AMD’s Ryzen 5 series is here to challenge Intel’s Core i5 processors

AMD made big waves in the chip world last month when it unveiled the Ryzen series as a new line of processors that could actually challenge Intel’s long-seated dominance when it comes to high-end performance.

But where the Ryzen 7 was a top-tier line akin to Intel’s Core i7 models aimed at users who demand peak performance at any price, the Ryzen 5 could be a much bigger deal as a cheaper, midrange model that’s taking aim at Intel’s popular Core i5 line. 

The Ryzen 5 line has four models: the $169 Ryzen 5 1400 (4 cores/8 threads at 3.2GHz/3.5GHz), the $189 Ryzen 5 1500X (4 cores/8 threads at 3.5GHz/3.7GHz), the $219 Ryzen 5 1600 (6 cores/12 threads at 3.2GHz/3.6GHz), and $249 Ryzen 5 1600X (6 cores/12 threads at 3.6GHz/4.0GHz).

As noted by AnandTech, that top-tier Ryzen 5 1600X lines up nicely against Intel’s $242 Core i5-7600K, hitting roughly the same price point but offering 6 cores with 12 threads to Intel’s 4 core/4 thread offering, although obviously we’ll have to wait for some actual benchmarking tests to see how that shakes out in the real world. 

AMD will be selling the Ryzen 5 processors starting April 11th. Additionally, the company is planning a budget Ryzen 3 line to go head-to-head with Intel’s Core i3 series for later in 2017.

The article was published on : theverge