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The AMD Ryzen 5 5600 and 5500 are two popular CPUs in the budget mid-range category. The former offers more features and performance, so you would naturally assume it is better. But pricing plays a big role here. The Ryzen 5 5600 costs significantly more, which strips some of its value compared to the Ryzen 5500.
In this article, we conduct an in-depth comparison of the two CPUs to judge which is the best for budget gaming in terms of performance, features, and cost.
Note: Some aspects of this article are subjective and solely reflect the writer's opinions.
AMD Ryzen 5 5600 vs 5500
The AMD Ryzen 5 5600 and 5500 are based on the same Zen 3 architecture but have different features, specs, and performance. That's because the Ryzen 5 5500 is not a traditional Zen 3 CPU. It was originally an APU with integrated graphics, but AMD disabled the integrated graphics part of the chip and relaunched it as a new processor.
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Let's check out the specs of the two CPUs to understand their differences.
Specs comparison
Here are the specs of the AMD Ryzen 5 5600 and 5500:
The L3 cache of the Ryzen 5 5500 is half that of the Ryzen 5 5600, which will have major implications when gaming. L3 cache is shared across all the cores, and less cache will lead to lower performance in memory-sensitive games. The Ryzen 5 5600 has a higher clock speed, which gamers will love.
Also, there's no PCIe Gen 4 support on the Ryzen 5 5500, which can seriously limit the performance of some SSDs and graphics cards.
Synthetic productivity benchmark
Let's look at the actual performance differences between both processors. We compare the performances of the AMD Ryzen 5 5600 and 5500 using popular benchmarks, such as GeekBench and Cinebench.
On average, the AMD Ryzen 5 5600 delivers a 7.9% higher score in single-core benchmark than the Ryzen 5 5500. In multi-core benchmarks, the former achieves only a 5.1% higher score than the latter.
As is evident, the performance difference between the two processors is less than 10%.
Gaming performance differences
Productivity performance benchmarks give us a general idea of a CPU but don't always translate to actual gaming performance. We need a proper gaming benchmark of two CPUs.
That said, let's compare the AMD Ryzen 5 5600 and 5500 in modern gaming. For this benchmark, we sourced the FPS numbers from the channel, Hardware Tested, on YouTube.
Note: The test was run at 1080p resolution at the highest settings with the RTX 3070 GPU.
Here are the gaming benchmarks of both processors:
On average, the AMD Ryzen 5 5600 produces 11.8% higher FPS than the Ryzen 5 5500. In Rainbox Six Seige, the performance difference between the two CPUs is even higher. The higher clock speed and larger cache size of the Ryzen 5 5600 made a difference in gaming.
Price comparison
The AMD Ryzen 5 5600 costs $128, which is 45.5% more than the AMD Ryzen 5 5500 ($88). Since price is a factor when it comes to budget gaming, the latter trumps here.
Final verdict of AMD Ryzen 5 5600 vs 5500
The AMD Ryzen 5 5600 is around 11.8% faster in gaming and approximately 6% faster in productivity than the Ryzen 5 5500 but costs 45.5% more. Despite the performance gain, it is not worth the price. Therefore, the Ryzen 5 5500 is the best choice for budget gamers.
However, if PCIe Gen 4 matters to you, you should go with the more expensive AMD Ryzen 5 5600. But note that the cost of Gen 4 SSDs is also much higher.
