How does the new Ryzen 5 7600 compare to the Ryzen 5 3600? Specs, performance, pricing, and more compared

The Ryzen 5 7600 was introduced as a part of the Ryzen 7000 non-X lineup this year at CES. The chip comes with a $230 target selling price and will be available starting January 10. It is a spiritual successor to the Ryzen 5 5600 introduced in 2022.

The Ryzen 5 non-X chips have primarily been AMD's competitor to the Core i5 x400 chips and, previously, have competed for the $200 value crown. However, with Zen 4, the Red Camp has priced the chips at $230, making them slightly costlier than before.

The processor is completely unlocked, like its predecessors. Gamers can overclock the CPU, which will allow them to achieve almost 95% of the performance marks that the 7600X can pump out in video games.

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How much of a leap is Zen 4 and Ryzen 5 7600 over the Ryzen 5 3600?

The Ryzen 5 3600 is a budget chip and is quite old at this point. It was introduced back in 2019 as AMD's $200 processor, and as a competitor to the Core i5 9400. The chip is based on the Zen 2 architecture which has since been replaced by the Ryzen 5 5600 on the AM4 platform, and now the Zen 4.

Thus, it is no surprise that the Ryzen 5 7600 dominates the 3600. However, the question is by how much.

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Specs of the chips

Both the Ryzen 5 3600 and the 7600 CPUs have six cores and 12 threads. While the former comes with a base clock of 3.6 GHz, the newer processor is clocked at 200 MHz faster at 3.8 GHz.

The Ryzen 5 7600 continues to be a trend for other Zen 4 CPUs and can boost up to 5.1 GHz. Meanwhile, the Ryzen 5 3600 boosts to just 4.2 GHz.

Both chips have a 65 W TDP and come with 32 MB of L3 cache.

	Ryzen 5 3600	Ryzen 5 7600
Architecture	7nm Zen 2	5nm Zen 4
Socket	AM4	AM5
Cores	6	6
Threads	12	12
Base clock	3.6 GHz	3.8 GHz
Boost clock	4.2 GHz	5.1 GHz
L3 cache	32 MB	32 MB
TDP	65W	65W

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Performance differences

The Zen 4-based chip is much faster than the older Ryzen 5 3600. According to benchmark data published in the performance aggregator NanoReview, the Ryzen 5 7600 beats the 3600 by over 40% in synthetic benchmark software like Cinebench and Geekbench.

	Ryzen 5 3600	Ryzen 5 7600
Cinebench R23 (single-core)	1,302	1,867 (+43%)
Cinebench R23 (multi-core)	9,579	13,485 (+41%)
Geekbench 5 (single-core)	1,263	2,050 (+62%)
Geekbench 5 (multi-core)	7,152	10,201 (+43%)

Thus, the newer budget chip is a much better performer across both multi-core and single-core workloads. The performance difference is large enough to cause day and night differences in video games and productivity workloads alike.

The reasons contributing to these performance differences are the newer, more efficient Zen 4 core architecture, support for faster DDR5 memory, and better optimization across workload software.

The Ryzen 5 7600 comes with a dual-core Radeon iGPU that can be used for basic video-output purposes. The Ryzen 5 3600 does not come with a graphics processor. Thus, users will have to pair the chip with a discrete GPU.

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Conclusion

The Ryzen 5 7600 will be launched with a $230 price tag. In comparison, users can pick up the Ryzen 5 3600 for just $110 these days. Thus, for half the price, the performance of this older chip does make sense.

Although gamers putting together a high-performance rig should opt for the newer chip, the Ryzen 5 3600 is powerful enough to handle basic workloads like web browsing and casual gaming.

Thus, users who want to build a media PC for basic browsing and content consumption can opt for the older and cheaper Ryzen 5 3600 processor.