AMD Ryzen 5 1600X And 1500X Processor Review: Affordable Zen Takes On Core i5

For our next series of tests, we moved on to some game-related metrics with Crysis and 3DMark, specifically the physics benchmark that's part of the Fire Strike test. When testing processors with Crysis, we drop the resolution to 1024x768, and reduce all of the in-game graphical options to their low preset values to isolate CPU and memory performance as much as possible. However, the in-game effects, which control the level of detail for the games' physics engines and particle systems, are left at their maximum values, since these actually do place a load on the CPU rather than GPU.  For the 3DMark Physics test, we simply create a custom 3DMark run consisting solely of the physics test, which is CPU dependent, and report the results...

Gaming: Crysis and 3DMark Physics Taking the GPU out of the Equation

Low-resolution gaming performance -- that isn't GPU bound -- with titles that haven't been optimized for Ryzen, is currently one of the pain-points of the platform. These two tests are in stark contrast to one another. The 3DMark Physics tests shows Ryzen 5 performing well. The much older Crysis CPU benchmark, however, doesn't paint a very pretty picture.

High Resolution Gaming Tests 1080P and 4K Gaming With GeForce GTX 1080

We also ran some high-resolution game and graphics tests on AMD's new Ryzen 5 processors using 3DMark, Hitman, and Ashes Of The Singularity. We used 3DMark's Fire Strike Ultra preset, and both of the games were run with all in-game graphics options set to their maximum values, save for the Ashes 1080P test where we used the "High" preset. Note, we also swapped out the GTX 960 for a GeForce GTX 1080 here.

The 3DMark Fire Strike results are tightly grouped, because the GPU is the bottleneck. The 6900K's higher clocks help propel it into the top spot, followed by a bevy of Ryzen processors. The overall scores and individual framerates are tightly grouped though, with only small percentages separating the processors' performance.

Game performance was also competitive with the DirectX 12 title, Hitman, with the settings we used. The Core i7-6900K took the lead overall, but the Ryzen 7 and 5 series processors fall in right in-line behind it, but in front of the Core i5s.



Since our original coverage of Ryzen 7, Ashes of the Singularity has been updated and now features some preliminary optimizations to better utilize Ryzen. Overall, the Ryzen 7 1800X still trailed the 6900K by a sizable margin at 1080p, but things scale much better than before. The 1500X ends up beating Core i5 processors by a couple of percentage points as well at 1080p, but the Ryzen 5 1600X fares much better. At 4K, the GPU is the bottleneck and the grouping is much tighter. Here the 1500X ends up finishing just behind the Core i5s.