Hardware AMD Ryzen 5 1500X Review

Very interesting that there is such a hard wall at 4Ghz for air or water cooling, yet Der8auer can get them to silly frequencies on LN2... The architecture is obviously capable of it, but why is it not a linear line in terms of frequency/voltage/temperature?

Still, interesting results in terms of power consumption, other reviews I've read have put it a bit higher, but your results are more in line with what I was expecting. No mention of idle/load temperatures though? Be interesting to know the temps considering these (correct me if I am wrong) don't have the silly temperature offset of the higher end chips.

 

The R5 1600 (non-X) is a 65W part. In the table on the first page it is listed as 95W. Same mistake in the R5 1600X review.

In the idle power consumption graphs, the 1600X stock and overclocked values and labels are switched. This is also in both articles.

 

What a cracking little CPU.

If I was in the market for a new PC for gaming and general use then this is most probably what I'd get, and spend the change on faster RAM, a better graphics card or beer.

 

Yeah it sucks, but unfortunately nothing we can do about it, oh well, at least it keeps fan speeds on the rad to a minimum.

 

This 3.9 - 4Ghz wall is the only thing that's stopping me from switching to a Ryzen build TBH.

..They really do need to hit 4.5Ghz to be the all round champ and give Intel a serious, long overdue kicking.

..but the fact is the higher IPC combined with a 20%+ clock speed advantage means Intel is still the CPU I'll stick with..for now, not being into any kind of productivity work or, god forbid, live game streaming, also counts against them in my mind.

..hopefully a 2018 Ryzen refresh with better overclocking will change that.

 

If that ever happens again I'll **** my boots.

 

The quad core chip coming from Intel this summer on the new HEDT platform is very likely to take an insurmountable lead in software that doesn't make use of more than four cores, so for a real lead in gaming benchmarks AMD would have to get Ryzen to 5ghz on air in the next couple months, which of course will never happen.

That said, once you turn up the resolution it is mostly the GPU that matters anyway making the whole fast CPU thing rather theoretical, while the benefit of more cores outside of gaming is very real and AMD right now does very much have the upper hand in good enough cores per £.

 

Indeedly, AMD won't get me the best game benchmarks, but it'll be more than capable of putting the performance burden on the GPU at the resolutions/settings I like so it's mostly academic anyway, and outside of games, AMD all the way tyvm. And they are cheaper.

Since AMD actually have a viable, pretty nifty CPU this time round and not the steamdriver screw-up and 250watt TDP 5ghz CPUs(?), I just can't countenance buying Intel, AMD need the money and we need AMD.

 

I'm so pleased to see competition is coming back, by what degree is open to opinion, but thank you AMD - we all needed this.