Moving on to WinRAR, the R5 3600 looks very good, falling just short of the 8700K by a mere 4% margin. That made it 45% faster than the Core i7-7700K and Ryzen 7 2700X. The Cinebench R20 multi-core shows a very mild 2% increase in performance for the 3600X over the vanilla 3600. Very underwhelming difference – but could this be a good thing? – that doesn't justify the 25% price increase. With its first EPYC and Ryzen Threadripper processors, particularly the high core count WX models, AMD ran into several structural problems with memory bandwidth sharing between the CPU cores. The company fixed these with its 2nd generation EPYC processors, in which all dies with CPU cores talk to a centralized I/O controller die that has a monolithic memory controller, thereby making it possible for a CPU core to have the full bus width of the memory interface. With its 3rd generation Ryzen processors, AMD takes a similar approach. Two 8-core CPU complex dies talk to an I/O controller die over Infinity Fabric, which has the processor's dual-channel memory interface and PCI-Express root complex. For its 8-core Ryzen 7 series and 6-core Ryzen 5 series parts, AMD physically uses just one 8-core "Zen 2" chiplet.

We find similar results at 1440p, though here the 3600 matches the 1% low performance of the 9600K. Normally we'd recommend the Ryzen 5 5600 as a smart Zen 3 upgrade, but as we've found for 3600 owners, it's not a huge step forward and in many instances the performance uplift is going to be fairly negligible. After all, it was only 17% faster on average at 1080p using a Radeon RX 6950 XT whereas the 5800X3D was 46% faster. Moving on to The Division 2. At 1080p the R5 3600 edged out the 9600K and made a significant step forward from not just the 2600X, but also the 2700X. Interestingly, this time at 1440p the Ryzen 3600 was able to pull further ahead of the 9600K when looking at the 1% low performance. The R5 3600 was a good bit faster than the 2700X and 8700K here as well, as it matched the 8-core 3700X. We've already looked at the Ryzen 7 5800X3D in detail, from our day-one review to numerous comparisons with other high-end AMD and Intel processors, but still missing from all of that has been older Ryzen 5 parts, parts that many of you are still using.The AMD Ryzen 5 3600 also comes with an included CPU cooler, the Wraith Stealth. It's a good piece of kit too, which means you can save spending money on another cooler for your PC build. What are the alternatives to the Ryzen 5 3600? Having tested both R5 3600 models (see all of that further down below), here's the tale of the tape:

This time the 3600X reduced the render time by just 4% when testing with Blender, at this point you're probably starting to question why we need two 6-core/12-thread Zen 2-based CPUs. F1 2021 plays very well on the Ryzen 5 3600, but if you're after even more performance the 5600 will probably have you covered. But if you want to go all out the 5800X3D is seen here delivering up to 111% more performance with the Radeon 6950 XT at 1080p, incredible really.

AMD Ryzen 5 3600

Assuming you have a capable GPU, and if you are targeting very high FPS gaming at lower quality settings, perhaps for competitive shooters, then Ryzen 5 3600 owners stand to gain a lot of extra performance by upgrading to the 5800X3D. But that's like the perfect scenario for that upgrade. You can enable PBO with the box cooler, but it won't do much as you're already near the thermal limit. Basically we gained 25 MHz for a 4 degree increase in temperature... needless to be said, we don't recommend using PBO with the box cooler.

Later on we plan to test 3rd-gen Ryzen with some B350 motherboards to see just how well these new processors work on entry-level boards. Shopping Shortcuts: Starting with CS:GO, we find that the 1% lows of the 5800X3D are improved by 81% from the 3600, while the average frame rate was boosted by 55% from 245 fps up to 380 fps. We've heard that more serious Counter-Strike players like to target over 300 fps, so if that happens to be you, then the 5800X3D will be a worthwhile upgrade. But without question the most popular question we received afterwards was: should you buy the Ryzen 5 3600 or the 3600X?This change of mind return policy is in addition to, and does not affect your rights under the Australian Consumer Law including any rights you may have in respect of faulty items. To return faulty items see our Returning Faulty Items policy.