AMD Ryzen 5 5600G Review: The Value iGPU Gaming King

[harlan4096]

iGPU bang for your buck

Our Verdict

The Ryzen 5 5600G steals the show with a stellar price-to-performance ratio that provides up to 96% of the iGPU gaming performance of its more expensive counterpart, but for 30% less cash.

For

• Stellar price-to-performance ratio
  
• Faster Zen 3 CPU cores
  
• Passable 1080p, solid 720p
  
• Excellent power consumption and efficiency
  
• Great overclocking headroom
  
• Bundled cooler
  
• Compatible with some AM4 motherboards
  

Against

• PCIe 3.0 connectivity
  

The six-core 12-thread Ryzen 5 5600G comes to market as part of AMD's first salvo of 7nm 'Cezanne' APUs for desktop PCs that AMD plans to use to plug big price gaps in its Ryzen 5000 lineup that dominates our Best CPU list and CPU Benchmark hierarchy. We've already taken the more expensive eight-core 16-thread Ryzen 7 5700G for a spin, and today we're giving the $259 Ryzen 5 5600G the same treatment. When it comes to gaming on integrated graphics, the Ryzen 5 5600G takes the shine off its more expensive Ryzen 7 5700G counterpart by serving up ~96% of its performance but for 30% less cash, making it the CPU to get if you're looking to weather the GPU shortage with a potent APU for gaming.

The Cezanne APUs come with Zen 3 execution cores paired with the Radeon Vega graphics engine for iGPU-powered gaming rigs, and their arrival is long overdue. Cezanne will be the first new AMD APUs available at retail since the quad-core Zen+ "Picasso" models came to market in 2019. AMD actually augmented that lineup with the more modern eight-core Zen 2-powered Ryzen Pro "Renoir" series in 2020, but limited those chips to OEM systems only.

Now, three chip generations after it launched its last round of APUs (Zen 2, XT, Zen 3), AMD is finally replacing its 12nm quad-core Zen+ APUs.

AMD Ryzen 5000 G-Series 65W Cezanne APUs
CPU Arch. Price Cores/ Threads Base/ Boost Freq. GPU Cores GPU Freq. (MHz) TDP L3 (MB)

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Ryzen 7 5700G Zen 3 $359 8 / 16 3.8 / 4.6 RX Vega 8 2000 65W 16
Ryzen 5 5600G Zen 3 $259 6 / 12 3.9 / 4.4 RX Vega 7 1900 65W 16
Ryzen 3 5300G Zen 3 N/A 4 / 8 4.0 / 4.2 RX Vega 6 1700 65W 8

Cezanne comes to market during the worst graphics card shortage in history. As such, a potent yet affordable APU could be a godsend for enthusiasts looking for a stopgap chip for basic gaming while they wait for discrete GPU pricing to normalize. The new Ryzen 5000G models also pack much more performance than their prior-prior-gen brethren, so even after the shortage recedes, they'll still be a big step forward for budget gaming, small form factor, and HTPC rigs.

Instead of its traditional separation of the CPU and APU lines, AMD drops the 5000G models right into the Ryzen 5000 stack — AMD says they fill the role of the standard "non-X" models that traditionally offer more attractive price points at a given core count by sacrificing peak clock speed for a lower TDP.

If the numbers hold out in our performance testing, the 5600G could also address AMD's premium pricing with its Zen 3 chips: AMD's shift from being the budget brand to the market leader resulted in a $299 cost of entry into the Ryzen 5000 family. The $259 six-core Ryzen 5 5600G reduces that steep price of entry and also comes with a bundled Wraith Stealth cooler, sweetening the deal. AMD is still holding back some of its lower-priced 5000G models, though, so our list of the best cheap CPUs probably won't change for some time.

The GPU shortage appears to be improving ever so slowly, thanks in part to the collapse of mining profitability and China shutting down mining firms, but we expect it to persist to some extent over the next several months. If the 5600G slots in well under its X-equipped counterpart, the Ryzen 5 5600X, it could be a tough chip to beat. However, that isn't an easy task given the tradeoffs associated with Cezanne's monolithic die design, which differs significantly from the chiplet-based Ryzen 5000 chips. 

AMD Ryzen 5 5600G Specifications and Pricing

The Ryzen 5000G family spans from four to eight cores and has the Zen 3 architecture that provides a 19% IPC uplift over the Zen 2 architecture used in the previous-gen Ryzen 4000G models. AMD is only bringing the eight-core 16-thread Ryzen 7 5700G and six-core 12-thread Ryzen 5 5600G to retail, at least for now. In addition, AMD currently hasn't announced when it will bring the four-core eight-thread Ryzen 3 5300G or the 35W GE-Series models to retail, meaning we won't see any significant change to our list of the Best Cheap CPUs any time soon. 
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