Although most of the information regarding the Ryzen 5 lineup was revealed yesterday, the official announcement from AMD has provided some additional details, performance figures and has clarified some things. The most important detail is the fact that AMD has decided to keep the Core Complex (CCX) intact on its Ryzen 5 SKUs, or simply consistent. This means that six- and quad-core parts will have the same core design as the octa-core Ryzen 7 lineup, featuring two CCX modules.
This means that both the six-core Ryzen 5 parts will be made on 3+3 design, paired with full 16MB of L3 cache, while quad-core Ryzen 5 parts will use 2+2 CCX design and end up with 8MB of L3 cache. This means both will have the same amount of available PCIe lanes, just like Ryzen 7 SKUs.
As detailed earlier, AMD will be launching a total of four Ryzen 5 SKUs, the Ryzen 5 1600X, Ryzen 5 1600, Ryzen 5 1500X and the Ryzen 5 1400.
The flagship SKU in the Ryzen 5 lineup is the Ryzen 5-1600X, aimed against Intel's Core i5-7600K CPU. This is a 6-core/12-thread CPU with 16MB of L3 cache, working at 3.6GHz base and 4.0GHz Turbo clock and has a 95W TDP. It features the XFR technology, which should boost the overclocking capability depending on the CPU cooling, and will ship without any boxed cooler, at least in retail.
The Ryzen 5 1600 SKU is quite similar but it lacks the XFR feature and works at slightly lower 3.2GHz base and 3.6GHz Turbo clocks. This also means it has a lower 65W TDP and will ship with AMD's Wraith Spire cooler.
The Ryzen 5 quad-core offer is quite interesting, as the Ryzen 5 1500X packs 8MB of L3 cache, works at 3.5GHz base and 3.7GHz Turbo clocks and has the same 65W TDP. It also comes with XFR feature, ships with Wraith Spire cooler and should go against Intel's Core i5-7500. The Ryzen 5 1400, lacks XFR, works at 3.2GHz base and 3.4GHz Turbo clocks, has 65W TDP and will ship with smaller Wraith Stealth cooler. The Ryzen 5 1400 should go well against Intel's Core i3 lineup, especially the dual-core Core i3-7350K.
| SKU | Cores/Threads | Clock Base/Turbo | L3 Cache | TDP | Price |
| Ryzen 5 1600X | 6/12 | 3.6/4.0GHz | 16MB | 95W | US $249 |
| Ryzen 5 1600 | 6/12 | 3.2/3.6GHz | 16MB | 65W | US $219 |
| Ryzen 5 1500X | 4/8 | 3.5/3.7GHz | 8MB | 65W | US $189 |
| Ryzen 5 1400 | 4/8 | 3.2/3.4GHz | 8MB | 65W | US $169 |
As you can see from the slide below, AMD has rather aggressively priced its Ryzen 5 lineup and if the performance is anything similar to the Ryzen 7 lineup, Intel is in for some hard competition in the mainstream CPU market.
In addition to announcing the full Ryzen 5 SKU lineup which should be available in retail/e-tail on April 11th, AMD has also released a neat video that gives a peek at the Ryzen 5 1600X performance, showing it in a couple of games, including Overwatch and F1 as well as the Blender benchmark, all against Intel's Core i5-7600K CPU.
Hopefully, reviews of the Ryzen 5 SKU lineup will be coming soon as we are certainly looking forward to checking out some of those SKUs in other games and benchmarks.
