AMD released the Ryzen 5 5500, the cheapest CPU of this generation, about 18 months after the first Zen 3 chips graced our PCs. The Zen 4 chip is expected by the end of the year, but will this chip be able to make an impact in such a limited time frame?

The second question is much easier to answer than the first because it is clear what the Ryzen 5 5500 can and cannot do compared to similar chips. Like the Ryzen 5 5600X before it (open in new tab), this chip is a 6-core, 12-thread Zen 3 CPU with a decent clock speed and DDR4 support there. [However, it does not support the latest PCIe 4.0 interface and remains PCIe 3.0, so it is not an attractive chip if you are buying it with vague hopes of future-proofing. However, it does come with a Wraith Stealth cooler, so at least you won't have to buy an aftermarket cooler to get your system up and running.

As one would expect from a cheap CPU, this CPU has a slower clock speed than its predecessors, though not as much as you might think. The base clock is 3.6 GHz and boost is 4.2 GHz, while the previous most affordable chip, the Ryzen 5 5600X, has a base clock of 3.7 GHz and can turbo up to 4.6 GHz. [The Ryzen 5 5500 has only half the L3 cache of the 5600 and 5600X. Many games have big caches, as evidenced by the release of the cache-rich Ryzen 7 5800X3D (open in new tab). Not all games, to be fair, but enough to sow seeds of doubt.

The frequency drop won't be a major upset on its own, but the cache will also be lower, making it somewhat less of an attractive proposition; the move to PCIe 3.0 also makes it less suitable for long-term play, making the Ryzen 5 5500 something worth considering, It needs to produce results in gaming benchmarks.

The Ryzen 5 5500 is a mixed bag when it comes to performance. In intensive CPU testing, it performs surprisingly well despite its low price.

For example, the Cinebench R23 benchmark results are competitive with the Ryzen 5 5600X in multi-core tests and not far behind in single-core tests. This feat was replicated in the X264 v5 benchmark, where the Ryzen 5500 encoded video at 37 fps, the same as more expensive chips. [In the test, the Ryzen 5 5500 consumed slightly more power than the 5600X, with a peak power of 78W versus 76W. It also ran slightly hotter with the same AIO cooler, 75°C versus 70°C. The last benchmark of note on the more serious side was PCMark 10 Express, where the 5500 lagged behind the 5600X by 12%. This difference was a sign of things to come in gaming benchmarks...

AMD's recent release of the Ryzen 7 5800X3D proved that more cache is useful for some games. The Ryzen 5 5500, on the other hand, was the opposite, with AMD reducing the L3 cache from 32MB to 16MB in order to achieve a cheaper price point. This results in less room for gaming and has a clear impact on performance.

The impact varies from game to game, but the general theme is a significant drop in performance for all games we tested: Far Cry 6 showed the biggest drop against 5600X, averaging only 88 fps compared to 5600X's 122 fps F1 2021, Metro Exodus, and Total War: Three Kingdoms were all slower, with average and minimum frame rates all dropping 15-20%, making for a less than impressive experience.

Basically, this is not the budget gaming processor you've been waiting for.

The good news here is that the price of this chip has dropped since its launch and is now available for as low as $139 on Newegg. However, it is still not cheap enough to make this an easy recommendation. Even for gamers on a limited budget.

If you can't stretch to the $199 Ryzen 5 5600X or the $173 Ryzen 5 5600, you'll have to opt for a bargain last-generation chip or Intel's Alder Lake Core i3.