Ryzen 5 5500 vs Ryzen 5 5600. Is 16mb of cache worth the additional 50£?

[AndreiArgeanu]

I need to upgrade my CPU since my Ryzen 3 3100 is holding back my RX 5700XT and I found the Ryzen 5 5500 for about 100£. The ryzen 5 5600 is about 150£ and I don't feel like spending the additional 50£ just to get an additional 16mb of cache and 200mhz higher clock speed. Is it worth spending 50% more on the 5600? Is that 16mb of cache going to make a signficant difference in my setup? Or will the 5500 do me just as well. I mainly play games and code.

[Jurrunio]

Dont forget to check benchmarks, those tell a lot more than mere specs.

[BiG StroOnZ]

I'd say because of gaming benchmarks, the additional 50£ is worth it for the 5600:

 

 

 

[Fasauceome]

The 5500 is comparable in performance to the Ryzen 5 3600. Mind you, it also has PCIe 3.0 instead of 4.0 (though that would hardly matter to the average gamer)

 

If you can get a new 3600 for a decent price, or even a used one for a substantial discount, that should be compared to the 5500

[Skiiwee29]

Would agree that the extra for the cache is worth it. If the 5800x3d has showing us anything, its that Cache plays a huge factor in gaming performance when it comes to CPUs. The 5800x3d still trades blows with Ryzen 7000 and Intel 13th Gen for gaming.

[aDoomGuy]

Cache is good, but how much you will benefit depends on your workload. It heavily depends on the games and since I don't know how much 50 quid is worth to you, is hard for me to say.

 

SO, conveniently @BiG StroOnZposted some game benchmarks. Let me do some numbers (...which may be correct or incorrect... but never the less).

 

Far Cry 6 5600 is 18% faster

F1 2022 5600 is 18% faster

Hitman 3 is 13% faster

 

So at a glance you get 10-20% more frames for 50% more money.

[Needfuldoer]

44 minutes ago, Fasauceome said:

If you can get a new 3600 for a decent price, or even a used one for a substantial discount, that should be compared to the 5500

They're currently $137 on Amazon in the US, when you pick the "shipped from and sold by Amazon" listing. (They were $120 last week.) The only catch is that they're backordered for now.