The AMD Ryzen 5 5600G is a Zen 3-based, desktop-grade APU featuring the Radeon Vega 7 graphics adapter. This Ryzen 5 was unveiled in H1 2021. It features six SMT-enabled CPU cores for 12 threads in total, running at 3.9 GHz to 4.4 GHz.
The CPU ships with AMD’s Wraith Stealth cooler as long as it’s not an OEM version.
Architecture
Zen 3-based processors bring a moderate performance boost over Zen 2 generation CPUs. Core counts are left where they were before, while per-MHz performance is getting several percentage points higher.
Ryzen 5 5600G’s CPU cores have access to 16 MB of L3 cache. The processor is compatible with DDR4-3200 RAM and has plenty of PCI-Express 3.0 lanes for connecting graphics cards, SSDs and other devices. Four PCI-Express 3.0 lanes allow for read/write rates of up to 3.9 GB/s, provided a sufficiently fast NVMe SSD is used. PCI-Express 4.0 spec is not supported here, since Ryzen 5 5600G is pretty much a laptop-grade SoC in disguise rather than a “proper” desktop chip, like a Ryzen 5 5600X.
You can replace this Ryzen with a faster CPU easily as it uses AMD’s AM4 socket interface. Another way to get a performance boost would be to overclock the CPU, which is easy to do with AMD’s very own software (many motherboard vendors offer overclocking software of their own as well).
Performance
The six Zen 3 cores running at the relatively high clock speeds will easily rip through most workloads, more demanding ones (like gaming and high-res video editing) included. Multi-thread benchmarks reveal the Ryzen to be in the same league as Intel’s Core i7-9700K, Core i5-10600K, Core i7-10700. A huge advantage of Ryzen 5 5600G over the aforementioned alternatives is its faster integrated adapter, though. More on this below.
Graphics
The Radeon RX Vega 7 iGPU has seven Compute Units (= 448 shaders) and runs at up to 1,900 MHz. It is casual gaming-friendly, allowing one to play most games at 900p / Low quality preset. On the other hand, there is no SUHD 4320p monitor support here, nor can the graphics adapter HW-decode AV1, the latest video codec.
While being superior to Intel’s integrated graphics, the Vega is no match for AMD’s RDNA2-based iGPUs, like the 680M.
Fast RAM is a prerequisite for decent gaming performance as the Vega has no memory of its own.
Power Consumption
The Ryzen is manufactured on TSMC’s 7 nm process for nearly excellent energy efficiency. This CPU has a default TDP of 65 W (it can go much higher than that if overclocked, though).
