AMD R5 2600 & 2600X CPU Gaming Benchmarks
Assassin’s Creed: Origins Benchmark – R5 2600, 2600X, i5-8600K, 2700
Assassin’s Creed: Origins starts us off at 1080p. For this one, the R5 2600X stock CPU places at 102FPS AVG, with lows at 77FPS and 66FPS. These numbers are all reasonable, and scale from the stock 1600X – placing at 94FPS AVG – by about 8.6% from last year’s model. That’s with both stock. Overclocked, the 2600X at 4.2GHz pulls a lot more power and gains negligibly in the FPS department, at 103FPS – a 1.5% increase, and just outside of our error margins. The overclocked 1600X lands at 95FPS AVG, also gaining negligibly.
The R5 2600 non-X CPU, which operates a frequency of 3.4 to 3.9GHz, runs the test at 97FPS AVG, with lows about the same as every other Ryzen 5 CPU on the chart. Compared to the R7 2700X stock CPU, operating at 107FPS AVG, performance uplift versus the stock R5 2600X is about 5.7%.
Of course, at 1440p, all of that equalizes. Like we demonstrated in our R7 2700X review, the differences primarily thin-down to just Intel and AMD, where we see about a 10% gap between them. Other than that, once we’re intra-architecture, there is functionally zero difference in a GPU-bound benchmark.
Watch Dogs 2 CPU Benchmark – R5 2600, 2600X, i5-8600K, 2700
Moving on to Watch Dogs 2, we measured the R5 2600X stock CPU, using X470, as performing at 103FPS AVG, with GN’s founded 1% and 0.1% lows at 80FPS and 62FPS, respectively. Overclocking gets us an increase of 1.6%, and is entirely not worth it – a result of XFR2 being functionally as good as a manual OC when pushed against the limits of ambient cooling. The 2600 operates a couple percent behind the 2600X, as expected. The stock 1600X runs at around 93FPS AVG, allowing the stock 2600X an 11% lead before overclocking – but again, they can overclock to the same frequency, basically.
The competing i5-8600K outperforms the 2600X by about 3.1% when both are stock. Overclocking gets the 8600K up to 116FPS AVG, a lead of 10.7% over the overclocked 2600X at 4.2GHz, while also retaining higher 1% and 0.1% low frametime performance.
As expected, 1440p equalizes this to some extent. Just like in our 2700X review, the Intel processors retain a bit of a lead, but all the intra-arch CPUs remain close in performance.
Project Cars 2 Benchmark – R5 2600, 2600X, i5-8600K, 2700
Project Cars 2 at 1080p plants the 8600K 5GHz overclock right alongside the 5GHz 8700K, illustrating that Project Cars favors clock speed over nearly all else. This is further demonstrated other overclock scaling.
The 2600X stock CPU operates at 110FPS AVG, with an overclock granting all of 1FPS – within test variance, and functionally equal in performance. The 2600 operates at 106FPS AVG, granting the 2600X stock CPU a lead of 4%. This vanishes when overclocking the 2600, which is trivial. Compared to the 1600X stock CPU, the 2600X stock operates at 110 to 97.8FPS AVG, or a 12.7% lead generationally. The 2700X doesn’t offer much of an improvement in this department, with its efforts more noticeable under Blender or streaming applications.
Cars at 1440p mostly just shows more of the same – scaling primarily vanishes between same-arch CPUs, with Intel holding a bit of a lead. Both are GPU-bottlenecked.
Ashes of the Singularity Benchmark – R5 2600X vs. 2600, 2700
Conversely to Project Cars, Ashes of the Singularity can actually leverage additional cores – although it does like frequency, to some extent.
For this one, the i7-8700K at 5GHz leads the charts at 56FPS AVG, followed by the overclocked R7 2700X at 4.2GHz with 51FPS AVG. The overclocked 1700 isn’t far behind – illustrating why we’d suggest sticking with Ryzen 1, if you already have it – and the i5-8600K at 5GHz runs at 47FPS AVG, about equal to the stock R7 2700, and with frametimes also equivalent.
The 2600X stock CPU pushes 43.9FPS AVG, with an overclock providing nothing of value. The 2600 is a single digit behind, and can be overclocked to make up that ground. Finally, further down, the 8600K stock CPU operates at 41FPS AVG.
Similar scaling to what we’ve seen elsewhere.
Civilization VI CPU Benchmark – R5 2600 vs. 2600X, i5-8600K
We test turn times for Civilization VI, but the game recently got a huge update that completely upended our previous testing. We have retested as a result. The 2700X stock CPU finishes each turn in 11.05 seconds, with all five turns taking about 55 seconds. Overclocking reduces the time requirement to 10.88 seconds, for a 1.5% time reduction. The 8700K stock CPU operates at 10.75 seconds – not a huge change – with the overclocked variant at 10.17 seconds, also not particularly game-changing. Civilization’s update has tightened turn times to a point of limited usefulness in benchmarking, although it is still a highly consistent and unique benchmark for the CPU. The 2600X performs similarly to the 8600K – and everything else, really. There’s not a lot of difference in these tests.
GTA V CPU Benchmark – R5 2600X, 1600X, 8600K
GTA V is our last one. At 1080p, GTA V posts the 8600K stock CPU at 136FPS AVG, with a significant performance uplift of 11% when overclocked to 5GHz. The 2600X at 116FPS AVG operates about 4.7% ahead of the 2600 non-X, and about 11.5% ahead of the original 1600X and its 104FPS AVG; granted, overclocking to 4.05GHz nearly ties that matchup.
1440p demonstrates that we hit a GPU bottleneck at 130FPS AVG, with the overclocked 8600K and 8700K both within margin of error of one another. The 2600X runs close to where it did at 1080p – around 115FPS AVG.
AMD R5 2600 & 2600X Power Consumption
We measure power consumption as clamped at the EPS12V rails. We used the Gigabyte Gaming 7 X470 motherboard for Ryzen 2000 series CPUs – if you are curious about power capabilities and loss on behalf of the VRM, we have a video discussing and analyzing the Gaming 7’s PCB. This is not measured at the wall,
Power Consumption – R5 2600 & 2600X
For power consumption, we plotted the R5 2600 non-X at 81W at the EPS12V rails for Cinebench multi-threaded, landing it between the 1600X stock and 1700 stock from the first generation. The 2600X draws about 113W at the rails in our test, with the 2600X overclocked at 130W – a completely unworthwhile endeavor, given XFR2. It’d be more worth it for the non-X. For frame of reference, the 2700X stock CPU measured 145W, or 192W when overclocked. This is largely because AMD and its board partners are blasting the 2700X with more voltage than necessary when stock.
Conclusion: AMD R5 2600X & 2600 vs. Intel i5
We’re getting to a point where Ryzen’s generational improvements, from a pure FPS and performance perspective, are going to look an awful lot like Intel’s. If you bought Ryzen 1, there’s really no reason to replace it with Ryzen 2. AMD’s improvements are primarily in unseen places to the end user, like the reduced minimum voltage at a given frequency, which we previously highlighted here. These are less flashy than gaining, say, 20% in framerate, so will undoubtedly be largely overlooked by the general userbase. Such improvements are critical, and we think AMD has done well to reduce voltage at a given frequency over first generation.
As for the rest, it’s rather lateral from Ryzen 1. If you already own a 1600X, don’t buy a 2600X to replace it. If you don’t own a current CPU, strongly consider a 2600X. The 2600 and 2600X get all the same accolades as the 1600 and 1600X did. They’re the same price, they perform a bit better, they reduce given-frequency voltage requirements, and they fit in the same boards. Where we’d previously recommend the R5 1600, we now recommend the R5 2600. It’s as simple as that.
The R5 2600(X) is an all-arounder CPU, and if it weren’t for Intel’s 6-core i5s, it’d be the only option. The 6-core i5s still have some viability, but AMD’s R5 line remains our go-to at the price point, in general, with Intel remaining the go-to at the $330 for gaming, or AMD at $330 for production/streaming-type applications (although the 8700K does well to compete there – better than the 8600K does to compete with the R5s).
Editorial, Host: Steve Burke
Testing: Patrick Lathan
Video: Andrew Coleman
