The high-end Ryzen 7 CPU from AMD has proven to be a huge success on the market with positive reviews and good sales. Following this success, the mid-tier AMD Ryzen 5 CPUs are slated to be released next month.
AMD mentioned previously that the AMD Ryzen 5 is scheduled for release in Q2 2017. According to NDTV, the company has set April 11 as the date for the launch of the big Ryzen 5. AMD will reportedly unveil four new CPUs. Two of the upcoming CPUs have six physical cores, while the other two have four. These CPUs are all expected to support simultaneous multithreading, wherein each core is allowed to run two threads at the same time.
The fastest mid-tier Ryzen 5 CPU is the 6-core/12-thread 1600x variant, having a base clock of 3.5GHz and boost target of up to 4GHz. This is comparable to the top-tier Ryzen 6 1800x, but the Ryzen 5 version is obviously outclassed due to its fewer cores. The Ryzen 5 1600x has a price tag of $249. It is expected to take on Intel Core i5-7600K, which also boasts of similar features.
On the other hand, another mid-tier product, the AMD Ryzen 5 1600, is clocked at 3.2GHz with boost target of up to 3.6GHz. It is going to boast of six cores that can get 12 threads working. This variant is priced quite lower than 1600x at $219.
The last two mid-tier Ryzen 5 processors are the 1500x and 1400, which are both quad-core CPUs running on eight threads. The faster 1500x model has a clock speed of 3.5 to 3.7GHz, while the 1400 variant is clocked at 3.2 to 3.4GHz. The price of Ryzen 5 1500x and 1400 are $189 and $169 respectively.
According to PC World, AMD General Manager for Client Business Unit, Kevin Lensing, stated that the advantage of the mid-range AMD Ryzen 5 CPUs is their "tremendously more computational power." This seems to be an important edge enough to topple Intel's i5 Core processors. For one, the Ryzen 5 1600x is slightly more expensive than the Intel Core i5-7600K processor with 3.8GHz clock speed and 4-core/4-thread configuration. However, Ryzen's advantage is its higher thread count, which is three times larger than Intel Core i5's CPU.
Given the success of the AMD Ryzen 7 on the market, the sales projection for AMD Ryzen 5 looks to be promising. There is high expectation for the upcoming mid-tier AMD CPUs with the momentum that the Ryzen 7 is enjoying.