AMD recently launched a third Zen 3 CPU in the Ryzen 5 5500 family dubbed the Ryzen 5 5500F for $99. But despite the fact that both chips belong to the "Ryzen 5 5500" series and have nearly identical specs, new gaming benchmarks have uncovered that the 5500F achieves noticeably higher gaming performance in CPU-bound games. RandomGaminginHD on YouTube tested the Ryzen 5 5500F in several games, showing up to a 16% performance improvement over its non-F counterpart.
The YouTuber tested the Ryzen 5 5500F against the Ryzen 5 5500 paired with an RX 9060 XT 16GB in Counter-Strike 2, Crimson Desert, GTA V: Enhanced, Battlefield 6, Forza Horizon 6, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Cyberpunk 2077. In the more CPU-bound titles, the Ryzen 5 5500F showed a noteworthy gap compared to the 5500. In Counter-Strike 2 at 1080p high settings, the 5500F was 8% faster than its non-F counterpart; in GTA V: Enhanced at the Very High RT preset, the 5500F was 9% faster; in Battlefield 6 at high settings, the 5500F was 16% faster, and in Cyberpunk 2077 at ultra settings, the 5500F was 11% faster.
In the rest of the titles, the GPU load was great enough to neutralize any extra performance the Ryzen 5 5500F might have on offer compared to the 5500. All of the YouTuber's benchmarking results were run at 1080p.
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The Ryzen 5 5500F is not a perfect graphics-less clone of the Ryzen 5 5500, which explains the performance differences between the two chips. The Ryzen 5 5500F comes with a 200MHz higher boost clock than the 5500 and comes with PCIe 4.0 support, whereas the 5500 is limited to PCIe 3.0 speeds. The PCIe differences specifically are due to the fact that AMD is using its chiplet version of Zen 3 to make the Ryzen 5 5500F, codenamed "Vermeer", whereas it is using Zen 3's monolithic counterpart, codenamed "Cezanne," with built-in integrated graphics to make the Ryzen 5 5500.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Does the Ryzen 5 5500F support PCIe 4.0 on every AM4 chipset, or only on certain boards?
How much of the 5500F's gaming lead comes from its higher boost clock versus the chiplet design?
Which of the tested games were most CPU-bound enough to show the biggest gap between the 5500F and 5500?
Did the RX 9060 XT 16GB bottleneck any of the 1080p benchmarks in this test?
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The Ryzen 5 5500F was released alongside the Ryzen 5 7500 a few days ago as AMD's new entry-level offering on the AM4 platform. Despite the platform's age, AMD is continuing to make CPUs for the now 10-year-old AM4 platform. The Ryzen 5 5500F is the second AM4 model AMD has released this year, the first being the rebooted Ryzen 7 5800X3D 10th Anniversary Edition.
