AMD Ryzen 5 7600 review: at what cost?

As we mentioned earlier, we've tested with both DDR5-5200 and DDR5-6000 RAM for our Ryzen 7000 and Intel 12th/13th-gen systems. For DDR4-based systems, including Intel 11th-gen and AMD Ryzen 5000, we're using DDR4-3600. The 6000MT/s results are labelled as such; if a result is unlabelled then it is DDR5-5200 for the DDR5 systems and DDR4-3600 for DDR4. We'll examine the impact of different DDR5 speeds in more detail on page five of this review.

Anyway - in these tests, we'll examine how the Ryzen 5 7600 behaves in Cyberpunk 2077, as well as two recent releases from series that have featured prominently in our previous CPU benchmarks: Far Cry 6, renowned for its single-core reliance, and Crysis 3 Remastered, a DF staple. We've opted for highly repeatable scenes here from a variety of sources here - an in-game cutscene, a brief open gameplay segment along a fixed route and an in-game benchmark.

Remember that you can mouse over the results in the tables below (as long as you're using a desktop browser rather than a phone) to get dynamically generated performance readouts for all processors we've tested. Meanwhile, clicking the graph swaps you into percentages, making it a bit easier to judge relative performance at a glance.

Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 is our second RT benchmark, showing how RT performance can add even more load to the CPU and cause CPU bottlenecking in some scenarios. This benchmark, taken from a motorcycle run along the busy city streets, also demonstrates the game's reliance on high-speed memory, with big performance advantages evident with DDR5-6000 over DDR5-5200. That's especially prominent with the Ryzen 7000 CPUs, including the 7600, which often see a ~10 percent frame-rate improvement with faster RAM.

Pretty much all Ryzen 7000 CPUs, with that DDR5-6000, are nearing 100fps average, which is a great result for this fairly inexpensive 7600 that places it amongst Intel's 13th-gen as well.

Far Cry 6

The single-core reliance from Far Cries past returns in the sixth instalment of the franchise. The 7600 does well here, again with results that are indistinguishable from other, higher-powered Ryzen 7000 alternatives. And in a preview of our RAM analysis, we have about a six percent advantage from DDR5-6000 over DDR5-5200.

Crysis 3 Remastered

Crysis 3 Remastered allows us to revisit our favourite scene from early on in the original game's campaign, which oscillates between character closeups and complex distant geometry to load both CPU and GPU. Once again, I think we're starting to edge towards GPU limitations here even with DLSS performance engaged, with the 7600 delivering nearly 300fps - equivalent to other Ryzen 7000 CPUs, aside from the impressive 7950X, and slightly behind Intel's higher-tier 12th-gen and 13th-gen CPUs.

Now let's move onto one final spot of game testing, testing how well the 7600 performs at three different RAM frequencies. Where's the sweet spot for DDR5 with this budget chip?

AMD Ryzen 5 7600 analysis

• Introduction, test rig and content creation benchmarks
• Gaming benchmarks: Flight Simulator 2020, Hitman 3
• Gaming benchmarks: Counter-Strike: GO, Metro Exodus EE, Black Ops Cold War
• Gaming benchmarks: Cyberpunk 2077, Far Cry 6, Crysis 3 Remastered [this page]
• Gaming benchmarks: Memory bandwidth analysis
• AMD Ryzen 5 7600: the Digital Foundry verdict