AMD’s limited-edition $229 Ryzen 5 5600X3D comes with all the goodness of the company’s game-boosting 3D V-Cache technology, propelling it to the highest gaming performance in the mid-range price class. Overall, the 5600X3D is ~20% faster in gaming than the Intel Core i5-13400 that currently tops our list of the best CPUs for gaming. However, in a move that defies convention, the Ryzen 5 5600X3D comes to market as a Micro Center exclusive and will only be available while supplies last.
The six-core 12-thread Ryzen 5 5600X3D is a smaller version of the immensely popular eight-core $289 Ryzen 7 5800X3D that remains a top pick for gamers. However, the 5600X3D delivers 95% of the 5800X3D’s gaming performance for 20% less cash. As you can see in our CPU benchmarks hierarchy, at stock settings, the 5600X3D is also faster in gaming than the entire standard Ryzen 7000 lineup — including the $599 Ryzen 9 7950X. That’s because even though the Ryzen 5 5600X3D comes with two fewer cores and slightly lower clock speeds than its pricier 5800X3D counterpart, it still wields the same 96MB of game-boosting L3 cache.
