AMD Ryzen 5 3600X Linux Performance

Now that the new AMD Ryzen 3000 series are running great with the latest Linux distributions following prominent motherboard vendors issuing BIOS updates that correct the "RdRand" issue, we're moving on with looking at the performance of the rest of the Ryzen 3000 series line-up while having freshly re-tested the processors under Ubuntu 19.04. Up for exploration today is the AMD Ryzen 5 3600X, the six-core / 12-thread processor retailing for about $250 USD.

The AMD Ryzen 5 3600X has 6-cores / 12-threads while having a 3.8GHz base frequency and 4.4GHz maximum boost frequency. This CPU has a 95 Watt TDP, 32MB L3 cache, and other features in line with the rest of the Zen 2 family. AMD bundles the Ryzen 5 3600X retail CPU with their Wraith Spire cooler.

The Ryzen 5 3600X is positioned well with Intel's closest competition being the Intel Core i5 9600K Coffeelake processor for $245 USD. With the Core i5 9600K there is six cores but without HT/SMT, 3.7GHz base frequency, and 4.6GHz turbo frequency while having a 95 Watt TDP.

Now that the RdRand/systemd issue has been resolved by new BIOS releases, there aren't any Ryzen 3000 series CPU problems to note for Linux users. Like our testing with the Ryzen 7 3700X and Ryzen 9 3900X, the Linux support and performance is in good standing with this Ryzen 5 3600X mid-range processor. The Ryzen 5 3600X has been running the past two weeks without any issues under Ubuntu 19.04 as well as the likes of Fedora 30. Of course, for best support and performance we always recommend using the latest Linux kernel with new hardware. If wanting to generate optimized binaries for the new AMD Zen 2 CPUs, you also should be on GCC 9.2, LLVM Clang 9, or AMD's AOCC 2.0 reference compiler.

For the purposes of looking at the Ryzen 5 3600X performance capabilities, we benchmarked it along side the other AMD processors with the ASUS ROG CROSSHAIR VIII HERO WiFi motherboard with BIOS 0803, 2 x 8GB DDR4-3600 GSKILL memory, 2TB Corsair Force MP600 NVMe SSD, and Radeon VII graphics. The other AMD CPUs tested this round were the Ryzen 7 2600X, Ryzen 5 3600X, Ryzen 7 3700X, and Ryzen 9 3900X. For Intel reference performance are Core i9 9900K and Core i5 9400F metrics, unfortunately having no Core i5 9600 series at my disposal. All of the tests were done on Ubuntu 19.04. Via the Phoronix Test Suite various Linux CPU benchmarks were carried out.