The quad core and octa threaded Ryzen 1500X is a sub-$200 chip based on AMD's latest Zen architecture. It is released this month as part of the Ryzen 5 launch – a mid-market range specced out to challenge Intel's i5 series and yield considerably better multi-threaded performance at budget prices. Comparing the i5-7600K shows that the 7600K is 20% faster for single and quad core workloads but looses by 20% for multi-core workloads. The Ryzen 5 line-up also includes the 6 core 12 threaded 1600X. By comparison, the 1500X is 24% less expensive, comes with a Wraith Spire cooler and impressively yields very similar single and quad core performance, but multi-core performance lags 50% behind the 1600X. Both chips can be overclocked, but out the box, the base and boost clock speeds are 3.5GHz and 3.7GHz for the 1500X and 3.6GHz and 4.0GHz for the 1600X. The 1500X is a very reasonable CPU for the money, which thanks to AMD's recent IPC improvements, punches far above its weight for multi-threaded performance by Intel's standards. ^{[Apr '17 CPUPro]}

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