Ryzen 5 5500 processor review: affordable six-core that is late

It so happened that the Ryzen 5000 series release coincided with the crisis on the semiconductor market and the peak of chip shortage, as a result of which AMD had to severely limit the variety of model range.
In November 2020, the company released only one model each with 6, 8, 12 and 16 cores, with the minimum price of a processor with Zen 3 progressive cores above $300.
This approach displeased AMD fans, but the company had no other choice: the production quotas which it managed to get from its manufacturing partner, TSMC, were not enough even to cover demand for expensive processors.
A year and a half passed since then, and the problem with the lack of production capacity for the manufacture of Zen 3 semiconductor chips weakened noticeably.
But AMD did not hurry to expand the Ryzen 5000 lineup - the situation was quite good for it, because by selling more expensive processors it was increasing its profits.
Yes, with this approach the users of low-cost systems had no opportunity to get processors with progressive microarchitecture at their disposal, but the company did not care much: it was quite successful in distributing obsolete solutions of Ryzen 3000 series among this audience.
And these processors were also in high demand, because the alternatives, which until recently were offered by Intel, did not have serious competitive advantages.However, with the appearance of Alder Lake the situation has changed dramatically.
Intel created a very successful processor family which was almost immediately available in all price segments.
Because of this, it turned out that with the advent of 2022 there was nothing suitable in AMD's range that the company could counter the competitor's punchy processors like Core i5-12600K, Core i5-12400 and Core i3-12100, which very quickly came out on top in the sales statistics.
So as soon as AMD realized that its market position had staggered and its share of the desktop market began to rapidly shrink, it immediately moved to retaliate.
Firstly, it aggressively reduced prices on all available Ryzen 5000 series processors by 25-30%.
Secondly, the lineup was replenished at once with several new products - available eight- and six-core carriers of the Zen 3 microarchitecture.
Thus, since the beginning of April, sales of the $300 Ryzen 7 5700X eight-core and two six-core models: the $200 Ryzen 5 5600 and the $160 Ryzen 5 5500 started on the global market.
Unfortunately, in Russia, which is now cut off from direct supplies, these models arrived with a noticeable delay and not at the prices AMD intended for them.
But nevertheless, the most affordable CPU among the new products, Ryzen 5 5500, still looks interesting.
In \"normal life\" it should be the cheapest six-core with modern microarchitecture, but in the current reality its Russian price is approximately equal to the cost of the youngest six-core Alder Lake, Core i5-12400, which is still quite good.
That is why the 3DNews lab immediately started a detailed testing of this promising product as soon as the opportunity presented itself.It is worth to remind that AMD has already tried to produce such budget six-core units, which became the cheapest variants in their class, for example Ryzen 5 3500 and 3500X.
However, they were only available in certain geographical regions and also had significantly reduced specifications.
In Ryzen 5 3500 and 3500X, for example, the company turned off SMT technology, which was a big hit to performance.
But the new Ryzen 5 5500 is a completely different breed of processor.
It is globally available, the SMT technology is in place, and the main difference from the older brothers is the reduction of cache memory, which at first glance does not look catastrophic loss and makes familiarity with it only more interesting.⇡#Ryzen 5 5500 in detailsThe Ryzen 5000 lineup has undergone very noticeable changes this spring.
Now there are eight representatives instead of four.
The expansion took place mainly \"downwards\", but among the new models there is also the innovative Ryzen 7 5800X3D with 3D V-Cache technology, which is positioned by the company as a kind of gaming flagship.
The composition of the family is listed in the table below, and, pay attention, a separate column - \"Current price\" is added to it.
It shows retail prices of Ryzen 5000 family members on the world market after the occurred price reduction (in Russia, of course, the situation with prices is different, and there is no point in discussing it within the scope of this article).
Cores/threadsFrequency, GHzL3, MbytesTDP, Wofficial priceCurrent priceRyzen 9 5950X16/323,4-4, 964105$799$559Ryzen 9 5900X12/243.7-4.864105$549$399Ryzen 7 5800X3D8/163.4-4.592105$449$449Ryzen 7 5800X8/163.8-4.732105$449$349Ryzen 7 5700X8/163.4-4.63265$299$