AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Review: Why Is This Amazon's Best Selling CPU?
by Dr. Ian Cutress on May 18, 2020 9:00 AM ESTGaming: Civilization 6 (DX12)
Originally penned by Sid Meier and his team, the Civ series of turn-based strategy games are a cult classic, and many an excuse for an all-nighter trying to get Gandhi to declare war on you due to an integer overflow. Truth be told I never actually played the first version, but every edition from the second to the sixth, including the fourth as voiced by the late Leonard Nimoy, it a game that is easy to pick up, but hard to master.
Benchmarking Civilization has always been somewhat of an oxymoron – for a turn based strategy game, the frame rate is not necessarily the important thing here and even in the right mood, something as low as 5 frames per second can be enough. With Civilization 6 however, Firaxis went hardcore on visual fidelity, trying to pull you into the game. As a result, Civilization can taxing on graphics and CPUs as we crank up the details, especially in DirectX 12.
Perhaps a more poignant benchmark would be during the late game, when in the older versions of Civilization it could take 20 minutes to cycle around the AI players before the human regained control. The new version of Civilization has an integrated ‘AI Benchmark’, although it is not currently part of our benchmark portfolio yet, due to technical reasons which we are trying to solve. Instead, we run the graphics test, which provides an example of a mid-game setup at our settings.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
| AnandTech | 1080p Ultra |
| Average FPS |  |
| 95th Percentile |  |
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edzieba - Monday, May 18, 2020 - link
The "faster ram" columns always get a good laugh: anyone here running their DIMMs and /not/ using the XMP profiles?WaltC - Monday, May 18, 2020 - link
Right! What would be the point of that?...;) Intel isn't yet equal to AMD in architecture--still needs a bunch of vulnerability mitigation, and is still cranking out 14nm like there's no tomorrow...;) Intel's "high end" is in great demand, says Ian. Hmmm...I'll bet AMD's high end is even under higher demand--since Intel has very little if anything that can catch it. Zen 3 is going to fire another shot across Intel's bow...! Good times!PeachNCream - Monday, May 18, 2020 - link
Yeah, but how many desktop CPUs are getting sold directly to consumers versus the numbers going into more portable form factors or to OEMs for mass market Optiplexes and ProDesks? Those admittedly yawn-fest systems are where the volume sales are landing, not here with Gamer Billy's RGB LED-sled full ATX tower where though there are higher margins on a per-unit basis, the numbers just aren't significant.Icehawk - Wednesday, May 20, 2020 - link
Yeah, I’m not sure why they have a delusional disclaimer saying folks don’t use XML. Last time I checked this was a site for enthusiasts. Would really like them to test at stock and with a reasonable upgrade stick. A wider suite of benchmarks would be nice too.PeachNCream - Monday, May 18, 2020 - link
While the 3600 is currently the best selling desktop CPU on Amazon and it is great to see a competitive CPU landscape right now, occupying that number 1 slot is not representative of the wider PC market as a whole. A vanishingly small number of people elect to operate a desktop PC of any sort these days and of those people the majority do not build their own systems from individual components. Most of the world uses a mobile phone or a laptop to accomplish day-to-day compute tasks and get whatever CPU happens to be included in that system. I'm happy to see 4000-series APUs becoming more available so there is competition FINALLY in the price segments that see large sales volumes. It would be great if Anandtech could get hands on more practical and common hardware that the average person puts to use so the next time I go out to grab a sub-$500 laptop, I know if the cooling is sufficient or if it has dual channel memory. Maybe find out if there is something quirky about the touchpad. I have to drop in at notebookcheck.net most of the time for information that is relevant to me and their reviews are not usually as complete at AT, but AT appears to be very much out of the mobile hardware review business except for halo gamer hardware that relevant to a pretty small audience.WaltC - Monday, May 18, 2020 - link
Maybe it's just the difference in English, but why title the article "Why is the 3600 AMZN's best-selling CPU?" Almost sounds like Ian doesn't think it should be--but then the article itself corrects that misapprehension. Probably a better title would have been, "Here's why the 3600 is AMZN's best-selling CPU." Small change comment--nit picking, for sure...;) IMO, articles should never be titled as questions--a good article should inform, instead of leave unanswered questions. I was always taught that titling with questions instead of statements was second rate. A good article should include the answers--so instead of asking a question you let the reader know, "Herein lies the answer," etc.GreenReaper - Monday, May 18, 2020 - link
It doesn't meet the expectation that any news piece titled with a question can be answered "no", either!Icehawk - Wednesday, May 20, 2020 - link
One title is click bait, one is not. This is the world we live inflyingpants265 - Monday, May 18, 2020 - link
Hello. 3600 is still too expensive. $290 CAD when I paid only $100 CAD for my used 2600. So for me to upgrade, I'd be paying an extra $200.1_rick - Monday, May 18, 2020 - link
Comparing used prices to new isn't very useful.