Highly anticipated: We're still a month away from 3rd-gen Ryzen's July 7 release date, yet leakers have already spotted two Ryzen 5 3600s tested on Userbenchmark and GeekBench. While neither of these benchmarks is particularly indicative of gaming performance, they provide intriguing insight and strong cause for optimism.

The closest comparison for the Ryzen 5 3600 is the 2600, which is also a six-core, twelve thread chip that's just 300 MHz slower with a 3.9 GHz boost clock. Across the four benchmarks, the 3600 outperforms it by a staggering 25%, which is higher than expected.

Intel's i5-9400F which is equivalent performance wise to the 2600 and has recently dropped to $150, is beaten by just 5% in single-core benchmarks, making it a good value. But because it's only six-core, six thread chips, they're beaten by a shocking 44% in the two multi-core tests, throwing it out of the ring.

CPU MSRP / Street GeekBench Single Core GeekBench Multi-Core Userbench Single Core Userbench Multi-Core
Ryzen 5 3600 (1) $199 100% 100% 100% 100%
Ryzen 5 3600 (2) $199 99% 96% 86% 99%
Ryzen 5 2600 $199 / $145 81% 75% 84% 83%
Intel i5-9400 $182 / $150 99% 78% 92% 61%
Intel i7-9700K $374 / $399 112% 105% 109% 96%

Courtesy of Userbenchmark, we also know the average clock speeds during the Userbenchmark tests: 3.75 GHz and 4.05 GHz. Both are below the 4.2 GHz rated boost clock, which means a significant amount of performance is still being left on the table. Additionally, the 3600 is more or less guaranteed to overclock to 4.4 GHz as that's the clock speed of the 3600X, and there's potential to reach closer and overclock to the 4.6 GHz of the 3900X.

Of the benchmarks, all but one was conducted on current gen X470 motherboards. The GeekBench run that was conducted on an X570 actually performed worse in the multi-core test (but better in the single core), alleviating fears that Zen 2 would underperform on older generations of motherboards. Except for first gen boards, that is, which may or may not support the new processors depending on motherboard vendors.

All this raises a bizarre question though. If the 3600 performs so well, why didn't AMD reveal any benchmarks at Computex? They were fairly forthcoming about the 3900X and 3800X, confirming the latter could match the i9-9900K in PUBG, for example. Perhaps AMD is saving the surprise for their Next Horizon E3 announcement.

Image Credit: AMD_Robert on Reddit