Ryzen 5 3600 vs Ryzen 9 5950X — Specs & Performance Compared

Verdict: The Ryzen 9 5950X is ahead of the Ryzen 5 3600 on all 6 shared benchmarks on file, by 36% to 224%, including 224% in Cinebench R23 multi (29,441 vs 9,073).

Side-by-side CPU comparison of the Ryzen 5 3600 and the Ryzen 9 5950X. Specs, synthetic benchmarks, AI inference tok/s, and Amazon availability below; each column header links to that part's benchmark page.

AMD

Ryzen 5 3600

6 cores65W TDP

Full Ryzen 5 3600 benchmarks →

AMD · Zen 3

Ryzen 9 5950X

16 cores105W TDP$799 MSRP2020

Full Ryzen 9 5950X benchmarks →

*Price sourced from Amazon.com. Price and availability subject to change.

Where to buy

A listing for each part; the current price and stock are on the retailer's page.

Specs side-by-side

Spec	Ryzen 5 3600	Ryzen 9 5950X
cores	6	16
threads	12	32
base clock ghz	3.6	3.4
boost clock ghz	4.2	4.9
tdp w	65	105
memory bus	Dual-channel	—
l3 cache mb	32	64
process nm	7	—
socket	AMD Socket AM4	AM4

Synthetic benchmarks

Each row says whether a higher or a lower number is better (ranks and times are lower-is-better). Scores come from TechPowerUp, CGDirector, CPU-Monkey, Geekbench Browser, CpuTronic, HardwareDB, PassMark, HWBOT and NumberWorld; each row links its sources, and where they differ the cell shows their median. Empty cells mean we don't yet have that benchmark on file for the SKU.

Benchmark	Ryzen 5 3600	Ryzen 9 5950X
Cinebench R23 multi (higher is better) Source: TechPowerUp, CGDirector, CPU-Monkey	9,073 points	29,441 pts
Cinebench R23 single (higher is better) Source: TechPowerUp, CGDirector, CPU-Monkey	1,245 points	1,757 pts
Geekbench 6 multi (higher is better) Source: Geekbench Browser, CpuTronic, HardwareDB, CPU-Monkey	7,067 points	12,237 pts
Geekbench 6 single (higher is better) Source: CpuTronic, HardwareDB, CPU-Monkey, Geekbench Browser	1,532 points	2,195 points
PassMark CPU Mark (higher is better) Source: PassMark	17,660 points	40,345 pts
PassMark Single Thread (higher is better) Source: PassMark	2,559 points	3,477 points
PassMark Single Thread Rating (higher is better) Source: PassMark	2,558 points	—
PassMark Single-Thread (higher is better) Source: PassMark	2,558 points	—
Y-cruncher 1B (lower is better) Source: HWBOT, NumberWorld	49 seconds	27

AI inference (tokens/sec)

Top community-reported tokens-per-second results for popular LLMs whose weights fit the card's memory, each linked to its source. See the per-SKU benchmark page for the full set including quantization and prompt length.

Ryzen 5 3600

No verified AI inference results on file. See the Ryzen 5 3600 benchmark page →

Ryzen 9 5950X

llama3.1:70b: 18.5 tok/s (Phoronix)

All Ryzen 9 5950X AI benchmarks →

Quick answers

Which is faster, the Ryzen 5 3600 or the Ryzen 9 5950X?

The Ryzen 9 5950X is ahead of the Ryzen 5 3600 on all 6 shared benchmarks on file, by 36% to 224%, including 224% in Cinebench R23 multi (29,441 vs 9,073).