Ryzen For The Masses: A Look At AMD’s Ryzen 5 1600X & 1500X Processors

(All of our tests are explained in detail on page 2.)

As seen on the previous page, rendering can take amazing advantage of even the biggest processors, but video encoding is not that far behind – if at all. Even the free conversion tool HandBrake can take advantage of our sixteen-thread processors to significantly decrease encode times. For our video encoding purposes, we use Adobe’s Premiere Pro, as well as HandBrake.

To a lesser degree, music conversion and image manipulation can also see benefits on beefier chips, so Adobe’s Lightroom and dBpoweramp will be used to help us gauge that performance.

Adobe Premiere Pro

These results are perfect for highlighting an interesting factoid: that not all encodes will use the CPU the same. The 1080p Blu-ray encode proved quicker on the 7700K over the 1600X thanks to its much faster clock speed, but the 4K encode, which can exercise more than 4 cores, performed much better on the 1600X. This is why it truly pays to understand your workload when seeking out new hardware.

As for the 1500X vs. 7350K matchup? The results really do speak for themselves.

HandBrake

HandBrake largely backs up the results from Premiere Pro, putting the 1500X well ahead of the dual-core 7350K, and the 1600X just a head of the 7700K – the exception being that x265 was quicker on Intel, but to a lesser degree than the 1600X being faster with x264.

Adobe Lightroom & dBpoweramp

Based on the results seen from our Ryzen 7 review, it isn’t too much of a surprise to see the 1600X perform a bit worse than the 7700K in Adobe Lightroom. The situation changes, though, with dBpoweramp. It doesn’t use special instructions to encode – it simply uses the processing power available. And because it does, the 1600X gains the lead in that particular test.

The 1500X again speaks for itself, and puts a massive damper on the 7350K.