AMD's Ryzen 5 1500X challenges the Intel Core i5 family for quad-core supremacy. Can Ryzen overtake the latest Kaby Lake-based models in the $200 range? AMD's Ryzen 7 derives its value from higher performance than Intel's workstation-oriented Broadwell-E processors at any given price price point. With Ryzen 5, the company plays to the same tune, this time hitting comparable prices as Intel's Core i5 chips, but with simultaneous multi-threading to turn four or six cores into 8T/12T powerhouses.

The six-core Ryzen 5 1600X we recently tested is one such 6C/12T solution, going up against 4C/4T Core i5s and successfully cutting through threaded workloads with greater alacrity. The Ryzen 5 1500X we're benchmarking today loses two cores, but maintains its SMT support to tackle the mainstream competition without compromising performance in rendering, programming, and transcoding apps.