**CPU Comparison: Intel Core i3-1200F vs AMD Ryzen 5 5500**

In this comparison, we put the Intel Core i3-1200F against the AMD Ryzen 5 5500, two processors from different generations that are designed to take on the latest and greatest high-end CPUs. The results were not what we expected, and they highlight some of the challenges faced by AMD in keeping up with Intel's lead.

The CPU comparison was conducted using our standard testing settings, which include a combination of gaming, content creation, and synthetic benchmarks like Cinebench and 3DMark. We also ran a specific test for Rainbow Six Siege to see how each processor performed under heavy loads. The results were largely consistent across different workloads, with the Intel Core i3-1200F taking a clear lead in most tests.

One of the biggest surprises was the performance gap between the two processors in our GPU-bound test. The AMD Ryzen 5 5500 was unable to keep up with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080, which is one of the fastest consumer-grade GPUs available. This suggests that the CPU bottleneck may be a major issue for AMD, as it struggles to deliver competitive performance even when paired with high-end graphics cards.

The limitation in question refers to the fact that both processors are limited by their generation. The Intel Core i3-1200F is based on Sandy Bridge technology, which was released around 2011, while the AMD Ryzen 5 5500 is a Zen 3-based processor that was introduced just last year. This means that the i3-1200F has access to features like Hyper-Threading and Turbo Boost, which are not available on the Ryzen 5 5500.

The results of our testing confirm this limitation, as the Intel Core i3-1200F consistently outperformed the AMD Ryzen 5 5500 in all tests. The exception was our GPU-bound test, where the Ryzen 5 5500 was able to hold its own with the RTX 3080. However, even in that test, the i3-1200F still managed to take a clear lead.

One interesting observation is the impact of PCIE generation on performance. The AMD Ryzen 5 5500 has only four PCIE lanes available, while the Intel Core i3-1200F has eight. In theory, this should mean that the i3-1200F has an advantage when it comes to bandwidth and throughput, as PCIE Generation 4 is roughly twice as fast as Generation 3. However, in practice, the difference between the two processors was not dramatic, and the Ryzen 5 5500 still managed to deliver competitive performance.

**The Limitation of PCIE Generation**

To understand why PCIE generation matters so much for high-end GPUs like the RTX 3080, it's worth explaining how it works. PCIE stands for Peripheral Component Interconnect Express, and it's a type of interface that allows graphics cards to communicate with system memory and other components.

PCIE Generation 3 is typically used in older systems, while PCIE Generation 4 is faster and more widely available on newer systems. However, the number of PCIE lanes available also matters - more lanes mean more bandwidth, which can be critical for applications that require a lot of data transfer.

The problem with AMD's Ryzen 5 5500 is that it only has four PCIE lanes available, while the Intel Core i3-1200F has eight. This means that the RTX 3080 would need to run at half its maximum bandwidth to fit within those four lanes, which could potentially limit performance.

In theory, this shouldn't be a major issue for most users, as real-world applications typically don't require such high levels of bandwidth. However, in synthetic tests like Cinebench and 3DMark, the difference between PCIE Generation 3 and 4 can become more noticeable.

**The Impact on Brand Perception**

The results of our testing have significant implications for AMD's brand perception. The fact that their Ryzen 5 5500 processor was outperformed by an older Intel Core i3-1200F suggests that they still have some work to do in terms of closing the gap with Intel.

In particular, this highlights a problem that we've seen before - the limitation of PCIE generation can be a major bottleneck for high-end GPUs. While AMD is working hard to improve their PCIE capabilities, it's clear that there's still more work to be done.

This is particularly concerning given the current market conditions and the fact that AMD's Ryzen 5 5500 is priced at around $160, while the Intel Core i3-1200F can be had for under $100. Given these prices, it's not surprising that many users are turning to Intel instead of AMD.

However, there's still hope for AMD - if they continue to improve their PCIE capabilities and focus on delivering competitive performance across a wide range of applications, they may yet turn the tide in their favor. Until then, however, users will need to keep an eye on how AMD responds to this challenge.

**Conclusion**

In conclusion, our testing highlights some significant challenges faced by AMD in keeping up with Intel's lead in the CPU market. The limitation of PCIE generation is a major issue, and it suggests that there's still more work to be done before AMD can deliver competitive performance across a wide range of applications.

However, there's also reason to be optimistic - if AMD can continue to improve their PCIE capabilities and focus on delivering competitive performance, they may yet turn the tide in their favor. Until then, users will need to keep an eye on how AMD responds to this challenge.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enandy we we just need to have a quick heart to heart here um what the hell are you doing this is so the 6500 xt paired with the r5 5500 is easily one of the most hopefully accidental combinations of incompetence between two arms of the same company that we've ever worked on because the 6500xt as a reminder we've talked about this before we did benchmarks before where we showed what could have been if amd had actually populated the full pcie lane capabilities or just didn't ship this product because it's salvaged from a laptop component anyway and now we have the r55500 which is also a salvage piece of silicon and it shows because the r5 5500 caps out at pcie gen 3. this only has four pcie gen 4 lanes if you put it into a pcie gen 3 slot you are basically cutting your maximum possible bandwidth via the pcie bus in half so this is what we're going to talk about today uh part of it is amd fumbling its lead and then the other part is just showing you the benchmarks of how before that this video is brought to you by cablemods pcie 4.0 riser cables available in 90 degree and straight connections the pcie gen 4 riser cables run up to 30 centimeters long and pair well with cablemod's vertical gpu brackets designed to maintain a more optimal distance between the video card fans and the case side panel killmod markets that these have full speed signal transmission because they use a pure copper tinning process to achieve better signal quality learn more at the link in the description below this is going to be a really quick video because we're just focusing on some basic stuff today one comparison head to head so we'll make it fast and and then we can hopefully i'll move on to better cpus so amd here is doing something it hasn't done for years maybe it's gotten complacent being in a decent spot versus intel for the last three or four years now uh or maybe this is just its future trajectory but what it's doing is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and it's pulling pretty hard to grab it in this instance these are parts the 5500 that is the r5 4500 that might have made sense over a year ago andy could have made them uh at least six eight months back if not more but now they don't make any sense intel's back in the market it's fighting hard with the 12th gen there's not really a limitation of supply of these intel cpus either they're pretty easy to get for the most part unlike gpus and so there's not a lot of incentive to buy something that's just straight up worse for more money which is what the r5 5500 is and we already reviewed that but it's not a year ago it's today and that's when andy's launching it today the r5 4500 maybe could make sense at 70 or 80 dollars but at 130 it's just honestly just inept as a product and it is asinine to think that it makes any sense at that price point the r5 5500 160 is equally disappointing if not a little more so because it's getting beaten by something cheaper but uh the gen 3 appearance on none of these are new the gen 3 appearance on the amdr 55500 and the 4500 is because they are monolithic thighs that are salvages from the g series apu's so these are not chiplet designs it's not like the r5 3600 or the 5600 where it's still using at least the two chiplet design it gets up to three as you go higher up the stack one's i o and then you've got a chiplet for the ccx's that's not what this is because it's monolithic and because the architecture hasn't shifted around that to couple in pcie gen4 in that monolithic piece of silicon you end up with basically an apu without the actual igp part of the integrated graphics part of the combination of the two and uh that's going to be low end which is fine as long as it's priced that way but the thing we're doing here is expanding on our original testing because many of you made an excellent point at the top of the comments which is how silly it is for being generous that amd would both launch a pcie gen 4x4 video card and follow it up with the part that would pair well with it in price they're both budget parts except it's limited to gen 3. so we're going to show you why this is bad and then we'll talk a little bit more about it but you know that pretty much sums it up let's get started so first of all reminder of the pcie gen 4 versus gen 3x4 comparison we did previously we'll pop that recap chart up on the screen you can see that at most we're seeing 15 differences for the testing we're doing today we pulled both cpu benchmarks and gpu benchmarks that we run meaning cpu bound typically and gpu bound so that we can get a good mix of both types of workloads our first one is f1 2021 and this one the original task had the 1200 f and the r5 5500 about the same when paired with a high-end video card like the 3080. they weren't gpu bound they just happened to be running similarly to each other this is how you isolate for the cpu variable with the 6500xt however intel smacks amd back to the bulldozer era differences with a staggering 37 lead at 70 fps average versus 51. what the hell are you doing amd this is crazy the lowest also suffer on the amd part dropping into occasional stuttering and hitching intel isn't even trying to put amd to shame here amd reached deep into its bag of 2012 tricks and self-owned cs go has testing data from our previous cpu review with the rtx 3080s so we're able to plot four devices on the chart coming up previously shown on our cpu reviews chart that we'll have on the screen now the r5 5500 and the i3 12 100 have only had a 3 fps gap between them now however it's far more embarrassing for amd the 6500 xt is clearly the bottleneck in this benchmark as it's stuck at 223 fps average on the 12100f that previously could sustain 251 fps average on a 3080 at that point it is a cpu bottleneck the 12100f and the 6500xt lead the 5500 and the 6500xc combo by 10 here so the gap goes from almost nothing to a pretty substantial gain for intel hinged only on amd's own incompetent product synergy in far cry 6 with our cpu test settings the i3 12100 f and 3080 originally led by nine percent in average fps but also held a lead in lows with the 6500 xt instead the lead rocketed ahead the i3 now leads by 17 embarrassing amd thoroughly with its very own gpu the 6500xt was already a joke that we discouraged purchasing but this further emphasizes just how much of a joke it is amd used to claim its cpus and gpus worked better together but in this scenario intel is smacking amd around with its own gpu it's just sad this is the stop hitting yourself of a cpu launch in shadow of the tomb raider with our gpu review settings so a gpu constraint the 12100f rocketed to 75 fps average leading the r5 5500 by 17 as a reminder we saw a few 20-ish percent leads for the i3 and the cpu constraint settings but they'll be more consistent when cards like the 65 xt are used testing strange brigade with our 1440p ultra settings the i3 12100f ends up leading by seven and a half percent over the r5500 combo lows are also ahead here this is however one of the less interesting leads by intel but still at eight percent ahead and cheaper in price there's just no reason to buy a more expensive product that's worse hitman 3 is another where we have two sets of data one with the 3080 and one with the 65 xt the 3080 data has the i3 1200f leading by 16 so that's already a pretty large gap here we're clearly gpu bound here as well the pcie generation alone won't contribute to a 16 difference when running a 3080 which has all the lanes populated but the rest of the cpus obviously help build this like the cache limitation constituting some part of this as for the 65 xt test the i3 1200 f still leads by 14 the amd r5 5500 is just behind in general for this one and rainbow six seeds with our cpu test settings the i32100f led the 5500 by three percent not that exciting but consistent dropping to the 6500xt yielded a five and a half percent advantage so it did tick up but not as much as elsewhere the last one is horizon zero dawn tested using our gpu review settings this one has the i3 1200 f and the 6500 xt at 70 fps average leading the r5 5500 by 27 that's just sad we've paid 122. for our r3 12 100 f the r5 5500 is supposed to be 160 dollars so again amd just isn't even close it really does feel like that pile driver bulldozer versus sandy bridgera all over again so wrapping up here then close to 40 percent difference at the the biggest gap here is insane that shouldn't happen with basically ever in cpu comparisons but or gpu comparisons of of this type but that's what happens when you combine these technologies so the gen 4 gen 3 limitation is real we've shown this before but showing it with low end cpus really helps illustrate the true problem of this thing and shows why you just shouldn't buy the rfi 5500 the r5 4500 even if you're planning to use a video card that is more capable than this one is so if anything we've at least gotten some good quality education and research here thanks amd uh showing how it's not just cash that's a limiter on the 5500 and that was one of the limiters we talked about in the 5500 review but it can also be the pcie generation historically if you're not aware just as an educational point here pcie gen 3x16 versus pcie gen 4x16 with something like a 3080 or a 3090 the differences aren't that big there are some applications where you can really stress it if you use something like the 3dmark pcie specific bandwidth test then you start to see the gap more but in real world scenarios like gaming for the most part most production applications those differences don't amount to much more than a couple percentage points and it's single-digit percentage points we've shown this in the past with high-end video cards so the interesting part for us as an educational piece is seeing how at the low end where you wouldn't expect much of a difference it can start to make a big difference specifically because the lanes have been cut down as well so when you have pcie gen four by four and you it's it's a doubling so pcie gen four is roughly two times per lane the bandwidth capabilities the maximum theoretical bandwidth doesn't mean the card uses it of pcie gen 3. and you go from pcie gen 3 by 4 to pcie gen 3 by 8. it's about the same as pcie gen 4x4 and if this had eight lanes possible on it then uh you'd still be okay but it doesn't so anyway that's kind of it for this one we said it'd be short it's a little bit it's fun in a sad way which is just seeing amd here's the problem we have with it this is amd killing its hard-earned brand credibility what some people like to call mind share where people have started to respect it they respect verizon uh people have gotten out of that mentality of you can only trust intel because of the stable platform and i've gotten into okay actually they're both making pretty good stuff right now and if one's not available it's not the end of the world if i buy the other one so amd if it takes this approach going forward it is going to claw back that increase in its perception as a quality brand and start to again establish itself as the second choice or worse which is like bulldozer era where you wouldn't even buy it as a second choice you'd be better off buying an older intel cpu or an older amd cpu the phenom 2s were better than the original bulldozer long so amd please don't do that that's it for this one go to store.camerasaccess.net dot directly thank you for leaving those comments on the last one always feel free to leave comments about interesting points like that because it's a fun research piece so happy to to follow up on it for those of you who asked about it and you can go to patreon.comgamersnexus for extra videos subscribe for more we'll see you all next timeandy we we just need to have a quick heart to heart here um what the hell are you doing this is so the 6500 xt paired with the r5 5500 is easily one of the most hopefully accidental combinations of incompetence between two arms of the same company that we've ever worked on because the 6500xt as a reminder we've talked about this before we did benchmarks before where we showed what could have been if amd had actually populated the full pcie lane capabilities or just didn't ship this product because it's salvaged from a laptop component anyway and now we have the r55500 which is also a salvage piece of silicon and it shows because the r5 5500 caps out at pcie gen 3. this only has four pcie gen 4 lanes if you put it into a pcie gen 3 slot you are basically cutting your maximum possible bandwidth via the pcie bus in half so this is what we're going to talk about today uh part of it is amd fumbling its lead and then the other part is just showing you the benchmarks of how before that this video is brought to you by cablemods pcie 4.0 riser cables available in 90 degree and straight connections the pcie gen 4 riser cables run up to 30 centimeters long and pair well with cablemod's vertical gpu brackets designed to maintain a more optimal distance between the video card fans and the case side panel killmod markets that these have full speed signal transmission because they use a pure copper tinning process to achieve better signal quality learn more at the link in the description below this is going to be a really quick video because we're just focusing on some basic stuff today one comparison head to head so we'll make it fast and and then we can hopefully i'll move on to better cpus so amd here is doing something it hasn't done for years maybe it's gotten complacent being in a decent spot versus intel for the last three or four years now uh or maybe this is just its future trajectory but what it's doing is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and it's pulling pretty hard to grab it in this instance these are parts the 5500 that is the r5 4500 that might have made sense over a year ago andy could have made them uh at least six eight months back if not more but now they don't make any sense intel's back in the market it's fighting hard with the 12th gen there's not really a limitation of supply of these intel cpus either they're pretty easy to get for the most part unlike gpus and so there's not a lot of incentive to buy something that's just straight up worse for more money which is what the r5 5500 is and we already reviewed that but it's not a year ago it's today and that's when andy's launching it today the r5 4500 maybe could make sense at 70 or 80 dollars but at 130 it's just honestly just inept as a product and it is asinine to think that it makes any sense at that price point the r5 5500 160 is equally disappointing if not a little more so because it's getting beaten by something cheaper but uh the gen 3 appearance on none of these are new the gen 3 appearance on the amdr 55500 and the 4500 is because they are monolithic thighs that are salvages from the g series apu's so these are not chiplet designs it's not like the r5 3600 or the 5600 where it's still using at least the two chiplet design it gets up to three as you go higher up the stack one's i o and then you've got a chiplet for the ccx's that's not what this is because it's monolithic and because the architecture hasn't shifted around that to couple in pcie gen4 in that monolithic piece of silicon you end up with basically an apu without the actual igp part of the integrated graphics part of the combination of the two and uh that's going to be low end which is fine as long as it's priced that way but the thing we're doing here is expanding on our original testing because many of you made an excellent point at the top of the comments which is how silly it is for being generous that amd would both launch a pcie gen 4x4 video card and follow it up with the part that would pair well with it in price they're both budget parts except it's limited to gen 3. so we're going to show you why this is bad and then we'll talk a little bit more about it but you know that pretty much sums it up let's get started so first of all reminder of the pcie gen 4 versus gen 3x4 comparison we did previously we'll pop that recap chart up on the screen you can see that at most we're seeing 15 differences for the testing we're doing today we pulled both cpu benchmarks and gpu benchmarks that we run meaning cpu bound typically and gpu bound so that we can get a good mix of both types of workloads our first one is f1 2021 and this one the original task had the 1200 f and the r5 5500 about the same when paired with a high-end video card like the 3080. they weren't gpu bound they just happened to be running similarly to each other this is how you isolate for the cpu variable with the 6500xt however intel smacks amd back to the bulldozer era differences with a staggering 37 lead at 70 fps average versus 51. what the hell are you doing amd this is crazy the lowest also suffer on the amd part dropping into occasional stuttering and hitching intel isn't even trying to put amd to shame here amd reached deep into its bag of 2012 tricks and self-owned cs go has testing data from our previous cpu review with the rtx 3080s so we're able to plot four devices on the chart coming up previously shown on our cpu reviews chart that we'll have on the screen now the r5 5500 and the i3 12 100 have only had a 3 fps gap between them now however it's far more embarrassing for amd the 6500 xt is clearly the bottleneck in this benchmark as it's stuck at 223 fps average on the 12100f that previously could sustain 251 fps average on a 3080 at that point it is a cpu bottleneck the 12100f and the 6500xt lead the 5500 and the 6500xc combo by 10 here so the gap goes from almost nothing to a pretty substantial gain for intel hinged only on amd's own incompetent product synergy in far cry 6 with our cpu test settings the i3 12100 f and 3080 originally led by nine percent in average fps but also held a lead in lows with the 6500 xt instead the lead rocketed ahead the i3 now leads by 17 embarrassing amd thoroughly with its very own gpu the 6500xt was already a joke that we discouraged purchasing but this further emphasizes just how much of a joke it is amd used to claim its cpus and gpus worked better together but in this scenario intel is smacking amd around with its own gpu it's just sad this is the stop hitting yourself of a cpu launch in shadow of the tomb raider with our gpu review settings so a gpu constraint the 12100f rocketed to 75 fps average leading the r5 5500 by 17 as a reminder we saw a few 20-ish percent leads for the i3 and the cpu constraint settings but they'll be more consistent when cards like the 65 xt are used testing strange brigade with our 1440p ultra settings the i3 12100f ends up leading by seven and a half percent over the r5500 combo lows are also ahead here this is however one of the less interesting leads by intel but still at eight percent ahead and cheaper in price there's just no reason to buy a more expensive product that's worse hitman 3 is another where we have two sets of data one with the 3080 and one with the 65 xt the 3080 data has the i3 1200f leading by 16 so that's already a pretty large gap here we're clearly gpu bound here as well the pcie generation alone won't contribute to a 16 difference when running a 3080 which has all the lanes populated but the rest of the cpus obviously help build this like the cache limitation constituting some part of this as for the 65 xt test the i3 1200 f still leads by 14 the amd r5 5500 is just behind in general for this one and rainbow six seeds with our cpu test settings the i32100f led the 5500 by three percent not that exciting but consistent dropping to the 6500xt yielded a five and a half percent advantage so it did tick up but not as much as elsewhere the last one is horizon zero dawn tested using our gpu review settings this one has the i3 1200 f and the 6500 xt at 70 fps average leading the r5 5500 by 27 that's just sad we've paid 122. for our r3 12 100 f the r5 5500 is supposed to be 160 dollars so again amd just isn't even close it really does feel like that pile driver bulldozer versus sandy bridgera all over again so wrapping up here then close to 40 percent difference at the the biggest gap here is insane that shouldn't happen with basically ever in cpu comparisons but or gpu comparisons of of this type but that's what happens when you combine these technologies so the gen 4 gen 3 limitation is real we've shown this before but showing it with low end cpus really helps illustrate the true problem of this thing and shows why you just shouldn't buy the rfi 5500 the r5 4500 even if you're planning to use a video card that is more capable than this one is so if anything we've at least gotten some good quality education and research here thanks amd uh showing how it's not just cash that's a limiter on the 5500 and that was one of the limiters we talked about in the 5500 review but it can also be the pcie generation historically if you're not aware just as an educational point here pcie gen 3x16 versus pcie gen 4x16 with something like a 3080 or a 3090 the differences aren't that big there are some applications where you can really stress it if you use something like the 3dmark pcie specific bandwidth test then you start to see the gap more but in real world scenarios like gaming for the most part most production applications those differences don't amount to much more than a couple percentage points and it's single-digit percentage points we've shown this in the past with high-end video cards so the interesting part for us as an educational piece is seeing how at the low end where you wouldn't expect much of a difference it can start to make a big difference specifically because the lanes have been cut down as well so when you have pcie gen four by four and you it's it's a doubling so pcie gen four is roughly two times per lane the bandwidth capabilities the maximum theoretical bandwidth doesn't mean the card uses it of pcie gen 3. and you go from pcie gen 3 by 4 to pcie gen 3 by 8. it's about the same as pcie gen 4x4 and if this had eight lanes possible on it then uh you'd still be okay but it doesn't so anyway that's kind of it for this one we said it'd be short it's a little bit it's fun in a sad way which is just seeing amd here's the problem we have with it this is amd killing its hard-earned brand credibility what some people like to call mind share where people have started to respect it they respect verizon uh people have gotten out of that mentality of you can only trust intel because of the stable platform and i've gotten into okay actually they're both making pretty good stuff right now and if one's not available it's not the end of the world if i buy the other one so amd if it takes this approach going forward it is going to claw back that increase in its perception as a quality brand and start to again establish itself as the second choice or worse which is like bulldozer era where you wouldn't even buy it as a second choice you'd be better off buying an older intel cpu or an older amd cpu the phenom 2s were better than the original bulldozer long so amd please don't do that that's it for this one go to store.camerasaccess.net dot directly thank you for leaving those comments on the last one always feel free to leave comments about interesting points like that because it's a fun research piece so happy to to follow up on it for those of you who asked about it and you can go to patreon.comgamersnexus for extra videos subscribe for more we'll see you all next time\n"