Editor's take: AMD's upcoming Ryzen 5 5600X CPU has made its presence known in a big way. The chip, which doesn't officially launch until November 5, is featured in the latest leaderboard update from benchmark software maker PassMark. Of course, benchmarks aren't everything, but it certainly doesn't hurt to win them, either.
In PassMark's CPU Mark test measuring single thread performance, the Ryzen 5 5600X scored a chart-topping 3,495 points. The next highest score on the list belongs to the Intel Core i9-10900K (a $550 CPU) at 3,175. Ouch.
The Ryzen 5 5600X is one of four new Ryzen 5000 series processors built on AMD's Zen 3 architecture. The six core / 12 thread CPU boasts a core clock speed of 3.7GHz and can boost up to 4.6GHz, all at a 65W TDP.
Perhaps more impressive is the fact that the Ryzen 5 5600X is at the bottom of the thus-announced Zen 3 stack. The Ryzen 7 5800X, the Ryzen 9 5900X and the Ryzen 9 5950X all have higher core / thread counts and more cache (but they also have higher TDPs and cost more). Only the Ryzen 7 5800X has a higher base clock rate (at 3.8GHz).
All of AMD's new Ryzen 5000 series desktop processors are scheduled to launch on November 5.