AMD's great value Ryzen 5 7600X processor is down to $199 in the US, $100 below MSRP

AMD's entry-level Ryzen 7000 processor, the Ryzen 5 7600X, is down to $199. That's $100 below the original launch price of the chip and the exact same price as the slightly slower but otherwise identical Ryzen 5 7600. (It's even cheaper than Intel's $204 Core i5 13400F, a chip that the 7600X beats convincingly in most games.)

In the UK, it's the 7600 that's the better deal, at £189 versus the 7600X at £209, but both are fine value options too.

• USA - Get the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X CPU for $199 (was $299)

• UK - Get the AMD Ryzen 5 7600 CPU for £189 (was £249)

If you're building an AM5 system, the 7600X and 7600 are great choices as they supports all of the key features - PCIe 5.0, DDR5, integrated graphics - while delivering good in-game performance for much less than the rest of the Ryzen 7000 lineup. You can certainly pay more to get faster gaming performance (Ryzen 7 7800X3D at $389 would be the most obvious upgrade pick) or better multi-threaded performance (eg $520 Ryzen 7950X for a video editing rig), but in most cases you're better off sticking with the entry-level six-core model and then having the option of a later Ryzen 7000/8000 upgrade down the road if you need one.

For more concrete numbers, let's turn to my Eurogamer review of the Ryzen 7500F, which includes recent 7600X testing. In Flight Sim 2020, one of the most CPU-limited games on the market, I found that the 7600X turned in a 60fps average frame-rate at 1080p (and 1440p), versus 54fps for the Ryzen 5 7500F but significantly behind the 7800X3D at 97fps. However, versus Intel competition, that 60fps figure is legit - the 13400F is noticeably behind at 49fps, while the 14600K is only a shade ahead at 67fps - and that CPU costs $317; it costs nearly 60 percent more while being only 12 percent faster.

Most games are less CPU-limited than this Flight Sim 2020 run which flies low over London to try to maximise CPU utilisation. Therefore, FS2020 represents something of a worst-case scenario and you ought to see much lower margins between different CPUs in the majority of scenarios, especially at 1440p and 4K, backing up the idea of going with the cheapest CPU that suits your needs.