That is a common problem with people buying CPUs, this is why people buy the FX 6300 or the FX 9590 thinking they are good because of high clocks or more cores. They are not directly comparable in this way.
What determines the 'speed' of a processor is how many instructions it can process per clock cycle. This is known as IPC or Instructions Per Cycle. This is the reason even low end Intel chips such as the i3 series are significantly faster than the FX line of CPUs. It can do so much more per clock to the point even 6 cores is worse than two (two + hyperthreading) because of the immense IPC difference.
I know someone will call me on it so it should be noted that more cores can help with some workloads that are highly threaded. In some cases like this, it can be beneficial to go with more cores over a higher IPC. Keep in mind though that there isn't much out there for the mainstream user that takes advantage of more than 4 cores. Gaming is an area that could use some optimization in this regard. Very few games use all the cores you can throw at it so in may cases that 6 or 8 core chip just sits there doing nothing most of the time.
What determines the 'speed' of a processor is how many instructions it can process per clock cycle. This is known as IPC or Instructions Per Cycle. This is the reason even low end Intel chips such as the i3 series are significantly faster than the FX line of CPUs. It can do so much more per clock to the point even 6 cores is worse than two (two + hyperthreading) because of the immense IPC difference.
I know someone will call me on it so it should be noted that more cores can help with some workloads that are highly threaded. In some cases like this, it can be beneficial to go with more cores over a higher IPC. Keep in mind though that there isn't much out there for the mainstream user that takes advantage of more than 4 cores. Gaming is an area that could use some optimization in this regard. Very few games use all the cores you can throw at it so in may cases that 6 or 8 core chip just sits there doing nothing most of the time.
I've done some research between the processors:
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-FX-9590-vs-AMD-Ryzen-5-1500X/1812vs3921
But I was wondering why the Ryzen 5 CPUs have a better rating but have a substantially lower clock rate, when I usually used to buy processors I would buy them based on clock rate and somewhat on number of cores, so it seems kind of strange some of the Ryzen CPUs would be substantially better. Are there good reasons why or are they just considered better because there newer and take less wattage?
Next time your looking at CPU's you need to read benchmarks and reviews.
