AMD ’s third-generation Ryzen processor has emerged in the PC hardware space, providing a perfect combination of price and performance for content creation and gaming-but these chips are not available at all price points. Although AMD added high-end options with the release of the 3950X, manufacturers of budget systems had to pay $ 200 for the mid-range Ryzen 5 3600, or accept the compromise of older first- or second-generation Ryzen CPUs. Today, with the release of $ 100 / £ 95 Ryzen 3 3100 and $ 120 / £ 115 Ryzen 3 3300X, this situation has changed.
These mainstream processors may soon be favored by system builders, and due to some key improvements, they appear to be more powerful than previous processors. First, both CPUs have four Zen 2 cores, so they should provide better single-threaded performance than their earlier Ryzen generation Zen and Zen + predecessor products. The efficiency advantages inherent in the conversion from 12nm to 7nm also allow for higher boost frequencies, with the boost frequency on the 3100 set to 3.9GHz and the boost frequency on the 3300X set to 4GHz. These CPUs also support SMT (Synchronous Multithreading), which is the first of Ryzen 3 processors. Having eight threads can make these chips better suited for content creation roles, and can also help build games based on more modern engines.
These changes alone will cause major performance changes, but there will be more minor upgrades here. For example, the size of the L3 cache on the 3300X has doubled compared to the 2300X. This means that these processors do not need to rely frequently on data streaming from RAM, which speeds up processing and helps these chips better pair with lower frequency RAM. Despite these advances, TDP remains at 65W, including the included Wraith Stealth radiator, and in most cases no third-party AiO or air radiator is required.
All of this looks promising, but only in actual tests can the crucible determine whether these chips can reach their potential in the highly competitive field. Thankfully, we have already had Ryzen 3100 and 3300X to answer this question in the past few weeks.
As usual, most of our performance tests will be conducted in games. Over the past decade, we have chosen a lot of CPU-intensive games, but we will also briefly introduce content creation tasks-after all, there are four Zen 2 core With 8 threads, we have the level of performance that early YouTubers dreamed of.
Although Ryzen 3 3100 and 3300X are the stars of this exhibition, we also included the results of high-end AMD and Intel processors to provide some much-needed context. Later in the review, we will focus on some similarly priced competitors, including Ryzen 5 2600, Ryzen 5 3400G and-Incredibly Intel Core i7 7700K (quad-core, eight-thread flagship in 2017), And some similar products. It is very similar to Intel's upcoming tenth-generation Core i3 series.
In order to test these chips fairly, we used a standard Windows 10 installation (installed the latest security patches and AMD chipset drivers) on the fast NVMe storage-especially the XPG Spectrix S40G (we chose the most Best NVMe SSD). Our main AMD benchmark tests were conducted on Asus ROG Crosshair 7 X470 motherboards, and supplementary tests were conducted on MSI MPG X570 Gaming Plus and Asus ROG Crosshair 8. Except for the Core i7 7700K, our Core processors have been tested on Asus ROG Maximus XI Extreme. , So you must return to the classic MSI Z170A game M7.
The Ryzen processor is cooled by AMD ’s Wraith Prism cooler, which is a slightly better version of the Wraith Stealth bundled with the 3100 and 3300X. In terms of Intel, the game Storm Castle 240mm AiO is used. Our setup includes G. Skill Trident Z Royal 3600MHz CL16 RAM provided by AMD, reliable 850W Gaming Storm PSU and open-air test bench.