AMD Ryzen 3000 Series CPU Review - Intel Gets Competition

The sun is shining bright on AMD for the Ryzen 3000 series. Both the 3700X and 3900X have managed to impress me. In the more serious workloads, these things rip a hole through the clouds in the sky. The overall performance is there, single-threaded performance is really good. Gaming wise, AMD made a massive step forward as well but is not slapping around that 9700K and 9900k. The reality, however, is that AMD is close to Intel on the gaming front, just not quite everywhere. I would have liked them to fight with the 9900K just for the fun of it, that is not happening in the gaming segment with the most expensive enthusiast-class graphics card. But, the fact that I am comparing a 329 USD (MSRP) 8-core 3700X processor with a 599 USD (MSRP) Core i9 9900K feels weird, even while typing this conclusion - yeah think about that fact for a second. So how important you deem a few % difference in the lowest resolutions, is only for you to judge. With a card like the Radeon 5700 (XT) or RTX 2070/2080, you'll be hard-pressed to even notice a difference.

If we look at desktop workloads with compression software, content creation(s), transcoding and whatever, AMD pretty much is bitch-slapping Intel. There is no other logical conclusion we can draw here. I mean heck, the 12-core 499 USD 3900X is beating 16-core 2000 USD costing products and platforms like a little b.... well you know the word. Oh hey, speaking of platforms, X570 is great, really. You do need to weigh up for yourself if PCIe Gen4 is the game-changer for you," concludes the author of the test.

The Ryzen 9 3900X redefines our expectations for the mainstream desktop with a beastly 12-cores and 24-threads and represents a great value if you're seeking a well-rounded performer. The extra cores and threads will pay big dividends in productivity applications, and the solid performance in more common lightly-threaded applications is more than enough for most users.

The Ryzen 7 3700X slots in as the more accessible counterpart that will appease the vast majority of customers, and it also comes with the many of the same attractions of the previous-gen model, except it is faster and consumes less power. If you're looking for the best value on the market, the Ryzen 7 3700X is your chip," reads the review.

AMD really did a lot of good things to their Ryzen series of processors, and a lot of the hype that was generated is warranted. While they don't necessarily sweep away Intel's lead when it comes to single threaded performance, they did a good job of tossing things up when it comes to gaming. They delivered on the promise of increasing their multithreaded performance; it's an interesting day when at the same core and thread count AMD's 3900X is trading blows with Intel's 9900K that operates at much higher frequencies, albeit in more real-world applications the 9900K typically wins. We like the high-frequency single-core boosts, although we are a bit disappointed in all core overclocking potential, the new options in Ryzen Master can let you tune your CPU though. Memory overclocking has been significantly improved, and we really like the new options for the fabric clock. We were a bit sad to see the 3700X's write performance, but AMD did mention they did it to help reduce power consumption and that most real-world workloads don't utilize memory write that much. Overall, yes AMD did excellently, they deserve applauds not only for bringing very high performance and high-value product to the market but because they have really reinvigorated competition," says the author.

"The 3900X was 8% slower than the 9900K on average at 1080p, so AMD’s halved the deficit to Intel in gaming. Then as we’ve found before with Ryzen, for almost anything else the 3900X buries the 9900K, while the 3700X delivers comparable performance. When it comes to power consumption the new Ryzen processors are extremely efficient.

If you’re exclusively concerned about gaming performance we’d recommend the 3700X and probably the 6-core 3600 models, which we'll be reviewing soon. But if you want the absolute fastest gaming CPU then that’s still either Intel’s 9700K or 9900K, even though value for money they aren’t great and there’s no upgrade path.

For those of you who also use their PC for work, content creation, or essentially any productivity task that demands a fast CPU, in those scenarios these new Ryzen CPUs are in a league of their own, making the 9900K a bit of a one-trick pony. Overall the new Ryzen 3000 series delivers and the improvements in power efficiency are nothing short of amazing. Pricing is competitive and if this doesn’t force Intel to adjust theirs, nothing will," we read in the test.