Today AMD 3rd Gen Ryzen CPUs hit the shelves and finally, I’m able to lift the lid on just how much faster they are than previous generations and how they compete against Intel. AMD has sent me its press kit comprising the Ryzen 9 3900X – a 12-core, 24-thread monster as well as the Ryzen 7 3700X, which is essentially the 8-core, 16-thread successor to the Ryzen 7 2700X. I’ve benchmarked both against a host of previous AMD Ryzen and Threadripper CPUs as well as those from Intel to see if the new 7nm Zen 2 architecture is a flop or has turned the CPU market upside down and given Intel a serious headache.
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| Cores/Threads | Base/Boost Freq | Total Cache | TDP (Watts) | Included cooler | SEP (USD) | Availability | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ryzen 9 3950X | 16/32 | 3.5GHz/4.7GHz | 72MB | 105W | Wraith Prism RGB | $749 | September |
| Ryzen 9 3900X | 12/24 | 3.8GHz/4.6GHz | 70MB | 105W | Wraith Prism RGB | $499 | July 7, 2019 |
| Ryzen 7 3800X | 8/16 | 3.9GHz/4.5GHz | 36MB | 105W | Wraith Prism RGB | $399 | July 7, 2019 |
| Ryzen 7 3700X | 8/16 | 3.6GHz/4.4GHz | 36MB | 65W | Wraith Prism RGB | $329 | July 7, 2019 |
| Ryzen 5 3600X | 6/12 | 3.8GHz/4.4GHz | 35MB | 95W | Wraith Spire | $249 | July 7, 2019 |
| Ryzen 5 3600 | 6/12 | 3.6GHz/4.4GHz | 35MB | 65W | Wraith Stealth | $199 | July 7, 2019 |
I won’t go into too much detail here about the deeper specifications of the new CPUs as I’ve already done so with my AMD 3rd Gen Ryzen Deep-Dive Essential Guide - I highly recommend you give it a read, but I’ve included the essentials below as well as a detailed look at what’s new and the CPU’s specifications below.
To start with, all of the new CPUs include a cooler in the box. Which one you get depends on the CPU model, but the CPUs I’m reviewing today both include the Wraith Prism RGB. That might seem a little strange with a 12-core CPU in the mix, but the 7nm manufacturing process means the Ryzen 9 3900X had a TDP of just 105W. Today, all but the 16-core Ryzen 9 3900X will go on sale although most review sites will only post numbers for the Ryzen 7 3700X and Ryzen 9 3900X since these are the only models that have been officially sampled so far.
3rd Gen Ryzen Essential Tips
Compatibility and Features
While AMD continues to allow all Ryzen CPUs to be installed into the same Socket AM4 as the original X370 and B350 motherboards, you can’t quite use any CPU in any motherboard though.
The latest CPUs will work in those older motherboards with chipsets such as X370 and B350, but AMD hasn’t specified just how well they’ll work, only stating that B450 and X470 motherboards will work the same as the new X570 chipset-based boards do. However, what you can’t do is use a 1st Gen Ryzen CPU such as the Ryzen 7 1800X in an X570 chipset board.
Other than this, coolers that work on older motherboards will still work on X570 motherboards and there have been no other changes, except that X570 motherboards also support PCI-Express 4.0. AMD included the Aorus NVMe Gen4 SSD 2TB in the press pack and the speeds were spectacular, with read speeds over 5000MB/sec and write speeds of around 4400MB/sec.
Memory speeds
The most important thing to consider when building a 3rd Gen Ryzen PC, though, is memory speed. AMD has improved the memory controller on the new CPUs to allow the Infinity Fabric – AMD’s high speed interconnect that links parts of the CPU and the rest of the PC, to run at higher speeds. Up to 3,600MHz, the two speeds are linked, and as you see sizeable performance boosts by increasing the Infinity Fabric speed, you’ll want to make the most of this and use 3,600MHz memory, especially as it’s not that much more expensive than 3000MHz kits at the moment.
However, above 3600MHz a divider kicks in to reduce the Infinity Fabric speed, so as far as I’m concerned, above this is the realm of extreme overclockers since you won’t see any extra benefit from the Infinity Fabric as it will be maxed out. In fact, using 3733MHz memory actually saw my system offer slightly worse performance as the divider meant the fabric was operating at a slower frequency. So, my advice for anyone building a new system is to use a 16GB dual-channel kit of 3,600MHz memory, ideally with a C16 latency, although most 3466MHz kits I’ve tried readily overclock to 3,600MHz anyway.
Test system
I’ve rebuilt my test systems for the launch today so they use cutting-edge components and also fully up to date versions of Windows 10 with the May 1903 update along with all the various security patches – both from motherboard manufacturers and Microsoft.
I should also point out that I’ve used 3466MHz memory with all my systems as this was guaranteed to work with older AMD CPUs allowing my results to be directly comparable with the new ones. You may see slightly better performance using 3600MHz memory.
Overclocking: I managed to overclock both the Ryzen 7 3700X and Ryzen 9 3900X to 4.3GHz using a vcore of 1.425V but sadly they weren’t stable below a vcore of 1.45V, where AMD recommends should only be used for temporary benchmarking. AMD Ryzen 7 1800X: 4GHz, AMD Ryzen 7 2700X: 4.2GHz, AMD Threadripper 2920X: 4.2GHz, Intel Core i9-9900K: 5GHz, Intel Core i7-9700K: 5.1GHz, Intel Core i7-8700K: 5GHz.
Common components: Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 3466MHz memory, Nvidia RTX 2070 Super, Samsung 970 Evo 2TB M.2 SSD, EK Waterblocks EK-MLC Phoenix liquid cooler, Corsair RM850i PSU
AMD systems
Socket AM4: MSI X470 Gaming Pro Carbon AC (Ryzen 7 1800X), Gigabyte X570 Aorus Master (2nd and 3rd Gen Ryzen)
Socket TR4: MSI MEG X399 Creation (Threadripper 2920X)
Intel systems:
LGA1151: MSI MEG Z390 Ace
LGA2066: Asus ROG Strix X299-E Gaming
Gaming Benchmarks
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
The 95th percentile minimum frame rate in Shadow of the Tomb Raider for the CPU-leaning portion of the game saw both new AMD CPUs add a massive 22% to the frame rate - a huge leap with a similar boost to the average frame rate too. They both beat the Core i7-8700K as well, but the higher clock speeds offered by the Core i9-9900K and Core i7-9700K seemed to edge out a lead here, at least at my 1080p test resolution. At higher resolutions, this lead will be smaller, but 1080p is still the most popular gaming resolution and if you’re gaming on a high refresh monitor, you’ll likely want to be using a fairly powerful graphics card too. It’s worth noting too that the AMD CPU’s boost speeds was higher than the all-core overclocks I managed so that’s what some results are slower when overclocked.
Far Cry 5
Far Cry 5 was a mixed bag with AMD’s Zen 2 CPUs beating the Core i9-9900K’s 99th percentile frame rate, while the Intel CPU offered a higher average frame rate. Ultimately I’d say this was a draw and both CPUs managed a 12% increase over the Ryzen 7 2700X too. The od CPU out was the Core i7-9700K, who’s lack of hyper-threading overheads seems to have boosted performance even beyond the faster-clocked Core i9-9900K.
Dota 2
Dota 2 is a relatively easy game to run and popular with professional gamers who love high frame rates. Once again, the new CPUs offered massive increases over the Ryzen 7 2700X, and while they didn’t beat Intel’s 8-core CPUs, We’re usually talking about single digit differences in terms of frame rates and percentages. Again, then, it seems things are very title-dependant, but in every test AMD has added huge performance gains over previous generations and only in select titles at average resolutions is it still worth considering Intel over AMD. In fact in several results, AMD was actually faster.
Content creation benchmarks
Adobe Premiere Pro
Prepare yourselves, because while there were small differences in the majority of my game tests, the gaps are even bigger in content creation. Thankfully for AMD, it’s on top here and in a massive way. Adobe Premier was slightly compressed at the top, but nonetheless, the Ryzen 9 3900X was the fastest CPU at stock speed offering noticeably better performance than the similarly-priced Core i9-9900K and amazingly even beats the Threadripper 2920X despite it sporting quad-channel memory. A crazy fact to consider is that the Ryzen 9 3900X costs the same as the Ryzen 7 1800X did at launch two years ago, yet the former was 41% faster here. Well done AMD. The Ryzen 7 3700X meanwhile was also much faster than the Ryzen 7 2700X it replaces and it also kept up with the far pricier Core i9-9900K, leaving the Core i7-9700K in its dust.
Cinebench R20
The single thread Cinebench test is a good indicator of both instructions per cycle as well as lightly-threaded performance and the Ryzen 9 3900X was the star of the show, just edging out the Core i9-9900K while the Ryzen 7 3700X did the same with the Core i7-9700K and once again, massive increases over the Ryzen 7 2700X.
This is perhaps one of the most eye-popping results here as in Cinebench R20′s multi-threaded test, the Ryzen 9 3900X was utterly dominant, laying waste even to the mighty Threadripper 2920X, which has understandably seen some massive price cuts recently. In fact, its score of 7223 is faster than results for the the Threadripper 2950X I’ve seen – sadly I didn’t have time to test it, but results over at CPU Monkey seem to show the Ryzen 3900X was 200 points faster despite a 4-core deficit, which is pretty devastating for AMD’s own HEDT CPUs as well as Intel’s.
HandBrake
It was another win for AMD in HandBrake, where the Ryzen 9 3900X was a huge amount quicker than every other CPU, even the Threadripper 2920X, while the Ryzen 7 3700X was nearly a match for the Core i9-9900K and in a different league to the Ryzen 7 2700X and Core i7-9700K.
PC Mark 10 Image Editing
The final performance test is PC Mark’s image editing test and again it was AMD domination with the Ryzen 7 3700X and Ryzen 9 3900X sitting at the top of the graph with massive leads over Intel and older generation AMD CPUs.
Power Consumption
The standout result for me here is the Ryzen 7 3700X in the load test, which drew just 185W from the wall socket compared to 253W for its predecessor. The 7nm manufacturing process’s benefits are clearly shown here, while the 12-core Ryzen 9 3900X was around 30W more power frugal than the 12-core Threadripper 2920X too.
Conclusion
The only significant disappointment here is overclocking. From speaking to AMD, it does seem that 4.3-4.4GHz is the limit as far as all-core overclocks go, but I didn’t see Precision Boost Overdrive frequencies hit much higher than the stock maximum boost frequencies either. It’s early days and I have yet to tinker properly, but so far overclocking headroom seems limited at best.
Other than this, I think the Zen 2 performance summary is very much a two-part story. In games AMD has made huge strides over 12nm Zen+ to the extent that in some tests it’s faster, others roughly even, but there are still some situations where Intel is quicker. However, from my own testing for Forbes and several other publications using other benchmarks, it’s fairly clear that unless you’re using a powerful graphics card with low to medium resolutions and pushing frame rates to their limits, these differences will often be negligible. That’s going be true at higher resolutions too or if your system is more GPU-bound. It’s rare that I say this, but I’d go as far as saying that the Ryzen 3700X is actually worth an upgrade over the Ryzen 7 2700X too, especially if you need those extra frames and are using a high refresh rate monitor.
However, while Zen and Zen+ CPUs often offered better bang for your buck in multi-threaded content creation, Zen 2 is off the charts. The Ryzen 9 3900X has essentially made every desktop CPU up to 16 cores - be it Intel Core X or AMD Threadripper, redundant for high-end desktop content creation. As further evidence of this, I’ve grabbed some quick numbers for the Threadripper 2950X, Core i9-7900X and Core i9-9980XE to see how they fare in Cinebench above. As I suspected, even the 16-core Threadripper 2950X is out-stripped by the Ryzen 9 3900X. The only CPU to offer significantly more performance is the Core i9-9980XE, while the Core i9-9960X 16-core CPU retails for over $1500 – clearly not worth it given the small difference you’d see unless you need extra PCI-Express lanes. This leads me to one conclusion – the Ryzen 9 3950X 16-core CPU is very likely going to make every single current desktop processor redundant in multi-threaded performance.
The Ryzen 7 3700X, meanwhile, also punched well above its weight and offering similar performance to the Core i9-9900K in Adobe Premiere Pro, at least in my 4K video export, is rather damning for Intel given the price difference. Ultimately, what this all boils down to is for everything content creation/multi-threaded, AMD is now absolutely dominant except if you have piles of cash to spend on an Intel Core i9-9980XE and rendering/exporting time is money. In games AMD is mostly slightly better, equal to, or not that far behind Intel depending on the title, even in more CPU-bound setups. As such, for a multi-purpose PC, AMD is by far the best choice, however far your budget stretches. The Zen 2 architecture and AMD’s move to 7nm in one go is a huge leap forward in performance and value too and I think the best is yet to come with the Ryzen 9 3950X, which has even higher frequencies and core/thread counts.
