AMD RYZEN 3 1200

The most budgetconscious spin of Ryzen highlights the new multicore norm

IT’S TEMPTING TO START by saying you can’t always get what you want, and in lieu of being able to afford a top-flight monster, a budget chip like this will have to do. But questionable Rolling Stones references aside, it’s not the whole story when it comes to AMD’s most affordable Ryzen chip. This isn’t just a chip to turn to when forced to build on a shoestring; it’s a chip that shows how far CPUs have advanced in a year, and it’s a chip that punches far harder than its $100 price tag suggests.

That single Franklin nets you a true quad-core processor. Yup, the sort of territory that was previously the preserve of a mainstream Core i5. The Ryzen’s base clock nominally runs at 3.1GHz, but you’ll rarely see it running the cores at that speed; instead it’ll operate closer to the Turbo of 3.4GHz. There’s no SMT included on AMD’s Ryzen 3s, presumably to help separate them from the Ryzen 5 chips, but it’s still a speedy chip, capable of handling four threads at once for bang on $100.

It should make for an interesting counterpoint to Intel’s new Core i3s, although we haven’t had those in our labs yet, so instead we’ve compared it to the 8th Gen Core i5-8400, purely because that’s the chip to beat in the desktop space at the moment. On the face of things, that’s not a fair comparison, as the new Core i5 is a six-core, six-thread chip, but it does cost double what AMD is asking for this, so bear that in mind when looking over the specifications and benchmark results.

Speaking of benchmarks, we can report there are no nasty surprises with the Ryzen 3 1200—given the core count and operating frequency, it performs as expected. This means that it’s bringing up the rear of the benchmark tables, but it does so at a great price. The Cinebench R15 result of 478, for instance, may seem low compared to the Core i5’s 949, but in the context of price, you’re looking at a score of 4.78 per dollar, as opposed to 4.75 for Intel’s. Yup, you get more bang for your buck from AMD’s chip.

It is worth noting that the latest BIOS updates mean that the memory issues we saw at the launch of Ryzen have evaporated, and that getting the system up and running was a breeze. Gaming isn’t that big a differentiator anymore either, with a mere 2fps drop over the more expensive chip in FarCryPrimal.

You’ll find a Wraith Stealth cooler in the box alongside the CPU, and it’s a fine cooler at stock performance. It’s worthy of its “Stealth” moniker, too. When it came to overclocking, we reached for our AIO cooler of choice, the NZXT Kraken X62, but you should be able to hit decent numbers with the Stealth as well. Overclocking the Ryzen 3 1200 is simple—set the target frequency in the BIOS (up the voltage if needed), and you’re done. In this case, we hit a stable 3.7GHz, which saw the Cinebench R15 score jump to 567 points.

Overall, this is a lot of chip for not much money. If you need serious power, you should absolutely spend more, but if value is your main concern, there’s certainly a lot to love here. –ALAN DEXTER