AMD Ryzen 9 3900X
Superb multicore power,power solid performance elsewhere and a price that undercuts Intel
SCORE
PRICE £366 (£440 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk
The AMD Ryzen 9 3900X is o one of the cheapest high-end processors in the entire Lab Labs, which is all the more impressive when you consider the amount of pow power that AMD has loaded inside this C CPU.
The 3900X has a whopping 12 multithreaded cores, meaning it can handle 24 concurrent threads. Th That’s two more cores than the Intel Core i9-10900K ( see p86), which offers ten cores for a higher price of £530.
AMD’s chip has 64MB of L3 cache, which is miles more than the 20MB included with Intel’s chip. It has 24 dedicated PCI lanes, which is four more than Intel offers.
The only area where AMD doesn’t take a clear lead is in clock speed. The 3900X’s stock speed of 3.8GHz outpaces the Intel chip by 100MHz, but the AMD part peaks at 4.6GHz – the Core i9-10900K can accelerate to 4.9GHz across all of its cores and 5.3GHz on one core.
Underneath it all is the Zen 2 architecture, which uses a 7nm manufacturing process and an innovative modular chip design that improves efficiency and makes these chips cheaper to construct – which helps explain the huge price cut when compared to Intel’s rival CPU.
The Ryzen 9 3900X also slots into a more affordable and versatile ecosystem than anything Intel can offer. AMD’s reliance on the existing AM4 socket means that this chip can work in existing motherboards – at most, you’ll need to apply a BIOS update. It also means that this chip will work in cheaper boards, because Intel’s new processor has been released alongside a raft of high-end motherboards, with few cheaper options currently available.
This inevitably make things more affordable – and AMD still includes coolers with its CPUs too, which also reduces cost.
Impressively, AMD’s high-end chipsets also support PCIe 4, which means they work with superfast SSDs. Intel’s CPUs and chipsets currently only support PCIe 3, so they're restricted to (still fast) older SSDs.
AMD’s chipsets don’t natively support Wi Wi-Fi Fi 6 or 2.5Gbits/sec Ethernet, which are features included with Intel’s Z490 silicon, but it’s relatively easy to find AMD-based boards that have these networking upgrades anyway thanks to thirdparty hardware.
So the Ryzen 9 3900X uses a more accessible and arguably more advanced ecosystem, but its real advantage is that it outpaces the newer, pricier Intel chip in plenty of benchmarks. For instance, its overall score of 457 in our application tests is better than the 409 scored by the Intel CPU, and the AMD chip recorded a better result in each individual test.
Moreover, AMD’s chip was faster in both Geekbench and Cinebench’s multicore benchmarks, it led the way in Blender, and it was quicker in both SiSoftware Sandra tests – which evaluate cryptography and AI computation abilities.
The AMD chip performed well in power tests too. While this chip’s idle power draw of 91W isn’t great, when benchmarking it required 150W from the mains and it only needed three Watts more when its CPU cores were stressed. Intel’s chip required 183W and 225W from those tests.
The AMD part couldn’t always overhaul Intel, though. While its single-core speeds are impressive, the Intel chip is marginally quicker – it had a 19-point lead in Cinebench, for example, and was 154 points faster in Geekbench. The AMD chip was again a little slower in both Adobe
“It’s still easily quick enough to hold its own in those areas where Intel takes a lead – while being far cheaper”
tests. The single-core test in Y Y-Cruncher Cruncher demonstrates Intel Intel’s s single-core lead in a purer form – in that app’s single-core test, the Intel chip was nearly four seconds faster than the AMD part.
AMD’s chip is certainly no slouch in gaming, but this is another area where it can’t yet oust Intel. It was routinely a frame or two behind the Intel part in Ghost Recon Wildlands. While it was only half a frame back in Total War: Warhammer II’s 4K test, it was further behind at 1080p.
This is no surprise when 3DMark Time Spy is considered: the AMD part scored a reasonable 13,307 points, but the Intel processor nearly hit a result of 13,500 points.
The Core i9 remains a better option if you need single-threaded pace or gaming speed, or if you need to run Adobe software – even if the gaps here between the AMD and the Intel are relatively tiny.
The AMD chip is better in virtually any multithreaded workload, though, and it’s still easily quick enough to hold its own in those areas where Intel takes a lead – while being far cheaper, and with a more versatile ecosystem. The AMD Ryzen 9 3900X punches above its weight in key departments and is a deserving Labs Winner.
KEY SPECS
3.8GHz/4.6GHz base/peak clock speed 12 cores 24 threads 64MB L3 cache no graphics AMD Zen 2 architecture AMD AM4 socket 105W TDP