AMD Ryzen 3 3300X
Others beat the 3300X for gaming, but it provides remarkable performance for a keen price
SCORE
PRICE £100 (£120 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk
The Ryzen 3 3300X is one of the most exciting chips AMD has released for some time. It’s the first Ryzen 3 to be based on the Zen 2 architecture, and also the first with multithreading. AMD is clearly keen to make an impact at the lower end.
The move to the superb Zen 2 architecture means that this part has loads of underlying improvements, including a more efficient chiplet design that boosts performance and lowers manufacturing costs. The move to a 7nm manufacturing process also delivers a big boost to performance.
The 3300X has four cores that support eight threads, and they run with base and boost speeds of 3.8GHz and 4.3GHz, alongside 16MB of cache cache.
The Ryzen 5 3600X only costs £191, but it’s one of the stars of AMD’s entire range. It’s the most powerful chip from the mid-market Ryzen 5 brand, coming with six multithreaded cores and clock speeds of 3.8GHz and 4.4GHz.
The Zen 2 architecture and its 7nm manufacturing mean a huge boost to efficiency and performance. There’s an impressive 32MB of cache, but no integrated graphics – just like AMD’s other pure Ryzen 3 chips.
The “X” suffix means the 3600X has more aggressive turbo compared to parts such as the Ryzen 5 3600, but that also means that the Ryzen 5 3600X has a TDP of 95W. More modest chips like the 3600 sit down at 65W.
That compares well to Intel’s competition – this £120 AMD part supports more threads than either the i3-9100 or the i5-9400F, and it has better clock speeds and more cache. That’s particularly impressive given that Intel’s chips cost £117 and £150 respectively. The move to Zen 2 also means that the 3300X supports PCIe 4 – unlike Intel – along with more PCI lanes and faster native memory.
The Ryzen’s overall benchmark score of 188 is eight points faster than the pricier, six-core Intel i5-9400F ( see p90), and it beat the Intel chip in both Cinebench tests, both Adobe tools and Blender. It wasn’t able to keep up in Geekbench’s multicore test – and in a couple of other minor
The Ryzen 5 3600X competes with Intel’s Core i5 chips, which is impressive considering its price. The i5-10700K costs a whopping £275, for instance, and AMD adds value by including a cooler too. Plus, you’ll find that motherboards are, on average, cheaper while taking advantage of AMD chipsets’ support for PCIe 4.
This chip hammered home its advantage in the multithreaded workloads. In our benchmarks, it was the quickest chip from this mid-range group, with an overall result of 270 outpacing the pricier Core i5-10600K by 20 points. And it did this while consuming less power than Intel.
Its Cinebench and Geekbench multicore scores beat the Intel Core nchmarks – but it beat Intel in ost scenarios that are pertinent to ainstream computing and work sks. It even opened up solid leads in ngle-core tests. While the difference ould be hard to spot in real life, it ll be that tiny bit faster in everyday a ps such as web browsers and Office. Its only weak area is games. Its DMark result of 10,716 lags behind tel’s chip, and the i5-9400F was far icker in our selection of games too. en the i3-9100 ( see p90) was better re. The Ryzen 3300X’s lack of ming pace means the i5-9400F mains better for a pure gaming rig, or that i3 chip if you ’re on a budget. However, AMD’s part is hardly miles behind in those tests, so it’s still capable for mainstream gaming, and its superb, well-balanced application performance makes it far better for everyday work and home PCs. And, as an added bonus, it’s cheaper, despite coming with a cooler in the box. Right now, the AMD Ryzen 3 3300X is simply the best low-end processor on the market.
KEY SPECS
3.8GHz/4.3GHz base/peak clock speed 4 cores 8 threads 16MB L3 cache no graphics AMD Zen 2 architecture AMD AM4 socket 65W TDP i5-10600K -10600K by modest margins, and it was as just quicker in the Photoshop and Premiere remiere Pro tests. The AMD part was the e best mid-range chip in Blender, Y-Cruncher’s -Cruncher’s multicore benchmark and in both SiSoftware Sandra runs.
AMD’s part was less impressive in some me single-core tests, falling behind the e Core i5-10600K in that section of the e Cinebench, Geekbench and Y-Cruncher -Cruncher benchmarks. Its 3DMark Time me Spy result was a little slower than an Intel’s chip, too, and this trend carried arried on in most of the gaming tests – but it did retain its lead in the CPU-intensive Civilization VI test.
The Ryzen 5 3600X offers fantastic speed across a whole range of multithreaded tasks – if you need a mid-range CPU for content creation, this is the chip to buy. It’s compelling elsewhere too: while it can’t quite match Intel in single-threaded workloads, it’s hardly a slouch, and the AMD chip is far cheaper. The Ryzen 5 3600X’s superb multicore performance and low price make it a brilliant mid-range option.
KEY SPECS
3.8GHz/4.4GHz base/peak clock speed 6 cores 12 threads 32MB L3 cache no graphics AMD Zen 2 architecture AMD AM4 socket 95W TDP