AMD Ryzen 3 3100 & 3300X CPU Review

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Introduction, Specifications, and Pricing

When AMD Ryzen first launched, Intel was in a particularly good place as while it was a significant step forward, it was only the start of getting the ball rolling by AMD. However, fast forward a few years, and here we are with AMD threatening Intel’s position at overall platform performance leadership.

While Intel still technically holds some leadership on single thread/IPC performance, all in all, they have taken a beating by Ryzen 3000. Intel has just recently announced their new Comet Lake S desktop processors, which we will be doing a full writeup later this month on. However, for now, we have the intro to the mainstream, aka Ryzen 3 of the Ryzen 3000 product stack from AMD.

Like every launch, the Ryzen 3000 launch was hallmarked with the flagship at the time Ryzen 9 3900X and a series of Ryzen 7 entries, along with Ryzen 5 following. As time passes, we start to see chips come to light that begins to round out the lineup, and that is what we have today. The Ryzen 3 3100 and Ryzen 3 3300X are the two CPUs we are looking at today. They are both quad-core models with SMT enabled. Let’s check out the specs and see what differentiates these two.

Specifications

First up is the higher-end model, the Ryzen 3 3300X. This CPU, as previously mentioned, sports four physical cores with SMT enabling eight logical processors or threads. The 3300X has a base clock speed of 3.8GHz with a maximum boost clock of 4.3Ghz. Now obviously, if you let PBO take its course, you can get more from it, but for most users out of the box, you will see the 3300X hover around these clocks. The L3 cache comes out to 16MB, and this will be a bit of a point of contention as we dig deeper into the overall silicon decisions for these two Ryzen 3 models.

The CPU comes with a Wraith Stealth cooler, which is the small pancake cooler. The two CPUs we received from AMD were not in retail boxes, but I think most of you can easily find images of the Wraith Stealth cooler at this point. The cooler in the box is more than capable of a basic gaming build with either of these chips. However, if you want to squeeze every ounce of performance form Ryzen, cooling is vital, as that unlocks more headroom for the CPU to boost.

To round out the 3300X, it is also PCIe 4.0 enabled like all of the other Ryzen 3000 CPUs (except Ryzen 5 3400G, and Ryzen 3 3200G). The 3300X is rated at 65W TDP, just like its 3100, little brother. Speaking of the 3100, let’s check out those specs next.

The Ryzen 3 3100 is a quad-core with SMT just like the 3300X, but this one has lower clocks. The base clock for the 3100 is down to 3.6GHz and has a maximum boost clock of 3.9Ghz. This will obviously boost a bit more with PBO or can likely be tuned for a manual overclock, but we will explore that later in the review. The 3100 also comes with the Wraith Stealth and supports PCIe 4.0.

Both chips support a default DDR4 3200MHz or MT/s for their supported speed. With proper DIMMs, we should be able to set a comfortable 3600MHz memory speed, which will be right in the 1:1 sweet spot for tying the IF and bus clocks together.

Pricing

Pricing from AMD is listed at an SEP of $120 for the 3300X and $99 for the 3100. This places it in a unique space as the 3300X comes up against AMD’s chosen competitor, the 9400F, which as of the time of writing, is selling for $159.99, while the 3100 squares off against the Intel 9100F, which is 74.99.

This creates a strange dichotomy as in the case of the 3300X; we are punching up, to the tune of around thirty dollars, however, in the case of the 3100, we are punching down to a product that is 75% the cost of the 3100. Yes, I am aware that Intel just announced their new Comet Lake-S processor stack, but since those are under embargo until the 20th of this month, we must compare to what is on the market today.

In the following pages, we will assess any significant features or notations of the new 3300X and 3100 CPUs and evaluate their ability to be recommended at this price point.

AMD Ryzen 5 3600X

	Today	Yesterday	7 days ago	30 days ago
	$274.99	$272.95	$269.99	$260.00	Buy
* Prices last scanned on 5/3/2021 at 12:41 pm CDT – prices may not be accurate, click links above for the latest price. We may earn an affiliate commission.

CPU, New Tech, Packaging, and Test Setup

AMD Marketing Points

AMD had several slides in their presentation for the new Ryzen 3 models, but since we can share our results, we will skip those provided by AMD. However, it is worth noting as you see here that AMD, with its Ryzen lineup, has shaken things up a bit over the years since its introduction. AMD has, in a way, pushed what was quickly becoming a stagnated offering into more performance per dollar options being available thanks to competition.

Both CPUs, as you can see here, are quad-core parts with SMT for a total thread count of eight. They both carry a 65W TDP and are 7nm chiplet-based units. This does mean that we can expect the same architectural improvements and performance we have come to expect from AMD’s 7nm based CPU parts.

The 3300X is specified with a 3.8GHz base and a maximum boost of 4.3GHz. The onboard 18MB “Game cache” or combination of 16MB L3 combined with 2MB L2 is a powerful addition to boost gaming and other performance metrics.

The 3100 CPU comes in with a base clock of 3.6GHz and a maximum boost of 3.9GHz. Now that clock speed will make a significant performance differential in out of the box performance. But, I do think that with a proper OC, we can make up for some of this.

There is one area that will not be able to be mitigated by the user, and this is the die layout itself. With AMD’s 7nm chiplets, one chiplet is called a CCD (core chiplet die) and contains two core complex units containing up to four cores each. So, when you see a 7nm chiplet, keep in mind that while it may be one package with up to eight cores, it is a single die containing two core complexes with up to four cores each. Now the 3100 and 3300X are built differently as the CCX is deployed in different ways. The 3100 goes with two cores per CCX, for two cores and four threads per CCX. The 3300X employs a single full CCX for the four cores and eight threads.

The reason this is important is that the cache is essentially split in half for the 3100, which has half of the cache on one CCX, and the other half on the other CCX. This means that the unified cache and latency when a core needs to grab something or talk to the other cache or pair of cores, there will be induced latency. This latency will be felt via a reduction in performance.

Test setup

My testbench is strictly controlled with a fresh OS for any platform or component change. The system uses all the same components whenever possible to maintain comparable results between platforms. The ambient in the test lab is rigorously controlled at 22C +/- 1C. All tests are run a minimum of three times, and any outliers are tossed, and another replacement test run will be completed to achieve our average results.

The use of a TITAN RTX for the CPU testing is to ensure that the GPU is not the bottleneck for performance results, and will best represent the scaling across CPU and platforms.

Motherboard: ASUS Crosshair VIII Hero Wi-Fi (buy from Amazon)
CPU: AMD Ryzen 3 3300X & 3100
Cooler: Alphacool Eisbaer LT 360mm (buy from Amazon)
Memory: Corsair Dominator RGB 3600MHz 16GBx2 (buy from Amazon)
Video Card: NVIDIA TITAN RTX (buy from Amazon)
Storage – Boot Drive: Corsair MP600 (PCIe 4) 2TB (buy from Amazon)
Testbench: DimasTech Easy XL (buy from Amazon)
Power Supply: Thermaltake 1200W (buy from Amazon)
OS: Microsoft Windows 10 (buy from Amazon)
Monitor: ASUS XG438 43″ 4K (buy from Amazon)
Keyboard: Logitech G910 Orion Spectrum (buy from Amazon)
Mouse: Corsair Logitech G502 (buy from Amazon)

WPrime, SuperPi, Cinebench, and AIDA64

WPrime

WPrime is first up and being a multi-threaded benchmark. We know it will scale with any CPU we throw at it. You can manually set the number of workers or threads you want to allocate to the calculation, which we did the total thread count for each CPU to ensure we measure the maximum performance the CPU can offer.

The 32M test is the shorter one and shows how each CPU performs with a quick burst multi-core loading. Here we see the 3100 and the 3300X surround the 7700K with the 3300X taking the win over the 7700K.

The 1024 test is the longer version and can take form as short as under half a minute up to several minutes depending on thread count and frequency of the CPU being tested. Here we see once again the 3100 and 3300X surrounding the 7700K, while the 3300X beats it outright, we see that the $100 3100 holds its own here.

SuperPi

SuperPi is a much older test, but it’s worth including as it is a single-threaded computation workload that really can show in granular detail differences in the computational ability of the silicon being tested. One thing to note is that this is an aging application that tends to favor intel architecture, so don’t be surprised when you see much better results by some chips, as those same chips you will see get beaten in other tests.

Here we see that the 7nm efficiency is as good as the previous flagship 2700X loses to the 3300X. The 3300X is even close to catching the 3600X in this single-threaded test. The 3100 with its significantly lower out of the box clock speed and die configuration shows the impact here as well.

Cinebench

Cinebench is a long-standing render benchmark that has been heavily relied upon by both Intel and AMD to showcase their newest platforms during unveils. The benchmark has two tests, a single-core workload that will utilize one thread or 1T. There is also a multi-threaded test which uses all threads or nT of a tested CPU

First up is the multi-core test, where we can see that it is more of the same with the 3100 and 3300X surrounding the 7700K. AMD claimed that the 7700K was a target and that the 3300X can beat it, and thus far, this has proven true.

Moving to single-threaded and things tighten up a bit. Here we see the 3300X jump ahead of not only the 7700K but the 8700K as well. The 3100 pulls ahead of all three of the Zen+ (12nm chips) in the grouping.

Aida64

Memory read performance is up first for Aida. Here we see that our two chips do well here only being matched or beaten by its fellow 7nm brethren.

Moving to memory write, and we see the impact of a single CCD chip crop up. This is something we observed during the early reviews for Ryzen 3000, since adding the I/O die with the 7nm chiplets, having a CPU with a single chiplet will half your memory write performance. This will likely never show its face in everyday use, but it is worth noting.

The memory copy performance once again is strong here. The 3300X and 3100 come neck and neck with the 9900K and 8700K. The 3900X is a more potent overall chip, takes the haloed spot.

Memory latency is an area where intel shines. AMD tends to have higher overall latency in general, but in testing, it has not caused any abhorrent behavior in testing or usage. One thing worth noting is that the 3300X has the best latency we have seen from an AMD AM4 CPU thus far.

Aida’s AES test likes threads, and it shows. Much to my surprise, the 3300X and 3100 both perform well in this test, even besting the 8700K. However, the 9900K with twice the thread count and higher clock speed pushes ahead here.

For FPU testing, we have 32-bit single-precision first. Both the 3100 and 3300X beat the 7700K but fall a bit behind the higher thread count 8700K, 9900K, and others.

Now with the next level, we have the 64-biot double-precision test. Here we see the 3300X gobble up the 2700X by a sliver of margin. The 7700K stays behind both the 3100 and 3300X.

Lastly, we have 80-bit extended precision, and this one squeezes the chips a bit, with the 7700K falling further behind. The 8700K is within striking distance of the 3300X, but overall the higher thread count holds off the two Ryzen 3 chips.

Handbrake, Blender, POV-Ray, CoronaRender, 7-Zip, and WebXPRT

Handbrake

Handbrake is up next, and we are transcoding a 4K MKV to MP4. Here we see the new 3300X beats out the 7700K and even comes close to beating the 2600X, which has a four-thread advantage over it.

Blender

Blender, we used the classroom render test and timed the result. Here, we see the same scaling with the 3100 trailing the 7700K slightly. The 3300X once again finds itself ahead of the 7700K and behind the six-core parts.

POV-Ray

POV-Ray or Persistence of View Raytracer allows users to create 3D graphics. We use it to test both 1T and nT performance of CPUs as it renders out as fixed workload.

First up will be 1T testing, and here we see the 3100 and 3300X jump ahead of all of the Zen+ chips while surrounding the 7700K. The 3300X is rather close to the six-core parts, which is quite a strong showing for a quad-core part. The 3100 due to clock speeds deficiency along with likely the die layout falls a bit behind the 3300X here.

Cororna Render

Corona Render is a photorealistic renderer that can be integrated into several popular 3D modeling applications. It can also be used as a standalone application, which is what we opted for to best control variables.

Here we have the renderer using all threads of available CPUs, and we see that the scaling is almost linear across the core counts. The 3300X, however, has a strong showing pulling well ahead of the 7700K, but the gap to the six-core parts is too much for the thread deficient quad-core parts.

7-Zip

7-Zip is an open-source and free compression application. IT works well with multi-threading and also can see gains from clock speed as well.

Here we see that the 7700K comes to life here, and some of its architectural efficiency comes into play here, giving it a needed win over the new Ryzen 3 parts. Just keep in mind that the win over the 3300X is so close its well within the margin for error.

WebXPRT

WebXPRT is a browser-based test, and we like this test as this is one of the areas not many think to test. This also happens to be a real-world usage test that can be impacted by the mitigations which have recently rolled through and were patched.

Here we see the 3300X pulls up toward the top of the stack. The 3100 due to its lower clock falls behind the Intel contingent but still outpaces the Zen+ parts. One thing that surprised me was the 7700K beating the 8700K.

Still, I think that is because the 7700K platform may not need or have the number of patches applied that impact performance as the UEFI for our board (Maximus IX Hero) had its most recent update being version 1301 from April of 2018.

Unigine and UL Benchmarks

Unigine Superposition

Superposition from Unigine is a DX12 based benchmark. We test with the 720P LOW preset as this removes all but the most basic GPU loading, and all of the FPS performance comes from the CPUs ability to push frames to the GPU. This test is far more efficient and speed based rather than being highly threaded.

Here we see the 3300X take a spot right behind the 9900K, which surprises me a bit as it tops out at around 4340MHz on boost versus the 9900K, which can boost up to 5GHz. Once again, the 3100 falls a bit behind due to its clock speed deficiency.

PCMark 10

PCMark is a benchmark from UL and tests various workload types to represent typical workloads for a PC. Everything from video conferencing, image import, and editing, along with 3D rendering, are tested.

First up is the main score, this is a cumulation of all of the proceeding results, which once again places the 3300X directly trailing the 9900K and the 3900X. This is not bad company to be in at a $120 price point. The 3100 falls back, trailing the 7700K.

Next up is essentials, which shows the 3100 gain some ground besting the 7700K and the 2600X. The 3300X holds second place now, but the 9900K drops behind not just the 3300X but the 3600X and 3900X as well.

Next up is productivity, and here we see the 3300X jump to the top of the chart beating the 3900X by a razor-thin margin. It is repeatable, though, so I will take it. The 3100 holds lower mid-space beating out the Zen+ based CPUs and equivalent to a 3600X.

Lastly, for the PCMark tests, we have the Digital Content Creation section, which takes advantage of thread counts. Here we see all the higher core count parts beating our Ryzen 3 options. The 7700K is still behind the 3300X, but also the 2600X, which, while Zen+ it still has 50% more cores and threads than the 3300X. The 3100 still holds its own vs. the 3400G, but everything else pulls steadily ahead of it.

3DMark Firestrike

3DMark Firestrike shows a synthetic performance measure for gaming level performance. Here we have the main score and the CPU score. The main score has our two Ryzen 3 models trailing the 7700K overall. Moving to the physics (CPU) score, we see that the 7700K falls back in line, as we would expect behind the 3300X.

Moving to the graphics sub scores and we see that the 9900K shows better graphical performance, and that helps explain why it beat out the 3300X. The overall score considers platform performance as a whole, and some platforms can push a bit more graphical performance, whether it be via efficiencies in the bus itself or form their clock speed.

In the combined score, we get to see how the CPU and Graphics performance combines to give a result and further proof of the still relevant 7700K/Z270 platform.

3DMark Time Spy

Time Spy is another 3DMark test variant, but this one is for DX12 based systems. This test can be quite stressful, and since its an entirely different load, you may be surprised to see how the results shuffle when compared to Firestrike.

Here we see the 3100 and 3300X sitting toward the bottom once again, but this time, both steadily beat out the 7700K platform. When moving to the CPU score, we see that the 7700K beats both CPU’s which means that we see a difference in the graphics performance, which we will look at next.

Here we see that the efficiency of the new Ryzen 3 chips to push frames to the GPU shows well here. The 3300X and 3100 only fall behind the higher core count Ryzen chips, while the others fall behind them.

Gaming Benchmarks

In gaming tests, most testers tend to lower the resolution to 720P or 1080p, which works to show the CPU FPS, however, it’s not very realistic for how a person would use a CPU in the real-world. We record 720P results in case they are ever needed, but we show 1080p as it is still one of the most popular resolutions. We also test 1440p and 4K, which some may question, and I will explain.

I want to show you who may be considering a purchase of these chips the actual difference you will see based on the resolution you may be gaming at. I believe this will open the minds of many to see that many CPUs can provide a great gaming experience sans 1-2 FPS if you are gaming at higher resolutions.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

First up in the Shadow of the Tomb Raider test, we have the 1080p performance. The reason we test 1080p is that at lower resolutions, we can see how many frames the CPU can push to the GPU, which is lightly loaded. Here we see the 3100 pulls a reasonable result for its price point, but we can see some definite bottlenecking of the GPU to the tune of 28% compared to the top of the chart 9900K. The $120 3300X closes that gap a bit to an 18% differential.

Moving up to 1440P and we see more of the load transfer to the GPU. Now the 3100 is only trailing the 9900K by 18%. The 3300X closes the gap to a mere 8% as it passes the flagship 2700X.

Now we get to 4K, where all of the load has moved to the GPU, and now we are talking a 1-2 FPS differential between the CPUs tested, except for the 3400G APU, which drops to 74 FPS average or 4-6FPS behind the leaders.

Wolfenstein Youngblood

Wolfenstein at 1080p, we see that the field shuffles a bit due to how the game performs at extreme FPS. Here we see the 9900K topping the chart with the 3100 beating out all of the Zen+ chips except for the 2700X. The 2700X sits firmly between the 3300X and the 3100. The 3300X is nipping at the heels of the 3600X, which tells me that the clock speed and efficiency are more important here, rather than thread count.

Cranking things up to 1440p, and the results were pretty shocking. The first thing to note is that the 7700K jumped up to the top of the chart while the 3900X, 3600X, and 3300X all trail it by a few FPS. The 9900K and 8700K fall in line with the 3300X.

Pushing things to 4K, and once again, things level out. The 7700K still shows its relevance as it leads the chart by a single frame, and the 132FPS marker covers the trailing 60% of CPUs until we get down to the 2600X, which drops an additional frame.

Civilization VI

Civilization is a quite popular game, and its performance we will test consists of standard graphical tests, which we will represent with average frame times for each resolution. We will also examine the AI turn time for each CPU to show how long each turn for AI will take based on your CPU performance and efficiency.

First up is the AI Turn time benchmark, which uses your CPU to process turns for the AI players. You end up with a result at the end, which is an average time in seconds your system will take to complete AI player turns. Here we see that Civ prefers not just cores but frequency and efficiency. As you can see, the quad-core 3300X easily surpasses the Zen+ offerings, while the 3100 is near the 3400G just behind the 2600X.

Now, we move to graphics testing and start at 1080p. The 2600X shuffles downwards, moving in between the 3300X and the 3100. The 7700K is ahead of the 3300X, and the top of the charts is once again the 3900X.

Cranking things up to 1440P, and once again, we see the results consolidate, and the gap narrows. However, it is worth noting that the 3300X and 3100 stay the course not moving in their positions. The top 80% of the chips are within striking range of each other while the 3100 and 3400G fall a bit off the trend here having frame times a full millisecond longer than the 2600X.

4K is the great equalizer here as we see that all of the chips perform very close to one another, except for the poor 3400G, who still falls over a full millisecond off the pace. Now the 3300X moves up to a commanding spot near the top, but the shuffle is so close it could be called the margin of error, had it not been averaged over several runs.

Storage Performance

CrystalDiskMark

For storage performance, we test the platform using a PCIe 4.0 Corsair MP600 2TB M.2 NVMe drive. It is tested in CrystaldiskMark 7.0.0 x64, and we average the results to ensure a good cross-section of expected performance. Do note that some platforms do not support the new PCIe gen 4, and therefore will cap out around 3400-3500MB/s.

First up is the Sequential read test, which every manufacturer touts as the “up to” speed, but in reality, you never see this in everyday usage, but I digress. Here we see the X570 platform topping 5,000MB/s or around there. Much to my surprise, the top performer was the 3100.

Next up is the write speed which we see it top out at 4,250-4,260 range. Once again, the Ryzen 3 models top the chart here, although by only a few MB/s.

Next up is your random read, which is likely something you will experience more often in everyday computing. These are tiny files at a low queue depth. This is usually an area where OPTANE or a 3DXPoint storage solution rules, but the PCIe 4 drive does well here. We see the Ryzen 3 parts lead the pack once again, and a real surprise was the performance of the 9900K. It seemingly fell off a cliff, and I would typically swap boards thinking it was aboard issue; however, Each CPU gets a fresh OS, and the 8700K was tested on the same board and shows the expected performance numbers.

The MP600 tends to do much better here with random writes. This time we see a scaling where even the PCIe 4 platform separates, and to my surprise, the two Ryzen 3 models top the charts again. The 3900X and 3600X trail a bit behind the 3300X and 3100 this time, and not just by a few MB/s, but up to 30MB/s +.

Clocks, Overclocking, Thermals, and Power Consumption

Here we will look at the physical and functional performance metrics for the new Ryzen 3 processors. This includes out of the box clocks, thermals, power consumption, and of course overclocking.

Out of the Box Clocks

First up is a frequency plot for the Ryzen 3 3100, which shows the frequency stumbles around 3100 – 3900 during idle with my logging running with a polling rate of 1000ms. At the 25 second mark, I fired off the Time Spy stability test in 3DMark. As you can see, the CPU hangs at 3900 solid with occasional blips on single cores to 3100 between loading parts of the benchmark.

The 3300X has a much higher clock, and as we see here, once we start the benchmark, the CPU sits at around 4341MHz and only dips during the loading scenes.

Power Consumption

For power consumption tests, we use a wall meter to test the full system draw. The reason for this is it will represent what the entire system pulls versus our meter, which shows power draw on each PSU cable. The reason for this is that measuring the power draw from the EPS cable, for example, does not take into account VRM losses and, therefore, can show a much higher power draw for the CPU or other device due to an inefficient VRM design or loading range.

Idle power with the full system and TITAN RTX discrete GPU in place, we see the 7700K pulling the lowest. They were followed by the 3400G and the two remaining Intel entries. The 3100 jumps to 66W, while the more powerful 3300X draws an additional two watts.

Loading up the CPU with a full FPU load, and we see a different story take shape. Now the 3100 tops the chart pulling a paltry 126W. The 3300X is up to 147W while all the other CPUs scale up from there. A notable mention here is that the 7700K, even being an older chip, still does well, pulling only 144W.

Testing synthetic GPU stress only is an excellent way to show the overhead the CPU adds, as the GPU does not pull more power after it reaches steady state. Here we see the 3100 hold a top-three spot while the 3300X falls to the bottom 40%. This is not horrible; its simply showing the extra wattage necessary to run the rig with a full GPU load.

Thermals

Idle temps for the two new chips are 26C for the 3100, while the 3300X comes in a single degree higher at 27C. Thermal sensors at idle are always a little funny as they were made to be accurate under high temp and load, but I have found that idle can float, so take this ranking with a grain of salt.

Loading each CPU up with a full burn-in FPU load, and we see the gaps start to widen. We waited for each platform and cooler to reach full saturation/steady-state before making any measurements. Here we see the 3100 topped out at 53.2C while the 3300X stepped up in a significant way reaching 71.5C. This was surprising enough we remounted coolers four times, and the thermal variance between mounts was about 1C at most. The 3300X runs warm, but I guess I should not be surprised based on its boost clocks.

Overclocking

Overclocking Ryzen has been an exercise in futility at most junctures. Typically our analysis ends with something to the tune of just use PBO as it will do the job, and you won’t lose the higher single-core boost. But we always have to try.

First on the bench for overclocking is the 3100, and much to my surprise, we were able to get a good clock at 4.4Ghz from it. This overclock was achieved with 1.295VCore (set in UEFI), This raised our nT Cinebench R20 score to 2669, which is an increase of 315 points or 12%. The 1T score rose to 508 from 449, which is an increase of 59 points or 12% once again. This is worth mentioning, as this places the 3100 at the level of the 3300X.

Now let’s see what the 3300X has left in its tank.

Another shocker here as we were able to achieve a 100% stable 4.5Ghz with our sample. We could get 4.6GHz bench stable but not able to pass all tests, so we backed off to 4.5GHz, and it was rock stable with the same 1.295VCore. More VCore, unfortunately, did not help things and caused worse stability. Now, checking out the nT score, we see it rose from 2625 to 2752, which is an increase of 127 points or 5%. This is not that surprising as this CPU had a much higher boost clock, hence less headroom.

The 1T result jumped from 504 to 523, which is an increase of 19 points or 4%.

I can say that at least with my samples, the Ryzen 3 3100 and 3300X leave a little bit on the table for those willing to tinker with overclocking the CPU. The 3100, definitely looks to have a decent amount of headroom to play with.

Final Thoughts

Typically when reviewing the more mainstream CPU parts, it can be considered boring or just more of the same. I am happy to see that AMD is offering some value quad-core parts that look to be solid performers.

What we like

Overclocking: The new Ryzen 3 models have some serious headroom, especially when considering that the 3100 is a $99 part and can match or even beat some much pricier parts if you are willing to put in the work.

PCIe 4.0: We know that PCIe 4.0 is just now starting to see capable parts coming to market. Still, the expansion of the bus to allow higher throughput means that not only SSD’s will benefit, but other controllers or HBAs will come online, allowing less PCIe lane usage for the same bandwidth.

Value: The 3300X and 3100 are quite good from the value front when considering the performance and features you get.

What do we think could be better?

Single thread performance: Ryzen still has some ground to make up here as Zen 2 has proven amazing for IPC increases. However, if Zen 3 rumors are true, this may be a non-issue as soon as those see the light of day.

The new Ryzen 3 3100 & 3300X are not going to top the charts or break any world records. But, let’s be honest, that is not what they were made for, these chips were made to service a market where gamers want a robust foundation to build upon that will offer a path to upgrade and great performance.

You get a path to upgrade with AM4, and the performance while not chart-topping in every aspect is good enough that I think you would find gamers hard-pressed to pass on them. Let’s not forget you get a next-gen feature set such as PCIe 4.0, which Intel has not even talked about adding yet.

This rounds up the new Ryzen 3 parts, and stay tuned as more new platform coverage is coming soon!

ByFYIPC