Review AMD Ryzen 9 3900X and Ryzen 7 3700X Review: Zen 2 and 7nm Unleashed

[Admin]

AMD's Ryzen 3000 series promises more performance and value via the benefits of the 7nm process and Zen 2 microarchitecture.

AMD Ryzen 9 3900X and Ryzen 7 3700X Review: Zen 2 and 7nm Unleashed : Read more

 

[Isokolon]

too bad there wasn't a 3800X included, would be interesting to see if the price tag for the 3800X over the 3700X is indeed worth it

 

[feelinfroggy777]

Nice for worksation task, but disappointing it basically ties Intel in gaming if not just a tad behind.

 

[salgado18]

Nice for worksation task, but disappointing it basically ties Intel in gaming if not just a tad behind.

It tied to Intel for less money, with a great bundled cooler, and a cheaper platform (edit: and less power too). Also, unless you use a 144Hz monitor, the diference is purely synthetic. Did you expect it to be way faster than a 5 GHz Intel magically?

 

[Phaaze88]

Thank you so much and to be honest the only reason why I bought the 750tx Corsair psu is because it was 30$, can I ask you if the gtx770 2gb will run battlefield 1 on high?

too bad there wasn't a 3800X included, would be interesting to see if the price tag for the 3800X over the 3700X is indeed worth it

I can't imagine it would be.
If looking at the 3800x as a binned 3700x - that's basically what it would be - grab one if it goes on sale closer to the 3700x's price.
These chips don't overclock any better than their predecessors, which wasn't good to begin with, so whatever extra clocks you get with a 3800x will hardly be noticeable and won't be worth a $50+ price increase over 3700x.

 

[velocityg4]

The overclocking results were disappointing. 4.1Ghz max on all cores. Given that the 3950x does a 4.7Ghz single core turbo boost and the 3900x does 4.6Hz single core turbo boost. I'd have assumed any of the Ryzen 3000 would OC to 4.6/4.7Ghz on all cores with decent air/water cooling.

Power consumption: AIDA 64 seems to punish AMD a lot more than Intel. When you were using Prime95 Intel was punished a lot more. It seems the switch from Prime95 to AIDA 64 gives Intel an unfair advantage in the stress test power consumption test. While Prime95 gave AMD an unfair advantage. I'd suggest using both in reviews or find another torture test that will fully punish both AMD and Intel for a max load test. With such wild variation. I can't see how either is an accurate measure of a CPU under full load.

Example Review: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i9-9900k-9th-gen-cpu,5847-11.html

The Intel i9-9900K hit 204.6W in your old reviews stress test. This time it is only 113W.

The AMD Ryzen 2700x hit 104.7W in your old review. Now it is 133W.

 

[feelinfroggy777]

It tied to Intel for less money, with a great bundled cooler, and a cheaper platform (edit: and less power too). Also, unless you use a 144Hz monitor, the diference is purely synthetic. Did you expect it to be way faster than a 5 GHz Intel magically?

It did tie Intel in gaming. It tied basically the same Intel CPUs that have been on the market since 2015 with Skylake. We are in the back half of 2019 and we see the same gaming performance that we had in 2015 mainstream CPUs.

We know AMD is cheaper and comparing clockspeeds against different architectures between Intel and AMD is silly. But it would be nice to see some tangible improvement regarding fps with CPUs. The GPU still remains king when it comes to a quality gaming build.

 

[delaro]

I've seen reviews from 5 different sites and the conclusions bounce all over the place, which makes me think there is much to do on the software optimization side. 🤔 I was expecting gaming FPS to not change all that much with many of the titles being tested have partnered or optimized around Intel.

 

[jimmysmitty]

Nice for worksation task, but disappointing it basically ties Intel in gaming if not just a tad behind.

Minus the ability to overclock yes tied. Most people who buy the 9900K will not be buying it to leave it stock.

The overclocking results were disappointing. 4.1Ghz max on all cores. Given that the 3950x does a 4.7Ghz single core turbo boost and the 3900x does 4.6Hz single core turbo boost. I'd have assumed any of the Ryzen 3000 would OC to 4.6/4.7Ghz on all cores with decent air/water cooling.

Power consumption: AIDA 64 seems to punish AMD a lot more than Intel. When you were using Prime95 Intel was punished a lot more. It seems the switch from Prime95 to AIDA 64 gives Intel an unfair advantage in the stress test power consumption test. While Prime95 gave AMD an unfair advantage. I'd suggest using both in reviews or find another torture test that will fully punish both AMD and Intel for a max load test. With such wild variation. I can't see how either is an accurate measure of a CPU under full load.

Example Review: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i9-9900k-9th-gen-cpu,5847-11.html

The Intel i9-9900K hit 204.6W in your old reviews stress test. This time it is only 113W.

The AMD Ryzen 2700x hit 104.7W in your old review. Now it is 133W.

Its what I wanted to know. Ryzen has always been pushed to the limit in terms of clock speed and Zen 2 is no different it seems. Little to no headroom. AnandTech was able to get it to 4.3GHz all core but with manual OCing it seems to disable boost clocking which in turn cuts 300MHz from single core performance.

As for the power consumption, the differences are probably what they prioritize. I know Prime 95 heavily uses AVX which is a power hog. Not as sure on AIDA 64 since I never used it. I always use Prime 95 and IBT for stability.

It did tie Intel in gaming. It tied basically the same Intel CPUs that have been on the market since 2015 with Skylake. We are in the back half of 2019 and we see the same gaming performance that we had in 2015 mainstream CPUs.

We know AMD is cheaper and comparing clockspeeds against different architectures between Intel and AMD is silly. But it would be nice to see some tangible improvement regarding fps with CPUs. The GPU still remains king when it comes to a quality gaming build.

Its not silly to compare clock speeds as those can be advantages. Intel still clearly has a clock speed advantage and that advantage will keep them priced higher. We might see some drops but I doubt we will see enough to make it feel like Athlon 64 again.

As much crap as people give Intel for getting stuck at 14nm I have to give them props for having a 5 year old process tech beat modern process tech, especially one that's supposed to be "half" the size. I know its not quite as most 7nms out there are still less dense than Intels initial 10nm plans but still it goes to show that the nm part has become pointless and a marketing gimmick more than anything.

The only thing a CPU matters gaming wise is how long it will last before it will bottleneck the GPU. While its still early the clock speed and overclocking advantage Intel has might make their CPUs last longer in gaming than Zen 2. Only time will tell but maybe AMD will get a better process tech in a few years and finally compete like the old days.

 

[martinch]

Its not silly to compare clock speeds [between AMD and Intel] as those can be advantages.

Unless you're trying to give an indication of "performance-per-MHz" of varying architectures, yes, comparing clock speeds between differing architectures is a fundamentally invalid comparison (it's also not exactly an accurate predictor of per-core performance).

 

[feelinfroggy777]

Its not silly to compare clock speeds as those can be advantages. Intel still clearly has a clock speed advantage and that advantage will keep them priced higher. We might see some drops but I doubt we will see enough to make it feel like Athlon 64 again.

Clockspeeds between AMD and Intel are not apples to apples. Bulldozer hit 5ghz and it was a terrible CPU. Just because it could hit 5ghz, did not make a good chip.

 

[InvalidError]

Unless you're trying to give an indication of "performance-per-MHz" of varying architectures, yes, comparing clock speeds between differing architectures is a fundamentally invalid comparison (it's also not exactly an accurate predictor of per-core performance).

Even real-world aren't reliable indicators unless you can find benchmarks of the specific software and task within that software you are interested in. Anything else is a general indicator at best.

So, I predicted all-core overclocks on par with XFR boost at best and it seems Tom's review samples get nowhere near that on practical cooling. Looks like AMD is doing a pretty good job of leaving little to nothing for practical overclockers to do with the X-chips already squeezing everything they are worth out of themselves with little more than a few checkboxes.

 

[feelinfroggy777]

Even real-world aren't reliable indicators unless you can find benchmarks of the specific software and task within that software you are interested in. Anything else is a general indicator at best.

So, I predicted all-core overclocks on par with XFR boost at best and it seems Tom's review samples get nowhere near that on practical cooling. Looks like AMD is doing a pretty good job of leaving little to nothing for practical overclockers to do with the X-chips already squeezing everything they are worth out of themselves with little more than a few checkboxes.

They pretty much overclock themselves these days.

 

[yeti_yeti]

I think this Ryzen lineup is great and delivers awesome performance, especially in professional applications. Some people seem to be disappointed, that Ryzen 7/9 didn't beat their Intel counterparts in gaming, which was something a lot of
people(myself included) didn't think was going to happen anyway.

However, I do think that AMD could have been a bit more transparent and modest, when showcasing their own benchmarks of their products beating or matching the competing Intel chips, which would result in less people being let down.

Other than that, I think AMD did great in both GPU and CPU department and look forward to more products from them.

 

[kinggremlin]

Good effort by AMD, but still doesn't move the performance bar any for home users. For anyone who has been waiting 4 years to get a 5960x for less than $500, you've now got your CPU. For anyone looking for something tangibly faster than Intel's Haswell generation CPU's, you're still waiting.

 

[lxtbell2]

Good effort by AMD, but still doesn't move the performance bar any for home users. For anyone who has been waiting 4 years to get a 5960x for less than $500, you've now got your CPU. For anyone looking for something tangibly faster than Intel's Haswell generation CPU's, you're still waiting.

Zen 2 seems to have some 30% better power efficiency than Intel processors, and that's huge. Power efficiency is everything for SFF, laptops, HTPC, fanless builds etc etc. So I would say it can potentially move the performance bar a lot for those.
Regarding absolute performance, the 12-core destroys all Haswell desktop CPUs in productivity, and I can't care less about "tangibly faster" in gaming as long as my graphics card is the bottleneck in 1440p+.

 

[InvalidError]

Zen 2 seems to have some 30% better power efficiency than Intel processors, and that's huge. Power efficiency is everything for SFF, laptops, HTPC, fanless builds etc etc. So I would say it can potentially move the performance bar a lot for those.

For the lower-power segments, Intel has Icelake which is more than a match for Zen 2 CPU-wise.

 

[salgado18]

About bad overclock numbers, my 2 cents:

1. Nobody had the time to properly test them. I believe Tom's had like two or so days to run dozens of tests on two brand new processors, and still produce the article. Also, these are early BIOS and drivers. It could improve with time.

2. The 3700x reaches a max of 4.3, but the 3950x reaches 4.6. Maybe it's inconsistent because of such a new process, after all, these are the first 7nm cpus produced, right? And lots of changes, some sillicon revisions could help a lot.

 

[kinggremlin]

Regarding absolute performance, the 12-core destroys all Haswell desktop CPUs in productivity, and I can't care less about "tangibly faster" in gaming as long as my graphics card is the bottleneck in 1440p+.

A 12 core CPU will not be any faster than an 8 core for home users. The software used does not scale with that many cores. If it was so easy to make typical software scale with more cores, programmers would have already done it. Most mainstream software is not capable of being highly parallelized like a graphics workload, so this problem isn't going to get fixed without a completely different type of computing platform. Adding more cores doesn't make a PC faster when what you really need is faster cores.

 

[kinggremlin]

About bad overclock numbers, my 2 cents:

1. Nobody had the time to properly test them. I believe Tom's had like two or so days to run dozens of tests on two brand new processors, and still produce the article. Also, these are early BIOS and drivers. It could improve with time.

2. The 3700x reaches a max of 4.3, but the 3950x reaches 4.6. Maybe it's inconsistent because of such a new process, after all, these are the first 7nm cpus produced, right? And lots of changes, some sillicon revisions could help a lot.

May want to watch this link from world reknown overclocker de8auer:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXbCdGENp5I


He has 10 CPU's (mix of 6/8/12 cores). Forget overclocking, he couldn't get any of his 8 or 12 core CPU's to hit AMD's advertised max clocks (4.5 for 3800x, 4.6 for 3900x) even with a custom water cooling loop. There were leaks before launch that these chips would hit 5GHz. De8auer says in this video to forget that, he has chips that wouldn't hit 5GHz using liquid nitrogen.

 

[ingtar33]

I've seen reviews from 5 different sites and the conclusions bounce all over the place, which makes me think there is much to do on the software optimization side. 🤔 I was expecting gaming FPS to not change all that much with many of the titles being tested have partnered or optimized around Intel.

Linus had a possible cause for this. He noted the same thing (with results all over the place) and realized it's a result of the windows scheduler bouncing heavy tasks from core to core without consideration for boost clocks. when they locked the application to the cores that were boosting the results for the AMD cpu shoot went up and became much more consistent. He believes once the scheduling issue in windows is worked out the Ryzen bench results will probably increase noticeably.

 

[Ncogneto]

Good effort by AMD, but still doesn't move the performance bar any for home users. For anyone who has been waiting 4 years to get a 5960x for less than $500, you've now got your CPU. For anyone looking for something tangibly faster than Intel's Haswell generation CPU's, you're still waiting.

One of these days you might actually understand what matters, and what doesn't. AMD delivered on performance that matters, not some silly gaming benchmark(s) that is Intel's last gasp as it hangs on by it's fingernails. Performance that you can only see if you couple either platform with a $1200 GPU no less, and even then, you can't actually notice a difference while playing your game (155fps vs 135 FPS, who gives a rats a**). Show me a game in which the Intel CPU is performing at a level that is visually noticeably better (without looking at some silly fps counter).

On every other front, the Intel CPU gets stomped in the dirt, all while costing more and consuming more power, and needing an exotic cooling solution as well.


Easy win for AMD, for anyone other than those only interested in nothing but pure fps bragging rights, which is so High School level silly.

Spectre/meltdown/zombieload......disable HT, etc etc etc. Every month brings another Intel bug.

They should be ashamed.

 

[fr3sgnint]

Shame we didn't see any CAD / Solidworks ETC type benchmarks on the productivity side.

 

[acquinn]

So impressive. AMD hasn't been on my radar since the Athlon days. Competition is good! I wonder how long it'll take Intel to get to 7NM. Also, where's Intel's response hardware-wise? I mean isn't the 9900K almost a year old at this point? And it's still beating AMD in a lot of areas.

 

[kinggremlin]

Shame we didn't see any CAD / Solidworks ETC type benchmarks on the productivity side.

You don't have to. Both are single threaded applications with random addons that may support multithreading, so you know Intel is going to win, just like most stuff from Adobe. People like Ncogneto don't seem to grasp how much commonly used software doesn't benefit at all from increased core counts beyond a few.