The AMD Ryzen 3 3300X and 3100 CPU Review: A Budget Gaming Bonanza
by Dr. Ian Cutress on May 7, 2020 9:00 AM ESTTest Bed and Setup
As per our processor testing policy, we take a premium category motherboard suitable for the socket, and equip the system with a suitable amount of memory running at the manufacturer's maximum supported frequency. This is also typically run at JEDEC subtimings where possible. It is noted that some users are not keen on this policy, stating that sometimes the maximum supported frequency is quite low, or faster memory is available at a similar price, or that the JEDEC speeds can be prohibitive for performance. While these comments make sense, ultimately very few users apply memory profiles (either XMP or other) as they require interaction with the BIOS, and most users will fall back on JEDEC supported speeds - this includes home users as well as industry who might want to shave off a cent or two from the cost or stay within the margins set by the manufacturer. Where possible, we will extend out testing to include faster memory modules either at the same time as the review or a later date.
| Test Setup | |
| AMD Ryzen 3000 | AMD Ryzen 3 3300X AMD Ryzen 3 3100 |
| Motherboard | GIGABYTE X570 I Aorus Pro (1.12e) |
| CPU Cooler | AMD Wraith |
| DRAM | G.Skill FlareX 2x8 GB DDR4-3200 C14 |
| GPU | Sapphire RX 460 2GB (CPU Tests) MSI GTX 1080 Gaming 8G (Gaming Tests) |
| PSU | Corsair AX860i |
| SSD | Crucial MX500 2TB |
| OS | Windows 10 1909 |
Many thanks to...
We must thank the following companies for kindly providing hardware for our multiple test beds. Some of this hardware is not in this test bed specifically, but is used in other testing.
| Hardware Providers | |||
| Sapphire RX 460 Nitro | MSI GTX 1080 Gaming X OC | Crucial MX200 + MX500 SSDs |
Corsair AX860i + AX1200i PSUs |
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| G.Skill RipjawsV, SniperX, FlareX |
Crucial Ballistix DDR4 |
Silverstone Coolers |
Silverstone Fans |
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lightningz71 - Friday, May 8, 2020 - link
Because I was typing it on mobile, didn’t proofread before I hit submit, and the spell checker didn’t flag it as being wrong because it doesn’t know context.It’s my fault, my mistake, and I normally strive to do a better job with my spelling in general. Thank you for pointing out my mistake so that I can be more cognizant of my future errors.
Holliday75 - Saturday, May 9, 2020 - link
Now I feel like a d*ck for pointing it out.In all honesty just poking fun and genuinely curious because I see this mistake made daily all over the place. Facebook, comments, even articles by professional journalists and a work email or two. I find it curious when I know the people who speak American English natively and still make this mistake.
Spunjji - Monday, May 11, 2020 - link
Well, Autocorrect is one answer - and the other is the paradoxical relationship between the long "oo" sound in in lose and the shorter "oo" sound in loose. It's hard to argue that the spelling shouldn't be the other way around, although I have no doubt would still trip over it even then.notb - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link
Idle power draw is atrocious. How can it be this high?It's not even that I'm worried about the unnecessary electricity use or noise (which could make an analogous APU a lot less interesting for HTPC and NAS).
I'm just really shocked by interconnect using 16W when the cores it joins are hardly doing anything.
Does anyone know what is I/O die doing? Is there a 10W ASIC mining bitcoin or what?
eastcoast_pete - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link
Hush! You're spilling the beans here (:Actually, if AMD had a highly efficient ASIC mining chip with good hash rates, I'd consider buying some. Same goes for Intel.
notb - Friday, May 8, 2020 - link
Actually Intel is a major FPGA maker, so you can get one of those. It's not that hard to find an open-source coin miner (even on GitHub).The comment stand though. I googled a bit and there's no clear explanation for the high idle uncore.
And 8-core mobile Zen2 chips use maybe 3W in idle. It's not like their IF is a lot slower or has less to do.
This makes me wonder if we're even going to see desktop/server 35W chips? Not to mention it would be nice if they offered TDP down of 25W...
Suddenly, I'm a lot less interested in an AMD-powered home server or NAS (and BTW: EPYC embedded lineup is still Zen-only).
kepstin - Friday, May 8, 2020 - link
If they do make desktop 35W chips, they'll probably be based on the integrated APU die. I suspect the increased idle power is due either to off-die IF link to the IO chiplet needing more power than IF within a die, or perhaps the (14nm) IO chiplet itself having higher power usage.notb - Friday, May 8, 2020 - link
I'm OK with this kind of uncore under load (it's how Zen works).And I don't really mind high idle in workstation CPUs. It's an acceptable compromise.
I just assumed that they'll adjust this for low-core CPUs, since these often go into home PCs used casually - spending a lot of time at idle / low. And under a cheap, slim cooler there will be a difference between 5 and 16W.
AMD will have to fix this in the APUs if they want to take on low-power segments (NAS, HTPC, tiny office desktops).
AFAIK Zen2 APUs will use the chiplet layout, not monolithic approach from the mobile offer. Hence, OEMs will probably use mobile chips anyway. DIY customers may have a problem.
Holliday75 - Saturday, May 9, 2020 - link
We've seen updates addressing issues with previous Zen CPU's. Possible it could be a miss on their part of just didn't have the time to tweak it before release.Namisecond - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link
Thanks for detailing the two new AMD CPUs. Any news on the new desktop APUs though? I'm hearing rumors of up to 8 cores but the GPUs on them will be worse than the previous generation.