AMD Ryzen 3 Review

[Julio Franco]

Although Ryzen 3 is just getting released, it feels like we already know everything about AMD's new R3 1200 and 1300X CPUs after running simulated benchmarks last week. Today we get to see how accurate those results were and how Ryzen 3 does at the $110 price point.

Read the full article here.

https://www.techspot.com/review/1455-ryzen-3/

 

[Vito05]

Buying i3 Intel now seems rather pointless and worse deal. Hope to see laptops using Ryzen 3 soon.

 

[Azurelas]

Ryzen 3 seems ideal for a basic home server/NAS setup. Downclocking it to about 2ghz should make passive cooling a viable option.

 

[Nobina]

I bought Intel a year ago cause AMD really didn't have any real offers. I hope AMD gets back on their feet with these CPUs cause I don't like Intels anti consumer practices.

 

[dirtyferret]

Right now the Intel CPUs are all being beat on price - performance unless you happen to live near a microcenter, you can still get G4560 for $56, the i5-7600k for $200 and the i7-7770 for $300. If you don't live near one then AMD's line up simply offers better price performance.

* Hey Steve, looking at techpowerup's review they seem to have better performance in Battlefield 1 with Intel's entry CPU line up then AMD for 1080p gaming. In fact the G4560 seems to outperform it for most of there 1080p gaming tests.

 

[andy06shake]

Don't really see the market for this CPU considering you can pick up an R5 1400 for £130.

 

[OcelotRex]

Buying i3 Intel now seems rather pointless and worse deal. Hope to see laptops using Ryzen 3 soon.

i3's, including the desktop chips, have GPUs on board. The Price/Value comparison assumes one is buying a video card.

 

[Puiu]

I would like to point out that the i3 7350k got a price reduction to just $150 (30$ price cut, competition FTW) which makes it a bit more competitive if you OC if you only care about games games. In the end, at that price point, I would still go for the 1500x.

 

[SymphonyX7]

I would like to point out that the i3 7350k got a price reduction to just $150 (30$ price cut, competition FTW) which makes it a bit more competitive if you OC if you only care about games games. In the end, at that price point, I would still go for the 1500x.

You'd still need to buy a Z170 or Z270 board to OC the i3-7350K. B350 boards are cheaper and the R3 1200 comes with a somewhat decent cooler. So an additional $30-40 at least for the Z170/Z270 board and another $30 for a decent tower cooler to OC the 7350K. Those little savings mean a lot on budget builds.

 

[OcelotRex]

I would like to point out that the i3 7350k got a price reduction to just $150 (30$ price cut, competition FTW) which makes it a bit more competitive if you OC if you only care about games games. In the end, at that price point, I would still go for the 1500x.

Microcenter has an even better price at $129.99 if you have one close enough to shop from. Competition, the age of the processor, and the new 14nm Intel CPUs launching in the coming months should keep all of the Kaby Lake chips affordable through the holidays. If one does wait for the new series of Intel CPUs older ones at Microcenter get a $30-50 discount when bundled with a motherboard; that's how I got an Asus Z77 mobo and 3570k for less than $250.

 

[OcelotRex]

You'd still need to buy a Z170 or Z270 board to OC the i3-7350K. B350 boards are cheaper and the R3 1200 comes with a somewhat decent cooler. So an additional $30-40 at least for the Z170/Z270 board and another $30 for a decent tower cooler to OC the 7350K. Those little savings mean a lot on budget builds.

For budget builds I agree with your assessment but for some the more expensive chipsets make more sense due to what's included with them. For example - I am looking to replace my aging media server. If I went Ryzen I wouldn't want the X370 chipset for the crossfire support. Instead I am interested in the additional SATA and USB 3.0 ports:

Are there b350 boards with 6 SATA? Yes. Do they also have more than 2 USB 3.0? Even more rare. It's easier to find a X370 on sale with what I need than the B350 with all the options or add on cards, which would be more expensive.

 

[Vrmithrax]

Buying i3 Intel now seems rather pointless and worse deal. Hope to see laptops using Ryzen 3 soon.

I'd struggle with that, depending on what type of laptop platform you are looking at... For general computing, I don't think they'll be as competitive or power efficient in the laptop arena, since it will require a discrete GPU be paired up in the hardware. If we're talking power or gaming laptops, then it'd be a better fit for the Ryzen 3.

Now, if they can get a Ryzen-like APU together, that could be quite interesting across the board. My experience with previous AMD APUs were that the Radeon graphics side was pretty good, but the CPU part just drug the whole performance curve into the gutter.

 

[venkatsrin]

Thank you for the great review!! You are one of the few / first sites to include overclocked results in all the benchmarks and power consumption analysis... with these chips being unlocked thats very useful.
Cant wait for the benchmarks with mid-range cards.

 

[HardReset]

For budget builds I agree with your assessment but for some the more expensive chipsets make more sense due to what's included with them. For example - I am looking to replace my aging media server. If I went Ryzen I wouldn't want the X370 chipset for the crossfire support. Instead I am interested in the additional SATA and USB 3.0 ports:

Are there b350 boards with 6 SATA? Yes. Do they also have more than 2 USB 3.0? Even more rare. It's easier to find a X370 on sale with what I need than the B350 with all the options or add on cards, which would be more expensive.

Remember that Ryzen CPU and B350 chipset both have 2*SATA Express. One SATA Express = either PCI Express x2 or 2*SATA.

 

[Vulcanproject]

If you run them stock then really, they aren't that great value. Their value really lies in the ability to overclock cheaply. That is their big advantage over Intel equivalents at this price point.

Overclocked the 1200 is around as fast as an i5 7500 which of course you can't do anything with.

You can have virtually i5 7500 performance for $110 (WITH a cooler) on the premise you willingly tweak the chip. Isn't that what a lot of people really want? Potential for bargain performance. In that case then that chip is good value.

 

[hahahanoobs]

To a techie Zen looks exciting. To a consumer, they couldn't care less and would be better of with Intel chips.

AMD is still in some serious trouble. They have 27% of the dGPU market and failing. Just look how AMD is marketing Vega RX now. With Freesync and G-Sync monitors asking you how the game feels compared To a 1080Ti. It's sad. RTG needs to be sold off and Raja needs to go.

Zen's biggest play is server, and Intel has 98% of that. Good luck with that one AMD.

Vega is overpriced and Zen isn't good enough.
Zen needed to be the definitive winner. It's not. Neither is Vega.

AMD is in big trouble and even they know it. This "victory" will be short lived.

 

[Puiu]

To a techie Zen looks exciting. To a consumer, they couldn't care less and would be better of with Intel chips.

AMD is still in some serious trouble. They have 27% of the dGPU market and failing. Just look how AMD is marketing Vega RX now. With Freesync and G-Sync monitors asking you how the game feels compared To a 1080Ti. It's sad. RTG needs to be sold off and Raja needs to go.

Zen's biggest play is server, and Intel has 98% of that. Good luck with that one AMD.

Vega is overpriced and Zen isn't good enough.
Zen needed to be the definitive winner. It's not. Neither is Vega.

AMD is in big trouble and even they know it. This "victory" will be short lived.

dude you keep complaining about the price of Vega, but nobody but you has seen the price of those GPUs

And why isn't Zen enough? They have been selling like hot cakes.

Why are you on every AMD thread posting things like this? Are you getting paid for dissing AMD about things you don't know anything about? We've already pointed out multiple times the flaws in your logic.

The huge price cuts that Intel made since the launch of Ryzen shows clearly that whatever AMD is doing is working.

 

[GreenNova343]

To a techie Zen looks exciting. To a consumer, they couldn't care less and would be better of with Intel chips.

Not quite true. A "techie" will be interested & focused on how the systems perform head-to-head -- in some cases perhaps obsessively so, particularly for those that focus on 1 particular aspect (I.e. # of PCIe lanes, DDR4 speed support, performance in one particular benchmark, etc.) -- or in some cases will be geared towards a particular performance set (I.e. video encoding for video creators).

General consumers, on the other hand, will say, "Can it run Windows, the office productivity suite I want to use, let me access my email, & let me access my favorite social media sites", & "how much does it cost"? They really don't care about whether it's AMD or Intel under the hood, & they really don't care about whether it uses a discrete GPU or an integrated GPU. That's also going to hold true for the majority of business users as well.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/pVwLRG: Ryzen 3 1200 build with 16GB of DDR4-3000 RAM , Gigabyte AB-350 Gaming (one of the cheapest ATX boards with the B350 chipset, although the RAM will technically downclock to 2933MHz), & an MSI Radeon R7 250 (rough equivalent to the Intel HD Graphics 610 on the Pentium), just over $400 USD.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/PpBXr7: Pentium G4560 build, using the same RAM & the cheapest Gigabyte B250 board (GA-B250-HD3). Yes, you save about $130 USD on the cost. But, that board loses a PCIe slot to add 2 PCI slots, & your RAM will be limited to 2400MHz speed (2133 if you don't "OC" the RAM), you lose 2 USB 3.1 ports (AB-350 board comes with 4 via the CPU & 2 via the chipset on the back panel, B250 board only comes with 4 via the chipset on the back panel), & you don't have any RAID support (AB-350 offers RAID 0/1/10). If you want to have RAID support (0/1/5/10), 2 extra number of USB 3.1 ports (with the added bonus of 1 of them having the Type-C port, although you give up the USB 2.0 ports to do so), get rid of those legacy PCI slots (gaining an extra x8 slot in the process, although using it drops your x16 slot down to x8 speed), & get the ability to use that RAM at full 3000MHz speed (although technically considered an "OC" of the RAM), you need their GA-Z270X-UD3 board, which drops your savings down to $90 USD (https://pcpartpicker.com/list/vxgvyf).

Based on just these parts, the ratio of component price to benchmarked performance between a Pentium G4560 & a Ryzen 3 1200 is just about spot-on (~25%). But that's the problem for Intel...that's the price of just these components. Adding in an inexpensive case (plus 2 cheap case fans which were only $6USD each), a decent 550W PSU, 64-bit Windows 10 Pro, an inexpensive DVD-RW drive, a Samsung 960 EVO 250GB M.2 SSD, & a WD 2TB HDD added $513 USD to the package price (https://pcpartpicker.com/list/FYWg7h). That drops the price ratio between the Pentium G4560 & Ryzen 3 1200 to about 10%...& even a Ryzen 3 1200 offers more than a 10% performance improvement at stock speeds over the Pentium.

AMD is still in some serious trouble. They have 27% of the dGPU market and failing. Just look how AMD is marketing Vega RX now. With Freesync and G-Sync monitors asking you how the game feels compared To a 1080Ti. It's sad. RTG needs to be sold off and Raja needs to go.

Vega wasn't even mentioned in the article, & hasn't even been released yet, so it has nothing to do with this. But hey, that means they're doing better than Intel, which has no discrete GPU division.

Zen's biggest play is server, and Intel has 98% of that. Good luck with that one AMD.

That hasn't always been the case. And past performance is no guarantee of future performance. Ask Cyrix about that. Ask Intel about their Itanium line of server CPUs. Ask S3 about their discrete GPU line.

Vega is overpriced and Zen isn't good enough.
Zen needed to be the definitive winner. It's not. Neither is Vega.

AMD is in big trouble and even they know it. This "victory" will be short lived.

Nope. Zen didn't need to be a definitive winner...even though many categories do show it having an edge over Intel's CPUs. It just needed to close the gap on performance enough that its lower prices truly give consumers a choice between *cue Tim Allen voice* "more power, ar ar ar, no matter how much it costs" vs. getting performance that is at least "good enough" without having to break the bank or resort to maxing out the credit card for grocery shopping over the next year. AMD has delivered on that. And to be honest, it'll be the same with Vega. AMD won't have to conclusively beat the GTX 1080TI/Titan X; if they can deliver, say, 90% of the performance for 80% of the cost, that's "good enough" to make it competitive, because at that price level the difference represents significant savings.

But hey, if you feel comfortable spending a few extra hundred dollars when you don't need to, then by all means, feel free to send me the money, I'll find a good use for it...

 

[Peter Farkas]

Ryzen 3 seems ideal for a basic home server/NAS setup. Downclocking it to about 2ghz should make passive cooling a viable option.

you could easily cool it with a Zalman fx 100 already, considering you can mount it on AM4

 

[Amet Monegro]

Buying i3 Intel now seems rather pointless and worse deal. Hope to see laptops using Ryzen 3 soon.

Raven Ridge APUs...

 

[hahahanoobs]

To a techie Zen looks exciting. To a consumer, they couldn't care less and would be better of with Intel chips.

AMD is still in some serious trouble. They have 27% of the dGPU market and failing. Just look how AMD is marketing Vega RX now. With Freesync and G-Sync monitors asking you how the game feels compared To a 1080Ti. It's sad. RTG needs to be sold off and Raja needs to go.

Zen's biggest play is server, and Intel has 98% of that. Good luck with that one AMD.

Vega is overpriced and Zen isn't good enough.
Zen needed to be the definitive winner. It's not. Neither is Vega.

AMD is in big trouble and even they know it. This "victory" will be short lived.

dude you keep complaining about the price of Vega, but nobody but you has seen the price of those GPUs

And why isn't Zen enough? They have been selling like hot cakes.

Why are you on every AMD thread posting things like this? Are you getting paid for dissing AMD about things you don't know anything about? We've already pointed out multiple times the flaws in your logic.

The huge price cuts that Intel made since the launch of Ryzen shows clearly that whatever AMD is doing is working.

water cooled version
HBM 2.0
New architecture
much larger than 1080 die size

You think that's cheap???

 

[hahahanoobs]

Buying i3 Intel now seems rather pointless and worse deal. Hope to see laptops using Ryzen 3 soon.

Are you kidding me? This got upvoted twice?!
The i3's are faster overall and isn't plagued with memory issues.

As for laptops where you can't overclock Ryzen to make up for its lack in performance, the i3 will still be faster AND use LESS power.

If you look at it from a consumers' perspective, you'll see the flaws in your comment.

 

[Puiu]

water cooled version
HBM 2.0
New architecture
much larger than 1080 die size

You think that's cheap???

who said it's cheap? but you still have no idea of both the performance and the price so stop commenting on it like you have some insider information that nobody here does. we have no idea what the perf/$ will be in the end. if it will be bad then we'll see it in a review. until then all you are doing is talking "shite" without knowing the facts which kinda tells us more about you than AMD's products.
The same with the Zen CPUs. For some weird reason you think that AMD is doing bad even though all facts point towards AMD actually having incredibly good sales.

 

[hahahanoobs]

who said it's cheap? but you still have no idea of both the performance and the price so stop commenting on it like you have so inder information that nobody here does. we have no idea what the perf/$ will be in the end. if it will be bad then we'll see it in a review. until then all you are doing is talking "shite" without knowing the facts which kinda tells us more about you than AMD's products.
The same with the Zen CPUs. For some weird reason you think that AMD is doing bad even though all facts point towards AMD actually having incredibly good sales.

You don't put that much into a product to offer it at a discount. You're not one of those guys that thinks AMD is financially able to consistently offer their products at a reduced price are you?

$699 was the intended price of Vega RX. Look at the price of the FE. $1000. Do you really think Vega RX was supposed to have a $500 price tag? Is that how much Fury X was? AMD has to match or beat the GTX 1080 now. How do I know Vega RX isn't a GTX 1080 killer? Because AMD now has some demo showing how it "feels" like a GTX 1080 Ti using adaptive sync monitors and specific settings. You don't do that when you're confident your product IS faster.

Read between the lines. A low price isn't everything. You have to learn to look at this from all angles. Cool you got more cores with Ryzen. It's just too bad the majority of consumers have absolutely no need whatsoever for more than four cores right now. A lot of them still have two cores. AMD sucks at raising clock speed, so they could only add more cores which helps them scale one chip, the 1800X, across all three of their markets (Ryzen, TR, EPYC).

Zen benefits the ~20% of consumers. That's not how you make a comeback.

 

[Puiu]

You don't put that much into a product to offer it at a discount. You're not one of those guys that thinks AMD is financially able to consistently offer their products at a reduced price are you?

$699 was the intended price of Vega RX. Look at the price of the FE. $1000. Do you really think Vega RX was supposed to have a $500 price tag? Is that how much Fury X was? AMD has to match or beat the GTX 1080 now. How do I know Vega RX isn't a GTX 1080 killer? Because AMD now has some demo showing how it "feels" like a GTX 1080 Ti using adaptive sync monitors and specific settings. You don't do that when you're confident your product IS faster.

Read between the lines. A low price isn't everything. You have to learn to look at this from all angles. Cool you got more cores with Ryzen. It's just too bad the majority of consumers have absolutely no need whatsoever for more than four cores right now. A lot of them still have two cores. AMD sucks at raising clock speed, so they could only add more cores which helps them scale one chip, the 1800X, across all three of their markets (Ryzen, TR, EPYC).

Zen benefits the ~20% of consumers. That's not how you make a comeback.

"You don't put that much into a product to offer it at a discount."
That is literally the most stupid thing I've read in ages. It's like you work at AMD and you are telling us exact numbers that not even shareholders know. And we also know that AMD's CPU are very cheap to produce compared to Intel's CPUs. If a price cut is needed to put intel back in it's place then why not do it? AMD is literally crawling back from almost 0 market share for mid to high end desktop PCs at a super fast pace.
And how do you know that they are offering them at lower prices because of improved yields or/and production volume going up?

And where the hell are you taking that 20% number out of? Do you consider the "games only" type to be 80% of the market?

I am trying to read between the lines, but when you put it in black and white so directly it's pretty clear that you know some stuff that nobody here knows. I bet not even AMD themselves know.

"AMD sucks at raising clock speed" - spoken like a true fanboy
I don't remember 3.8-4GHz being bad at all (especially with the very acceptable IPC performance). It pretty much invalidates all CPUs aside from the K series from Intel and even those are recommended for gaming only (unless you have very specific needs) and are generally more expensive (depends on where you live). they also require a good cooler if you want to OC them high.
You've read the 30 games benchmark, you know exactly just how close AMD is in gaming vs a 7700k and just how far ahead it is for mostly everything else. And you also know just how bad Intel's new x299 platform is compared to even R7 1700 (forget the Threadripper which should pretty much destroy Intel in terms of value, especially if we manage to OC them to 3.8-4.0 on all cores).