AMD Ryzen 9 3900X and Ryzen 7 3700X Review: Kings of Productivity

[Lew Zealand]

Nothing new here. AMD is STILL playing the catch-up game. Pass.

Waiting with popcorn for the AMD warriors. Bring 'em on... **munch...munch**

Ah, yes, the Intel superiority crowd, enjoying their marginal lead in a select few games while basking in almost double the price (and no hyper-threading) and way more power consumption and heat.

Anyone thinking AMD was going to suddenly catch up to Intel after a decade behind is not being realistic.

The fact of the matter is AMD is trading blows with a company 10x it's size, and delivering awesome value for customers. How anyone views that as a loss is beyond me.

"Marginal lead" -> 30fps on the 1% lows on a lot of games. More damage control please. 2 weeks ago AMD would obliterate Intel in everything and no one would have any reason to buy Intel anymore.

LOL, wrong. Not "on a lot of games," instead in just one game at one resolution with a high 140fps already. Cherry pick your data much?

Intel games faster with a top end card at lower resolutions, but hyperbole only hurts any argument you might have.

 

[LogiGaming]

Nothing new here. AMD is STILL playing the catch-up game. Pass.

Waiting with popcorn for the AMD warriors. Bring 'em on... **munch...munch**

Ah, yes, the Intel superiority crowd, enjoying their marginal lead in a select few games while basking in almost double the price (and no hyper-threading) and way more power consumption and heat.

Anyone thinking AMD was going to suddenly catch up to Intel after a decade behind is not being realistic.

The fact of the matter is AMD is trading blows with a company 10x it's size, and delivering awesome value for customers. How anyone views that as a loss is beyond me.

"Marginal lead" -> 30fps on the 1% lows on a lot of games. More damage control please. 2 weeks ago AMD would obliterate Intel in everything and no one would have any reason to buy Intel anymore.

LOL, wrong. Not "on a lot of games," instead in just one game at one resolution with a high 140fps already. Cherry pick your data much?

Intel games faster with a top end card at lower resolutions, but hyperbole only hurts any argument you might have.

I guess we read different reviews? Even at 1440p the AMD chips were behind INtel on basically every game? Now imagine people with high refresh monitors using medium settings (or even lower on multiplayer shooters). You get a 400€ CPU and surprise surprise, you can´t even have the amount of framerate you wanted to remain competitive and have better mouse input lag. You still battling with an overclocked 6700k from 2015. Embarrasing.

More damage control please. AMD still playing the catch up game in gaming, it is what it is.

 

[Lew Zealand]

I guess we read different reviews? Even at 1440p the AMD chips were behind INtel on basically every game? Now imagine people with high refresh monitors using medium settings (or even lower on multiplayer shooters). You get a 400€ CPU and surprise surprise, you can´t even have the amount of framerate you wanted to remain competitive and have better mouse input lag. You still battling with an overclocked 6700k from 2015. Embarrasing.

More damage control please. AMD still playing the catch up game, it is what it is.

This review, Mr. Damage Control. Maybe you could, you know, review the graphs for yourself.

 

[Bluescreendeath]

Ryzen 3000 looks like a good deal for the majority of users and gamers, especially gamers who also stream while gaming, do productivity work, and/or multitask. Most of the games show the Ryzen 3000 being roughly comparable or just slightly slower in framerates with comparable or better power consumption.

It does not have the absolute gaming performance crown, but having better price for performance and productivity at the cost of a small difference in frames for few games seems like a worthwhile trade for most people.

 

[LogiGaming]

I was afraid the new chips would fall behind Intel in the gaming benchmarks, and that we would have to listen to the Intel groupies rubbing it in. Well, I suppose it's good the Intel chips have something going for them anyways. Something to keep the conversation going.

I mean, but wasn´t it like that for 2 years now? The advantage Intel had over AMD since Ryzen 1xxx launched was Gaming, not anything else. AMD even had 6c 12t and 8c 16t on mainstream way before Intel, so they were king on productivity tasks already. Nothing changed. It doesn´t matter if Intel is better at games or AMD better at blender. It matters what each user wants to do with his PC. I´m a gamer, I care about framerates, I buy Intel. You work with blendeR? NIce, go AMD.

 

[LogiGaming]

Ryzen 3000 looks like a good deal for the majority of users and gamers, especially gamers who also stream while gaming, do productivity work, and/or multitask. Most of the games show the Ryzen 3000 being roughly comparable or just slightly slower in framerates with comparable or better power consumption.

It does not have the absolute gaming performance crown, but having better price for performance and productivity at the cost of a small difference in frames for few games seems like a worthwhile trade for most people.

Want to talk about price vs performance and everything you said? R5 2600 or R7 2700 then. They are 10%/15% slower on average and cost half of the price. 2600 is 130€ now and 2700 180€ here on Europe. So let´s not allow hypocrisy here.

 

[parowOOz]

Yeah, but when Lisa Su said the 3950x was the best gaming pc, people were like huh? I've been lol to myself at the 750$ price, waiting to see what the 9900k crowd will say. It was going to come out eventually on the benchmarks. But yeah that extra binning will make it the best gaming CPU. 4.7 boost > 4.6 boost. No it's not economical but if you have that best of the best wallet, thar you go.


p.s. then again I thought the 9900k would get barely toppled....

p.s.s. Were all the security patches applied?

I guess you could say that the 3950X will deliver the best out of the box performance. Question is, is the difference going to be meaningful compared to other Ryzens ? 100MHz higher boost doesn't sound like something that could make a huge difference and that's also not an all-core boost. From reviews I saw it would seem that 4.2GHz-4.3GHz is about where Ryzens 3 top out. So as far as gaming is concerned, the 3950X doesn't really make sense, it's just too expensive. You'd get better results putting that extra into buying a better GPU or to enhance your overall experience buying a new display/SSD etc.

 

[gamoniac]

IMO TechSpot should have reviewed these AMD CPUs with after-market fans. Most people who bought a $330 or $500 CPU wouldn't couple it with the cheap - though respectable, fan that comes in the box. Don't get me wrong, I do think testing with the included fan provides useful perspective, it is not what I will do.

Good review as always.

 

[Bluescreendeath]

Ryzen 3000 looks like a good deal for the majority of users and gamers, especially gamers who also stream while gaming, do productivity work, and/or multitask. Most of the games show the Ryzen 3000 being roughly comparable or just slightly slower in framerates with comparable or better power consumption.

It does not have the absolute gaming performance crown, but having better price for performance and productivity at the cost of a small difference in frames for few games seems like a worthwhile trade for most people.

Want to talk about price vs performance and everything you said? R5 2600 or R7 2700 then. They are 10%/15% slower on average and cost half of the price. 2600 is 130€ now and 2700 180€ here on Europe. So let´s not allow hypocrisy here.

What hypocrisy? You seem to have missed my points, so you should reread my post. Price for performance was one element to consider, but overall gaming performance and productivity were other elements that I mentioned. The Ryzen 3000s approaches the Intel 9900k and 9700k cpus to within 90-95% in most games and even matches it in a few games. Since Ryzen 3000 just came out, maybe better drivers will slightly increase gaming performance in the future too.

The Ryzen 2000 still wins based on price for performance and dollar per frame alone, but in terms of closing the gap of having almost negligible gaming fps difference, better single core perf and productivity, AND having a better price for performance relative to the top competitor offerings, then Ryzen 3000 is a good option.

 

[Markoni35]

p.s.s. Were all the security patches applied?

AMD didn't even have many security issues to begin with. Unlike Intel. Even those that AMD had, they fixed in next generation. Unlike Intel, which just copies them.

Intel thought: "We're gonna get some speed advantages, which may introduce security holes, but customers are too stup-id to care about that".

Turned out Intel was right. Most of customers really don't care about security. Just give them nice gaming benchmarks and that's it. Who cares about privacy, personal data, credit card info, net banking, photos. They are ready to sacrifice all of that for 5% better gaming experience.

We can't even blame Intel for not fixing the security holes. They profiled their target audience correctly.

 

[parowOOz]

X570 starts at $170. Otherwise you can pickup X370, X470, and B450 and they will all work.



Better when paired with a 2080 Ti at 1080p. If you don't have a 2080 Ti or do not play at 1080p the two CPUs are functionally equal in games. Given that the 9700K isn't the top skew, you have to figure the person does in fact have a budget. In that case, the included cooler of the 3700X is a bonus.

That's not entirely correct as the 9700K also has an advantage at 1440p. In a few titles it's noticeable so I don't think it's fair to just ignore it. We also have to remember that high refresh rate monitors are a thing. It's not uncommon for gamers to lower their graphical settings to have their fps hover around their monitors' refresh rate. By doing that they are putting more stress on the CPU making it's performance more important.

Of course how much the above is relevant is going to differ from one person to another. As a all-round performer the Ryzens are clearly the better buy, there's just no denying that. Also as you point out, the added and quite decent cooler (looking at you Intel...) is an added bonus for people on a budget. But if you care about every fps you can have then Intel is still the best option for you.

 

[LogiGaming]

What hypocrisy? You seem to have missed my points, so you should reread my post. Price for performance was one element to consider, but overall gaming performance and productivity were other elements that I mentioned. The Ryzen 3000s approaches the Intel 9900k and 9700k cpus to within 90-95% in most games and even matches it in a few games. Since Ryzen 3000 just came out, maybe better drivers will slightly increase gaming performance in the future too.

The Ryzen 2000 still wins based on price for performance and dollar per frame alone, but in terms of closing the gap of having almost negligible gaming fps difference, better single core perf and productivity, AND having a better price for performance relative to the top competitor offerings, then Ryzen 3000 is a good option.

If you call "almost negligible gaming fps difference" 30fps and 40fps differences, then yeah. We done with this debate. I heard the same about 2700x vs 8700k. In that time ppl also said "only 5% slower". Now finally everyone saying is more lik 30% in some scenarios. Now the new "only 5% slower than Intel" chip is Ryzen 3000. In 1 year when Zen3 is out, ppl will finally admit it was still behind and Zen3 will close the gap even more. Whatever. 5%. Sure.

 

[LogiGaming]

AMD didn't even have many security issues to begin with. Unlike Intel. Even those that AMD had, they fixed in next generation. Unlike Intel, which just copies them.

Intel thought: "We're gonna get some speed advantages, which may introduce security holes, but customers are too stup-id to care about that".

Turned out Intel was right. Most of customers really don't care about security. Just give them nice gaming benchmarks and that's it. Who cares about privacy, personal data, credit card info, net banking, photos. They are ready to sacrifice all of that for 5% better gaming experience.

We can't even blame Intel for not fixing the security holes. They profiled their target audience correctly.

Are you using windows 10? You have security risks. You use a smartphone with internet connection? You´re at risk. Do you use google? You´re at risk. Your devices use DDR4 memory? It can be exploitable.

Never ending debate. Talking about security issues is just hypocrisy, nothing else. We all take those risks. Not only Intel users.

 

[bluetooth fairy]

Still kings of productivity only - this could be a proper headline. But how good is Zen2, we'll see tomorrow - https://new.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/amd

Thanks for the review. Looking forward to details: how exactly and by which means the gains were achieved in every particular task (kinda IPC, some useful info can already be found elsewhere). I mean these AVX workloads, L3-cache goods, memory latency bads and writes uglies, etc.

 

[OptimumSlinky]

Sigh. Not sure why any of us bother.
Before Ryzen, 8-core CPUs were $1,000 USD. Now, you can have them for under $400.
Intel is still king in IPC and gaming. Yay.
But elsewhere, from servers to productivity (which make more money overall, TBH), they're getting kicked in the teeth.
And more importantly, the resurgent AMD has force Intel to drop their prices massively. So even if you're an Intel fanboy, you should be still be thanking AMD, not ****ing on them.

 

[Bluescreendeath]

What hypocrisy? You seem to have missed my points, so you should reread my post. Price for performance was one element to consider, but overall gaming performance and productivity were other elements that I mentioned. The Ryzen 3000s approaches the Intel 9900k and 9700k cpus to within 90-95% in most games and even matches it in a few games. Since Ryzen 3000 just came out, maybe better drivers will slightly increase gaming performance in the future too.

The Ryzen 2000 still wins based on price for performance and dollar per frame alone, but in terms of closing the gap of having almost negligible gaming fps difference, better single core perf and productivity, AND having a better price for performance relative to the top competitor offerings, then Ryzen 3000 is a good option.

If you call "almost negligible gaming fps difference" 30fps and 40fps differences, then yeah. We done with this debate. I heard the same about 2700x vs 8700k. In that time ppl also said "only 5% slower". Now finally everyone saying is more lik 30% in some scenarios. Now the new "only 5% slower than Intel" chip is Ryzen 3000. In 1 year when Zen3 is out, ppl will finally admit it was still behind and Zen3 will close the gap even more. Whatever. 5%. Sure.

Did you actually read the review? For some reason, you conveniently left out the fact that vast majority of games showed Ryzen 3000 performing about 90-95% of the Intel 9000s with a few benchmarks showing near 1 to 1 performance. Every single gaming benchmark except 1 showed almost comparable performance (eg. 90% or more).

You decided to cherry picked a SINGLE game benchmark, World War Z, that showed Ryzen vs Intel 9000 running at 144fps vs 160s/170s fps in 1% lows. At that framerate, the practical difference doesnt even matter considering both cpu's 1% lows have enough fps to max out a 144 htz monitor. If you want to cherry pick benchmarks based on a single game, then I can cherrypick Assassins Creed's benchmark to claim Ryzen 3000 performs better than the 9900k in gaming.

I'm wondering if you are purposely making misleading claims with cherrypicked information or if you just didn't bother reading most of the review.

 

[LogiGaming]

Did you actually read the review? For some reason, you conveniently left out the fact that vast majority of games showed Ryzen 3000 performing about 90-95% of the Intel 9000s with a few benchmarks showing near 1 to 1 performance. Every single gaming benchmark except 1 showed almost comparable performance (eg. 90% or more).

You decided to cherry picked a SINGLE game benchmark, World War Z, that showed Ryzen vs Intel 9000 running at 144fps vs 170s fps in 1% lows. At that framerate, the practical difference doesnt even matter considering both cpu's 1% lows have enough fps to max out a 144 htz monitor. If you want to cherry pick benchmarks based on a single game, then I can cherrypick Assassins Creed's benchmark to claim Ryzen 3000 performs better than the 9900k in gaming.

I'm wondering if you are purposely making misleading claims with cherrypicked information or if you just didn't bother reading most of the review.

On top of my head, Tomb Raider, World War Z, Hitman, Black Ops 4, Apex Legends. Is all on the web folk, just read the reviews and stop the "only 5% slower" bs already.

Plus a lot of people turn their graphics down to medium/low for online shooters, for maximum FPS, and then the difference will be even bigger.

 

[10thDmenxn]

What I see PRINTED, is exactly the opposite of what you type, each and every time. And this tells me that the intel fanboys have the exact same problems with ethics, truth and fairness that intel has. You guys all deserve each other...
But for those who are honest, and read the information without bias, it's evident that the AMD chips run the games indistinguishable from the Intel chips, and beat the crap out of them on everything else, while normally costing almost half as much. And this is while MOST games are still optimized for intel chips, which is slowly changing, and not optimized for multi threads yet. As this continues to change, the AMD chips will become better and better, while the intel chips will suffer.

 

[mosu]

So Intel CPUs are for boys and AMD CPUs are for men.@ Steve: great job. Please retest some benchmarks if you get your hands on a PCIe v4 SSD.

 

[Bluescreendeath]

On top of my head, Tomb Raider, World War Z, Hitman, Black Ops 4, Apex Legends. Is all on the web folk, just read the reviews and stop the "only 5% slower" bs already.

NONE of the games you listed that have benchmarks here except for the sole exception of World War Z have a 30-40 fps difference. Go reread the benchmarks again because you seem to be confused and are making false claims.

There is like a 10fps difference between the 3700X and 9700k in Tomb Raider at 1080p and 2-7fps difference 1440p. In Hitman 2, there is an 18 fps difference at 1080p and a 8fps difference at 1440p.

And I said it's mostly a 90-95% difference, which is basically supported by the article's conclusions at the end. 90% is a difference of 10%, while 95% is a difference of 5%. You're looking at 5-10% difference in most games, with a few games reaching near parity and a single game benchmark at a 30fps difference but with the minimum over 140fps.

You should do a better job reading the article and other people's posts.

 

[LogiGaming]

NONE of the games you listed that have benchmarks here except for the sole exception of World War Z have a 30-40 fps difference. Go reread the benchmarks again because you seem to be confused and are making false claims.

There is like a 10fps difference between the 3700X and 9700k in Tomb Raider at 1080p and 2-7fps difference 1440p. In Hitman 2, there is an 18 fps difference at 1080p and a 8fps difference at 1440p.

And I said it's mostly a 90-95% difference, which is basically supported by the article's conclusions at the end. 90% is a difference of 10%, while 95% is a difference of 5%. You're looking at 5-10% difference in most games, with a few games reaching near parity and a single game benchmark at a 30fps difference but with the minimum over 140fps.

You should do a better job reading the article and other people's posts.

You still didn´t see the review(s). Can´t do anything else really. Keep talking about your imaginary "5%" differences. Had this same debate some time ago with Zen+, it was "only 5% slower" too. Same old arguments to make up for the lack of performance. Meanwhile AMD is still competing with a 7700k from 2017 in games and you have more people on this same thread that seen the same as me. What can we do more, is all on the graphs, go check 1% lows, average, everything. Then go check benchmarks for online games where ppl use lower graphic settings and GPU isn´t at 100%. Battlefield V is a good example, with 9700k flying at 200fps and Ryzen 3900x at 155fps.

Meh, boring. Maybe on Zen 3 AMD can finally surprass Intel in gaming and then me and other gamers switch to them. Until then, Intel it is. Getting better tho.

 

[parowOOz]

Ah, yes, the Intel superiority crowd, enjoying their marginal lead in a select few games while basking in almost double the price (and no hyper-threading) and way more power consumption and heat.

Anyone thinking AMD was going to suddenly catch up to Intel after a decade behind is not being realistic.

The fact of the matter is AMD is trading blows with a company 10x it's size, and delivering awesome value for customers. How anyone views that as a loss is beyond me.

Double the price ? You can clearly see that's not the case in the very review you are commenting on. Same goes for power consumption. Come on, have you read the actual review ? If you're going to take on a fanboy/troll, at least make sure you use factual evidence against them. Otherwise how are you any better ?

For the majority of people Intel's gaming advantage won't matter because they wouldn't be able to tell the difference anyway. At the same time the advantage that Ryzens have over their competiton in general multi-tasking and content creation are substantial. So I'd say that you most definitely can argue that AMD have caught up to Intel, surpassed them in many respects actually.

I think it's safe to say that all but the most fanatical fanboys here can recognize that the only reason we had 6-core 8 series and currently 8-core 9 series CPUs from Intel is AMD and the pressure they have put on Intel with their Ryzen CPUs. So I don't see many people considering competition as a loss.

Having said that, just because AMD are a smaller company doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. They either have good products or they don't. Currently they most certainly do.

 

[texasrattler]

Nothing new here. AMD is STILL playing the catch-up game. Pass.

Waiting with popcorn for the AMD warriors. Bring 'em on... **munch...munch**

Ah, yes, the Intel superiority crowd, enjoying their marginal lead in a select few games while basking in almost double the price (and no hyper-threading) and way more power consumption and heat.

Anyone thinking AMD was going to suddenly catch up to Intel after a decade behind is not being realistic.

The fact of the matter is AMD is trading blows with a company 10x it's size, and delivering awesome value for customers. How anyone views that as a loss is beyond me.

For hyper threading, tons of people actually turn it off as some games do not even like it, even pro gamers do not recommend it on. Even MS and Intel have at times said to disable it due to security issues.
DO NOT go on about how games use HT, most do not. Even when games start using more threads or even cores, it'll be years from now and most of use will be moving on to whatever that new tech at the time will be.

 

[Bluescreendeath]

You still didn´t see the review(s). Can´t do anything else really. Keep talking about your imaginary "5%" differences. Had this same debate some time ago with Zen+, it was "only 5% slower" too. Same old arguments to make up for the lack of performance. Meanwhile AMD is still competing with a 7700k from 2017 in games and you have more people on this same thread that seen the same as me. What can we do more, is all on the graphs, go check 1% lows, average, everything. Then go check benchmarks for online games where ppl use lower graphic settings and GPU isn´t at 100%. Battlefield V is a good example, with 9700k flying at 200fps and Ryzen 3900x at 155fps.

Meh, boring. Maybe on Zen 3 AMD can finally surprass Intel in gaming and then me and other gamers switch to them. Until then, Intel it is. Getting better tho.

1) 90% is a difference of 10%. A cpu that performances at 90-95% sees a difference of 5-10%. This isn't difficult math.

2) It's even more clear now that you didnt actually read this article. The benchmark here at 1080p clearly shows the 9700k got 168 fps not 200 fps in Battlefield V. The 3700X got 155fps at 1080p. At 1440p, the 9700k got 134 fps vs the 3700X which got 129 fps. Nowhere does it show any Intel cpu "flying at 200fps" so don't make up fictional numbers dude

I will do the math for you here: 168 vs 155 is a difference of 8%. 134 vs 129 is a difference of 4%. So again, this supports what I said.

3) Also, I've actually see reviews from multiple sites and they all show the Ryzen 3000 performing pretty close to the Intel 9000 in games. For example: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-ryzen-9-3900x/15.html

And these are real benchmarks, not just fictional numbers you made up.

 

[The Duder]

Nothing new here. AMD is STILL playing the catch-up game. Pass.

Waiting with popcorn for the AMD warriors. Bring 'em on... **munch...munch**

Ah, yes, the Intel superiority crowd, enjoying their marginal lead in a select few games while basking in almost double the price (and no hyper-threading) and way more power consumption and heat.

Anyone thinking AMD was going to suddenly catch up to Intel after a decade behind is not being realistic.

The fact of the matter is AMD is trading blows with a company 10x it's size, and delivering awesome value for customers. How anyone views that as a loss is beyond me.

I was afraid the new chips would fall behind Intel in the gaming benchmarks, and that we would have to listen to the Intel groupies rubbing it in. Well, I suppose it's good the Intel chips have something going for them anyways. Something to keep the conversation going.

Dude, gaming is all we do, but don't take it to heart, both companies are gouging us