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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psychobriggsy - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link
They'll be based off on Renoir. So 8 cores, 16 threads, with 8MB L3.In mobile, Renoir's GPU has outperformed the predecessor, despite having fewer CUs, because of improved clocks. I'd say it's likely desktop Renoir will outperform the predecessor in graphics at the same price point, but not dramatically.
Namisecond - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link
So, if we go by mobile Renoir, a max of 8 CU graphics?lightningz71 - Friday, May 8, 2020 - link
Yes, but, it was trivially easy to run the 3400g gpu at 1600mhz and run the ram at 3400/3600 speeds. Assuming that the gpu of the “4400” apu gets 8CUs at about 2000 MHz, it will have less total processing power. Assuming that it can’t typically run the ram much faster than 4000 speeds, it won’t have much extra bandwidth. My best guesstimate is that it performs marginally better than the 3400 in gpu limited tasks purely for having better ram support and less processor memory contention due to the larger L3. However, games are rarely entirely gpu limited and having the much improved zen 2 cores will make things markedly better.I base a lot of that on the benchmarks of the 3500u vs the 4500u, which are very roughly comparable in resources. The 4500u is consistently faster, though not by much.
Spunjji - Monday, May 11, 2020 - link
I'm expecting much the same as what you outlined here. A significant improvement over the 3400G in CPU performance and gaming for stock configurations, but with limited gains over overclocked systems.Koenig168 - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link
Hmmm ... the 3300X is doing better than I thought it would. Would appreciate some benchmarks with games that benefit from more cores/threads. Great article. I find the part about the difference between 3100 and 3300X particularly interesting (I had wondered about the difference between the two CPUs to warrant the price difference).EdgeOfDetroit - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link
Do those games actually exist?eastcoast_pete - Friday, May 8, 2020 - link
The 3300 is a fully functional 4 cores on one die, the 3100 is 2 cores on two (otherwise defective) die. Thus, the 3100 needs to use the interconnect a lot, which slows it down a bit.extide - Saturday, May 9, 2020 - link
No, it's still a single die, just spread across both CCX in that die instead of just one.extide - Saturday, May 9, 2020 - link
(But otherwise yes you're correct because even within a single CCD the cores must travel out to the IO die and back to get to the other CCX)Deicidium369 - Friday, May 8, 2020 - link
Suggest 3 or 4