The AMD Ryzen 3 3300X and 3100 CPU Review: A Budget Gaming Bonanza
by Dr. Ian Cutress on May 7, 2020 9:00 AM ESTCPU Performance: New Tests!
As part of our ever on-going march towards a better rounded view of the performance of these processors, we have a few new tests for you that we’ve been cooking in the lab. Some of these new benchmarks provide obvious talking points, others are just a bit of fun. Most of them are so new we’ve only run them on a few processors so far. It will be interesting to hear your feedback!
NAMD ApoA1
One frequent request over the years has been for some form of molecular dynamics simulation. Molecular dynamics forms the basis of a lot of computational biology and chemistry when modeling specific molecules, enabling researchers to find low energy configurations or potential active binding sites, especially when looking at larger proteins. We’re using the NAMD software here, or Nanoscale Molecular Dynamics, often cited for its parallel efficiency. Unfortunately the version we’re using is limited to 64 threads on Windows, but we can still use it to analyze our processors. We’re simulating the ApoA1 protein for 10 minutes, and reporting back the ‘nanoseconds per day’ that our processor can simulate. Molecular dynamics is so complex that yes, you can spend a day simply calculating a nanosecond of molecular movement.
Crysis CPU Render
One of the most oft used memes in computer gaming is ‘Can It Run Crysis?’. The original 2007 game, built in the Crytek engine by Crytek, was heralded as a computationally complex title for the hardware at the time and several years after, suggesting that a user needed graphics hardware from the future in order to run it. Fast forward over a decade, and the game runs fairly easily on modern GPUs, but we can also apply the same concept to pure CPU rendering – can the CPU render Crysis? Since 64 core processors entered the market, one can dream. We built a benchmark to see whether the hardware can.
Smooth#canitruncrysis pic.twitter.com/k7x31ULndF
— 𝐷𝑟. 𝐼𝑎𝑛 𝐶𝑢𝑡𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑠 (@IanCutress) May 4, 2020
For this test, we’re running Crysis’ own GPU benchmark, but in CPU render mode. This is a 2000 frame test, which we run over a series of resolutions from 800x600 up to 1920x1080.
Crysis CPU Render Frames Per Second |
||||||
AnandTech | 800 x600 |
1024 x768 |
1280 x800 |
1366 x768 |
1600 x900 |
1920 x1080 |
AMD | ||||||
Ryzen 9 4900HS | 11.50 | 8.75 | 7.44 | 6.83 | 5.21 | 4.30 |
Ryzen 5 3600 | 9.98 | 7.84 | 6.69 | 6.15 | 4.75 | 3.92 |
Ryzen 3 3300X | 8.42 | 6.52 | 5.43 | 5.01 | 3.92 | 3.07 |
Ryzen 3 3100 | 7.50 | 5.78 | 4.87 | 4.5 | 3.54 | 2.77 |
Intel | ||||||
Core i7-7700K | 7.63 | 5.87 | 4.95 | 4.55 | 3.57 | 2.79 |
Core i7-9750H | 6.78 | 5.17 | 4.37 | 3.99 | 3.12 | 2.46 |
Dwarf Fortress
Another long standing request for our benchmark suite has been Dwarf Fortress, a popular management/roguelike indie video game, first launched in 2006. Emulating the ASCII interfaces of old, this title is a rather complex beast, which can generate environments subject to millennia of rule, famous faces, peasants, and key historical figures and events. The further you get into the game, depending on the size of the world, the slower it becomes.
DFMark is a benchmark built by vorsgren on the Bay12Forums that gives two different modes built on DFHack: world generation and embark. These tests can be configured, but range anywhere from 3 minutes to several hours. I’ve barely scratched the surface here, but after analyzing the test, we ended up going for three different world generation sizes.
Interestingly Intel's hardware likes Dwarf Fortress.
We also have other benchmarks in the wings, such as AI Benchmark (ETH), LINPACK, and V-Ray, however they still require a bit of tweaking to get working it seems.
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Korguz - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link
well maxipadking, if this site pisses you off so much, and all you do is whine about how bad the reviews are, and how they test low end garbage cpus, why do you even bother coming here ? it is just to be a biased intel shill ?? go back the site that praises your god intel.Deicidium369 - Friday, May 8, 2020 - link
Look it's the resident, no life AMD shill in his natural habitat - offering absolutely nothing to conversation and just sniping.. he will also follow you to other forums - he's a creepy little guyKorguz - Friday, May 8, 2020 - link
your funny man, go look in the mirror, and work on getting your OWN personal facts straight.Spunjji - Monday, May 11, 2020 - link
I am enjoying how "I got caught shitposting in multiple forums" went through Deicidium's flamebot troll filter and came out as "watch out, this guy will stalk you".dwade123 - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link
It’s crazy how Skylake is still the fastest for gaming. Beats having to spend and spend on endless minor upgrades with AMD... and still be slower in gaming ROFL.Makaveli - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link
And maybe that matters to man children who never leave the basement. For the rest of the adults, price/performance matters more than a few extra fps. And even more so now with alot of people being layed off due to the pandemic and trying to save money.stardude82 - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link
Heck, for most people a 10 year old Lynn field is good enough.rUmX - Saturday, May 9, 2020 - link
I just recently rebuilt a i5 760 for a friend, and you're absolutely right. It is still a pretty quick cpu for most users for basic tasks. However its super slow compared to even Zen 1. Part of that is the low clocks, and lacking boost. My Ryzen 1600 non-AF runs circles around it even single threaded.Spunjji - Monday, May 11, 2020 - link
When the best reach you can manage is "My favourite company's abject failure to improve performance is a plus, actually."ExarKun333 - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link
This is AMD 90nm all over again.