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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alufan - Friday, May 8, 2020 - link
just curious if I follow the "bench" link it shows Intel at the top of the stack in the opening page, yet when I choose to look at the actual results with the drop down then the results change, yet the opening page is from a benchmark in which the Thread ripper has not even been tested on, the whole industry recognises that its probably the single fastest chip out there for the HEDT platform yet your opening page shows Intel at the top and no 2020 results, once again this looks like careful manipulation of the results and the casual viewer dropping on the page just sees the top 4 out of 6 positions taken by Intel with TR2 mixed in and no mention of TR3 not a very fair page and it gives a poor impression and a possibly misleading impression to folks who know no better and instantly get the impression Intel sells the highest performing CPUs which we know is not the case anymoreqwertymac93 - Friday, May 8, 2020 - link
There are two versions of "bench" for CPUs. "CPU" & "CPU 2019". You need the 2019 one to see the more recent results.alufan - Saturday, May 9, 2020 - link
and thats what I did clicked the link in the article and ended up with a page showing intel as having all the top spots which we all know is no longer the case...that was my point the opening summary page should reflect the results not the results of 2 years ago, and its now month5 of 2020 not 2019 "latest" results should be 2020zodiacfml - Friday, May 8, 2020 - link
This 3300x is something beats the six core 2600. In some reviews, it is equal to 3600 in games while a slightly behind in rendering tasks. I have already decided that a six-core is minimum for me since the 1600 but this...andrewaggb - Friday, May 8, 2020 - link
It's pretty good for what it is but for a cheap PC, intel has graphics. For a cheap gaming PC it's a bargain now but probably won't age well with 8 core consoles coming out this year. If you can afford the 3700x (or better), that should last 8+ years for gaming.Tchamber - Friday, May 8, 2020 - link
The Ryzen 3 3200G had preside graphics, too.ahenriquedsj - Saturday, May 9, 2020 - link
Good job.Mugur - Saturday, May 9, 2020 - link
Ian, sorry to say this, but you must find another organisation for you. Anandtech is just the ghost of what it was. You need at least what every youtuber has to conduct a decent set of benchmarks. You need to buy cpus, videocards, etc. for decent testbeds when they not sampled to you. I'm sick of seeing obscure outfits with every cpu and gpu possible, while a real expert is using a 1080 etc.Rudde - Saturday, May 9, 2020 - link
Will you update the conclusion to include 3100?lmcd - Saturday, May 9, 2020 - link
That board compatibility diagram must be flawed because my B350 board from ASRock has validated support for everything in the 3XXX series.