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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Spunjji - Monday, May 11, 2020 - link
The issue is that it's not informed. It's codswallop.PeterCollier - Monday, May 11, 2020 - link
You're talking about the article.Spunjji - Tuesday, May 12, 2020 - link
🤡psychobriggsy - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link
Considering it shows the $120 AMD offering comprehensively beating the old i7-7700K, and says the current Intel budget offerings will be slower, and recommends the AMD processors, I find this comment rather brain dead.WaltC - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link
One question I had is why AT chose to use the 2600 instead of the 3600...? Makes no sense to me, as the 3600 runs at 65W and the 3600X runs at 95W--just like the 2600--only the 3600 is appreciably faster--but costs the same! 3600 is MIA. No question but that the review benchmarks clearly demonstrate the superiority of the AMD offerings, but we already knew that. I see the omission here--deliberate--of the 3600--while including $425 Intel 6c/12t offerings--as surely an apology for Intel's inability to compete. Such is not needed, really. Apologizing in subtle ways for Intel is, I think, a pretty poor way to write a review on CPUs Intel cannot at the present time compete with--the 3100/3300. Getting right down to it--there was no need to include *any* 6c/12t CPUs here, right? Should have been comparisons only with Intel/AMD 4c/8t cpus, exclusively, imo. Selection of CPUS for *this review* didn't make any objective sense that I could see--beyond the obvious, of course (at least you didn't forget and leave the 3100/3300 out...;))evilspoons - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link
I'm guessing the omission of the 3600X has something to do with, at the time I read this, they hadn't even finished all the benchmarks for the 3100. You know, the one in the headline. I don't think it's a conspiracy, just a time constraint.crimson117 - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link
They didn't rerun the 2600 for this, they used existing benchmarks.They haven't ever benchmarked the 3600 previously, so it's not listed here. They do have the 3700X, however, which is essentially the same performance as a 3600 (except in heavily threaded workloads): https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/2520?vs=25...
MDD1963 - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link
I saw other testers on Youtube use the 3600, and, the 3300X was VERY surprisingly close to it's performance...; the 3300X's clearly quite strong threads and lack of inter -CCX -RAM latency issues are reaping benefits!BenSkywalker - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link
The choices they use to compare are utterly bizarre. A three and a half year old Intel i7 and last generation Ryzen parts....?Legitimately, this review is useless if you are shopping *today*, not just from a team red versus team blue, but where this processor sits in today's market, no clue after reading this. One of my friends was looking for a budget gaming build and I was looking at a 3200G/B450 setup, how does this compare? Instead let's assume people have a time machine and are cross shopping two gen old Ryzen and three green old Intel parts....?
The charts aren't bad, they are terrible. Have an old i7 in there for reference, ok, put current Ryzen 3 and i3 inn there and if you don't have enough time *only* include them.
rabidpeach - Friday, May 8, 2020 - link
bro, they try to make a point with the reviews. if you want this comparison you use the cpubench feature of this website and compare any chip they tested on any of the tests they have. it's an actual feature not a bug. the point of this article and tests is to show entry level amd 100 price point is as powerful as 3 year old flagship-ish intel for the mainstream. it shows against the zen and zen+ hexacores that it catches up to them in many situations despite lacking in cores. this shows you amd is not just throwing cores at intel anymore. they have ipc too! ok any more spoon-feeding? would you prefer a spork?