AMD Ryzen 3100, Ryzen 3300X review: The game of pick and choose

AMD has finally replaced its ageing Ryzen 1200 and Ryzen 1300x with the much-awaited Ryzen 3100 and Ryzen 3300X. But one should be careful when choosing to buy one of these new budget chips from AMD.

On paper, these 2 processors look very similar with just clock speed difference. Therefore, it's natural for someone to lean towards the cheaper Ryzen 3100. But don’t make that mistake. Here’s why.

As you can see in the picture below the Ryzen 3100’s cores are divided into 2 halves so there will be some latency when these cores would want to communicate with one another. While on the Ryzen 3300X the cores are all together hence there would be no latency when they would communicate.

This may not seem like a big deal, but in reality, this translates to over 10-15% performance difference even when these two chips are running at the same frequency. Since all the cores of the Ryzen 3300x are together, theoretically they will be a little hotter than the Ryzen 3100.

For testing, we paired the CPUs with the RTX 2080Ti along with 16GB of fast 3200MHz RAM to really see where these new chips stand in the market.

Real-world tests

The Ryzen 3 3300X performs nearly 5% better than the costlier Ryzen 5 3600 in the Cinebench R15 single-core performance test. Also, the Ryzen 3 3100 outperforms the much costlier Intel i5 9400f in single-core performance by a thin margin.

Next up in the Cinebench R15 Multi Core test results wherein both the CPUs beat out their competition easily while the Ryzen 3300X almost beats the 6 Core 12 Thread Ryzen 5 1600. Mind you, the Ryzen 5 1600 is 12nm refresh of the first Ryzen 5 1600 which was based on the 14nm process; hence the performance is close to the Ryzen 5 2600.

The handbrake text results indicate that these chips are also capable of basic video rendering and encoding but won’t be able to fulfil the needs of a professional. These chips took 12-14 minutes to transcode a 1GB 4k file to 1080p which isn’t bad for its price but a professional would rather go for costlier and more powerful options like the Ryzen 3600X or the Ryzen 3700X or even an Intel i7 10700k to save their valuable time and energy.

These gaming results speak wonders for the new Ryzen 3100 and the Ryzen 3300X. They obliterate the costlier Intel i5 9400f, but it is worth noting that the newer 10th-gen Intel i3 and i5 also exist and may provide a tough fight to the Ryzen 3300X. Intel i3 and i5 would also be costlier than both these chips, hence the value proposition is something that we would have to look out for. 

But as of now, the Ryzen 3300X performs almost at par with the Ryzen 3600 in terms of pure gaming performance, therefore the Ryzen 3300X hits it out of the park in terms of the value for gaming that it is providing for its cost. 

In Jedi the fallen order, Ryzen 3300X even outperforms the Ryzen 3600 although with only a tiny margin. That says a lot about this chip’s gaming potential. Talking about its little brother, the Ryzen 3100. It also beats out the Ryzen 1300x and the i5 9400f while maintaining the ‘value’ factor intact.

Verdict

We’d recommend you go for the Ryzen 3300X instead of Ryzen 3100 because of the performance which almost levels the Ryzen 3600 in terms of gaming. That too, in ₹3,000 extra. This would make your system just a little more future proof and also let you do other tasks faster.

Anybody who wants do to more than gaming shouldn’t invest in these budget CPUs. Rather they should go for the Ryzen 5 or 7 or the Intel 10th-gen i7. But for someone who just wants to play games, these two CPUs along with the Intel i3 10100 will work wonders. But the Intel i3 is the costliest of the three (by about ₹1,000) and performs at par with the Ryzen 3300X in terms of gaming.

Keep in mind that the Ryzen 3300X has an unlocked multiplier and can be overclocked while the Intel i3 10100 has a locked multiplier.

Written by Arnauv Gilotra.