Review: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X & Ryzen 9 3900X

Take care there. We need that new BIOS. As both 3.40 and 3.43 did shoot voltage up to 1.5V momentarily with PBO enabled on my chip.
I had to set custom P-States to ensure that it will not go above 1.45V.

Maybe it is set for some different resistances on new chips. But still, that Unboxed guy killed his chip by enabling PBO + high LLC. Which on one hand is pretty stupid from someone who should have enough experience to know that one has to check Voltages when manipulating LLC.
And since there used to be issues even with Voltage Offset settings, one should be extra careful as something somewhere may stick and apply together with something else.

Especially since things are controlled by AMD's CBS, And those "easy settings" from manufacturer of the boards are touching those values.
It takes some bad mistake when something is not properly reset after it has been set manually and issue is at hand.

In case of our board, setting Manual OC with clock and voltage actually writes it into P-States. (Twice same values.)
But disabling this "easy" manual OC will not remove values from P-States.

Then there is CPU voltage in one of advanced menus that's written in Hex. And it is not actual voltage, but offset from highest to lowest. Therefore nullifying it to "00" means maximal voltage.

Maybe Unboxed dude did this unknowingly. There are surely many traps. And even person responsible for writing UI above those menus for given board manufacturer can make fatal mistake.

 

Thanks for the review Hilbert. They look like good cpus. I'll be getting a big upgrade for my r3 1200 some day.

I also appreciate you including data from old and cheap cpus so we can see the progress being made over time. The IPC test is nice too.

AMD seems to tune their cpus better now. I've overclocked AM2, AM3, FM2, and AM4. You can't get much extra speed from AM4, but you can tune them for better performance per watt.

 

"But, the fact that I am comparing a 329 USD (MSRP) 8-core 3700X processor with a 599 USD (MSRP) Core i9 9900K feels weird, even while typing this conclusion - yeah think about that fact for a second."

I hope the Intel Fanboy/Nazi read that line.

Quite pathetic for the 9900k, as you need to OC it to 5ghz just to stay competitive XD. It just goes to show how efficient the Ryzen 3k series are. Now, I think there's more performance to be had as the firmware/bios are at their infancy.

Makes want to retire my 8700k as I'm stuck with 1 instance of Memu Emulator (for Kings Raid), without it using all the paltry 6 cores.


Epic win AMD.

 

Me, soon as it's available on Amazon.

 

Quite a few CPUs are already on EBAY for rip off prices. The scalpers decided to buy them all up.

 

I got my order for a 3700x from Newegg at 8:30 am this morning. The were doing a 1 per customer policy.

 

Will wait at least 3-4 months to see how things sort themselves out, re motherboards, bios, mem compatibility, other issues, etc, before pulling trigger on anything.

 

Reading TH site for review makes me want to puke as they are biased peasants. Also, beware of that "kinggremlin" member at their forums as I think him and "jwb1" are one and the same - and same unwise argument they're spreading XD

 

As popular as the 3700x was, why didn't AMD make more of them.

 

I'm sure they are making them as fast as possible. It's not like the 3700x in the only process utilizing TSMCs 7nm technology. Even though cryptocurrency is not as huge as it once was, even they are using TSMC for 7nm. Among other things as well, ofcourse.

 

Would've been nice to see cpu bound tests in older games where playing at higher framerates for high refresh rate monitors.

Example I played Killing Floor for a bit the other day for the first time since I upgraded from the 950 and the game still can't seem to maintain 120fps without sustained drops, even on a 2600x which was kind of disappointing.

I don't know if newer Intel CPUs have any issues with this though either.

It looks good though. I will wait for a 3600x review. I have been thinking of updating to that based how reviews were. Thanks for the bc AMD.

 

I'll wait a bit too. the 3700x looks a great CPU but being a gamer, it's still a bit of a hit and miss. Still, overall, it's an amazing CPU for the money. I'll wait for a few more motherboards to come out and a few bios updates before I decide whether I'll be switching. Honestly, my 7700k runs my games amazingly well so I don't feel like I need to upgrade right now.

God, for all I know, I'll procrastinate and end up waiting for the next gen and to see what Intel come up with.

 

One thing that I was curious was the performance of the included box cooler - and from what I saw in other reviews you should invest in a third party solution (for 3900X at least):

 

I bought the 3700x since I did not find enough compelling performance diff that would translate to real world everyday noticeable experiences. Performance + costs did it for me.Maybe if Intel could had lead by a mean of 20% across the board I might had given more weight to Intel but they just did not dominate and got crushed on the price side.

 

Killing Floor 1 was doing fine at some point in time. Then some update and boom. +All the new maps with lots of objects and animations of world objects. UE in state they put it in hates it so much. Those maps have no hard time stuttering even while having decent fps.

Killing Floor 2 on other hand is doing great in terms of achievable fps and frame pacing while looking much better. If only difficulty scaling in 2nd could be bit better. (Not that difficulty in 1st is any better. It is just broken in very different way.)

 

Next year, Zen 2+ will have a slight increase in IPC and drop in memory latency.

In 2021, we'll see Zen 3, which will likely be a game changer. Rumors are floating around about stacked IO/memory and 3 or 4 threads per core.

AMD is killing it!

 

I think its crazy not to factor in one major thing... what the future has coming for multi-core processors (next gen gaming)... If we do dare talk about this aspect...then these Ryzen CPUs are by far, the better buy. Look at next gen console gaming for example...those upcoming next gen consoles will be sporting the same Ryzen CPUs.... with the 8 cores and 16 threads... isn't that a MAJOR THING TO MENTION????? Multi Core Gaming is finally gonna go to the next level in about a year from now once those consoles release and if you got the exact same 8 core proc... over say a 4 core or even a 6 core proc from Intel... which is the better buy? Heck.. EVERYTHING is finally going to the next level for consumers when we talk about PC Multi Core Procs with Operation systems (Windows 10) and just about all apps but gaming is the huge factor here as most here game or most buying this type of hardware is a gamer.

I don't understand why this is not a big "Talking Point" in this review. Its one of the biggest factors in going with a multi core proc..considering 99% of next gen PC games will be coming from the next gen Console Space that just happens to have AMD Ryzen 8 Core Procs and Navi GPUs... how is this not a big factor in this Ryzen Review? Someone slap me!! Please!!

 

That certainly is counter intuitive. I'm thinking of getting one of these. Can you let me know the board model and post a screenshot of this page (include the accompanying help text, usually automatically displayed at the side) to allow me to make a few enquiries before purchase. It's reasonable to expect that new boards for a new CPU might, on occasion, need some manufacturer updates.

 

GFX card aside, it is and has been a talking point ever since we moved away from single core CPU's - a talking point that has been increasing in loudness especially since AMD ramped up core counts in previous releases. Unfortunately, we need quite a bit more buyer saturation. Developers are much slower to respond and yes, consoles are a very significant driver. As you note, the next consoles are getting core increases, thanks due to AMD, but they're not due to be released for some time thus, another reason for developers to take their time (this is no simple task).
Maximising core counts for gaming will come. We're already getting there for some non-gaming situations.

 

Again, not the best choice for high refresh rate gaming, but significantly better than AMD's predecessor! For instance on Battlefield 5 it was 184 fps for 9900K vs 160fps for 3700X & 3900X, which is a big difference, but only if you're running 180Hz plus. For the other games that were tested, quite a few showed that 3700X & 3900X were not suitable for 144Hz even, but who needs to play Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 144Hz, you only need 144Hz+ for competitive online fps gaming. If you've got a high refresh rate monitor then depending on what games you play it's possible 3700X/3900X would be ok for them, but it's not ideal, and for future games there's no guarantee that they're gonna be any better - the safe bet for an expensive 144Hz+ gaming build would be 9900K.

Interesting to see that these Ryzen CPUs still don't overclock well, and that it still makes more sense to leave them at default to let the auto boosting features of the cores hit higher frequencies in lighter loads than you would otherwise be able to achieve with a manual all core overclock. Actually, if you were to compare overclocked Intel CPUs to these Ryzen CPUs then the gaming performance gulf would be even larger - and that's actually a very valid point because Intel CPUs overclock really easily, and gamers often overclock their CPUs - Intel CPUs therefore a no brainer for high refresh rate gaming when you think about it from this angle now.