Ryzen 9 3900X & Ryzen 7 3700X Review

AMD has taken the process lead over Intel by fielding new 7nm processors that contain smaller and more densely-packed transistors than Intel's competing 14nm chips. The advantages of increased density come in the form of higher performance, better power efficiency, more cores, and more cache packed into a smaller area than the first-gen Ryzen models, all of which makes third-gen Ryzen a potent adversary for Intel both on the desktop and in the data center. Starting at the top we have the Ryzen 3900X, which is a 12-core design. In fact it's the first 12-core processor in a standard desktop socket, and it rather unique within AMD's product stack because it is currently the only SKU which takes full advantage of AMD's newest chiplet architecture. Whereas all the other Ryzen parts are comprised of two chiplets - the base I/O die and a single CPU chiplet - 3900X comes with two such CPU chiplets, granting it (some of) the extra cores and the 64MB of L3 cache that entails. Interestingly, while AMD has increased the core-count by 50% over its previous flagship processor, it has managed to keep the TDP to the same 105W as on the Ryzen 2700X. On top of this, the chip clocks in 300MHz faster than the predecessor in terms of boost clock, now reaching 4.6GHz; even the base clock has been increased by 100MHz, coming in at 3.8GHz. The big question then, is whether the new 7nm process node and Zen 2 are really this efficient, or should we be expecting more elevated power numbers? Meanwhile our second chip of the day is the new Ryzen 3700X, which is configured and positioned as a particularly efficient model. With a boost clock of 4.4GHz and a base clock of 3.6GHz, the part should still be notably faster than the Ryzen 2700X, yet AMD has managed to make this a 65W TDP part which is going to make for some interesting analysis. Office CPU Performance and Productivity
It's in these categories where AMD's strengths lie: In the majority of our system benchmarks, AMD more often than not is able to best Intel's Core i7-9700K and i9-9900K in terms of performance. It was particularly interesting to see the new 3rd gen Ryzens post larger improvements in the web tests, all thanks to Zen 2's improved and larger op cache.

In anything that is more than lightly multi-threaded, AMD is also able to take the performance crown among mainstream desktop processors, thanks to their inclusion of 12 cores in their top SKU Ryzen 3900X. For total MT throughput, Intel can still beat this with their massive X-series HEDT chips, but these server-derrived parts are in a completely different class in both features and price, and AMD has their own Threadripper parts to rival that. All of this means that for heavily threaded scenarios, the 3900X rules the roost among true desktop processors.

Meanwhile, even when AMD doesn't have a core count advantage - as is the case with the Ryzen 3700X - the chip is still extremely competitive. Overall the 3700X falls in-between the more expensive 9700K and 9900K when it comes to multi-threaded workloads - and sometimes it even beats the 9900K, a respectable result indeed.

Gaming Performance

When it comes to gaming performance, the 9700K and 9900K remain the best performing CPUs on the market. Even without an IPC advantage anymore, Intel's high clockspeeds and supporting elements such as the core ringbus still give them the best performance in the kind of lightly-threaded and tightly-threaded scenarios that games often follow.

That being said, the new 3700X and 3900X are posting enormous improvements over the 2700X. And we can confirm AMD's claims of up to 30-35% better performance in some games over the 2700X. So AMD has not been standing still.

Ultimately, while AMD still lags behind Intel in gaming performance, the gap has narrowed immensely, to the point that Ryzen CPUs are no longer something to be dismissed if you want to have a high-end gaming machine. Intel's performance advantage is rather limited here � and for the power-conscientious, AMD is delivering better efficiency at this point - so while they may not always win out as the best choice, the 3rd gen Ryzens are still very much a viable option worth considering.