AMD announces the Ryzen 3 3100 and Ryzen 3 3300X budget processors and a new B550 chipset

Ryzen 5 2600 is better but has the same price.

most games, at least on Linux, don't really use more than 4 cores

I would say the opposite. The newest games I've played recently seem to be very good at multi-threading - Shadow of the TR, Doom Eternal, Wolfenstein 2, Resident Evil 3...

some b450 and some b350 have been bios enabled for PCIE 4.0 compatibility, mine has, it's a b350 (gigabyte gaming ver 1 ).

Whoa, nice, didn't know about this, that's cool! I decided to look into this more and found tihs article: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/asus-b450-x470-motherboards-pcie-4.0-support,39859.html

Unfortunately for me, the Asus ROG Strix B450-I Gaming board I use for HTPC does not support PCIE4.

Ryzen 5 2600 is better but has the same price.

most games, at least on Linux, don't really use more than 4 cores

I would say the opposite. The newest games I've played recently seem to be very good at multi-threading - Shadow of the TR, Doom Eternal, Wolfenstein 2, Resident Evil 3...

Don't take that for granted, but I think that many actual games are targeting 4 cores CPUs, but that doesn't make these Ryzens future proof. This said, it's my impression from info I found here and there, it might already be outdated and there are probably others, in this forum, that are in a much better situation than me to comfirm that.

Here is an exemple of what I'm referring to:

Witcher 3 - DX11 - Scaling

You may have more than 4 cores, but there is not much gain from that... For the moment. I'm quite sure that if/when 8 cores become the mainstream solution and with Vulkan :) and DX12 adoption, developers will find a way of taping in that potential.


Last edited by Mohandevir on 21 April 2020 at 7:49 pm UTC

How times have changed, a 4c/8t CPU at 100$, this might be the perfect excuse to retire my Intel i5-4590 system. Rock on AMD :)

Cpu L caches also have a big impact on performance. One may argue that the additional caches are for the 3600 two extra cores but the processor is pretty smart in allocating caches to different processes. Currently the 2600 is $174 at Newegg. It is a though choice but the pricing of the 3300X at $120 is pretty much on the spot.

Ryzen 3 3300X
3.8 to 4,3Ghz
4 cores, 8 threads
L1 cache 256kb
L2 cache 2MB
L3 cache 16MB

Ryzen 5 3600
3.6 to 4.2Ghz
6 cores, 12 threads
L1 cache 384KB
L2 cache 3MB
L3 cache 32MB

This will be a really great upgrade path for someone that needs a nice budget build. Came a little too late for me though. I already bought a Ryzen 3600 and a B450 motherboard. Supposedly they will be releasing Ryzen 4000 series toward the end of this year.

Prices here in the USA aren't much different than usual. I can get a RX5700 for about $330, RX 5600 $270, or an RX5500 for $180.

We can easily get CPU's at MSRP.


Last edited by Dragunov on 22 April 2020 at 12:57 am UTC

Here is an exemple of what I'm referring to:

Witcher 3 - DX11 - Scaling

What about games those aren't 5 years old?

Here is an exemple of what I'm referring to:

Witcher 3 - DX11 - Scaling

What about games those aren't 5 years old?

Like Shadow of the Tomb Raider?

https://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/software/shadow_of_the_tomb_raider_pc_performance_review/7

6fps between 4 cores to 8 cores.

Doom Eternal seems to be taking advantage of more cores:

https://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/software/doom_eternal_pc_performance_analysis_and_optimisation_guide/3

But still it can perform well on 2 cores/4threads when paired with a good gpu, as noted by the author.

Rage 2:

https://wccftech.com/rage-2-pc-core-scaling-and-graphics-cards-performance-explored/

It seems to be a per game thing.

Looking forward to the cpu scaling of Metro: Exodus with my Ryzen 5 3600.


Last edited by Mohandevir on 22 April 2020 at 3:32 am UTC

6fps between 4 cores to 8 cores.

I'd say, +10% is a significant amount of growth. Maybe much bigger price differences between CPUs make it unworthy, but at least it shows that games actually do use multithreading. Doubling cores doesn't mean doubling the performance.

It seems to be a per game thing.

Sure, but with new 8C16T consoles coming, I believe all AAA games are going to be multithreaded, using 16 threads efficiently. For people who want to build a gaming computer without the need to upgrade it in the next few years, I would recommend a Ryzen 7 or at least six-core Ryzen 5.


Last edited by ageres on 22 April 2020 at 5:43 am UTC

Currently the 2600 is $174 at Newegg. It is a though choice but the pricing of the 3300X at $120 is pretty much on the spot.

who would be able to buy at those prices?? with supplies chains collapsing, prices have skyrocketed, for example it's practically imposible to find NAVI cards at MSRP.

Prices in the EU don't seem that bad. At least here in Finland the RX5700 XT is cheaper than it was before the pandemic when I bought mine.

Finally I will update my PC, hopefully here in italy, the 3300X will be €150/160... i cannot keep gaming with dual cores (i3 6100 now and G3258 before that).

Sure, but with new 8C16T consoles coming, I believe all AAA games are going to be multithreaded, using 16 threads efficiently. For people who want to build a gaming computer without the need to upgrade it in the next few years, I would recommend a Ryzen 7 or at least six-core Ryzen 5.

I keep hearing that since 2013 with jaguar architecture from xbox and ps4

Here in italy the R5 is still around €250 and the 3700X is €350 (directly from Amazon Prime), we all know they are a better choice for future games, but I and many others cannot afford €350 cpu, €150 RAM and €100 MOBO.
With the 3300X, mobo and ram i will be in the range of €300/350 and a pretty good gaming PC for less than a ps5, and who knows... maybe amd will keep AM4 compatibility for a few generations ahead.


Last edited by tommystig21 on 22 April 2020 at 9:53 am UTC

Here in italy the R5 is still around €250 and the 3700X is €350 (directly from Amazon Prime)

My brother bought an R5 2600 for about $120-130 on AliExpress (do people use it in Italy?) last autumn, there are also R7 2700 available for $150, DDR4-3200 16GB RAM modules for $75, mobos and other hardware too.

6fps between 4 cores to 8 cores.

I'd say, +10% is a significant amount of growth. Maybe much bigger price differences between CPUs make it unworthy, but at least it shows that games actually do use multithreading. Doubling cores doesn't mean doubling the performance.

It seems to be a per game thing.

Sure, but with new 8C16T consoles coming, I believe all AAA games are going to be multithreaded, using 16 threads efficiently. For people who want to build a gaming computer without the need to upgrade it in the next few years, I would recommend a Ryzen 7 or at least six-core Ryzen 5.

Exactly why I said that it didn't make the new Ryzen 3 future proof.

Still, atm, the biggest gain is when you Jump from 4c/4t to 4c/8t. For a budget build, these Ryzen can be a good deal.


Last edited by Mohandevir on 22 April 2020 at 10:57 am UTC

German computer magazine c't has done reserach about this. They often found fps not to vary greatly, but frame times (99% best) to get smoother with more cores.

AliExpress (do people use it in Italy?)

Not really, more often than not there will be huge import fees, and it totally lacks support for warranty, without that it's considered grey market in italy (since there is no IVA --italian tax) and not worth the discount. It happens on amazon.it too, that's why we must be carefull to go to the list of reseller and select Amazon directly or an italian based shop, only in those cases there will be official support from the shop (fingers crossed) or amd (or gigabyte for mobos, etc.)
That's why I usually buy PC parts in retail shops like nexths.it (a small chain in nord italy with few fisical shops) they are very professional and they stick to MSRP prices with taxes applied. They even update the BIOS for newer CPUs when you buy a motherboard without extra costs.

PS: IVA is only one of the many taxes applyed to goods, being calculated in priceofitem + 22%, in case of aliexpress IVA must be paid when you receive the item on your doorstep + import fees, which only god knows how they are calculated.

A few things.

You are so wrong it is not even funny. First of all, the 2600 uses 1 256bit AVX2 command per 2 clocks, instead of 1 clock. This is HUGE for next gen games. Guess what, AAA next gen games will require AVX2 baseline, since consoles have it. And having proper 1 command per clock support for AVX2 will make a huge difference in the AAA games to come. So buying older architectures than Zen 2 in my opinion is not worth it.

To put it into perspective, it is the difference Bulldozer architecture had with Intel in gaming. It had HALF the floating point performance, which hurt gaming a lot.

This assumes you can actually feed AVX2 workloads every clock in games. There are some game engine architecture choices that are capable of utilizing SIMD but claiming 1 clock or 2 clock AVX2 submission is going to be as dramatic as Bulldozer's shared FPUs doesn't make sense. Bulldozer did poorly in gaming because gaming is full of single floating point operations, since much of the data in games is represented as floating point values. Not to mention non-game processes could require the FPU while the game is running which stalls the floating point operation.

Caches aren't really important in current video games. Obviously a few years from now this may change, but a few years from now you will probably be upgrading the 3300X anyway... What matters most is the speed/latency of those caches, for gaming purposes. And i think since both cpus are of the same architecture they will feature similar speeds. Cache would play a huge part if it was cache for the igpu part of an APU, other than that, the vast majority of games are more than fine with 3300X levels of cache.

I find it particularly funny that you in consecutive comments argued for the importance of AVX2 but then followed that up by saying cache isn't that important. Cache is what keeps those AVX2 instructions fed, otherwise you will stall until the RAM slowly drags your data set into your L3 where it still needs to traverse into L2 and L1. Presumably games don't just load a single vector workload and endlessly FMA that same vector. Not to mention the significance of caches when it comes to data-oriented design, such as ECS systems, which have been gaining popularity as of late because, as it turns out, cache misses are harmful to game performance too. In this regard bigger caches absolutely do matter since we use multi-way caches and more cache lines means more slices of memory can be kept in L3 without having to evict already loaded data.

So, if you are going to be rude and accuse people of being wrong and shills and whatnot, I would also recommend that you at least be correct in your claims. Or consistent. Or generally constructive.

Quite instructive comments from all of you. Thanks!

Still it's funny to think that, as of October 2019, I was still gaming on my 7 year old i7-3770 and paired with a good GPU, I was still having a great gaming experience. I bought my Ryzen 5 3600 because I feared for a hardware failure, not because it was outdated. Sure, I'm not into the 4K and/or 144hz race. My 1080p 60hz HDTV with in-game Vsync is still my target and will be for the foreseable futur. As long as I have a silent build that gives me a solid 60fps (tearing and stuttering free) plus a little headroom, I'll be satisfied. Above that it's just overpowered/overpriced.

But that's just my situation and point of view.

Have fun with your high end gaming rig building!


Last edited by Mohandevir on 22 April 2020 at 5:40 pm UTC

[quote=Guest]

Cpu L caches also have a big impact on performance. One may argue that the additional caches are for the 3600 two extra cores but the processor is pretty smart in allocating caches to different processes. Currently the 2600 is $174 at Newegg. It is a though choice but the pricing of the 3300X at $120 is pretty much on the spot.

Caches aren't really important in current video games. Obviously a few years from now this may change, but a few years from now you will probably be upgrading the 3300X anyway... What matters most is the speed/latency of those caches, for gaming purposes. And i think since both cpus are of the same architecture they will feature similar speeds. Cache would play a huge part if it was cache for the igpu part of an APU, other than that, the vast majority of games are more than fine with 3300X levels of cache.

Sorry man but that's the most ridiculous statement I ever read. Which one is it, "caches are not important" but their "speed/latency" is. High speed caches (read expensive) are use for every single cpu instruction. That's one of the major problem for modern cpu. They are so fast that getting the instructions/data in time is problematic. The cpu will be at a standing still if it has to fetch this information from the main memory. Yes the faster and the bigger the caches, the faster it goes. It's not important in gaming ??? Good luck with you "cacheless" cpu, if you ever found one. You may be able to play Ping Pong.

Some recent comments have been removed and a user has been warned.

Please remain respectful to your fellow GOL readers. We do moderate and we do have rules about acceptable standards of commenting behaviour.

This thread apparently got a bit heated, so I'll share some ideas of mine. Comment sections about hardware releases need not devolve into calling others ignorant or a shill. People have different sorts of ideas as to what good hardware purchases are like and what sorts of technologies is going to be driving performance in the future. I would suggest stating your views and the facts and feelings you think support that stance rather than going for ad hominems because someone's views don't line up with yours. Throwing around insults and labels only shuts down discussion and encourages responding in kind which creates a toxic environment for all.

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On the actual topic, I find these processors a useful choice for customers on a budget. Their core counts will probably eventually be a limitation on performance but 4/8 can still get current stuff done decently well and there is a viable upgrade path to higher core count CPUs from these ones when quad-cores no longer cut it.