The AMD Ryzen 3 1300X and Ryzen 3 1200 CPU Review: Zen on a Budget
by Ian Cutress on July 27, 2017 9:30 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- AMD
- Zen
- Ryzen
- Ryzen 3
- Ryzen 3 1300X
- Ryzen 3 1200
Conclusion
For as much hype and excitement that has been generated around Zen and the Ryzen products so far, with everything focused on the high-end when we hit the lower elements of the stack and the volume parts, not much ‘excitement’ is to be had. We’ve already gone through the new fancy microarchitecture and the platform, and what matters at this end of the spectrum is a pure performance per dollar metric. So far the Ryzen 7 parts have certainly hit that goal, especially when originally compared to Broadwell-E when the Ryzen 7 parts per launched. For the Ryzen 3, the direct competition is Kaby Lake, and CPUs with a much higher IPC. But where Intel has two cores, AMD has four.
Diving straight into the graphs, the Single Thread performance graph is as follows. All data is shown relative to the performance of the Ryzen 3 1300X.
For the AMD CPUs, the 1300X and 1500X are near in base/turbo frequency (3400/3700 vs 3500/3700) and so score about the same, and the Ryzen 3 1200 at 3100/3400 scores about 13% lower.
The Intel CPUs here show a distinct curve from the Pentium G4560 at 3.5 GHz through the Core i3s at 3.9 GHz, 4.0 GHz and 4.1 GHz. The Core i5 7400 scores a lot lower here, with its base frequency of 3.0 GHz and a turbo up to 3.5 GHz.
For the multi-thread performance:
We shopped the graph here at +20% otherwise it would look odd, but the Ryzen 5 1500X with simultaneous multithreading gets a +40% boost over the 1300X, while the Ryzen 3 1200 sits again at around -12%. All the dual core intel parts lag behind here compared to AMD’s quad cores, although the Ryzen 3 1200 and the Core i3-7300 are closely matched – but the Ryzen wins on price by being ~$40 cheaper. The Core i5-7400, competes against the Ryzen 3 1300X here as they are both quad cores, and the Intel wins despite the lower frequency due to higher IPC – which comes at a $50+ premium.
For our combined all-in-one graph, we included our mixed workload data and weighted the results 40:50:10 for single:multi:mixed thread workloads.
If we ignore the Ryzen 5 1500X in the top right corner, there are a few stories here.
First is that the Ryzen 3 1200 does not look like an attractive option. It performs +2-3% of the Pentium but is $30 more expensive, and the Core i3-7100 beats it by 8% for only a sub-$10 cost.
Then there is the Ryzen 3 1300X. Compared to the Core i3-7300/7320 and the Core i5-7400, it clearly wins on performance per dollar all around. Compared to the Core i3-7100 though, it offers almost 5% more performance for around $10-15 more, which is just under 10% of the cost. Depending on budgets, each one could be an attractive option.
We’re still working through our gaming testing as this review goes live, and we’ll add graphs for that in a bit.
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wallysb01 - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link
And you're an N=1. Intel iGPUs are more than enough for plenty uses now, and have been for a while actually. I built a cheap office machine for my wife that we use also use for streaming, for example, I even played some DOTA on it for a time. That computer has the G3220 and it works just fine. HTPC, office/web, even a little light/cheap gaming... Intel iGPU is all you need. The extra $50+, power use and space (for those that want small form factors) for a dGPU is just thrown in the garbage and lit on fire for most computer use.DanGer1 - Saturday, July 29, 2017 - link
If you want to compare to an APU you will have to wait for Raven Ridge and I am pretty sure we all know what integrated Radeon graphics compare to Intel....no contest. It is my understanding that Raven Ridge will be coming out on 14nm+ as well. AMD will have a clear win in this segment.KAlmquist - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link
Currently, the lowest priced AM4 motherboard on Newegg is the ASRock A320M-HDV for $55 including shipping. There are a number of Intel LGA 1151 boards for less than that, starting with the GIGABYTE GA-H110M-M.2 for $48 and the ASRock H110M-HDS R3.0 for $51. So motherboard costs currently favor Intel at the low end. That said, the price differential is small, and may disappear over time as manufacturers recover their development costs.DanGer1 - Saturday, July 29, 2017 - link
Right, but you can overclock the R3 without needing to by a "K" and it comes with a cooler.SlowSpyder - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link
Looks like AMD aimed for the i5 7400, but priced it with the i3's. Not much to complain about here.Otritus - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link
The third(last) chart on the first page is listed as Comparison: AMD Ryzen 3 1300X when it should be Comparison: AMD Ryzen 3 1200Otritus - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link
On the second page it says fury x uses hdm not hbmDrake H. - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link
just missed the dolphin...rocky12345 - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link
Great review thank you.After watching a review on YT from AdoredTV and reading your review here I feel the R3 Ryzen's are pretty much what we all expected. They beat that useless Pentium CPU and duke it out with the i3's and the non K i5's. On AdoredTV he got the 1200 to 3.9Ghz and the 1300x to 4.0Ghz on the stock coolers with good temps. Once overclocked they really show their value in everything more so in the games. They both make the useless Pentium and the i3's look pretty sad.
Another thing to look at is the R3's come with a stock cooler and are unlocked as well right their that adds value because unlike a K CPU you do not need to buy a cooler and if you get a Intel non K you can't make them faster by overclocking the Intel CPU's.
rocky12345 - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link
Made a mistake it is Hardware Unboxed not AdoredTV I was referring to in my first comment. My bad sorry.