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
Benchmarking Performance: CPU Office Tests
The office programs we use for benchmarking aren't specific programs per-se, but industry standard tests that hold weight with professionals. The goal of these tests is to use an array of software and techniques that a typical office user might encounter, such as video conferencing, document editing, architectural modeling, and so on and so forth.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
Chromium Compile (v56)
Our new compilation test uses Windows 10 Pro, VS Community 2015.3 with the Win10 SDK to compile a nightly build of Chromium. We've fixed the test for a build in late March 2017, and we run a fresh full compile in our test. Compilation is the typical example given of a variable threaded workload - some of the compile and linking is linear, whereas other parts are multithreaded.
PCMark8: link
Despite originally coming out in 2008/2009, Futuremark has maintained PCMark8 to remain relevant in 2017. On the scale of complicated tasks, PCMark focuses more on the low-to-mid range of professional workloads, making it a good indicator for what people consider 'office' work. We run the benchmark from the commandline in 'conventional' mode, meaning C++ over OpenCL, to remove the graphics card from the equation and focus purely on the CPU. PCMark8 offers Home, Work and Creative workloads, with some software tests shared and others unique to each benchmark set.
SYSmark 2014 SE: link
SYSmark is developed by Bapco, a consortium of industry CPU companies. The goal of SYSmark is to take stripped down versions of popular software, such as Photoshop and Onenote, and measure how long it takes to process certain tasks within that software. The end result is a score for each of the three segments (Office, Media, Data) as well as an overall score. Here a reference system (Core i3-6100, 4GB DDR3, 256GB SSD, Integrated HD 530 graphics) is used to provide a baseline score of 1000 in each test.
A note on context for these numbers. AMD left Bapco in the last two years, due to differences of opinion on how the benchmarking suites were chosen and AMD believed the tests are angled towards Intel processors and had optimizations to show bigger differences than what AMD felt was present. The following benchmarks are provided as data, but the conflict of opinion between the two companies on the validity of the benchmark is provided as context for the following numbers.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
140 Comments
View All Comments
ampmam - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link
Great review but biased conclusion.tvdang7 - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link
No overclock?Oxford Guy - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link
No, just a RAM underclock.zodiacfml - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link
overclocking tests on the ryzen 3 1200 please. the only weakness of the chip is for non-gaming or htpc usage as it will require purchasing a discrete graphics card. otherwise, it presents good value for most things like gaming and multi-threaded applications, add overclocking, and it gets even better.kaesden - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link
one thing to not overlook with the ryzen 1300x is the platform. Its competitive with budget intel offerings and can take a drop in 8 core 16 thread upgrade with no other changes except maybe a better cooling solution, Something intel can't match. Intel has the same "strategy" at their high end with the new X299 platform, but they seem to have lost focus of the big picture. The HEDT platform is too expensive to fit this type of scenario. Anyone who's shelling out the cash for a HEDT system isn't the type of budget user who is going to go for the 7740x. they're just going to get a higher end cpu from the start if they can afford it at all, not to mention the confusion about what features work with what cpu's and what doesn't, etc...TLDR; AMD has a winner of a platform here that will only get better as time goes on.
peevee - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link
From the tests, looks like Razen 3 does not make much sense. Zen arch provides quite a boost from SMT in practically all applications where performance actually matters (which are all multithreaded for years now), and AMD artificially disabled this feature for that stupid Intel-like market segmentation.Also I am sure there are not that many CPUs where exactly 2 out of 4 cores on each CCX is broken. So in effect, in cases like one CCX has 4 good cores and another has only 2 they kill 2 good cores, kill half of L3, kill hyperthreading...
It would be better to create a separate 1-CCX chip for the line, which would have much higher (more that twice per wafer) yield being half the size, and release 2, 3 and 4 core CPUs as Ryzen 2, 3 and 4 accordingly. With hyperthreading and everything. I am sure it does not cost "tens of millions of dollars" to create a new mask as even completely custom chips cost less, let alone that simple derivative.
Oxford Guy - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link
"It would be better to create a separate 1-CCX chip for the line"Or, it could be explained by this article why AMD can't release a Zen chip with 1 CCX enabled and one disabled. Instead, we just get "obviously".
silverblue - Friday, July 28, 2017 - link
He did explain it. Page 1.Oxford Guy - Saturday, July 29, 2017 - link
Where?All I see is this: "Number 3 leads to a lop-sided silicon die, and obviously wasn’t chosen."
That is not an explanation.
peevee - Tuesday, August 1, 2017 - link
That is still be half the yield per wafer compared to a dedicated 1-CCX line. Twice the cost. Cost matters.And the 3rd chip must be 1CCX+1GPU. SMT must be on everywhere though, it is too good to artificially lower value of your product by disabling it by segmentation.