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 Rendering Tests
Rendering tests are a long-time favorite of reviewers and benchmarkers, as the code used by rendering packages is usually highly optimized to squeeze every little bit of performance out. Sometimes rendering programs end up being heavily memory dependent as well - when you have that many threads flying about with a ton of data, having low latency memory can be key to everything. Here we take a few of the usual rendering packages under Windows 10, as well as a few new interesting benchmarks.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
Corona 1.3: link
Corona is a standalone package designed to assist software like 3ds Max and Maya with photorealism via ray tracing. It's simple - shoot rays, get pixels. OK, it's more complicated than that, but the benchmark renders a fixed scene six times and offers results in terms of time and rays per second. The official benchmark tables list user submitted results in terms of time, however I feel rays per second is a better metric (in general, scores where higher is better seem to be easier to explain anyway). Corona likes to pile on the threads, so the results end up being very staggered based on thread count.
Blender 2.78: link
For a render that has been around for what seems like ages, Blender is still a highly popular tool. We managed to wrap up a standard workload into the February 5 nightly build of Blender and measure the time it takes to render the first frame of the scene. Being one of the bigger open source tools out there, it means both AMD and Intel work actively to help improve the codebase, for better or for worse on their own/each other's microarchitecture.
LuxMark v3.1: Link
As a synthetic, LuxMark might come across as somewhat arbitrary as a renderer, given that it's mainly used to test GPUs, but it does offer both an OpenCL and a standard C++ mode. In this instance, aside from seeing the comparison in each coding mode for cores and IPC, we also get to see the difference in performance moving from a C++ based code-stack to an OpenCL one with a CPU as the main host.
POV-Ray 3.7.1b4: link
Another regular benchmark in most suites, POV-Ray is another ray-tracer but has been around for many years. It just so happens that during the run up to AMD's Ryzen launch, the code base started to get active again with developers making changes to the code and pushing out updates. Our version and benchmarking started just before that was happening, but given time we will see where the POV-Ray code ends up and adjust in due course.
Cinebench R15: link
The latest version of CineBench has also become one of those 'used everywhere' benchmarks, particularly as an indicator of single thread performance. High IPC and high frequency gives performance in ST, whereas having good scaling and many cores is where the MT test wins out.
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Teknobug - Friday, July 28, 2017 - link
Guess the Rzyen 3 1300X isn't much of an upgrade over my other PC which is i5 3550 (OC'd to 3.9GHz) system then.jamyryals - Friday, July 28, 2017 - link
It's great to have some competition going on again!Mumrik - Friday, July 28, 2017 - link
If you run a 0% line horizontally through a graph like you do on page 17, and especially if it actually moves around a bit from graph to graph, I'd suggest making that line thicker than the others.harobikes333 - Saturday, July 29, 2017 - link
AMD pretty much has all the CPU segments covered <3Planning on a build soon!
LostPassword - Sunday, July 30, 2017 - link
i know a lot of people will say it doesn't matter. but the beauty about these ryzen 3 is that they are unlocked. i see alot of youtubers hit 3.7-3.8ghz on stock cooler.Oxford Guy - Wednesday, August 2, 2017 - link
Tom's Hardware used 3200 RAM for its review. I suggest reading that one because it paints a different picture than this one which uses slow RAM.Mugur - Thursday, August 3, 2017 - link
I think the author missed the point with this review: Ryzen 3 is obviously targeted towards gaming to a very tight budget, not B2B, not Enterprise, not Office, etc...Of course, this doesn't mean that certain cpu benchmarks shouldn't be used, but the test bed should definitely include overclocking (using the included Stealth cooler) and 3200 Mhz RAM (I wonder about AGESA 1006?). I don't care as much for "normalizing" benchmarks and Anandtech bench (a useful tool though), but just make me see how those 2 cpus are performing in the kind of environment they will be used. And add 2 entry level cards like RX 560 and GTX 1050/Ti; I know the reason about using a high end graphics card and I agree on paper, but this is not how those cpus will be used. It's an academical exercise.
Not everything should be a PhD dissertation, especially for this low level, budget components. If I have to reconmmend someone a cheap gaming machine I need to know whether a Ryzen 1200@3.9 Ghz + 8 GB 3200 DDR4 + RX 560 4 GB is a viable option (or not), better than a G4560 + 8 GB 2400 + GTX 1050 for example, especially in the long run.
Oxford Guy - Friday, August 11, 2017 - link
Worrying about RAM speed when you're using a low-grade GPU is unwise. You'll be very GPU-limited most of the time.No, what this review needed was 3200 RAM plus relevant GPUs. At the very least the 3000 speed RAM in the machine they tested with shouldn't have been heavily downclocked.
chiname - Saturday, November 18, 2017 - link
This actually depends on where you live.I did a pc a week ago.It's just an small entry level pc for kids to play some games.The price to performance was favoring AMD.I really wouldve liked to get an intel i3 7100 but the cost was higher than the 1200 amd.So hench we went with amd.Complete amd pc cost 6.5k include gfx card.intel wouldve cost us over 8k.
John_M - Sunday, April 29, 2018 - link
"We’re still working through our gaming testing as this review goes live, and we’ll add graphs for that in a bit."I've read that so often on this site but the promise is seldom fulfilled.