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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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.