The AMD 3rd Gen Ryzen Deep Dive Review: 3700X and 3900X Raising The Bar
by Andrei Frumusanu & Gavin Bonshor on July 7, 2019 9:00 AM ESTTest Bed and Setup
As per our processor testing policy, we take a premium category motherboard suitable for the socket, and equip the system with a suitable amount of memory running at the manufacturer's maximum supported frequency. This is also typically run at JEDEC subtimings where possible.
It is noted that some users are not keen on this policy, stating that sometimes the maximum supported frequency is quite low, or faster memory is available at a similar price, or that the JEDEC speeds can be prohibitive for performance. While these comments make sense, ultimately very few users apply memory profiles (either XMP or other) as they require interaction with the BIOS, and most users will fall back on JEDEC supported speeds - this includes home users as well as industry who might want to shave off a cent or two from the cost or stay within the margins set by the manufacturer. Where possible, we will extend out testing to include faster memory modules either at the same time as the review or a later date.
| Test Setup | |||||
| AMD 3000*1 | R9 3900X R7 3700X |
MSI MEG X570 Ace |
7C35v12 7C35v11*2 |
Wraith Prism | G.Skill TridentZ 4x8 GB DDR4-3200 CL16 16-16-16-36 |
| AMD 2000 | R7 2700X R5 2600X R5 2500X |
ASRock X370 Gaming K4 |
P4.80 | Wraith Max* | G.Skill SniperX 2x8 GB DDR4-2933 |
| AMD 1000 | R7 1800X | ASRock X370 Gaming K4 |
P4.80 | Wraith Max* | G.Skill SniperX 2x8 GB DDR4-2666 |
| AMD TR4 | TR 1920X | ASUS ROG X399 Zenith |
0078 | Enermax Liqtech TR4 |
G.Skill FlareX 4x8GB DDR4-2666 |
| Intel 9th Gen | i9-9900K i7-9700K i5-9600K |
ASRock Z370 Gaming i7** |
P1.70 | TRUE Copper |
Crucial Ballistix 4x8GB DDR4-2666 |
| Intel 8th Gen | i7-8086K i7-8700K i5-8600K |
ASRock Z370 Gaming i7 |
P1.70 | TRUE Copper |
Crucial Ballistix 4x8GB DDR4-2666 |
| Intel 7th Gen | i7-7700K i5-7600K |
GIGABYTE X170 ECC Extreme |
F21e | Silverstone AR10-115XS |
G.Skill RipjawsV 2x16GB DDR4-2400 |
| Intel 6th Gen | i7-6700K i5-6600K |
GIGABYTE X170 ECC Extreme |
F21e | Silverstone AR10-115XS |
G.Skill RipjawsV 2x16GB DDR4-2133 |
| Intel HEDT | i9-7900X i7-7820X i7-7800X |
ASRock X299 OC Formula |
P1.40 | TRUE Copper |
Crucial Ballistix 4x8GB DDR4-2666 |
| GPU | Sapphire RX 460 2GB (CPU Tests) MSI GTX 1080 Gaming 8G (Gaming Tests) |
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| PSU | Corsair AX860i Corsair AX1200i |
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| SSD | Crucial MX200 1TB **Crucial MX300 1TB |
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| OS | Windows 10 x64 RS3 1709 Spectre and Meltdown Patched **Windows 10 x64 1903 Spectre and Meltdown Patched |
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| *1 Ryzen 3000 series has been tested in a different environment. *2 Initial Review BIOS - Graphs results are marked with ** |
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We must thank the following companies for kindly providing hardware for our multiple test beds. Some of this hardware is not in this test bed specifically, but is used in other testing.
| Hardware Providers | |||
| Sapphire RX 460 Nitro | MSI GTX 1080 Gaming X OC | Crucial MX200 + MX500 SSDs |
Corsair AX860i + AX1200i PSUs |
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| G.Skill RipjawsV, SniperX, FlareX |
Crucial Ballistix DDR4 |
Silverstone Coolers |
Silverstone Fans |
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Security Mitigrations
The systems have applied the latest Spectre and Meltdown mitigation patches where applicable. Meanwhile we should note that while the ZombieLoad exploit was announced earlier this year as well, the patches for that have not been released yet. We'll be looking at those later on once they hit.
Article Testing Methodology Update (July 8th):
We ran our original review numbers with the latest available firmware for the MSI MEG X570 ACE motherboard last week (Version 7C35v11). On Saturday the 6th MSI had shared with us a notice about a new version coming out, which became available to download to us on Sunday the 7th, the launch day and date of publication of the review.
We’ve had more time to investigate the new firmware, and have discovered extremely large changes in the behaviour of the frequency boosting algorithm. The new firmware (Version 7C35v12) for the motherboard contains AMD’s new ComboPI1.0.0.3.a (AGESA) firmware.
We discovered the following direct measurable effects between the two firmware versions:
(Note: This is a custom test that uses a fine-grained looping timed fixed instruction chain to derive frequency; it showcases single-core frequency)
We notice a significant change in the CPU’s boosting behaviour, now boosting to higher frequencies, and particularly at a faster rate from idle, more correctly matching AMD’s described intended boost behaviour and latency.
We’re currently in the process of re-running all our suite numbers and updating the article where necessary to reflect the new frequency behaviour.
Article Testing Methodology Update (July 9th):
We've updated the article benchmark numbers on the Ryzen 9 3900X. We've seen 3-9% improvements in exclusive ST workloads. MT workloads have remained unchanged, Gaming had both benefits and negatives. We continue to work on getting updated 3700X numbers and filling out the missing pieces.
Original BIOS results are as of first publication are marked with ** in the graphs.
Article Testing Methodology Update (July 10th):
We've also updated our Ryzen 7 3700X results now. Ultimately our conclusions haven't changed, but AMD does narrow the gap a bit more. For a full summary of our findings, please check out this article.
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Maxiking - Tuesday, July 23, 2019 - link
I said a few times... I don't tend to buy amd products so no, I am not gonna sue anybody.And as pointed out in the video, in his German one, he works for a retailer selling prebuilt pcs.. People keep returning pcs with AMD cpus becaue they do not boost to the promised frequency. You there, there are something like laws, if you write on the box 4.6ghz, it must reach it.
You are so knowledgeable, sharp minded and analytical when comes to meaning of words and what people want to say, you should sue Intel on your own, should be easy.
Atom2 - Monday, July 29, 2019 - link
ICC compiler is 3x faster than LLVM and AVX512 is 2x faster than AVX2. And both were left out of comparison? The comparison designed purely only for the LLVM compiler users? Used by who?Rudde - Saturday, August 10, 2019 - link
ICC is proprietary afaik and Anandtech prefers open compilers. AVX512 should be found in 3DPM and shows utter demolition by the only processor that supports it (7920X).MasterE - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link
I considered going with the Ryzen 9 3900X chip and an x570 motherboard for a new rendering system but since these chips aren't available for less than $820+ anywhere, I guess I'll be back to either the threadripper or Intel 9000+ series. There is simply no way I'm paying that kind of price for a chip with a Manufacters Suggested Retail Price of $499.gglaw - Friday, August 23, 2019 - link
@Andrei - I was just digging through reviews again before biting the bullet on a 3900X and one of the big questions that is not agreed upon in the tech community is gaming performance for PBO vs all-core overclock, yet you only run 2 benches on the overclocked settings. How can a review be complete with only 2 benches run, neither related to gaming? In a PURELY single threaded scenario PBO gives a tiny 2.X percent increase in single threaded Cinebench. This indicates to me that it is not sustaining the max 4.6 on a single core or it would have scaled better, so it may not be really comparing 4.6 vs 4.3 even for single threaded performance. Almost all recent game engines can at least utilize 4 threads, so I feel your exact same test run through the gaming suite would have shown a consistent winner with 4.3 all-core OC vs PBO. And in heavily threaded scenarios the gap would keep growing larger, but specifically in today's GAMES, especially if you consider very few of us have 0 background activity, all-core OC would hands-down win is my guess, but we could have better evidence of this if you could run a complete benchmarking suite. (unless I'm blind and missed it, in case my apologies :)I've been messing around with a 3700X, and even with a 14cm Noctua cooling it, it does not sustain max allowed boost on even a single core with PBO which is another thing I wish you touched on more. During your testing do you monitor the boost speeds and what percent of the time it can stay at the max boost over XX minutes?
Maxiking - Monday, August 26, 2019 - link
Veni, vidi viciYeah, I was right.
I would like to thank my family for all the support I have received whilst fighting amd fanboys.
It was difficult, sometimes I was seriously thinking about giving up but the truth can not be stopped!
The AMD fraud has been confirmed.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/cusn2t/...
Ninjawithagun - Thursday, October 10, 2019 - link
Now all you have to do is have all these benchmarks ran again after applying the 1.0.0.3. ABBA BIOS update ;-)quadibloc - Tuesday, November 12, 2019 - link
I am confused by the diagram of the current used by individual cores as the number of threads is increased. Since SMT doesn't double the performance of a core, on the 3900X, for example, shouldn't the number of cores in use increase to all 12 for the first 12 threads, one core for each thread, with all cores then remaining in use as the number of threads continues to increase to 24?Or is it just that this chart represents power consumption under a particular setting that minimizes the number of cores in use, and other settings that maximize performance are also possible?
SjLeonardo - Saturday, December 14, 2019 - link
Core and uncore get supplied by different VRMs, right?Parkab0y - Sunday, October 4, 2020 - link
I really want to see something like this about zen3 5000