Reviews claim Ryzen 3 is a hit

AMD has been progressively releasing Ryzen CPUs to consumers, starting with the top of the line Ryzen 7 and then the midrange Ryzen 5. Now Ryzen 3 has been released, and reviews on the Ryzen 3 1200 and Ryzen 3 1300X are popping up all over the internet. AMD has priced the Ryzen 3 1200 (US$109) to compete against the i3-7100 (US$115), while the Ryzen 3 1300X (US$129) is targeting the i3-7300 (US$163).

Looking first at the Ryzen 3 1200 we have 4C/4T running at 3.1/3.4/3.45 GHz base/turbo/XFR, significantly lower than the 3.9 GHz i3-7100. The Ryzen 3 1300X is also a 4C/4T processor, but it runs at a faster 3.4/3.7/3.9 GHz base/turbo/XFR, giving a smaller variance to the Intel i3-7300 clocked at 4.0 GHz.

Reviews have found that the Ryzen 3 1200 is at a disadvantage when running at stock speeds. The decrease in clock speed means that it loses in single core workloads such as gaming, but trades blows with the 2C/4T Intel chips in multi-threaded tasks. Straight out of the box the Ryzen 3 1300X performs similarly to the two i3 CPUs in many single threaded workloads but creates a sizeable lead when comparing multi-thread scenarios.

These Ryzen 3 CPUs get even more interesting when you take into consideration that both have unlocked multipliers for overclocking. Results that we have seen show that most reviewers can get the Ryzen 3 1300X stable at 4.0 GHz with all four cores — an 18% increase over the base clock (rounded). However, these early samples of the Ryzen 3 1200 also appear to be great overclockers, generally reaching 3.9 GHz with 4.0 GHz also being possible — a 26-29% increase in clock speed over the base value (rounded). The benchmark results once overclocked often matched the even more expensive 4C/4T i5-7500 (US$189).

Tomshardware has awarded the Ryzen 3 1300X an editors choice award, Techspot gave a score of 90% and described the Ryzen 3 1200 as "outstanding," while Guru3D declared Ryzen 3 as "great value." Positive concluding comments were generally around the low price (including motherboard chipset), four physical cores, and overclocking ability.

It appears that AMD has hit hard at the budget segment with two highly compelling CPUs, especially for overclocking enthusiasts longing for the days where the goal was to get the most value possible out of a cheap processor. Is there any reason now to buy an i3 processor? Share your thoughts with us below.

Note: Prices retrieved from Amazon at the time of writing

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