AMD Ryzen 7 2700 vs AMD Ryzen 3 PRO 3300U

AMD Ryzen 7 2700

The AMD Ryzen 7 2700 is an eight-core desktop processor that can handle sixteen threads simultaneously thanks to Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT). This technology is equivalent to Intel's Hyper-Threading. Launched in April 2018, the Ryzen 7 2700 is the second fastest Ryzen 7 processor and is much more economical than its flagship sibling. The Ryzen 7 2700 has a 65 W TDP, which is nearly 50% more efficient than the 105 W TDP Ryzen 7 2700 X. This energy efficiency comes at a cost to performance though.

The Ryzen 7 2700 has a base clock speed of 3.2 GHz, which can be boosted by Extended Frequency Range (XFR) up to 4.1 GHz. The power gain is still high in multi-threaded applications, although this is some way off the Ryzen 7 2700X. The Ryzen 7 2700 benefits from AMD's new Zen+ architecture, with a greater number of instructions per cycle (IPC) and higher clock speeds than last year's Zen chips. The Ryzen 7 2700's eight cores are divided into two clusters that are connected by Infinity Fabric, a subset of HyperTransport. Each cluster has its own L3 cache.

The Ryzen 7 2700 has good performance in games. However, if it is operating at a lower base clock because of low TDP, then the Ryzen 7 2700 falls behind the Ryzen 5 2600 in gaming benchmarks. This behaviour could be because many games currently lack multi-core support. Hence, games rely more on clock speed more than core count.

Detailed information, benchmarks and values can be found in our review of the Ryzen 7 2700.

AMD Ryzen 3 PRO 3300U

The AMD Ryzen 3 PRO 3300U is a mobile SoC that was announced in January 2019. It combines four Zen+ cores (no SMT / Hyperthreading so only 4 threads) clocked at 2.1 - 3.5 GHz with a Radeon RX Vega 6 graphics card with 6 CUs (384 Shaders) clocked at up to 1200 MHz. Specified at 15 Watt TDP, the SoC is intended for thin mid-range laptops. Compared to the similar consumer variant Ryzen 3 3300U, the PRO model features additional management and security features (e.g., full memory encryption) and longer warranty / availability.

The Picasso SoCs use the Zen+ microarchitecture with slight improvements that should lead to a 3% IPS (performance per clock) improvements. Furthermore, the 12nm process allows for higher clock rates at similar power consumptions.

The integrated dual-channel memory controller supports up to DDR4-2400 memory. As the features of the Picasso APUs are the same compared to the Raven Ridge predecessors, we point to our Raven Ridge launch article.

AMD states that the Picasso APUs are about 8% faster than the predecessors. Therefore, the Ryzen 3 PRO 3300U should be similar to the Ryzen 5 PRO 2500U (2 - 3.6 GHz but with SMT).