The AMD Ryzen 3 3300X and 3100 CPU Review: A Budget Gaming Bonanza
by Dr. Ian Cutress on May 7, 2020 9:00 AM ESTCPU Performance: New Tests!
As part of our ever on-going march towards a better rounded view of the performance of these processors, we have a few new tests for you that we’ve been cooking in the lab. Some of these new benchmarks provide obvious talking points, others are just a bit of fun. Most of them are so new we’ve only run them on a few processors so far. It will be interesting to hear your feedback!
NAMD ApoA1
One frequent request over the years has been for some form of molecular dynamics simulation. Molecular dynamics forms the basis of a lot of computational biology and chemistry when modeling specific molecules, enabling researchers to find low energy configurations or potential active binding sites, especially when looking at larger proteins. We’re using the NAMD software here, or Nanoscale Molecular Dynamics, often cited for its parallel efficiency. Unfortunately the version we’re using is limited to 64 threads on Windows, but we can still use it to analyze our processors. We’re simulating the ApoA1 protein for 10 minutes, and reporting back the ‘nanoseconds per day’ that our processor can simulate. Molecular dynamics is so complex that yes, you can spend a day simply calculating a nanosecond of molecular movement.
Crysis CPU Render
One of the most oft used memes in computer gaming is ‘Can It Run Crysis?’. The original 2007 game, built in the Crytek engine by Crytek, was heralded as a computationally complex title for the hardware at the time and several years after, suggesting that a user needed graphics hardware from the future in order to run it. Fast forward over a decade, and the game runs fairly easily on modern GPUs, but we can also apply the same concept to pure CPU rendering – can the CPU render Crysis? Since 64 core processors entered the market, one can dream. We built a benchmark to see whether the hardware can.
Smooth#canitruncrysis pic.twitter.com/k7x31ULndF
— ๐ท๐. ๐ผ๐๐ ๐ถ๐ข๐ก๐๐๐ ๐ (@IanCutress) May 4, 2020
For this test, we’re running Crysis’ own GPU benchmark, but in CPU render mode. This is a 2000 frame test, which we run over a series of resolutions from 800x600 up to 1920x1080.
| Crysis CPU Render Frames Per Second |
||||||
| AnandTech | 800 x600 |
1024 x768 |
1280 x800 |
1366 x768 |
1600 x900 |
1920 x1080 |
| AMD | ||||||
| Ryzen 9 4900HS | 11.50 | 8.75 | 7.44 | 6.83 | 5.21 | 4.30 |
| Ryzen 5 3600 | 9.98 | 7.84 | 6.69 | 6.15 | 4.75 | 3.92 |
| Ryzen 3 3300X | 8.42 | 6.52 | 5.43 | 5.01 | 3.92 | 3.07 |
| Ryzen 3 3100 | 7.50 | 5.78 | 4.87 | 4.5 | 3.54 | 2.77 |
| Intel | ||||||
| Core i7-7700K | 7.63 | 5.87 | 4.95 | 4.55 | 3.57 | 2.79 |
| Core i7-9750H | 6.78 | 5.17 | 4.37 | 3.99 | 3.12 | 2.46 |
Dwarf Fortress
Another long standing request for our benchmark suite has been Dwarf Fortress, a popular management/roguelike indie video game, first launched in 2006. Emulating the ASCII interfaces of old, this title is a rather complex beast, which can generate environments subject to millennia of rule, famous faces, peasants, and key historical figures and events. The further you get into the game, depending on the size of the world, the slower it becomes.
DFMark is a benchmark built by vorsgren on the Bay12Forums that gives two different modes built on DFHack: world generation and embark. These tests can be configured, but range anywhere from 3 minutes to several hours. I’ve barely scratched the surface here, but after analyzing the test, we ended up going for three different world generation sizes.
Interestingly Intel's hardware likes Dwarf Fortress.
We also have other benchmarks in the wings, such as AI Benchmark (ETH), LINPACK, and V-Ray, however they still require a bit of tweaking to get working it seems.
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PeterCollier - Monday, May 11, 2020 - link
Did you really feel the need to add 40 comments a week later the article was published? And on a Monday? Please tell us what company, Intel or AMD, that you work for.Spunjji - Tuesday, May 12, 2020 - link
Yes, reading article comments five days "late" definitely indicates that I work for a tech company, and not that I only visit this place once or twice a week during my lunch break. But hey, basing trolls is what I do for amusement. What's your excuse for trolling in the first place?kepstin - Friday, May 8, 2020 - link
I suspect that the 2600 was put into the charts as a stand-in for the 1600AF. The 1600AF should perform very close to the 2600 in most benchmarks - just a touch slower due to reduced clock speeds.rabidpeach - Friday, May 8, 2020 - link
1600af is represented by the 2600. the 2600 is just slightly better than it. this is not a problem. also amazon is out of them. the only benchmarks these processors win are high core count. daily life the 100 3100 will be faster so why hobble yourself with the smaller cache and 12nm?DanNeely - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link
Something I've been wondering about for a while, is that when the first Ryzen announcements were made I read articles saying that the inclusion of some SATA/USB on the CPU itself would allow for cheaper entry level mobos/systems that used the CPU as an SoC without a chipset at all. However I don't recall ever seeing anything built that way. I'm inclined to doubt that it is possible but that no one has ever done it because for a low end system without a discrete GPU the CPU appears to have enough IO to cover all the bases. Were the initial reports wrong? Is it something that's only shown up in cheap OEM systems but never DIY boards?neblogai - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link
Deskmini A300 is made this way- althouth it has no dGPU slot and requires an APU. This also allows the PC to idle at just 8-10W, compared to ~20W(?) for PCs that use motherboards with chipsets.DanNeely - Friday, May 8, 2020 - link
just one system by a single vendor. Kinda disappointing IMO since the CPU has enough connectivity for a basic no frills system, and would've been a reasonable option for a budget mITX board.Spunjji - Monday, May 11, 2020 - link
Agreed. I'd love to build a system in my existing USFF ITX case using something like an ITX version of the Deskmini A300 board, but for some reason nobody's doing it. I'm genuinely cluesless as to what "some reason" might be, too, as the A300 proves the concept just fine.Slash3 - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link
ASRock's DeskMini A300 series systems are the closest configuration to this, lacking a secondary chipset.notb - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link
A lot of focus in this text is about how 3300X ($120) compares to 7700K ($329, 3 years ago).Wouldn't it be nice to see how 3300X compares to high-end original Ryzen? ;)
The choice of CPUs is really weird. 8086K? 4790K? Really?
1600X, 1700, 1700X, 1800X - all probably beaten in most games and synthetic single-thread. In a lot of software as well (since 7700K used to beat 1800X occasionally).
1800X: $499