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
— 𝐷𝑟. 𝐼𝑎𝑛 𝐶𝑢𝑡𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑠 (@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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callmebob - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link
Haha to myself.AMD's B550 slide tricked me for a moment, as it makes it appear as if the CPU only has 20 PCIe lanes total. Which is of course bollocks, Ryzen has 24 PCIe lanes total (20 usable + 4 chipset link).
Does it mean AMD artifically only allows 16 of the 20 CPU PCIe lanes to be used on B550 motherboards? Really? I am confused whether that is a mistake in the slide, or if that will be the actual reality. I hope, and for AMDs sake, it is the former...
DanNeely - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link
If you're talking about the "The New AMD B550 chipset" slides, the problem is they're poorly designed and you've misread them. On the left side of the 1st one you've got a box with 20 PCIe lanes 16 for the graphics and 4 for the chipset, then below that you've got a box with what is either 4 lanes for a single 4x 4.0 SSD, 2 sets of 2 lanes for a pair of 2x 4.0 SSDs, or a 2x PCIe link and 2 sata ports. Below that in the list of text it has 16 lanes and 8 lanes as the first two items.Makaveli - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link
The cooling fans on the X570 are silent as I've never heard mine once in the 6 month's I've been using it. I wouldn't worry about it.wr3zzz - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link
It's less about noise than durability. I've had two MB died on me prematurely in 30+ years and both are due to the little cooling fans dying. Unless you are buying top of the line $1000 MB, those fans are garbage comparing to what's used on GPU and CPU.callmebob - Friday, May 8, 2020 - link
> Unless you are buying top of the line $1000 MBOi, are you still using Zimbabwe dollaroos? ;-)
But yeah, other than the creative pricing i am totally with you in regard to those little teeny fans...
lightningz71 - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link
If I’m interested in CPUs in this price range, I’m also considering the following units:2700
2600x
2600
1600AF
3600
While I realize that the intel 10 series isn’t available yet, a low end current 9 series i5 and a higher end 9 series i3 would have also been relevant.
I realize that this was under a short deadline, but at least a couple of comparisons in that range for maybe a few tests would have helped.
For my money, the base 2700 is very hard to beat in this price range. It would only ever loose in things that are strictly single core or strictly AVX2, which are very case specific, and would wipe the floor with the 3300x in anything multi core sensitive, judging by the 2600 tests alone. It can usually be had for within $10 of the msrp of the 3300x.
The 3300x is interesting at $99. The 3100 at $80
Holliday75 - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link
Why does everyone spell lose with two "O's"?Namisecond - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link
Two not mutually exclusive possibilities:1. English is not their native language
2. They failed at English.
callmebob - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link
...because they are playing it loose with the spelling of lose.Also, Double O's posess a certain elgance, sophistication and general badassery. They are also deadly. Ooh, and keep your girl away from them, especially one particular Double O.
Ian Cutress - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link
When some people say lose, they put all the emphasis on the o, so it sounds longer, so they think one is not enough. Ask them to spell loose straight after, and you get to see some good old gears start clunking into place.