Review: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X and Ryzen 7 3700X

Conclusion

AMD impressed the technology world when it debuted the Zen CPU architecture a couple of years ago. Immediately competitive in multi-threaded applications and reasonable at gaming, executives were bombastic about future Zen designs improving upon the muscular original in every way.

Two years later, Zen 2, manufactured on a leading-edge 7nm process, hits the consumer market in the form of the Ryzen 3000-series chips. There is indeed a generous IPC lift between generations, enough for AMD to become truly competitive in gaming, whilst the benefits of a smaller, efficient process enables Ryzen to shoehorn more cores than ever before.

Our testing shows Zen 2 fulfills AMD's promise of ever-improving performance in every facet that matters, all the while keeping to the established AM4 form factor.

Laying down siege on Intel's finest mainstream processor, Core i9-9900K, is the similarly-priced Ryzen 9 3900X. AMD's monster, carrying 12 cores and 24 threads, hammers Intel's best in multi-threaded applications, where the gulf in performance is arresting and decisive. Zen 2's improved IPC manifests itself with much-improved FHD gaming performance, which whilst not quite as sharp as Intel's, is more than decent. Run alongside a powerful GeForce RTX 2080 Ti FE card, the Ryzen 9 3900X becomes a very competent gaming chip into the mix, especially at higher resolutions. And all this power is wrapped inside a package that actually consumes less power than the Intel equivalent.

If Ryzen 9 3900X is impressive for the performance junkie, the Ryzen 7 3700X is even better for the mainstream user. Priced at £300 or so, this 65W chip comfortably bests last year's Ryzen 7 2700X in every benchmark that matters. Actually, it's relatively close to that dearer Core i9-9900K in most tests, all the while consuming vastly lower power.

Potent multi-threaded performance is allied to handsome gaming credentials and fortified by an energy-efficient design. It's a processor that, at its current price, has no obvious weaknesses. Every so often a chip comes along that verges on being a no-brainer buy. Ryzen 7 3700X is that processor for this generation. Building a £1,000-£1,500 PC which is excellent in all areas? Start off with the Ryzen 7 3700X and build around it.

Bottom line: AMD's Ryzen 3000-series CPUs impress through a heady combination of excellent performance, restrained power consumption, decent pricing, and solid motherboard support. An improvement over their predecessors in every meaningful way.

AMD Ryzen 7 3700X

AMD Ryzen 9 3900X

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The AMD Ryzen 3000-series processors are available to buy at Scan Computers.

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