AMD’s Ryzen 7 3700X and Ryzen 9 3900X CPUs reviewed

Question & Answers (164)

1. If they do that, then they should technically add the cost of the corsair into the price scatter-plot. It would only be fair since wraith coolers are free.

2. Where’s the 5700XT review?

3. AMD Ryzen 9 3900X & AMD Ryzen 7 3700X – > Cooling: AMD Wraith Prism
   Intel Core i7-8700K & Intel Core i9-9900K -> Cooling: Corsair H110i
   syrlysly?

4. AnandTech had that problem back in 2001 IIRC and fixed it.
   There’s a Print option that makes the entire review a single page.

   ScanAudio speaks very highly of the new AMDs and DAWBench tests show the 3700X on par with 9700/9900 and beating all Intel’s on IPC from the 7700k back. Pretty impressive.

   There’s also evidence of super low latency overclocked DRAM that actually speeds up certain workloads.
   This definitely is no reverse engineered Design.

   Best news, Intel is going to counter before years end, leaks no doubt. CES 2020 will be Intel’s revenge.
   I’m still getting the 3700X just to thank AMD for being itself again.
   Sure look forward to Intel’s angry reply.

5. I liked the dropdown that lest you quickly see the title for each page and quickly switch between them.
   Would be nice to have something that achieves the same functionality back.

6. The lack of a next page button is really hampering the readability of the article. I wonder if there would be a way to code it. the page numbers are too easy for me to misclick when i poke my finger at the screen.

7. https://www.techspot.com/review/1871-amd-ryzen-3600/
   [quote=”Steven Walton”] Ryzen 5 3600 offers a tremendous value. It smoked the Core i5-9600K in every single application benchmark we ran and worst case matches its single core performance. You get 12 threads opposed to just 6, so it’s no doubt going to age better, but this time you don’t have to roll the dice on Ryzen’s longevity, as it’s already faster today. [/quote]

8. I am going off of a review I found on PCper. In the CPU Bench test the AMD 3700x outperforms the Intel i5-9600k but in the gaming the i5-9600 runs neck and neck with 3700x

9. i have only seen that in one review and one game (gamers nexus and assassins creed)
   might be that one game that does it which is fine as i dont have any plans on playing it

10. argh i meant z370 motherboard

11. i agree and in some areas (australia at least) the 9600k has had a price dump to in between the 3600 and 3600x but it seems usa doesnt have the price drop for them yet (at least newegg that i checked)
    a z170 motherboard is close to the price of a decent b450 motherboard too

    i just sold my 1700x and im actually going 9600k myself

12. Frame times on the 9600k make it not that good.

13. “aside from 1-2 nanoseconds of wire latency”

    Hmm. Signals travel through bond wires at no less than ten inches per nanosecond.

    Those are some long bond wires. My guess is they’re including every possible gate delay and adding a few clock cycles into this “1-2 nanoseconds” quote.

14. The fastest chiplets can be selected to make a very fast multi-core while leaving the slower chiplets for less expensive models. Otherwise the base and max clock could not be going up as core count goes up. This is a great new paradigm!

15. Opps. I was not seeing my comment posted so I tried again and it said about a duplicate comment detected, even after refreshing the page so I entered another name and it posted and my original posted as well….

    not a fan of this new comment section on the main site.

16. I was thinking about upgrading to the 3700x until I saw some benchmarks that had the i5-9600K in it. IMO the i5-9600K would be a better / slightly cheaper purchase.

    Am I wrong?

17. I was thinking about upgrading to the 3700x until I saw some benchmarks that had the i5-9600K in it. IMO the i5-9600K would be a better / slightly cheaper purchase.

    Am I wrong?

18. Comments like the ones you are replying to make me quickly miss having to be registered to comment. Not that it stops such ignorance, but at least they would have to jump through more hurdles first.

    Maybe the community can come together to help TR acquire the necessary tools to resume DAW testing? I know I have consumed enough content here to warrant putting a few bucks up for the cause.

19. Memory write bandwidth is halved on the single chiplet parts. This was an intentional move on AMD’s part.

20. Does anyone have a clue about what is going on with the AIDA Memory bandwidth results?
    I noticed the same performance on other review sites.
    The Ryzen 3 3700X has a very low write bandwidth, and also its read bandwidth is lower than all the other cpus.
    On the other hand, the Ryzen 9 3900x performs great. The latency is about the same between the two.

21. I was looking for the most commented stories and most liked comment links. It may just be me, but couldn’t find them. I frequently learn more from the comments than the stories. Sometimes they’re even funny, though not as often as the people writing think they are.

22. Out of curiosity does anyone know which of TSMC’s 7nm processes is used? Intel made a big fuss over millions of transistors per millimetre squared so I was wondering which one AMD used the 96MTr/mm2 or the 113MTr/mm2 one

23. Impressive. Well done AMD, again.

24. There isn’t even a next button or link!

25. Daw benchmark was what took me to TR. i hope you manage to get Daw benchmarks again soon. There are actually a couple of people that care a lot for them.
    Asio4all may solve you problem. but i don´t know if it has an impact in audio performance that ruins your benchmarks. But it shouldn´t be hard to try

26. Yes, basic functionality is missing, like the drop-down menu for selecting between pages.

27. SAY WHAT!? Where is the drop-down menu for selecting between the pages of the article?

28. Audio benchmarks can be run with onboard soundcards if you use ASIO4All.

29. Zak: Great review of really interesting new chips! The look may be different, but the content is the TR many of us have come to know and look forward to! And now that it is above the fold for those of us using PC’s, I hope many others will give you the kudos you deserve for a job well done.

30. Yep, I’m an idiot. 🙂

31. It’s also mentioned in the article. 😛 Specifically, it’s an IOD fabricated on 14nm instead of 12nm.

32. I don’t have a 7700K on-hand to test, sorry. Thanks for commenting.

33. Unfortunately, TR doesn’t exist in one big office. The Focusrite audio interface we have used in previous reviews was purchased out-of-pocket by Jeff Kampman, our previous editor in chief, and I don’t have access to any such device.

    There’s also the matter of the complicated licensing for the expensive software required to run DAW testing. In the end, no matter how much I wanted to do it — and I did — there was simply no way.

34. So much whitespace, so much scrolling, so many page numbers without page titles not listed in a handy dropdown box.

35. Agreed Mr Bill – a top effort Zak, well done on a very special flagship review mate. It reads very well mate.

36. I’m disappointed too. It’s not all about gaming and creating YouTube videos.

37. I very rarely criticise TR, but this new “look and feel” is absolutely hideous.

38. They would be outclassed by the items in the current line-up more notably on the productivity side.

39. Many thanks for the nice review. It’s great to have some new meaty content, and good luck with getting the redesign sorted out.

40. 3 characters per line are visible with Safari at 1920×1080, landscape.

    I.was really looking forward to TR’s gerbildom commenting on these new CPUs.

41. Zach, A nicely done review! The 3900X is really an upgrade. I like you putting all the traces in a grid. Its easier to compare them; good idea. Can one say that one advantage of the chiplet architecture is that the fastest chiplets can be reserved for the high end CPU? It seems it must be that way when a CPU with more cores can clock higher than one with less cores. It lets AMD turn the paradigm on its head. Faster CPU’s are assembled with the faster chicklets. Period.

42. Let’s call this what it is…

    Comment gate

43. …and since I can’t quote myself, it appears this is common knowledge and was announced about a month ago.

44. Curious why 9-series i5s and i7s weren’t included?

    p.s. why do i need to input my name and email to post a comment, if i’m already logged in?

45. Hardware Unboxed recently made a video comparing the 7700K and 1800X with more recent games.
    Could you please include the 7700K test results as well?
    Comparing it to 1800X could be interesting (and might indicate the gaming performance of the 9900K vs the 3900X a couple of years from now).

46. I think that video skips a few important parts.
    Firstly, the older chipsets didn’t even have PCIe 3, which is a very important distinction. PCIe used a different encoding scheme than the older versions and has quite different transceiver requirements.
    To support PCIe 3 (or 4) the chipset also needs to support PCIe 2 and 1, meaning it needs all the hardware for both transceiver standards.
    As you know form all the benchmarks, tests, overclockin etc, Power consumption has a linear relation to switching frequency. as PCIe 4 switches literally twice as fast as PCIe 3 the dynamic power consumption will also double. PCIe 3 again is 1.6x the switching speeds as PCIe 2.
    Also PCIe uses line-encoding to enforce enough 1 – 0 transitions to be able to do clock/data recovery, making it switch almost independent of the amount/sort of data.

    That (including the video above) would just be the impact of 1 lane of PCIe. As the X570 has 4 lanes to the cpu, it would stand to reason at least those would be active most of the time. Then there is the amount of connections to the outside world from the X570. I count 16 endpoint PCIe 4 lanes, 8x 10GBit USB3.2 lanes, 4 SATA ports and some usb2 ports. Going from 4 lanes to all these outputs will need quite some internal switching, routing, buffering etc.

    Lastly, PCIe 3 has some stricter specs on signal quality and might need better (re)-drivers.
    That said, the high idle power draw, might just be an early version bug which keeps the chipset from power gating, or even just from downtraining back to PCIe 1 speeds when idle

47. Srsly. The comments and regulars are the reason I come here. The comment section is unusable and I can’t see where my bros at.

    Send help.

48. Really disappointed myself. Looks like another bunch of lazy reviewers who just wanted to cash in on whats hot right now rather than sticking to their guns and providing great, hard to find content.

49. Too bad the reviewer didn’t have time to do audio benchmarks.
    What’s the use of accepting professional tools from NI, RME and DAWBench if the CPU reviewers cant use the tools, don’t have them or don’t want to.

    Had high hopes for this review site.
    Well at least TR received nice hardware and software, hopefully you got to keep everything.

50. I’m a music producer and I found this site by googling DAWbench. You guys give some excellent info for the music producer community. I hope you guys find the time after this big release to get the tests done again. Thanks again.

51. The rumor mill is circulating the idea that the X570 is just one of the IO dies without any real power-gating.

52. This is welcome commentary, but please help us out by sharing it in this thread where I’m trying to keep everything organized.

53. Re: website design change
    Longtime lurker/fan here; TR (was) my favorite go-to tech site. The new change is awful, dumb, and a complete waste of space! At the *very least*, give us a switch at the bottom or top so we can *choose* between mobile and desktop formats. Oh, and if the purpose of the change was *increase* ad revenue, you’ve accomplished the exact opposite (can’t see much now)! Sorry to pile, but…. 🙁

54. I got beat on the web navigator comment 🙂

    Excellent review guys……….off to read the Radeon RX 5700 sutff

55. Good one, noted.

56. The page navigator with the summary of each page’s contents, along with the next and previous buttons are sorely missed. Please, bring those back.

57. The previously existing comments will be back soon. We’re working out some things. Use href for links now, BTW.

58. Where’d all the comments go with the new website design?

    Anyway (if this is the right place) [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qk3PD-4zPN0]Here’s Der8auer’s video on X570 chipset power consumption[/url] (skip to 14:00 for full results table).

    Looks like AMD REALLY borked their attempt at an in-house chipset design. Power consumption is 2x what the X470 chipset needed. PCIe4.0 imparts nearly zero extra power consumption from the chipset. And he was able to keep the chipset at 73C under a comically tiny passive heatsink.

59. Here’s hoping you can get it done. Should generate some extra traffic too because not that many reviewers test audio software in their productivity tests(not that there’s a very straightforward and consistent way to do it lol).

60. We’ll try, but no promises or estimates at this time.

61. When do you hope to have the DAWBench results up? Would love to see them….

62. What is going on here!! Well I’m glad TR is back in the saddle as I was wondering if there would even be a review up. All this brightness on my screen though! Also thanks for mentioning that all the current patches are installed for mitigations. Some of the reviews I don’t know if I’m looking at old or new data.

63. Costs per wafer increased pretty dramatically with the move the 7 nm and, being a new manufacturing process, yields are going to be lower. The chiplet strategy allows AMD to produce smaller dies that increase effective yields for the same defect density, allows them to bin more aggressively because of the larger number of dies, and allows them to reuse the 7 nm parts across multiple product lines. It’s certainly an economical decision first and foremost, but it’s not without its benefits.

64. Multi chip modules (MCMs) have become a lot more popular in the semiconductor world outside of the CPU business. There are a lot of advantages of MCMs and AMD probably just realized that the performance advantage of using a single die wasn’t worth giving up all the advantages of an MCM.

    I wouldn’t be surprised if we see Intel do the same thing in the near future.

65. I am guessing it was a combination of yield concerns on the new process, and wanting extra flexibility to mix-n-match compute dies in different combinations to meet different needs. They’d already started down this path with Threadripper and Epyc; splitting out the I/O was kind of a logical next step I guess.

    The smaller process node is also less of an advantage for I/O; you don’t have transistor-dense structures like cache and vector ALUs/FPUs, and you need larger transistors to drive the external buses anyway. So you might as well use a more mature process for that.

66. I’m asking about how to do links, I tested with HTML and it didn’t work.

67. [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otCpCn0l4Wo]AMD: You can’t touch this [/url]

68. As Zak mentioned in the comments that got wiped by the redesign launching, it wasn’t intentional. Moving the licensing around is complicated and he simply couldn’t do it in time. There’s a chance we’ll be able to run those test later, though.

69. It’s on now. I have power to approve posts and will try to stay on top of things today as the dust continues to settle.

70. Dropped the ball by not doing a DAWBench test this time around. That’s literally the only thing I want to see. Improved memory and core to core latency is a huge deal for audio production and many of us have been waiting quite a while for this because we need cores and speed but don’t want to blow $1200 on a 9920X.

71. They didn’t survive The Click. I’m hoping they can be ported over soon.

72. Great review as usual thank you so much.
    Memory latency was the only weakness i saw from AMD Ryzen 3000 series, other than that they are great cpus for any workloads!

73. It’s a great review.

    The layout change is a bit jarring.

74. Where are all the comments from earlier???

75. I like the new layout and nice review.

76. im actually selling my ryzen 1700X and getting an intel mostly just because it might be the last overclockable cpu if intel goes the same way and releases cpus so close to the limit that they cant be clocked any further
    i know im a niche but i actually like overclocking and since intel cpus are pretty cheap now after the price cuts im going back to the dark side

77. You note a regression in the memory latency test. However, I note that the Ryzen 3000 CPUs are being tested with 16-16-16 timings vs. the 14-14-14 timings of the others. This is likely because the Ryzen 3000 is at 3600 while the others are at 3200. Can you tell us what the AIDA 64 memory latency is when the memory is at 3200 14-14-14 speeds? I think that memory latency tests are usually used to show theoretical architectural differences, so the other variables in memory speed should be held constant.

    On another note, the auto-scaling of the charts causes several of the fields to text wrap in the middle of product names or words (in a maximized 1080p browser window). I thing that perhaps you should just upload the charts as images and only allow the auto-layout tool to handle the text wrapping for the main body text of the article.

78. This is of course not the first time it’s being done, but I’m not fond of the concept of “chiplets” for CPU tasks. Is AMD in trouble here? I thought they were starting to kick some ass with their recent offerings, but now I’m not so sure. Are they having trouble making the new fab process work for full-blown CPUs? Or have they hit a limit (cost, reliability, whatever) designing CPU stuff to all fit inside a single CPU chip? Or a combined CPU+GPU chip?

79. *tap* *tap* *tap*
    Is this thing on?

80. Unless you need the horsepower of additional threads, I don’t see much reason to replace the 8700K. That’s still a very capable chip.

81. Unfortunately, the age of overclocking is largely over. Manufacturers are increasingly squeezing every last inch of performance out of the box, and the little left remaining is now often handled pretty well by software overclocking tools. I actually have more fun undervolting my CPUs now to maintain performance while lowering the power bill.

    Zen 2 is more power efficient, roughly on par with Intel in IPC, and significantly cheaper. Those are huge wins for the marketplace, but not as sexy as big overclocker.

82. Solid review Zak, thanks. Great to see TR with a launch day review again.

    I have a few questions:

    1. With the 3700X, are both CCXs on the same CCD? There was a pre-lease rumour that claimed there would be one CCX on each of 2 CCDs?

    2. The 6-core 3600 seems to get the same amount of L3 cache – 32MB – as the 8-core 3700X?
    Is that right?

    3. Why is AIDA64 memory write so low on the 3700X vs the 3900X?

    4. Crypto seems comparatively weak vs. Intel – any thoughts as to why and performance ramifications in real world use (Bitlocker, dm-crypt)?

    5. Any early indications on virtual machine performance?

    The high memory latency does look a bit worrying on the surface – will be interesting to see if this impacts performance meaningfully in any real-world workflows.

    Overall this looks like an impressive result here from AMD. They seem to have matched or slightly exceeded Intel in IPC. It’s just a shame they won’t OC to the high 4 GHz range – maybe that will come with Ryzen 4! Even still, the value for money here is undeniable, and the performance delta in gaming is now negligible in most titles after the significant improvements over Ryzen 2.

    A 3700X is now on my shopping list for Black Friday (what can I say, I’m not an early adopter). Since these CPUs don’t seem to overclock well, I don’t like tiny fans on mobos, and I don’t need the new features (PCIe 4.0, etc.), I’d forego the Rolls-Royce X570 to save some cash and go with a quality B450 board. I’ll wait to see more real world feedback and reviews with software I use regularly, but it may be time to replace my old Haswell 8 thread CPU.

83. Why?
    They both R5 and i5 have 6 cores and games don’t really use more than that and from other reviews I have seen sometimes smt hinders performance and sometimes it helps so it’s a wash with smt
    I have learned to never predict future game core usage and to buy what’s good NOW and to upgrade often instead of buying the expensive thing hoping it will last long by predicting future game usage
    My 3930k taught me that lesson

    For non gaming it’s a no brainer everyone knows ryzen is way better for the price

84. If I was in the market right now I wouldn’t buy an i5. I’d get an i7, or maybe the R5 3600X. The thing is that the i7 9700k is $400, and local deals are… local. If you can get one that’s great, but not everyone can.

85. Pretty disappointed in ryzen myself
    With all the talks about high clocks it sucks seeing them pretty much at their max clocks out the box and still behind Intel in gaming overall

    It wouldn’t be so bad being behind if you could overclock them but they are pretty much max clocked out of the box and even with high voltage reports are they don’t go any higher than around 4.3ghz all core

    With the recent discounts on intel CPUs they are a better alternative at a better price

    [url<]https://www.pccasegear.com/products/46914/amd-ryzen-5-3600x-with-wraith-spire[/url<] [url<]https://www.pccasegear.com/products/44159/intel-core-i5-9600k-processor[/url<] $359 9600k vs $389 3600X

86. Why would you be sad about the 9600k?
    At the same clock it’s still faster than ryzen in games (but not in cinebench which is odd) and it comes with a faster clock and overclocks better
    Not sure how much it cost you but with the discounts on it at my local computer shops it’s cheaper than the 3600X
    [url<]https://www.pccasegear.com/products/46914/amd-ryzen-5-3600x-with-wraith-spire[/url<] [url<]https://www.pccasegear.com/products/44159/intel-core-i5-9600k-processor[/url<] It's still a better CPU imo than the ryzen

87. Pet peeve: people using “exponentially” for any increase more than linear, or for any accelerating growth process.

    A little bit of math leads us to expect that the dominant term in the relationship between power consumption and processor clock is cubic rather than exponential. And from what I’ve seen that holds reasonably well for these kind of relatively small frequency changes close to a processor’s design point.

    Ignoring lower order terms, that would lead us to expect the 3800X to take 27% more power. I suspect that the 40W TDP difference, which is 62% more, isn’t just the higher power due to base clock but involves other factors like giving it more room for boost without throttling.

88. I’ve been thinking about the AMD 3700X for my next build. One reason I hesitate is that I got badly burned by the chipset for the Athlon 64 build I did years ago.

    My youngest son wants me to update now since he’ll get my old system, but I’m in no rush and I was quite surprised by how well the Core i7-8700K held up.

89. [quote<]but he can't tell you - for reasons.[/quote<] now i get it

90. X370 and X470 follow-up would be superb. I have two X370 Asus boards (Strix and Prime) that I would be willing to loan to TR for a follow-up review. (And that could come with a Ryzen 5 1600 in it.)

    I agree with you on the 3700X also. What a killer value.

91. The “northbridge” on those systems didn’t include the memory controller, though, I thought – I thought the Clarkdale/Arrandale memory controller was on the graphics die.

92. 65W – 105W are targets, not set in stone (as one example)

93. I really would have thought my 7900x would have been more future proof. It’s delidded and running on an all core 4.6 OC, so it’s fine but 2 years ago 10 coars and 20 threads was SO INCREDIBLE, and it’s like that 1,000 CPU plus the extra 200 for delidding, and well it will be (and is fine). However when you drop that kind of coin you don’t expect it to be disrupted to quickly, I guess in another year I might be buying whatever comes after this from AMD should this process continue.

    Really excited to see competition back! (and TR too!!!)

94. Hey Scott, I’m playing a mobile game with a woman from Lee’s summit, I actually asked her if she knew you (small towns and all, I’m from NY and stuff), of course she didn’t, but it was a nice throwback.

    And yes, VERY nice to see a launch day TR review, I’m not the top contributor for no reason, will ANYONE dethrone me???

95. Nope. This is on Zak and the TR staff. Good job, folks!

96. Now kill it! Another article OCing whatever there is out of these chips. Can they hit 4.7 all-core with better cooling and aggressive voltage? What about RAM, does 4000 make things better? What about the latest AGESA? Still so many questions and so little answers…

97. Breathtaking!

    on a more serious note, nice review, I was kinda surprised to see it so early)) My hypetrain honestly got derailed quite hard, i was expecting better clocks, but still, well done AMD. 5700XT also is a nice welcome, just not at that price, IMO.

98. I’m tempted to buy, but I do not trust the mothers with factory fans.

    I absolutely need a fan replacement article for those fans on the mother. Is it doable and practical? if you need to discard a mother because the fan failed, then it is worthless.

    I lost a lot of hardware to accumulation of carpets of dust.

99. I think it simply comes down to AMD simplifying things for OEMs. By providing two TDP targets OEMs can safely make a “65W” cooler and a “105W cooler.”

100. Aight bro, I fixed it for you. 🙂

101. Through their floundering years I always wanted to pick up some of their stock at $2 and just hold it for years and see what happened. Kicking myself in the butt for that one lol

102. He promised, you heard it here first!

103. Having lived through nearly 16 years of their CPUs largely whelming though, it is worth taking a moment to appreciate this return to competition regardless. I do expect Ice Lake will take back the IPC crown in a big way in short order, but that looks like it can only clock high enough to be suitable to ultrabooks for now.

104. While it’s not entirely true, it’s definitely the norm.

105. Something about that phrase sounds familiar…

106. X570 chipset is quite a bit more power-thirsty than earlier Socket AM4 chipsets—so much so that AMD’s partners equipped every single X570 mainboard with active chipset cooling.

     This is incorrect. The oarus xtreme x570 doesn’t have a chipset fan.

107. Ah, dang. That’s a shame, but I expect it’s probably a sizeable improvement. Hopefully someone out there will test this, you guys are one of the only ones that I’ve seen do DAW stuff.

     Thanks.

108. For a “golden” sample on LN2 it’s possible, but….

109. It isn’t unthinkable. AMD should have been able to best a nearly-five year old architecture (Skylake) and its derivatives.

110. i wonder how theHEVC encoding compares to the Turing NVENC with the 3900x.

111. For me a graphics card is simply a waste of money, I don’t play games.

     And that’s not to say I think the Performance and Perf-Per-Watt of these new Ryzen’s aren’t very impressive, because they are.

     It’s just it would take Intel to make “Netburst 2” to make me switch back to AMD again, and with Sunny Cove coming, with purportedly a similar percentage IPC improvement to Zen 2, on I hope 10nm, that doesn’t seem likely, I think Intel learned their lesson.

     I also hope Intel learned it with the 10nm debacle………

112. Yeah, you probably should have waited.

113. Anyone who thought they were going to get 5ghz were um, optimistic. It looks like most reviewers got around 4.3 on all core overclocking (from what I could tell). I say they had pretty decent results overall. Bringing the prices down on CPU’s is always nice. I’ll pass but I have a current cpu. Changing out processors and boards is just not worth it.

114. 9700K and 9900K are fine if you are willing to tolerate the cooling that it is needed to keep the beasts tame at maximum load.

115. Sure makes the “5GHz” leaks over the past while look pretty dodgy, doesn’t it?

116. Wow. And they’re really bordering on false advertising with the “max” boost clocks. His samples could barely if at all) hit their advertised max boost clocks even on custom water cooling.

     I wonder what clock speeds are with TRs samples under the stock coolers.

117. Well, neither version is obsolete. The 1809 build will continue getting updates for quite a while. More importantly, not everyone updates to the latest Windows release as soon as it’s released, especially since 1903 hasn’t even been fully rolled out by MS.

     This optimization theoretically should provide a decent benefit for processes that spawn threads that are tightly dependent on each other, for instance processes like games. Windows by far being the gaming enthusiast OS of choice and TR typically benchmarking gaming related hardware and software, I think it makes sense to benchmark something that could possibly provide a tangible benefit on the top CPUs that a lot of gerbils here are interested in.

118. Really regretting my 9600K purchase right now

119. With the Zen based consoles coming I’m not sure I’d skimp on cores even for games.

120. Because physics. Power consumption scales exponentially. Ask any overclocker. They know.

121. Interested to know why the 3700X is just 65W, but the 3800X needs 40W more (+60%) for only an extra 300MHz (+8%)

122. I’d be curious to see gaming numbers for the 3600X if y’all get your hands on one. From what I’ve heard there is indeed not much use for more than 4-6 cores in current games, seems like that may be the real MVP for a dedicated gaming box.

123. No promises, but I’ll see if I can’t figure something out. No promises!

124. Yeah. It’s what blows my mind as well. AMD’s CPU division sure is firing on all cylinders these days.

125. Sometimes still hard to believe AMD is so competitive these days. Crazy.

126. Have a heart: you don’t want to completely starve those extra 4 cores of power…

127. If it’s any consolation, at least on these two boards, the fan is whisper-quiet. It’s audible – if you stick your ear right up to the board outside of a case. Of course, that could change if the bearings wear out.

128. Pre-launch day access to hardware helps. Thanks AMD!

129. I still don’t regret my 9900k purchase a couple weeks ago. 5GHz on all cores with no AVX offset and only 1.28V under load. For gaming, you’re not going to achieve meaningfully higher performance today. May not be as fast for professional workloads, but that’s why I have a 7960x at 4GHz.

130. [quote<]Plus, every X570 board has active cooling for the chipset[/quote<]Not quite - the Gigabyte X570 Aorus Xtreme has passive chipset cooling, but AFAIK it's the only one so far. Wish there were an 'X560' or such bringing some of the IO benefits and futureproofness without the much higher chipset power consumption. I have bad memories of a tiny loud chipset fan from the early P4 era and it's not something I aspire to revisit.

131. People will downvote you but I think it’s a valid opinion. While I was testing I was certainly lamenting the lack of an iGPU in the Ryzen machines, simply for troubleshooting. Not that I had a lot of trouble, but y’know.

     Actually it was Win10 1903 that gave me most of the problems. LOL

132. Wow, launch day content from TechReport!

133. I’m a fan of RPCS3 myself, so sure, I’ll see if I can look into that, perhaps later today.

     I know RPCS3 uses TSX on CPUs that support it and is quite a bit slower on those that don’t, so I also wondered if one of these machines could handle PS3 emulation well.

     EDIT: It looks like PC Perspective uses a custom-made tool to do that kind of testing. I don’t have access to it, unfortunately, but I’ll load up some games in RPCS3 and see how it goes and report back.

134. No argument there, but you’re absolutely the MVP this time. 🙂

135. Not exactly. Clarkdale and Arrandale chips had a separate die for graphics on-package, but their northbridge functions were still integrated in a separate chip on the motherboard.

136. Well, he’s wrong, but he’s not completely wrong. Were it not for the TR site and community that Scott built, and the support of Bruno, Nate, and of course yourself, I wouldn’t be here doing this review. So while I may have been doing the work, I certainly owe a debt to Mr. Wasson.

137. Sure, I can add them in there for clarity’s sake. All tests on all machines were done on fresh installs of the very latest Windows 10 Pro downloaded direct from Microsoft, though. (1903 + all updates)

138. What would be the point of spending resources to test an obsolete OS build on a new processor?

139. Unfortunately the licensing for DAWbench is *incredibly* complicated and I didn’t have time to work it out for this review. Thanks for commenting.

140. No DAW Bench testing….? 🙁

141. Under your Test Methods lists, can I suggest providing the specific build of Windows used? Win10 1903 has thread placement optimizations for these non-monolithic CPU designs. Would be curious to see a couple of select benchmarks comparing 1903 to 1809 too if there’s time.

142. This German guy has in interesting look at exploring the overclocking potential.
     [url<]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXbCdGENp5I[/url<] Spoiler: There's not much Of course, that's just another way of saying that AMD has engineered a product that gives you all of the marbles out of the box. By the way, who put those marbles in the box anyhow? 😉

143. Did AMD just take the IPC crown? 😮 😮 😮

     [url<]https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph14605/111165.png[/url<] 10th gen Sunny Cove is thought to gain 18% in IPC, but until then, looks like AMD did the unthinkable.

144. Thanks for an extremely timely review. Would be curious to find out whether performance chances noticeably with good cooling (for example Corsair H115i or similar).

     Given that I can simply replace my 1700X with a 3900X on my X370 motherboard from two years ago, this seems like a very nice upgrade.

145. You’ve got this one wrong, bro.

146. Mr. Wasson is the real MVP here.

147. [quote<]Snarky internet commenters have already pointed out that this is not really all that different from the way things used to work when we had both north- and south-bridge chips on our motherboards. The difference between a distant chip on the motherboard and a separate chiplet on the same package is monumental, though.[/quote<] It is what Intel did for the dual core, quad thread designs for the Nehalem/Westmere generation -- Clarkdale desktop processors (Core i3 and below) and Arrandale laptop processors (most of the lineup). [url=https://hothardware.com/reviews/intel-clarkdale-core-i5-desktop-processor-debuts<]See the package shot here.[/url<]

148. This was a great review and read, Zak, very well done.

     It goes without saying that, as always since the site’s inception, I came to TR first for the review and I am very pleased to see it on embargo day, and with the quality and content I have always enjoyed seeing from TR since the old days of the long long ago.

     10/10

149. Cross CCX latency should decrease between CCXs on the same chiplet, but crossing the I/O die probably incurs a massive penalty.

150. The 99th percentile numbers between the 3700X and 3900X are interesting. I bet the 3800X ends up being a better gaming chip than the 3900X in the end.

151. it made me smile every time it beat a Threadripper, let alone the 9900K @ “time beyond 16.7ms”

     i don’t suppose you could test core-to-core cross-CCX latency? e.g. pcper.com/2017/06/the-intel-core-i9-7900x-10-core-skylake-x-processor-review/3/

     the context i’m looking for is if it’s low enough for RPCS3 (PS3 emulator) to utilize more than 1 CCX for SPE emulation

152. I am slightly disappointed with the efficiency of the 3900X v 9900K although the performance is excellent.
     The 9900K is being pushed towards the limit on an older node whilst the 3900X has the advantage of a newer node and runs at lower clocks which generally helps efficiency.
     The 3700X seems rather a gem though on all counts.
     The 3900X is still mightily impressive overall and no wonder the TR2 12C chip has been reduced to ~380 as it gets well beaten by the 3900X in most cases.

153. A quick area under the curve analysis of the blender numbers (with the 8700K as the baseline) gives the following results:

     CPU — Efficiency relative to 8700K
     3900X — 254.0%
     2920X — 176.1%
     3700X — 173.2%
     9900K — 141.0%
     7900K — 130.8%
     2700X — 108.7%
     1800X — 108.4%
     8700K — 100.0%

     That’s an amazing increase for a single generation and fantastic performance overall. I’m interested to see what a 3800X can do with PBO.

154. Good grief, that efficiency. If the Epyc/Xeon efficiency gap is that big, then Intel is in serious trouble.

155. Now very much looking forward to Sunny Cove, and yes I’m in that use case for the iGPU. Plus I have had better experience with reliability with Intel (anecdotal I know, but ack fans on motherboard chipsets again!).

     I know it won’t be a popular opinion (and will get lots of down votes), but that’s mine, so it’s a big “Nope!” from me.

     I’ll never argue with the benefits of competition point though.

156. It all looked pretty impressive to me until I go to power efficiency, but then, MIND BLOWN!
     Just looking at the 3700x, it matches the 9900K pretty closely, but consumes ~ 26% less power, and that is for the whole system?
     Nicely done, AMD!

157. Of course there are 16 but four of them act as passive heat sinks.

158. Wow, very exciting! I bought an i7-9700K last year because at the time I didn’t have much confidence in AMD pulling this off but I’m glad to have been proven wrong

159. Wow, the 3700X looks like the ideal mix of price/performance for me. I was planning on a 3800X, but may need to reconsider.

     Any plans on a follow-up with Ryzen 3000 on 4xx series motherboards? I’ll be curious to see whether there’s any performance penalty.

160. AMD II: The Gluing[/url<] Meanwhile Intel will cancel Freedom Lake and start work on [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw8RVcUyma0<]Battlefield Lake[/url<] It looks like Intels hold on the regular desktop market is going to take a massive hit. Theres almost no reason to get an Intel solution right now unless you got a good bundle deal or have a use case for the iGPU. Intel only hope in the desktop market lies on the Sunny Cove family.

161. 1. In multithreaded apps the performance Delta from the 1800X (8 core) to the 9900K (8 core) is about the same as from the 9900k to the 3900X (16 coar). Clearly it’s impossible for Intel to EVAR catch up.

     2. Given how 16 miracle Coarz on 7nm are still will behind the core parts in games, we now know why AMD put on that ridiculously unrealistic “streaming” demo.

     3. We’re canceling…. ALL FPGAS! See, we have surprises.

162. as i said in forums, they should make an amazon wishlist. i’d donate towards specific hardware i’d love to see benchmarked

     also, re: support, this is the first review i’m reading!

163. so happy TR got this one! also, mountain time zone, best time zone… 7am 7/7

     oops, unintentionally posted at 7:07

164. Zak, did you ever know that you’re my hero? A true Herculean effort if I’ve ever seen one. Thank you!

     Everyone, if this return to form is the kind of content you want more of, now is the new best-time-ever to [url=https://techreport.com/subscriptions<]show your support[/url<]. Also, please share this review with others on the platform of your choice. The bigger splash this piece makes, the better.