AMD Ryzen 3 Reviews: Great Quad-Core Value for Under $150
After the release of the Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 5, Advanced Micro Devices has finally made its way to the budget PC range with the release of the Ryzen 3. Boasting four cores for under $150, early reviews show great performance for the dollar, beating Intel's i3 line in terms of value.
The Ryzen 3 range currently has two chips on offer: the Ryzen 3 1300X and the Ryzen 3 1200. Both chips have four cores, compared to the Intel's Core i3 lineup which only comes with two.
The difference with the earlier Ryzen 5 is that these chips do not have multithreading, and thus comes with one thread per core. Both Central Processing Units (CPU) have four threads to correspond with their four cores, with a clock difference setting the two models apart.
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The Ryzen 3 1200 runs at 3.1 GHz, up to 3.4 GHz with turbo boost. The Ryzen 3 1300X, meanwhile, clocks at 3.5 GHz and is boostable to 3.7 GHz. Both these CPUs can be overclocked, unlike Intel's i3 line which requires buyers to get the more expensive K line to get the chips with unlocked overclocking.
Both AMD chips also come with the Wraith Stealth cooler designed for silent cooling, as noted by WCCF Tech.
In single-threaded performance, the Ryzen 3 1300X lags just by a hair to the more expensive Core i3 7300, behind by about 2 frames per second in the tests done by Tom's Hardware.
That is at stock speeds, however. With the 1300X unlocked for overclocking, raising its speed sees the AMD processor beat the equivalent Core i3 in every metric. This makes the AMD chips a great fit for enthusiasts.
Similar reviews agree as well, with testers noting how the extra two cores make a big difference when it comes to productivity and workstation tasks, like encoding video or just plain heavy multitasking.
The video below shows the features of the Ryzen 3, as introduced by AMD on Thursday, July 27.
