AMD’s Third Generation Ryzen CPUs Are Just Terrific

AMD did it . It produced a ludicrously truehearted series of CPUs that use a hatful less power than their competitors and predecessors while also being cheaper and adding some bonus lineament , like PCIe 4.0 keep , only hardcore personal computer users need . The young $ 500 Ryzen 9 3900X and $ 330 Ryzen 7 3700X deliver on many of AMD ’s promise about power and price from the last several days .

( I should note right at the showtime that there ’s a catch in the form of a very annoying flaw that could smash installation for first time builder . It ’s minor , if potentially devastating , so I wo n’t detail the ill until the end of this review . )

The new Ryzens are thefirst widely secrete x86 CPU based on a 7 nm process . What ’s that soup think of ? “ x86 ” is an computer architecture used by central processing unit that power nearly every laptop computer and desktop made today . “ 7 micromillimeter ” refers to the process node . Historically , this number is used to correspond to the length between transistor gates on the processor itself . A shorter length means info on the processor itself has less distance to travel and requires less zip to do so , which in possibility , translate to improvement in speed and ability efficiency .

Photo: Alex Cranz (Gizmodo)

So AMD ’s Modern 7 nm processor based on the Zen 2 microarchitecture should be degenerate and more power effective than the previous Zen+ 12 nm generation and Intel ’s 9th generation based on the 14 nm cognitive operation .

In my tests , the hypothesis appears to reflect reality . The competitors were :

$ 500 Ryzen 9 3900X establish on the Zen 2 microarchitecture . It has 12 core and 24 threads and 105W TDP .

Argentina’s President Javier Milei (left) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., holding a chainsaw in a photo posted to Kennedy’s X account on May 27. 2025.

$ 330 Ryzen 7 3700X establish on the Zen 2 microarchitecture . It has 8 cores , 16 thread , and 65W TDP .

Ryzen Threadripper 2950Xbased on the Zen+ microarchitecture . It can befound for as depleted as $ 600but typically deal for around $ 800 to $ 900 . It has 16 cores , 32 thread , and 180W TDP

$ 500Intel i9 - 9900Kbased on Intel ’s 14 nm 9th genesis microarchitecture . It has 8 cores , 16 ribbon , and 95W TDP .

William Duplessie

We tested all four using similar 256 GB SSDs , 16 GB of RAM , and the same Nvidia GTX 1080 GPU . The benchmarks posted below paint an interesting word picture .

Intel ’s i9 - 9900 K did significantly well in tasks that employ a single core . So in the Geekbench 4 single core benchmark and WebXPRT 2015 ( a synthetical bench mark used to essay how quickly a internet browser completes tasks ) , the Intel part beat all three AMD central processing unit . AMD has been struggling for days to fit Intel in core to heart and soul performance , and it seems clear from these benchmark it still has body of work to do . A pile of coating , like vane browsers and some secret plan functions , generally rely on a single nitty-gritty for carrying into action , so AMD ’s lag will be felt by more general users even as might users appreciate the sheer number of cores .

AMD ’s thaumaturgy lies in its power to cram a heap more CORE onto a CPU and charge a pot less than Intel . Its mainframe do best in power hungry applications . Think picture rendition or important act crunching . That turn out out in the results too . In our Blender bench mark , in which we time how long the 3D program takes to render an trope , and in Handbrake , in which we time how long it takes to change over a 4 kilobyte video to 1080p , the young AMD CPUs execute very well . In fact , the Ryzen 9 beat the Threadripper in the Handbrake bench mark and arrive in just 8 second behind in Blender . That ’s despite having four fewer cores .

Starship Test 9

amazingly the Ryzen 7 contend well with the more expensive i9 . It beat it in Handbrake , and just barely lost to it on the Blender bench mark . Being that the Ryzen 7 is n’t just cheaper , but also employ less power than the i9 , it seems like the cleared choice for people on a budget . The Ryzen 7 performs so admirably compared to the i9 - 9900 K , it seems unjust to even try and compare to other cheaper processors as they ’ll all be much sluggish .

Now for the catch I touch to at the top of this review : I beg you , do not use the heatsink and fan combo cooler AMD has include with the late generation of Ryzen CPU . A cooler is necessary , but there are plenty of in force alternatives than the one AMD furnish gratis . It ’s ostensibly a quality cooler . It has LEDs and can synchronize with Razer Chroma software , but it ’s also very loud , and there ’s manner too much of the unco viscid thermal chemical compound pre - applied . It ’s so gluey that it will essentially paste the ice chest to the CPU . That ’s not the bad thing ; a good seal between the two is great for optimum temperature reduction .

Here ’s why it ’s a recipe for disaster . AMD ’s CPU tie in to the motherboard through a series of super delicate pin . Bend any of them , and you have a busted CPU that is n’t covered by AMD ’s warrantee . The ice chest , meanwhile , attaches to the motherboard via two hook . You hook one side of the tank onto the display panel , lean it onto the CPU , and then abstract the other side on using a little alloy arm . The metallic element arm is retrace of cheap metallic element and can get stuck . You may find like you need to wiggle it to get it working and connected correctly . But one wrong wiggle and the cooler can unseat the CPU and turn rowlock .

Lilo And Stitch 2025

If you ’re a first time builder , you ’ll want to invest in a separate cooler — one that screws in instead of relying on hook shot ( ~$50 ) . But you ’ll still want to invest in the AMD processors over competition from Intel . This latest generation of Ryzen processors is libertine and affordable , and for once , they wo n’t hog all the muscularity the power supply puts out .