AMD Ryzen 3 3300X And 3100 Review: Serious Quad-Core Value

Name: AMD Ryzen 3 3300X
Brand: AMD

by Marco Chiappetta — Thursday, May 07, 2020, 09:15 AM EDT

AMD Ryzen 3 3100 & 3300X Review - Audio, Video, and 3D Rendering

In our custom LAME MT MP3 encoding test, we convert a large WAV file to the MP3 format, which is a popular use case for many end users, to provide portability and storage of their digital audio content. LAME is an open-source MP3 audio encoder that is used widely around the world in a multitude of third party applications.

LAME MT

Audio Conversion and Encoding

In this test, we created our own 223MB WAV file and converted it to the MP3 format using the multi-thread capable LAME MT tool in single and multi-thread modes. Processing times are recorded below, listed in seconds. Shorter times equate to better performance.

The Ryzen 3 3100 brings up the rear here, though it's right there with the Ryzen 5 3400G. The AMD Ryzen 3 3300X's higher clocks give it a big boost and put just ahead of the Ryzen 5 2600X. Intel's processors have a clear edge with LAME MT, however, and they finish in the top two spots.

X265 Benchmark

Video Encoding Test

The multi-threaded HWBOT x265 Benchmark is based on the open source x265 encoder that leverages modern CPU instructions to speed video encoding. We tested the CPUs represented here with the 64-bit encoder using the default 1080p workload.

The Ryzen 3 3100 smokes the Ryzen 5 3400G (which is based on AMD's previous-gen microarchitecture) and finishes right in-line with the Ryzen 5 2600X. The Ryzen 3 3300X finishes about 11% ahead of the 2600X and nearly catches the Core i5-9600K.

Y-Cruncher

MT Pi Calculator

Y-Cruncher is a multi-core-capable tool that calculates the value of pi to a specified number of digits. In this case, we ran the tool on all threads and had the application calculate the value of pi to 1 billion digits. The values below are the time required to perform the calculation expressed in seconds. As a result, lower values indicate better performance.

The Y-Cruncher benchmark has the quad-core Ryzen 3 3300X actually outpacing the 8-core Ryzen 7 2700X, which is a testament to Zen 2's microarchitecture enhancements and strong multi-thread scaling, and landing just behind the Core i5-9600K. The Ryzen 3 3100 blows past the Ryzen 5 2600X and demolishes the Ryzen 5 3400G.

Cinebench

3D Rendering Benchmark

Cinebench rendering performance test based on Cinema 4D from Maxon. Cinema 4D is a 3D rendering and animation tool suite used by animation houses and producers like Sony Animation and many others. It's very demanding of system processor resources and can utilize any number of threads, which make is an excellent gauge of computational throughput. This is a multi-threaded, multi-processor aware benchmark that renders and animates 3D scenes and tracks the length of the entire process. The rate at which each test system was able to render the entire scene is represented in the graphs below.

The Ryzen 3 3300X manages to outpace the Core i5-9600K in terms of single-thread performance here, and nearly catches it in the multi-threaded test as well, but ultimately trails by a couple of points. The Ryzen 3 3100 lands a notch behind the 3300X, but again well ahead of the Ryzen 5 3400G.

POV-Ray Performance

Ray Tracing Benchmark

POV-Ray, or the Persistence of Vision Ray-Tracer, is an open source tool for creating realistically lit images. We tested with POV-Ray's standard 'one-CPU' and 'all-CPU' benchmarking tools on all of our test machines and recorded the scores reported for each. Results are measured in pixels-per-second throughput; higher scores equate to better performance.

pov ray ryzen 3

Our POV-Ray results essentially mirror Cinebench R20, with one minor change -- the Ryzen 5 2600X and Core i5-9600K swap positions in the rankings and Intel's single-thread performance looks significantly better here.

Blender

3D Rendering Benchmark

Blender is a free and open source 3D creation suite that can handle everything from modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, even video editing and game creation. It has a built-in benchmarking tool that will track the time it takes to complete rendering a particular model. We used a CPU-focused BMW model for these tests here...

Once again we see the Ryzen 3 3300X nipping at the Core i5-9600K's heals, with only a few seconds separating the two processors in the Blender benchmark. The Ryzen 3 3100 lands about 36 seconds behind the 3300X -- as you would expect -- but over a minute ahead of the Ryzen 5 3400G.

STARS Euler3d

Computational Fluid Dynamics

STARS Euler3d is a computational fluid dynamics benchmark which uses a CFD grid that contains 1.23 million tetrahedral elements and 223 thousand nodes. The benchmark executable advances a mach 0.50 Advisory Group for Aerospace Research, or AGARD, flow solution for an aeroelastic test wing. The benchmark score is reported as a CFD cycle frequency in Hertz.

This benchmark is multi-threaded, but is also dependent on platform bandwidth, and cache and memory latency, so the final results are not determined by compute performance alone. Cache sizes and memory bandwidth affect the score as well...

We saw more of the same with the Euler3D fluid-dynamics benchmark, with the Ryzen 3 3100 and Ryzen 3 3300X finishing well out in front of the Ryzen 5 2400G, and more closely duking it out with the Ryzen 5 2600X and Core i5-9600K.