AMD Ryzen 3000XT Processors Reviewed: Zen 2 Turbocharged

In our custom LAME MT MP3 encoding benchmark, 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.

lame 3000xt

This test will only whack one or two threads at a time, and AMD's processors don't like to boost to their maximum frequencies with this particular workload, so we see virtually no performance differences between the majority of the Ryzen processors, and Intel's CPUs come away with a clear win.

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.

h265 3000xt

In the x265 video encoding test, the Ryzen 3000XT series processors offer slight performance improvements once again. The 3800XT finishes about 10% behind the Core i9-10900K, but the Ryzen 9 3900XT pulls ahead by about 4FPS.

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.

cinebench 3000xt
We saw more of the same with Cinebench R20. In this benchmark though, the new Ryzen 3000XT series processors offer the best single-threaded performance, which carries over to the multi-threaded test. The Ryzen 9 3900XT trails only the Ryzen 9 3950X and outpaces the more expensive Core i9-10900K by nearly 13%.

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 3000xt

The tables turn somewhat in the POV-Ray benchmark. In this benchmark, the Core i9-10900K pulls ahead of the Ryzen 9 3900XT, in both the single and multi-threaded tests.

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...

blender 3000xt

Blender's results look much like Cinebench R20. Here, the Ryzen 9 3900XT pulls ahead of the Core i9-10900K by about 9 seconds and trails only the 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X.

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