The 3300X is a 4-core Ryzen CPU. Priced at just $120 USD, it offers far better value to gamers than all the previous Ryzen CPUs. This is great news for potential buyers, but bad luck for gamers that recently spent nearly three times more on the 8-core 3700X. The reduction from eight to four cores results in more efficient caching and higher boost clocks. AMD’s marketing has abruptly broken from the firmly established “moar cores” mantra to a conveniently realistic: four cores are actually okay. Shifting goalposts this quickly reveals an unhealthy focus on first time buyers and a brazen disregard for existing customers. Sales tactics aside, unfortunately the 3300X remains constrained by architectural latency and the associated gaming bottleneck (frame drops). Comparing an overclocked 3300X pegged at 4425 MHz to a stock Intel Core i3-10100 running at 4100 MHz shows that the i3-10100 delivers better gaming performance in four out of five games. The 10100 also includes an iGPU with QuickSync hardware encoding. Since additional cores make little difference to gamers, there are no significant upgrades beyond the 3300X in the Ryzen product stack. In order to achieve better gaming performance, it is necessary to upgrade to a higher tier Intel CPU. Despite the barrage of anonymous hearsay pushed on social media, users will be hard pressed to find actual use cases that favor the 3300X over the i3-10100, especially when the 10100 is not handicapped by 2666 MHz RAM. Gamers are bottlenecked by the Ryzen architecture and desktop users need integrated graphics. [Jun '20CPUPro]
The AMD 7000X3D CPUs have the same core architecture as the rest of the 7000 series but they have one group of eight "3D" cores with extra cache. The “3D” cores are priced higher but run at 10% lower clocks. For most real-world tasks performance is comparable to the 7000X variant. Cache sensitive scenarios such as low res. canned game benchmarks with an RTX 4090 ($2,000) benefit at the cost of everything else. Be wary of sponsored reviews with cherry picked games that showcase the wins, ignore frame drops and gloss over the losses. Also watch out for AMD’s army of Neanderthal social media accounts on reddit, forums and youtube, they will be singing their own praises as usual. AMD continue to develop “Advanced Marketing” relationships with select youtubers with the obvious aim of compensating for second tier products with first tier marketing. PC gamers considering a 7000X3D CPU need to work on their critical thinking skills: Influencers are paid handsomely to promote overpriced niche products (X3D, EPYC, Threadripper etc.). Rational gamers have little reason to look further than the $300 13600K which offers comparable real-world gaming and better desktop performance at a fraction of the price. Workstation users (and RTX 4080+ gamers) may find value in higher core CPUs such as the 16-core $400 13700K. Despite offering better performance at lower prices, as long as Intel continues to sample and sponsor marketers that are mostly funded by AMD, they will struggle to win market share. [Apr '23CPUPro]
We calculate effective speed which measures real world performance for typical users. Effective speed is adjusted by current prices to yield a value for money rating. Our calculated values are checked against thousands of individual user ratings. The customizable table below combines these factors to bring you the definitive list of top CPUs. [CPUPro]
Welcome to our PC speed test tool. UserBenchmark will test your PC and compare the results to other users with the same components. You can quickly size up your PC, identify hardware problems and explore the best value for money upgrades.