When AMD announced the new Ryzen 3 processors built on Zen 2, Impression that these were essentially the reject parts from AMD’s successful Ryzen 3000 line. Inside is a single chiplet with only four cores active out of eight, pushing up to 4.3 GHz; but the kicker was the low price of $120 for the high frequency version, or $99 for a bit slower. AMD has sold quad-core CPUs at $99 for a while, but this is the new core and the new manufacturing process, so would this be any different? We put them up against a $350 quad core from three years ago. It seemed like a crazy idea at the time.
After successful launches of the Ryzen 9, Ryzen 7, and Ryzen 5 families of Zen 2 hardware, AMD has been sitting pretty at north of $200. At each price point, the company offered a compelling option against the competition, as we’ve noted in our reviews of hardware like the 3950X, 3900X, and 3700X. Others, like the Ryzen 5 3600, are some of the best sellers in Amazon’s top list. As we noted in our recent CPU buyers’ guide, out of the top 10 spots on Amazon’s best seller list for CPUs, AMD has 8 of them, and the first 5.
That’s all well and good for the higher end of the market, however in the sub-$200 category, this is where the volume often is. Intel has been neglecting this market of late, due to the abnormally high demand for Xeon silicon forcing manufacturing to spend more time on 28-core hardware than quad-core hardware. This leaves the door open for AMD, so it was always going to be interesting what the company did here. For a long time, AMD did nothing, pushing users to its Ryzen 2000 hardware or Ryzen 3000 APUs, namely because they were selling really well (the Ryzen 2600 / 1600 AF offers 6 cores for as low as $85).
With the recent launch of AMD’s latest Ryzen Mobile generation APUs, based on Zen 2 and Vega, we were unsure whether AMD would fill this sub-$200 gap with desktop versions of those APUs, or offer lower binned Ryzen 5 3000 parts. After a very successful launch of Ryzen Mobile 4000, leading to some stellar reviews, it was clear that the mobile silicon was commanding a strong premium in the market, and so we get Matisse based CPUs coming to the sub-$200 segment instead. With that, on April 21st, AMD announced its new Ryzen 3 3300X and Ryzen 3 3100 processors.
| AMD ‘Matisse’ Ryzen 3000 Series CPUs | |||||||||||
| AnandTech | Cores Threads | Base Freq | Boost Freq | L2 Cache | L3 Cache | PCIe 4.0 | Chiplets IO+CPU | TDP | Price (SEP) | ||
| Ryzen 9 | 3950X | 16C | 32T | 3.5 | 4.7 | 8 MB | 64 MB | 16+4+4 | 1+2 | 105W | $749 |
| Ryzen 9 | 3900X | 12C | 24T | 3.8 | 4.6 | 6 MB | 64 MB | 16+4+4 | 1+2 | 105W | $499 |
| Ryzen 9 | 3900 | 12C | 24T | 3.1 | 4.3 | 6 MB | 64 MB | 16+4+4 | 1+2 | 65W | OEM |
| Ryzen 7 | 3800X | 8C | 16T | 3.9 | 4.5 | 4 MB | 32 MB | 16+4+4 | 1+1 | 105W | $399 |
| Ryzen 7 | 3700X | 8C | 16T | 3.6 | 4.4 | 4 MB | 32 MB | 16+4+4 | 1+1 | 65W | $329 |
| Ryzen 5 | 3600X | 6C | 12T | 3.8 | 4.4 | 3 MB | 32 MB | 16+4+4 | 1+1 | 95W | $249 |
| Ryzen 5 | 3600 | 6C | 12T | 3.6 | 4.2 | 3 MB | 32 MB | 16+4+4 | 1+1 | 65W | $199 |
| Ryzen 5 | 3500X | 6C | 6T | 3.6 | 4.1 | 3 MB | 32 MB | 16+4+4 | 1+1 | 65W | OEM |
| Ryzen 3 | 3300X | 4C | 8T | 3.8 | 4.3 | 2 MB | 16 MB | 16+4+4 | 1+1 | 65W | $120 |
| Ryzen 3 | 3100 | 4C | 8T | 3.6 | 3.9 | 2 MB | 16 MB | 16+4+4 | 1+1 | 65W | $99 |
Filling the bottom at price points of $99 and $120 is very aggressive. Here is AMD’s latest generation Zen 2 hardware, on a 7nm TSMC high performance manufacturing node, bundled with a 14nm IO die from GlobalFoundries, packaged together with frequencies up to 4.3 GHz. At the time of the announcement, we noted that AMD is going to be competing with itself a lot here, for performance and price. Suddenly that $85 Ryzen 5 1600AF only looks appetizing if you want six Zen 1 cores – four Zen 2 cores at higher frequencies and higher IPCs for $99 on paper is probably the better deal.
Both processors officially support DDR4-3200, and AMD is reiterating that DDR4-3600/3733 is a nice sweet spot for those purchasing faster memory. Both chips also have 24 PCIe 4.0 lanes from the chipset: 16 for PCIe, 4 for an M.2 drive, and 4 for the chipset. For X570 chipsets, these should be running in PCIe 4.0 mode – for B550 chipsets and others, these chipset lanes will run in PCIe 3.0 mode (see below).
AMD sampled us both the Ryzen 3 3300X and the Ryzen 3 3100 for review. These only arrived recently, so we are still in the process of benchmarking the chips on a few benchmarks.
One of the key points for a cheaper build is often a cheaper motherboard. AMD and Intel both supply the market with mid-range and low-end chipsets, which motherboard manufacturers then use to build something more palatable in the $60 to $120 range. Technically AMD is also launching the B550 chipset today too, offering PCIe 4.0 from the CPU and PCIe 3.0 from the chipset, however news on these motherboards has been quite thin. We haven’t received one to test with these processors, which makes an X570 + Ryzen 3 review somewhat non-real world.
AMD has provided us will a full list of motherboard compatibility charts for all of the AM4 processors aligned with all of the AM4 motherboards. Due to technical limitations around BIOS size (i.e. motherboard vendors using too small of BIOS chips), only various families of hardware are verified in different motherboards. Most motherboards will likely accept processors outside these designations, especially if the vendor has used a larger BIOS chip, however AMD is putting these guidelines in to make it easier to follow. So while AM4 is heralded as a platform that can support ‘A-Series to 16-cores’, and it does, but only across several boards – very few boards (if any) will support the full gamut of hardware.
B550, the chipset looks very similar to B450 but with some upgrades. Rather than PCIe 2.0 support from the chipset, we get PCIe 3.0, with a PCIe 3.0 uplink to the processor. B550 motherboards will also be engineered to support PCIe 4.0 from the CPU, which means at least the first (and perhaps the second) PCIe slot will be PCIe 4.0 enabled, and there should also be an M.2 slot.
These are the cheaper motherboards, so we’re not expecting any miracles here. B550 is designed to support 3000-series Matisse CPUs only, so AMD is suggesting that current APUs in the market (3200G/3400G) aren’t really suited for this board if they work at all.
| Feature | AMD Ryzen 3 3300X | AMD Ryzen 3 3100 |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | Zen 2 (7nm) | Zen 2 (7nm) |
| Cores / Threads | 4 Cores / 8 Threads | 4 Cores / 8 Threads |
| Base Clock | 3.8 GHz | 3.6 GHz |
| Boost Clock | 4.3 GHz | 3.9 GHz |
| Cache (L3) | 16MB | 16MB |
| TDP | 65W | 65W |
| PCIe Version | PCIe 4.0 | PCIe 4.0 |
| Memory Support | DDR4-3200 | DDR4-3200 |
| Core Configuration | 4 cores on a single CCX | 2+2 cores split across two CCX |
| Performance | Faster due to unified CCX design | Slightly slower due to split CCX |
| Overclocking Potential | Higher | Moderate |
| Price (Launch) | ~$120 | ~$99 |
| Best For | High FPS gaming, productivity | Budget gaming, multitasking |
Yes, the Ryzen 3 3300X is an excellent budget gaming CPU. With 4 cores and 8 threads, it delivers great performance in 1080p gaming when paired with a decent GPU.
The Ryzen 5 3600 has more cores (6 vs. 4) and performs better in multi-threaded tasks. However, the 3300X can be faster in some single-threaded applications and gaming due to its higher boost clock.
Yes, the Ryzen 3 3300X is unlocked and supports overclocking. It can be pushed beyond its base and boost clock speeds with proper cooling.
A GTX 1660 Super, RTX 2060, or RX 5600 XT are great mid-range options. For higher-end GPUs like RTX 3060 Ti, some bottlenecking may occur in CPU-heavy games.
Yes, it includes the Wraith Spire cooler, which is sufficient for stock performance but may need an upgrade for overclocking.
It can handle light streaming, but for higher-quality streaming (1080p/60fps), a CPU with more cores like Ryzen 5 5600X is recommended.
B450, B550, and X570 motherboards are good choices. B450 is more budget-friendly, while B550 and X570 offer better future-proofing.
No, it does not have integrated graphics. You will need a dedicated GPU to use this processor.
DDR4 3200MHz or higher is recommended for the best performance. Ryzen CPUs benefit from faster RAM speeds.
It remains a solid choice for budget gaming, but newer CPUs like Ryzen 5 5600X or Intel i5-12400 offer better performance at similar prices.
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