AMD Ryzen 5 3600X & 7 3800X in the test

– AMD's portfolio of Ryzen 3000 processors includes only five models. But as the test of the Ryzen 5 3600X and the Ryzen 7 3800X shows, they are logical additions on paper, but they are almost irrelevant in everyday life. The smaller counterparts are the far better complete package.

So far, two of the five new Matisse processors from the AMD Ryzen 3000 family have been missing in the large Ryzen 3000 test. These were not available as a sample from the manufacturer, and retailers hardly got any models in the case of the Ryzen 7 3800X. And that's no coincidence: Together with the Ryzen 5 3600X, this is a gap filler, both of which have hardly any reason to exist, as it turned out during the test. But without the models, the portfolio would be sown very thinly and the price jumps huge. AMD is therefore in a bind. BitcoinMinersHashrate tests and shows why.

Thanks to the editors, the system integrator Mifcom and the online shop of Caseking.de for providing the CPUs tested for the first time in this test.

Ryzen 5 3600X and Ryzen 7 3800X in detail

The Ryzen 5 3600X is the big brother of the Ryzen 5 3600. Its TDP is raised by 30 watts from 65 to 95 watts, but it can clock slightly higher – 200 MHz in the base as well as in the turbo. This has its price: an additional 50 euros should be paid for it, an additional charge of around 25 percent.

With the Ryzen 7 3800X, the surcharge for the completely identically equipped Ryzen 7 3700X is even greater: 80 euros both at the RRP and in retail. In return, the base clock rises by 300 MHz, which is due to the 40 percent higher TDP, but in turbo mode, both models ultimately only separate 100 MHz. Everyday operation is based on the turbo and rarely on the base, so that the differences will ultimately be less than can be seen on paper.

It is also interesting to see almost three weeks after the start how much AMD has warned retailers not to deviate from the MSRP. This development has been observed increasingly in recent months and years – a kind of price guarantee for the first four weeks after the start, before the trade can "fight" with each other again. This does not only apply to AMD CPUs, because this is also the case with Nvidia's super graphics cards.

A neutral look at the portfolio still shows a problem for AMD. The three models 3600, 3700X and 3900X may be enough in the end customer business, but the price gaps between them would be far too big. So you need additional CPUs that are positioned in between. And the big competitor Intel is known to do it: There are various Core i5 at the smallest price distance – but these many models are not really needed. But they can always be accommodated anywhere in the OEM business.

AMD's naming remains partially opaque in 2019

Since the first Ryzen from AMD, there have been some constants in the designation of the processors: Without letters, they were 65-watt models. An X with this was given to a copy with 95 watts (and more). But the portfolio of CPUs quickly became very large, especially in the first generation it was too much of a good thing in some areas. This was rationalized away in the second generation – a perfectly correct decision.

The third generation starts with even fewer models, but even today the five CPUs are sometimes far too similar. And then there is the nameless naming. If the Ryzen 5 3600 and 3600X models are still clean with the same number of cores and set up with a little less clock at 65 watts or a little more at 95 watts, the Ryzen 7 3700X is already out of the ordinary. Actually this should be a 95 watt model, but only has 65 watts. Instead, there is a Ryzen 7 3800X with exactly the same equipment in the higher TDP class with a bit more clock. To have a real comparison with the predecessor, these models should have simply been called 3700 and 3700X – as in Gen 1 and Gen 2.

Then AMD would have had fewer problems finding names for CPUs with more features. The company runs directly into the 3900 series and has to install two models, the differences of which are so much greater than when jumping from 3700X to 3800X: Ryzen 9 3900X with twelve cores and Ryzen 9 3950X with 16 cores. Logically, this is not all in the end and therefore (not only) incomprehensible to laypersons, but it has a long tradition at AMD.

On the next page: benchmarks, power consumption and temperatures