Review and testing of the AMD Ryzen 7 3800XT processor. Red revenge / Overclockers.ua

Over the past three years, since the first Ryzen was released, the desktop processor market has changed much more than since the introduction of Sandy Bridge back in 2011. AMD has imposed a nuclear race on its competitor, and according to this indicator, it wins victory after victory. If at first the older Ryzen 7 1800X was able to offer users eight cores with SMT support, now the top Ryzen 9 3950X already has 16, which is 32 executable threads! In this regard, the competitor’s solutions play the role of catching up and seriously lag behind their opponents. In the spring of this year, Intel, having introduced a new LGA1200 platform, improved the performance not only of older models, but also of more mass-produced products, which made its processors very attractive, especially for games. AMD decided to respond by updating its line of CPUs, supplementing them with high-frequency solutions with the XT index, and at the same time lowering prices for old c X models.

We recently reviewed the Ryzen 9 3900XT, which promised to bring an extra 100 MHz to the cores in the load. But as practice has shown, we got them with single-threaded calculations, while at full load on the processor, the frequency of all cores was at the level of the Ryzen 9 3900X. But with manual adjustment of the parameters, we managed to squeeze the maximum out of the novelty, which the previous model was not capable of. We now turn our attention to the octa-core Ryzen 7 3800XT.

AMD Ryzen 7 3800XT

The model in question occupies a middle position in the updated series, where, in addition to the Ryzen 9 3900XT, there is also the younger Ryzen 5 3600XT solution, thus AMD has filled all the niches of processors for demanding users.

But for budget enthusiasts, the company introduced the Ryzen 3 3100/3300X a little earlier, which, when overclocked, compete well with conventional six-core models. But back to our ward.

So, the main characteristics of the Ryzen 7 3800XT remained unchanged – it’s still the same eight-core CPU with support for SMT technology on the Matisse core, equipped with 32 MB of L3 cache and operating at a base frequency of 3900 MHz.

The TDP level remained unchanged at 105 W, and if the processor does not go beyond the maximum power consumption of 142 W, then the frequency of individual cores can rise to 4700 MHz, which is 200 MHz more than the Ryzen 7 3800X. With a multi-threaded load, the beginner operates at a frequency of 4200-4400 MHz.

The design of the processor has not changed – it consists of one CCD chiplet with computing cores and cache, as well as one IOD chip, which already contains memory controllers, PCI Express 4.0 buses and other blocks responsible for the I / O function. The CCD crystal, in turn, contains a pair of CCX clusters, four cores each, which gives AMD a wide field of activity for combining chiplets and activating computing units when releasing a particular CPU model. But what has really changed is the “improved” 7nm process technology used, honed by TSMC over the past year, thanks to which it was possible to get an increase in operating frequency. In fact, all recent Ryzen 3000 series processors based on the Zen 2 microarchitecture are released using it. So, by purchasing the same Ryzen 5 3600 of this year, there is a chance to overclock it well.

But this barrel of honey has its own fly in the ointment – the Ryzen 7 3800XT has become hotter than its predecessor. In Cinebench R20 or x265 Benchmark, the processor can easily be warmed up to 74-78 degrees, and in stress tests – up to 80 and above under a maintenance-free “dropsy” with a 280/360 mm radiator or a Noctua NH-D14 level supercooler. In games, this figure reaches 70 degrees, and this is at 20 ° C indoors!

Now it’s not surprising that AMD decided not to bundle the new product with a boxed cooler and let users choose the appropriate cooling system themselves.

It got better with overclocking, and after the release of the ClockTuner for Ryzen (CTR) program by 1usmus, it’s even easier, just press a couple of buttons, wait a bit, and the utility will do everything itself!

It overclocks according to CCX, which I used to find the maximum frequency on all processor cores, after which I introduced adjustments to the UEFI of the motherboard. The Ryzen 7 3800XT was able to perform stably in the benchmarks at 4600 MHz with a voltage of 1.333 volts. In this mode, the CPU warmed up to 77 degrees in Cinebench R20 (80 ° C in HWBot x265 Benchmark 2.2.0), and in gaming applications – up to 72 ° C when cooling a maintenance-free CBO with a 280 mm radiator at full speed of the pump and fans. Quite a good result, as for such overclocking, given that the processor can warm up to such temperatures even in stock.

But CCX is not always able to overclock synchronously. If a very unsuccessful core gets into such a complex, then the rest will work at its frequency. As a result, half of the processor can operate stably at 4600 MHz, and the second – only at 4575 MHz. We got just such a Ryzen 7 3800XT, but the problem was solved by a banal increase in voltage, which, in turn, resulted in increased power consumption and heating.

test stand

The stand with the AMD Ryzen 7 3800XT processor included:

• motherboard: ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Formula (UEFI 2206);
• cooling system: NZXT Kraken X62;
• thermal interface: Noctua NT-H1;
• memory: G.Skill Trident Z Neo F4-3600C16D-16GTZN;
• video card: ASUS ROG-STRIX-RTX2080-8G-GAMING;
• drive #1: Kingston KC400 512GB;
• drive #2: Corsair Force MP600 Gen4 PCIe x4 2TB;
• case: Vinga Cobalt;
• fans: 2x ThermalRight TR-TY141 + Noctua NF-A15 PWM;
• power supply: Chieftec GPS-1250С;
• operating system: Windows 10 Pro x64 (2004);
• drivers: AMD 2.04.04.111, Nvidia GeForce 445.87.

The system was assembled in a case, but to reduce its effect on temperatures, all covers were removed, including the front and top panels. The CBO was installed in front, and the fan speed was adjusted via the motherboard depending on the temperature of the processor – 28% / 40 ° C, 60% / 60 ° C and 100% / 65 ° C, the pump worked up to 65 degrees at a speed of 60% of the nominal and configured with the NZXT CAM utility. An NVMe drive with its own heatsink was connected via an adapter to a PCI-E x16@4 slot, the operating system was installed on a Kingston KC400 512GB. All OS updates available from Windows Update have been installed. Third-party anti-virus products were not involved, no fine-tuning of the system was made, the size of the paging file was determined by the system itself. The memory operated at a frequency of 3600 MHz with timings of 16-16-16-36-1T in default mode and 3800 MHz with 16-16-16-34-1T and its full tuning when overclocking the processor to 4600 MHz, while the voltage on the modules was set at 1.41 V, and on the SoC – 1.112 V. Also, when overclocking the Ryzen 7 3800XT in NZXT CAM, the pump speed was set to 100% regardless of temperature, otherwise, during the passage of benchmarks, the overheating protection in the processor and the system rebooted. The video card worked at stock frequencies, only the fan speed in gaming applications was increased to 60% using MSI Afterburner.

As an opponent for the hero of our review, the Intel Core i7-10700K would have been perfect, but for technical reasons it did not have time for our testing. Therefore, we will use the results of the Core i9-9900K prepared for another material. The processor was installed in the following system:

• motherboard: ASUS ROG Maximus X Formula (UEFI 1302);
• cooling system: be quiet! Silent Loop 280mm;
• thermal interface: Noctua NT-H1;
• memory: G.Skill Trident Z Neo F4-3600C16D-16GTZN;
• video card: ASUS ROG-STRIX-RTX2080-8G-GAMING;
• drive #1: Kingston KC400 512GB;
• drive #2: Corsair Force MP600 Gen4 PCIe x4 2TB;
• case: Antec NX800;
• power supply: Antec HCG850 Gold;
• operating system: Windows 10 Pro x64 (1909);
• drivers: Intel INF 10.1.18228.8176, Intel ME 1909.12.0.1236, Nvidia GeForce 445.87.

The system was assembled in a case, but to reduce its effect on temperatures, all covers were removed. The CBO was installed from above, and the speed was adjusted depending on the processor temperature – 28% / 40 ° C, 60% / 60 ° C and 100% / 65 ° C, the pump worked at a speed of 60% of the nominal value up to 65 degrees. Chassis fans were running at their rated speed due to lack of control. An NVMe drive with its own heatsink was connected via an adapter to a PCI-E x16@4 slot, the operating system was installed on a Kingston KC400 512GB. All OS updates available from Windows Update have been installed. Third-party anti-virus products were not involved, no fine-tuning of the system was made, the size of the paging file was determined by the system itself. The memory operated at a frequency of 3600 MHz with timings of 16-16-16-36-2T. In stock mode, MCE technology was disabled, which allowed the processor to function as intended by the developers. During overclocking, the core frequency increased to 5000 MHz, the cache to 4600 MHz, while the memory worked at 4000 MHz with timings of 17-17-17-39-2T. The video card functioned at stock frequencies, only the fan speed in gaming applications was increased to 60% using MSI Afterburner.

The following programs were used as test software:

• AIDA64 v6.25.5400;
• CPU-Z 1.92.0;
• Cinebench R20;
• Geekbench 5;
• 7-Zip 19.00;
• 3DMark;
• Assassins Creed Odyssey;
• Red Dead Redemption 2;
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider;
• Total War Three Kingdoms;
• WoT enCore RT.

When testing in games, the minimum and maximum presets were used, no other settings were made. Only in WoT enCore RT the resolution at the minimum level of image quality was set to 1920×1080, and at the maximum, the Ultra level was used for shadows. Statistics were collected using MSI Afterburner in gaming benchmarks. Average fps and 1% low were used, the minimum was not taken into account.

The results of the junior solutions in the graphs have been provided purely for information and demonstration of what a user can get by purchasing a senior product. This data should be treated with caution, as some applications have been updated and the indicators in them may differ.

Test results

The memory tuning of the Ryzen 7 3800XT raised the AIDA64 results quite well, even in the write subtest, although not by much. Latency, the scourge of the last decade for AMD’s memory controllers, has also decreased, but it’s still far from Intel’s performance.

In Cinebench R20, “red” solutions have always been strong, and this time was no exception. The Ryzen 7 3800XT seriously outperforms its opponent, which required overclocking to 5 GHz in order to somehow catch up and even slightly outperform the competitor. Overclocking the review hero again increases the distance between them.

Geekbench 5 reacted sensitively to the overclocking of the AMD platform and showed a serious lead over the opponent. In stock, the processors are almost equal with a slight margin towards the Ryzen 7 3800XT.

When working with video, the representative of the AM4 platform performs better, and after overclocking, it begins to seriously bypass the opponent.

Archiving has not been a strong strong point of Intel processors for a long time, therefore it is not surprising that the Core i9-9900K is even behind the stock Ryzen in overclocking.

The 3DMark synthetic package is more favorable to Intel solutions, but memory tuning in AMD processors can work wonders. In the end, after overclocking, the hero of our review bypassed the competitor.

But in games, not everything is so clear. According to the results of Intel, it is clear that we rested on the capabilities of the video card, but for Ryzen it is still enough. With overclocking, the average fps grows slightly, but playing Assassin’s Creed Odyssey after it will become more comfortable on both platforms.

Red Dead Redemption 2 has a similar situation. Overclocking allows the AMD processor to raise the result a little, although the lag behind the competitor is already more serious.

Those who have not had time to play Shadow of the Tomb Raider can comfortably do it on any CPU, and after overclocking – even on monitors with a refresh rate of 120 Hz without any discomfort.

Total War Three Kingdoms is one of the few where the Ryzen 7 3800XT can really catch up and even outperform a competitor. If the AMD processor is not so good in stock, then after overclocking it looks even more preferable than the Core i9-9900K.

The WoT enCore benchmark turned out to be the most controversial in our testing. For octa-core processors, it has phenomenally poor results at the lowest picture quality, even if the CPUs are overclocked. What is the reason for this is not yet clear, either with the fact that the program has been updated, or with the fact that its multi-core support ends at the level of 4-6 cores. As the graphics quality goes up, all processors become equal, and tank lovers can save a lot by taking the cheapest Ryzen 3 or Core i3.

Now consider the power consumption of systems. Surprisingly, the older AMD platform turned out to be more economical under load, even with overclocking, than Intel, although in idle it was exactly the opposite.

A similar situation is observed in games, but unlike application programs, Ryzen is less productive here – how much he “ate”, he “gave out” as much.

conclusions

AMD does not stop arousing user interest in its products and every time it pleases fans of the “red” platform with new products. Solutions of the desktop Ryzen 3000 series have improved performance in games well, Ryzen 4000 mobile APUs have imposed competition on Intel multi-core products, and today we will be presented with the Ryzen 5000 series. What interesting features the processors will have this time – we will find out in a few hours, we just need to wait .

The Ryzen 7 3800XT processor turned out to be a very interesting model. In applications, it outperforms the more expensive Core i9-9900K without any problems, but lags behind in games, almost as much as it is cheaper. Thanks to the refined process, it overclocks well and the performance gap is narrowed, while its power consumption is lower than that of the competitor. But, like the opponent, in this mode it works on the edge and requires more efficient cooling than supercoolers and maintenance-free cooling systems can provide. So, the Ryzen 7 3800XT is rather the choice of enthusiasts and demanding users who prefer the AMD platform or want to get maximum performance in specialized software, but for some reason do not want to spend money on more expensive processor models.