AMD Ryzen 3 3300X – when cheaper Matisse is not enough

Gaming, graphics tests and PC/3DMark

The duel of Ryzen 3 3100 and Intel Core i3-10100 processors showed that AMD can beat Intel in most tests at a lower price. However, the R3 3100 is not the only new model introduced by the manufacturer. The 3300X is more powerful, with higher clock speed and, coincidentally, it also sells for the same price as the Ci3-10100. In addition to significantly higher clock speed, it also has different CCD composition.

Basic specs

Ryzen 3 3300X was released at the same time as the 3100 and represents the top model in Ryzen 3 series. Paper parameters show up to 400 MHz higher clock speed and a higher price which is at the level of Intel Core i3-10100. However, if the difference was only the clock speed, the 3300X would probably not be bought by anyone, as it would be enough to slightly overclock the 3100.

However, the difference between the processors is also below the surface, and this is quite significant. It results from different configurations of chiplets in the CCD. While the 3100 has two active CCXs with two cores, a 2 + 2 configuration, the 3300X uses only one full-featured CCX with 4 cores and thus a 4 + 0 configuration. Thanks to the fact that all 4 cores are also 16 MB L3 cache in one CCX, the 3300X offers better core-to-core latency and therefore theoretically also higher performance. It will be interesting to see how much these changes will be reflected in our tests.

Testing methodology

We tested the processors at home, not in a laboratory environment. Nevertheless, the effort was made for the most accurate results. These are therefore the average of the measured values from repeated tests. We tried to eliminate factors that would affect performance in addition to the processor itself and the motherboard. We used the same components in both cases. The idea of all tests was to use base settings and turning on XMP, no other adjustments were made. This is how most users will actually function.

The duel of Ryzen 3 3100 and Intel Core i3-10100 processors showed that AMD can beat Intel in most tests at a lower price. However, the R3 3100 is not the only new model introduced by the manufacturer. The 3300X is more powerful, with higher clock speed and, coincidentally, it also sells for the same price as the Ci3-10100. In addition to significantly higher clock speed, it also has different CCD composition.

Rendering

Higher clock speed and a change in the internal structure of the processor were immediately reflected in the result of Cinebench R15. Compared to the 3100, you see a nice 12% increase in performance in single-core and 9% in multi-core. The 3300X’s lead over Intel is even bigger, 15 and 24%.

The newer version of Cinebench R20 shows the same difference as R15 among the new Ryzen 3 CPUs. The lead over Intel has changed slightly, an increase to 20% in single-core but a decrease to 19% in multi-core.

In a practical test of POV-Ray render, you can see that the 3300X is 8% faster than the 3100 and 21% faster than the 10100. This translates into almost 10 and 25 second differences.

Blender showed only a 3% difference between 3100 and 10100. The 3300X is another 11% or 49 and 63 seconds faster than both.

Geekbench

Geekbench 3 shows a 9% lead of the 3300X over the 3100 in both single and multi-core tests. Compared to Intel, it is up to 18 and 25% faster.

Although Geekbench 4 doesn’t really like AMD processors, the 3300X beats the other two processors in this test as well, 7–9% in single-core and 8–14% in multi-core.

The latest Geekbench 5 version shows a 12% lead over 3100 in single-core and 13% over 10100. Multi-core 5 and 14% in favor of 3300X.

The raw performance of the 3300X is very solid and the more than 10% increase in single-core compared to the 3100 is definitely not negligible. In multi-core, we saw up to a quarter higher performance compared to 10100 which is unprecedented at the same price of processors.

The duel of Ryzen 3 3100 and Intel Core i3-10100 processors showed that AMD can beat Intel in most tests at a lower price. However, the R3 3100 is not the only new model introduced by the manufacturer. The 3300X is more powerful, with higher clock speed and, coincidentally, it also sells for the same price as the Ci3-10100. In addition to significantly higher clock speed, it also has different CCD composition.

Far Cry 5

The area where Intel 10100 was ahead of Ryzen 3100 is high fps gaming. This happens when you lower the resolution and/or graphics settings to get as many frames per second as possible. Bottleneck is thus transferred from the graphics card to the processor and Intel had an advantage there thanks to higher clock speed. This is still the case, but now the difference is only at the level of 10% or 10 fps which is significantly better than 20–25 fps in the case of 3100.

Unigine Heaven and Superposition

However, the results are different in Unigine tests, where the 3300X gets better results than the 10100 even in high fps gaming.

PCMark and 3DMark

Similarly, both PCMark and 3DMark Firestrike are already clearly in favor of AMD with a 7% and 4% lead over Intel.

The duel of Ryzen 3 3100 and Intel Core i3-10100 processors showed that AMD can beat Intel in most tests at a lower price. However, the R3 3100 is not the only new model introduced by the manufacturer. The 3300X is more powerful, with higher clock speed and, coincidentally, it also sells for the same price as the Ci3-10100. In addition to significantly higher clock speed, it also has different CCD composition.

Encryption

In encryption, the 3100 was already stronger than the 10100, the 3300X has an advantage mainly in encryption by 9%. Decryption is almost the same.

Encoding

6–7% better encoding results will save you a few seconds compared to 3100. 3300X is 14% faster than 10100.

Memory tests

Not much has changed in memory tests, writing is still half the speed of Intel, and other values are almost identical between 3100 and 3300X. What makes the 3300X slightly better is latency, but it still doesn’t match Intel.

The duel of Ryzen 3 3100 and Intel Core i3-10100 processors showed that AMD can beat Intel in most tests at a lower price. However, the R3 3100 is not the only new model introduced by the manufacturer. The 3300X is more powerful, with higher clock speed and, coincidentally, it also sells for the same price as the Ci3-10100. In addition to significantly higher clock speed, it also has different CCD composition.

Heating

The 9 degrees Celsius higher temperature compared to 3100 is notable, but it is still not a high value that the processor could not handle and had to underclock. In addition, this is the maximum value and in most tests the temperature was below 70 degrees.

Power draw

When looking at the power draw of the CPU package and the entire system, you can see 10 W more compared to the 3100 which is also the justification for the higher temperature. Higher performance simply needs more juice and this is reflected in power draw.

The duel of Ryzen 3 3100 and Intel Core i3-10100 processors showed that AMD can beat Intel in most tests at a lower price. However, the R3 3100 is not the only new model introduced by the manufacturer. The 3300X is more powerful, with higher clock speed and, coincidentally, it also sells for the same price as the Ci3-10100. In addition to significantly higher clock speed, it also has different CCD composition.

Rating

AMD Ryzen 3 3300X is not just an overclocked Ryzen 3 3100. The difference between these processors is also below the surface in the configuration of chiplets. The R3 3300X therefore has a lower latency between the individual cores which is also reflected in the performance. On average, we saw about a 10% increase in single-core compared to 3100 which is certainly not negligible.

Core i3-10100 with the same price has it even harder. In the multi-core test it also lagged behind by 25% and even game tests at many fps were no longer fully in its hands. Here, too, the 3300X was able to compete with it. The only advantage of the 10100 is the still integrated graphics which none of these Ryzen CPUs has. So you always have to pair AMD with a dedicated graphics card which means higher costs for office PCs. The Core i3 also has a surprisingly lower power draw and temperature which can be useful if you want to put the processor in a small case with passive cooling, for example. In any other case, and especially if you are building a PC for gaming and work, AMD offers significantly higher performance for the same money.

You can buy this processor at our partner’s website czc.cz for 3 343 CZK/125 EUR.

English translation and edit by Lukáš Terényi

• Contents
• Intro
• Rendering and Geekbench
• Gaming, graphics tests and PC/3DMark
• Encryption, encoding and memory tests
• Heating and power draw
• Rating