Review of AMD Ryzen 7 3700X processor. Zen 2 still rocks

Conclusion

Even after the release of the Ryzen 7 5700G, the Ryzen 7 3700X is currently the cheapest octa-core processor. It still doesn’t have a proper successor. The Ryzen 5 5800X is significantly pricier, but it is fully stocked in stores. This last-gen model could thus be considered up-to-date and should not be omitted in comparisons with other processors. It also beats the Rocket Lake Core i7 not only in efficiency but also occasionally in performance.

Conclusion

The Ryzen 7 3700X in most cases has not enough performance to beat about a hundred euros more expensive Core i7-11700KF. In games, it can lose by up to 16% in Full HD (it would be less with a slower graphics card than the RTX 3080), in QHD it is only 5%. The Rocket Lake Core i7 also has the upper hand in heavy-duty applications, in 3D rendering it’s 15–20 %. But it is at the cost of dramatically higher power draw. High efficiency, like with Ryzen 5000, is also present in Ryzen 3000 including the 3700X.

The older Ryzen 7 also loses by roughly 20% against the Core i7-11700KF in Adobre Premiere Pro, but in the alternative in the form of DaVinci Resolve it is 4–12% to the detriment of the R7 3700X . Photo editing in Photoshop is mostly by about 20% slower. There is usually a small difference only with some filters that use GPU acceleration (such as noise reduction, sharpening or shifting the depth of field, and so on). But exporting uncompressed photos in Lightroom is quite faster on the 3700X than on the 11700KF, 1:1 preview generation times are the same, though. However, it should also be added that Lightroom overall favors AMD processors more. But it is worse in Affinity Photo vector graphics, even the Core i5-10400FR7 beats the 3700X. However, this is a unique exception and usually the 3700X is especially suitable for those who do not get enough multithreaded performance out of the Ci5-10400F and do not put that much emphasis on gaming.

In games, the results of Core i5-10400F and Ryzen 7 3700X are interestingly balanced, but the Core i5-11400F is 3% (2160p) to 9% (1080p) faster. However, from these two, the 10400F and 3700X, the Core i5 is more suitable for a strictly gaming computer. In addition to the significantly lower price, also for its higher efficiency. The 10400F is 19–23% more power efficient in games, the Ryzen still does not have a high power draw though. For comparison, the Core i7-11700K with PL2 has double the power draw as the 3700X.

The advantage of the last-gen Ryzen 7 (Matisse) over the last-gen Core i5 (Comet Lake) in a gaming computer could be in streaming with the x264 encoder, where with the AMD processor there are significantly smaller fps drops. But most importantly, the 3700X is more attractive to those who will make use of more Ryzen 7 cores and threads. In video encoding, the performance increase of the 3700X (compared to the 10400F) is more than 45% higher.

Ryzen 7 also has a slightly higher single-threaded performance in this comparison of older generations of AMD and Intel, which in addition to faster audio encoding also translates to everyday use. It is also supported by PCMark tests, which measure swiftness when working with text or spreadsheet editors, during conference calls or even on the web. Slightly lower “web” performance of the Ci5-10400F is then achieved in complex tests of Speedometer and Octane.

TL;DR: The Ryzen 7 3700X is close to the best features of the Ci5-10400F (decent gaming performance at low power consumption) and the Core i7-11700KF in the form of multithreaded performance, which is not that far from Rocket Lake, and at the same time the 3700X is significantly more power-efficient. Compared to the 10400F in games, this is no longer the case (the 3700X has a slightly higher power draw), but otherwise the Ryzen 7 3700X appears to be a remarkable compromise between the Core i5-10400F and the Core i7-11700KF.

We’ve got the games for our tests from Jama levova

Special thanks to Blackmagic Design (for a licence to DaVinci Resolve Studio), Topaz Labs (for licences to apps DeNoise AI, Gigapixel AI and Sharpen AI) and Zoner (for a licence to Photo Studio X)

• Contents
• AMD Ryzen 7 3700X in detail
• Methodology: performance tests
• Methodology: how we measure power draw
• Methodology: temperature and clock speed tests
• Test setup
• 3DMark
• Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla
• Borderlands 3
• Counter-Strike: GO
• Cyberpunk 2077
• DOOM Eternal
• F1 2020
• Metro Exodus
• Microsoft Flight Simulator
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider
• Total War Saga: Troy
• Overall gaming performance
• Gaming performance per euro
• PCMark and Geekbench
• Web performance
• 3D rendering: Cinebench, Blender, ...
• Video 1/2: Adobe Premiere Pro
• Video 2/2: DaVinci Resolve Studio
• Graphic effects: Adobe After Effects
• Video encoding
• Audio encoding
• Broadcasting (OBS and Xsplit)
• Photos 1/2: Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom
• Photos 2/2: Affinity Photo, Topaz Labs AI apps, ZPS X, ..
• (De)compression
• (De)cryption
• Numerical computing
• Simulations
• Memory and cache tests
• Processor power draw trend
• Average processor power draw
• Performance per watt
• Achieved CPU clock speed
• CPU temperature
• Conclusion