The King is Dead, Long Live the King! – Ryzen 3900X & Ryzen 3700X Review

Final Thoughts

Now comes the part where I gotta find a way to summarize my experience with the new Ryzen 3000 series parts.

Firstly, I was apprehensive to believe the hype AMD created when they announced and teased performance as I think I like many have become gun shy after so many times claims are out there and it comes up anywhere between a little short to wildly different than expected. I am stoked in this case to say that the hype is real, and the 9900K is on very shaky ground as the performance of the 7nm Zen 2 basically displaces the now aging 14nm parts from Intel.

Now comes time for me extrapolate a few things based on what I have seen. Intel has a tough road ahead of them as their earliest point where they will likely be able to fight back will be in late 2019 or even early/mid 2020 since 14nm is not really viable to scale outward on the 115x socket since its such a small package that the thermal density of the current arch that the 9900K is based on would be a thermal disaster if they tried to scale the current core to fit any more cores. 10nm is on the radar but tape out and prep for a new processor series takes time and I know that Intel had said that possibly holiday availability for 10nm parts in 2019, but if its anything like previous launches, initial allotment goes to OEMs which have systems on the shelf for holiday and that is why I state it could be early 2020.

The Ryzen 3000 series I knew would be good but I never figured the level to which we observed and it is all thanks to the team at AMD and their dedication to keep pushing for the next step in performance. The Ryzen parts run at a slower speed in most cases than the Intel parts yet they outperform the 9900K which tells you AMD did some serious work to bring this level of performance to us all at a very reasonable value. PCIe 4.0 is not really usable for GPUs for the most part, at least for gaming. But storage and other HBA’s this will be next level performance.

Heres the score breakdown

Value – 100 The Ryzen 3000 CPU stack is well positioned and the prices and relative performance WILL disrupt the current CPU market.

Performance – 96 Performance is solid, there are some single core areas where it can tighten up, but if you look at it relative to cost, the Ryzen 3000 series as of this moment in time is unbeatable. Intel and the 9900K have been usurped.

Innovation – 98 Innovation is always interesting and sometimes it’s hard to justify scoring high on innovation without making some very big moves in design or architecture. AMD did both and offers some major innovation with the first 7nm ZEN 2 CPUs and to do all of that with almost total domination of performance in the category is no small task.

Quality – 90 Quality includes not just the feel and quality of the part but the quality of the experience. Using the X570 was as simple to install and get running as enabling DOCP (XMP) and installing an OS. This is not the old AMD anymore where weird issues happen all the time, Ryzen is far more polished now. There is still some refinement needed in the BIOS so anyone making a Day-1 purchase will deal with that but the BIOS is complete enough on the ASUS Crosshair VIIII Hero WiFi that I would feel confident saying it would not be an issue, but expect regular updates to the UEFI for the coming months as things get tuned in.

I only have one thing I can say in closing to this, Well done AMD, you made one Kickass series of processors with the Ryzen 3000 series.

To everyone swearing that AMD will never catch up to Intel. I only have one thing to say, and you can read it below.

‘Le roi est mort, vive le roi!’