What's a Better Value: Ryzen 3 1300X or 1200?

[RezidentSeagull]

The Short:

 

What's a better value proposition, the 1300X, or the 1200? I'm definitely going to overclock whatever I get, so it really boils down to gambling on the overclockability of the Ryzen 1200.

 

Do I play it safe with the Ryzen 3 1300X, knowing that the probably higher binning and stock speed of 3.5GHz will make it more certain that I can overclock to 3.9-4.0GHz?

 

Or do I gamble on the Ryzen 3 1200, knowing that reviewers SEEM to be able to get it up to around 3.9-4.0GHz and saving about $30 CAD in the process, but having to deal with a possibly lower quality chip and having to overclock much more from a 3.1GHz base?

 

The Looooong:

 

I've been waffling on how to approach an upgrade to a Ryzen-based system for some time now. Originally I was going to buy a Ryzen 5 1600 because I wanted more than 4 cores while still getting as good a value as I can. It got hard to justify that though, since I'm mostly just gaming on my desktop, and not doing a huge amount of CPU-intensive stuff that really benefits from more cores. Plus, the price of ~$280-300 CAD is a lot of money for too-little need.

 

So, once I started seeing the results of Ryzen 3 benchmarks, I shifted and instead am going to focus on a "Mostly-Gaming" build. The money I save going to a Ryzen 3 processor (~ $100 CAD) can be used to offset getting the X370 motherboard and high-speed RAM that I was angling to get, and it leaves me with more room for a meaningful processor upgrade in the future.

 

I'd be upgrading from an overclocked FX-8320 system with a GTX 970, so even though I'd lose out (sort of) on multi-threaded performance, I'd be gaining a LOT in terms of single-threaded performance, which is still where it's at for gaming anyway.

[themctipers]

1200 better value, can overclock like a 1300x.

don't buy ryzen 3 and X370, buy a 1600 and B350

[Belgarathian]

They'll both get to 3.8-4GHz, so I'd go for the 1200 on a B350 MB with some good 3200mhz RAM. 

If you want to run SLI/Xfire then you'll need a X370 chipset, otherwise B350 will be fine. 

[RezidentSeagull]

4 minutes ago, themctipers said:

1200 better value, can overclock like a 1300x.

don't buy ryzen 3 and X370, buy a 1600 and B350

 

4 minutes ago, Belgarathian said:

They'll both get to 3.8-4GHz, so I'd go for the 1200 on a B350 MB with some good 3200mhz RAM. 

The evidence looks pretty good so far for the 1200, so I'll keep an eye on overclocking results, but it looks like I'm leaning 1200 then...!

 

As for the X370, I know it's not as good a value as B350, but I kinda wanted the extra PCIe lanes in case I go for getting a 10Gb NIC for my desktop and NAS...

 

That said! I'm still working out exactly how many PCIe lanes I REALLY need, so if I find a nice B350 board I like, I'd probably be swayed towards it. Work in progress, that is.

[MyName13]

Whatever you buy just don't buy r3 for gaming, Zen architecture isn't for gaming let alone crippled r3 and r3 is going to struggle a lot because of ccx latency.There's a reason why Pentium matches r3 (and why r5 matches i5) either get r5 1400 or just wait for coffee lake.R3s have no smt, so when a ccx is busy it has to communicate with other ccx, then on top of that only 1 ccx has l3 cache, r5 1400 at least has smt so if a game is designed to utilise smt it won't have to go to the other ccx that much.If you can wait for coffee lake then wait, if you can't then you'll have to upgrade very soon.Your fx performs like r3 and sometimes even better in gaming so don't change it.

[RezidentSeagull]

21 hours ago, MyName13 said:

Whatever you buy just don't buy r3 for gaming, Zen architecture isn't for gaming let alone crippled r3 and r3 is going to struggle a lot because of ccx latency.There's a reason why Pentium matches r3 (and why r5 matches i5) either get r5 1400 or just wait for coffee lake.R3s have no smt, so when a ccx is busy it has to communicate with other ccx, then on top of that only 1 ccx has l3 cache, r5 1400 at least has smt so if a game is designed to utilise smt it won't have to go to the other ccx that much.If you can wait for coffee lake then wait, if you can't then you'll have to upgrade very soon.Your fx performs like r3 and sometimes even better in gaming so don't change it.

That's a valid argument. That said, saying the Zen architecture "isn't for gaming" is kinda silly. As for the issues with CCX latency... they don't really seem to be so significant as to make a game unplayable, especially with higher speed RAM being used for faster Infinity Fabric speeds. Regarding L3 cache... that is just kinda weird to say. For the Ryzen 3 chips, each CCX has 4MB of L3 cache, with two CCXs leading to a combined total of 8MB.

 

Gaming performance on the Ryzen 3 1300x also is looking pretty good. Tomshardware, for example, has shown in its gaming tests that the 1300X, at stock but especially when overclocked, balances against the more expensive i3-7300 50% of the time and trounces it the other half. Anandtech also is showing similar numbers, even suggesting that the i5-7400 is given a serious challenge. (Of course, there's more data out there than just two review sites, so everything is, as always, with a grain of salt).

 

Waiting for Coffee Lake, in the meanwhile, is an option, though frankly I'm not hugely interested in it for a variety of reasons. An i7-7700K right now at NCIX is about $445 CAD, and I have a sneaking suspicion that the rumored hex-core Coffee Lake replacement will not be any cheaper. For that money, I could literally buy a Ryzen 3 1200 ($144.99 CAD base price), overclock it until it bursts into flames, and then buy the hex-core Ryzen 5 1600 that I eventually wanted ($279.99 CAD on sale).

 

Coincidentally, that is actually my current plan. I was going to get a Ryzen 3 today and overclock the heck out of it, move my FX-8320 system to a server-role, then evaluate my options when AMD eventually releases a "14nm+" refresh of Zen. Just like Intel, it seems very likely that a second batch of 14nm products will mean a matured production process and hopefully higher clock rates than the current 4.0GHz ceiling on Ryzen chips. No guarantee, but certainly likely.

[MyName13]

1 hour ago, RezidentSeagull said:

That's a valid argument. That said, saying the Zen architecture "isn't for gaming" is kinda silly. As for the issues with CCX latency... they don't really seem to be so significant as to make a game unplayable, especially with higher speed RAM being used for faster Infinity Fabric speeds. Regarding L3 cache... that is just kinda weird to say. For the Ryzen 3 chips, each CCX has 4MB of L3 cache, with two CCXs leading to a combined total of 8MB.

 

Gaming performance on the Ryzen 3 1300x also is looking pretty good. Tomshardware, for example, has shown in its gaming tests that the 1300X, at stock but especially when overclocked, balances against the more expensive i3-7300 50% of the time and trounces it the other half. Anandtech also is showing similar numbers, even suggesting that the i5-7400 is given a serious challenge. (Of course, there's more data out there than just two review sites, so everything is, as always, with a grain of salt).

 

Waiting for Coffee Lake, in the meanwhile, is an option, though frankly I'm not hugely interested in it for a variety of reasons. An i7-7700K right now at NCIX is about $445 CAD, and I have a sneaking suspicion that the rumored hex-core Coffee Lake replacement will not be any cheaper. For that money, I could literally buy a Ryzen 3 1200 ($144.99 CAD base price), overclock it until it bursts into flames, and then buy the hex-core Ryzen 5 1600 that I eventually wanted ($279.99 CAD on sale).

 

Coincidentally, that is actually my current plan. I was going to get a Ryzen 3 today and overclock the heck out of it, move my FX-8320 system to a server-role, then evaluate my options when AMD eventually releases a "14nm+" refresh of Zen. Just like Intel, it seems very likely that a second batch of 14nm products will mean a matured production process and hopefully higher clock rates than the current 4.0GHz ceiling on Ryzen chips. No guarantee, but certainly likely.

1)I don't see r3 beating i3 in gaming in that article, I see the opposite, and please don't use overclocking and fast ram as an argument for showing its superiority, r3 users won't overclock and use fast ram, it's obvious that even the Pentium is a better choice (and it works with the crappiest and slowest ram on ultra cheap h110 motherboards)

2)Each ccx has 8 MB of l3 cache, r5 1400 and r3 have cache in only 1 ccx

3)Saying that mcm architecture isn't for gaming isn't silly, look at the performance and ask yourself why a dual core beats a quad core (and why an 8 thread performs like a 4 thread CPU).

[dfg666]

On 8/1/2017 at 7:36 AM, MyName13 said:

Whatever you buy just don't buy r3 for gaming, Zen architecture isn't for gaming

lol no. There's a reason why Intel panicked and brought out their X299 platform and also started offering 6 core CPUs on their mainstream platform.

 

 

AMD Ryzen completely destroys any of Intel's offerings in price to performance.

 

 

[ThatTechKid]

1200 with a B350 Mobo. You can OC the 1200 to the 1300x Base clock with the stock cooler. 

[MyName13]

33 minutes ago, dfg666 said:

lol no. There's a reason why Intel panicked and brought out their X299 platform and also started offering 6 core CPUs on their mainstream platform.

 

 

AMD Ryzen completely destroys any of Intel's offerings in price to performance.

 

 

Ryzen is smashing only with hexa and octa cores, quad cores not so much.Why does a 4c8t ryzen perform like intel's 4c4t cpu and why does 4c4t ryzen perform like intel's dual core?

[ZenMonkey]

I might be the only person who prefers the 1300X to the 1200. It's only $20 and the 1300X is a higher-binned chip, so you're more likely to hit those top overclock speeds. If you plan on gaming, clock speed is king currently.

[ZenMonkey]

1 hour ago, dfg666 said:

AMD Ryzen completely destroys any of Intel's offerings in price to performance.

 

In many respects, but not in overall gaming performance. In gaming, Intel is still on top by a respectable margin because most of the games out there don't even use 4c8t, let alone 6/12 or more, so game optimization plus Intel's higher speeds and IPC make a big difference.

 

Now if you're a streamer or content creator in addition to being a gamer, then R5 or R7 would make more sense for a gaming rig. Also, I suspect that over the next five years we'll see the majority of games supporting more cores and threads since that's the new trend in mainstream CPUs, so an R5 or R7 will likely be a better long-term investment chip, but this thread is about the R3 so I'm guessing it's a budget build the OP expects to replace in < 3 years, in which case long-term investment isn't likely his top priority.

[MyName13]

23 minutes ago, ZenMonkey said:

 

In many respects, but not in overall gaming performance. In gaming, Intel is still on top by a respectable margin because most of the games out there don't even use 4c8t, let alone 6/12 or more, so game optimization plus Intel's higher speeds and IPC make a big difference.

 

Now if you're a streamer or content creator in addition to being a gamer, then R5 or R7 would make more sense for a gaming rig. Also, I suspect that over the next five years we'll see the majority of games supporting more cores and threads since that's the new trend in mainstream CPUs, so an R5 or R7 will likely be a better long-term investment chip, but this thread is about the R3 so I'm guessing it's a budget build the OP expects to replace in < 3 years, in which case long-term investment isn't likely his top priority.

Even when games start requiring 8 threads ryzen won't perform well/better than now because of ccx latency (and because of only 8 MB of cache in r5 1400), it will surely perform better than r3s but chocolate flavoured sh!t is still sh!t, fast cores rule in gaming and always will.Developers won't parallelise games to put less stress on the CPU by doing things faster, they will most likely be required for increasing the complexity of games and this won't make ryzen perform better than current Intel's CPUs, if that was the case a dual core wouldn't smash quad core ryzen.I'd still take any r5 over i5 even if (quad) r5 wouldn't perform much better than i5 Intel the future.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, MyName13 said:

Even when games start requiring 8 threads ryzen won't perform well/better than now because of ccx latency (and because of only 8 MB of cache in r5 1400), it will surely perform better than r3s but chocolate flavoured sh!t is still sh!t, fast cores rule in gaming and always will.Developers won't parallelise games to put less stress on the CPU by doing things faster, they will most likely be required for increasing the complexity of games and this won't make ryzen perform better than current Intel's CPUs, if that was the case a dual core wouldn't smash quad core ryzen.I'd still take any r5 over i5 even if (quad) r5 wouldn't perform much better than i5 Intel the future.

You are over blowing this CCX latency thing it's not as big of a deal as you are making it out to be. Also your claim that R3 isn't beating a I3 is nonsense and you even said users who get a R3 won't OC and get fast memory and the very first post on this thread is talking about someone who is doing just that. 

 

As for your comments about a Ryzen 5 not beating a I5 well to late it already does in minimum frame rates which are far more important then having 10 more fps on average, hell at times I5 hits crazy low FPS out of no where WHY you ask well its over it being pegged to 100% usage in modern games and has nothing else to give. Same will happen to the ryzen 3 and I3 processors. 

 

4C/4T CPU for gaming simply isn't a good option in 2017 and moving forward. 

 

Coffee lake should have been here 2 years ago but Intel had no competition so we got stuck with the same crap for 5 years. Ryzen is the best thing to happen to the enthusiast market i mean we even have Jayztwocents switching for gods sake. 

[ZenMonkey]

1 hour ago, jdwii said:

Ryzen is the best thing to happen to the enthusiast market i mean we even have Jayztwocents switching for gods sake. 

 

I agree that Ryzen is probably the best thing to happen in the past 10 or so years. Certainly the past 5-7 years. It's going to drive Intel to innovate and update. If Intel can come back with a more reasonable pricing scheme, it could be a knockout for Ryzen. If not, Ryzen provides great cost to performance, if not the best overall performance. Either way, we are the winners.

 

2 hours ago, MyName13 said:

Even when games start requiring 8 threads ryzen won't perform well/better than now because of ccx latency (and because of only 8 MB of cache in r5 1400), it will surely perform better than r3s but chocolate flavoured sh!t is still sh!t, fast cores rule in gaming and always will.Developers won't parallelise games to put less stress on the CPU by doing things faster, they will most likely be required for increasing the complexity of games and this won't make ryzen perform better than current Intel's CPUs, if that was the case a dual core wouldn't smash quad core ryzen.I'd still take any r5 over i5 even if (quad) r5 wouldn't perform much better than i5 Intel the future.

 

Much of the CCX latency issue is offset by the faster memory recommended for use with Ryzen. Even so, if the game is optimized for 8 cores, then better 8 cores with some latency than 4 or 6 cores without.

 

Saying game developers won't optimize for it is presumptive. If AMD claims a sizable market share with Ryzen - and their cost to performance ratio is such that they're likely to do so - then developers will respond.

 

Finally, this is the first iteration of the Ryzen architecture. I expect to see a good amount of refinement over the next two years.

[MyName13]

3 hours ago, jdwii said:

You are over blowing this CCX latency thing it's not as big of a deal as you are making it out to be. Also your claim that R3 isn't beating a I3 is nonsense and you even said users who get a R3 won't 

 

As for your comments about a Ryzen 5 not beating a I5 well to late it already does in minimum frame rates which are far more important then having 10 more fps on  

 

4C/4T CPU for gaming simply isn't a good option in 2017 and moving forward. 

. 

1)If ccx isn't an issue then Zen is definitely far behind Kaby lake (not just few percent)

 

2)Quad r5s have better minimums?They do, only for a few percent

But not nearly as better as they should be, see 3)

 

3)4c4t doesn't mean anything, you can't compare Kaby lake 4c4t with Zen 4c4t, it's obvious that i7 has much better performance than i5 due to hyperthreading, but we don't see this when going from r3 to quad r5.If Zen is just few percent behind Kaby lake then why doesn't r5 1400/1500x perform like i7 7700 and why doesn't r3 1200 perform at least like i5 7400?Im afraid that locked i5 and quad r5s will have the same lifespan.

[Guest]

7 hours ago, MyName13 said:

1)If ccx isn't an issue then Zen is definitely far behind Kaby lake (not just few percent)

 

2)Quad r5s have better minimums?They do, only for a few percent

But not nearly as better as they should be, see 3)

 

3)4c4t doesn't mean anything, you can't compare Kaby lake 4c4t with Zen 4c4t, it's obvious that i7 has much better performance than i5 due to hyperthreading, but we don't see this when going from r3 to quad r5.If Zen is just few percent behind Kaby lake then why doesn't r5 1400/1500x perform like i7 7700 and why doesn't r3 1200 perform at least like i5 7400?Im afraid that locked i5 and quad r5s will have the same lifespan.

If you actually look at all the benchmarks it is higher in the 1% low frame rates. Again i've been saying this for awhile now Ryzen is NOT on broadwell level IPC it never was. 

 

Ryzen does some things better to overcome this in a lot of applications. For example SMT is "better" on ryzen and see's greater results then HT over Amd probably not being able to efficiently use all the resources it has for that single core in single core applications. 

 

Look at Ryzen 3 OC that to 4ghz and then compare it to a 2500K at 4ghz to get a look at true 100% IPC. I bet it will be the same as my testing around 18-21% more powerful then sandy-ivy in IPC on average. 

 

I ran several benchmarks and every time i get these results. Broadwell is around 5-7% better then Haswell IPC and based off of my testing i can safely say Ryzen is + or - 10% within Haswell. 

 

Not a single freaking review is comparing IPC correctly like they used to back in the Pentium-Athlon days.