Generation Gap – Ryzen 7 1700 Versus Ryzen 3 3300X
Age Versus Youth; Eight Older Cores Against Four Newer Ones
The ~$300 R7 1700 is over three years old and a bit slower with a base clock of 3.0GHz and turbo of 3.7GHz but sports eight cores and sixteen threads. The ~$120 R3 3300X is less than a year old with a mere four cores and eight threads, but it’s base is 3.7GHz and it boosts to 4.3GHz. TechSpot decided to see just how much has changed and if the newer Ryzen 3 might be a match for the older Ryzen 7.
Their tests were run at 1080p and with a handful of GeForce cards from the GTX 1650 to the mighty RTX 2080 Ti, forgoing scenarios that would focus only on the CPU to instead provide a look at a more reasonable system. That is, if you were one to decide to pair an RTX 2080 Ti with a Ryzen 3 processor.
Regardless, the benchmarks tell a clear tale of the improvements to AMD’s architecture over the past couple of generations. If you are shopping for a lower cost system and pondering grabbing a used R7 1700 from eBay or picking up a brand new Ryzen 3 the choice is quite clear when you look at the overall averages. Indeed in the results where they were even somewhat close, you saw very little performance difference between any of the tested processors.
The results of this review might surprise you and would definitely scale down to a more reasonable priced GPU for a budget build.
AMD's old-time favorite, the Ryzen 7 1700 seems to have aged rather well. Budget PC builders right now can choose between a Ryzen 3 3300X or a second hand R7 1700 for $130. The 3300X is a 4-core/8-thread CPU that enjoys all the advantages of the Zen 2 architecture, while the R7 1700 has twice as many cores, but older Zen ones. So which wins?
So, if you were one of those who got a r3 1300 2 or 3 years ago with the plan to upgrade later, then you can get a SERIOUS power upgrade super easy now. You might have to flash your bios, but same socket and what nots.
Pretty cool when you think about it.