It’s undeniably a muscle chip, but on price, content-creation power, and gaming results, AMD’s Ryzen 7 3800XT can’t quite escape the shadow of the too-good, too-cheap Ryzen 7 3700X.
The middle child in AMD’s new-for-2020 trio of Ryzen XT processors, the Ryzen 7 3800XT ($399) is a desktop CPU plagued by the same problem as its 2019 Ryzen 7 3800X predecessor. And that problem has a name: Ryzen 7 3700X. Even with AMD’s refinements to its 7-nanometer (7nm) manufacturing process in the XT line of chips, the 3800XT can’t quite find its way to a level of greatness that matches its price point. The chip adds up to a rare value misfire for AMD, in a year in which the company has seldom made a misstep.
Midrange content creators will see better returns on an investment in the Ryzen XT family with the Ryzen 5 3600XT, and the Editors’ Choice-winning Ryzen 7 3700X often scored so close to the Ryzen 7 3800XT in both content creation and gaming that, at times, it was hard to tell them apart. With AMD’s next-generation Zen 3 around the corner (coming by the end of 2020, the company insists at the moment), the Ryzen 7 3800XT is a not a bad chip by itself, but it’s outclassed by other Ryzen family members. AMD’s Ryzen 7 3800XT vs. Intel’s Core i7: It’s Tricky in the Middle
If you’re looking for more context and a deeper exploration of the Ryzen XT line and how it differs from the previous generation, head on over to our Ryzen 9 3900XT review to get the full skinny.
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In short, though? The Ryzen XT CPUs are slight « tune-ups » of three of AMD’s key 7-nanometer (7nm) Zen 2 CPUs from its hugely successful mid-2019 launch. The Ryzen 9 3900XT is a $499 chip that heads this field of three; then there’s the 3800XT reviewed here; and the last is the $249 Ryzen 5 3600XT. All are close siblings of the chips that they are refinements of: the Ryzen 9 3900X, the Ryzen 7 3800X, and the Ryzen 5 3600X. The new three don’t replace the older three; all six will stay on the market together.
That new crowding, thanks to the XTs, makes the CPU midrange from $250 to $400 a pretty busy place here in 2020. Even before the XT chips, midrange gamers and serious content creators weren’t wanting for choice; plus, with low-end options like the $120 Ryzen 3300X entering the market, budget gamers have better-than-ever options. Here are the key specs for the three XT chips…
None of the XT chips comes with integrated graphics (IGP) silicon, just like their forebears. Also, all of the XT chips work on AMD’s now-venerable Socket AM4 and thus shouldn’t require a new motherboard if you’re already in the Ryzen ecosystem, though you’ll want to check for individual board compatibility before making any assumptions.
Let’s take the specs a step further. Here’s a breakout of the Ryzen 7 3800XT alongside its 3800X predecessor, as well as Intel’s closest Core i7 equivalents from its current and previous generation…
As you can see, the Ryzen 7 3800XT is an eight-core/16-thread processor with a base clock speed of 3.9GHz, a max boost of 4.7GHz (up from 4.5GHz in the non-XT version),4MB of L2 cache, and 32MB of L3 cache. The lack of IGP is less of a concern, perhaps, than on the Ryzen 5 3600XT, and anyone gaming on this chip should already be compensating for the missing IGP with something like an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti graphics card, at a minimum. But it bears noting that the Intel Core i7s above have lightweight Intel UHD Graphics 630 IGPs built in. Gamers will want nothing to do with them, but they are there for productivity-minded use.
On price, the Ryzen 7 3800XT costing $70 more on MSRP than the Ryzen 7 3800X isn’t as much the story here as is the massive gap (as much as $110 at this writing) between the Ryzen 7 3800XT and the Ryzen 7 3700X, widely available at $289 to $300 at this writing, and in spots even lower. The Ryzen 7 3700X is an eight-core,16-thread AMD third-gen processor that is close to identical to the original Ryzen 7 3800X, barring a lower TDP (65 watts, down from 105 watts) and a lower maximum boost clock (4.4GHz, down from 4.5GHz).
In reviews of both chips across the web (we haven’t had the opportunity to test the 3800X, though we did test the 3700X), most analysts agree that the minimal gains of the Ryzen 7 3800X over the 3700X, and even then gains only in a few particular games, isn’t enough to bridge the cost gap. Both also show up as close to neck-and-neck in heavily threaded content-creation tasks, and if not neck-and-neck, then at least neck-and-very-long-arm.
One big factor to consider that affects the value equation further: Like the AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT, the Ryzen 7 3800XT is a departure from AMD’s usual practice on bundled CPU coolers.
