The Ryzen 3 3100 is a stellar CPU for budget gamers and content creators who have a dedicated video card, bringing major multi-threaded pep to the $99 price point. Even so, many shoppers will be better off springing another Jackson for AMD’s great Ryzen 3 3300X instead.
If the AMD Ryzen 3 3300X is the desktop processor that blurs the line between a great budget gaming CPU and a solid budget content-creation engine, the $99 Ryzen 3 3100 is the «lite» version. It’s a chip that shores up the low end of AMD’s Ryzen stack as a solid pick for PC gamers who are just a Jackson short of what you’d spend on a 3300X. Does it need to exist? Maybe not, but it still has its own rare charm, and is a first: an under-$100 four-core/eight-thread processor, which is a great deal no matter which way you slice it. In general, we’re going to recommend you go with the Ryzen 3 3300X instead, but if that $20 difference between the two chips is your difference-maker, the Ryzen 3 3100 is a value-minded little beastie that gets the job done almost as well. Just know that it requires a video card alongside it; it has no integrated graphics, unlike its Intel equivalents.
The New Budget Ryzen Stack
We’ve already done a deep dive on all the various things you need to know about this latest Ryzen launch in our review of the Ryzen 3 3300X, linked above, but here’s a quick breakdown. First, the core specs and where the new Ryzen 3 chips fit in the AMD third-generation Ryzen line…
These third-gen chips all make use of AMD’s 7nm process technology, under the umbrella of the Zen 2 architecture. Not listed here are two other 3000-series chips we’ve tested, the $99 Ryzen 3 3200G and the $149 Ryzen 5 3400G. The «G» is for integrated graphics; the reason they are not in the third-generation family, technically, is that the CPUs are based on older process technology. But don’t ignore them; they are the ones to look at if a dedicated graphics card is just not in the…well, cards for you.
SEE ALSO: Intel’s ‘Comet Lake-S’ Desktop CPUs Offer Up to 10 Cores of Computing Muscle
The Ryzen 3 3100, like the rest in the family, slots into the AMD AM4 socket, which has been in use since the first generation of Ryzen. It should work with any AM4 motherboard that has a BIOS update that specifically accommodates it. (Not every vendor will offer such compatibility on every old board, so check first.)
Alongside the launch of Ryzen 3, AMD is also announcing its next motherboard chipset upgrade: the AMD B550 (a tick up from the mainstream-priced B450), due out in new boards starting on June 16. The new Ryzen 3s support the much discussed PCI Express 4.0 (PCIe 4.0) bus standard (when used with a compatible late-model motherboard), but this is of interest mainly to performance hounds at the high end, concerned about maximum sustained speeds with specialized PCIe 4.0-compatible SSDs. For budget buyers, a previous-gen AM4 motherboard without PCIe 4.0 support, but supporting the CPU, should suffice in most cases.
To read the full explanation of what this launch means for budget creators and gamers alike, head on over to our Ryzen 3 3300X review to find out more. We’ve broken down lots more about the platform nuances there.
Intel vs. AMD Comparison
In its press materials, AMD has been pressing the advantage that the Ryzen 3 3100 has over Intel’s currently sold competing processor in the same price bracket, the four-core/four-thread Core i3-9100. Here’s a look at the current state of play in that tight budget space around $100. Note: The Core i3-10100, not tested here, is the closest price match to the Ryzen 3 3100 in Intel’s pending 10th Generation «Comet Lake-S» line, expected to hit the street later this month.
At the moment of this writing, Intel’s closest match for the Ryzen 3 3100 is the Core i3-9100, a four-core and (crucially) only four-thread CPU, which we ran some CPU tests on alongside this Ryzen 3 model. In both gaming and content creation, AMD believes it has the upper hand in certain games and applications, but will this ring true once we throw the chip in our testbed and start putting it through its paces? Let’s find out…
Performance Testing: CPU
For our test setup, we installed the AMD Ryzen 3 3100 into an MSI MEG Godlike X570 AM4 motherboard, and populated two of the DIMM slots with 16GB of memory set at 3,000MHz. An Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti handled video output during the CPU tests, clocked to Founders Edition specs. (Like other Ryzen chips not ending in «G,» these Zen 2-based Ryzens do not have on-chip graphics, so a video card is necessary.
