AMD announced this morning that it is expanding its Ryzen processor line-up with two new entries targeted at budget-minded gamers and business professionals. The pair of processors, the Ryzen R3 3100 and R3 3300X, each offer quad-core performance with hyperthreading for significantly budget pricing of $99 and $120 respectively.
These processors, planned for worldwide release in early May, aim to offer an exceptional value their relatively low cost of entry. Each are built on the Zen 2 architecture, which currently powers the R5, R7, and R9 3000-series processors. Both CPUs offer simultaneous multithreading, allowing for four cores and eight threads of performance. They also feature 16MB of total cache to increase their overall speed.
The new entries directly compete with Intel’s Core i3 line. Here’s how they compare, spec by spec.
Intel still holds the lead in boost frequency, but that appears to be about it. The additional double to triple the cache, twice the amount of threads, and significantly lower pricing make these CPUs very compelling. If you’re just getting into PC gaming and want to try your hand at streaming or video editing, these are currently the most cost effective way to do that with current gen parts.
Along with the new CPUs, AMD also revealed the brand new B500 chipset. Previously, if you wanted to enjoy PCIe 4.0, you had to buy the much more expensive X570 chipset. Pricing hasn’t been revealed yet, but AMD’s B-series chipsets represent their more affordable performance option, great for gaming builds that don’t need every bell and whistle. We expect the B550 series to follow that precedent. This opens the door to incredibly fast NVMe storage and the potential for improved GPU performance over time.
Stay tuned for more as we move closer to launch.
