AMD Ryzen 5 3600XT, Ryzen 7 3800XT and Ryzen 9 3900XT Review

AMD Ryzen 5 3600XT, Ryzen 7 3800XT and Ryzen 9 3900XT Review

Introduction

The AMD Ryzen 3rd Generation has proven to be wildly popular, and with good reason. A lot of the problems they had before they came across the Ryzen formula were erased with the first iteration, and both the 2nd and 3rd Generation improved upon that formula until they are easily matching the Intel offerings in price and capability. It’s like the AMD of old.

Never one to rest upon their laurels AMD have revisited their most popular models in the third-gen range and refined them yet further, to bring extra clock speed to the party, something we never grow tired of. AMD is also keen on the upgrade path formula, and the XT processors will drop in and work out of the box with any motherboard already capable of supporting the 3rd Gen processors, whether that’s an X470, X570, or the recently launched B550 range. What we particularly like, as if clock speed increases weren’t enough, is that AMD hasn’t taken the opportunity to gouge the paying public, instead releasing all three XT CPUs at the same price point as their X counterparts. So that’s $249 for the Ryzen 5 3600XT, $399 for the Ryzen 7 3800XT and $499 for the Ryzen 9 3900XT.

All of the familiar 3rd Gen features are present and correct, whether that is the extra bandwidth and storage speeds available from the PCI Express 4.0, or blazing USB transfer rates. The XT CPUs are just a faster, more finely tuned version of the already successful 3x00X processors.

One other addition from AMD with this new release is AMD’s StoreMI 2.0 technology, which supports a large combination of storage drives. The software is easier to use and can still bring users the same software speed enhancements to your fat old HDD that the original saw. Another major benefit is the lack of device capacity limits, which was a major downside of StoreMI 1.0. We’re always going to enjoy faster application launch times and Windows boot speeds, and StoreMI 2.0 is an easy way for some users to achieve that. Anything that lets us get on with working or playing faster is something we’re on board with.

Technical Specifications

The biggest change from the original chips to the XT models is the refinement of their silicon allowing for even higher clock speeds, and you can see that when you compare these updated XT CPUs against the originals. The Ryzen 5 3600 moves from 4.4 GHz boost/ 3.8 GHz base to 4.5 GHz/3.8 GHz respectively. 100MHz upgrade. The 3800XT goes from 4.5/3.9 to 4.7/3.9 GHz, whilst the Ryzen 9 3900XT ups the game from 4.6/3.8 GHz to 4.7/3.8 GHz. Not massive changes, with the 3800XT seeing the biggest increase, but we all know that an improvement in the manufacturers recommended boost speeds are always a little on the conservative side so that should allow us to overclock a little higher manually. Cache sizes remain the same, as indeed does the die size and transistor count. These are a refinement, rather than the wholesale changes we saw between the Ryzen 2nd Gen and Ryzen 3rd Gen. Think of them as the ultimate expression of the Zen 2 architecture.

AMD Ryzen 5 3600XT, Ryzen 7 3800XT and Ryzen 9 3900XT Review Â