AMD launched the Ryzen 3 3100 on April 21, 2020. It is the third gen Ryzen 3 CPU which is based on 7nm technology. Currently it is the second strongest Ryzen 3 CPU which comes at the price of $100. I have already made two articles on this CPU, you can view them from here.
Article 1
Article 2
This CPU has amazed me because this CPU can beat many other budget CPU's easily after being price less than them. So, now I have thought to compare this CPU to Intel's last generation's best budget CPU The Core i5 9400F. Intel launched the Core i5 9400F on January 7 2019 at a price of $180. Intel started making the 9th gen locked Processors which had no Integrated Graphics and they were sold at a really cheap price that Intel could finally fight back and they gave a better gaming performance than other AMD Processors and Core i5 9400F was one the best budget CPU's Intel made. I also made some articles on the Core i5 9400F, click to check.
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Article 2
How do these two beast CPU's do in gaming. Which CPU is better in gaming in a comparison.
Ryzen 3 3100
The Ryzen 3 3100 is a quad core CPU which has Hyper-Threading in it and comes with a Base Clock Frequency of 3.6 GHz which can be overclocked up to 3.9 GHz on all cores. It is an unlocked Processor It is a third Generation Processor so is it based on ZEN 2 Micro-architecture and Manufactured on 7nm Process. Along with 16 MB of L3 cache, it has a TDP of 65 W. It supports the AM4 socket and can be paired with any good AM4 socket Mother-Board like B450 tomahawk, B450 motar, x470, x570,etc. It supports a Maximum of 64 GB DDR4 RAM clocked at 3200 MHz in dual channel. It does not have any integrated graphics so you need to pair it with a dedicated Graphic Card.
The Core i5 9400F comes with 6 cores and 6 threads means it lacks Hyper-Threading but even today a 6 Core CPU is enough for gaming and other tasks like editing, streaming and rendering. It comes comes with a Base Clock of 2.9 GHz and is a locked Processor, so you can not overclock it but still can boost 1 core to 4.1 GHz, 4 cores to 4 GHz and all 6 cores to 3.9 GHz when applications and sites need more CPU power. It is based on Coffee Lake Micro-Archetecture and processed by 14 nm Technology like all new gen Intel CPUs. It has 65 W TDP and can be paired on any motherboard with LGA1151 Socket like H310m, B360, Z390, etc. The most memory supported by the CPU is 128 GB DDR4 RAM with a frequency of 2666 MHz.
The Core i5 9400F is pretty good even today for specification and only problems are no Hyper-Threading and locked Processor. In 2019 when it was launched at the price of $170 - $190, it offered greater performance in gaming compared to Ryzen 2000 series and it still competes with Ryzen 5 3000 series in gaming ( a little bit ). Earlier, I wrote an article on the comparison of Ryzen 5 2600 vs Core i5 9400F .
No test is a test without Benchmarks, so I have finally tested this CPU to find the results. I have paired both these CPUs with a RTX 2060 Super ( anything above RTX 2070 SUPER will be bottlenecked by these CPU on 1080p resolution ) and 16 GB DDR4 RAM @3000 MHz ( 3200 MHz would perform slightly better ). Cinebench R15 and 5 games are tested at 1080p resoltion on Ultra settings. Here are the results.
There was just a slight difference between the Ryzen 3 3100 and i5 9400F in single core tests because of the RAM frequency R3 3100 scored a bit better than i5. In games there was no bottleneck in any rigs. The i5 9400F scored a little more FPS in games because of the 4.1 GHz Turbo Speed Clock but the Core i5 9400F which was $80 more expensive than Ryzen 3 scored just 5% more FPS in games. Just as I wrote up, the greatest problem of Core i5 9400F is lack of Hyper-Threading, thus streaming and multitasking is better on Ryzen 3 than Core i5 9400F.
Now, if you are going to buy anything better and more cheaper then go with the Ryzen 3 3100 which is cheaper and just a bit weaker in gaming by 5%. But if you are a gamer then get a 9400F.
