Office CPU Performance and Productivity
It’s in these categories where AMD’s strengths lie: In the majority of our system benchmarks, AMD more often than not is able to best Intel’s Core i7-9700K and i9-9900K in terms of performance. It was particularly interesting to see the new 3rd gen Ryzens post larger improvements in the web tests, all thanks to Zen 2’s improved and larger op cache.

In anything that is more than lightly multi-threaded, AMD is also able to take the performance crown among mainstream desktop processors, thanks to their inclusion of 12 cores in their top SKU Ryzen 3900X. For total MT throughput, Intel can still beat this with their massive X-series HEDT chips, but these server-derrived parts are in a completely different class in both features and price, and AMD has their own Threadripper parts to rival that. All of this means that for heavily threaded scenarios, the 3900X rules the roost among true desktop processors.

Meanwhile, even when AMD doesn't have a core count advantage – as is the case with the Ryzen 3700X – the chip is still extremely competitive. Overall the 3700X falls in-between the more expensive 9700K and 9900K when it comes to multi-threaded workloads – and sometimes it even beats the 9900K, a respectable result indeed.

Gaming Performance

When it comes to gaming performance, the 9700K and 9900K remain the best performing CPUs on the market. Even without an IPC advantage anymore, Intel's high clockspeeds and supporting elements such as the core ringbus still give them the best performance in the kind of lightly-threaded and tightly-threaded scenarios that games often follow.

That being said, the new 3700X and 3900X are posting enormous improvements over the 2700X. And we can confirm AMD’s claims of up to 30-35% better performance in some games over the 2700X. So AMD has not been standing still.

Ultimately, while AMD still lags behind Intel in gaming performance, the gap has narrowed immensely, to the point that Ryzen CPUs are no longer something to be dismissed if you want to have a high-end gaming machine. Intel's performance advantage is rather limited here – and for the power-conscientious, AMD is delivering better efficiency at this point – so while they may not always win out as the best choice, the 3rd gen Ryzens are still very much a viable option worth considering.