AMD Processors

AMD Ryzen 3 vs 5 vs 7 vs 9

If you're at all familiar with the Intel Core range, the AMD Ryzen range is ordered similarly. While Intel's got Intel Core i3, i5, i7, and i9 processors, AMD's got AMD Ryzen 3, 5, 7, and 9 processors. And, as you'd expect, the further up the product stack you go, the more performance you get.

For basic day-to-day tasks such as browsing the web, word processing, and streaming videos, a 4-core AMD Ryzen 3 processor is more than enough and is extremely budget-friendly.

To play the latest gaming releases, you'll want to step up to at least a 6-core AMD Ryzen 5 processor. These usually offer the best price-to-performance ratio of the AMD Ryzen range. An 8-core AMD Ryzen 7 processor is better still for gaming as modern, triple-A titles are becoming increasingly CPU-heavy. The extra cores will also help with live-steaming, if you're interested in that.

Lastly, there's AMD Ryzen 9 processors, which can come equipped with up to 16 high-performance cores and 32 threads. Not a whole lot of games will take advantage of all 32 threads of an AMD Ryzen 9 processor, but multi-threaded creative and professional applications and workloads certainly will.

'X' AMD Ryzen Processors vs 'Non-X' AMD Ryzen Processors

Browse our range and you'll notice there's usually two variants of an AMD Ryzen processor: one with an 'X' suffix, and one without. For instance, the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X and AMD Ryzen 5 7600. These are, effectively, the exact same processor, with the same number of cores, threads, amount of cache, and so on.

The only difference is that 'X' AMD Ryzen processors feature higher out-of-the-box boost frequencies, which can result in notably faster performance depending on the workload. To achieve these frequencies, however, 'X' variants consume a fair bit more power and, in turn, generate more heat than their 'non-X' counterparts. The AMD Ryzen 5 7600's default TDP, for example, is just 65W, while the 7600X's is 105W - that's quite the jump.

Put simply, if you want to best performance possible, regardless of power consumption. opt for 'X' AMD Ryzen processors. Otherwise, 'non-X' AMD Ryzen processors offer fantastic efficiency and performance-pet-watt, while coming in slightly cheaper, too.

What's the Best AMD Ryzen Processor for Gaming?

For those who're after the best-of-the-best when it comes to CPU gaming performance, look no further than 'X3D' AMD processors, such as the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D.

'X3D' processors boast '3D V-Cache' technology. This enables AMD to stack cache on the processor vertically (rather than laterally) and, in turn, squeeze more cache onto its chips. And as the cache is stacked directly above the processor die, the cache's latency to the processor is reduced.

Cache is fast, even faster than RAM. So, with more cache, more data can be stored on and processed by the processor itself, increasing performance. It's more efficient than shuffling data to-and-from RAM. Games are very cache sensitive in particular. 'X3D' processors, with their abundance of L3 cache, dominate gaming-related CPU benchmarks as a result. You can't go wrong with a 'X3D' processor in a gaming PC.

AMD Ryzen Processors with AMD Radeon Graphics

Every AMD Ryzen 7000 Series desktop processor features built-in AMD Radeon graphics as standard. This is a fantastic addition to the Ryzen 7000 Series range, as previously you'd have to buy specific 'G-Series' AMD Ryzen processors for on-board graphics.

Don't expect high-end, gaming-grade performance out of these AMD Ryzen processors' integrated graphics, mind you. For that, you'll still need a dedicated graphics card from either AMD themselves, NVIDIA, or Intel.

AMD Radeon graphics on AMD Ryzen processors are performant enough for browsing the web, encoding, and decoding videos, making them ideal in an everyday home office PC or budget home theatre PC. Also, these integrated graphics come in extremely useful when you're in-between dedicated graphics cards.

AMD Ryzen Processors with Stock Coolers

Most of our range of AMD Ryzen processors come with CPU air coolers in their boxes. These bundled-in thermal solutions are colloquially known among PC builders as 'stock coolers'. Lower-end AMD Ryzen 5 processors include the more basic AMD Wraith Stealth cooler, while higher-end AMD Ryzen 7 and AMD Ryzen 9 processors feature the heftier AMD Wraith Prism cooler, complete with customisable RGB lighting.

Stock coolers are designed to be incredibly easy to install. However, they can't quite keep up with powerful, high-wattage AMD Ryzen processors running at full tilt. If you want to squeeze the highest boost frequencies out of your AMD Ryzen processor in games and CPU-heavy workloads, without thermal throttling kicking in, it's worth investing in an aftermarket CPU cooler.

For those who plan to use an aftermarket air cooler, or even an all-in-one water cooler, you can save a bit of money by buying the 'tray' or 'OEM' version of an AMD Ryzen processor, which is just the processor by itself and nothing else. Some AMD Ryzen processors are only available in tray form.

What's AMD Ryzen Threadripper?

As the name implies, the AMD Ryzen Threadripper range is targeted at professionals whose workloads demand as many processing threads as possible. Think 3-D animation, video editing, architectural design, software compiling, and so on. With these heavily multi-threaded workloads, the more threads, the better - and that's exactly what AMD Ryzen Threadripper processors deliver.

For context, AMD's highest-end mainstream processors max out at 16 cores and 32 threads, while the latest-and-greatest AMD Ryzen Threadripper processors boast up to 96 cores and a whopping 192 threads, all while maintaining blistering-fast boost frequencies in excess of 5GHz.

What's more, AMD Ryzen Threadripper processors support an enormous number of PCIe lanes for low-latency, high-bandwidth data transfer for all your system's graphics cards, add-in cards, and storage devices. They're the ultimate processors for high-performance workstations. All this performance necessitates its own motherboard platform, TRX, as opposed to AM4/AM5 used by mainstream Ryzen processors.

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