Zen3 (X, 8-core) is
~25-40% faster than Zen2 (X, 8-core) across all kinds of algorithms.
We have to give it 10/10 overall!
Despite no major architectural changes over Zen2 (except larger 8-core single CCX layout and thus unified L3 cache), Zen3 manages to be quite a bit faster across legacy and heavily vectorised SIMD algorithms: it beats the competition even with AVX512 and more cores (e.g. 10-core SKL-X). Even streaming algorithms (memory-bound) improve over 20%. We certainly did not expect performance to be this good.
In effect, it is like getting 50% more cores – 8-core Zen3 performs like a 12-core Zen2 (e.g. 3900X) – and thus even a 10-core 10900K cannot compete. Considering you can just “pop it” into an existing AM4 mainboard (
requires a BIOS update to support it) it is a massive upgrade from say, original Zen1/Zen+.
If you can afford it – especially in these unprecedented times – it is a “no brainer” upgrade allowing older AM4-based computers to live many, many more years. You don’t really need PCIe4 and its modest improvement (and thus a 500-series board) – that would anyway require costly PCIe4 SSDs and costly GP-GPU upgrade.
Considering Zen2 is ~40% faster than Zen+ (never mind original Ryzen), Zen3 is in effect 2x faster than Zen+ – a 2x (96%) improvement over just 2 generations, while core counts remained the same (
unlike Intel that just increased core counts). Also consider you can now get a 16-core/32-threads AM4 CPU (
which originally only had 6-core option), it is like having a 32-core/64-thread Ryzen in the same AM4 slot – a 5.3x increase in overall performance.