How to Choose an AMD Processor

Over the past few years, AMD has released some impressive processors. Names like Ryzen 3 and Ryzen 5 suggest they are equivalent to Intel i3 and Intel i5.

ContentsHow To Understand AMD Processor NamesHow To Interpret AMD Processor Model NumberWhich AMD Processor Is Best For YouHow To Choose The Best AMD Processor For GamingBest AMD Processors For Content CreatorsConclusion

And that's true, for the most part. But this will not be an article on AMD vs Intel. Instead, it will be a guide on how to buy the best AMD processor for your use. And just as it doesn't make sense to buy a great car just for running errands, it doesn't make sense to buy a 16-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper for casual web browsing or office work. And contrary to what some might believe, it's often not the best choice to play either, and you'll see why later in this article.

How to Understand AMD Processor Names

The first part of the name is quite easy to understand. You can consider it in another way, entry-level, mid-range, high-end, etc.

• Ryzen 3 bundles processors with low-end performance, specs, and features. At the time of writing, these models come with four cores.
• Ryzen 5 bundles processors for the mid-range segment. They have four or six cores and a maximum of twelve processing threads.
• Ryzen 7 marks the entry into the high-end performance segment. The processors come with eight cores and sixteen threads.
• Ryzen 9 is the top of the range, above Ryzen 7 processors. They have twelve or sixteen cores and a maximum of thirty-two threads.
• Ryzen Threadripper may be considered superior to Ryzen 9, but that's not a valid comparison, and you'll see why later. These processors recently come with eight, twelve, sixteen, twenty-four, and thirty-two cores. The thread count is twice the model's CPU count.

For browsing the web, watching YouTube, Netflix and more, a Ryzen 3 is more than enough. If you're buying a laptop, try to get a Ryzen 5, as power-efficient CPUs are much slower than desktops.

How to choose the best amd-processor for gaming

If you play games, a high clock speed for the processor is much more important than the number of cores. You should aim for at least six cores, then look for the processor with the highest GHz number that you can find and afford. You can also focus on the models with the "X" suffix, as these have an increased clock speed compared to the base models. The Threadripper series might seem like the best choice for gaming, but that's not the case as most of these models have lower clock speeds than the best Ryzen 7 or 9 series processors.

You can read more about the importance of CPU clock speed in games, in the last part of this article. An easy way to find a gaming CPU is to check out this list of CPUs that currently have the best benchmark results in single-threaded performance.

You can see in the image above how one of the best choices for a gaming CPU on this date is Ryzen 5 3600X because it's by far the cheapest on the list with very similar performance to all of them. others. The AMD Ryzen 7 3800X is much more expensive because it has more cores. But both CPUs could achieve nearly identical frame rates in a game like GTA V.

Best AMD cpus for content creators

So when is Threadripper a good choice? When you need lots and lots of parallelism. This is the case for video editing, photographic/graphic work, editing, music production and mixing, etc. You should also buy a Threadripper if you use virtual machines often. Plus, they're great if you intend to use the machine as a server.

Conclusion

Often you will find two or three models at a similar price and not know which one to choose. In this case, just search for something like "amd ryzen 3800x benchmark" and see the result from "cpubenchmark.net", as this will show you a total score (how all the cores perform when dividing a big task into small ones). tasks) and a single thread -score, how fast a single core is.

If money is tight, you can also buy a processor a generation behind, because you won't lose much performance but save a lot on cost.

Happy CPU hunting!

Image credits:Ilya Plekhanov @ Wikipedia and Fritzchens Fritz @ Flickr