The AMD Ryzen 3 3300X and 3100 CPU Review: A Budget Gaming Bonanza

When AMD announced the new Ryzen 3 processors built on Zen 2, I was under the impression that these were essentially the reject parts from AMD’s successful Ryzen 3000 line. Inside is a single chiplet with only four cores active out of eight, pushing up to 4.3 GHz; but the kicker was the low price of $120 for the high frequency version, or $99 for a bit slower. AMD has sold quad-core CPUs at $99 for a while, but this is the new core and the new manufacturing process, so would this be any different? We put them up against a $350 quad core from three years ago. It seemed like a crazy idea at the time.