Releasing the first 1 Gigahertz processor with the original Athlon and bringing in the 64-bit version of the x86 instruction set, AMD have often been ahead when it comes to technological advancements. This time around AMD has partnered with TSMC to produce the first 7 nanometer desktop processors in the form of the Ryzen 3000 series. In addition to this smaller process node, AMD has also ushered in its revolutionary and highly scalable chiplet design. This sees 6, 8, 12 and 16-core parts on the desktop and up to 64 cores in AMD’s EPYC 7002 series of server processors, codenamed Rome.

The 3rd generation introduces a new Ryzen 9 tier encompassing the 12-core, 24-thread 3900X and the upcoming 16-core, 32-thread 3950X. A mightily impressive amount of computational power on the mainstream desktop that is competitive with intel’s expensive High-End Desktop (HEDT) parts. Furthermore, The Ryzen 9 processors in particular have a mammoth 72MB of Level 3 cache, questionably marketed as "Gamecache", which should aim to mitigate the latency issues we saw with Ryzen 2000 resulting in improved gaming performance.

As the title suggests, we will be looking at the gaming performance of the Matisse CPUs, more commonly known as the Ryzen 3000 series. With its higher base clock of 3.8GHz, boost clock of 4.6GHz and 12-cores to dispense, the 3900X leads the benchmarks in our gaming suite, though not by much. AMD’s Ryzen 5 3600 with a base clock of 3.6GHz, boost clock of 4.2Ghz and 6-cores is the weakest processor in the line-up, but doesn’t fall as far behind as you might think. For now, let’s take a look at the test system and testing procedures.