AMD Ryzen XT Processor Review – 3600XT, 3800XT, 3900XT

By Nathan Kirsch July 7, 2020

Final Thoughts and Conclusions

The AMD Ryzen 5 3600XT, Ryzen 7 3800XT, and Ryzen 9 3900XT all appear to offer small performance improvements over their respective ‘X’ series processors that they are derived from. The 100 – 200 MHz boost clock increase helps boost performance by only around 2 to 5 percent, but that was often enough of a difference to pass up another processor in the benchmark charts.

When it comes to power draw the idle and load power draws were up for the new ‘XT’ parts, but we expected the load power to be slightly higher with the higher clock frequencies. Seeing another 10-20 Watts at load isn’t anything major, but we did notice that the performance per watt actually went down on the chips where we had both the ‘X’ and ‘XT’ versions. For example, the 3600XT used 20W or about 13% more power than the 3600X in Cinebench and only gained 3.4% more performance. This hurts the performance per watt proposition a little bit if you care about that.

The other big thing is pricing. The original AMD Ryzen 3000 ‘X’ series processors are selling at really good prices right now. The AMD Ryzen 5 3600X can be picked up for around $224.99 all day and that makes it $25 less than the new Ryzen 5 3600XT processor that is $249.99. The AMD Ryzen 9 3900X can be found for $422.68 shipped, which is about $77 less than the new Ryzen 9 3900 XT that is $499.99.

So, the original ‘X’ series processors are roughly 10-20% less than the new ‘XT’ series processors that offer at best 2-5% higher boost clocks. That tarnishes the the appeal of the new Ryzen 3000 XT processors a bit, but AMD is giving you a choice. You can get the best value with the ‘X’ series processor if that matters to you or you can spend more for the ‘XT” series processor and get the best possible performance in that CPU class. The choice is yours and at the end of the day we appreciate that.

Legit Bottom Line: The AMD Ryzen 3000XT processors brings more performance to the table for those that are willing to pay a little more to get it.