3900XT vs 3900X vs 10900K
|AMD’s new XT line of CPUs is out, and with them comes the question, what should you buy? A 3900XT, the regular 3900X, or Intel’s 10900K. Lets test them all and find out, but first, if you haven’t already, consider subscribing for more videos every Monday, Wednesday and Friday!
The XT variant of the 3900 is a turbo-boosting monster. It’s now capable of up to 4.7GHz on a single core, and up to 4.6GHz on all cores compared to 4.2GHz all core on the standard X. It’s still based on power delivery and temperatures, so in a thermally-constrained situation you won’t see that much of a difference, but if you can keep it cool and powered it can start to walk away.
Now I was testing with an Asus X570 STRIX F board, and an Asus 240mm LC AIO, from this Fierce PC system which I’m doing a full review on shortly so worth watching, and as for Intel I was using an MSI Z490 ACE board, and the same cooler. So, how does it stack up in the real world?
Premiere Pro | Blender | Cinebench 1t | Cinebench nt | Power W | Temp C | |
3900XT | 203 | 122 | 505 | 6881 | 142 | 83 |
3900X | 207 | 122 | 498 | 6926 | 142 | 76 |
10900K | 175 | 131 | 496 | 6060 | 223 | 86 |
Taking a look at Cinebench first, it’s single-threaded performance shows that turbo boost advantage, with a 7 point lead over it’s X counterpart, and a 9 point lead over the 10900K. In multi-threaded the two chips are within margin of error, as the 3900XT had been running, and therefore heat soaking the cooler, a little longer, which goes to show the limits of the boosting.
As for productivity, Premiere Pro had an update which took render times of the same 10 minute test sequence from 8 or 9 minutes, to just 3, but it still does favour intel and it’s higher single core clock speeds. With that said, the XT was a tad faster than the X here.
And in Blender, the extra cores become more useful again, with both Ryzen chips tied for 1st place here, although the 10900K isn’t as far behind as you’d think being down 2 cores.
In gaming, it’s what you would expect. The XT and X are almost identical, with a general trend of the XT being slightly faster, and the 10900K generally still taking the lead.
COW MW | 1080p AVG | 1% Low | 1% Low ms | 1440p AVG | 1% Low | 1% Low ms | 4K AVG | 1% Low | 1% Low ms |
3900XT | 166.75 | 135.501355 | 7.38 | 126.96 | 106.7235859 | 9.37 | 75.68 | 61.91950464 | 16.15 |
3900X | 168.37 | 133.1557923 | 7.51 | 122.04 | 98.23182711 | 10.18 | 75.82 | 60.82725061 | 16.44 |
10900K | 176.28 | 138.8888889 | 7.2 | 134.32 | 109.4091904 | 9.14 | 79.48 | 64.85084306 | 15.42 |
BFV | 1080p AVG | 1% Low | 1% Low ms | 1440p AVG | 1% Low | 1% Low ms | 4K AVG | 1% Low | 1% Low ms |
3900XT | 158.39 | 132.6259947 | 7.54 | 128.33 | 109.8901099 | 9.1 | 74.73 | 66.22516556 | 15.1 |
3900X | 168.01 | 150.1501502 | 6.66 | 129.81 | 118.2033097 | 8.46 | 76.6 | 68.91798759 | 14.51 |
10900K | 176.38 | 151.5151515 | 6.6 | 133.93 | 117.0960187 | 8.54 | 76.28 | 67.70480704 | 14.77 |
PUBG | 1080p avg | 1% Low | 1% Low ms | 1440p avg | 1% Low | 1% Low ms | 4K AVG | 1% Low | 1% Low ms |
3900XT | 177.633 | 136 | 7.352941176 | 161 | 140 | 7.142857143 | 82 | 74 | 13.51351351 |
3900X | 191.84 | 123.9157373 | 8.07 | 148.12 | 114.9425287 | 8.7 | 87.37 | 71.22507123 | 14.04 |
10900K | 202.09 | 149.4768311 | 6.69 | 164.59 | 131.7523057 | 7.59 | 83 | 73.42143906 | 13.62 |
Fortnite | 1080p AVG | 1% Low | 1% Low ms | 1440p AVG | 1% Low | 1% Low ms | 4K AVG | 1% Low | 1% Low ms |
3900XT | 224.33 | 140.8450704 | 7.1 | 152.8 | 108.1081081 | 9.25 | 79.34 | 67.38544474 | 14.84 |
3900X | 228.44 | 139.0820584 | 7.19 | 144.54 | 103.4126163 | 9.67 | 76.16 | 60.79027356 | 16.45 |
10900K | 220.53 | 148.3679525 | 6.74 | 152.63 | 115.0747986 | 8.69 | 77.95 | 63.17119394 | 15.83 |
So, the XT is a slightly faster chip making it the obvious choice over the X, right? Well, it depends on the price. On OverclockersUK the X is now £40 cheaper than the XT, and I’m not sure you get all that much real world performance for your money. You might be better off spending that extra on say a better RAM kit with lower timings instead.
What about team blue? Well, current pricing is listed as £600 and for that money it’s virtually impossible to recommend it. If it was £400 or 450 it wouldn’t be so hard as its edge in gaming performance could make it the “ultimate” gaming CPU, but when it costs this much you may as well buy the next GPU up and get better performance that way.