AMD Confirms Ryzen 3 1300 And 1200 Processors With Specs Revealed In Ryzen PRO Unveiling

AMD Zen
AMD first introduced us to its 14nm Zen family of processors with the Ryzen 7 lineup, and later with Ryzen 5. Up until this point, AMD has been relatively mum about its upcoming Ryzen 3 processors, which will be positioned against Intel’s Core i3 series. However, AMD may have revealed its hand earlier this morning with the announcement of Ryzen PRO.

Take a quick look at the chart below to see how the Ryzen PRO family stacks up:

amd ryzen pro processors

As you can see, the lineup largely mirrors that of the standard Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 5 processors, matching in clock speeds, core counts, TDP and cache sizes. For example, the Ryzen 5 PRO 1500’s 3.5GHz base clock and 3.7GHz Turbo match up perfectly with the Ryzen 5 1500X. Likewise, the Ryzen 7 PRO 1700 is a dead ringer for the Ryzen 7 1700.

With that in mind, we need to pay closer attention to entry-level models in the Ryzen PRO family: the Ryzen 3 PRO 1200 and the Ryzen 3 PRO 1300. Could these two processors give us some insight into what AMD plans for the entry-level Ryzen 3 family? Well, it sure looks like it. If AMD follows the same formula laid out above, these are the two “confirmed” Ryzen 3 SKUs we should expect:

  • Ryzen 3 1300: 4 cores/threads, 3.5GHz/3.7GHz (base/boost), 8MB L3 cache, 65w TDP
  • Ryzen 3 1200: 4 cores/threads, 3.51Hz/3.4GHz (base/boost), 8MB L3 cache, 65w TDP

Looking at the specs, it would appear that the Ryzen 3 family will consist of quad-core processors with SMT functionality disabled. This means that quad-core Ryzen 3 processors will only be capable of handling four threads, unlike the quad-core Ryzen 5 processors, which can handle eight threads. We also see that the Ryzen 3 has adopted the L3 cache arrangement of the Ryzen 5 1400, which means that you’ll find 8MB, or half the amount in the rest of the Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 processor families. Ryzen 3 processors will also still operate within a 65W power envelope.

It should be interesting to see how the Ryzen 3 processors perform without the aid of SMT functionality. AMD’s SMT performance has typically come with some healthy performance benefits, so we can’t wait to see how much its absence handicaps the Ryzen 3 in our battery of benchmarks.