AMD Ryzen 7 3700U Review

The Ryzen 7 3700U is one of AMD's high-end-low-power Laptop processors. It was released in 2019 with 4 cores and 8 threads. With base clock at 2.3GHz, max speed at 4GHz, and a 15W power rating. The Ryzen 7 3700U is based on the Picasso 12nm family and is part of the Ryzen 7 series.

Ryzen 7 3700U is also the successor of AMD's last gen Ryzen 7 PRO 2700U processor that was based on the Zen and 14nm process and was released in 2017.

Speaking of which, if you want a high-end desktop (HEDT) 6-core processor that can compete with the AMD Ryzen 7 3700U, you’re going to have to drop quite a bit more cash and get something like the $415 Intel Core i7-10710U. And, even if you do go with this Intel chip, you won’t necessarily end up with the same level of performance.

AMD Ryzen 7 1st Generation, and the Zen+ architecture itself, is notable because it leads 12nm processors to the mainstream for the first time. But, there’s a lot more going on under the hood than just a smaller manufacturing node.

AMD's Zen+ series has landed, upping the ante with Intel in its high-stakes game for desktop PC market dominance with a well-rounded lineup of new chips that push mainstream platforms to higher core counts and more raw compute than we've ever seen. As a result, Intel's commanding presence in the enthusiast space is threatened in a way we haven't seen in over a decade.

The Ryzen 7 3700U takes the basic ingredients of the Zen+ microarchitecture, which brings an average of 15% more instructions per cycle (IPC) throughput, and 12nm process and melds them into a high-performance chip that is impressive across our test suite, especially when we factor in the competitive pricing, backward compatibility with most AM4 socket motherboards, unlocked overclocking features, and bundled cooler.

As we've seen, gaming remains an advantage for Intel, so if squeezing out every last frame is all you care about, Intel's processors are a good choice. Much of that performance advantage will be less noticeable when gaming at higher resolutions, or if you pair the processors with a lesser graphics card.

AMD Ryzen 7 1 Generation is finally here, and the AMD Ryzen 7 3700U might just be the poster child for what this generation of processors has in store for consumers. Sure, it might have stuck with the 4-core, 8-thread setup, which it inherited from its predecessor, the Ryzen 7 PRO 2700U. However, with the new 12nm manufacturing process, it delivers a far better performance at lower power consumption.

This decision to 12nm has brought a beefy 15% boost to IPC (instructions per clock) performance. Effectively, compared to a Ryzen 7 1-Generation processor at the same clock speed, you will get a straight 15% increase in performance. That’s not big enough to be evident in day-to-day workloads, but it does still mean something.

What this all means is that the AMD Ryzen 7 3700U is an absolute beast when it comes to multi-threaded workloads, especially at this price point. If you're counting on doing some video editing or compiling one hell of an Excel spreadsheet, you're going to see firsthand a performance boost with the Ryzen 7 3700U.

The AMD Ryzen 7 3700U is another impressive release from AMD and its 1 Generation of Ryzen 7 chips. With it, you’re getting 4-cores and 8-threads, with a boost clock of 4GHz. It may not be the strongest contender ever made on paper, but when you see and feel the actual performance gains it offers, you’re certainly getting a lot of bang for your $284.13 buck.

AMD has been having some trouble as of late which has made it even harder to compete with the incoming wave of Core i7 processors. That has forced the chip maker to be a little more creative and make do with their current product lines. Today we have the AMD Ryzen 7 3700U on hand, which in itself isn’t anything new. It’s basically a refreshed Ryzen 7 PRO 2700U with a clock speed boost. We say basically because it’s not a straight refresh however, there’s another change.

If you're mostly playing games on your PC, you will be happy buying either processor. Both proved to be solid options and are evenly matched with a slight advantage to the Intel chip if you don't tune up the Core i7 processor. The base performance we showed for the Ryzen 7 3700U can be achieved with $90 memory, while the Core i7-10510U will require $110 - $120 memory in order to enable the frame rates shown here. It’s not a big cost difference and right now with anything less than an RTX 2070 or Vega 64 you’ll more than likely become GPU limited.

One of the nice things about the AMD Ryzen 7 3700U processors is that the retail boxed models come with a CPU cooler. So, you can pick something like the AMD Ryzen 7 3700U up for $284.13 and don’t need to spend any extra money on CPU cooling.

The AMD Ryzen 7 3700U retail boxed processor comes with the traditional ‘pancake’ CPU cooler. Nothing fancy, but it gets the job done on this processor which is rated at 15W TDP. You do not need to have an aftermarket cooling solution unless you want to.

With Ryzen 7, AMD continues to innovate on its new architecture and 12nm process. Like Ryzen 7, AMD has engineered Ryzen 7 to operate on a AM4 chipset with all the modern amenities of computing. This includes support for DDR4 RAM, the fastest NVMe SSDs and Thunderbolt 3 ports.

Ryzen 7 hasn’t had the smoothest entrance into the computing world with lackluster gaming and some CPU temperatures high enough to raise concerns. But after a month of optimizations plus new drivers and BIOS updates, Ryzen 7 seems to have bypassed those same growing pains.

The Ryzen 7 3700U clocks up to 4Ghz just as it promises on the box, and with AMD’s software you can take one of the cores all the way up to 4.1GHz. However, don’t expect to get much beyond that without seriously upgrading your cooling solution and manually tweaking voltages behind the operating system level.

Although the 15W-rated cooler doesn't feature a copper base or the LEDs found on AMD's higher-end thermal solutions, it does handle Ryzen 7's heat output deftly enough to facilitate XFR-triggered frequencies. This gives you an extra 200 MHz. We were even able to overclock the Ryzen 7 3700U to 4.2 GHz within a reasonable temperature range. The fan also blows down onto the motherboard, which provide additional cooling around the socket. If you need more bling, AMD recently announced that it now offers the LED-equipped cooler separately.