Overclocking

This is perhaps the most important section of this review and a mighty interesting one. If the Ryzen 3 1200 fails to offer decent overclocking headroom, its meagre stock frequencies will see it languish in no man's land against a relatively strong Ryzen 3 1300X that costs just £30 more. However, not only did the Ryzen 3 1200 offer a decent amount of headroom, it actually leapfrogged its Ryzen 3 sibling to 4GHz, matching most of the other Ryzen CPUs we've tested. The only thing it lacks, then, is Simultaneous Multi-Threading, but with a vcore of just 1.425V, this is an easily attainable every day overclock that can be cooled by a modest CPU cooler too.

Performance Analysis

We've included some key CPUs in the graphs. Unsurprisingly, the Ryzen 3 1300X is there but so too is the Ryzen 5 1400, which is in many ways identical to the Ryzen 3 1200 other than having the advantage of Simultaneous Multi-Threading. We've also included results for Intel's Core i3-7300, which sits closer to the Ryzen 3 1300X in terms of price but should give a good idea of how the stock and overclocked Ryzen 3 1200 sits against cheaper dual-cores too.

HandBrake is clearly preferring more cores and threads, so the Ryzen 5 1400 rules the roost at stock speed and overclocked thanks to its additional four threads. In fact, even at stock speed, it was more than a match for every other CPU on test. However, the Intel dual-cores were simply annihilated, with even the stock speed Ryzen 3 1200 battering both to a bloody pulp. The additional cores also help to achieve a similar score against the Core i3-7350K in PCMark 8's Photo Editing test despite a hefty clock speed deficit.

Terragen 4 still seems to prefer Intel CPUs, but the Ryzen 3 1200 actually performed very well in terms of value, costing 30 percent less than the Core i3-7300 but coming out barely five percent slower at stock speed and turning the tables to be a massive 20 percent faster once overclocked. The situation in Cinebench was even more one-sided. Games are an area that's particularly weak for the stock speed Ryzen 3 1200, with noticeably slower results than the rest of the field in two of our three game tests. However, once overclocked this issue was removed completely, and it even outperformed the more expensive Core i3s in Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation.

Conclusion

What we have with the Ryzen 3 1200 is a similar situation to the Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 series, specifically regarding the Ryzen 5 1600 and Ryzen 7 1700. They have the same basic specifications as their more expensive X-edition siblings but slower frequencies and smaller XFR boost. With the Ryzen 3 1200, its stock speed numbers are particularly poor, with it seemingly falling off a cliff in some tests, most noticeably in games. However, they all offer overclocking headroom that allows them to leapfrog those pricier X-edition CPUs if the latter are at stock speed, and those same X-edition CPUs rarely offer much if any extra overclocking headroom. This makes the non-X CPUs something of a bargain, and the Ryzen 3 1200 is no exception. Coupled with the fact it actually overclocked further than our Ryzen 3 1300X, and the choice is crystal clear if you're up for some overclocking.

While it does lag behind some other CPUs in some tests, this is usually due to its lack of Simultaneous Multi-Threading, but even here it manages to better the stock speed Ryzen 5 1400 once it's overclocked. It's particularly damaging news for Intel, with this £98 CPU laying waste to the two fastest Core i3 CPUs it has in most tests, both of which cost considerably more. It's little wonder, then, that the latest rumours point at Intel offering quad-cores in its next Core i3 line up. Put simply, if you're spending more than £60 on a dual-core CPU, you're now doing it wrong, as the CPU we're looking at here has just re-written the low-end CPU market and is a fantastic choice for a budget overclocked system.