AMD Ryzen 3 4100 and Ryzen 5 4500 Review: The Budget CPU Beatdown

MD is on the cusp of refreshing its top-end parts with the Zen 4 Ryzen 7000 chips that arrive later this month. But the company employs its Zen 2 architecture for its latest low-end chips, the Ryzen 3 4100 and Ryzen 5 4500, and all signs point to these chips being the company's budget offerings well into next year. The $99 quad-core Ryzen 3 4100 and the $129 six-core Ryzen 5 4500 are designed to challenge Intel's potent $122 Core i3-12100 and the $99 graphics-less 12100F that have become the go-to budget chips for gamers. The new AMD chips came as part of the company's broader launch of seven new Ryzen 5000 models that aim to shore up its rankings in CPU benchmarks and retake its position on the Best CPUs for gaming list. 

The Ryzen 5 4500 and Ryzen 3 4100 are part of AMD's new strategy of using its monolithic (single-chip) Zen 2-powered 'Renoir' APU silicon to tackle the sub-$150 market that Intel has dominated with its Alder Lake processors. AMD's low-end lineup leverages one full-fledged APU model with active integrated graphics, the Ryzen 4600G, and two models with disabled Vega integrated graphics, the 4500 and 4100. 

The Ryzen 5 4500 and Ryzen 3 4100 still come with the efficient 7nm TSMC process, and their monolithic design allows AMD to hit lower price points than possible with the more expensive chiplet-based Ryzen processors. However, that results in some tradeoffs — the chips only support 20 lanes of the PCIe 3.0 interface and DDR4 memory. In contrast, Intel's competing Core chips support up to PCIe 5.0 and either DDR4 or DDR5 memory, giving Intel the connectivity edge. That's not to mention that AMD's Renoir APUs have the aging Zen 2 architecture that debuted back in 2019. 

AMD's chips come with bundled Wraith Stealth coolers and benefit from the robust AM4 motherboard ecosystem that's teeming with plenty of affordable options. AMD also allows overclocking on these lower-end SKUs, an advantage over Intel's Core i3. 

AMD's lowest-end chips are long overdue, arriving a year and a half after the first wave of Ryzen 5000 chips, but they're badly needed. Intel's Alder Lake launch caught AMD uncharacteristically flat-footed, wresting away AMD's performance and pricing lead. Intel's aggressive pricing also brought superior value in every price range while exploiting AMD's glaring lack of any sub-$250 Zen 3 chips. AMD's tactic of bringing single-chip Renoir silicon to market serves as the counter, even if it leverages older tech to lower price points. Here's how the low-end Ryzen chips stack up. 

AMD Ryzen 3 4100 and Ryzen 5 4500 Specifications and Pricing

The Ryzen 3 4100 and Ryzen 5 4500 are nearly identical to the graphics-armed Ryzen 4000G models that AMD brought to market for OEMs and SIs back in 2020. However, these models come with a disabled iGPU, so you'll need a discrete graphics card. 

The $99 Ryzen 3 4100 is a Renoir model that slots in with four Zen 2 cores and eight threads that operate at 3.8 / 4.0 GHz base/boost clocks. The 65W chip comes with 4MB of L3 cache and has a disabled Vega graphics engine, positioning it to compete with Intel's graphics-less Core i3-12100F. In many respects, the quad-core 4100 essentially replaces the Ryzen 3 3100 that was never really available at retail due to shortages during the pandemic.

The $129 Ryzen 5 4500 has six Zen 2 cores and 12 threads that operate at a 3.6 / 4.1 GHz base/boost frequency. Like the 4100, this chip has a 65W TDP but comes with 8MB of L3 cache. Even though it doesn't have an active iGPU of its own, pricing dictates that the 4500 competes with the full-fledged $125 Core i3-12100 that comes with an iGPU. The 4500 effectively replaces the Ryzen 3 3300X that wasn't ever widely available at retail.

Aside from the disabled iGPU, these chips have the same Renoir design as the OEM-only Ryzen 7 4750G (hit the link for the full architectural details), including support for PCIe 3.0 instead of PCIe 4.0. As a result, this chip will make a great pairing for older, lower-end AM4 motherboards (you definitely don't want to pay for functionality you don't need by pairing it with a PCIe 4.0-supporting motherboard).

The Ryzen 5 4500 and Ryzen 3 4100 come with a bundled Wraith Stealth cooler sufficient for stock operation and supports up to DDR4-3200 memory. In addition, these chips are fully unlocked for overclocking the CPU cores, memory, and fabric. In contrast, Intel's non-K models only support memory overclocking, though Intel's nonsensical decision to keep certain voltages locked still restricts memory overclocking headroom.

Test Setup

We tested with Windows 11 on an X570 motherboard to maintain a comparable test environment with the rest of the processors in the test pool. Of course, you wouldn't pair this chip with this class of motherboard, but even lower-end 300-series motherboards should provide enough juice for full operation. We also tested with secure boot, virtualization support, and fTPM/PTT active to reflect a properly configured Windows 11 install. We have a breakdown of the test system configurations at the end of the article.

Our overclocks were rather straightforward — we enabled the auto-overclocking Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) feature with 'advanced motherboard' settings and adjusted the scalar setting to 10X. Additionally, as outlined in the table below, we matched our memory overclocks with a 1:1 FCLK/memory clock ratio to keep latency low, which games love. We tested the Ryzen 5 4500 and Ryzen 3 4100 in two different configurations each:

• Ryzen 5 4500: Corsair H115i 280mm water cooler, PBO Disabled, DDR4-3200

• Ryzen 5 4500 PBO: Corsair H115i 280mm water cooler, PBO Enabled, Scalar 10X, DDR4-3800, FCLK 1900 MHz (1:1 Ratio)

• Ryzen 3 4100: Corsair H115i 280mm water cooler, PBO Disabled, DDR4-3200

• Ryzen 3 4100 PBO: Corsair H115i 280mm water cooler, PBO Enabled, Scalar 10X, DDR4-3800, FCLK 1900 MHz (1:1 Ratio)

AMD Ryzen 3 4100 and Ryzen 5 4500 Gaming Benchmarks — The TLDR

As usual, we're testing with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 to reduce GPU-imposed bottlenecks as much as possible, and differences between test subjects will shrink with lesser cards or higher resolutions. You would never see these low-end chips paired with an RTX 3090, but this allows us to highlight unrestrained chip performance. 

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The quad-core Zen 2-powered Ryzen 3 4100 is easily the slowest chip in the test pool. But that isn't too surprising given its tame 4.0 GHz boost clock and scant 4MB of L3 cache. The six-core Ryzen 5 4500 only boosts to 4.1 GHz, but the doubled L3 cache and extra cores weigh in as it delivers 13% more performance at stock settings than the 4100.

The Core i3-12100 costs $122 for the full-fledged version with an iGPU, competing with the Ryzen 5 4500, and also comes as the graphics-less Core i3-12100F for $99, competing with the Ryzen 5 4100. Both of these models provide identical performance. The Intel Core i3-12100's Golden Cove P-cores give even the Zen 3-powered Ryzen 5000G chips a stiff challenge, so it's no surprise that the Zen 2 Renoir struggles mightily in comparison.

For similar or slightly lower pricing, the Core i3-12100/F is a whopping 49% faster than the Ryzen 3 4100 and 21.7% faster than the Ryzen 5 4500 in 1080p gaming, making it clear that budget gamers should opt for Intel's chip over the Ryzen competition.

Intel still restricts Core i3 overclocking to the memory, limiting gains to a few percentage points. In contrast, AMD allows full overclocking of both Ryzen 4000 models, but it isn't too useful. The overclocked Ryzen 3 4100 is a mere 3% faster than the stock config, while the tuned 4500 is about 6% faster than the stock setup.

As an interesting comparison point, we also included the Ryzen 5 4600G in the test pool. However, this is a full-fledged Renoir APU with a working RX Vega 7 integrated graphics engine, so it isn't meant to be used with a discrete GPU. Look to these pages for a full review soon with iGPU performance benchmarks.

Overall the Core i3-12100/F underlines its status as the best budget gaming CPU on the market — the Zen 2-powered Ryzen 4 4500 and Ryzen 3 4100 can't compete. 

Moving over to 1440p brings a GPU bottleneck into the equation, so the performance deltas between the chips shrink tremendously. Be aware that large performance deltas in a few of the game titles can heavily impact these types of overall measurements. It's always best to make an informed decision based on the types of titles you frequently play, so be sure to check out the individual game benchmarks below. That said, we don't see much variance in the results below — the Ryzen 5 4500 and Ryzen 3 4100 get beaten by the Core i3-12100 across the board. As such, we'll skip the commentary in the individual titles below. 

3DMark, VRMark, Chess Engines on AMD Ryzen 3 4100 and Ryzen 5 4500

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Synthetic benchmarks don't tend to translate well to real-world gaming, but they do show us the raw amount of compute power exposed to game engines. It's too bad most games don't fully exploit it. That tendency is evident here as we see the Ryzen 5 4500 beat the Core i3-12100 by significant margins in both the DX11 and DX12 synthetic CPU tests, but it doesn't win in a single real-world gaming benchmark below.

Far Cry 6 on AMD Ryzen 3 4100 and Ryzen 5 4500

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F1 2021 on AMD Ryzen 3 4100 and Ryzen 5 4500

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Hitman 3 on AMD Ryzen 3 4100 and Ryzen 5 4500

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Horizon Zero Dawn on AMD Ryzen 3 4100 and Ryzen 5 4500

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Red Dead Redemption 2 on AMD Ryzen 3 4100 and Ryzen 5 4500

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Watch Dogs Legion on AMD Ryzen 3 4100 and Ryzen 5 4500

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AMD Ryzen 3 4100 and Ryzen 5 4500 Application Benchmarks — The TLDR

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We can boil down productivity application performance into two broad categories: single- and multi-threaded. These slides show the geometric mean of performance in several of our most important tests in each category, but be sure to look at the expanded benchmark results further below. 

The Core i3-12100 easily dispatched the Ryzen 4000 duo in our gaming tests, and while the Ryzen 5 4500 is a bit more competitive in the application testing, the Ryzen 3 4100 does little to rectify its poor showing.

The Core i3-12100 is 44% faster than the Ryzen 3 4100 and 34% faster than the Ryzen 5 4500 in our cumulative measure of single-threaded performance. In other words, the single-threaded contest isn't a contest at all.

Moving over to threaded work, the quad-core 12100 is 40% faster than the quad-core Ryzen 3 4100, leaving no reason to purchase it over Intel's Core i3.  

However, the six-core Ryzen 5 4500 is 3% faster than the 12100 in threaded work. That rather slim delta is a win for the Zen 2 chip against the Alder Lake Core i3, and we see several larger wins for the Ryzen 5 4500 in our more expansive multi-threaded benchmarks below. As you'd imagine given its advantage of having two more cores, the 4500 is faster in some threaded rendering and encoding applications than the Core i3-12100. 

However, given the large disparities in single-threaded performance and gaming, not to mention connectivity options, the Core i3-12100's better blend of performance and features is more attractive even for the productivity-minded (particularly if you plan to use a PCIe 4.0 SSD).  

Rendering Benchmarks on AMD Ryzen 3 4100 and Ryzen 5 4500

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The Core i3-12100 is impressive in single-threaded rendering work, leading all competing Ryzen chips in both Cinebench and POV-Ray benchmarks. However, its quad-core design isn't as well suited as the Ryzen 5 4500 for some of the heavily-parallelized rendering workloads you'll see in the real world. For example, the Ryzen 5 4500 is 11%, 5%, and 25% faster in the threaded Cinebench, Corona, and C-Ray renderers, respectively. 

Encoding Benchmarks on AMD Ryzen 3 4100 and Ryzen 5 4500

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Encoders tend to be either heavily threaded or almost exclusively single-threaded. The Ryzen 3 4100 isn't competitive in any of these benchmarks, but while the Ryzen 5 4500 isn't a factor in the lightly-threaded tests, it is more competent in heavily-threaded tasks. 

The Core i3-12100 dominates the lightly-threaded LAME, FLAC, and WebP encoding tests. Flipping over to threaded applications, the Ryzen 5 4500 excels in HandBrake, SVT-HEVC, and the SVT-AV1 encoding tasks. 

Adobe Premiere Pro, Photoshop, and Lightroom on AMD Ryzen 3 4100 and Ryzen 5 4500

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We've integrated the UL Benchmarks Procyon tests into our suite to replace the aging PCMark 10. This new benchmark runs complex Adobe Premiere Pro, Photoshop, and Lightroom workflows with the actual software, making for a great real-world test suite.

These multi-phase benchmarks have mixed workload profiles, with some sections of each benchmark relying more upon single-threaded prowess while other portions of the workflow rely upon sheer threaded horsepower. This mixed-use type of application is common, and here we can see that the Core i3-12100's superior mix of overwhelmingly faster single-threaded performance and more than sufficient threaded heft given its price point combine to take the lead in every benchmark. 

Web Browsing, Office and Productivity on AMD Ryzen 3 4100 and Ryzen 5 4500

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The ubiquitous web browser is one of the most frequently used applications. These tests tend to be lightly threaded, so a snappy response time is critical. Here we see the Core i3-12100 take a commanding lead in both the web browsing and light office benchmarks. 

Compilation, Compression, AVX Benchmarks on AMD Ryzen 3 4100 and Ryzen 5 4500

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This section includes a diverse set of workloads, including exceedingly branchy code in the LLVM compilation workload and the massively parallel molecular dynamics simulation code in NAMD. Frankly, most of these types of workloads in this section aren't well-suited for this class of chip, but we include them as a reference.

The Core i3-12100 isn't as competitive as the Ryzen 5 4500 in these heavily-threaded applications. AMD also benefits in the SHA3, AES, and HASH benchmarks from its cryptographic optimizations.

AMD Ryzen 3 4100 and Ryzen 5 4500 Power Consumption and Efficiency

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The Intel Alder Lake chips still suck more power than AMD's Zen 3-powered Ryzen 5000 series chips, but pairing the Intel 7 process with the hybrid architecture brings big improvements, particularly in threaded work. However, Intel's decision to dial up the power limits as it pushes for performance supremacy results in higher peak power consumption and less efficiency. 

The quad-core Ryzen 3 4100 draws a stunningly-low amount of power during the heavy HandBrake and y-cruncher power measurements, but that results in the slowest performance of our test pool. However, that also results in superior overall efficiency, as we can see in the renders-per-day-per-watt metrics. 

Meanwhile, the six-core Ryzen 5 4500 unsurprisingly pulls more peak power than the quad-core Ryzen 3 4100, but its faster performance results in better efficiency profile than the Core i3-12100 in some scenarios. 

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Here we take a slightly different look at power consumption by calculating the cumulative energy required to perform x264 and x265 HandBrake workloads, respectively. We plot this 'task energy' value in Kilojoules on the left side of the chart. 

These workloads are comprised of a fixed amount of work, so we can plot the task energy against the time required to finish the job (bottom axis), thus generating a really useful power chart. 

Remember that faster compute times, and lower task energy requirements, are ideal. That means processors that fall the closest to the bottom left corner of the chart are best. 

Alder Lake Core i3 Remains the Leader

AMD's new tactic of repurposing APU silicon for the lowest-end budget chips increased the company's ability to ship low-priced silicon during the shortages. However, the Zen 2 architecture is showing its age, leaving Intel with a clear lead in the sub-$125 chip segment.    

Below, we have the geometric mean of our gaming test suite at 1080p and 1440p and a cumulative measure of performance in single- and multi-threaded applications. We conducted our gaming tests with an RTX 3090, so performance deltas will shrink with lesser cards and higher resolution and fidelity settings.

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As a reminder, the $122 Intel Core i3-12100 and $99 12100F offer identical performance, but the latter comes with the iGPU disabled. The Core i3-12100 is an insurmountable 49% faster than the $99 Ryzen 3 4100 and 21.7% faster than the $129 Ryzen 5 4500 in 1080p gaming, making the Core i3 the clear choice for budget gamers. 

The Core i3-12100 also dominates in single-threaded applications, being 44% faster than the Ryzen 3 4100 and 34% faster than the Ryzen 5 4500 in our overall measurement. In threaded work, the Core i3-12100 is 40% faster than the quad-core Ryzen 3 4100, leaving no justification for the 4100 for new builds. 

The six-core Ryzen 5 4500 is 3% faster than the 12100 in our overall measurement of performance in threaded workloads, but be aware that we see somewhat larger advantages in the 4500's favor in some rendering workloads. That might make the 4500 attractive if you're interested solely in productivity work or looking for an upgrade for a Zen 1 system. 

However, the Ryzen 5 4500's few advantages in threaded workloads come with severe tradeoffs in gaming and single-threaded applications. As we often see, mixed-use types of applications are common. Our Adobe tests are a good example — the 12100's superior mix of overwhelmingly faster single-threaded performance and more than sufficient threaded heft often takes the lead in those types of workloads. 

The Ryzen 5 4500 is also limited to PCIe 3.0 connectivity, a disadvantage compared to Intel's support for PCIe 5.0 — particularly for the productivity-minded, who might appreciate the faster throughput of a PCIe 4.0 SSD. The Core i3-12100 also supports DDR4 or DDR5 memory, while the Ryzen 5 4500 is limited to DDR4. That doesn't factor in much because DDR5's premium pricing isn't a good fit for this class of chips. 

The Core i3-12100 and the Ryzen models come with bundled coolers, but AMD offers fully unrestrained overclocking, while Intel limits you to memory overclocking only. That isn't too much of a factor, either, as we saw limited gains with all of these budget chips. 

The Core i3-12100 and 12100F remain the hands-down winners for budget gaming builds. Most budget builders are looking for the best all-rounder chip they can buy, and here the Core i3-12100 and 12100F unquestionably offer the best blend of performance in gaming, single- and multi-threaded work, along with more modern connectivity options.

The Ryzen 3 4100 doesn't make much sense at its $99 price point, even for upgrades. The Ryzen 5 4500 would make a decent upgrade for an existing budget AM4 build if you can find it at below MSRP, but be aware that the Zen 3-powered Ryzen 5 5500 is a better upgrade, and you can often find it on sale for only ~$15 more than the 4500. For new builds, the Intel Core i3-12100 remains the champion of the budget arena. 

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