No, it isn't great. The 3500X falls short of expectations.
No, it isn't great. The 3500X falls short of expectations.
I secured a B450 motherboard, 16GB RAM, and a 3500X at a surprisingly low price on Facebook Marketplace. The seller was transitioning to AM5 and needed a fast sale. I’m wondering if it’s worth keeping the 3500X or selling it outright. It seems you could sell it for around £75, while a similar 3600/3600X board is available locally for about £90–100, leaving roughly £20 for an SMT upgrade. Ideally, you’d consider moving to a Zen 3 R5, but it might be better to hold off until prices drop further. Since it will be paired with a 5700XT, the additional threads should help, though the exact impact is unclear.
It's terrible for gaming because of the missing SMT support. Skipping SMT means missing out on a big advantage. A solid 6-core setup has been having trouble in recent titles (since 2018) mainly due to insufficient threads. No matter how much you tweak, it can't be fixed—it just requires more cores since games now demand at least 8, and will likely need even more as older consoles retire.
It was a low-cost, OEM-exclusive chip from 2019. So... You should anticipate certain features. This type of chip is typically found in PCs running games like Valorant and Rocket League.