Processors

[pkr]

Ryzen 3500 has just been launched, from this link I learned that it is a 3rd Generation, 6 core, 6 thread, 3.6 GHz base and 4.1 GHz Max clock processor (I could not verify this from AMD website). These specifications appear close to that of Ryzen 2600, but without the SMT and at 3.4 GHz base and 3.9 GHz as max clock.

Now my question is-
1. Is SMT really useful especially for non gaming purpose?
2. Which is preferable- 3500 which is 3rd gen and has better clock speed OR 2600 which has multithreading (Given that 3500 priced a little less than 2600)?

[black_zion]

1) You're misusing your terminology. Multithreading is when an application uses more than one processor threads. HyperThreading/SMT is when a processor can run 2, 3, or even 4 threads, seen as logical cores by the OS, per physical core. The benefits of HT/SMT vary depending on the load on the processor core, as it depends on the CPU core not being fully utilized. TechPowerUp did an article on the 3900X in creator type tasks (encoding, rendering, and other non gaming tasks), and found the overall difference to be 10.5%, but depending on the task it could be only a difference of milliseconds. I linked the full article and the graph except below.

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-ryzen-9-3900x-smt-off-vs-intel-9900k/3.html

2) Ryzen 3000 series (Zen 2) performs about 15% faster per clock than Ryzen 2000 series (Zen+) due to architectural improvements. Personally I would go with the 3500, but the 3500 hasn't officially been released yet.

[pkr]

Thank you for pointing it out, I have corrected my terminology. 

3500 has be released in India (https://www.vedantcomputers.com/amd-ryzen-5-3500-processor-upto-4-1-ghz-16-mb-cache ), but AMD does not have a description of 3500 on their website yet.