Ryzen 3000 generation: AMD Ryzen 3000 release date, price, specs, and everything we know

AMD Ryzen 3000 release date, price, specs, and everything we know

For the past decade or more, AMD has been sitting in second place in the CPU wars. It’s not for lack of trying, and the past two years of Ryzen processors have certainly shaken things up in the competition to deliver the best CPU. Intel still managed to win in several areas—gaming in particular—but that could all change with the launch of the third generation Ryzen CPUs. 

Using the Zen 2 architecture and with a leading edge 7nm process technology courtesy of TSMC, this is the first time AMD has ever had a manufacturing node advantage over rival Intel. This is huge, and it gives AMD a legitimate shot at the CPU throne. And not just for multithreaded workloads—we don’t have independent numbers yet, but AMD could even come out ahead of Intel in gaming performance. 

Here’s everything we know about the features, architecture, price, models, specs, and release date of the upcoming Ryzen 3000 series.  

Decoding codenames

All of AMD’s current generation processors are based on some form of Zen, the name of its modern CPU architecture for every processor category—desktops, laptops, all-in-ones, servers, and so forth. While generally easier to follow than Intel’s many different CPU architectures, it can still be confusing. Let’s clear that up. Here are the versions of Zen, along with the corresponding codenames and desktop processor series:

• Zen («Summit Ridge»)—Ryzen 1000 series
• Zen+ («Pinnacle Ridge»)—Ryzen 2000 series
• Zen 2 («Matisse»)—Ryzen 3000 series
• Zen 3 («TBA»)—Ryzen 4000 series?
• Zen 4 («TBA»)—Ryzen 5000 series?

Zen 2 is actually the third iteration of the Zen microarchitecture, and is attached to AMD’s upcoming Ryzen 3000 series. AMD’s first-gen Ryzen processors (Zen) utilized a 14-nanometer FinFET manufacturing process. For the second-gen Ryzen parts (Zen+), AMD shifted to a 12nm node but with only minor updates to the architecture. The upcoming Ryzen 3000 series (Zen 2) processors are built on a 7nm node and contain significant changes to the underlying architecture along with the die shrink. Then in 2020 (most likely), AMD will launch its Zen 3 lineup, built on an enhanced 7nm+ node. Furthermore, AMD says Zen 3 is «on track» and that the subsequent Zen 4 architecture is currently «in the design phase».

I should note there are even more codenames than the ones above. What I’ve labeled are the names of AMD’s mainstream desktop processors, but there also exist codenames for the company’s CPUs with Vega graphics (essentially APUs, or accelerated processing units) and Epyc server chips. Further confusing the matter, the 2000 series APUs (eg, 2200G and 2400G) are first gen Zen architecture parts, and there are two new desktop APUs, the Ryzen 3 3200G and Ryzen 5 3400G, that are built using the second generation Zen+ architecture.

Ryzen 3000 series specs and pricing

AMD has officially announced six third generation Ryzen CPUs now, along with the two Ryzen 3000 desktop APUs. As anticipated after the first real glimpse of the processor at CES, Ryzen 3000 will come in two different varieties—and probably a third later once Zen 2 APUs arrive. I’ll get into the specifics of why certain changes were made in a moment, but AMD now has a cIOD (client IO die) manufactured using 12nm, which consists of the memory controller and other aspects of the chipset. This in turn links to one or two CCDs—the actual Ryzen CPU cores and cache. The Ryzen 9 parts will have two CCD chips inside the package, along with the cIOD, while the Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 will have a single CCD.  Here’s what we know of the actual Ryzen 3000 lineup: 

• Ryzen 9 3950X—16C/32T, 3.5GHz to 4.7GHz, 72MB cache, 105W TDP, $749 (in September)
• Ryzen 9 3900X—12C/24T, 3.8GHz to 4.6GHz, 70MB cache, 105W TDP, $499
• Ryzen 7 3800X—8C/16T, 3. 9GHz to 4.5GHz, 36MB cache, 105W TDP, $399
• Ryzen 7 3700X—8C/16T, 3.6GHz to 4.4GHz, 36MB cache, 65W TDP, $329
• Ryzen 5 3600X—6C/12T, 3.8GHz to 4.4GHz, 35MB cache, 95W TDP, $249
• Ryzen 5 3600—6C/12T, 3.6GHz to 4.2GHz, 35MB cache, 65W TDP, $199
• Ryzen 5 3400G—(Zen+) 4C/8T, 3.7GHz to 4.2GHz, 6MB cache, Vega 11 Graphics at 1400MHz, 65W TDP, $149
• Ryzen 3 3200G—(Zen+) 4C/4T, 3.6GHz to 4.0GHz, 6MB cache, Vega 8 Graphics at 1250MHz, 65W TDP, $99

All of the above, with the exception of the 3950X, will launch on July 7—including the two second generation Zen+ APUs. There will likely be additional Ryzen 3000 parts, but this is what AMD has revealed so far. There may be lower price 4C/8T or 4C/4T Ryzen 3 models at some point, but those at least partially overlap the APUs and may not be necessary.

Pricing for the Ryzen 3000 parts is clearly higher than earlier rumors (guesses), and clockspeeds perhaps aren’t quite as high as some had hoped. However, there’s more to performance than clockspeeds, and power requirements are generally much lower than the competing Intel parts. Let’s dig into some of the lower level details now to better understand what AMD has planned.

Image 1 of 12

The Zen 2 architecture

Zen 2 is more than just a die shrink—a switch to the smaller 7nm manufacturing process. Smaller process nodes typically mean better power efficiency, potentially higher clockspeeds, and improved density—or more transistors in the same size chip. All of those benefits appear to be part of the Ryzen 3000 processors, but there’s a lot more going on underneath the hood. At a high level, AMD claims IPC (Instructions Per Clock) is 15 percent higher than Zen+. That means for the same number of cores and the same clockspeed, Zen 2 should be 15 percent faster. But how did AMD get that 15 percent improvement? It’s all in the architectural details.

I already mentioned one major change with the Zen 2 design, moving the memory controller into a separate IO chip. This has a latency penalty compared to previous Ryzen CPUs, but it has the benefit of not creating substantially different memory latencies when moving to a dual chiplet design like Ryzen 9. But that memory latency increase ends up being mostly a moot point according to AMD, thanks to the other architectural changes.

One big update is the doubling of the L3 cache size. On the single chiplet Ryzen 5/7 parts, there’s a 32MB victim cache—meaning, data in the L2 cache doesn’t get replicated into the L3 cache (an exclusive cache if you prefer). The dual chiplet Ryzen 9 CPUs meanwhile come with a combined 64MB L3 cache. Because of the exclusive caching design, AMD adds the L2 and L3 cache sizes and calls this the Gaming Cache. With 512KB of L2 cache per core, that gives the 6-core Ryzen 5 chips 35MB of Gaming Cache, 36MB of Gaming Cache for the 8-core Ryzen 7 parts, the 12-core has 70MB of Gaming Cache, and the big daddy 16-core 3950X has 72MB of Gaming Cache.

And what do those massive cache sizes do for memory latency? AMD says on average the effective memory latency is reduced by 33ns relative to Zen+, which in turn can improve performance by up to 21 percent—and that’s in games. The larger L3 cache sizes do cause a slight increase in cache latency—typical L3 cache latency is now 40-45 cycles compared to 35-40 cycles on Zen—but compared to the roughly 200 cycle latency of system memory the benefits should be substantial. And if you’re keeping track, L1 cache latency is still 4 cycles and L2 cache latency is 12 cycles.

Going along with the larger caches, AMD has added a new TAGE branch predictor in Zen 2. There’s a whole lot of technical detail we could get into, but fundamentally incorrect branch predictions can cause a pretty big performance hit—the 19-stage pipeline gets flushed and restarted, so every branch miss is a major opportunity for performance improvements. Zen 2 keeps the Perceptron branch predictor for the L1 cache (which already works well), but adds the more complex TAGE branch predictor for the L2 cache. The net result is that AMD says Zen 2 will make 30 percent fewer incorrect branch predictions.

In the execution units, AMD also added a third AGU (Address Generation Unit). That gives Zen 2 seven execution ports, but it can still only dispatch up to six instructions per clock. However, there are enough cases where the CPU could use another AGU that it apparently made sense.

Another change is to the floating point (FP) performance, with AMD doubling the AVX performance. Where Zen and Zen+ had a two cycle latency for AVX256 instructions, Zen 2 is single cycle. There’s a related change to the load and store bandwidth, which is now 256 bits wide instead of 128 bits. Also, multiplication latency is three cycles, down from four cycles. This may not affect all workloads that much, but for applications that utilize AVX2, the gains should be pretty substantial.

Something not quite as directly applicable to the CPU architecture is Zen 2’s support for PCIe 4.0. That doubles the bandwidth between the CPU and chipset, as well as the M.2 slot. It should also boost the bandwidth between the CCDs and the cIOD within the package, since those Infinity Fabric links are presumably PCIe 4. 0 derived as well. What PCIe 4.0 means in the real world is less clear. SSDs that support the new standard are coming, and will deliver even higher throughput than existing M.2 NVMe SSDs. But for gaming purposes, neither the GPU nor the storage is likely to matter much.

There are plenty of other tweaks in Zen 2—a larger 4K micro-Op cache, larger 180 entry register rename space (up from 168), increased L1/L2 BTB tables (512 L1 vs. 256, 7K L2 vs. 4K), moving from a 64K 4-way associated L1 cache to a 32K 8-way L1 cache, a 224 reorder buffer (vs. 192), and more. That’s all highly technical stuff that you need to be a microprocessor engineer to properly appreciate, but the bottom line is that Zen 2 ends up being better than Zen/Zen+ in just about every way.

How much better? I’ll get to AMD’s claims in a moment, but one interesting point that came out of discussions with AMD’s CPU experts is that even though the theoretical maximum IPC of Zen 2 is 6.0—if it filled every possible instruction dispatch every cycle—in the real world most applications are only getting an IPC of about 1. 5. There are more predictable workloads where IPC might be as high as 3.0, other complex workloads where IPC drops as low as 0.25, but on average Zen 2 is getting 1.5. The larger caches, improved branch prediction, extra AGU, larger buffers, and other architectural changes are all ways of improving IPC.

AMD Ryzen 3000 performance

AMD is setting expectations quite high with Zen 2, claiming an average 15 percent IPC improvement relative to Zen+. That 15 percent improvement comes from all the above architectural updates, and combined with higher clockspeeds and core counts, performance should be a significant step up from the Ryzen 2000 series. But it’s not just about the hardware, as there are some software changes that will also play a role.

One of the big problems AMD has faced with its Ryzen and Threadripper CPUs is that Windows simply doesn’t have a great process scheduler when it comes to designs like Zen/Zen+/Zen 2. Specifically, L3 cache latency is worse on the AM4 processors when a thread is running on one CCX (Core CompleX—a group of four CPU cores along with their caches and other bits) and accesses data stored in the L3 cache on the other CCX. This increases memory latency, and it would be better if threads from the same application were grouped on the same CCX when possible.

The Windows 10 May 2019 update improves on the Windows scheduler, and combined with a new AMD chipset driver (which isn’t available to the public yet), thread scheduling should be better. This could improve performance by 5-10 percent in some workloads, and it will be available for all Ryzen and Threadripper platforms by the time the new CPUs launch. What isn’t clear is how much of the performance increases AMD showed in its slides will come just from the Zen 2 architecture, and how much comes from the new scheduler, but I’ll look into it more once I have CPUs in hand.

Intel has made some bold statements about performance, going so far as to say «come beat us in gaming if you can.» I’ll have full independent numbers in the coming weeks, but as of now, I can provide both information on where AMD and Intel currently stand, as well as AMD’s performance information for several Ryzen 3000 CPUs. If AMD’s slides are accurate, Intel may regret that challenge.

Starting with the Core i9-9900K against the Ryzen 9 3900X, across eight games AMD is showing relatively equivalent performance. The same goes for the Core i7-9700K versus the Ryzen 7 3800X, and the Core i5-9600K going up against the Ryzen 5 3600X. AMD performed all of these gaming tests at 1080p high settings, where the CPU is more likely to make a difference, and the graphics card used is an RTX 2080. That last point is important, as if you’re using a slower GPU like an RX 580 or GTX 1060, you’d see far less of a difference. Unfortunately, AMD didn’t provide hard numbers for both the AMD and Intel CPUs, so all I can say is that the results look relatively similar.

Let me put that into context, however. I’ve been retesting all of the modern Intel and AMD CPUs in advance of the Ryzen 3000 launch, using an RTX 2080 Ti and testing at 1080p ultra. With ten different games (Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, The Division 2, Far Cry 5, Fortnite, Hitman 2, Metro Exodus, Middle-Earth: Shadow of War, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Strange Brigade, and Total War: Warhammer 2), I can say that the fastest gaming CPU in my results right now is the Core i7-9700K, which just edges out the Core i9-9900K—141. 0 fps compared to 139.4 fps. The Core i5-9600K incidentally gets 131.4 fps.

More important than the i9 vs. i7 vs. i5 Intel comparison is the Intel vs. AMD Ryzen comparison. The Ryzen 7 2700X averages 118.1 fps and the Ryzen 5 2600X gets 116.8 fps, so Intel leads by 19 percent on average, and the Core i5 leads by 12.5 percent. Looking at the individual games, Strange Brigade is AMD’s best result—it’s a tie among basically all five CPUs—while Far Cry 5, Hitman 2, and Shadow of War have Intel leading by 30-45 percent in some cases.

What we don’t know is exactly where the Ryzen 3000 CPUs will land relative to these processors. However, with a claimed 15 percent IPC improvement and slightly higher clockspeeds, plus larger caches that in some cases might result in even larger gaming performance improvements (AMD showed up to 30 percent improvements relative to the 2700X in another comparison), things could change. AMD’s Ryzen 9 3900X and Ryzen 7 3800X in particular could potentially end up as the best processors for gaming and other tasks come July.

Will AMD claim an outright lead in gaming performance? Perhaps not. However, with 12-core going up against 8-core, 8-core/16-thread going up against 8-core/8-thread, and 6-core/12-thread squaring off against 6-core/6-thread, the non-gaming matchups look to be decidedly in favor of AMD. Perhaps that’s why Intel is talking smack about games?

These non-gaming results from AMD all support the above statements. With relatively similar clockspeeds and IPC on both AMD and Intel CPUs, having 50 percent more cores/threads—or even twice as many cores/threads—guarantees AMD will win every meaningful multithreaded performance comparison. Cinebench, POV-Ray, Blender, H.264 encoding, H.265 encoding, cryptography, and more should all favor AMD’s Ryzen 3000. Even singlethreaded performance looks close, based on what AMD showed (which may not be representative of all workloads).

Keep in mind that a lot of consumers really don’t do much in the way of heavily multithreaded workloads. Cinebench, POV-Ray, Blender, and other 3D rendering applications are popular CPU benchmarks, in part because they’re easy to run. Outside of professionals, few people use such applications. About the most complex task a typical consumer would perform is video encoding, like when livestreaming gameplay. Otherwise, for non-professional work the need for more than an 8-core CPU is debatable.

More telling is the TDPs of AMD’s parts. Both the 12-core and 16-core Ryzen 9 parts are supposed to be 105W parts. Whether they’ll fully respect that power limit or the motherboard manufacturers will «boost» performance and run at higher clocks is not yet clear. Intel’s CPUs certainly run well beyond their rated TDP in some workloads, and with the 7nm process AMD’s new chips should come out in the lead on power.

Something else to point out here is that Intel’s Skylake-X processors look absolutely terrible in terms of efficiency compared to Zen 2, or even the Coffee Lake refresh. I’ve seen 10-core Skylake-X (i9-7900X) pull as much as 300W for a CPU heavy workload at «stock.» Performance can be good in the right scenarios, but it’s using far more power than I’d like. The i9-7980XE carries things even further, with peak CPU loads reaching as high as 450W. That’s nearly double what I see on the mainstream AM4 and LGA1151 platforms.

When is the Ryzen 3000 release date?

All of AMD’s Ryzen 3000 and Radeon 5700 products are set to launch on July 7, 2019. That’s a shoutout to the 7nm technology at the heart of the products. As far as review embargoes and independent performance testing, that could come sooner, but officially AMD hasn’t given a date yet. Sometime in the next few weeks, we’ll have the full reviews posted for most of the new CPUs, but the 3950X won’t arrive until September. Let the official countdown to launch commence. 

Sign up to get the best content of the week, and great gaming deals, as picked by the editors.

Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors

Jarred’s love of computers dates back to the dark ages when his dad brought home a DOS 2. 3 PC and he left his C-64 behind. He eventually built his first custom PC in 1990 with a 286 12MHz, only to discover it was already woefully outdated when Wing Commander was released a few months later. He holds a BS in Computer Science from Brigham Young University and has been working as a tech journalist since 2004, writing for AnandTech, Maximum PC, and PC Gamer. From the first S3 Virge ‘3D decelerators’ to today’s GPUs, Jarred keeps up with all the latest graphics trends and is the one to ask about game performance. 

AMD Ryzen 3000 Series CPUs: Rumors, Release Date, All We Know About Ryzen 3

UPDATE: AMD held it’s Computex 2019 keynote here in Taipei, revealing part of the third-gen Ryzen lineup. We’re working to update this article with the new information, as there are still plenty of details that still remain unknown. In the meantime, head over to our full analysis of the third-gen Ryzen launch for the list of shipping models. If you’re wondering about AMD vs Intel, we’ve got an answer.

The arrival of AMD’s 1000-series Ryzen processors (like the flagship Ryzen 7 1800X) revitalized the CPU market in ways we couldn’t have imagined just a few years ago, forcing Intel to become more competitive across the full breadth of its product stack. But that was just the beginning of AMD’s assault with its new Zen-based chips. Last year AMD moved from its original 14nm chips to the 2000-series 12nm Ryzen processors (like the Ryzen 7 2700X) that come wielding the Zen+ microarchitecture. Now, the Ryzen 3000 series is coming. According to the latest rumors, these chips could come with up to 16 cores for the mainstream desktop, doubling Intel’s limit of eight cores.

Ryzen 3000 (Image credit: voyata / Shutterstock)

These newer chips were a solid evolutionary step, but now AMD is working feverishly to bring its Zen 2 microarchitecture to market packing a 7nm manufacturing process. Along with an improved Infinity Fabric, the collection of new technologies will come to market as the third-generation Ryzen ‘Matisse’ processors. If AMD can pull off this feat in a timely manner while Intel still struggles to roll out its 10nm CPUs, it will mark the first time in its history that AMD has taken the process node lead from Intel.

AMD recently demoed the new processor during its CES keynote. While we still don’t know all the details about what is coming with AMD’s 3000-series processors yet, we do know they are coming to market in mid-2019. AMD recently announced that the 7nm EPYC data center variants are sampling in Q2 of 2019, so things appear to be on track, and we also know that the Zen 2-based chips will power Sony’s next-gen Playstation 5.

Last week, AMD’s Lisa Su also confirmed at the company’s Annual Shareholder Meeting that it will launch its 7nm lineup of Ryzen 3000 and EPYC data center chips, along with the Navi graphics architecture, in the third quarter of 2019. That comes on the heels of the recent discovery that Gigabyte has enabled support for PCIe Gen 4.0 with its previous-gen motherboards through a BIOS update that you can download today. That feature will only be fully unlocked when you pair it with a Ryzen 3000 chip, so the stage has apparently been set for an announcement during Lisa Su’s Computex keynote on Monday, May 24.

Let’s take a look at what else we know, and what we don’t.

Third-Gen Ryzen Performance

At CES 2019, AMD CEO Lisa Su showed off an «early» third-gen Ryzen desktop processor running a game paired with a Radeon VII.  These 7nm chips will be the first desktop processors to support PCIe 4.0 x16 right out of the box. That also implies that the new 500-series chipsets will also support the new standard.

AMD Ryzen 3000 Demo. (Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

AMD demoed a pre-production Ryzen 3000-series processor going head-to-head against a Core i9-9900K. It’s noteworthy that AMD hasn’t fully tweaked the design yet, meaning that it will likely extract more performance from the chip before it comes to market. The eight-core 16-thread Ryzen processor was about even with the eight-core 16-thread Core i9-9900K in a Cinebench multi-threaded workload, with the Ryzen score 2,057 to the i9’s 2040.

Third-gen Ryzen’s power consumption figures during the demo were just as impressive – the chip consumed 30% less power than the Intel processor during the benchmark. Intel’s Core i9-9900K requires a high-end motherboard, power supply, and cooler to extract the optimum level of performance. The Ryzen processors’ comparatively low power consumption means it could be much cheaper to build full systems around the chips, thus allowing AMD to offer a similar level of performance while maintaining the value advantage.

The 3rd-Gen Ryzen Chip

As expected, the third-generation Ryzen processor comes with a multi-chiplet arrangement, much like the EPYC Rome processors AMD recently announced. This modular design consists of an eight-core 7nm chiplet (fabbed at TSMC) connected to a 14nm I/O die (fabbed at GlobalFoundries). The I/O die contains the memory controllers, Infinity Fabric links, and I/O connections. Aside from support for PCIe 4.0, AMD is still keeping details about these resources close to the chest.  

As we can see, AMD offset the larger I/O die from the 7nm core die, leaving plenty of room for a second eight-core CPU complex. We can even see what appears to be a dip in the PCB (images below) that would serve as a mounting point for another eight-core chiplet. AMD’s Lisa Su has commented that the design obviously leaves room for another chiplet, and that «you might expect that we will have more than eight cores.» However, Su did not specify how many more cores will come with the processors, or if they would arrive during the initial launch or come as a follow-up series of chips. A credible rumor has emerged that AMD already has a 16-core variant in flight, but AMD has not officially confirmed the information.

We do know from the latest publicly-available BIOS updates that AMD has already moved forward to the B0 stepping of its silicon, indicating the Ryzen 3000 chips are nearing their final retail form.

Image 1 of 6

AMD is now using a second-gen Infinity Fabric to connect the compute die to the I/O die that serves as the linchpin of the design. This design helps AMD keep the areas of the chip that don’t scale well, like the memory controllers and I/O, on a proven and mature node, while also leveraging the performance, density and economic advantages of the 7nm node for the important compute functions. The innovative design is a sign of a broader trend in the industry to heterogeneous architectures.

It Just Works

The Ryzen 3000 series chips come with a radical new design, but luckily for us, the chips will work with many of the optimizations for existing Ryzen processors. AMD’s first-gen Ryzen processors landed with a revolutionary new core design that initially led to lower-than-expected performance in some applications. Latency-sensitive applications (like games) suffered the most, but AMD made a concerted effort to arm software developers with the knowledge to tailor their code for the unique Zen microarchitecture, largely correcting the issue with the mainstream desktop chips.

We asked AMD CTO Mark Papermaster if those optimizations would carry over to the new third-gen Ryzen products, which he confirmed. That means the Ryzen 3000 series chips will hit the ground running when they come to market.

PCIe 4.0 Support

AMD led the way with PCIe 4.0 support for its 7nm EPYC Rome chips and enabled the standard on the 3000-series processors. However, AMD has confirmed to us that while the new Ryzen processors are compatible with motherboards designed for the first-gen chips, it will require new motherboards to fully support the PCIe 4.0 standard.

There is hope for existing Ryzen systems, though. AMD representatives confirmed that 300- and 400-series AM4 motherboards can support PCIe 4.0. AMD will not lock the out feature, instead it will be up to motherboard vendors to validate and qualify the faster standard on its motherboards on a case-by-case basis. Motherboard vendors that do support the feature will enable it through BIOS updates, but those updates will come at the discretion of the vendor.

Most older motherboards could support a PCIe 4.0 x16 connection to the first slot on the motherboard, but the remainder of the slots could revert to PCIe 3. 0 signaling rates. That’s because any trace routing on the motherboard that exceeds six inches requires newer redrivers and retimers that support PCIe 4.0’s faster signaling rates. That means the PCIe slot nearest to the CPU will easily support PCIe 4.0, while the other slots, including M.2 ports, could run at PCIe 3.0. Support could be limited to slots based upon board, switch, and mux layouts.

The 500-Series Chipset

AMD’s purportedly named X570 motherboards have already begun to pop up in online testing databases as motherboard vendors put their new products through the wringer, so speculation is running high.

The third-gen Ryzen processors support PCIe 4.0, and it’s logical to assume that the next-gen chipsets, largely thought to be named the 500-Series, will also support the standard. Our sources tell us the 14nm 500-Series chipsets will consume more power (~15W) than the 28nm chipsets (~8W) used on current AM4 motherboards, but that’s because the 500-series chipsets also support PCIe 4. 0. We weren’t told the specific lane allocations of the new chipset, but those faster lanes will be useful for numerous types of secondary I/O devices.

We’re also told by motherboard vendors that AMD will stop using ASMedia to design its chipsets. But AMD says that it will continue to use ASMedia, but the new chipsets will be «more nuanced.» That could mean that AMD will design parts of the chipset and simply license key IP blocks, like USB 3.1, from ASMedia.

DigiTimes muddied the issue further with a report that ASMedia had stated that it would continue to build all AMD chipsets, but it’s notable that there is a difference between building and designing the component.

AM4 Socket

AMD has promised AM4 CPU socket compatibility until 2020 for all its Ryzen processors. That means you should be able to use any AMD Ryzen processor on any AM4 motherboard, providing AMD’s customers with a solid upgrade path in the future. That stands in stark contrast to Intel’s frequent socket changes that find enthusiasts having to migrate to new boards and chipsets. AMD’s long-lived support for the AM4 socket has earned plenty of cachet with enthusiasts, but it also restricts the company’s options for the new 3000-series processors.

AMD and its motherboard partners have been working to deliver on that promise, with recent BIOS updates to existing motherboards coming from all the major manufacturers. Unfortunately, for now, we have yet to see any A-Series motherboards receive the treatment, leaving the distinct possibility that the chips won’t be supported on the existing low-end motherboards.

The AM4 socket gives us a few hints about the possible configurations. The AM4 socket supports two channels of DDR4 memory, and that isn’t likely to change with the 3000-series models because each memory channel requires its own dedicated pins for communication. Given the current alignment of the AM4 socket, that means the new chips will likely have a dual-channel memory controller.

The AdoredTV Rumor

AdoredTV famously reported that an anonymous tipster had sent a list of AMD’s new processors. The rumor claimed AMD will release the new Ryzen chips in Q1 2019, but several details of the rumor are questionable.

The information contended that AMD would unveil the new processors and pricing at CES, but the company didn’t share such detailed information during its keynote. We expect the lack of detail about the Ryzen chips, as most of these final touches, especially CPU clock speeds and pricing, typically come later in the development process.

Swipe to scroll horizontally

CPU	Cores / Threads	GPU	Base / Boost Clock	TDP	Price
Ryzen 3 3200G	4 / 4	Vega 8	3.6 / 4.0GHz	65W	$99
Ryzen 5 3400G	4 / 8	Vega 11	3. 7 / 4.2GHz	65W	$149
Ryzen 7 3700	12 / 24	—	3.8 / 4.6GHz	95W	$299
Ryzen 7 3700X	8 / 16	—	3.6 / 4.4GHz	65W	$329
Ryzen 9 3800X	8 / 16	—	3.9 / 4.5GHz	105W	$399
Ryzen 9 3900X	12 / 24	—	4.8 / 4.6GHz	105W	$499
Ryzen 9 3950X	16 / 32	—	3.5 / 4.7GHz	105W	$749

Several other facets of the rumored lineup are also questionable. The pricing model outlined in the rumor would bring twice the number of cores to market within similar price ranges of the current AMD chips, which is highly unlikely given what we said above about the higher cost of 7nm production. AMD did turn the industry on its ear with its revolutionary pricing model with the first-gen Ryzen processors, but that release represented an entire reset of the company’s lineup.

Now the company is bringing an iterative update to market, meaning that such radical changes to its product stack would impact its existing lineup. Bringing 3000-series processors to market at these prices would cannibalize the company’s existing lineup, meaning it would have to purge its entire supply chain to avoid having unsellable excess inventory. That isn’t likely.

AMD also recently stated during its 50th Anniversary luncheon that its 7nm products all carry a 50%, or higher, margin. That makes the promise of extreme price drops even more questionable.

Others have pointed out more obvious holes in the lineup, such as TDPs and frequencies that don’t line up evenly across the product stack. We don’t think this rumor is accurate, especially given the nature of the disclosure and the pricing model. But only time will tell if at least some of the rumor contains accurate info. In the meantime, we’ve seen plenty of obscure retailers post placeholders for Ryzen 3000 series chips using the exact naming and specifications as seen in this rumor. It should go without saying, but you should view those with extreme suspicion.

The Return of the CCX, Intro to the AMD Zen 2 Architecture

Papermaster also confirmed that the chips will come with AMD’s Core Complex (CCX), which is a key foundational building block that allows the company to easily scale the design of the chip. The current CCX design consists of four cores connected to a centralized cache split into four slices. Each core also has its own private L2 cache. Many current-gen Ryzen models come with two CCX’s tied together via AMD’s Infinity Fabric, which is a fast interconnect that serves as a superspeed highway between the units. This allows for fast and efficient communication. The CCX’es also share the same memory controller.

Although we know that the new chips bear this same design ethos, we aren’t sure if AMD has made radical adjustments. The company may have added more cores to each CCX, or adjusted the capacities and associativity of the caches.

The TSMC 7nm Process

AMD hasn’t said much about the 7nm process that it will use for the Ryzen 3000-series chips, though the company claimed during its debut of the EPYC data center chips that the process will bring twice the density while halving the power consumption at the same performance level. The company claims 7nm also offers 1.25x the performance at the same power. These advantages will come to the end user in the form of faster and cheaper chips, but scaling difficulties and chip-level interconnect restrictions complicate matters as chips become smaller—see Intel’s ongoing issues with its own 10nm process.

AMD’s CTO Mark Papermaster tells us to expect a 25 percent increase in performance from the new process, but he reiterated to EETimes that the move to the new process is challenging. Papermaster also said that the move to EUV (extreme ultraviolet) manufacturing, which will come with the 7nm+ node, will only provide “modest” device performance opportunities. We’ve also seen similar statements from AMD’s Forrest Norrod, so it might be best to keep expectations for significantly higher clocks in check.

It is important to remember that node naming conventions have become more of a marketing exercise than a metric based on hard measurements. So TSMC’s 7nm is not denser than Intel’s pending, oft-delayed, 10nm node. In fact, Intel’s 10nm process is actually denser than TSMC’s 7nm process – Intel’s 10nm (6T) process is 100 mega-transistors per square millimeter (MTr/mm²), while TSMC’s 7nm (7.5T) weighs in at 66 MTr/mm².

But for now, it’s a race to see who can get their new process to market first. Intel plans to have 10nm processors in high volume manufacturing in late 2019 (presuming there aren’t any more delays), leaving AMD a big window of opportunity if it can make its target of mid-2019.

The high up-front costs associated with developing a new node pushed AMD’s primary manufacturing partner, Global Foundries, out of the 7nm race last year. AMD remains committed to delivering the new node and using it as a vehicle to deliver the new Zen 2 microarchitecture to market, but it is partnering with TSMC for manufacturing. TSMC is the industry’s premiere third-party foundry, so AMD will have to compete for wafer output with big players such as Apple, Qualcomm and Nvidia, that also use the fab’s chip production facilities. However, recent reports indicate that the 7nm node is expensive, thus leading several large players to scale back product development on leading nodes, thus leaving about 10 percent of TSMC’s 7nm production capacity underutilized. This is a double-edged sword for AMD: while the company shouldn’t have any problem sourcing wafers from TSMC, the progressively higher costs of each smaller node means we might not see big price drops with the second-gen Ryzen chips.

For now, we wait

AMD’s move to producing 7nm chips in volume before Intel can counter with its own 10nm shrink could serve a huge blow to Team Blue, especially if AMD can also pull it off in the middle of this year.

But there are more gains to be had than “just” a node shrink: AMD also has its Zen 2 microarchitecture coming with the 3000-series Ryzen chips, and that should bring along a nice improvement in instructions per clock (IPC) throughput. That could potentially push the company closer to matching Intel in one of the few areas where the blue team still has a clear advantage—performance in single-threaded applications. AMD’s demo implies that it is reaching parity with Intel’s per-core performance, but we’ll need a much larger spread of workloads to accurately gauge the improvement.

AMD is already extremely competitive on many fronts. But if the company can close the single-threaded performance gap (which would be beneficial for gaming performance in particular), it could set the stage for the biggest upset in the history of the processor market. And that kind of success (paired with increasing EPYC sales) would give AMD a major influx of cash, which could help the company better compete against its much larger CPU rival (not to mention Nvidia on the graphics front) in 2020 and beyond.

More About AMD

• AMD Athlon 200GE Review
• AMD vs. Intel: Which Sub-$500 PC is Better?
• Ryzen 2 vs Intel Coffee Lake

Want to comment on this story? Let us know what you think in the Tom’s Hardware Forums.

Get instant access to breaking news, in-depth reviews and helpful tips.

Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors

Paul Alcorn is the Deputy Managing Editor for Tom’s Hardware US. He writes news and reviews on CPUs, storage and enterprise hardware.

Topics

AMD

CPUs

AMD Ryzen 3000: a noticeable boost in gaming performance, the 16-core flagship Ryzen 9 3950X does not require special motherboards

During E3 2019, AMD hosted its own Next Horizon Gaming Event to showcase its upcoming gaming devices. At the same time, Travis Kirch, head of client products, immodestly stated that soon people would not even need to buy Intel processors, hinting at a total superiority over competing solutions. nine0003

Helping

The company notes that its new line of Ryzen 3000 desktop processors, announced at Computex 2019 two weeks ago, provides a number of advantages in various areas. AMD’s new processors are not only cheaper and more power efficient, not only more productive in content creation tasks thanks to the extra cores, but they also outperform Intel’s chips in games.

AMD reports that a 40% increase in performance and energy efficiency is achieved only by switching to a thinner 7nm manufacturing process. In addition, the Zen 2 architecture provides a 15% increase in instructions per clock compared to Zen at the same operating frequency. So the overall performance gain is very noticeable. nine0003

As part of the demo, it was also said that while Intel and AMD processors can run games at the same frame rate, only AMD chips can simultaneously stream Twitch in ultra high quality.

Course

EMPLOYER BRANDING

Build a great and great robot brand in just one month.

REGISTER!

All new Ryzen 3000 processors provide significant performance gains, but Ryzen 9 stands out3950X, which includes 16 processing cores (supports the processing of 32 instruction streams simultaneously) and 72 MB of cache. The base operating frequency of this chip is 3.5 GHz, the increased frequency is 4.7 GHz. What is most interesting, this monster has a relatively low power dissipation — 105 watts. For comparison, a 16-core Threadripper has a TDP of 180W, while a 16-core Intel chip has a TDP of 165W. At the same time, the last two processors require the use of more expensive motherboards and have larger processor sockets. While Ryzen 9The 3950X has a traditional AM4 design and can be used with almost any matching motherboard. AMD plans to maintain socket-level compatibility until at least 2020, and the transition to another processor socket will only be caused by a «tipping point in platform technology. » Probably, we are talking about significant changes in the operation of slots for RAM and expansion cards. So far, the new AMD X570 platform provides support for PCIe 4.0.

Together with the new processors, AMD introduced new cooling systems for them. Every Ryzen 7 and 9 processorcomes with Wraith Prism RGB LED cooler. Supports Razer Chroma backlit sync.

AMD’s Ryzen 3000 series processors begin shipping July 7th, with the new flagship Ryzen 9 3950X available in September for $750.

Source: The Verge

AMD, AMD Ryzen 3000, NAVI, Ryzen, Ryzen 3000, Ryzen 9 3950X, Components, Processors

AMD Ryzen 3000: Eight Zen 2 Cores with PCIe 4.0 Support Coming Summer 2019

In addition to the first 7nm Radeon Vega 7 gaming GPU, AMD announced the Ryzen 3000 processors at the Gliding Keynote. The desktop processors, codenamed Matisse, will be installed in the good old AM4 socket, but they will also rely on the new Zen 2 architecture with PCI Express 4. 0 support, among other things.

However, no specific release date for Ryzen 3 has been announced. AMD is talking about the second or third quarters. Clock speeds are also not yet final. Matisse processors, like the second generation EPYC, rely on a design with several separate dies in a package. Each smaller die contains eight Zen 2 cores. The single larger die is responsible for I/O operations. Computing crystals are manufactured using 7nm technology, I / O crystal — according to 12nm process technology. nine0003

Since the I/O die of EPYC processors supports PCI Express 4.0, the same will be true for socket AM4 Matisse processors. So AMD will bring to market the first desktop processors with PCI Express 4.0 support.

Our Anandtech colleagues have already held a package of CPU chips in their hands, which allowed us to do some calculations. The die size of the CPU is 10.53 x 7.67mm and the area is 80.80mm². On the I/O die we get 13. 16 x 9.32 mm, area 122.63 mm², respectively.

On stage, AMD couldn’t resist comparing an unnamed 3rd generation Ryzen processor with unknown clock speeds to an Intel Core i9-9900K processor. The new Ryzen 3 showed 2.023 points in Cinebench R15, in the case of the Core i9-9900K, the result was 2.042 points. For comparison, the Ryzen 7 2700X scores around 1,750 in this test. So AMD is clearly targeting Intel’s eight-core flagship. On the other hand, compared to its direct predecessor, Zen 2 gives a performance boost of 15%, which is also not bad. nine0003

AMD also claims an increase in efficiency. If the Core i9-9900K draws 125W of power, the upcoming Ryzen will run at just 75W. The power consumption of the entire system is 180 and 130 W, respectively. So AMD was able to achieve comparable performance with significantly lower power consumption.

There is very little additional information about 3rd generation Ryzen processors yet.