AMD announces Ryzen 9 3900X flagship desktop CPU, Ryzen 7 3800X, more

Julio Franco

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Why it matters: AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su's Computex inaugural keynote was packed with the hardware we wanted to hear about so eagerly. 3rd-gen Ryzen desktop processors are now official, based on new Zen 2 cores, the series includes a new Ryzen 9 flagship with 12 cores and 24 threads for $499, while the mainstream king Ryzen 5 3600 is a 6 core/12 thread 65W CPU starting at $199. AMD's X570 chipset also claims a first in supporting PCIe 4.0.

AMD is claiming their new Zen 2 cores deliver 15% more IPC than previous generation chips, in addition to new features and design improvements that include larger cache sizes and a redesigned floating point engine. Shipping on July 7, the full Ryzen 3000 family of processors consist of the chips outlined on the table below.

Model Cores/
Threads
TDP (Watts) Boost/Base (GHz) Total Cache (MB) PCIe 4.0 Lanes* MSRP
Ryzen 9 3900X 12/24 105W 4.6/3.8 70 40 $499
Ryzen 7 3800X 8/16 105W 4.5/3.9 36 40 $399
Ryzen 7 3700X 8/16 65W 4.4/3.6 36 40 $329
Ryzen 5 3600X 6/12 95W 4.4/3.8 35 40 $249
Ryzen 5 3600 6/12 65W 4.2/3.6 35 40 $199

As expected, the new lineup introduces a new Ryzen 9 desktop processor with the flagship 12 core/24 thread Ryzen 9 3900X which is selling at a premium above the rest of the pack but features more cores and cache for a price well below Threadripper's levels. AMD was also keen to share some preliminar performance benchmarks, meant to highlight how their new processors compare to current Intel competitors:

  • Ryzen 7 3700X vs. i7-9700K with real-time rendering: The Ryzen 7 3700X offered 1% more single-threaded performance, and 30% more in multi-threaded tests.
  • Ryzen 7 3800X vs. i9-9900K with PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds gameplay: The Ryzen 7 3800X matched the performance of the i9-9900K.
  • Ryzen 9 3900X vs. i9-9920X with Blender Render: The Ryzen 9 3900X beat the Intel i9 9920X by more than 16%.

Ryzen was already superior to Intel in terms of multi-threaded performance and most of the time value. Single-threaded performance is now stronger, which was one of the areas where Intel was still holding the lead, albeit usually at a higher price.

Additionally, the new Ryzen processors are supported by AMD's X570, the world’s first PCIe 4.0 chipset. AMD says their manufacturing partners like Asrock, MSI and Gigabyte have readied over 50 new motherboard models as well as PCIe 4.0 storage solutions.

Zen 2 also comprises new EPYC CPUs aimed at the datacenter. AMD showed off a 2nd-gen EPYC server running two processors handily beating (it was twice as fast than) two Intel Xeon 8280 on the NAMD benchmark. The company was also celebrating they landed the contract to power the Frontier supercomputing system, which will be more than 5 times faster than the current world's fastest computer targeting over 1.5 exaflops of computing performance. Frontier will be built using EPYC CPUs and Radeon Instinct GPUs.

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This is very good news! Looking forward to independent benchmarks.

Something odd about the TDP-s though, for 3700X (8-core) to fit into 65W, while 3600X (6-core) is 95W. I would expect this the other way round. Any chance this is a mistake?
 
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This is very good news! Looking forward to independent benchmarks.

Something odd about the TDP-s though, for 3700X (8-core) to fit into 65W, while 3600X (6-core) is 95W. I would expect this the other way round. Any chance this is a mistake?
If it isn't a mistake then it's most likely related to the all core clock speeds. Ryzen's voltage requirements grow a lot after you reach a certain frequency. For the 2000 series, it was extremely efficient until 4GHz after which the voltage needed grew exponentially.
 
I dont see anything to jump up n down over. Their 3700X is the same as Intels i7 9700K. The 3800X is the same as i9 9900K.
Other than price, everything else seems the same so far, AMD is finally competing so in time maybe things overall will get better for cpus.
Although I dont see AMD taking over or dethroning Intel anytime soon. Especially with a lot users loyal to Intel.

Will be a interesting summer.
 
I dont see anything to jump up n down over. Their 3700X is the same as Intels i7 9700K. The 3800X is the same as i9 9900K.
Other than price, everything else seems the same so far, AMD is finally competing so in time maybe things overall will get better for cpus.
Although I dont see AMD taking over or dethroning Intel anytime soon. Especially with a lot users loyal to Intel.

Will be a interesting summer.

Taking over the performance crown in every (or majority of) matchup is 100% worthy to jump up n down with.
Loyal to Intel? Don't be ridiculous. Only people who's never heard of AMD would do that. Common buyers would most likely listen to recommendations from friends/media/computer shopkeepers, and all that wind will blow in AMD's way for the next year at least.
 
Don't see the value in the 3800X at all. Positioned too close in performance for a lot higher TDP. Maybe for $30 more, not $70 and where I live that $70 will be more like $150.
 
Don't see the value in the 3800X at all. Positioned too close in performance for a lot higher TDP. Maybe for $30 more, not $70 and where I live that $70 will be more like $150.
Base Clock is way higher and Boost clock is higher, my assumption is the All Core clock speed is able to run and maintain much higher than the 3700X.

I also think it's worth mentioning here, Intel essentially lie about their power consumption figures, they claim 95 watts but in reality it's much higher. Maybe AMD are just telling the truth? Or giving us a bit of overclocking headroom?
 
Look at AMD's gaming performance claims. At least 14 percent faster for the top 8 core. That's enough to completely close the gap to Intel's best in that critical area.

Can't wait for benchmarks now. If the boost clocks are anything to go by, then I am hoping for the 8 cores to run 4.5GHz across the board. Maybe even more is possible. As has been mentioned in the past, if you just took a 2700X and made it run 4.5GHz you had something pretty close to a 9900k.

However with enough IPC tweaks and better memory support then the 3700X should be capable of matching the 9900k with an overclock. It'll also probably be able to do it using a lot less power.

As for pricing, AMD have never seemed to sell Zen at full MSRP since they launched where I am. I think that initially they will be priced as such, but after a few months I expect them to be aggressively priced by retailers.

A 3700X capable of matching 9900k for $300 or so? Without the need for a monster cooler? Oh go on then....
 
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They barely beat Intel with rather mature 7nm node while Intel has taken antiquated 14nm and milked everything it had and then some. Once they launch high performance desktop chips on 10nm, I see them mopping the floor with Zen tbh. Only time will tell.
 
They barely beat Intel with rather mature 7nm node while Intel has taken antiquated 14nm and milked everything it had and then some. Once they launch high performance desktop chips on 10nm, I see them mopping the floor with Zen tbh. Only time will tell.
That's great and all but you're talking like that's around the corner. Intel are 3 years away from even implementing 10nm across it's portfolio. Also worth mentioning, AMD will have moved to 7nm+ and possibly even down to 5nm by that time...
 
They barely beat Intel with rather mature 7nm node while Intel has taken antiquated 14nm and milked everything it had and then some. Once they launch high performance desktop chips on 10nm, I see them mopping the floor with Zen tbh. Only time will tell.

I assure you no zen2 chip will beat a 9700k/9900k overclocked at 5,2ghz. Those comparasions are stock. This is why Intel is releasing a 5ghz all core 9900ks.

Tbh this is nothing revolutionary. Amd finally reached skylake speeds after 5 years. For 7nm this is rather unimpressive
 
Wise people say (incl. on these forums) that when we consider Intel gaming performance it is mostly thanks to low-latency ring-bus architecture. So that AMD should reduce their cache and memory latency to catch up with Intel in games. If it was the case, AMD could probably show us some gaming diagrams with 9700k/9900k as baseline.

13% IPC uplift and higher boost clocks at the same TDP and price level are welcome anyway.
 
They barely beat Intel with rather mature 7nm node while Intel has taken antiquated 14nm and milked everything it had and then some. Once they launch high performance desktop chips on 10nm, I see them mopping the floor with Zen tbh. Only time will tell.

I assure you no zen2 chip will beat a 9700k/9900k overclocked at 5,2ghz. Those comparasions are stock. This is why Intel is releasing a 5ghz all core 9900ks.

Tbh this is nothing revolutionary. Amd finally reached skylake speeds after 5 years. For 7nm this is rather unimpressive

Yeah, and I guess real TDP will be 150W and price noncompetitive again. Multi-thread will go for Ryzen by all ways.
Citing another source: "Intel did not tell us the TDP yet, but we will update this article when we know. " meaning it will be f* hot. At least they claim they implemented HW repairs of many exploits Intel CPUs have.

Actually, we see Intel in very difficult position as the only thing they can do is to OC their already released product up to the maximum.
 
Like I said about the 16 core unit, I'll see it when I believe it. Otherwise, this is a very impressive generational boost for AMD. Now I'll have to decide how long to keep my 2700X.
 
I also think it's worth mentioning here, Intel essentially lie about their power consumption figures, they claim 95 watts but in reality it's much higher. Maybe AMD are just telling the truth? Or giving us a bit of overclocking headroom?

Intel's TDP numbers are for base clock operation only. Only way to get that is to disable TurboBoost, something that I do on gaming laptops.
 
They barely beat Intel with rather mature 7nm node while Intel has taken antiquated 14nm and milked everything it had and then some. Once they launch high performance desktop chips on 10nm, I see them mopping the floor with Zen tbh. Only time will tell.

I assure you no zen2 chip will beat a 9700k/9900k overclocked at 5,2ghz. Those comparasions are stock. This is why Intel is releasing a 5ghz all core 9900ks.

Tbh this is nothing revolutionary. Amd finally reached skylake speeds after 5 years. For 7nm this is rather unimpressive
You are assuring us of nothing, other than you have not even read, or watched the keynote today.
Those comparisons are stock for a reason, did you happen to note that the Ryzen beat those chips already in a live demo? With less power and costing half as much..?
Or are you just here talking derp, because you cheerlead for intel and can't even bother to read what is going on, or how efficient Zen2 is, or how PCIe 4.0 offers twice the bandwidth as Intel's offerings.

It is utterly ignorant to think a 7nm 105w Ryzen 3900x at 4.9ghz (w/ better performance than Intel's own 12c/24t CPU -per live demo)… can't be overclocked to 5.2ghz...?

Making your whole "Intel is still be better because" argument^ (above).... completely moot..!


AMD here has a win/win. The whole X570 ecosystem, outperformance Intel's HEDT.
 
I find this announcement exciting, although others may find it ho-hum. AMD, with 7nm parts from TSMC, has achieved, finally, full parity (and then some) with Intel... 14nm chips. So if cost is no object, but you want the absolute best, I suppose you can be confident that Intel, with its 10nm lineup, will blow AMD out of the water. (Or were some of the comparisons with 10nm chips from Intel? Even so, I doubt Intel will have to exert itself much to soon surpass AMD in performance.)

I'm still excited, because I want value for my money. Before, AMD was too far behind Intel in some key areas, such as floating-point muscle. Now, it's time to take the plunge and upgrade my old system.
 
None of you even watched the keynote, so I won't ruin your reality bubble party.... but the icebreaking is that Ryzen Zen2 has better IPC than Intel now. And more power efficiency too.

Now scramble to the interwebs to find out of I am wrong.


I'll start you out on Linus's Key Note take, on it:
 
Looks like something happened to the 16/32 3.3s. Made more evident by the 3700x/3800x both being 8/16s. Probably couldnt get the yields to a high enough stock. Should have just stuck to the original names. 3700/3700x 8/16s, 3800 12/24.
 
Let's make a simple TL;DR:
1. Intel will still perform slightly better in most games because it can clock/OC higher and generally games are better optimised for it ("slightly" being the keyword and only for the top end 9700K and 9900K if the numbers are real - Steve will help us here).
2. The very small FPS delta will be irrelevant as AMD's MSRP puts it way below Intel's offerings.
3. If multithreading was better on Ryzen 2 then there's no contest with Ryzen 3. Intel is screwed here.
4. The 5GB/s MP600 NVME from Corsair using PCIe 4.0 looks so damn tasty :D
5. What is the real power usage for that 65W 8c/16t CPU? O_o
 
Looks like something happened to the 16/32 3.3s. Made more evident by the 3700x/3800x both being 8/16s. Probably couldnt get the yields to a high enough stock. Should have just stuck to the original names. 3700/3700x 8/16s, 3800 12/24.
They are most likely not going to release a 16 core CPU soon because they need a lot of fully functioning golden chiplets for their Epyc server lineup. It's most likely the reason why they delayed (canceled?) Threadripper 3. The server market profit margins are way higher.

Once yields get better and Intel makes a few moves they will 100% announce the 16 core variant.
 
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