Having recently reviewed the Ryzen 5 1600 AF, you should know all there is to know about this nimble CPU. In short, it's an incredible value for less than $100, however there are some who say the Core i3-9100F is a better choice. It's also cheaper and more widely available, so let's discuss Intel's budget processor.
Today we're looking at the most expensive desktop CPU to ever exist, and shockingly it's not from Intel. The Threadripper 3990X is a 64-core, 128-thread Zen 2-based processor that AMD fully acknowledges is a special purpose processor that combines both high frequency and high core counts into a single package.
A mysterious Ryzen 5 1600 refresh made it to market late last year. Bizarrely, AMD has released a really cheap version of the Ryzen 5 2600, but just called it the Ryzen 5 1600. Known as the "1600 AF" because of the box identification this is a Zen+ 6-core, 12-thread part that's selling for just $85 brand new.
The old value king Ryzen 5 2600 remains to this day a great CPU option. Gamers asking if they should spend some $70 more on the R5 3600, or just get the 2600, this is the article for you. It was time to get these results out.
If you haven't heard about the Ryzen 5 3500X until now it's likely because this CPU is mostly being sold and marketed to OEMs and system integrators. Initially it was reported as an OEM-only part for China, but it turns out you can pretty much buy it anywhere, though the conditions will vary from one region to another.
#ThrowBackThursday Expanding upon all the testing we performed in our day-one 3rd-gen Ryzen coverage, today we'll be running a clock-for-clock comparison benchmark. IPC can be a good indicator of a processor's architecture efficiency, so we're pitting the new Ryzen 3900X and 3700X against Intel's Core i9-9900K.
Today we're comparing the Ryzen 9 3950X and Core i9-9900KS in a massive number of games, using one of G.Skill's most premium 16GB memory kits, the Trident Z Neo DDR4-3600 CL14. For those of you spending $600+ on a CPU, purchasing top end DDR4 memory doesn't seem like a stretch, so here's a head to head comparison between AMD and Intel processors using manually tuned timings.
The world of CPUs has been notoriously busy the past few years. Since our last update AMD’s 3rd generation Ryzen and Intel Cascade Lake-X parts have hit the market. After all the extensive testing you are familiar with, TechSpot's CPU buying guide means to answer that question for you in a few easy recommendations you can trust and follow.
The latest 32-core and 24-core high-end desktop CPUs from AMD have now landed. And yes, we've benchmarked the heck out of them. The Threadripper 3970X is a 32-core, 64-thread chip with a massive 128MB L3 cache, runs at 3.7 GHz and it's priced at $2,000 making it AMD's most expensive desktop CPU ever. If that's too rich, maybe the 3960X costs $1,400 for 24 cores and 48 threads.
As we anticipated when we reviewed AMD's new flagship 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X, rather than testing it on the very high-end Gigabyte X570 Aorus Xtreme, we want to see how it does on budget AMD B450 boards. Maybe this combo doesn't make sense right now, but it will in the future as a potential upgrade for many AM4 owners.
The Ryzen 9 3950X looks to bridge the gap between mainstream and high-end desktop platforms and is the most expensive mainstream platform CPU we've seen in a long time. This puts AMD in the position to command a price premium for desktop computing. But is their new 16-core/32-thread monster worth the asking price?
