AMD's 3rd Gen Ryzen Is The Most Exciting Processor Launch In A Decade
There have been a fair amount of rumors surrounding AMD's 3rd Gen Ryzen 'Zen 2′ processors over the last few weeks covering specifications, performance and pricing. I wrote just yesterday about the latest rumor of a supposed 16-core mainstream Ryzen CPU obtaining a huge Cinebench score and a few days ago I discussed why AMD might be considering getting rid of its low-end Threadripper CPUs too. However, leaks and rumors aside, there are far more important and genuine reasons to be excited by 3rd Gen Ryzen and what AMD will be announcing next week at Computex and after that at E3 in June.
[...] AMD could finally match or even beat Intel with Zen 2 and 3rd Gen Ryzen as lots of these issues are rumored to be solved. Memory speeds will apparently increase significantly and given the impact we've seen from relatively small boosts in memory speed, this could well see 3rd Gen Ryzen CPUs offer sizeable performance gains. Thankfully, memory prices are in AMD's favor too with kits of 16GB 3,600MHz memory retailing for less than $125 - when just before Christmas that same kit would have cost you nearly $260.
[...] The latest rumor of a Cinebench score of such a CPU puts this 16-core monster on par with Intel's Core i9-9980XE – a $2,000 CPU that requires Intel's high-end desktop motherboards, yet rumors of the supposed Ryzen 9 3850X put that CPU as retailing for less than $600. While we might not see those lofty 5GHz numbers from that CPU, they might appear lower down the stack with a 12-core model, which is likely to be a favorite for general purpose users and gamers alike.
[...] The fact is, that 1st and 2nd Gen Ryzen didn't deal a death blow to Intel. It was still faster in some areas and while its CPUs and platforms usually cost more, that doesn't always matter, especially if the differences are mere 10′s of dollars and you'll be using your PC for the next few years, reaping the benefits. However, with 3rd Gen Ryzen, all the signs are that we could finally be looking at reviewers like myself recommending AMD's CPUs across the board, and not just for certain workloads.
Could it really be that AMD's offerings will be faster, with more cores, more IPC, lower energy consumption, and cheaper all at once across vast swaths of the CPU market?
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At Computex 2019 in Taipei, AMD CEO Lisa Su gave a keynote presentation announcing the first "7nm" Navi GPU and Ryzen 3000-series CPUs. All of the products will support PCI Express 4.0.
Contrary to recent reports, AMD says that the Navi microarchitecture is not based on Graphics Core Next (GCN), but rather a new "RDNA" macroarchitecture ('R' for Radeon), although the extent of the difference is not clear. There is also no conflict with Nvidia's naming scheme; the 5000-series naming is a reference to the company's 50th anniversary.
AMD claims that Navi GPUs will have 25% better performance/clock and 50% better performance/Watt vs. Vega GPUs. AMD Radeon RX 5700 is the first "7nm" Navi GPU to be announced. It was compared with Nvidia's GeForce RTX 2070, with the RX 5700 outperforming the RTX 2070 by 10% in the AMD-favorable game Strange Brigade. Pricing and other launch details will be revealed on June 10.
AMD also announced the first five Ryzen 3000-series CPUs, all of which will be released on July 7:
| CPU | Cores / Threads | Frequency | TDP | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ryzen 9 3900X | 12 / 24 | 3.8 - 4.6 GHz | 105 W | $499 |
| Ryzen 7 3800X | 8 / 16 | 3.9 - 4.5 GHz | 105 W | $399 |
| Ryzen 7 3700X | 8 / 16 | 3.6 - 4.4 GHz | 65 W | $329 |
| Ryzen 5 3600X | 6 / 12 | 3.8 - 4.4 GHz | 95 W | $249 |
| Ryzen 5 3600 | 6 / 12 | 3.6 - 4.2 GHz | 65 W | $199 |
The Ryzen 9 3900X is the only CPU in the list using two core chiplets, each with 6 of 8 cores enabled. AMD has held back on releasing a 16-core monster for now. AMD compared the Ryzen 9 3900X to the $1,189 Intel Core i9-9920X, the Ryzen 7 3800X to the $499 Intel Core i9-9900K, and the Ryzen 7 3700X to the Intel Core i7-9700K, with the AMD chips outperforming the Intel chips in certain single and multi-threaded benchmarks (wait for the reviews before drawing any definitive conclusions). All five of the processors will come with a bundled cooler, as seen in this list.
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Saturday May 25 2019, @09:32PM (6 children)
https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/how-to-watch-amd-ryzen-3000-keynote-computex-2019/ [digitaltrends.com]
AMD Computex keynote will be at 7 PM Pacific, 10 PM Eastern tomorrow. I assume that in-depth articles are under embargo and go live at midnight, but maybe not.
The 12-core CPU may be the sweet spot if it's clocked higher than the 16-core, and at a reasonable ~$350 price.
Given that you can grab a TR 1950X for $500, it would be reasonable for the top 16-core to be priced around $500 instead of $600. But it should outperform the TR 1950X due to IPC and clock improvements.
Based on results shown earlier, AMD could match Intel core for core on single/multi performance. At least until Intel's next chip launch.
Navi GPUs may also be announced.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by driverless on Sunday May 26 2019, @02:09AM (3 children)
In a decade? Sheesh, anything to get those clicks. Even if it's a significant jump on Intel, it's at most "the most exciting processor launch in a year or two", and the same goes for Intel launches. These things are incremental improvements on their predecessors, not revolutionary new designs like when Core2 supplanted P4 and similar.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @02:18AM
Youre wrong, this could be amd's chiplets overtaking intel in every category. The yields with chiplets are insane because you can mix and match and bin. So even crappy ones still get sold.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Sunday May 26 2019, @02:23AM (1 child)
You are potentially getting a 150% multithreaded performance increase from Ryzen 7 1800X to 16-core (Ryzen 9?), both launching at $500.
It's possible that there are no quad-cores in the Ryzen 3000 lineup at all, with 6 cores being the mimimum at around $99 and beating last year's 8-core Ryzen 7 2700X in some cases:
https://wccftech.com/amd-zen-2-6-core-cpu-benchmark-leaked-faster-than-ryzen-7-2700x-in-geekbench-4/ [wccftech.com]
It also looks like AMD will match Intel on single threaded performance, something that didn't happen with the original Ryzen launch. So for the first time in many years, AMD's chips will simply be the best option in almost all respects, not just performance/$ (AC does criticize it for not supporting quad channel memory).
If every good rumor about the launch is true, then it is probably the most exciting launch in 5 years. Maybe a decade. Certainly it comes at just the right time to hurt Intel, as Intel is still struggling to move product lines to "10nm" [soylentnews.org].
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Sunday May 26 2019, @04:37AM
That would be good news. Single thread performance is 90% of what I care about.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @02:11AM (1 child)
10 pm on sunday, not tomorrow
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday May 26 2019, @02:24AM
Today is Saturday in the U.S., tomorrow is Sunday.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 25 2019, @10:02PM (1 child)
And since they're sticking with Socket AM4, which only has dual channel memory support, this probably doesn't stand to improve much. Unless they move the Threadripper socket to high-end mainstream, AMD chips will all be memory bottlenecked until Socket AM5, whenever that is.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @03:02PM
Big pain? That's FUD. This is a "mainstream" desktop processor. Intel's mainstream desktop processors are only dual channel too with a similar max of
41.6 GB/s. https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/processors/core/i9-processors/i9-9900.html [intel.com]
So for mainstream desktop CPUs you'll experience the same memory bandwidth limits whether you're on AMD or Intel.
If you really want more you'd be going for a different socket e.g. TR4 or the "real server" sockets.
I bet for the target market the memory bandwidth would not actually be an issue - they'd be better off spending more on CPU or GPU or SSD than going for quad channel memory. Whatever performance they lose by somehow not having quad channel will be more than made up for by the faster CPU/GPU/SSD.
Tell me what percentage of Ryzen users will need a memory bandwidth faster than 40GB/sec more than they would need a faster CPU/GPU/SSD.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 25 2019, @11:04PM (1 child)
There's no way they can compete with Intel on telemetry and backdoor exploits.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @01:20AM
AMD only lacks an IME because they call theirs something different. The AMD PSP is a thing that exists.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 25 2019, @11:24PM (8 children)
Since AMD has an interesting deal with THATIC for about 3 years already, I am looking forward for Huawei devices built on THATIC/AMD CPUs. If that happens, it could kill not just Intel, but an Apple as a collateral.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday May 25 2019, @11:34PM (5 children)
Recent story about that:
Chinese Zen-Based CPU on Sale: Sugon Workstation with 8-Core Hugon Dhyana Processor [anandtech.com]
I don't see it killing Intel or Apple though.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @12:00AM
Those Hugons are servers, everyone having a sufficiently large cabinet and cold room to store it, can design something like that, in any epoch of technology. But Huawei is already excellent with consumer class pads and laptops, many of such are already much better than Apple's. This is a direct a competition I am talking about. And yes, I myself own many iThingies, so I know well what is really wrong with them...
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Sunday May 26 2019, @05:04AM
"Hugon Dhyana"? It sounds like someone was huge on Diana (of Amazonia?)...
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Sunday May 26 2019, @03:03PM (2 children)
All I want is a cheap POWER9 desktop.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday May 26 2019, @04:22PM
What happened to RISC-V?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @10:04PM
POWER9 and cheap are opposites. Choose only one. The closest would be Basic Blackbird™ Bundle (4-Core CPU) [raptorcs.com]
(Score: 2) by driverless on Sunday May 26 2019, @02:11AM
Given that those CPUs just by themselves, with nothing else added, are bulkier than an entire Huawei cellphone, that would be quite a feat.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @03:04PM
Why? So that they can also be ban-hammered by the US Gov?