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AMD has finally revealed its next generation of desktop processors. The company today announced the Ryzen 5000 CPU series, based on its latest Zen 3 architecture. Four new models were announced today, starting at $ 299 and going up to $ 799.
Starting at the top, we have the new Ryzen 9 5950X, which has 16 cores and 32 threads. This new chip is capable of a 3.4GHz base clock and a 4.9GHz boost clock. AMD claims that the 5950X has the highest single and multi-threaded performance of any conventional desktop CPU. The CPU also has a huge 64MB L3 cache spread across its two chiplets. It has a TDP of 105W.
The 5950X is priced at $ 799 and replaces the previous 3950X, which was priced at $ 749. It will compete with the 18-core Intel Core i9-10980XE.
Next up is the Ryzen 9 5900X, which has 12 cores and 24 threads. The 5900X is capable of a 3.7GHz base clock and a 4.8GHz boost clock. AMD claims this makes it the best gaming CPU on the market. The 5900X also has 64GB of L3 cache spread across two chiplets and a 105W TDP.
The 5900X is priced at $ 549 and replaces the $ 499 3900X. It will compete with the 10-core Intel Core i9-10900K.
Moving down the price scale, we have the Ryzen 7 5800X, which has 8 cores and 16 threads. The 5800X can do 3.8GHz as a base clock and 4.7GHz as a boost clock. It is a single chiplet design, with all eight cores and the full 32MB cache in the single CCX. The 5800X also has a 105W TDP.
The 5800X is priced at $ 449 and replaces the $ 399 3800X. It will compete with the 8-core Intel Core i7-10700K.
Finally, there is the Ryzen 5 5600X, which has 6 cores and 12 threads. It has a base clock of 3.7GHz and a boost clock of 4.6GHz. It also has 32MB of L3 cache on its single chiplet but with a reduced TDP of 65W. The 5600X is the only one in this group that will come with a stock cooler in the box.
The Ryzen 5 5600X is priced at $ 299 and will replace the $ 249 3600X. It will compete with the 6-core Intel Core i5-10600K.
AMD has yet to detail all the changes to the new Zen 3 architecture, other than stating that it is a completely new architecture built from scratch and not an evolution like the previous two architectures. The company is touting a 19% improvement in IPC or instructions per clock, which is often used as a measure for a processor’s efficiency. The 19% figure comes from averaging a bunch of gaming and workstation tasks, so it’s not 19% on every task you perform.
Due to an improvement in efficiency, AMD was able to increase performance without increasing power consumption. These new Ryzen chips have the same TDP and similar board power consumption as the previous generation chips, which means you’re doing more work for the same amount of power consumed.
You may have noticed the change in chiplet design. AMD has been using chiplets instead of a monolithic design that Intel uses, allowing it to pack more cores but at the cost of higher latency due to lag in communication between CCX modules.
Zen 3 processors have chiplets that can have 6 or 8 cores each with 32MB of L3 cache, which means that chips like the 5800X and 5600X can only have a single CCX with all of its cache in it, significantly reducing internal latency and reducing having to resort to writing to system memory, which is much slower. This also affects the upper center parts like the 5900X and 5950X to a lesser extent.
You may have also noticed that prices have generally gone up by $ 50. This is in addition to the fact that there are no non-X SKUs this year. AMD said it has no plans to release any more SKUs at this time, which does not mean which won’t release successors to the Ryzen 3 3100 and 3300X at some point, but we may not see a Ryzen 5. 5600 or a Ryzen 7 5700X like we did previously. It seems that AMD has decided to remove the non-X SKUs for now and at the same time increase the price over the previous X SKUs, which may not be well received by everyone despite the increase in performance.
This also means that AMD is once again competing with itself, as previous-gen parts are now much cheaper and may seem more attractive to some buyers, especially those on older motherboards. As for Intel, those parts are priced similarly, but Intel has other issues on its hands, namely a lack of stock for its high-end models, which has caused the cost of available units to skyrocket.
Speaking of Intel, AMD revealed some gaming figures during its keynote speech. Being first class results, they should be taken with a pinch of salt. However, it’s hard not to be impressed with what AMD has finally accomplished here. The 5900X, which AMD used for its comparison with a 2080 Ti and 16GB DDR4 3600MHz memory versus a 10900K in a similar configuration, returned higher results almost across the board than the Intel part. This seems to indicate that Intel’s decisive victory over AMD in gaming appears to be coming to an end. It makes no sense to show the productivity results as AMD was already ahead.
At the end of the keynote speech, AMD also gave a sneak peek of the upcoming Radeon RX 6000 series graphics card. An unspecified model was shown along with some performance numbers. These cards will be revealed later on October 28.
The new Ryzen 5000 series will be available for purchase starting November 5. They will be compatible with all motherboards running B550 and X570 chipsets at launch. B450 motherboards will receive a beta BIOS update in January 2021, which should allow users to use these new chipsets on select B450 motherboards.
