Everything We Know About Zen 3

Minoso

Everything we know about Zen 3

(Image from AMD.com)

On October 8th, AMD introduced their next lineup of Ryzen processors using their new Zen 3 architecture. This modern architecture offers many improvements, including increased IPC (instructions per clock), improved power efficiency, and reduced cache latency. This translates to a massive bump in performance for just about any task.

Based on previous Ryzen processors, it was assumed that they would go with 4000 this year, but AMD has changed it to 5000 to avoid confusion with their 4000 series mobile and APU chips.

 

Their Zen 3 lineup features four new processors ranging from $299.99 to $799.99 as their suggested price with each tier offering more cores/threads for your needs. Whether that is casual use, gaming, or content creation, AMD has you covered. AMD will be releasing these processors on November 5th, 2020. These processors will be compatible with B550, X570, and select 400 series boards through a BIOS update. *Check with your motherboard manufacturer for compatibility.

AMD will only be including a Wraith Stealth cooler with their Ryzen 5 5600X. We have no information as to why they chose to do this, but given the wide selection of 3rd party cooling solutions, this should help reduce waste for those that opt-out of using stock coolers.

 

Performance

(Image from AMD.com)

For performance, AMD claims an IPC boost of 19%, which is huge for gaming. AMD has not released how they achieved this, but they did give us a few hints in their announcement. Their new Zen 3 layout unifies up to 8 cores to a single 32MB cache, reducing the work needed for the cores to talk to each other. It improves power efficiency and reduces latency, which should net a boost to IPC. Given all tests are first-party, it would be interesting to see how these perform in the hands of reviewers as we get closer to its release date.

 

Below, you will find AMD suggested pricing and specifications for each processor along with our sources for this information.

 

Zen 3 Pricing & Specifications

	AMD Ryzen™ 5 5600X	AMD Ryzen™ 7 5800X	AMD Ryzen™ 9 5900X	AMD Ryzen™ 9 5950X
Release Date	November 5th 2020
Price	$299.99	$449.99	$549.99	$799.99
Cores/Threads	6C/12T	8C/16T	12C/24T	16C/32T
Base/Boost Clocks	3.7GHz / 4.6GHz	3.8GHz / 4.7GHz	3.7GHz / 4.8GHz	3.4GHz / 4.9GHz
Unlocked	Yes
Cache Quantity	3MB L2 Cache 32MB L3 Cache	4MB L2 Cache 32MB L3 Cache	6MB L2 Cache 64MB L3 Cache	8MB L2 Cache 64MB L3 Cache
Memory Support	DDR4-3200
PCIe	Version 4.0
TDP	65W	105W	105W	105W
Cooler	Wraith Stealth	None	None	None
CMOS	TSMC 7nm FinFET
Socket Compatibility	AM4
Chipset Compatibility	*B450 *X470 B550 x570 For 400 series boards, check with your motherboard's manufacturer
Core Architecture	AMD Zen 3

 

If you missed AMD's big announcement, check out the video here and let us know what you are most excited about this launch!

 

 

TSTonyV

5800X pricing is not encouraging relative to previous gen. The 3700X was to de-facto choice for 8c/16t vs the 3800X which was mostly a pointless SKU since it had no real performance benefits besides a potentially slightly better bin. But they've chosen to use the 3800X MSRP as their reference point and while the other SKUs were all raised $50 relative to last gen, it feels like they raised this one by $130 instead because of that. 

the 10700k can currently be had for $350. AT $450 the 5800X would not only have to match it but convincingly beat the 10700k in every facet to feel compelling, but if we assume that AMD's statements on performance improvements from their keynote scale relatively for the rest of the product stack, then we could expect the 5800X to be generally slightly ahead of the 10700k in gaming which isn't enough to justify the price increase.

It's kind of ironic in the fact that what I expect to happen is the 5800X will be victim to the same issues the 10700k launched with in that the price just wasn't there relative to the rest of the competition. The 10600k was basically the same in gaming while being quite a bit cheaper, but for anything that was multi-thread intensive you could just get the 3900X that would run circles around the 10700k for the same price. Obviously it's a bit different now that the price finally came down far enough, but how long will that take for the 5800X, or will it at all? The 5600X will likely be nearly identical in gaming for less, and the 3900X will probably still beat it in multi-thread scenarios (I highly doubt the IPC increase can make up for four extra cores).

bbnn

any news if things will change for the zen3/Radeon launch as compared to the Ampere launch? as in vouchers will be handed out by ALL stores not just 1? that kind of stuff

wrench_bender

Does anyone think there might be any correlation between the architecture of the 3300x and zen 3?

It just seems strange not supplying a superior 4 core product, but do supply a inferior 3100x.

Maybe I'm just seeing what's not there.

bbnn

wrench_bender said:

Does anyone think there might be any correlation between the architecture of the 3300x and zen 3?

It just seems strange not supplying a superior 4 core product, but do supply a inferior 3100x.

Maybe I'm just seeing what's not there.

they will probably release lower core count cpus later on

TSTonyV

wrench_bender said:

Does anyone think there might be any correlation between the architecture of the 3300x and zen 3?

It just seems strange not supplying a superior 4 core product, but do supply a inferior 3100x.

Maybe I'm just seeing what's not there.

bbnn said:

wrench_bender said:

Does anyone think there might be any correlation between the architecture of the 3300x and zen 3?

It just seems strange not supplying a superior 4 core product, but do supply a inferior 3100x.

Maybe I'm just seeing what's not there.

they will probably release lower core count cpus later on

This is what I expect. AMD only announced the 5600X, 5800X, 5900X and 5950X for initial release of Zen 3. 

The 3300X was released quite a while after the other 3000 series chips, so I expect a 5300X at some point, but it'll probably be a little while.