AMD 16-Core Ryzen 9 3950X: Up to 4.7 GHz, 105W, Coming September
by Dr. Ian Cutress on June 11, 2019 6:00 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- AMD
- Ryzen
- Zen 2
- Ryzen 3000
- Ryzen 3rd Gen
- Ryzen 9
- 3950X
One of the questions that was left over from AMD’s Computex reveal of the new Ryzen 3000 family was why a 16-core version of the dual-chiplet Matisse design was not announced. Today, AMD is announcing its first 16 core CPU into the Ryzen 9 family. AMD stated that they’re not interested in the back and forth with its competition about slowly moving the leading edge in consumer computing – they want to launch the best they have to offer as soon as possible, and the 16-core is part of that strategy.
The new Ryzen 9 3950X will top the stack of new Zen 2 based AMD consumer processors, and is built for the AM4 socket along with the range of X570 motherboards. It will have 16 cores with simultaneous multi-threading, enabling 32 threads, with a base frequency of 3.5 GHz and a turbo frequency of 4.7 GHz. All of this will be provided in a 105W TDP.
| AMD 'Matisse' Ryzen 3000 Series CPUs | |||||||||||
| AnandTech | Cores Threads |
Base Freq |
Boost Freq |
L2 Cache |
L3 Cache |
PCIe 4.0 |
DDR4 | TDP | Price (SEP) |
||
| Ryzen 9 | 3950X | 16C | 32T | 3.5 | 4.7 | 8 MB | 64 MB | 16+4+4 | ? | 105W | $749 |
| Ryzen 9 | 3900X | 12C | 24T | 3.8 | 4.6 | 6 MB | 64 MB | 16+4+4 | ? | 105W | $499 |
| Ryzen 7 | 3800X | 8C | 16T | 3.9 | 4.5 | 4 MB | 32 MB | 16+4+4 | ? | 105W | $399 |
| Ryzen 7 | 3700X | 8C | 16T | 3.6 | 4.4 | 4 MB | 32 MB | 16+4+4 | ? | 65W | $329 |
| Ryzen 5 | 3600X | 6C | 12T | 3.8 | 4.4 | 3 MB | 32 MB | 16+4+4 | ? | 95W | $249 |
| Ryzen 5 | 3600 | 6C | 12T | 3.6 | 4.2 | 3 MB | 32 MB | 16+4+4 | ? | 65W | $199 |
AMD has said that the processor will be coming in September 2019, about two months after the initial Ryzen 3rd Gen processors, due to extra validation requirements. The chip uses two of the Zen 2 eight-core chiplets, paired with an IO die that provides 24 total PCIe 4.0 lanes. By using the AM4 socket, AMD recommends pairing the Ryzen 9 3950X with one of the new X570 motherboards launched at Computex.
With regards to performance, AMD is promoting it as a clear single-thread and multi-thread improvement over other 16-core products in the market, particularly those from Intel (namely the 7960X).
There are several questions surrounding this new product, such as reasons for the delay between the initial Ryzen 3000 launch to the 3950X launch, the power distribution of the chiplets based on the frequency and how the clocks will respond to the 105W TDP, how the core-to-core communications will work going across chiplets, and how gaming performance might be affected by the latency differences going to the IO die and then moving off to main memory. All these questions are expected to be answered in due course.
Pricing is set to be announced by AMD at its event at E3 today. We’ll be updating this news post when we know the intended pricing.
Update: $749
Related Reading
- AMD Ryzen 3000 Announced: Five CPUs, 12 Cores for $499, Up to 4.6 GHz, PCIe 4.0, Coming 7/7
- AMD Ryzen 3rd Gen 'Matisse' Coming Mid 2019: Eight Core Zen 2 with PCIe 4.0 on Desktop
- AMD: 3rd Gen Ryzen Threadripper in 2019
- AMD Confirms PCIe 4.0 Not Coming to Older Motherboards (X470, X370, B350, A320)
- ASUS Pro WS X570-Ace: A No-Nonsense All-Black Motherboard with x8/x8/x8
- GIGABYTE Unveils X570 Mini-ITX Motherboard: X570 I Aorus Pro WiFi
- ASRock X570 Aqua: Heaviest AMD Flagship Motherboard Ever (Plus Thunderbolt)
- MSI Unveils the MEG X570 Ace: Black and Gold For AMD 50
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mode_13h - Saturday, June 22, 2019 - link
They have to build products at a price the market will pay. That's why Radeon VII isn't bigger. I think we all know it's more efficient to build bigger dies and clock them lower, but they can't only look at power-efficiency.Speaking of Radeon VII, I think they expected it to cost more, but perhaps a 7 nm demand slump allowed them to offer the consumer version at its current price. Their original messaging on Vega 20 did not include a consumer product, however.
Xajel - Wednesday, June 12, 2019 - link
I guess they will offer it with APU's at least, they mentioned something about that as APU's are designed more for power and efficiency.As with CPU's, I don't know, maybe they might do something with 7nm+ as yields comes better. But I doubt it actually beyond the APU's, AMD's idea is to use as fewer die designs as possible for more products as possible, now the same 8C chiplet is being used across the line, the only different is the IO chiplet which is different between Ryzen and Epyc, Threadripper might reuse the Epyc IO already.
So adding a new CPU just for 8C isn't feasible for them at least this time. But 8C APU's is possible now.
yankeeDDL - Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - link
Impressive.105W, 16 cores. IPC similar to Core 9-gen.
The MSRP for teh Core i9 7960x is 1700usd, more than 2X, for similar performance despite >50% higher TDP (and Intel's TDP is cheating).
Sounds to me that starting Q3/Q4 buying Intel for desktop, workstation, or Servers, makes no sense... Good going! Looking forward to Intel's response.
SaturnusDK - Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - link
No. IPC of Ryzen 2000 series was roughly on par with Core 9th gen. Ryzen 3000 series has higher IPC than any Intel product.The R9 3950X competes directly only with the i9 9980XE and beats it easily.
Oxford Guy - Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - link
We also have to take into full account the security problems and the related performance regressions.For the best security, is it still mandatory to disable SMT in Intel CPUs? If so, the performance advantage for AMD is massive.
SaturnusDK - Wednesday, June 12, 2019 - link
In the slide foot notes AMD clarifies that Intel CPUs used for comparison were tested without using any vulnerability mitigations. And these are already known to quite significant negative performance impact.They also note that AMD CPUs were tested without the latest Windows update when compared against Intel CPUs, and the latest Windows update significantly improves performance on AMD CPUs.
So none of the usual Intel trickery like hiding an industrial cooler with an illegal coolant like the 5GHz 28-core fiasco, or turning of half the CPU cores in Threadripper when comparing to i9 9900K, or using dual channel DDR4-3700 for their Ice lake and single channel DDR4-2400 for Ryzen 3700U when comparing those.
scineram - Wednesday, June 12, 2019 - link
3700U was dual channel. Stop lying!yankeeDDL - Wednesday, June 12, 2019 - link
I hadn't noiticed the footnotes. Then it is massive, wow! I think teh embargo lifts on June 7th. Let's hope on a thorough review, taking all of these factors into consideration.yankeeDDL - Wednesday, June 12, 2019 - link
*July 7th...Gondalf - Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - link
This move will kill their HEDT line.The real question is what will be AMD revenue advantage of this cheap silicon saga.
ps. why not 4.7Ghz turbo on 8 cores dies??? 16 cores are useless in games.
Bad move from AMD