Tomorrow night at E3 2019, AMD will host the long-awaited Next Horizon Gaming event. It will primarily be a detailed story about the new Navi generation graphics cards, but it seems that AMD may present another surprise. There is every reason to believe that the company will announce the existence of plans for the release of the Ryzen 9 3950X processor, the world's first 16-core CPU for gaming systems. At the very least, the VideoCardz website published a "spy" slide of unknown origin, which provides the characteristics of such an intriguing product.
There is no doubt that a 16-core and 32-thread processor for the Socket AM4 ecosystem can indeed be released. Future processors based on the Zen 2 architecture may be based on either one or two eight-core 7nm chipsets, which theoretically allows the creation of processors with an unusually large number of cores. Actually, AMD has already announced its intention to release a 12-core Ryzen 9 3900X earlier, and the 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X can organically complement the company's Socket AM4 lineup of new products from above.
Another thing is that the current market situation does not at all require AMD to continue the multi-core race, and the company may well keep the 16-core new product in reserve, announcing it only when some new high-performance desktop products appear from a competitor.
In addition, the positioning of the 16-core processor as a solution for gamers raises big questions, as discussed on the slide. Especially in light of the fact that the 12-core Ryzen 9 3900X and 8-core Ryzen 7 3800X will be able to offer higher frequencies. So, according to available data, the 16-core processor will receive a base frequency of only 3,5 GHz. True, in turbo mode, it can increase to 4,7 GHz, and this is even higher than the turbo frequencies inherent in any other third-generation Ryzen processors. The heat dissipation figures also look intriguing: if the information is correct, the thermal package of the 16-core CPU will be the same 105 W, within which the 12-core Ryzen 9 3900X and the 8-core Ryzen 7 3800X will work.
| Kernels / threads | Base frequency, GHz | Turbo frequency, GHz | L2 cache, MB | L3 cache, MB | TDP, W | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ryzen 9 3950X??? | 16/32 | 3,5 | 4,7 | 8 | 64 | 105 | ? |
| Ryzen 9 3900X | 12/24 | 3,8 | 4,6 | 6 | 64 | 105 | $499 |
| Ryzen 7 3800X | 8/16 | 3,9 | 4,5 | 4 | 32 | 105 | $399 |
| Ryzen 7 3700X | 8/16 | 3,6 | 4,4 | 4 | 32 | 65 | $329 |
| Ryzen 5 3600X | 6/12 | 3,8 | 4,4 | 3 | 32 | 95 | $249 |
| Ryzen 5 3600 | 6/12 | 3,6 | 4,2 | 3 | 32 | 65 | $199 |
At the moment, it is impossible to confirm the accuracy of the leaked information, as well as to find out other details regarding the Ryzen 9 3950X. For example, its price and terms of appearance on sale are of great interest, but nothing is known about them yet. However, if AMD is really planning to release such a processor, we will probably know all the details very soon.
Source: 3dnews.ru