News AMD Announces 16-Core 32-Thread Ryzen 9 3950X for $749, 4.7 GHz boost, Launches in September

[PaulAlcorn]

AMD unleashes a 16-core 32-thread beast for the mainstream desktop: The Ryzen 9 3950X.

AMD Announces 16-Core 32-Thread Ryzen 9 3950X for $749, 4.7 GHz boost, Launches in September : Read more

 

[Giroro]

I was hoping for $699 on the Ryzen 9 3950X, which is closer to (but still above) the ~$42/core of the 3900X, 3700X, and 3600X.
At $750 the 3950X is ~$47/core
But at least it's not the $800 it would have been had AMD chosen the $50/core pricing of the 3800X (which is a little overpriced compared to the rest of lineup). The 3800Xis in the middle of the stack and doesn't even have the prestige of being the world's first at anything.
If the 3600 overclocks well, then it's looking like it will be an outstanding value at ~$33/core

 

[JQB45]

I'm not ok with the 3600 clock speeds when comparing to AMD's own existing 1600 and 2600 parts, you're not getting much other then IPC unless this thing overclocks well. Personally I'll go to AMD's new mid-range during the holiday season and get a 3800 or 3800X. I don't need the 3900X or 3950X at this point.

I am curious about the 3000-3500X line up and what that will bring to the truly budget constrained.

 

[jimmysmitty]

The biggest issue with more cores is software adoption. Everyone clamored that consoles using 8 core AMD CPUs would force game developers to utilize more cores. 6 years later and 8 cores doesn't mean squat in gaming, frequency still does as does IPC. So this will, per Lisa, be near Intel in IPC which means frequency will still win out the end game and in the mainstream market Intels 9th gen still holds that advantage pretty well from a stock perspective and even overclocking perspective.

While I would say it would be a good workstation CPU I feel that the dual channel memory will be the biggest bottleneck for it as workstation applications not only like multiple cores it also likes a lot of fast memory. Dual channel will not allow this CPU to really stretch its legs. Maybe when we move to DDR5, which is rumored to double bandwidth at the same speed, it would be a good fit.

With a new process and enhanced uArch we can hope that it will OC higher than Zen/Zen+. I think the biggest hold back was the 14nm process for Zen/Zen+, it was originally developed for low power products, while TSMCs 7nm should handle power better so maybe we will see good OCing out of it.

I will wait till TH and others get their hands on this to make full judgements. My inital view is it will push Intel in some areas but not enough to make them finally start a good price war.

 

[mihen]

SOLD

 

[NightHawkRMX]

Games seem to be starting to use more cores over the past 2 years.
4c i5 7600k beat the 6 core ryzen 5 in nearly all games 2 years ago.
Now in new games the 1600 wins in nearly all games. Framerate on the 7600k is unstable but the 1600 is smooth.

 

[TCA_ChinChin]

While I would say it would be a good workstation CPU I feel that the dual channel memory will be the biggest bottleneck for it as workstation applications not only like multiple cores it also likes a lot of fast memory. Dual channel will not allow this CPU to really stretch its legs. Maybe when we move to DDR5, which is rumored to double bandwidth at the same speed, it would be a good fit.

I will wait till TH and others get their hands on this to make full judgements. My inital view is it will push Intel in some areas but not enough to make them finally start a good price war.

Although AMD did emphasize multicore workstation benchmarks, I'm pretty sure they are marketing this more towards gaming since they literally said that the 3950x was the worlds first 16-core GAMING cpu. Even if people might think and even use the r9 for workstation tasks, AMD themselves are not heavily leaning towards it in their own marketing. They have the next generation of Threadripper which will be more appropriate and unfortunately probably more expensive.

Intel either won't respond and lose significant market share or drop prices. This is good enough to the point where no matter how you spin it, these AMD products are superior to Intel's current lineup. If they don't change things up at Intel and rest on their war chest from sandbagging to keep up the mirage of superiority, they deserve to lose.

 

[tntom]

Any word on the Threadripper CPUs? Some have speculated they may have served their time but will be dropped. 16C/32T used to be TR territory. Where would TR top out? 32/64 perhaps with 64 PCIe lanes like Zen+? or could they take it up to 64/128?

 

[AllanGH]

I'll definitely give it a looksee after the platform, as a whole, has had about a year to mature....but it did make me take a very interested look.

 

[TJ Hooker]

I'd be curious to see once a 16C/32T Zen 2 thread ripper comes out how much of a difference dual vs quad channel memory will make.

 

[Rdslw]

Any word on the Threadripper CPUs? Some have speculated they may have served their time but will be dropped. 16C/32T used to be TR territory. Where would TR top out? 32/64 perhaps with 64 PCIe lanes like Zen+? or could they take it up to 64/128?

I think they will make 16/32 + 24/48 + 32/64 MAYBE 48/96 + 64/128 TR's with 64 or 80 PCIE lines.
(4 for sure 8 -> doubt chiplets)
it was useful af for content creators and as its not high volume thing, still, a lot of would buy.

they have cheap cores AND it scales better in bigger cpu's.
expect TR to rule in 6-12 months.
Epycs will go for 8cores x 8chiplets as lowest and imho an option for 8 cores x 16 chips will appear soon.

 

[cryoburner]

Although AMD did emphasize multicore workstation benchmarks, I'm pretty sure they are marketing this more towards gaming since they literally said that the 3950x was the worlds first 16-core GAMING cpu.

That's because E3 is a gaming convention. Of course they're going to push it as a gaming CPU at this event, no matter how unnecessary 16-cores will be for gaming right now and probably for many years to come. Maybe it could be of some use for streaming with a CPU-based encoder at high resolutions and quality settings, but one would probably be better off using a dedicated capture device for that purpose. The 3950X is clearly going to be more of a Threadripper Lite for content creators who can use the cores but don't necessarily need the higher number of PCIe lanes or quad-channel memory. No doubt they will be put in some high-end gaming systems as well, but their benefits over a processor costing half as much will be limited for that purpose.

 

[mdd1963]

I'd perhaps change the article's comment 'will fully support PCI-e 4.0 and drop into existing mainboards' to 'will fully support PCI-e 4.0 OR drop into existing mainboards'...

 

[IceMyth]

I have Ryzen 1700 and the CPU am looking forward to is Ryzen 9 3900X. Personally I dont feel moving to high speed is an upgrade but the move from 8 core to 12 core with an increased speed is an upgrade.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

I really wonder how far chips like the ryzen 5 3600 will overclock on air or water.

I also wonder will the 3400g beat 9400?

The 3400g is only zen+, but it offers 4c/8t, vega
11, and 4.2 turbo.

It offers 2 less cores but 2 more threads than the 9400. The 3400g does offer 100mhz higher turbo.

 

[TCA_ChinChin]

That's because E3 is a gaming convention. Of course they're going to push it as a gaming CPU at this event, no matter how unnecessary 16-cores will be for gaming right now and probably for many years to come. Maybe it could be of some use for streaming with a CPU-based encoder at high resolutions and quality settings, but one would probably be better off using a dedicated capture device for that purpose. The 3950X is clearly going to be more of a Threadripper Lite for content creators who can use the cores but don't necessarily need the higher number of PCIe lanes or quad-channel memory. No doubt they will be put in some high-end gaming systems as well, but their benefits over a processor costing half as much will be limited for that purpose.

Yeah, the point is that there will be workstation level threadripper down the line so to rag on the 3950x for not having more pcie lanes or memory channels isn't really fair. Unless you want more market segment like Intel with their core i5 and i7 on hedt couple years back.

 

[gggplaya]

The biggest issue with more cores is software adoption. Everyone clamored that consoles using 8 core AMD CPUs would force game developers to utilize more cores. 6 years later and 8 cores doesn't mean squat in gaming, frequency still does as does IPC. So this will, per Lisa, be near Intel in IPC which means frequency will still win out the end game and in the mainstream market Intels 9th gen still holds that advantage pretty well from a stock perspective and even overclocking perspective.

Actually we're currently at 6 cores being the minimum for gaming as some newer modern titles get bottleneck by the 4 core i5 7600k and getting beaten by the ryzen 1600 which has less clock speed and IPC. So having 8 cores to give a little more headroom for multitasking or streaming is a good thing. In the future we may see 8 core utilization.

View: https://youtu.be/97sDKvMHd8c

 

[GoatGuy]

I see $750 for a 16 core whale is somewhat off-putting to many denizens here. Yet, at $47 a core, for top-shelf IPC per core performance, for a pair of cooperating CPU chiplets, and a powerful interprocessor multithreading bus-and-memory controller ... wow. Only $750!

Thing is, if we're realistic, darn few of us could would actually make palpable use of all 16 cores and 32 threads. I don't care if you're God's gift to gamers, or a "production" video rendering pro. While any one of us can contrive situations that would use 8, 12, 16 ... 24, 28 ... 48 ... 64 ... 1,000 cores, even for such folk, 99% of their daily workload is handled quite handily on far fewer active cores.

For my money, if I'm being Economical, then it would be the 12 core 24 thread Ryzen 3600x plus a top-shelf GPU such as AMD's just announced 7 nm 5700X plus a 570 class motherboard, 750 watt supply, 32 GB of RAM in 4 sticks, 1 TB of M.2 storage, and a nice compliment of triple monitors, both mouse and stylus tablet (hey, had these since the 1990s, and for graphics they're great), a non-lightshow-glitzy case, and that's about it. $2500 ought to cover it, and I've got a computer that'll last for quite some time and get a LOT of useful work done. A lot.

Just saying,
GoatGuy

 

[NightHawkRMX]

Yea, the 12 cores is much more reasonable.

 

[gggplaya]

I'm definitely getting the 12 core. The extra 100mhz is meh, but the extra cores will help with streaming in "SLOW" mode which is visually the best for the bitrate.

 

[BaRoMeTrIc]

$750 + $200ish for a x570 + 150-200 for 32gb RAM. vs $1700 + 200-300 for x299. Intel will still win by a slim margin in peformance but damn they can no longer justify double the price of their competitior for a few percentage points in performance.

 

[BaRoMeTrIc]

I was hoping for $699 on the Ryzen 9 3950X, which is closer to (but still above) the ~$42/core of the 3900X, 3700X, and 3600X.
At $750 the 3950X is ~$47/core
But at least it's not the $800 it would have been had AMD chosen the $50/core pricing of the 3800X (which is a little overpriced compared to the rest of lineup). The 3800Xis in the middle of the stack and doesn't even have the prestige of being the world's first at anything.
If the 3600 overclocks well, then it's looking like it will be an outstanding value at ~$33/core

you always pay a premium when getting above the "mainstream" core count. Look at the price difference between Intels 10-12-14-16 cores they start at $200 premiums then jump to $300

 

[jimmysmitty]

Actually we're currently at 6 cores being the minimum for gaming as some newer modern titles get bottleneck by the 4 core i5 7600k and getting beaten by the ryzen 1600 which has less clock speed and IPC. So having 8 cores to give a little more headroom for multitasking or streaming is a good thing. In the future we may see 8 core utilization.

View: https://youtu.be/97sDKvMHd8c

The most modern game on there is Rage 2 and its minimum requirements are still quad core CPUs. Most games, especially at higher resolutions and refresh rates, will depend more on the GPU.

Now I am not saying we wont eventually utilize more cores. The first game to require dual core was Crysis. And now quad is the way to go. But it doesn't happen over night and AMD throwing more and more cores wont accelerate it, hell even Intel doing the same wouldn't make it go any faster. Software always has and always will be the slowest in adoption of new hardware.

Yes for streamers more cores or one of those dual systems would be preferable but 16 cores for mainstream is overkill. I always said people who build a HEDT (Intel or AMD) system just to game are just flashing their money more than being an enthusiast.

But as I said I am waiting for third parties to get their hands on these. I want to see what real world performance looks like and if this Ryzen is like the previous Ryzen CPUs clock wise. Is there room or did AMD push them to the wall like the previous ones? That will tell us about how well TSMCs 7nm handles CPUs clock speeds.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

As a 4 core ryzen owner, i can tell you that 4 cores is not enough for many titles. You may not see a ton more fps by upgrading to a 6 core ryzen cpu, however the overall playability and framerate stability is greatly improved.
Some demanding titles like battlefield and assassin's creed will have issues on a 4 core.

There was one instance in steves video where the 7600k had lows below 60 fps while the 6 core ryzens lows were above 90fps. You would definately notice the increased stability of the 6 core.

 

[jimmysmitty]

As a 4 core ryzen owner, i can tell you that 4 cores is not enough for many titles. You may not see a ton more fps by upgrading to a 6 core ryzen cpu, however the overall playability and framerate stability is greatly improved.
Some demanding titles like battlefield and assassin's creed will have issues on a 4 core.

There was one instance in steves video where the 7600k had lows below 60 fps while the 6 core ryzens lows were above 90fps. You would definately notice the increased stability of the 6 core.

While I don't play every modern title I have yet to find a game that doesn't run well at 1080p maxed out on my 4670K, including Rage 2.

As I said some titles will benefit as will multitasking but straight gaming is still heavily IPC and frequency dependent and will be for a few more years.

I do plan to upgrade but I am one who waits for more than just CPUs to upgrade. I am personally waiting for NVDIMMs to become more common for mainstream as I feel storage is the largest bottleneck on systems today.

Also the video didn't show min FPS. It was Average FPS with the 1% frame time as the dark blue bar. I will give you that for some reason one of the games really did not like Intels 7600K for frame time at all. However one game is the exception not the rule.