We never thought that we would see the day that AMD stepped up to go toe-to-toe against the hardware behemoth that is Intel. But that may have just happened.
At Computex 2019 – one of the most important hardware trade events in the tech industry – Team Red CEO Dr. Lisa Su revealed AMD’s latest line of AMD processors and graphics cards, including an RX 5700 Navi GPU and five Ryzen 3000 CPUs.
The reception has been massively positive, and we can’t wait to see more from this new hardware. Let’s look at what was unveiled at Dr. Su’s keynote speech and what this means for the future of AMD.
Ryzen Processors
AMD’s third generation of Ryzen CPUs has been announced with a release date of July 7th 2019. These shiny new processors will range between $199 to $499 (British price tags are pending), all based on the latest 7nm Zen 2 architecture.
Heads were turned as it was also unveiled that they will all feature support the new PCIe 4.0, offering double the bandwidth of PCIe 3.0!
Ryzen 9
The most powerful processor from the new line-up is the Ryzen 9 3900X, the first mainstream CPU to feature 12 cores. This is AMD’s new flagship desktop CPU, set to be priced at $499 – half the price of Intel’s competing Core i9 9920X chipset. AMD claim that the Ryzen 9 3900X will offer similar performance to Intel’s i7-9700K, despite the massive price difference between the two, which could be a massive competitor for Intel.
Coming at a base frequency of 3.8GHz (boosted up to 4.6GHz), the Ryzen 9 3900X has a lot of potential, with enough room in its design to possibly feature 16 fully enabled cores in the future.
Ryzen 7
Next in the line-up are a pair of Ryzen 7 processors - a $399 3800X and $329 3700X - both featuring 8 cores that will be clocked at different frequencies. The biggest headline for these cards is their TDP, giving us a good indicator of their power consumption.
While the 3800X has a TDP of 105W, the 3700X has a TDP of just 35W. Already, the 3700X is looking to be one of the most energy-efficient desktop processors ever designed.
Ryzen 5
The final processors from the new line-up are the Ryzen 5 3600 and 3600X. These processors weren’t mentioned during the Computex keynote, but AMD revealed information about their latest Ryzen 5 processors in a press release.
Users can pick up a 6-core processor for under $200, which is very inviting if you are looking for a budget system upgrade. Of course, because of their position in the CPU line-up, these will be the weakest powered CPUs. Don’t let that deter you, however. Both of these processors will still support all of the new technologies as the bigger chips, including PCIe 4.0!
New AMD graphics cards
AMD also teased their next generation of graphics cards by showing off the upcoming Radeon RX 5700 at Computex. The Navi 7nm-based graphics card is running on the new RDNA architecture, offering 25% higher performance per clock and 50% better per watt compared to the existing GCN architecture that AMD has been using since 2011.
The RX 5700 will also utilise GDDR6 video memory and support the new PCIe 4.0 interface. The key piece of information that we are currently missing is the exact price of the GPU, however, rumours and speculation have pitched it costing around £450 - £600 in conjunction with AMD’s pricing.
During her keynote, Dr. Lisa Su claimed that the RX 5700 will be able to match – perhaps even beat – the power of Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 2070 graphics card. We will have to see it to believe it, but considering this is Nvidia’s third most powerful GPU, this has certainly got us excited. Stay on the lookout for future benchmarks of this card.
Ryzen to the challenge
What does all this mean for current and future AMD users? The new CPUs are based on AMD’s new X570 chipset, using the AM4 socket that they have been using for previous Ryzen processors. Hopefully, this means that those that currently use Ryzen CPUs can swap one of the new processors into their system without the need to update their motherboard – saving us a lot of effort and expenses!
If you are looking to upgrade your motherboard, AMD has announced that they there will be 56 x570 motherboards available from their partners to coincide with the new CPU launch. With the power requirements of the new chips, this might not be a bad time to consider upgrading after all.
Not much has been released about the raw performance of the new AMD hardware, but so far things are looking very exciting for those that are in the market for a mid-range and high-range GPU that is going to put Nvidia and Intel on a pedestal against AMD in the coming year.
