AMD Zen 3 Launch Event Discussion

Well right now as someone with a fairly old build, I can either buy Intel which is *almost* a dead end platform, or AMD which *is* a dead-end platform. Either way, I don't think I've upgraded just the CPU on a board since like, the Opteron, so it's not a huge deal.
I ran an opteron 140 until I could afford an FX-51 :D But yeah, you should see a huge performance leap, so if your current rig feels remotely usable by your standards, a new machine for feel that way for a long time.
 
While I admit I'm a little disappointed not to see 5.0ghz for "marketing" purposes because bigger number is easier to understand than IPC improvements and Intel devotees have been falling over themselves with their single/few core performance for years, still I'm overall happy with the chips. I am curious what OC room there may be on single, 2-4, and 8-16 core turbo speeds, as going from 4.8 or 4.9 to 5.0+ in theory SHOULD be doable with solid cooling unless they really left nothing left in the chip. Between that and IPC it should definitely eat Intel's lunch, but I am always a little skeptical of the next generation and we know Intel can pretty much throw unlimited money at things ; its amazing that AMD has remained more or less on top for so long.

The prices being a little higher is a bit of an annoyance but with the exception of the 5700X 65w slot missing, I don't see anything to be concerned about really - its what, +$50 at most, for a big step in performance? I don't want to see them jack things too high though, as the Threadripper setup has seemingly left the building, being extremely expensive and seemingly completely out of the "gaming / streaming / general HEDT" market to something more focused on pro-sumer, server, and exclusive use cases that can handle a ton of core and a fat wallet without also offering comparable single / few core performance on the high end to Ryzen. I AM glad they announced and will apparently release the 5950X at the same time as the rest of their CPUs, not make users have to wait for the top of the line like they did with Zen2 - that's always frustrating for any component.

One thing that's a little disappointing is the lack of a new chipset revision, particularly without USB4. I'd hoped AMD would iterate on the chipset a bit and add USB 4.x support among other enhancements, which would mean putting an end to the myriad of "USB 3.x gen y" confusing garbage while also adding Thunderbolt 3 compatibility/support slipstreamed in without having to get an Intel specific license. Now maybe the "refresh X570 boards" will include stuff like this by their own accord (c'mon Asus Crosshair XI Extreme, don't let me down) but its a pity that they didn't bring a X670 chipset with improvements, which means an opening for Intel to add to their next release. I like that AMD has been ahead of the curve with PCI-E 4 and all, but lets not be complacent.

Kinda a little disappointed about the release date waiting until November 5th, but if they're releasing both the CPU and GPUs at the same time that's...going to be interesting and hard on the wallet. I expect we'll hear more about the GPU's at the end of the month event. Lets hope both CPU and GPU release with sufficient quantity.

I think some of your expectations are unrealistic.

Ryzen has historically only gone up slightly with its clock speeds each iteration. Anyone who was expecting 5.0GHz out of it was out of touch with reality. We may have wanted it, but no one should be surprised it didn't happen. As for overclocking, don't get your hopes up on that front either. Ryzen has never been a good overclocker. To extend its lead over Intel as far as it did, I'd wager AMD had to bin these pretty close to the edge of what the silicon could do using TSMC's 7nm process node. So no, I don't think overclocking to 5.0GHz with good cooling is doable. You can only cool Ryzen so much given how small the physical die is.

As for the chipsets, I can see why AMD wouldn't bother. X570 is already feature comparable to Intel's Z490. Not only that, but its the end of the line for AM4. AMD has never really wanted to be in the chipset business anyway as most of it has been outsourced. X570 was built by AMD, which is an oddity in itself. My guess is that they didn't feel like it was worth the development costs for an incremental upgrade in features over X570. That money is better spent on the next generation platform for Zen 4 next year. As for refresh boards, don't get your hopes up. We will probably see more efficient VRM's but I wouldn't expect a whole lot else. Thunderbolt 3 will ALWAYS require a license from Intel. There is no getting around that. USB 4.0 support is a possibility through some third party controller, but its a token feature at best. There aren't a lot of devices out there to leverage it, so I don't know if we'll see that at this stage. What we will probably see is more boards with 2.5GbE networking and things like that.

As for the release date, don't include the Radeon GPU's in that so fast. AMD's not doing its presentation on RDNA2 / Radeon 6000 until the 28th of this month. We probably won't see R6000 in stores until some time after Zen 3 launches. It could hit the same window, but we don't know for certain. The fact that the presentation for that is 20 days later doesn't bode well for releasing on the same day. As for quantity, we won't know for sure. It says it will have Radeon 6000 series stock on launch, but is that compared to NVIDIA? Or is that in general? We don't know how much stock they'll have. Especially when its hard to gauge the demand for the product at this stage without really knowing just how it will perform. I expect the CPU launch will be like last time with good stock of the lower end and midrange parts but very few 5900X or 5950X's will be on hand for the first few weeks after release.

It seems like if you have a 10900K there is no compelling reason to upgrade. But the 10900K is also the current flagship processor from the competition, so that makes sense.

A 5800X or 5900X should be a pretty big jump from my 4790K though, hopefully. Also hoping for reasonable stock on launch for these chips.

No there isn't, as for gaming the 10900K is still going to be an awesome CPU. While the AMD offerings may end up being a lot faster on that front, you are mostly going to see those gains at 1920x1080. Furthermore, an upgrade to an AMD system would cost a lot in the form of CPU and a motherboard. I don't think that's worth it for gaming alone. Especially not if you are in a more GPU limited situation.
 
I ran an opteron 140 until I could afford an FX-51 :D But yeah, you should see a huge performance leap, so if your current rig feels remotely usable by your standards, a new machine for feel that way for a long time.

I ran dual Opteron 254's back in the day.
 
As for refresh boards, don't get your hopes up. We will probably see more efficient VRM's but I wouldn't expect a whole lot else.

Yeah, so far we have just seen the Asus Dark Hero with better VRMs and passive chipset cooling, but no other changes really. - https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/ROG-Crosshair-VIII-Dark-Hero/

Also no data on availability or price. Most likely in the $400 range since it is basically a Hero WiFi which is a $380 board.
 
I remember reading, and thinking myself, AMD is not your friend. They are a business trying to make as much money as possible. That was proven today with the reveal.

Are you kidding me? That was proven more than a decade ago when AMD charged $1,000 for its FX series CPU's and I'm not talking about that Bulldozer nonsense. AMD already eclipsed Intel's desktop pricing last generation with the Ryzen 9 3950X. It was $750 at launch back when Intel was only charging a little over $500 for it's 9900K. The 3900X launched at about the same price as the 9900K. AMD has been charging as much as Intel has for a very long time. There are numerous examples of the company doing this whenever it felt it could get away with it.
 
So what does the 5900x look like in terms of the 8-core CCX? One 8-core and then a cut-down version with 4? Whereas the 5950x will have two full 8-core ones? Will be interesting to see more architecture info.
 
Yeah, so far we have just seen the Asus Dark Hero with better VRMs and passive chipset cooling, but no other changes really. - https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/ROG-Crosshair-VIII-Dark-Hero/

Also no data on availability or price. Most likely in the $400 range since it is basically a Hero WiFi which is a $380 board.

The jury is still out on the VRM's. ASUS likes to mislead customers with false statements about VRM phase count. I've called them out on this numerous times. ASUS often uses a four phase solution but doubles up on the number of power stages and inductors to make it look like a higher phase count solution. Until you do a close examination of the PCB and figure out what voltage controller its using, or whether or not you see phase doublers, you can't tell with them. Price is one indicator of what kind of VRM you can expect from them, but even that isn't always guaranteed. The Maximus XI Formula used the same 4 phase VRM solution that it did on the budget oriented Maximus XI Hero. You had to step up to the Maximus XI APEX or the Extreme to get the better VRM's. The APEX had one of the best of its generation.

Meanwhile, ASUS called the VRM implementation on the Hero and Formula "Twin-8 Phase" when it was nothing of the sort.
 
I was wanting a 65w 8-12 core CPU for my VM/Plex/HTPC server. From what I've read they may be putting some out later, we'll see.
For now I'd really like to get my hands on a 3900 (non X).
 
I'm surprised and disappointed with the new lineup. I expected to get better value than with the Zen2 parts. But it seems to me that cost/performance figures are about the same with the price hike. I secretly hoped for a downward shift in the price segmentation. eg: 12 core part replaces the 3800X, and 16 core part replaces the 3900X, while the 5950X would be a monster 20 core.

I thought I'd be upgrading to Zen3 from my 3700x, but now that the cat is out of the bag, I think I'll pass. 5900X doesn't seem like a better deal than a 3900X was all along. The 5950X is outside of what I'm willing to spend.
 
So what does the 5900x look like in terms of the 8-core CCX? One 8-core and then a cut-down version with 4? Whereas the 5950x will have two full 8-core ones? Will be interesting to see more architecture info.
I'm curious as well. I wonder if the 5800x will actually outperform 5900x in certain gaming situations which is why not included in the benchmarks.

What do you all make of the 1MB drop in cache from 5800x to 5600x? Really random. I'm wondering if the 5600x will get the full IPC bump of this generation or if it will be gimped by more than clock speed.
 
When was the last time Intel had a 19% IPC gain? This is basically within one year - that is a very fast pace. Zen 3 price per core compared to Intel? Price basically $50 more than previous generation, not excessive from my viewpoint. I think I will wait until Zen 3 hits Threadripper.
 
The jury is still out on the VRM's. ASUS likes to mislead customers with false statements about VRM phase count. I've called them out on this numerous times. ASUS often uses a four phase solution but doubles up on the number of power stages and inductors to make it look like a higher phase count solution. Until you do a close examination of the PCB and figure out what voltage controller its using, or whether or not you see phase doublers, you can't tell with them. Price is one indicator of what kind of VRM you can expect from them, but even that isn't always guaranteed. The Maximus XI Formula used the same 4 phase VRM solution that it did on the budget oriented Maximus XI Hero. You had to step up to the Maximus XI APEX or the Extreme to get the better VRM's. The APEX had one of the best of its generation.

Meanwhile, ASUS called the VRM implementation on the Hero and Formula "Twin-8 Phase" when it was nothing of the sort.

I guess what I meant was that they were supposedly going to be 90A rated rather than 60/70A or whatever it was before. Source: https://rog.asus.com/articles/crosshair-motherboards/introducing-the-rog-crosshair-viii-dark-hero/
 
I'm curious as well. I wonder if the 5800x will actually outperform 5900x in certain gaming situations which is why not included in the benchmarks.

What do you all make of the 1MB drop in cache from 5800x to 5600x? Really random. I'm wondering if the 5600x will get the full IPC bump of this generation or if it will be gimped by more than clock speed.
they listed cache as L2 + l3. 32MB of cache is shared between each 8 core CCXs. 5800x has 36MB, 5600x has 35MB, so one could conclude that in addition to the 32MB cache shared by cores, each core has 0.5MB. Proves true for the 70MB cache for the 5900x and 72MB for the 5950x.
 
they listed cache as L2 + l3. 32MB of cache is shared between each 8 core CCXs. 5800x has 36MB, 5600x has 35MB, so one could conclude that in addition to the 32MB cache shared by cores, each core has 0.5MB. Proves true for the 70MB cache for the 5900x and 72MB for the 5950x.
OK, thank you. This gives me hope that the 5600x could be very compelling. Particularly if it overclocks higher. 🤞
 
I'm not impressed, especially with that demo at the end with Borderlands 3 and COD Warzone using the 5900x and Big Navi. I was totally prepared to move to the new 5950x but I'm getting 150 FPS @ 4K in box those games. COD Warzone for sure but I know I am getting a hellva lot more than 60fps in Borderland 3.

Still, it's a nice upgrade for AMD fans.
those speeds are more or less a match for the 3080 FE's performance in those games, with the stated max settings.

If you are doing better, you aren't running the max settings.
 
Are you kidding me? That was proven more than a decade ago when AMD charged $1,000 for its FX series CPU's and I'm not talking about that Bulldozer nonsense. AMD already eclipsed Intel's desktop pricing last generation with the Ryzen 9 3950X. It was $750 at launch back when Intel was only charging a little over $500 for it's 9900K. The 3900X launched at about the same price as the 9900K. AMD has been charging as much as Intel has for a very long time. There are numerous examples of the company doing this whenever it felt it could get away with it.

In the case of the 3950x it was double the cores over anything intel had at the time, that's obviously going to have more cost attached to it. Not sure how that's comparable to an 9900k. :bored:
 
Man, I wish they had an 5700X with 65W TDP but still 8 rather than 6 cores. I want that chip, since my workflow is much more GPU-centric, but it makes little sense to get a chip that is weaker than 3700X in highly parallel use cases.
 
Man, I wish they had an 5700X with 65W TDP but still 8 rather than 6 cores. I want that chip, since my workflow is much more GPU-centric, but it makes little sense to get a chip that is weaker than 3700X in highly parallel use cases.
I'd guess something like that will become available, at least for oems, if not mass market.
 
Based on the Cinebench 20 single-core results, Intel might be able to surpass the Zen 3's performance with Rocket Lake since Core i-1185G7, which has 4.8ghz at 50W max TDP, is already near 600 points.
 

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So my 2950X is now trash.

My renders are getting more complicated and taking literal DAYS on my system, and upgrading to a 16-24 core chip using Zen3 will greatly improve render times...

The only issue is that I have 128GB of RAM on 8 sticks. If I upgrade to a 5000 series CPU on a Dual-Channel platform, I'll have to lose half my RAM, OR buy 4 32GB sticks. Or I could buy into Threadripper 5000, which probably has the price right in the name...

Being an enthusiast aint easy...
 
So my 2950X is now trash.

My renders are getting more complicated and taking literal DAYS on my system, and upgrading to a 16-24 core chip using Zen3 will greatly improve render times...

The only issue is that I have 128GB of RAM on 8 sticks. If I upgrade to a 5000 series CPU on a Dual-Channel platform, I'll have to lose half my RAM, OR buy 4 32GB sticks. Or I could buy into Threadripper 5000, which probably has the price right in the name...

Being an enthusiast aint easy...

No trash. You can still use it as a paperweight. :D
 
So my 2950X is now trash.

My renders are getting more complicated and taking literal DAYS on my system, and upgrading to a 16-24 core chip using Zen3 will greatly improve render times...

The only issue is that I have 128GB of RAM on 8 sticks. If I upgrade to a 5000 series CPU on a Dual-Channel platform, I'll have to lose half my RAM, OR buy 4 32GB sticks. Or I could buy into Threadripper 5000, which probably has the price right in the name...

Being an enthusiast aint easy...
Use it as a render node?
 
Based on the Cinebench 20 single-core results, Intel might be able to surpass the Zen 3's performance with Rocket Lake since Core i-1185G7, which has 4.8ghz at 50W max TDP, is already near 600 points.
I think we can expect intel to match amd's single core performance with the next generation.
 
So my 2950X is now trash.

My renders are getting more complicated and taking literal DAYS on my system, and upgrading to a 16-24 core chip using Zen3 will greatly improve render times...

The only issue is that I have 128GB of RAM on 8 sticks. If I upgrade to a 5000 series CPU on a Dual-Channel platform, I'll have to lose half my RAM, OR buy 4 32GB sticks. Or I could buy into Threadripper 5000, which probably has the price right in the name...

Being an enthusiast aint easy...
threadripper 39XX series exists. Might be some deals in that, for you.
 
threadripper 39XX series exists. Might be some deals in that, for you.
The price is quite prohibitive and no guarantee that the socket is compatible with future chips, as AMD has ALREADY introduced a new HEDT socket for Threadripper Pro alongside the socket they introduced for Threadripper 3000. No trust for AMD's HEDT plans. I would like to be able to pop in a new CPU in the socket later on.

Thats the issue I'm encountering, the 2950X is the best you can get on Socket TR4 if you don't want to destroy your gaming performance. New upgrade means new mainboard no matter which direction I go :(
 
Time for me to upgrade my [email protected].

5900x is the CPU of choice for gaming I take it?

5800x might have some advantages up to 8 threads since it will be on one CCX.

Same situation here with 5820K and I'm definitely leaning 5800X. I don't need 12 cores and I like idea of 8 on single CCX. Waiting to see 5600X benches too. Hopefully one CCX there too.
 
Same situation here with 5820K and I'm definitely leaning 5800X. I don't need 12 cores and I like idea of 8 on single CCX. Waiting to see 5600X benches too. Hopefully one CCX there too.
I wasn't sure earlier in the discussion, but based on the amount of cache, all signs point to 5600x and 5800x using a single CCX.
 
If AMD presented truthfully, I'll grab a Ryzen 3 and swap it into one of my Ryzen 2 rigs. (That will then go to the 2700x in my x470. Not sure what I'll do with that 2700x...) Gotta admit, the 5900x specs look really nice, but the 5800x price is more my range.

Regardless, I'll wait for reputable sites to post their reviews.
 
So my 2950X is now trash.

My renders are getting more complicated and taking literal DAYS on my system, and upgrading to a 16-24 core chip using Zen3 will greatly improve render times...

The only issue is that I have 128GB of RAM on 8 sticks. If I upgrade to a 5000 series CPU on a Dual-Channel platform, I'll have to lose half my RAM, OR buy 4 32GB sticks. Or I could buy into Threadripper 5000, which probably has the price right in the name...

Being an enthusiast aint easy...
Threadripper 5000 series should be amazing with these IPC gains. It'll require a new motherboard though, won't it?
 
Being that I have a 5820k and I have to upgrade my CPU, motherboard and ram, I want my next setup to last as long. I wouldn't mind springing a bit extra.
 
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