AMD’s Ryzen 9 3950X, Threadripper on hold until November
Enlarge / That "premiering with 24 cores" fine print is our only concrete clue about November's Threadripper launch. (credit: AMD)
AMD announced in a surprise email today that its Ryzen 9 3950X, originally slated for launch this month, has been delayed until November, when it and new Zen 2 Threadripper CPUs will debut:
We are focusing on meeting the strong demand for our 3rd generation AMD Ryzen processors in the market and now plan to launch both the AMD Ryzen 9 3950X and initial members of the 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen Threadripper processor family in volume this November. We are confident that when enthusiasts get their hands on the world's first 16-core mainstream desktop processor and our next-generation of high-end desktop processors, the wait will be well worth it.
The 3950X will be a 16-core, 32-thread desktop CPU running with a 4.7GHz boost clock, with a suggested retail price of $749. Details on the Threadrippers debuting next month are thinner, although graphics describe it as "premiering with 24 cores." Presumably, we'll eventually see Zen 2 Threadrippers with 32 cores and 64 threads to match the last generation's 2990WX. Although there haven't been any official statements, rumors are floating around about one existing Threadripper 3000 32-core CPU-user benchmarks claiming to be from an engineering sample showed up at Geekbench last month.
The delay of Ryzen 9 3950X's launch-along with extreme shortages of the already-launched Ryzen 9 3900X-leads to obvious supply line speculation. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the foundry AMD uses for its Zen 2 processors (and Apple uses for the 7nm A13 CPU in the iPhone 11), recently increased its lead time for new orders from two months to six. This increased lead should not directly affect the 3950X or Threadripper launches, since the silicon for those processors would have been ordered months ago. But it is an indication that TSMC may be approaching production or binning limits.
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