AMD Launching 3900XT, 3800XT, and 3600XT Zen 2 Refresh CPUs: Milking Matisse
takyon writes:
On July 7, AMD will launch three refreshed Zen 2 "Matisse" desktop CPUs with slightly higher boost clocks than the previous versions:
- 12-core Ryzen 9 3900XT will boost to 4.7 GHz, instead of 4.6 GHz for the 3900X.
- 8-core Ryzen 7 3800XT will boost to 4.7 GHz, instead of 4.5 GHz for the 3800X.
- 6-core Ryzen 5 3600XT will boost to 4.5 GHz, instead of 4.4 GHz for the 3600X.
The 3900XT and 3800XT will not come with a bundled cooler, unlike the 3900X and 3800X (the top-of-the-line 16-core 3950X also did not come with a cooler). 3600XT will come with a Wraith Spire cooler.
The "suggested etailer price" (SEP) is the same as the launch prices for the previous CPUs ($499, $399, $249), but the 3900X is often sold for $400-$420 instead of $500, for example. So customers may end up paying between 10-25% more for a 2-5% potential performance gain, unless retailers drop the prices soon after launch.
The new 3000XT family of processors focuses mostly on boosting the turbo frequency by 100-200 MHz for the same power. AMD states that this is due to using an optimized 7nm manufacturing process. This is likely due to a minor BKM[*] or PDK[**] update that allows TSMC/AMD to tune the process for a better voltage/frequency curve and bin a single CPU slightly higher.
[...] In each [of the] three cases, the XT processors give slightly better frequency than the X units, so we should expect to see an official permanent price drop on the X processors in order to keep everything in line.
The CPUs should work with existing motherboards that supported the non-XT CPUs, after a BIOS update.
A September to October 2020 launch date is likely for the first next-generation Ryzen 4000 Zen 3 "Vermeer" CPUs. Rumors of the launch being pushed back to 2021 have been denied.
[*] BKM: Best-Known Method
[**] PDK: Process Design Kit
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