AMD promises 7nm Ryzen 3000 CPUs from mid-2019 - ahead of Intel's planned 10nm shift

AMD's Ryzen 3000 microprocessors to launch before Intel cranks up output of 10nm Ice Lake CPUs

AMD CEO Lisa Su used her keynote at this week's CES 2019 trade show to reveal more details about the forthcoming 7nm Ryzen 3000 microprocessors.

The Ryzen 3000 will be pin-compatible with existing X370 and X470 motherboards and will be the world's first mainstream CPU to support PCIe 4.0 x16.

On stage, Su showed off an "early version" of the Ryzen 3000 running Cinebench, achieving a score of 2,023, well ahead of the Intel Core i9-9900K and AMD's own Ryzen 7 2700X CPU, its current top-of-the-range Ryzen branded microprocessor.

However, a number of recent rumours over the forthcoming Ryzen 3000 remain unaddressed.

Last week, a leak by a Russian retailer indicated that the Ryzen 3000 series of CPUs would be headed up by a Ryzen 9 3800X CPU offering 16 cores - two eight core Zen 2 dies in one package - and 32 threads. The device, according to the leak, would offer a base clock speed of 3.9GHz, but be capable of boosting all the way up to 4.7GHz for demanding tasks.

Below that, the leak suggested that AMD is planning a Ryzen 7 3700X with 12 cores and 24 threads, with a base clock speed of 3.8GHz, but boosting all the way up to 5GHz.

Su's keynote also included details about the forthcoming Radeon VII graphics card, available from 7 February. The card, based on the second-generation Vega architecture optimised for 7nm, will be capable of 4k gaming with frame-rates in excess of 60fps.

The card will cost $699 in the US, and about £650 including VAT in the UK. The company claims that the Radeon VII will offer an improvement in performance of about 29 per cent compared to the company's current top-of-the-range graphics card, the Radeon RX Vega 64.