AMD to launch 7nm Ryzen 3000 CPUs and Navi graphics cards in July

Flagship Ryzen 3000 expected to bear 16 cores, 32 threads and run at 4.7GHz

AMD is set to launch its next-generation Ryzen 3000 CPUs at a launch event on 7 July. The Ryzen 3000 series CPUs will be built on TSMC's 7nm process node, as will the Navi GPUs that the company is set to launch at the same time.

That's according to a report by Red Gaming Tech, which claims that the company will officially reveal more of the technical detail behind both the Ryzen 3000 and Navi at the Computex trade show in Taipei, Taiwan the month before.

The leak is consistent with AMD CEO Lisa Su's assertion that the company is planning Ryzen 3000, together with a new X570 motherboard chipset, for late in the second quarter. The CPU will be the world's first mainstream CPU to support PCIe 4.0 x16.

The report adds that OEMs are expecting 12 or 16 cores on the higher end parts, which will be compatible with the AM4 socket, enabling users of first-generation Ryzen PCs to upgrade easily. However, there are no CPU or engineering samples in the hands of system builders yet, and they don't expect to have them until April at the earliest.

The unusually detailed leak also suggested that Ryzen 3000 would offer higher clock frequencies with the X570 motherboards offering more overclocking features.

On stage, AMD benchmarked an early version of an 8-core, 16-thread Ryzen Ryzen 3000 processor with Cinebench and it achieved a score of 2,023 - trumping both the Intel Core i9-9900K and AMD's own Ryzen 7 2700X CPU.

Other rumours suggest that the flagship Ryzen 3000 part will be a Ryzen 9 3800x, sporting two Zen 2 dies with eight cores apiece to provide a total of 16 cores and 32 threads. Clock speeds will go from 3.9GHz to 4.7GHZ, albeit at the cost of increased power consumption, with the chip weighing in with a TDP of 125W.

Details about Navi, meanwhile, remain sketchier. What we do know is that unlike AMD's current flagship GPU architecture Vega it will support GDDR6 memory, rather than HBM2, enabling more competitively priced products - when it finally appears.

However, a July launch of both Ryzen 3000 and Navi could put TSMC's manufacturing under pressure, meaning later availability of some of the parts - not least with the launch of Epyc 2 ‘Rome' server CPUs also expected in June and Threadripper 3000 ‘Castle Peak' CPUs expected to be unveiled in August.