AMD unveils $749 Ryzen 9 3950X CPU and Radeon RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT graphics cards at E3
AMD reveals top-of-the-range Ryzen 9 3950X alongside Radeon RX 5700 and RX 5700XT GPUs
AMD has unveiled a top-of-the-range Ryzen 9 3950X offering 16-cores, 32-thread that, it claims will enable gaming enthusiasts to stream their games almost frame-for-frame to Twitch and other services at the same time.
The Ryzen 9 3950X was unveiled at AMD's 'Next Horizon' event at the E3 trade show in Los Angeles, California, and will be available globally on 7 July along with the rest of the third-generation Ryzen range.
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The company also used E3 to reveal more details of its Navi-based GPUs, which promise to make AMD performance-competitive with Nvidia for the first time in several years.
"At every price point, we're giving gamers something special... We have made significant technology bets to push the envelope on high performance computing and give the gamers the hardware they need to power the experience they want," said AMD president and CEO Lisa Su.
The Ryzen 9 3950X processor features 16 cores and a large 72MB cache. It promises to support realistic graphics at 2k or 1440p with the kind of high frame rates that competitive online multi-player games demand.
Su said that the Ryzen 9 3950x has "the highest boost frequency in our stack", boosting from 3.5GHz (base) to 4.7Ghz with 72MB of cache, enabling it to outdo Intel's 8-core gaming CPU retailing at around the same price. Ryzen 9 3950X will be available from September for $749.
It will slot in above the $499 Ryzen 9 3900X, which offers 12 cores and 24 threads, which was unveiled at Computex two weeks ago, along with the rest of the Ryzen CPUs.
The company also used E3 to provide more information about its forthcoming Navi-based GPUs, launching the RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT GPUs.
These will be the first to be powered by the RDNA architecture and are being pitched against Nvidia's RTX 2060 and RTX 2070 respectively. AMD had teased the RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT at last month's Computex event in Taipei, Taiwan.
Both GPUs are built on TSMC's 7nm process architecture. AMD claims that new RDNA (Radeon DNA) design built-in to the Navi architectural platform provides higher performance per watt and also delivers about 1.25-times better performance per clock than current Radeon RX500-series products. These have a reputation for running somewhat hot under load.
It also promises improved cache hierarchy as well as a more efficient graphics pipeline. AMD claims that RDNA also provides more room to scale down for mobile and back up for data centres and gaming, enabling AMD's GPUs to be more widely deployed.
GPUs are increasingly being used for maths-intensive AI applications on servers, in the data centre and in the cloud. Both AMD and its main rival in GPUs, Nvidia, are looking to AI for future growth.
The Radeon RX 5700XT features 40 RDNA compute units, 2,560 stream processors, and 8GB of GDDR6 memory and offers up to 9.75 Teraflops of bandwidth. It runs at 1605MHz base clock speed, 1755MHz game clock speed with up to 1905MHz turbo speed.
The Radeon RX 5700 comes with 36 compute units and 2,304 stream processors. It has 1465MHz base clock speed, 1625MHz game clock speed, and up to 1725MHz turbo speed.
The Radeon RX 5700XT and Radeon RX 5700 will go on sale on 7th July this year at $449 and $379, respectively, pitching the cards against Nvidia's RTX 2070.
AMD also announced two new Ryzen 3000-series APUs that come with integrated graphics capabilities.
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