According to a new rumor, AMD Zen 3 could be coming much sooner than expected. As part of the runup to the launch of Vermeer series processors, AMD looks poised to gain some ground in the CPU market. The company has been riding pretty high off of the launches of Zen+ and Zen 2 architectures, but the next step could be already here.
And it looks like they won’t be refreshing any old silicon this time. The new Vermeer class of CPUs is coming soon, so let’s talk about that.
According to various sources, AMD will reveal the new Zen 3 CPUs on October 8th. from there, it’s only a few short weeks to launch. After the foibles and messes caused by Nvidia’s rollout of the 30-series GPUs, AMD would be in prime position to play on that weakness. However, if AMD hits major stumbling blocks and doesn’t have enough CPUs to meet demand, there could be major blowback. And if retailers don’t shut down bots and scalpers, there may be a riot in the tech scene.
Early benchmarks look promising, showing that the new listings could compare will with intel offerings like i9-10900K, although more testing is needed.
According to Yuri Bubliy, the creator of the ClockTuner application for Ryzen processors, AMD would be first launching two of its high-end Ryzen 5000-series processors on October 20. It’s expected that the main consumer-facing SKUs will launch first, with the Threadripper derivative running later.
According to them, there are four SKUs headed our way: R9 5950X, R9 5900X, R7 5800X, and R5 5600X.
AMD has already had a few leaks which revealed just what to expect from these new CPUs. Various outlets got their hands on early specs suggesting a pretty solid IPC increase, as much as 20% compared to Zen 2. And since it’s going to be based on the 7nm+ EUV process node from TSMC, there could be a major jump in core counts and per-core speed coming too. At least according to AMDs roadmap for the next couple of years, they’re still aiming to push higher IPC output every new generation.
The Ryzen 7 5800X would be an 8-core CPU according to some leaks, while the Ryzen 9 5900X would be 12-core, and the top-end Ryzen 9 5950X having a whopping 16. And on top of general performance improvements, there are hints that enthusiast QoL is about to get better as well. AMD could be playing catchup with Intel and implementing a per-core voltage adjustment on AMD Zen 3.
This all plays into an apparent strategy on the part of AMD to push more single-core performance with the AMD Zen 3 Vermeer series of processors. It will be crazy to see how the response from Intel takes shape. If AMD manages to push higher single-core numbers than Intel can, it will be a very interesting 2021.
