With less than two weeks to go before the official release of AMD’s long-awaited Ryzen 3000, and leaks couldn’t wait.
Less than three weeks ago, an incredible 16-core processor based on the Zen 2 architecture leaked out, confirmed and announced a few days ago as Ryzen 9 3950X, the “first 16-core gaming processor” and the fastest of its kind yet.
The Ryzen 9 3950X has a base frequency of 3.5 GHz and a turbo of 4.7 GHz, but the interesting thing about the filtration is that the processor does not run at these frequencies.
Intel Lags Behind AMD
As you can see in the following picture, the processor has 16 cores and 32 threads, as expected by the R9 3950X, but a fundamental frequency of 3.3GHz, which is 200MHz less than the announced 3950X. In addition, it has an overclocking of all 5.2GHz cores.
The base frequency removes the possibility that it is a 3950X, so it may be an unannounced Ryzen 9 or a technical sample that AMD is currently testing. The latter is most likely because it doesn’t make sense to present another 16-core processor with only a slight difference in the clock.
AMD Ryzen Vs. Intel i9 9980XE
Either way, this shows Zen 2‘s ability to reach high frequencies, even in SKUs with many cores. This special chip has been combined with a relatively fast DDR4 memory and a high-end MSI motherboard.
The left side features Intel’s $2000 processor, the i9-9980XE, the fastest processor they offer for desktop PCs. On the right is the 16-core processor with 5.2 GHz AMD, and yes, has higher values than Intel, although it has fewer cores.
We will have to wait to confirm the actual specifications of the Ryzen 9 3950X.