AMD’s first-generation Ryzen processors are sold at very low prices and the latest ones that appear come with an unexpected surprise – they are manufactured in 12nm instead of the original 14nm.
The first generation Ryzen would have had a node change to 12 nm
The 12nm process is more efficient and faster than the original manufacturing process used for the first Ryzen chips, which were released in 2017.
The original Ryzen 5 1600 was released with six cores and twelve threads using GlobalFoundries’ 14nm process, but a new “AF” version has been released for only $85 and apparently comes with the 12nm Zen+ architecture.
AMD’s second-generation Ryzen process debuted with the new 12-nm die, however, even though the new process did not offer smaller transistors or new ground-up architecture, it offered performance and efficiency improvements over the original Ryzen 14-nm LPP process. AMD modified the Zen architecture, which it called Zen+, to support higher frequencies, more sophisticated multicore gain rates, and faster memory/caches, which together resulted in a ~3% increase in instruction performance per cycle (IPC).
The original Ryzen 5 1600 14nm models (released in 2017) are shipped with product ID YD1600BBAEBOX, while the new models (released around November 2019) are shipped with part number YD1600BBAFBOX.
As we can see in the picture above (sent to Imgur by Reddit u/_vogonpoetry user), the first line of code in the IHS processor now also ends with “AF”.
The “AF” identifier was originally intended to classify the chips as level 2 of the 14nm Zeppelin node (B1 or B2), but common test programs like CPU-Z and HWInfo identify these chips as 12nm pieces. There is a possibility that this is a mere error in the product identification strings programmed into the chips. However, the Ryzen 5 1600 ‘AF’ processor is capable of holding 3.7 GHz, which the original Ryzen 5 1600 ‘AE’ cannot do, so this cannot be an error.
AMD has not yet commented on this. We will keep you informed.