AMD unveils flagship Ryzen 5xxx processors based on Zen3 architecture

Last night, AMD unveiled its flagships for the new Ryzen 5000 series desktop processor line. The presentation showed mainly flagship products: one eight-core Ryzen 7 processor, twelve- and sixteen-core Ryzen 9 processors and only one from the middle segment - a six-core Ryzen 5.







The rest of the processors of the middle and budget segments, namely Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 3, will be presented later. If we go straight to the basic characteristics, then the new AMD products look like this:

The new processors will go on sale on November 5, 2020.



The company has been delighting its fans and consumers with new products for several years, and in October last year, it actually declared a price war on Intel . This coincided with the announcements of the previous generation desktop processors - Ryzen 3xxx, which, although not on their head, but already bypassed Intel products in a number of parameters. First of all, in terms of computing power per dollar of cost. A year later, AMD is updating the architecture of desktop "stones" to Zen3 and releasing a new line of processors with an index of 5000.



The new 5000 series processors are based on the Zen3 architecture on lithography with a step of 7 nm. At the same time, there are significant improvements in the very design of new AMD products that allow the "red" to enter the basic consumer territory of its main competitor - the sphere of gaming computers.



It is worth recalling that a little earlier we wrote that, according to Steam reports, AMD processors for the first time in the history of statistics collection by the service crossed the 25% mark among PC players. This is an extremely important marker and an indicator that, even in the past generation, gamers have actively revised their views and preferred AMD products when it came to upgrading PCs.







The mention of AMD's growth in Steam statistics is important in the sense that the following statement was made at the presentation: Ryzen 5000 processors will be compatible with existing 400 and 500 series chips, and will also be able to work on some motherboards with 300 chipsets after users update the BIOS.



Against the background of endless updates to the line of sockets and chipsets from Intel, when the processors, which were released within a year from each other, already had their own socket, AMD's desire to expand the number of platforms suitable for the upgrade works for them only as a plus. In fact, the company reached out to those who believed in its products and bought motherboards for 3000 series processors. These users in most cases, subject to the balance of the platform and the current processor, will be able to painlessly upgrade to the more powerful Ryzen 5000 without replacing the motherboard.



Compared to the previous generation flagship Ryzen 9 3900X, the new Ryzen 9 5900X gives an average increase of 20-30% in frames, which was reflected in the presentation:







At the same time, the starting recommended price for the release of both processors differs by only $ 50: Ryzen 9 3900X cost $ 499, and the new Ryzen 9 5900X will sell for $ 550 apiece.



But much more interesting in terms of performance is the comparison of the Ryzen 9 5900X with the current top processor of Intel's competitors, specifically the i9-10900k. Recently, gamers hesitated when choosing between familiar Intel processors and new AMD products, often preferring, nevertheless, to upgrade from the "blue". On the slide below, the results of the Ryzen 9 5900X are not so impressive, but the psychological barrier has been, nevertheless, passed: Intel has no answer to this yet.







Here's what a comparison table of the two products looks like:

However, it should be understood that the i9-10900k is a processor based on 14 nm lithography, in addition, the maximum supported memory type is DDR4-2933. The Ryzen 9 5900X processor supports DDR4-3200 memory. But more importantly, the i9-10900k only supports PCIe 3.0 , while the new AMD processors are already working with PCIe 4.0.... This means that with the new Nvidia RTX 3xxx series graphics cards, AMD processors should perform much better than all existing blue products. At the same time, AMD's official statements when comparing Ryzen 9 5900X and i9-10900k say that the company's new processor is almost 3 times more productive than the current Intel flagship in terms of parameters. It seems to us that the figure is definitely overstated, but the almost identical price with more cores, less heat dissipation and a more modern architecture with all the consequences is definitely a plus in favor of the Ryzen 9 5900X.



It is also worth paying attention to the Ryzen 5 5600X shown to the public, which, like its predecessor, the Ryzen 5 3600X, can become super popular among gamers. With a price tag of $ 300, this six-core processor performs quite well, and the new model is about 20% more powerful than the popular Ryzen 3600X with less heat.



The new Ryzen already have the potential to work with DDR5 memory, the Korean SK hynix is now actively working on preparation for sales and production of which... Of course, the Koreans are still focused on working with the server market, but the appearance of the first DDR5 modules for desktops is a matter of the coming months. It is likely that the first modules will appear on sale by the second quarter of 2021. By the time the new memory appears on the shelves, we can confidently expect, if not the next generation of processors, then the update of the line of existing flagships to work with DDR5, which will only increase the gap between AMD and Intel, if the blue show nothing new.



Moreover, according to the latest insights, which, most likely, were merged by Intel marketers, the manufacturer is still focused on work in the server direction, where its positions are still unshakable. At the same time, there was no mention that Intel is now actively working on custom products. This means that AMD, with a slightly higher cost of the Ryzen 9 5900X, is already a direct competitor to Intel's flagship, and with the transition to DDR5 and the rapid release of an updated line of processors, the "reds" may completely break away in Intel's native gaming market.