AMD's Zen 2 refresh is here

Quizzical

The old lineup:

Ryzen 9 3950X:  16 cores, turbo up to 4.7 GHz
Ryzen 9 3900X:  12 cores, turbo up to 4.6 GHz
Ryzen 7 3800X:  8 cores, turbo up to 4.5 GHz
Ryzen 5 3600X:  6 cores, turbo up to 4.4 GHz

The new lineup:

Ryzen 9 3950X:  16 cores, turbo up to 4.7 GHz
Ryzen 9 3900XT:  12 cores, turbo up to 4.7 GHz
Ryzen 7 3800XT:  8 cores, turbo up to 4.7 GHz
Ryzen 5 3600XT:  6 cores, turbo up to 4.5 GHz

Lower clocked, lower power parts are left unchanged.  All that is new is a new top bin of the 6, 8, and 12 core parts.  TDP and base clock speeds are unchanged, so this really just means that the parts can turbo higher when there are few threads active.  Of course, given how often the real-world turbo clock speeds of AMD CPUs don't quite match the specs, it's probable that the new CPUs are better than the old, but not clear just how much, at least other than "not very".

Basically, this is just improved binning.  All of the Ryzen 3000 series desktop parts that don't have a G on them use the same dies for the CPU cores.  Before, AMD picked out the ones that could clock the highest for the 3950X, then the next best for the 3900X, and so forth.  With a more mature process node and possibly a respin, more of the dies could hit higher clock speeds than before, so AMD decided that they had enough of the dies that could hit 4.7 GHz to offer them in 8 and 12 core packages, not just the top end 16 core CPUs.

Recommended pricing on the new CPUs is the same as the pricing on the old CPUs that they replace.  On New Egg, the old CPUs are available at a modest discount, while the new ones are listed at MSRP.  Getting a little bit more performance for the same price as before is hardly revolutionary, but it's not a bad thing, either.

On a related topic, the new CPUs have ridiculous names.  That trailing zero that is there on literally every single CPU in AMD's entire Ryzen lineup is just dumb.  If you have three different CPUs that you want to call some variant on a Ryzen 5 3600, you could give them sensible names like 3630, 3650, and 3670.  Or you could even use the last digit and call them 3633, 3655, and 3677.  But no, AMD had to call them 3600, 3600X, and 3600XT.  And just to confuse everyone, AMD is using the trailing T to mean higher clock speeds, while Intel for many years has used the trailing T on their CPUs to mean lower clock speeds and lower power consumption.

Asm0deus

Quizzical said:

The old lineup:

Ryzen 9 3950X:  16 cores, turbo up to 4.7 GHz
Ryzen 9 3900X:  12 cores, turbo up to 4.6 GHz
Ryzen 7 3800X:  8 cores, turbo up to 4.5 GHz
Ryzen 5 3600X:  6 cores, turbo up to 4.4 GHz

The new lineup:

Ryzen 9 3950X:  16 cores, turbo up to 4.7 GHz
Ryzen 9 3900XT:  12 cores, turbo up to 4.7 GHz
Ryzen 7 3800XT:  8 cores, turbo up to 4.7 GHz
Ryzen 5 3600XT:  6 cores, turbo up to 4.5 GHz

Lower clocked, lower power parts are left unchanged.  All that is new is a new top bin of the 6, 8, and 12 core parts.  TDP and base clock speeds are unchanged, so this really just means that the parts can turbo higher when there are few threads active.  Of course, given how often the real-world turbo clock speeds of AMD CPUs don't quite match the specs, it's probable that the new CPUs are better than the old, but not clear just how much, at least other than "not very".

Basically, this is just improved binning.  All of the Ryzen 3000 series desktop parts that don't have a G on them use the same dies for the CPU cores.  Before, AMD picked out the ones that could clock the highest for the 3950X, then the next best for the 3900X, and so forth.  With a more mature process node and possibly a respin, more of the dies could hit higher clock speeds than before, so AMD decided that they had enough of the dies that could hit 4.7 GHz to offer them in 8 and 12 core packages, not just the top end 16 core CPUs.

Recommended pricing on the new CPUs is the same as the pricing on the old CPUs that they replace.  On New Egg, the old CPUs are available at a modest discount, while the new ones are listed at MSRP.  Getting a little bit more performance for the same price as before is hardly revolutionary, but it's not a bad thing, either.

On a related topic, the new CPUs have ridiculous names.  That trailing zero that is there on literally every single CPU in AMD's entire Ryzen lineup is just dumb.  If you have three different CPUs that you want to call some variant on a Ryzen 5 3600, you could give them sensible names like 3630, 3650, and 3670.  Or you could even use the last digit and call them 3633, 3655, and 3677.  But no, AMD had to call them 3600, 3600X, and 3600XT.  And just to confuse everyone, AMD is using the trailing T to mean higher clock speeds, while Intel for many years has used the trailing T on their CPUs to mean lower clock speeds and lower power consumption.

All very interesting though I do not agree with the idea you present that naming these something like 3633, 3655 and 3677 would have been less confusing.

I think the marketing team did good and this naming scheme will be easier for the average layman to follow.

Not sure what you find confusing here:

3600 next step up:

3600x next step up

3600xt

All these are "steps up" in the same "tier" so to speak.

Next tier you have

3700

3700x

3700xt

Next tier after that you have

3800

3800x

3800xt

Very easy to follow even for consumers that do not know what "cpu" stand for.

Vrika

Quizzical said:

On a related topic, the new CPUs have ridiculous names.  That trailing zero that is there on literally every single CPU in AMD's entire Ryzen lineup is just dumb.  If you have three different CPUs that you want to call some variant on a Ryzen 5 3600, you could give them sensible names like 3630, 3650, and 3670.  Or you could even use the last digit and call them 3633, 3655, and 3677.  But no, AMD had to call them 3600, 3600X, and 3600XT.  And just to confuse everyone, AMD is using the trailing T to mean higher clock speeds, while Intel for many years has used the trailing T on their CPUs to mean lower clock speeds and lower power consumption.

I disagree. Calling them all as 3600, and then adding some letters after that, makes it clearer that they're all different models of the 3600 CPU. As opposed to Ryzens with different numbers, which have also different number of CPU cores, are of different generation, or have some other larger difference.

Also AMD is using the same XT with their Radeon 5700 XT.