AMD Announces Ryzen 3000XT CPUs, A520 Chipset and New AMD StoreMI

[Guest_Jim_*]

There have been rumors for a bit now that AMD would be releasing new versions of some of its Ryzen 3000 series processors with higher clock speeds, and today the company has announced them. The Ryzen 3000XT series consists of the Ryzen 5 3600XT, Ryzen 7 3800XT, and Ryzen 9 3900XT, which share the same core and thread counts as the original non-XT versions of the same number. All three CPUs are to be available on July 7.

Starting from the bottom, the Ryzen 5 3600XT is a 6-core/12-thread CPU with a base frequency of 3.8 GHz and a boost of up to 4.5 GHz at a TDP of 95 W. This represents a 100 MHz increase to the boost frequency over the Ryzen 5 3600X CPU, but it will be priced at the same $249. The Ryzen 7 3800XT is an 8-core/16-thread part with a base clock of 3.9 GHz, like the Ryzen 7 3800X, and a boost of 4.7 GHz, 200 MHz over better than the original processor. The TDP is still at 105 W and the price is $399, like the original. Finally, the Ryzen 9 3900XT is a 12-core/24-thread chip with the same 3.8 GHz base clock of the Ryzen 9 3900X but with a 100 MHz faster boost at 4.7 GHz. Its suggested price is the same $499.

AMD claims the Ryzen 9 3900XT offers up to 4% better single-threaded performance over the Ryzen 9 3900X. This might not sound like much, especially if you intend to overclock the CPU anyway, but it is additional performance at the same price point, and if we see the prices drop for the original parts, they will become all the more competitive. These new CPUs will be supported on the same boards as the originals. The company states the Ryzen 5 3600XT will come with the Wraith Spire cooler but it recommends going using an AIO with a 280 mm radiator or equivalent air cooling to get the best experience out of these products. These three CPUs will be supported by all motherboards with a Ryzen 3000-ready BIOS, including the complete collection of 500-series chipset boards.

In the press release from AMD, it says these new processors are using an optimized 7 nm manufacturing process allowing for the greater boost frequencies. This could mean TSMC has made some upgrades to its process allowing for a better voltage/frequency curve for these chips, thereby enabling better binning of the chips.

This was not the only news for AMD today as motherboards based on its B550 chipset should be widely available starting today. This chipset offers mainstream support for PCIe 4.0 and is being used in motherboards of various form factors, so you can hopefully find the right mix of features to fit in your case of choice all at a reasonable price. The company also announced the A520 chipset which seems to be a replacement for the A320 chipset but with support for 3^rd Gen Ryzen CPUs and beyond. Motherboards based on the A520 chipset are expected to be available starting in August 2020 with over 40 designs already in development from board partners including ASRock, ASUS, Biostar, Colorful, GIGABYTE, and MSI.

One last bit of news was shared by AMD as it has announced AMD StoreMI 2.0. The original AMD StoreMI launched with the first generation of Zen products and provided a package for users to improve performance by moving files between fast drives of smaller capacities, and slower but larger drives. It was announced in April the distribution of StoreMI would end, but that AMD was working on a replacement for it, this StoreMI 2.0. With a new caching-based acceleration algorithm, AMD claims it can increase boot times by as much as 31% and reduce game load times by 13%, compared to an HDD alone. According to the footnotes, the test with AMD StoreMI was done with an HDD and PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD paired together. Hopefully more information on this software will arrive before long.

 

 

Source: AMD

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