Alongside the new Radeon VII graphics card, AMD has also revealed several key details regarding its next-generation Ryzen desktop processors. In general, this marked the fourth group of new products that the company has announced at CES 2019 including the 2nd Gen Ryzen Mobile and A-Series for Chromebooks.
Referred to as the 3rd Generation Ryzen desktop processors, they are also part of Ryzen 3000 series just like the 2nd Gen Ryzen Mobile chips. Aside from the increase in performance which is always to be expected from new products, another thing that made they rather different from their predecessors is the internal design of the chip.
Specifically, the new 3rd Gen Ryzen desktop processors contained two different chips. One being the 7nm Zen 2 CPU while the other one is a separate 14nm chip that acts as the I/O controller for the processor. This approach mirrored the two-chip design that AMD has used for its next-generation server processor, the Epyc Rome.
However, the full specifications of the 3rd Gen Ryzen desktop processors were not revealed today though. That being said, the CEO of AMD, Dr. Lisa Su has actually pointed that the chip she showed on stage during her keynote features 8-cores and 16-threads. Additionally, the 3rd Gen Ryzen desktop processors will also able to support PCIe 4.0 standard just like the Epyc Rome server chip.
Dr. Lisa has also teased the capability of 3rd Gen Ryzen by doing a live stage demo involving a Cinebench head-to-head shootout using an early sample of the chip against the existing Intel Core i9-9900K 8-core chip. It is not surprising that AMD’s chip overcame its competitor since its an AMD keynote after all but what made the demo rather interesting is the fact that the Ryzen chip able to overcome Intel’s offering while still retaining lower power consumption.
Furthermore, AMD has guaranteed that existing Ryzen users will be able to upgrade to the upcoming Ryzen 3000 series processors without the need to purchase new motherboard since they will still support AM4 socket. Given that AMD will be launching the new generation of Ryzen desktop processors in mid-2019, expect to hear more information regarding them to appear from time to time as we get closer to the official launch.
