AMD quietly launched two new high-performance Zen 3 processors today. Specifically, it released non-X variants of the Ryzen 9 5900 and Ryzen 7 5800 CPUs.
As you can imagine, both the 5900 and 5800 are lesser versions of their “X-rated” counterparts, but more to the point, AMD’s new CPUs will be available for OEMs only. Specs-wise, the 5900’s boost clock is just 100MHz lower than the 5900X, while its base clock is also slower by 700MHz at 3.0GHz. As for the 5800, the Ryzen 7 CPU has a base and boost clock of 3.4GHz and 4.6MHz. Versus the 5800X’s 3.8GHz base and 4.7GHz boost clock.
Clockspeeds notwithstanding, both the 5900 and 5800 retain the same number of cores and threads and their more powerful brethren; the 5900 has 12-cores, 24-threads, while the 5800 has 8-cores, 16-threads. Naturally, there are also based on TSMC’s 7nm die lithography, and can also be overclocked.
As mentioned, both the Ryzen 9 5900 and Ryzen 7 5800 will only be available via OEM products, with Dell’s Alienware Aurora Ryzen Edition desktop PC being one such product to sport the CPU. In terms of raw performance, online speculation suggests that both CPUs would be approximately 5% slower than their “X” counterparts.
On another note, it is unclear if AMD’s decision to make the 5900 and 5800 OEM exclusives are permanent or if it plans on making them available to the general public a little later down the road. Much like it did with its 2nd generation Ryzen 3 2300X last year.
