New AMD Ryzen 3000XT CPUs spotted, but you can probably ignore them
Maybe an AMD Ryzen 3000 anniversary release?
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Fresh off the release of theRyzen 3 3100and3300X, not to mention the newIntel Comet Lake-Slineup, it looks likeAMDmay be launching some new versions of its hard-hittingRyzen 3000CPU lineup.
Retail listings for new ‘XT’ iterations of AMD Ryzen 3000 processors have appeared on French tech retailer Materiel.net, making it more likely that theseprocessorswill actually exist. However, as the folks over atVideoCardzpoint out, it’s best to take the prices with a grain of salt. That said, with the AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT appearing at €499 (about $555, £455, AU$820), it would be within the same price range as theAMD Ryzen 9 3900Xwhen that CPU launched back in July 2019.
This new AMD leak doesn’t paint a clearer picture of what we can expect from the CPU performance, so it’s probably still safe to assume that theChiphell leak spotted last weekis the closest we have to solid information. According to that leak, the Ryzen 9 3900XT will feature a boost clock of 4.8GHz, up from the 4.6GHz that the original 3900X features.
That’s not a huge jump in specs, but because of the strong IPC (instructions per clock) performance ofAMD Zen 2, it should lead to some substantial gains, especially in games.
Either way, we won’t know whether these chips exist until AMD confirms it, and even ifthey do exist,they could just exist as an OEM option for prebuilt gaming PCs. So, don’t get too excited just yet.
Temper expectations
While we would love to see AMD provide some more powerful processors, especially if the chips fall within the same price range as the existing silicon, it’s important to note that they won’t bethat much better.
A 200MHz jump in clock speed is substantial, but it’s not enough to suddenly make anyone’s Ryzen 3000-equippedgaming PCirrelevant. According to these rumors, this would be a 4% jump in clock speed while maintaining the same core counts and TDP (thermal design power). So, if you already have a PC with one of Team Red’s latest chips, you have no real reason to pick one of these up.
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However, for folks that were on the fence about upgrading to the most recent processors, these chips, if real, would be an excellent choice – more performance is never a bad thing.
Keep in mind that theAMD Ryzen 4000CPU is likely right around the corner, so investing in what’s essentially last year’s tech right now may not be the best idea in the world. This all kind of puts these XT processors in a weird spot.
If we’re to put our speculation hats on for a second, we could see these processors acting as a special anniversary edition of the Ryzen 3000 processors – the only leaks so far have been of the most popular chips in the lineup. All the AMD rumors are pointing to a late 2020 launch for Ryzen 4000, so a limited anniversary run would make a lot of sense.Inteldid it last year with theCore i9-9900KS, so this could be AMD taking a similar approach.
We’ll see what these AMD chips look like when we get a solid announcement, but it’s equally possible that these processors will never actually see the light of day.
Bill Thomas (Twitter) is TechRadar’s computing editor. They are fat, queer and extremely online. Computers are the devil, but they just happen to be a satanist. If you need to know anything about computing components, PC gaming or the best laptop on the market, don’t be afraid to drop them a line on Twitter or through email.
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