AMD could be planning a surprise launch of several ‘refreshed’ processors to counter Intel’s recent launch of its 10th Gen CPUs. The new models claimed to be the Ryzen 9 3900 XT, Ryzen 7 3800 XT, and Ryzen 5 3600 XT by a supposed source of Wccftech, will feature higher frequencies as standard plus more aggressive boosting as well as higher overclocking potential.
However, under the hood they will still be ‘Matisse’ processors and use the 7nm Zen 2 architecture. The reasoning behind the move, if true, is curious. AMD is expected to launch its own 4th Gen Ryzen ‘Zen 3’ processors later this year and a long way before Christmas too. Many enthusiasts, especially AMD fans, have actually been dismissing Intel’s launch given Zen 3 is expected soon too. This begs the question of AMD, then, why now?
The Core i9-10900K offers superb gaming performance and is no slouch in multi-threaded tasks, but it maybe didn’t wow some enthusiasts given it failed to offer good value in some areas compared to AMD’s Ryzen 9 3900X. The Core i5-10600K, on the other hand, is vastly superior to the Core i5-9600K it replaces, offers excellent performance in games, and is a match for AMD in multi-threaded tasks, outperforming the Ryzen 5 3600X by wide margins in some tests once overclocked too and is a surprisingly attractive proposition.
The Ryzen 7 3800 XT and Ryzen 5 3600 XT are undoubtedly aimed at toppling Intel’s competition in the six and eight-core range and the Ryzen 9 3900 XT might be aiming to reassert AMD’s single-threaded and multi-threaded performance dominance and trying to make the Core i9-10900K look like poor value. If AMD does launch the CPUs, they may even push the price of the current non XT models down, although some including the Ryzen 9 3900X have already fallen in value recently ahead of Intel’s 10th Gen launch.
With AMD expected to reveal details of Zen 3 within the next 4-6 months, if this rumor is true we can expect to hear more about it very soon.