AMD’s next batch of CPUs will be launching on July 7. If you have been planning a new build, it might very well be worth waiting for these.
So the rumors were true, and July 7 is the day that the new 7nm CPUs from AMD will become available to purchase. The new CPUs are built with AMD’s Zen 2 architecture, using either one or two 7nm chiplets paired with a singular 14nm chiplet. The CPUs also come in a range of core counts and clock speeds, but there is a bit more going on here that needs to be considered.
| Ryzen 9 3900x | Ryzen 7 3800x | Ryzen 7 3700x | |
| Cores/threads | 12/24 | 8/16 | 8/16 |
| Boost Clock | 4.6Ghz | 4.5Ghz | 4.4Ghz |
| Base Clock | 3.8Ghz | 3.9Ghz | 3.6Ghz |
| TPD | 105W | 105W | 65W |
| Cache | 70MB | 36MB | 36MB |
| Price | $499 | $399 | $329 |
IPC has been increased by 15% with Zen 2, and cache size has been increased by around 100%. IPC, or instructions per clock, tell us how many things a CPU can do in one clock cycle. While most people will focus on clock speed, especially max clock speed in a single core, as being indicative of a CPU’s strength and suitability for gaming, IPC is very important as the CPU can do more work within the same clock cycle at that clock speed.
The cache size increase is also good news, as it means more information is stored in a much quicker to access area for the CPU, which should once again lead to an improvement in performance in the game.
All we have to go on right now are some graphs that AMD showed off at Computex, but quite frankly I don’t like trusting graphs from hardware makers as they can very often be focused on certain factors that favor the product. I’ll be waiting until the chips get out in the world and people get to review them and put them under actual real-world workloads before deciding what to do about my next build.
