AMD 12-Core Ryzen 9 3900X Zen 2 CPU Smokes Core i9-9900K, Even Threadripper In Benchmark Leak
However, AMD is gunning for Intel in a big way with its lineup of Zen 2-based Ryzen 3000 processors. We've already seen a number of overclocked benchmarks for the top dog Ryzen 9 3950X, but now we're getting some stock numbers for the 12-core/24-thread Ryzen 9 3900X which sits just below it in AMD's processor hierarchy.
New Geekbench results discovered by TUM_APISAK show that this 12-core beast is more than a match for the Core i9-9900K in peformance, while also matching it in price (both have an MSRP of around $500). The Ryzen 9 3900X manages to score 5905 in the single-threaded benchmark, which is just shy of the Core i9-9900K's 6074.
However, AMD really turns on the heat in multi-core performance. Thanks to the additional cores afforded by its efficient Zen 2 architecture and core optimizations compared to Zen+, the Ryzen 9 3900X throws down the gauntlet with a multi-core score of 44849 compared to 32393 for the Core i9-9900K. The Ryzen 9 3900X even manages to embarrass the Ryzen Threadripper 2950X, which is a 16-core/32-thread processor.
The Ryzen 9 3900X in question was running on a Gigabyte X570 Aorus Master motherboard with 16GB of RAM onboard.
Intel clearly see the Ryzen 3000 family as a competitive threat, as witnessed by a memo posted to the company's internal Circuit News portal entitled "AMD competitive profile: Where we go toe-to-toe, why they are resurgent, which chips of ours beat theirs". In the memo, Intel made the case for how AMD is executing so well with its desktop and datacenter processors and how it should respond.
"Intel 9th Gen Core processors are likely to lead AMD's Ryzen-based products on lightly threaded productivity benchmarks as well as many gaming benchmarks," wrote Circuit News Managing Editor Walden Kirsch. "For multi-threaded workloads, such as heavy content creation workloads, AMD's Matisse is expected to lead."
Steve Collins, Director of Intel's Data-centric Competitive Assessment Group, expounded on AMD's advantages, stating:
AMD made improvements in their 2nd generation Zen core and their disaggregated chiplet-based architecture scales cores efficiently. Therefore, on workloads that are heavily threaded, including heavy content creation and most server workloads, they'll get great performance results. And on price, we expect their pricing to be significantly below ours. So they'll likely get good performance-per-dollar. That's what they're going to compete on, and that's the risk to Intel.
AMD's Ryzen 3000 family of products will launch on July 7th. The flagship Ryzen 9 3950X won't arrive until September, however.
