AMD Gives Sneak Peek At 7nm Ryzen 3000 Zen 2 Desktop CPUs At CES 2019

While leaked information had suggested that there would be SKUs with up to 16 cores and 32 threads, there was no mention of such multi-core craziness today. Instead, Su only mentioned that there would be chips available with up to 8 cores and 16 threads. In fact, on display was a prototype 8-core Ryzen 3000 system that was pitted against a Core i9-9900K -- Intel's current top enthusiast-class processor.

In the Cinebench R15 demo, the Ryzen 3000 system was shown keeping pace with its rival at stock speeds, while showing greatly lower overall power consumption (as you would expect with a 7nm chip versus a 14nm chip). While the two systems finished the Cinebench R15 benchmark with similar scores, the AMD system consumed an average 133 watts while the Core i9-9900K averaged 179 watts.

With its 7nm process, we should expect to see higher clock speeds, increased power efficiency and an IPC increase (somewhere between a 12 to 15 percent uplift) compared to the 12nm Zen+ Ryzen 2000 desktop CPUs that launched in mid-2018. You can already see the power efficiency gains reaped compared to Intel's flagship enthusiast-focused Core processor.

AMD is using a chiplet design for Ryzen 3000, and the larger of the two dies that you see is actually that I/O die. The smaller one is the actual 7nm Zen 2 die. We're taking a wild guess here, but it's highly likely that the bigger I/O core is manufactured using a larger process node (14nm??). With that being said, we should expect to see a new chipset to take advantage of the new features with Ryzen 3000 (X570 has been rumored) including native support for PCIe 4.0. We should note, however, that the processors will be compatible with existing 300- and 400-Series AM4 motherboards.

We expect to hear more about Ryzen 3000 in the coming months, and we'll be waiting for the inevitable specs and benchmark leaks.