AMD Ryzen 3000 Series Said to Launch at CES 2019, With 16-Core Ryzen 9 CPU

A Russian e-commerce website has published detailed specifications and prices of what seem to be AMD's upcoming Ryzen 3000-series processor lineup. There appear to be at least seven models, codenamed ‘Matisse' in keeping with AMD's new artist-inspired naming scheme. Most interestingly, AMD seems to have decided to adopt a new tier in its naming scheme, Ryzen 9. This will serve to reposition its highest-end Ryzen desktop CPUs against Intel's new Core i9 brand, which itself was released in response to the strong Ryzen 7 line. It is possible that AMD will formally announce the new Ryzen 3000 series at CES 2019 next week, where CEO Lisa Su will be giving a keynote address for the first time.

The leaked information outlines a fairly robust lineup of seven CPUs – two each in the Ryzen 3, Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 tiers, and one Ryzen 9 model. The information also lines up with an earlier leak published by AdoredTV, though at that time there were rumours of 10 models, including another Ryzen 9 chip and two new Ryzen APU models with integrated Navi graphics.

AMD Ryzen 3000 Series price, features (rumoured)

The listings on the Russian E-Katalog website were spotted by Tom's Hardware. Interestingly, all product tiers get more cores, with the purported Ryzen 9 3800X leading the way with 16 cores and 32 threads. This chip could run at 3.9GHz with a boost speed of 4.7GHz, all in a 125W TDP. If the leaks are accurate, it could be priced at $449 (approximately Rs. 31,500).

The Ryzen 7 models have 12 cores and 24 threads, while the Ryzen 5 tier now has 8 cores and 16 threads, with the entry-level Ryzen 3 models boasting of no less than 6 cores and 12 threads. TDPs range from 50W for the purported 3.2GHz/4GHz Ryzen 3 3300 to 105W for the 4.2GHz/5GHz Ryzen 7 3700X. Prices could start at $99 (approximately Rs. 6,950) and go up to $329 (approximately Rs. 23,100).

These chips will slot into the same Socket AM4 motherboards as all current Ryzen CPUs although there should be some new chipsets to go along with them. AMD has committed to using the same platform for multiple generations to make it easy for owners to upgrade. This would also mean that the company is not transitioning beyond two channels of DDR4 RAM just yet. PCIe 4.0 could be supported on new motherboards, though. All Ryzen CPUs thus far have also been unlocked to allow for easy overclocking.

Such a drastic change would completely upset Intel's current lineup. The company only recently launched its first 8-core Core i9-9900K CPU and stripped Hyper-Threading from its lower-rung offerings, so the Core i7-9700K has 8 cores and the Core i5-9600K has six. Intel is also still struggling with its long-delayed 10nm transition and has instead refined its 14nm architectures several times.

If AMD does announce these chips at CES 2019, it would be a surprisingly early timeframe for the 7nm Zen 2 architecture to debut. The company has previously stated that it would lead with 7nm Epyc server chips in the middle of 2019. The Russian listings do say 7nm, which is one of the biggest reasons to cast doubt on this leak.

We discussed 5G, 8K TVs, Keyboards for Xbox One, and everything else you can expect to see at CES 2019 on Orbital, our weekly technology podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts or RSS, download the episode, or just hit the play button below.