AMD Releasing “Zen 3” CPUs on Nov. 5: Flagship Ryzen 9 5950X (16C/32T) to Cost $799

[northrop]

 

[Armenius]

 

[Grimlakin]

Lol those are great!!

 

[Dan_D]

I had no reservations about this CPU. It came out focused on the area’s it was the weakest and that’s great. Benches are hopefully coming soon and let’s just say I’m ready for a 5950X long as the benchmarks confirm the presentation.
Edit: on second thought even a 5900X

AMD has been pretty straight forward and honest about how they've represented Ryzen since it's original launch. I have little doubt that what AMD said is at least, generally true. I'd be surprised if the benchmarks didn't confirm what AMD showed us in the presentation. The Radeon group however, is another story. I have little doubt what we saw was a best case scenario for their benchmarks.

 

[Armenius]

 

[Dan_D]

Snip...........

So true.

 

[Endgame]

Any chance of early reviews using both x570 and x470? I plan on building one new system and upgrading my old 2700x system with ROG Stryx X470-F Gaming MB. I would love to put a 5950x in both systems, but I don’t know if dropping that CPU in the Stryx is a good idea.

 

[Dan_D]

Any chance of early reviews using both x570 and x470? I plan on building one new system and upgrading my old 2700x system with ROG Stryx X470-F Gaming MB. I would love to put a 5950x in both systems, but I don’t know if dropping that CPU in the Stryx is a good idea.

There won't be an early review. If we get sampled we will be under an NDA which comes with an embargo date on all information pertaining to the CPU. So while we may have them as much as two weeks in advance of the embargo date, we'll pretty much be silent at that point.

As for reviewing on X470 and X570, that won't happen for the same reasons we didn't do it with the Ryzen 3000 series. One reason is, there will be a lack of time to get that done. These launch reviews are brutal. There is a lot of testing, troubleshooting, going back and forth to the manufacturer, collating data, and writing a longer and more complex article than we normally do. We have to familiarize ourselves with the new product and how to overclock it and all of that. There is a big learning curve that goes along with everything. Two weeks simply isn't a lot of time. Quite often, its really about 7-10 days to get these articles done.

Secondly, I'm not even sure if I have an X470 motherboard laying around. We could purchase one of course, but it really wouldn't do anything. According to AMD's presentation yesterday, the power envelopes for the 5000 series is identical to that of the 3000 series. If your board could handle a 3950X, it can handle a 5950X. It's pretty much that simple. Lastly, there is literally no point to testing on X470 as the factors that influence a system's performance aren't on the motherboard outside of overclocking. The memory and PCIe controllers are built into the CPU. The PCH has a PCIe controller of course, but it would be the same as operating X570 on PCIe Gen 3.0, which doesn't make much of a difference beyond SSD benchmarks. It won't impact frame rates or CPU benchmark data.

 

[Endgame]

By early review, of course, I meant Day 1 reviews which appears to be a hard no. To add further complications, Anandtech reported that X470 bios support may take until Jan for most boards so it won’t be something I’ll even be able to upgrade right away.

just getting information on Ryzen 3000 performance on older X470 boards is a mess - reviews are frequently from 2018 using 2000 series chips. Getting a comprehensive evaluation of performance and OC capability of a 3950 on a X470 appears to be rare to non existent - 3950 reviews tend to use top end (~$600ish+) X570 boards and very rarely mid range X570 boards.

the 3950 is on the QVL list for the Strix X470 gaming-F so asus says it will work - will it OC to a reasonable amount, who knows? If the 5950X will work will and OC to a reasonable amount is anyone’s guess. Sounds like I’ll get to experiment sometime in Jan.

 

[Dan_D]

By early review, of course, I meant Day 1 reviews which appears to be a hard no.

This is incorrect and not what I meant. It will be a hard yes if we get sampled. Our reviews will be up when the NDA period expires barring any unforeseen events.

To add further complications, Anandtech reported that X470 bios support may take until Jan for most boards so it won’t be something I’ll even be able to upgrade right away.

just getting information on Ryzen 3000 performance on older X470 boards is a mess - reviews are frequently from 2018 using 2000 series chips. Getting a comprehensive evaluation of performance and OC capability of a 3950 on a X470 appears to be rare to non existent - 3950 reviews tend to use top end (~$600ish+) X570 boards and very rarely mid range X570 boards.

the 3950 is on the QVL list for the Strix X470 gaming-F so asus says it will work - will it OC to a reasonable amount, who knows? If the 5950X will work will and OC to a reasonable amount is anyone’s guess. Sounds like I’ll get to experiment sometime in Jan.

Well, Ryzen 3000 series CPU's have similar power envelopes as the 2000 series does, excluding the 12 and 16 core models. However, the Strix X470 Gaming F has a 6+4 phase VRM that's beefy enough. As for overclocking, it can probably handle overclocking a 3950X or 5950X but it might leave some headroom on the table.

Keep in mind though, overclocking isn't really the massive concern it once was unless you are using it for multi-threaded workloads alone. Typically, you are better off leaving it to boost on its own. We've seen pretty sizeable performance losses when overclocking a 3900X or 3950X to 4.2GHz or so in single-threaded or lightly threaded applications. If you want to get into per CCX overclocking, that's a different story, but it's more work than an all core overclock is to achieve.

But again, the performance of X470 boards will be the same as X570 boards. You have to look at their VRM designs to try and determine if they are a good candidate for higher core count CPU's. At stock speeds, you are almost always good to go as long as we aren't talking about bottom of the barrel options such as some of the B350 boards out there.

I forgot about the BIOS though, we did get some X470 updates but I don't think it was for what I had on hand at the time. There wouldn't have been time to do it anyway. I think I had 7 or 8 days to do the testing and the write up. I literally finished two hours before the NDA expired.

 

[David_Schroth]

Secondly, I'm not even sure if I have an X470 motherboard laying around.

I have a couple in inventory here. Not high end examples though.

I think I had 7 or 8 days to do the testing and the write up. I literally finished two hours before the NDA expired.

And the editing process continued for hours after the NDA lifted ;-)

 

[Dan_D]

I have a couple in inventory here. Not high end examples though.



And the editing process continued for hours after the NDA lifted ;-)

I keep hoping every launch that I'll be able to finish it up well ahead of the embargo date so I'm not staying up all night to get the article done. So far, it's only happened one time in 15 years.