AMD blows minds with a 16-core 7nm gaming CPU that works like any other Ryzen

[kalel01]

The $750 Ryzen 9 3950X is coming this September, and it fits into an AM4 motherboard

Gaming hardware tends to take a backseat at the yearly E3 trade show, with new titles getting the bulk of news coverage. But AMD is making a splash by showing off its latest Ryzen desktop CPU designs, aimed squarely at PC gamers.

The third generation of Ryzen dedicated CPUs come with more efficient 7-nanometer designs, and the usual boosts in speed, cache, et cetera. Prices range from just $200 for the Ryzen 5 3600X all the way up to $750 for the Ryzen 9 3950X, which boasts no less than 16 cores, 32 threads, and 72MB of cache.

But that’s all pretty par for the course. What’s most impressive about these newly-announced chips is that, despite the boost in performance and a shift to a new manufacturing process, all of the work on the existing AM4 socket design. AMD’s AM4 standard has been popular with budget builders, and in service since the first-gen Ryzen chips hit the market in 2016. The newest Ryzen chips stay compatible with the old standard due to some ingenious and very intentional fabrication design.

Now those same builders have access to the latest chips, and quite a lot of flexibility in terms of price and performance. AMD’s desktop chip line isn’t entirely limited to the AM4 socket—the ultra-powerful “Threadripper” chips still need a different standard. But the practical upside is that, if you want, you can use the $80 AMD motherboard you bought for a tiny budget machine three years ago for a polygon-pushing powerhouse gaming PC later this year with very few compromises.

The latest batch of Ryzen chips will be available between July and September of this year. At E3, AMD said it intends to keep the AM4 socket standard going into 2020 at the very least. Take that, Intel.