AMD Brings Ryzen 9 3900 and Ryzen 5 3500X To Life
by Dr. Ian Cutress on October 8, 2019 5:20 PM EST
Seemingly always with AMD’s product portfolio, there is a persistent drip of new products being inserted into the product stack throughout the lifetime of a given generation of hardware. Aside from the five Ryzen 3000 series processors launched back in July, we are expecting a new 16-core flagship on top of that list come in November. Until then, AMD has inserted two new processors: one for worldwide consumption, and another for the Chinese OEM market only.
AMD’s Zen 2 platform has been a source of major success for the company, both in its consumer form as Ryzen 3000 ‘Matisse’ parts, and its server based EPYC 7002 series ‘Rome’ hardware. Being the first x86 platform on 7nm, affording significant reductions in power, as well as going above and beyond the mainstream raw performance-per-clock from Intel, has accelerated the fortunes of AMD and pushed the company into being major players in consumer and enterprise, despite being a fraction of the size.
As with any product portfolio, the diversity of offerings is key to attaching to the various markets. Making that also align with manufacturing strategies for performance and stock levels becomes a tricky business, and throughout the life cycle of a platform, companies often launch new parts to satisfy demand. To this end, AMD is launching a lower power 12-core Ryzen 9 3900 into the world-wide market for system integrators, and a Chinese market OEM-only Ryzen 5 3500X for lower cost implementations.
| AMD 'Matisse' Ryzen 3000 Series CPUs | |||||||||||
| AnandTech | Cores Threads |
Base Freq |
Boost Freq |
L2 Cache |
L3 Cache |
PCIe 4.0 |
Chiplets IO+CPU |
TDP | Price (SEP) |
||
| Ryzen 9 | 3950X | 16C | 32T | 3.5 | 4.7 | 8 MB | 64 MB | 16+4+4 | 1+2 | 105W | $749 |
| Ryzen 9 | 3900X | 12C | 24T | 3.8 | 4.6 | 6 MB | 64 MB | 16+4+4 | 1+2 | 105W | $499 |
| Ryzen 9 | 3900 | 12C | 24T | 3.1 | 4.3 | 6 MB | 64 MB | 16+4+4 | 1+2 | 65W | - |
| Ryzen 7 | 3800X | 8C | 16T | 3.9 | 4.5 | 4 MB | 32 MB | 16+4+4 | 1+1 | 105W | $399 |
| Ryzen 7 | 3700X | 8C | 16T | 3.6 | 4.4 | 4 MB | 32 MB | 16+4+4 | 1+1 | 65W | $329 |
| Ryzen 5 | 3600X | 6C | 12T | 3.8 | 4.4 | 3 MB | 32 MB | 16+4+4 | 1+1 | 95W | $249 |
| Ryzen 5 | 3600 | 6C | 12T | 3.6 | 4.2 | 3 MB | 32 MB | 16+4+4 | 1+1 | 65W | $199 |
| Ryzen 5 | 3500X | 6C | 6T | 3.6 | 4.1 | 3 MB | 32 MB | 16+4+4 | 1+1 | 65W | - |
The Ryzen 9 3900, in order to match its lower 65W TDP, has a lower base clock than the 3900X and a slightly lower single-core turbo frequency. There will also be a corresponding Ryzen 9 Pro 3900 CPU for business use.
For the Ryzen 5 3500X, despite sending us an email telling us about its launch, AMD hasn’t actually given any specifications on it. (Edit: AMD does have specifications on the 3500X - on the Chinese website). Other PC manufacturers have listed the Ryzen 5 3500 (non-X), so it will be interesting to see if AMD acknowledges its existence.
Having OEM-only processors isn’t new for AMD. In the last generation AMD launched the Ryzen 5 2500X and the Ryzen 3 2300X into the pre-built and system integrator market, with no retail packaging or focus. Personally I’d love to see these for sale somewhere at retail as chip-only, even if it was through AMD itself.
As these new CPUs are OEM parts, as with previous OEM hardware, AMD doesn’t give official pricing on them. The Ryzen 5 3500X is China-only at this point, but we would expect it to be cheaper than the 3600. Similarly with the Ryzen 9 3900, one would expect it to sit between the 3900X and 3800X in pricing. Given reports about the lack of Ryzen 9 3900X on shelves at this point, or inflated pricing where available, it would be interesting to hear how many of these parts are actually available to OEMs and system integrator partners.
Related Reading
- AMD Announces Ryzen Pro 3000 Series CPUs For Q4
- AMD Ryzen 9 3900: A 12-Core 65W CPU Listed
- AMD Ryzen 5 3500 & 3500X Support Spotted
- AMD: Next Gen Threadripper and Ryzen 9 3950X, Coming November
- The AMD 3rd Gen Ryzen Deep Dive Review: 3700X and 3900X Raising The Bar
- All Ryzen: Q&A with AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su
- Fireside Chat with Ian and Wendell: Ryzen 3000, Zen 2, Navi, Xeon W
- AMD Zen 2 Microarchitecture Analysis: Ryzen 3000 and EPYC Rome
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PranavS - Wednesday, October 9, 2019 - link
Ian, on the Ryzen 5 3500, most PC component retailers here in India have already listed it for orders:https://www.primeabgb.com/online-price-reviews-ind...
https://www.vedantcomputers.com/amd-ryzen-5-3500-p...
https://mdcomputers.in/amd-hexa-core-ryzen-5-3500....
No mention whatsoever of the 3500X. Could be that the 3500 is India-specific like the 3500X is for China. Worth looking into.
PranavS - Wednesday, October 9, 2019 - link
Also, the 3500 here undercuts the 9400F, which in India is considerably cheaper than even the 2600, let alone the 3600. The only Ryzen six-core that was cheaper than the 9400F was the old 1600.brakdoo - Wednesday, October 9, 2019 - link
1. India is not a big enough market for PCs to do that.2. 3500 based systems are available or listed in europe.
PranavS - Wednesday, October 9, 2019 - link
1. Very true.2. Right. But retail chips too?
I'm not sure why AMD is being so quiet about this. 3500/3500X seem eminently marketable.
DanNeely - Wednesday, October 9, 2019 - link
Interestingly those list the 3500 at the same 4.1/3.6ghz as the article lists the 3500x; just with a cut down 16mb of l3 instead of 32mb. The smaller cache size makes the 3500 an obvious die harvest part. Depending on how many bad dies they have in that config it could end up India only - or limited regional availability - just because they don't have enough parts with that failure pattern available. How oir If AMD pushes down the stack with more modestly spced parts will help answer that over the next few months.Jan68 - Wednesday, October 9, 2019 - link
The way i see it. AMD has problems delivering 3900x due to design/production problems. To mitigate the current problems they tap out the 3900. 2020 is getting an interesting year for us.Korguz - Wednesday, October 9, 2019 - link
problem delivering 3900x ?? maybe where you are, where i would order from, no issues here, still available, and i dont recal them being out of stock.GreenReaper - Wednesday, October 9, 2019 - link
The 3900 is a different product for a market which wants a more efficient CPU (or, at least, one which fits within a particular power envelope) with a lot of cores.Not sure it'll even sell for *that* much less than the 3900X (which is a good deal for the cores) - although I wouldn't be surprised if the chiplets aren't quite as good as the ones in the 3900X.
Valantar - Wednesday, October 9, 2019 - link
Too bad the 3900 is OEM only, that 65W TDP (even if it pulls ~100W when turboing) would make it incredibly attractive for home server/NAS use. Quite the beastly media server, with some serious transcoding chops.juergbi - Wednesday, October 9, 2019 - link
Yes, it would have been nice if it wasn't OEM only. However, you can also limit the power consumption of 3900X by setting PPT to 88W (the stock setting for 65W TDP CPUs). You have to pay the full price of the 3900X but you will also get slightly higher single core boost.