As we're coming up on CES, cameos and details (but mostly speculation) on AMD's upcoming Ryzen 3000 series are becoming more and more ubiquitous. Not the least of which is the recent listing of what seems to be AMD's line-up for that same processor series. Based on the 7 nm process, AMD's "Matisse" Ryzen 3000 series will bring about an evolutionary change on the way AMD's processors are arranged, with the "chiplet" approach allowing for an even more streamlined, scalable, cheaper design that can go all the way from a relatively basic 4-core CPU (which could belong to the Athlon range) all the way up to an (allegedly) 16-core Ryzen 9 3800X.

And thus the floodgates are open. The leaked top of the food chain for AMD's Ryzen 3000 series is the Ryzen 9 3800X, which ups the tiers on AMD's lineup to four (Ryzen 3, 5, 7 and 9), and which reportedly ships with an incredible (remember this, if true, is being supported on the AM4 platform) 16-core, 32-thread, 3.9 GHz base, 4.7 GHz boost, and 125 W TDP processor. That's a Threadripper on the consumer segment, and you can bet it will go for much, much less than the original 16-core CPU went for.The Ryzen 7 tier sees an increase to a 12-core, 24-thread design under the new 3000 serie; the Ryzen 7 3700X and 3700 feature the same core counts, but base and boost clocks of 4.2/5.0 GHz and 3.8/4.6 GHz. If true, this means that the 12-core Ryzen 7 3700X would see the highest ever core count and core clock on an AMD Ryzen 7 CPU, by a long margin. The 105 W and 95 W TDP on eachmodel, respectively, pale in comparison to their respective core counts and frequencies.The Ryzen 5 now becomes the baseline for AMD's 8-core CPUs, with the 3600X and 3600 enjoying a 4.0/4.8 GHz and 3.6/4.4 GHz base and boost clocks, respectively. If the leaks are correct, an increase of 400 MHz in the Boost cock for an 8-core, "Matisse" design still requires an additional 30 W TDp headroom over the (expectedly and apparently) better positioned in the frequency/power curve Ryzen 5 3600, with its tightly controlled TDP of 65 W.Finishing up AMD's Ryzen 3000 series lineup would be the 6-core, 12-thread Ryzen 3 3300X and 3300, running at 3.5/4.3 and 3.2/4.0 GHz clocks, in a 65 W and 50 W TDp package, respectively. Hold on to your hats. If these leaks are true (and take them with metric tons of salt), this could get either very ugly, or beautiful.