Friday, May 22nd 2020
AMD Readies 3rd Gen Ryzen "Matisse Refresh" Ryzen 7 3850X and 3750X Processors
AMD is planning to immediately update its product stack to counter the Intel 10th gen Core "Comet Lake-S" desktop processor family. Codenamed "Matisse Refresh," the processor will use existing IP, based on the 7 nm "Zen 2" microarchitecture, but could improve in areas such as clock-speeds. As it now stands, the Ryzen 9 3900X appears unfazed by the i9-10900K and i7-10700K at its new $410 price, however, competitiveness of the 3800X and 3700X could buckle under pressure from the i7-10700 series (K, KF, non-K, and F), as well as the Core i5-10600 series. To this effect, we're hearing rumors of a "Ryzen 7 3750X" and "Ryzen 7 3850X" seeing the light of the day soon, with an early-June announcement, and early-July market availability. References to the 3750X date back to October 2019.
Rumors of "Matisse Refresh" gained traction when WCCFTech editor Hassan Mujtaba tweeted a slide from a GIGABYTE AMD B550 motherboard series pre-launch presentation, which references GIGABYTE's own interpretation of AMD's roadmap. It lists out every CPU microarchitecture for the AM4 platform, and right next to "Matisse" is "& Refresh," confirming that "Matisse Refresh" is real. A microarchitecture "refresh" needn't even involve any physical changes to the processor design, core-counts, or architecture, and can sometimes even indicate something as simple as a second major wave of SKUs that replace existing SKUs in the market, leading to their phase-out (eg: Intel "Haswell Refresh" retaining the 4th gen Core model numbering). The slide also adds weight to the theory that desktop "Renoir," like its mobile counterpart, lacks PCIe gen 4.0. The slide also talks about AMD introducing the entry-level A520 desktop chipset in August, which will support PCIe gen 4 when paired with a capable processor.
Sources:
Hassan Mujtaba (Twitter), VideoCardz, HXL aka 9550pro (Twitter)
Rumors of "Matisse Refresh" gained traction when WCCFTech editor Hassan Mujtaba tweeted a slide from a GIGABYTE AMD B550 motherboard series pre-launch presentation, which references GIGABYTE's own interpretation of AMD's roadmap. It lists out every CPU microarchitecture for the AM4 platform, and right next to "Matisse" is "& Refresh," confirming that "Matisse Refresh" is real. A microarchitecture "refresh" needn't even involve any physical changes to the processor design, core-counts, or architecture, and can sometimes even indicate something as simple as a second major wave of SKUs that replace existing SKUs in the market, leading to their phase-out (eg: Intel "Haswell Refresh" retaining the 4th gen Core model numbering). The slide also adds weight to the theory that desktop "Renoir," like its mobile counterpart, lacks PCIe gen 4.0. The slide also talks about AMD introducing the entry-level A520 desktop chipset in August, which will support PCIe gen 4 when paired with a capable processor.
62 Comments on AMD Readies 3rd Gen Ryzen "Matisse Refresh" Ryzen 7 3850X and 3750X Processors
I mean, adding a plus to each process seems like the status quo now - I'll presume TSMC have been working on improvements to their 7nm node for a while now....
I wouldn't rule out the possibility of twin 4+0 chiplets even if it seems a bit unlikely at this stage. If anything given what I just said I believe it's likely we'll see more SKU variety from AMD in the future because they've got the flexibility to leverage it much like Nvidia for years on the GPU side has had a array of slightly differing segmented SKU's AMD could mimic that same approach rather trivially with it's chiplets to it's advantage. They've got a clear design win they've come up with right now that Intel doesn't have a immediate answer to quite yet though something is inevitably in the works.
I still think another very interesting and novel thing AMD could do is discrete PCIe add in cards that are APU based or even CPU based. I think with the APU route it would be make sense is if they did the affinity fabric approach like they are doing on the new Radeon Pro cards. What would be rather neat is if AMD bought out Romex Software and integrated it at the hardware and software level as discrete PCIe add in cards that matted a AMD chiplet, M.2, and LPDDR slot together and did read caching of the M.2 with it. Now best yet all of it could be done with no CPU or memory overhead to your main CPU and system memory and they could even have it bridge to Radeon GPU cards over infinity fabric. That would be a great acquisition play on AMD's part. That could all easily fit in a slim single slot PCIe card slot.
Thus, speculation time: does the release of these Zen 2 parts, so close to the supposed Zen 3 launch date - imply that Zen 3 is going to be delayed? No prob, I assume they are both 8c/16t as their predecessors, just wanted to confirm. That's a very specific upper bound, why not just go with 20%?
I'll pass unless these are all 4.5ghz+ cpus.
100MHz bump and a corresponding price reduction won't change too much given that the market prices for 3700X and 3800X are discounted almost everywhere but for reviewers and streamers who often talk about MSRPs that has a fairly big impact on the perceived value for money.
Almost all of these existing product re-brand excercises from Intel, AMD, Nvidia are more about marketing and market-posturing then they are about the actual substance of the product. Even if the product is underwhelming it's good for the consumer as the "old" SKUs get put on clearance deals to get rid of inventory and the prices/performance metrics usually move in the consumers' favour of "more performance, same price" or "same performance, lower price". It's a win-win for everyone except the competing manufacturer, usually.
I see them holding onto limited zen3 production for the server space while using the maturity gained on zen2 to provide a meaningful challenge to Intel's releases.
Sure I wouldn't upgrade nor would most.
But the same applies to 9900k typical owner's.
However it could be a choice for older system owner's.
Plus Intel are clearly sandbagging rocket lake , trying to get some competitive bins built up.
So AMD needs an answer to comet lake yet also needs to reserve an answer for rocket lake.
Hopefully I got my lakes right but you know what I'm saying.
Delays yes hopefully not long one's.
We all already knew what these xx50 will bring, and overclocked version of xx00, need more juice, excessive heat all for the sake of 5 fps.
Anyway, I don't see why all the complaints, if AMD gives you 100-200MHz more for the same price because the process has matured, what's not to like? If you don't need a processor right now, don't buy, but if you need one, having more choice can only be better.
It makes perfect sense from economical standpoint as long as there is demand.
Don't buy but wait for the new generation!
For me personally it's not enough of an upgrade, but for somebody with a b350 r1300 combo, maybe a 3850x would sound like the good option, no need to dump the mobo, and sufficient performance for the next generation of games.
Honestly it could even work for me depending on what I feel like doing. I upgraded from my Core i7 2700k and HD7950 a week ago with Ryzen 1600AF and RX 5500xt and Asrock b450m Pro because they were so cheap and something was giving issues on old setup. Now I can either get one of these July chips or Just go balls deep with Zen 3. I have a good amount of choices.
"TSMC in its quarterly earnings call expressed confidence in that most of its 7 nm (N7) process production node customers would be looking to make the transition to their 6 nm (N6) process. In fact, the company expects that node to become the biggest target for volume ordering (and thus production) amongst its customers, since the new N6 fabrication technology will bring about a sort of "backwards compatibility" with design tools and semiconductor designs that manufacturers have already invested in for its N7 node, thus allowing for cost savings for its clients. " www.techpowerup.com/255097/tsmc-expects-most-7nm-customers-to-move-to-6nm-density
But otherwise, yeah, choice is great, as long as the price-performance ratio is improving, we should all be happy, even if we're not buying right away. It just means the market is going in the right direction for when we will.
And there's another reason AMD might need this refresh, the new 10600K from Intel seems like a good buy for gamers, so they need to respond. competition is great for users.
Ryzen 4000 will be Zen 3 on N7P or N7+.
While Ryzen 5000 will be Zen 4 on N5 (or N6).