Thursday, August 6th 2020
AMD Ryzen 9 4950X "Vermeer" Tested, the Sample Boosts to 4.8 GHz
AMD is preparing to launch its next-generation Ryzen 4000 series of desktop processors based on Zen 3 architecture, codenamed Vermeer. Thanks to the sources over at Igor's Lab, we have some new information about the clock speeds of a rumored Ryzen 9 4950X Vermeer model. Featuring 16 cores and 32 threads, the Ryzen 9 4950X is reportedly going to feature boost frequency of at least 4.8 GHz. Given that this is only an engineering sample, the final frequencies could be higher. In the report, the base frequency of the CPU is said to be 3.5 GHz. This is a very good frequency for a CPU that has that many cores. All of this information is coming from decoding the OPN code which states "100-000000059-52_ 48/35 _ Y". The 48 number indicates the boost, and 35 the base frequency. In the previous reports, we got OPN codes "100-000000059-14_46/37_Y" and "100-000000059-15_46/37_N" which suggested 4.6 GHz boost and base of 3.5 GHz, indicating that this is a new stepping.
Sources:
Igor's Lab, VideoCardz
74 Comments on AMD Ryzen 9 4950X "Vermeer" Tested, the Sample Boosts to 4.8 GHz
Materials research does and is taking time, but at the end of the day market realities will truly decide when we see such things.
For example, TSMC's 5nm will very likely exceed 5ghz easily. Intel is at 5ghz and just beyond right now with 14nm. 12nm/10nm/7nm is going to produce IC's with stable speeds in excess of the 5ghz mark. This is the next 1, 2 or 3 years. Intel will get their butt's in gear and answer AMD's Ryzen. The next few years for CPU's/chipsets/GPU's are going be interesting if not flat out exciting!
Everyone wanting to see the mythical 5Ghz Boost clocks will most likely have to wait until Zen 4 on 5nm.
Most of the advantages of nanowire gates will take many years of continuous process improvement to realise too.
They're are also still too many process constraints to making EUV chips that need to be resolved and worked through too see Intel for proof.
Again an opinion.
I ran my fx8350 at 5Kmhz and I swapped that out after five years service years ago now!?.
I wonder if any L2 cache increases are on the horizon (for Zen4+). Seems somewhat unnecessary with such a large L3 victim pool, but there's always a latency cost when fetching evicted data from L3 and L2 is more localized to each core. Prefetchers are likely updated, since they're going through 2x total L3 cache space vs Zen 2. MicroOp cache increased too? Guess we'll find out soon. Should be a decent overhaul.
Coupled with high enough IPC improvement, this could turn out to be really exciting launch.
But still... can it beat Renoir's efficiency and performance at the same TDP?
They're probably going to have to build a lot of stuff at Samsung in the coming years, with their fabs either doing mostly or exclusively solid state memory (which they make massive profits from). If they stuck to their own fabs for processors & GPUs, realistically they might only just beat AMD's 3nm products to market with their 7nm, since further delays to their 7nm are almost inevitable ... and as you'd expect, the performance and efficiency delta would be laughable.
Why not throw in half the heat output for the win too.
gpu is a bit disappointing but it's clearly not the emphasis on the renoir platform, hopefully they will come with one :D
That said, I'm mildly optimistic about the 4000 series CPUs and looking forward to the 4960/70X Threadrippers - providing I can get a decent board.
However, we're off-topic. Let's rope it in shall we...