Friday, June 16th 2023
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X3D & 5900X3D Historical Prototypes Demoed in Gamers Nexus Video
Gamers Nexus has uploaded a video feature dedicated to the history of AMD's Zen CPU architecture—editor-in-chief and founder Stephen Burke ventured to Team Red's Austin, Texas-based test and engineering campus. Longer and more in-depth coverage of his lab tour will be released at a later date, but today's upload included an interesting segment covering unreleased hardware. The Gamers Nexus crew spent some time looking at several examples of current and past generation AMD 3D V-Cache CPUs. Prototype Ryzen 7000-series Zen 4 designs were shown off by principal engineer Amit Mehra and technical team member Bill Alverson. They also brought out older 5000-series Zen 3 units that never reached retail—the 16-core Ryzen 9 5950X3D was demonstrated as having a 3.5 GHz base clock, and it can boost up to 4.1 GHz. The 12-core Ryzen 9 5900X3D had 3.5 GHz base and 4.4 GHz boost clocks.
Team Red only sells one AM4 3D V-Cache model at the moment, in the form of its well received Ryzen 7 5800X3D CPU. It was released over a year ago, but recent price cuts have resulted in increased unit sales—system builders looking to maximize the potential of their older generation Ryzen 5000-series compatible mainboards are snapping up 5800X3Ds. AMD could be readying a cheaper alternative, with previous reports proposing that a "Ryzen 5 5600X3D" is positioned to take on Intel's 13th Gen Core i5 series (with DDR4). The unreleased Ryzen 9 5950X3D and 5900X3D have 3D V-Cache stacks on both of their CCDs (granting 192 MB of L3 cache), which is unique given that all retail 3D V-Cache CPUs (released so far) restrict this to a single CCD stack. Apparently AMD decided to stick with the latter setup due to it offering the best balance of performance and efficiency, plus gaming benchmarks demonstrated that there was not much of a difference between the configurations.
The Gamers Nexus video description states: "This didn't make the final cut for our upcoming, in-depth lab tour of AMD's testing & engineering campus in Austin, Texas, but the stories told (and the unreleased products shown) were too interesting to cut entirely -- so we branched out the discussion."
It continues: "This (video) covers some of AMD Zen's history from a side conversation with Amit Mehra and Bill Alverson at AMD, discussing the many challenges of initial bring-up, products that get pitched and some that don't make it to market, and how Zen almost didn't make the original showing in 2016. AMD's Ryzen CPUs launched to the public in 2017, but this content looks at the behind-the-scenes of what led up to that launch."
Sources:
Gamers Nexus YouTube Channel, Wccftech
Team Red only sells one AM4 3D V-Cache model at the moment, in the form of its well received Ryzen 7 5800X3D CPU. It was released over a year ago, but recent price cuts have resulted in increased unit sales—system builders looking to maximize the potential of their older generation Ryzen 5000-series compatible mainboards are snapping up 5800X3Ds. AMD could be readying a cheaper alternative, with previous reports proposing that a "Ryzen 5 5600X3D" is positioned to take on Intel's 13th Gen Core i5 series (with DDR4). The unreleased Ryzen 9 5950X3D and 5900X3D have 3D V-Cache stacks on both of their CCDs (granting 192 MB of L3 cache), which is unique given that all retail 3D V-Cache CPUs (released so far) restrict this to a single CCD stack. Apparently AMD decided to stick with the latter setup due to it offering the best balance of performance and efficiency, plus gaming benchmarks demonstrated that there was not much of a difference between the configurations.
It continues: "This (video) covers some of AMD Zen's history from a side conversation with Amit Mehra and Bill Alverson at AMD, discussing the many challenges of initial bring-up, products that get pitched and some that don't make it to market, and how Zen almost didn't make the original showing in 2016. AMD's Ryzen CPUs launched to the public in 2017, but this content looks at the behind-the-scenes of what led up to that launch."
39 Comments on AMD Ryzen 9 5950X3D & 5900X3D Historical Prototypes Demoed in Gamers Nexus Video
Bring out the 56003D and I will mist probably but it tomorrow if the price is right.
I am surprised they didn't do a dual CCD 3D cache - would be really interested to see how these stack up
What I would love to see in maybe the HEDT space is something like a 4 channel 4 X3D CCD layout as there would be enough horsepower in workstation loads while not impacting serious datacenter marketshare with limited core/memory counts but enough for serious workstation setups to be worth the extra cost.
Forget AM4 and hypotheticals 5950X3D etc. Having a 4090, Zen 4 is the only option.
Although I'd love for them to just go dual X3D CCDs, picking the top efficient bins of 5800X3D CCDs.
In the video they also shown the 64-core Threadripper 5990X "Chagall" processor (Milan HEDT) that they never released before pulling the rug under TRX40 chipset adopters, as well as a revision A0 sample of Zen 1 from the very first tray. It's been an enlightening video to watch, but to me, more of heavy confirmation bias towards one of the multiple grudges I've accrued with AMD over time.
If you had a 4080 like me, it would make some sense, meaning that you don't want to lose the 16 cores while you get the 3D cache for gaming and wherever else is useful.
But pairing a 4090 with anything else than the latest and greatest?....
I'm not sure if the 5950X3D would be that good.
The 7950X3D has double L2, miles higher operating frequencies and boosts and comes with DDR5....
You have to find a very specific bench/task that uses as much cache as possible to make the latter fall in front of the 5950X3D.
Actually i hope they will make a much like Zen 4 3d setup. Meaning 1 3d cashe chiplet and one with out. This will give the best mixed gaming performance and workstation.
Reason is that not all games can use the 3d cashe to it's advantage and is better of with higher core clock.
So with a normal and a 3d-cashe ccd in one package. You can all ways get the best out of the game by using the that ccd best suited for the particular game. With a normal ccd also means you csn still have hight core boost on one ccd.
2 ccd both with 3d-cashe will only raise the price and lower the workstation performance even more do to lower core clock and not many things outside games really benefits from the ekstra v-cashe.
That's my reasoning for why I would rather like that setup. Well also because the cpu will be locket and so you can't do much to raise core clock your self.