Tuesday, August 13th 2024
AMD Readies Ryzen 5 5500X3D Socket AM4 Processor with 3D V-Cache
If you're on the Socket AM4 platform, AMD is never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert you; never gonna make you cry, never gonna say goodbye, never gonna tell a lie, and hurt you. The company is reportedly giving finishing touches to a firecracker of a sub-$200 chip for price-conscious gamers, the Ryzen 5 5500X3D. That's right, AMD is bringing 3D V-cache technology to the mid-range, with a new 6-core processor based on the "Zen 3" microarchitecture, but enjoying the gaming performance boost from 96 MB of L3 cache on tap.
AMD already has a 6-core X3D Socket AM4 chip, the Ryzen 5 5600X3D, which joined the product stack a couple of years after AMD's original Ryzen 7 5800X3D took the gaming PC processor scene by storm, matching the then swanky new Core i9-12900K "Alder Lake" despite being based on an older-generation "Zen 3" architecture. Not much else is known about the 5500X3D, except that it could have a lower clock speed than the 5600X3D. Back in November 2023, when news of the 5700X3D first hit the scene, the 5500X3D was rumored to be a 6-core/12-thread chip with 3.00 GHz base frequency and 4.00 GHz maximum boost, compared to the 3.30 GHz base and 4.40 GHz boost frequency of the 5600X3D. Given that AMD launched the 5600X3D at $230, AMD could target a sub-$200 price point to wow gamers on AM4, such as $199.
Why is AMD continuing to launch Socket AM4 chips well into the mid-2020s? We're no strangers to love, you know the rules and so do I—the new Socket AM5 lacks backwards-compatibility with DDR4, and as such AMD would be abandoning a large value-conscious desktop market to Intel, which supports DDR4 on even its 14th Gen Core processors. While AMD can't backport Zen 4 to AM4, it can do the next best thing—expand Zen 3 with 3D V-cache to more market segments, and bring Zen 4 kind of gaming performance to those segments. This could probably also have something to do with AMD's wafer-supply agreement with GlobalFoundries, which provides the 12 nm client I/O die for these "new" chips.
Sources:
Harukaze5719 (Twitter), chi11eddog (Twitter)
AMD already has a 6-core X3D Socket AM4 chip, the Ryzen 5 5600X3D, which joined the product stack a couple of years after AMD's original Ryzen 7 5800X3D took the gaming PC processor scene by storm, matching the then swanky new Core i9-12900K "Alder Lake" despite being based on an older-generation "Zen 3" architecture. Not much else is known about the 5500X3D, except that it could have a lower clock speed than the 5600X3D. Back in November 2023, when news of the 5700X3D first hit the scene, the 5500X3D was rumored to be a 6-core/12-thread chip with 3.00 GHz base frequency and 4.00 GHz maximum boost, compared to the 3.30 GHz base and 4.40 GHz boost frequency of the 5600X3D. Given that AMD launched the 5600X3D at $230, AMD could target a sub-$200 price point to wow gamers on AM4, such as $199.
114 Comments on AMD Readies Ryzen 5 5500X3D Socket AM4 Processor with 3D V-Cache
There are other possibilities too. What if only half of the 3D cache chip is functional?
The head nod to Rick Astley in this article is on point for AM4 though (we've known each other for so long).They already released that, it was just a Microcenter exclusive.
Intel also did this when they released the 10850K after the 10900K when they had problems binning enough chips with the extra 100MHz to be a 10900K.
I hope not as detuned performance CPUs have often been outright steals for the performance they offer, the aforementioned 10850K and 5700X3D being great examples.
5500X3D, if becomes real, won't be very exciting. 5600X3D is already very low on clocks, any lower will become problematic. 5800X smells like a better choice.
I wanna retire my Q9505 from duty, this seems to fit the bill rather nicely
Are you saying MC owns that model name for eternity and AMD has to pick another one? I find that hard to believe.Exactly what will the added cache do for that work load?If you want AM4 you should go for a 5600.
You can also add custom water cooling and call it super premium, but I don't know what difference it makes.
As for why, the only thing I can guess is they had a finite amount that would make the cut for that SKU and relegated it to them.