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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."
View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source
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.
![](https://www.techpowerup.com/img/nKNHM7dL64Y4qMz0_thm.jpg)
![](https://www.techpowerup.com/img/2tv5atTGlE1Rl4dw_thm.jpg)
![](https://www.techpowerup.com/img/uSBx4BxmXXJhpe5k_thm.jpg)
![](https://www.techpowerup.com/img/pJBsthxNCz6MyoBe_thm.jpg)
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."
View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source