AMD Ryzen 9 3950X CPU and Radeon RX 5700, 5700 XT GPUs revealed at E3 2019

At AMD’s Next Horizon Gaming event at E3 2019, company President and CEO Dr Lisa Su announced a 16-core and 32-thread Ryzen 9 3950X CPU and two new Ryzen 3000-series APUs. She also launched the first two models of the Radeon RX 5700 series in the form of the Radeon RX 5700 and Radeon RX 5700 XT. Additionally, two new Ryzen 3000-series APUs including the Ryzen 3 3200G and Ryzen 5 3400G were also announced.

Ryzen 9 3950X CPU

For the first time, AMD pulled off the wraps from the powerful 16-core and 32-thread Ryzen 9 3950X that is actually a consumer desktop CPU. Back in Computex 2019, the company had announced the eight-core, 16-thread Ryzen 7 3800X and Ryzen 7 3700X, along with the 12-core, 24-thread Ryzen 9 3900X CPU. The Ryzen 9 3950X will start selling from September this year.

In the Zen 2 architecture, because of double the amount of L3 cache and lower memory latency, a 21 percent boost in performance can be expected in 1080p gaming. AMD said that the Ryzen 9 3900X performs almost as good as Intel’s Core i9-9900K in 1080p gaming and that it surpasses Intel in tests like Cinebench R20 and Adobe Premiere. A similar performance was observed by AMD when the Ryzen 7 3800X was compared with the Intel Core i7-9700K, and the Ryzen 5 3600X with the Intel Core i5-9600K.

AMD also said that the new Windows 10 May 2019 update is going to be optimised for Zen and users can expect a performance boost of up to 15 percent after installing the update. It was also mentioned that all the third generation Ryzen 9 and Ryzen 7 CPUs will ship with the premium AMD Wraith Prism Cooler, which is equipped with support for Razer Chroma lighting.

Radeon RX 5700 XT and 5700 GPUs

Two models were announced under AMD’s Radeon RX 5000-series based on a new design named RDNA or Radeon DNA. This design is based on the company’s Navi GPU architecture so these cards will be the first consumer-grade Navi-based cards in the market.

The RX 5700 XT is the higher end of the two and it comes with a significant improvement compared to the previous RX Vega 56. Based on AMD’s 1440p game testing, the RX 5700 XT performed better than the Nvidia RTX 2070 whereas the RX 5700 performed slightly better than the Nvidia RTX 2060.

The RX 5700 XT is priced at $449 and the RX 5700 is priced at $379. Both the cards will go on sale from 7 July.

Ryzen 3 3200G and Ryzen 5 3400G

AMD announced upgraded versions of its APUs – Ryzen 3 3200G and Ryzen 5 3400G – that are now based on the ‘Zen+’ architecture. Do note, that the current architecture is ‘Zen 2’ but the Ryzen 3 2200G and Ryzen 5 2400G were based on the first ‘Zen’ architecture. The APUs come with integrated Radeon Vega graphics. Since both the APUs fall in the Ryzen 3000 family, it will be launched on 7 July.

Apart from the hardware announcements and launches, buyers of the Radeon RX 5700 series GPUs and a few Ryzen CPUs will receive a three-month subscription of Xbox Game Pass for PC. The subscription will give them access to a library of over 100 game titles. Upcoming games such as Gears 5, Halo: Infinite and Minecraft Dungeons will be available right from launch using Xbox Game Pass for PC.