12 PCWorld DECEMBER 2019NEWS AMD UNVEILS 32-CORE THREADRIPPER 3970X
drop to 45 watts.
AMD took the opportunity to drop more hints
about how much of a thrashing the CPU will give
to its competitors. Of course, the comparison is
fairly close against Intel’s $500, 8-core, Core
i9-9900K, but AMD said it’ll thrash the 12-core
Core i9-9920X, which sells for $1,000.
Content creation will be the 16-core Ryzen
9 3900X’s forte. The $500 Ryzen 9 3900X
already had the Core i9-9900KS on the ropes
for multi-threaded and most content creation
tasks, so the 16 core? Yeah, it’s just a victory lap
at this point for AMD.AN OVERCLOCKABLE
ATH LO N, TO O
Not everyone can afford a $2,000 32-core
Threadripper 3970X or a $750 Ryzen 93950X, so AMD is throwing budget PC users
a bone: an overclockable Athlon 3000G.
The Athlon 3000G will feature two cores
with symmetrical multi-threading, and Radeon
Vega 3 graphics, for $50. The chip will have a
clock frequency of 3.5GHz and, yes, you can
overclock it.
AMD envisions the Athlon 3000G going
up against Intel’s $60 dual-core Pentium Gold
G5400. Although AMD didn’t detail its
architecture, the Athlon 3000G is likely a Zen+
chip built on a 12nm process. That’s still
enough, AMD claims, to put it ahead of the
Pentium Gold G5400. AMD said its tests show
the Athlon outperforming the Pentium in
boring desktop use, and easily outrunning the
Pentium Gold in gaming. AMD said the new
Athlon 3000G will go on sale November 19.