AUGUST 2019 PCWorld 25Reviews & Ratings
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With its ground-breaking 7nm process, AMD’s Ryzen 9 3900X leaves very little room for
Intel’s best CPUs. BY GORDON MAH UNGO
ur review of AMD’s 12-core
Ryzen 9 3900X CPU, in five
words: Damn, this CPU is fast.
But keep reading, because
the Ryzen 9 3900X is likely as significant, and
likely as game-changing, as AMD’s original K7
Athlon-series of CPUs that crossed the 1GHz
line first, or its Athlon 64 CPU that ushered in
64-bit computing in a desktop PC.
You’d think the Ryzen 9 3900X wouldhave a hard time achieving the same
greatness. It’s true that it doesn’t quite shake
all the gaming-performance bugaboos of past
generations. But we think when the dust
settles, the CPU series will easily be a first-
ballot, CPU hall of fame entry.
It is, after all, the first consumer x86 chip
to be produced on a 7nm process node.
Intel’s current desktop chips are still all built
on a 14nm process node, and the companyIMAGE: GORDON MAH UNG