As we mentioned in the
intro, the engineering
challenge Ryzen 3rd gen
represents is enormous.
Firstly there’s the move to a
chiplet based design. Ryzen
3rd gen CPUs contain three
dies, consisting of two core
complexes built with the
7nm process, and an I/O die
built on 12nm. With that in
mind, consider that all AM4
processors must adhere to
the same pinout. AM4 has
gone from supporting
monolithic quad core 28nm
CPUs to 7nm multi die
sixteen core CPUs plus the
shift to PCIe 4.0 while
maintaining backwards
compatibility. It’s a real feat
of engineering. Intel could
certainly learn a thing or
two from this.
Then there’s the move to
7nm. This allowed AMD to
really shrink transistor size
and hence the core
complexes (CCX). A single
CCX is just 74 sq mm, with a
big chunk of this being taken
up by the L3 cache. These
small chiplets means AMD
benefits from improved
wafer density and lower
accountanyclockspeed
improvements.
Additional improvements
include higher memory clock
support thanks in part to a
new memory clock/infinity
fabric divider, security
vulnerability hardening and
on the software side,
Windows schedulercostswhilegaining
increased design flexibility
and scalability.
Then there’s the
architecture itself. Perhaps
the biggest architectural
gain comes from a
redesigned cache hierarchy.
A larger micro-op cache,
512k L2 cache and a doubling
of the L3 cache to 32Mb per
die all add up to a big chunk
of the latency improvements
between Ryzen 2nd and 3rd
generations, which
particularly helps to
increase game performance.
Additionally there’s an all
new TAGE branch predictor,
doubled floating point
capability, which all put
together leads AMD to claim
that IPC has been uplifted by
up to an impressive 15%, and
that’s before taking intoimprovementswiththeMay
10 t h 1903 upd ate.MOVING ONTO
THE NUMBERS
So, how do these things
perform? The answer: very
well! It’s clear that AMD has
taken a significant step
forward. When comparing“AM4 has gone from supporting monolithic
quad core 28nm CPUs to 7nm multi die
sixteen core CPUs plus the shift to PCIe 4.0
while maintaining backwards compatibility. ”
SPECIFICATIONS
Ryzen 7 3700X
Socket AM4; 8core/16thread;
3.6GHz base/4.4GHz boost
clock; 32MB L3 cache; Supports
DDR4-3200; 65W TDP; Wraith
Prism RGB bundled cooler.
Ryzen 9 3900X
Socket AM4; 12core/24thread;
3.8GHz base/4.6GHz boost
clock; 64MB L3 cache; Supports
DDR4-3200; 105W TDP; Wraith
Prism RGB bundled cooler. AMD’s chiplet design
allows multiple chips
on a single package.