On July 7, 2019, people were lining up in a frenzy to grab AMD’s newest line of Ryzen 3000 CPUs—yes, CPUs. The much-hyped 3rd gen Ryzen line utilizes the first 7nm process technology in the world, making this launch a huge game-changer in the world of computer chips. What does this exactly mean, though, for businesses and professionals? When it comes to multitasking, professional PC tasks, and memory bandwidth, AMD’s newest consumer multi-core CPUs will provide you with the best performance for your business needs at an affordable price.
Why is the 3rd Gen Ryzen Important?
The third generation of Ryzens are the first consumer x86 CPUs fitted with 7nm process technology. The 7nm refers to the measurement of the transistors—the electrical building blocks of the CPU. The smaller the transistor size, the more power-efficient it is because it can pack on more transistors on the chip without increasing the chip size itself. Over the past few years, increasing the number of transistors (by decreasing the size) has slowed down considerably.
AMD’s 7nm technology is a fresh and much needed development in the chip industry, but more importantly it’s an opportunity for AMD to challenge Intel’s chip market dominance. Comparatively, Intel will be launching their own fresh line up chips with 10nm chips in the near future. One important thing to note is that performance doesn’t exactly scale with transistor size—meaning that Intel’s 10nm will most likely compete with AMD’s 7nm chips.
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What is the performance like?
When rating and benchmarking a CPU, we look at three factors: power consumption, price, and performance. Historically, Intel CPUs performed better especially when it came to single-core applications. Price-wise, AMD offered great value, especially when it came to multitasking and productivity. The onset of 7nm will bring a dynamic change to this pattern, as there will be a huge performance boost without consuming too much power.
The Zen 2 microarchitecture effectively enables extreme efficiency in the 3rd gen Ryzen CPUs because of the dramatic reduction in transistor size. AMD states that this will increase instructions-per-cycle (IPC) by 15% and double L3 cache capacity and Fabric bandwidth. To break each down, IPC indicates how many tasks a CPU can execute in one cycle. Having more tasks conducted at a faster rate will yield tangible productivity and performance boosts especially if you multitask frequently.
One of the biggest highlights of the new Ryzen 3000 is its PCIe 4.0 support—a focal reason for why these new Ryzen CPUs could cement themselves as the mainstream processors. PCIe standards define how various PC components, such as the video card or storage devices, communicate with the rest of the PC. The PCIe 4.0 effectively doubles the bandwidth from 16GB/s on the previous iteration to 32GB/s. Users are already taking advantage of this bandwidth speed by coupling the Ryzen 3000 processor with PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSDs that can read speeds up to 5,000MB/s. Ultimately, the increased bandwidth will help you avoid frustrating hardware bottlenecks and improve workflow. With faster speeds in accessing files, loading applications, and streamlined graphics performance, you’ll want to get on board with PCIe 4.0.
What are people saying about the new Ryzen?
According to several third-party initial benchmark testing, the Ryzen 3000 performed remarkably, reflecting the many promises made by AMD. In a test by Gizmodo, the Ryzen 7 3700X and Ryzen 9 3900X were matched up against Intel’s i9-9900K and Threadripper 2950X, which price-wise are equal or more expensive than the new Ryzen CPUs. Despite this, we see the incredible value the Ryzen brings with the multi-core applications. When it comes to rendering images using 3D programs or converting high-definition videos, the budget Ryzen CPUs performed better. In this day and age, more and more applications, programs, and games will require more cores to be utilized (think VR), and the new generation of AMD CPUs will be certainly ready to tackle those power-hungry processes.
What motherboard would you need?
The x570 motherboard is AMD’s first in-house chipset motherboard with socket AM4, which supports the 3rd gen Ryzen series. Most modern PCs utilize the PCIe 3.0 interface, but with AMD’s new CPU line, we’ll definitely see the 4.0 interface becoming mainstream. Major motherboard manufacturers, such as ASUS, ASRock, Gigabyte, and MSI already have an array of AM4 motherboards available, and this will open doors for many who want to take advantage of the new technology.
If you don’t want to upgrade to a PCIe 4.0 yet, don’t fret—the 3rd generation Ryzen processors are backwards compatible with 300 and 400 series AM4 motherboards. You’ll still be able to enjoy the performance boost with improved clock speeds, efficient energy use, and more cores.
What does this mean for your business?
The values that the Ryzen brings to the table are affordability, performance, and power-consumption. The Ryzen CPUs will breeze through office applications, creative tasks like video editing, web surfing, and streaming. In today’s work environment, we tend to utilize numerous platforms, software, and applications, and this area is where the Ryzen truly shines. Couple this with built-in machine intelligence to optimize performance and power, you have a fantastic processor that will power your business seamlessly.
