AMD does have a 16-core Ryzen 3000 processor in the wings ready to be revealed, the latest CPU rumor insists, and we’ll see it at the company’s big E3 launch event later today (alongside the full range of new Navi graphics cards).

At Computex, a couple of weeks back in May, we heard about AMD’s Ryzen 3rd Generation CPUs, but the chips unveiled topped out at the 12-core Ryzen 9 3900X, with the previously (quite strongly) rumored 16-core product being a no-show.

That was a disappointment for some folks, but it seems that rubbishing the 16-core speculation may have been premature, as a freshly leaked slide points to the existence of a Ryzen 9 3950X.

Spotted by Videocardz, the purported presentation slide bills the chip as the ‘world’s first 16-core gaming CPU’, and the website claims the authenticity of the slide has been confirmed.

And the specs are pretty jaw-dropping. The 3950X is allegedly a 16-core (32-thread) processor with a base clock of 3.5GHz, and a maximum boost of 4.7GHz. Not only that, the TDP is only 105W (the same as the aforementioned 3900X).

All in all, that’s pretty incredible – but as ever, this is still just a rumor, so we have to take it with substantial pinch of salt. Being capable of boosting to 4.7GHz in a 16-core chip is particularly impressive, but remember that this will be the maximum boost, likely across a core or two, as opposed to the boost you’ll be able to get across all 16-cores.

Pricey proposition?

Even so, if the 3950X does emerge with these specs, it’s going to be a tempting piece of hardware – although it will also likely be pretty pricey. AMD could ask up to a grand for this chip, if it exists – after all, the Threadripper 2950X, its 16-core high-end desktop offering, was launched at $899 (£849, AU$1,369). But then again, the 3950X is an (alleged) mainstream processor, not a Threadripper (although it could offer similar performance, if this rumored spec is true).

If it does turn out to be pricey, realistically, a lot of folks are going to settle for the Ryzen 9 3900X which will probably be a good deal cheaper – priced at $499 (about £395, AU$715) – and with its 12-cores, it’ll still be a blistering performer for high-end PC enthusiasts and gamers.

Also, on the gaming front, there’s the question of exactly how many cores you really need. Many games still aren’t so reliant on the CPU, and you’re perfectly fine with a quad-core chip, with the GPU doing much of the work – but for those games which do benefit from many-core processors, obviously these new top-end Ryzen offerings are going to be quite something.

At least we don’t have to wait long to find out whether the 3950X does indeed exist, as we’ll know one way or another in not much more than 12 hours’ time. So stay tuned – we’ve got the full lowdown on how to watch AMD’s Next Horizon Gaming E3 2019 livestream.

Source: techradar.com