Today AMD announces its long awaited Ryzen 5000 series, powered by the new Zen 3 architecture. This is the second time AMD has launched a family of Ryzen SKUs that are more focused on architectural improvements than node progression. But this is not like Zen+ based Ryzen 2000 CPUs; in fact, it is in many ways the total opposite. Ryzen 5000 delivers both an apparently significant increase in IPC and a significant increase in pricing. Take a look at the SKU list below which compares Ryzen 5000 to its predecessor, Ryzen 3000.
| SKU | Core/thread count | Base/boost clock speed (GHz) | TDP (watts) | Cache size (MB) | MSRP (USD) |
| R9 5950X | 16/32 | 3.4/4.9 | 105 | 72 | $799 |
| R9 3950X | 16/32 | 3.5/4.7 | 105 | 72 | $749 |
| R9 5900X | 12/24 | 3.7/4.8 | 105 | 70 | $549 |
| R9 3900X | 12/24 | 3.8/4.6 | 105 | 70 | $499 |
| R7 5800X | 8/16 | 3.8/4.7 | 105 | 36 | $449 |
| R7 3800X | 8/16 | 3.9/4.5 | 105 | 36 | $399 |
| R5 5600X | 6/12 | 3.7/4.6 | 65 | 35 | $299 |
| R5 3600X | 6/12 | 3.8/4.4 | 65 | 35 | $249 |
While the branding hasn’t really changed from Ryzen 3000, the prices have all come up by $50. On one hand, this can seem reasonable as AMD has delivered a fairly rare performance boost from just architectural improvements. On the other hand, this boost might not be that large in some or even most applications. In gaming, however, Zen 3 is expected to make a big difference thanks to the redesigned CCX. So, we’ll see if the price increase is actually warranted.
One interesting pattern you might see is in the clock speeds: the base is down 100 MHz all across the board compared to Ryzen 3000. It’s not really clear why AMD has decided to decrease clock speeds, but hopefully this is not indicative of poorer than expected performance. It is certainly strange but perhaps this is AMD’s reaction to the community’s outrage over Ryzen 3000’s clock speed controversy.
Ryzen 5000 is available on November 5th, just under a month from now. Hopefully it will be worth the wait.
