Ryzen Release Thread

[SteelCrysis]

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-ry...40417.html

A mysterious Redditor, reportedly from Russia, has shared photographs that claim to be AMD's soon-to-be-released Ryzen 9 3950X 16-core processor and its packaging.
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Digitec Galaxus AG, a Swiss IT, consumer electronics and telecommunication retailer, recently posted a listing saying the the Ryzen 9 3950X would hit shelves on September 30. However, the Swiss retailer has since changed the delivery date to unknown. Some might argue that the previous listed date could have been a placeholder only. However, Digitec is AMD's only Western European partner, so we think that the retailer's information is probably legit. The recent Reddit posting lends some credence to the September 30 release date.

AMD has announced a plethora of 7nm products this year, and TSMC probably has its hands full. We suspect AMD is most likely still building up its Ryzen 9 3950X supply so that there are enough chips to go around. The Ryzen 9 3950X is expected to be a big gamechanger. after all. Its release will mark the first time we see a 16-core processor in the mainstream market.

https://www.neowin.net/news/amd-ryzen-9-...-very-soon

Enthusiasts and AMD fans are looking forward to the chip as it will be the first 16-core CPU on a mainstream platform. Nonetheless, it's always best to temper expectations. AMD's 32-core 2990WX Threadripper processor, based on Zen+ architecture, was found to be bandwidth-starved in certain applications despite running on quad-channel memory and a similar situation could arise here since the 16-core 3950X will be fed by dual-channel memory. However, AMD has made several notable improvements to the Zen 2 design so it may be a non-issue after all.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-ry...40398.html

While the new firmware delivers smaller boosts than expected, especially in light of the up to 300 MHz shortfall reported with the Ryzen 9 3900X in a recent survey, AMD does say that it corrects a firmware bug that reduces performance in some scenarios. With our testing of the single-die models complete, we're now focusing on the improvements for the multi-die Ryzen 9 3900X, which seems to be most impacted by the frequency deficit. We'll also test some adjustments AMD made to idle power consumption and see how the new update impacts AMD's auto-overclocking Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) feature, but most importantly, examine how the Windows scheduler is still causing AMD problems.
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That's due to the reality that AMD's chips come with a mix of faster and slower cores. Because your chip can't boost to its top frequency on every core, any wayward workload that lands in slower cores will suffer. More often than not, we observed the chip boosting on an inactive core during some workloads, which does nothing for performance. This is a persistent trend with both current and older BIOS revisions on the Gigabyte and MSI motherboards.

Like we've already seen in the mobile space, this new binning strategy is innovative and promises to wring the utmost performance out of every piece of silicon that comes out of the fab. But as we've seen today, AMD's implementation is still in the midst of teething pains. The first big hurdle is to get the Windows scheduler to utilize the faster cores more efficiently, and that may already be in the works.
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In either case, the current 46.49.0 SMU revision goes a long way to improving performance, but we're also told by our sources that a new 46.49.2 revision is already filtering out to motherboard vendors. That means we should see more improvements on the BIOS front quickly. That makes sense given the pending release of the Ryzen 9 3950X later this month.

AMD has also dismissed the reliability concerns that we recently investigated. The company says unequivocally that the heightened boost speeds will not impact processor longevity.

Overall, AMD's boost fix should meet the demands of most users that want to see their chips hit the numbers printed on the box, but you shouldn't expect miracles: Those increased boost clocks don't equate to much extra performance. We hope the company continues to work on optimizing the silicon and working with Microsoft to fine-tune the scheduler. Given AMD's history with the first-gen Ryzen processors, which were born into a world with zero optimization for the new Zen architecture but quickly served up massive post-launch gains, it's possible that we can see even more performance gains through optimization in the future.

We have to keep things in perspective, though. We're analyzing the finer details of the architecture to see how AMD can improve these chips in the future, but our recommendations remain unchanged. We stand by the recommendations we've made in both our reviews and our Best CPU articles: The Ryzen 3000 series processors bring a new class of performance, and value, to the mainstream desktop.