AMD is making serious gains on Intel. Let’s take a look ahead at what the semiconductor company has planned for the rest of 2020, as well as 2021 and beyond.
After beating out rivals Intel and Nvidia to become the first to 7nm and PCIe 4.0, AMD has a lot of successes to be proud about. With affordable prices, chart-topping performance, and advanced designs, there is plenty to love about AMD’s Ryzen family of processors.
The company has a lot planned over the next few years for its processors and graphics cards that could help extend its performance lead over the competition. As more is learned about AMD’s plans, people may be tempted to continue delaying any potential PC upgrade to wait for the next big thing coming from Team Red, which is a testament to the strength of the company’s engineering road map.
Laptops released with AMD’s Ryzen 4000 mobile processors have been a huge hit for AMD, and rightfully so. These affordable portables promise to deliver powerful performance, long battery life, and even the ability to crunch data and play Full HD games, all in a lightweight design. AMD and its partners are so bullish on the success of this silicon – based on AMD’s Zen 2 architecture — that it expects up to 135 designs to launch.
With the success of Ryzen 4000 on mobile, our expectations are high for the AMD silicon family’s debut on desktop, where it is expected to land before the year is over. It was rumored that AMD may be pushing Ryzen 4000’s desktop launch to early 2021 after the company launched new XT series processors to extend the life of its Ryzen 3000 family, but the company has squashed those rumors and insisted that there is no delay the for Ryzen 4000.
Still, if you can’t wait for AMD’s launch timeline and need the company’s best-in-class silicon, the Ryzen 3000 XT promises competitive performance. With pricing starting at just $249 for the Ryzen 5 3600XT, AMD’s XT processors outclass their Intel counterparts in creative tasks while delivering competitive frame rate performance in AAA gaming titles. The XT series uses AMD’s Zen 2 processor architecture and is built on an optimized 7nm node, and the company claimed that this advanced design gives the flagship 12-core Ryzen 9 3900XT 50% more cores and 47% more performance than the competing Intel Core i9-9900K, a chip that’s been popular among enthusiast gamers.
While AMD’s Ryzen XT chips maintain a performance advantage over the competing Intel parts, gaming performance is more even between the XT series, AMD’s Ryzen 3000 X series, and Intel’s desktop CPUs. All three competitors boast comparable frame rate performance, according to AMD’s released benchmarks, in titles like APEX Legends, Fortnite, Hitman 2016, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, GTA V, Far Cry 5, Devil May Cry 5, and DOTA. There are some performance variations, however, and we see Intel’s Core i9-9900K lead in frame rates on titles like Counterstrike: Global Offensive and Rocket League. However, in Devil May Cry 5 and Fortnite, the AMD’s XT series leaves Intel in the dust. AMD claims that its Ryzen 7 3800XT is designed to take on — and best — Intel’s Core i7-9700K, and the Ryzen 5 3600XT is ready to take on Intel’s Core i5-9600K. All of AMD’s gaming benchmark results were taken in FHD resolution.
If you can wait for AMD’s next-generation Ryzen 4000 series, you’ll have plenty of options to choose from on the desktop side. With the 4000 series, AMD will offer two distinct architectures this year. The first will be the Renoir APU, which will feature Zen 2 cores. PC enthusiasts, however, are likely looking forward to the launch of the Vermeer release of the Ryzen 4000 desktop processors, which will feature upgraded Zen 3 cores.
