After Intel announced an expansion of its 9th Gen Core desktop family and new 10nm “Ice Lake” mobile CPUs earlier this week, the ball was pretty much in AMD’s camp and the company didn’t disappoint during its CES 2019 keynote today. Indeed, the chip maker has just announced its 3d gen Ryzen desktop processors, which will be the first consumers CPUs using the company’s 7nm process node.
3rd Gen @AMDRyzen desktop processors will be the world first 7nm consumer desktop processors and continue AMD’s leadership in performance, technology, and efficiency. #CES2019 https://t.co/gIDdGASKuP pic.twitter.com/foXXfNA31R
— AMD (@AMD) January 9, 2019
The chip experts over at AnandTech have all the important details about these next-gen Ryzen desktop processors, which will be available in mid-2019. The new chips should provide a 15% performance gain compared to 2nd Generation Ryzen CPUs, and AMD should provide more details about maximum cores and clock speed closer to launch.
In addition to these new Ryzen CPUs, AMD also announced the new Radeon VII graphics card, which will be the world’s first 7nm gaming GPU:
Built on the enhanced second-generation AMD ‘Vega’ architecture, AMD Radeon VII provides 2X the memory, 2.1X the memory bandwidth, up to 29 percent higher gaming performance on average, and up to 36 percent higher performance on average in content creation applications compared to the current top-of-the-line AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 graphics card. For gamers, AMD Radeon VII enables maximum settings for extreme framerates at the highest resolutions. It also provides seamless, high-refresh HDR5 gaming at 1080p, ultrawide 1440p and 4K, and enables next-generation photo and visual creation applications on razor-sharp, vibrant 8K monitors.
The AMD Radeon VII and its 16GB of ultra-fast HBM2 memory will have to compete with NVIDIA’s freshly-announced GeForce RTX 2080 GPU. The latter only comes with just 6GB of GDDR6, though it supports hardware raytracing providing more realistic lighting in games. At $699, AMD’s high-end GPU will also be more expensive than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080, which is now available at $349. If you’re interested, the AMD Radeon VII will available starting February 7, and the chip maker has teamed up with Capcom and Ubisoft to offer Resident Evil 2, Devil May Cry 5 and Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 for free with the purchase of an eligible GPU or Radeon VII-powered PC
