AMD could be developing a 24-core Ryzen 9 7950X
Rumor has surfaced on a Chinese website hinting at a 24-core, 48-thread Ryzen 9 beast. We’ve never seen core counts so high on consumer desktop CPUs.
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Everything we’ve heard regarding AMD’s next-generation Zen 4 CPUs suggests the number of CPU cores will remain consistent, with the Ryzen 9 7950X retaining the 16-core, 24-thread model seen at the top end of Zen 3. The uniqueness of Zen 4 this time around, appears in its IPC and clock speeds, which translates into amazing single-core and gaming performance. Every X variant of the 7000 series will boast all-core boost speeds of over 5GHz, a first for AMD. The fact that AMD could be developing a 24-core Ryzen CPU has excited us greatly.
However, a Chinese seller on Weibo has revealed a specification sheet of the new Ryzen 7000 series CPUs, which includes a 24-core, 48-thread option, contradicting what we already know about Zen 4 processors.
Although this information appears to be a contradiction, it’s very possible that AMD is planning an emergency top-of-the-line CPU, if Intel’s Raptor Lake proves to perform a little better than expected.
As we know, Raptor Lake plans to pack twice as many efficiency cores into its CPU package this time around. Adding additional CPU cores could be a problem for AMD, as it could cause Intel to overtake AMD on multi-threaded performance, a field AMD has dominated over the past few years.
It is not uncommon for CPU companies to release a processor specifically to combat one of its competitors – just take the latest Intel release as an example.
The 12900KS is an absolute beast of a CPU, but it’s not such a good choice if you own a 12900K already. It only manages to gain a few FPS over the 12900K, and costs almost twice as much is the most glaring issue with the 12900KS. However, bringing better value to the table was not its intended purpose.
The sole purpose of the 12900KS was to combat AMD’s 5800X3D, which was rumored to be better in gaming workloads than the 12900K, and it was. Intel even managed to squeeze the 12900KS out of the gate a whole 15 days before the 5800X3D, in an attempt to hurt sales.
It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, so it is entirely possible that this case is just roles reversed, and it’s simply AMD not liking the performance of Intel’s new 13th gen CPUs.
One thing is for sure, however, we would love to get our hands on a 48-thread AMD desktop CPU – bring it on.
