AMD Ryzen 3000 XT Refresh May Bring Small Boost Gains

AMD is rumored to be working on a Ryzen 3000XT refresh. Just two days ago, we heard that the purported Ryzen 9 3900 XT and Ryzen 7 3800 XT chips would come with boost clocks of up to 4.8 GHz, giving Intel's best CPUs more to fear. However, new sources claim that the chips won't be packing those kinds of boost clocks.

A tweet today from hardware leaker Apisak points to the 3800XT packing a base clock of 3.9 GHz and boost at up to 4.6 GHz, with the 3900XT running at a base clock of 3.8 GHz and 4.7 GHz on boost.

Specs

These figures aren't actually all that impressive. The base clocks are identical to the X (but non-XT) counterparts, with the boost clocks just 100 MHz higher. That isn't much of an increase, and we would expect higher numbers for parts that carry the XT denotation. 

But perhaps there's something here that we're not seeing.

Better Benchmark Results?

The unannounced chips were also apparently subjected to the 3DMark treatment, as shown in screenshots dug up by hardware leaker Rogame. The 3900XT reportedly put down a physics score of 29,172 points, with the 3800XT trotting along behind at 25,135 points. 

In our AMD Ryzen 7 3800X review, we found the chip scored 25,586 points in the Fire Strike physics test, with the AMD Ryzen 9 3900X leading the pack at 28,700 points.

Of course, it's highly unlikely that the two test setups were identical, and we don't know what cooling solution was used for the XT benchmarks. Based on the results here though, it looks like the new XT chips will just be higher-binned silicon that overclocks and, thus, boosts better than the non-XT parts. If this is the case, these CPUs wouldn't be very exciting and instead be just an excuse for AMD to release a 'new' product.

Still, there's limited information available at this time to make a true judgement call. For all we know, the XT chips are just a novelty item, will replace the existing X-chips without a price increase or won't come out at all.