AMD Ryzen 4000 Vermeer 16-Core Spotted With 4.6 GHz Boost Clock

AMD Ryzen 3000-Series Processor

AMD Ryzen 3000-Series Processor (Image credit: AMD)

Hot on the heels of the Ryzen 4000-series (codename Renoir) APU leak, German news outlet Igor's Lab has shared further information on the APUs as well as the preliminary specifications for the upcoming Ryzen 4000-series (codename Vermeer) desktop chips.

Igor's Lab believes that the Ryzen 5 4400G and Ryzen 3 4200G are the other two rumored desktop APUs that'll be joining the Ryzen 7 4700G, which has already blown its cover. The new piece of information claims that Renoir comes with support for a Fabric Clock (FCLK) up to 2,000 MHz. For comparison, the maximum FCLK on AMD's Ryzen 3000-series (codename Matisse) desktop processors is 1,800 MHz or DDR4-3600 (the FCLK and memory clock run in a 1:1 ratio). In theory, Renoir, which presumably has a 200 MHz higher FCLK, should have better memory support and benefit more from higher speeds.

On the desktop side, the Ryzen 4000-series (codename Vermeer) will continue to dwell on TSMC's 7nm FinFET process node. However, the next-generation desktop processors are linked to AMD's new and improved Zen 3 microarchitecture. Igor's Lab got word of the specifications for the engineering samples (ES), and according to the publication's sources, A0 steppings of the Zen 3 chips are already being evaluated in the wild. Although Igor's sources are pretty reliable, the author does suggest a bit of caution when approaching the information from the leak.

AMD Ryzen 4000-Series Vermeer Specifications*

Swipe to scroll horizontally
OPNCores / ThreadsBase / Boost Clocks (GHz)
100-000000059-14_46/37_Y16 / 323.7 / 4.6
100-000000059-15_46/37_N16 / 323.7 / 4.6
Ryzen 9 3950X16 / 323.5 / 4.7
100-000000063-07_46/40_N8 / 164.0 / 4.6
100-000000063-08_46/40_Y8 / 164.0 / 4.6
100-000000063-23_44/38_N8 / 163.8 / 4.4
Ryzen 7 3800X8 / 163.9 / 4.5

*Specifications are unconfirmed.

It's important to highlight that the specifications correspond to the ES samples, and A0 steppings (early revisions of the silicon), at that. There's a strong likelihood that specifications may improve with the final revisions. The base and boost clock speeds are pulled from the OPN (Ordering Part Number) codes.

The 16-core, 32-thread Zen 3 chips expose a 3.7 GHz base clock and 4.6 GHz boost clock. The existing Ryzen 9 3950X processor has a 3.5 GHz base clock and 4.7 GHz boost clock. We're looking at an uplift of 200 MHz in the base clock and 100 MHz decrease in the boost clock.

The Zen 3 chips, which have eight cores and 16 threads, appear to have a 4 GHz and 4.6 GHz base and boost clock speeds, respectively. For reference, the Ryzen 7 3800X arrived with a 3.9 GHz base clock and 4.5 GHz base clock. Thus far, the Zen 3 successor seems to have a 100 MHz higher base clock and a 100 MHz lower boost clock.

Originally, AMD only intended to provide support for Zen 3 processors the latest B550 and X570 motherboards. However, after a bit of backlash, the chipmaker has caved in and will extend Vermeer support all the way back to the B450 and X470 motherboards.

Anonymous sources told DigiTimes last month that there is a strong possibility that Zen 3 could arrive around August or as late as September. AMD has the luxury of time to finetune Zen 3. Furthermore, the maturity of Igor's information is unknown. For all we know, AMD could have already revised the initial specifications, but it's clear the company is well underway in the development stages for its Zen 3 processors. 

Zhiye Liu
News Editor and Memory Reviewer

Zhiye Liu is a news editor and memory reviewer at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.

  • Blas
    4.6 GHz boost plus a conservative +10% IPC improvement, makes this equivalent to a 5,1 GHz Zen2, at least. Doesn't sound bad at all...
    Reply
  • daworstplaya
    Since AMD is going to support the 400 series chipset, pretty sure I'll be upgrading from a 3700x to a 4700x or 4800x. I've heard 15% IPC improvement and 200Mhz increase in single core performance will be worth it.
    Reply
  • 2Be_or_Not2Be
    "Anonymous sources told DigiTimes last month that there is a strong possibility that Zen 3 could arrive around August or as late as September. "

    Aargh, stop teasing us! I'm ready to buy now! (having held off on Zen 2 to go straight to Zen 3)
    Reply
  • jpe1701
    Ah Igor. I miss his content on here. Really knowledgeable guy.
    Reply
  • King Dranzer
    With 15%+ IPC improvement this will be insane CPU. I hope they release Mini-ITX boards be it B550 or X570-2.0.
    Reply
  • mrv_co
    CAN'T WAIT :love:
    Reply
  • dayoldy
    Back in 2012, I built a 16-core dual-Xeon beast for rendering of Adobe After Effects/Premiere & 3D composites, based on the promise that multi-core threading was the way of the future...

    But the dream fizzled for me after Adobe CC 2014 when support for multi-core processing in AE was taken out of user contol & performance enhancement preferences. AE renders slowed down after that. I think the much better all-around strategy for me to have taken would have been a single, 6-core, overclocked i7...

    Does any software these days actually make any worthwhile use of 16 cores?
    Reply
  • mdd1963
    more impressive will be an 8 core CPU that can boost and maintain all cores to 4.7 GHz or so....(we certainly know there is no way 4600 MHz is any more than on 1-2 cores on a 16 core CPU.....)
    Reply
  • Flemishdragon
    Blas said:
    4.6 GHz boost plus a conservative +10% IPC improvement, makes this equivalent to a 5,1 GHz Zen2, at least. Doesn't sound bad at all...
    Blas said:
    4.6 GHz boost plus a conservative +10% IPC improvement, makes this equivalent to a 5,1 GHz Zen2, at least. Doesn't sound bad at all...
    I very much doubt that. Would love to see the real world benchmarks when released. 4.6Turbo seems very low. And ram speed doesn't do a lot, is such a tiny difference.
    Reply
  • NightHawkRMX
    2Be_or_Not2Be said:
    "Anonymous sources told DigiTimes last month that there is a strong possibility that Zen 3 could arrive around August or as late as September. "

    Aargh, stop teasing us! I'm ready to buy now! (having held off on Zen 2 to go straight to Zen 3)
    I would rather wait then have a rushed launch with issues.
    Reply