The latest AMD rumor-mill buzz suggests that the Red Team is secretly rewarming two Ryzen 3000-series (codename Matisse) processors to contest the latest Intel Comet Lake army.
The Ryzen 7 3800X and Ryzen 7 3700X are the two potential Zen 2 candidates that could undergo the refresh treatment. If there is a tiny bit of credence in the rumors, AMD will market the rewarmed parts as the Ryzen 7 3850X and Ryzen 7 3750X with the latter having already surfaced in AMD's Product Master guide since last year. In other words, the Ryzen 7 3850X and Ryzen 7 3750X would just be higher-binned variants of their vanilla counterparts.
Keeping our expectations within rational limits, the new chips won't deviate from the eight-core, 16-thread design. These will still be leveraging the Zen 2 microarchitecture and 7nm FinFET process node. The optimizations will likely come in form of a small speed bump on the base and/or boost clocks. A 100 MHz increase sounds reasonable or maybe even 200 MHz if you want to be overly optimistic.
| Model | Cores / Threads | Base / Boost Clock (GHz) | L3 Cache (MB) | TDP (W) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ryzen 7 3850X* | 8 / 16 | ? | ? | ? |
| Ryzen 7 3800X | 8 / 16 | 3.9 / 4.5 | 32 | 105 |
| Ryzen 7 3750X* | 8 / 16 | ? | ? | 105 |
| Ryzen 7 3700X | 8 / 16 | 3.6 / 4.4 | 32 | 65 |
*Specifications are unconfirmed.
Enabling higher clock speeds on the Ryzen 7 3850X and Ryzen 7 3750X would ultimately force AMD to raise the TDP (thermal design power) limits on the Zen 2 parts. If we look at the Ryzen 7 3750X, the octa-core chip reportedly has a 105W TDP, which is 40W higher than the regular Ryzen 7 3700X. The thing is, don't expect the refreshed models to operate withing the same threshold.
The news of a Zen 2 refresh certainly seems inappropriate at this moment in time, especially with Zen 3 (codename Vermeer) processors heavily rumored to land as early as September. There are two rational explanations for this though. It may be be that TSMC's 7nm manufacturing process has matured to a point where AMD is rewarded with higher quality silicon, which in return allows faster clock speeds. On the other side of the coin, AMD could just be recycling defective silicon that didn't qualify for the higher-up models, such as the Ryzen 7 3800X or Ryzen 9 3900X.
In any event, it's too early to get excited about the Ryzen 7 3850X and Ryzen 7 3750X. For all we know, the two Zen 2 chips could be exclusive to OEMs and system integrators. However, we should find out soon enough if the rumor is real. A marketing executive from Asus mentioned two important dates on his Weibo account: June 16 and July 7. As you recall, AMD's B550 motherboards officially go on sale starting June 16. However, Twitter user HXL seems to think that AMD will reveal the Ryzen 7 3850X and Ryzen 7 3750X around the same time.
