AMD Zen 2 (Refresh) 3900XT/3800XT/3600XT

Gerard · 7 Jul 2020 at 22:10

Jacky60 said:
Both....just annoyed as was anticipating something more!

Come on! I can't take Mr Hallock seriously ever since he drew the PBO bar chart nonsense that frankly was so disingenuous it was beyond belief. 4.7Ghz everybody, it just never happened and when he drew it he knew this. He's the sort of chap that will look you in the eye and say "you see this red line? well look again it's actually blue" with a straight face.

They fact remains, they announced last month what they would be delivering, and delivered on what they said, they didn't mention any miraculous performance increases which seems to be what you and some others expected for some reason.

Kirby Wurm · 7 Jul 2020 at 22:18

Gerard said:
The 3900xt was the one that people were talking about having 4.6 boost clocks, the 3600xt can do 4.5 overclocked on water from some reviews but it's only half the core count of the 3900. Not like it's out of the box all core boost at 4.5.

I'm pretty sure the Gamer's Nexus sample OC'd to 4.6GHz all core was on a standard (AIO/high-end air) setup. Something of a moot point as even then the gains are pretty small as AMD pretty much stated they would be.

Gerard · 7 Jul 2020 at 22:33

Kirby Wurm said:
I'm pretty sure the Gamer's Nexus sample OC'd to 4.6GHz all core was on a standard (AIO/high-end air) setup. Something of a moot point as even then the gains are pretty small as AMD pretty much stated they would be.

One of the reviews stated it was pointless to overclock the 3600xt as it's basically giving you it's best out of the box. That's really the only reason amd are selling ryzen as all "unlocked" because they're running at more or less their max. That was a big selling point of ryzen, but realistically if amd were able to have chips that clocked several hundred mhz more they would also have a locked and unlocked sku.

Hopefully the 4000 series is a substantial bump in clock-speed along with the boost clocks for all cores being more substantial, having 4.7ghz on a single core might be ok for an archaic game or something but who's buying a 12 core cpu for that?

jigger · 7 Jul 2020 at 22:45

Gerard said:
One of the reviews stated it was pointless to overclock the 3600xt as it's basically giving you it's best out of the box. That's really the only reason amd are selling ryzen as all "unlocked" because they're running at more or less their max. That was a big selling point of ryzen, but realistically if amd were able to have chips that clocked several hundred mhz more they would also have a locked and unlocked sku.

Hopefully the 4000 series is a substantial bump in clock-speed along with the boost clocks for all cores being more substantial, having 4.7ghz on a single core might be ok for an archaic game or something but who's buying a 12 core cpu for that?

The lV1 review seemed to say the 3600XT was hitting close to 4.7ghz

MrPils · 7 Jul 2020 at 22:57

Mine never shipped, sad times. It seems like the 3900XT is a decent piece of silicon though. The few places that have tested it properly (with per ccx and/or per core ocing) confirm that its still 1 high quality and 1 lower quality, but you're looking at 4.6ghz to 4.7ghz on the good set of 6 cores and 4.3ghz to 4.4ghz on the poorer set. That is WAY better than release silicon.

I wouldn't hope for big clock speed bumps to 5ghz with 4000 series, it seems the main effort is going into getting a considerable IPC boost (probably a good chunk will come from increasing memory and IF stock speed). I'm sure I remember seeing quotes a few weeks ago from OEMs testing 4000 series saying performance uplift was up to 20% over 3000 series, though that could've been referring to APUs I guess? I suspect if a clock increase for 4000 was to come it would be with a refresh similar or identical to this.

Gerard · 7 Jul 2020 at 23:15

jigger said:
The lV1 review seemed to say the 3600XT was hitting close to 4.7ghz

Most i seen was 4.5, only looked at one or 2 though. Big difference between a 6 core hitting that with water and oc'ing on all cores and a 12 core doing it out of the box. But single core performance is always emphasised in the marketing and advertising as it's always a bigger number than all core boost.

Gibbo · 7 Jul 2020 at 23:32

Hi there
The new higher frequency AMD processors are now in stock at OcUK:
AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT Twelve Core 4.7GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail (100-100000277WOF) @ £499.99 inc VAT

100-100000277WOF, 12 Core with 24 Threads, 4.70GHz clock speed, 7nm FinFet Process, 64MB L3 Cache, Dual Channel DDR4 Controller, 3200-3600MHz RAM Recommended, 3 Year Warranty
Only £499.99 inc VAT.
ORDER NOW
AMD Ryzen 7 3800XT Eight Core 4.7GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail (100-100000279WOF) @ £398.99 inc VAT

100-100000279WOF, 8 Core with 16 Threads, 4.70GHz clock speed, 7nm FinFet Process, 32MB L3 Cache, Dual Channel DDR4 Controller, 3200-3600MHz RAM Recommended, 3 Year Warranty
Only £398.99 inc VAT.
ORDER NOW
AMD Ryzen 5 3600XT Six Core 4.5GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail (100-100000281BOX) @ £248.99 inc VAT

100-100000281BOX, 6 Core with 12 Threads, 4.50GHz clock speed, 7nm FinFet Process, 32MB L3 Cache, Dual Channel DDR4 Controller, 3200-3600MHz RAM Recommended, 3 Year Warranty
Only £248.99 inc VAT.
ORDER NOW

jigger · 7 Jul 2020 at 23:49

Gerard said:
Most i seen was 4.5, only looked at one or 2 though. Big difference between a 6 core hitting that with water and oc'ing on all cores and a 12 core doing it out of the box. But single core performance is always emphasised in the marketing and advertising as it's always a bigger number than all core boost.

It’s worth a watch. 4.7 all core and 1900 IF

Joxeon · 8 Jul 2020 at 01:09

Grim5 said:
wait for reviews before you judge

Well the reviews are out now and i'll stand by my earlier comment.

Joxeon said:
Unless they are priced within 20 quid of the non XT models I really don't see the point in getting one of these.

Grim5 · 8 Jul 2020 at 01:28

And that's fine, but always wait for the reviews first

Joxeon · 8 Jul 2020 at 01:47

The 3800XT is biggest oddball at its price range as you have the 3900X around the same mark if you want productivity and the 10700k for gaming so hard to see who in their right mind would buy one.

Jamin280672 · 8 Jul 2020 at 02:07

Gamers meld said the 3800XT was the best overclocker out of all the samples he got, he overclocked it all core to 4.55ghz at 1.3v and had the IF running at 2000mhz.

Grim5 · 8 Jul 2020 at 02:08

Jamin280672 said:
Gamers meld said the 3800XT was the best overclocker out of all the samples he got, he overclocked it all core to 4.55ghz at 1.3v and had the IF running at 2000mhz.

Awesome if true but I havent seen anyone else get this

edit: ah there are others, it seems they definitely overclock better than the X versions

4.45ghz all core on the 3900XT and 4.6ghz all core on the 3800XT

Gerard · 8 Jul 2020 at 02:34

Seems there is a bit of overclocking headroom in them, kitguru had their 3800xt at 4.6 all core and 4.45 for the 3900xt.

Jamin280672 · 8 Jul 2020 at 02:38

Grim5 said:
Awesome if true but I havent seen anyone else get this

edit: ah there are others, it seems they definitely overclock better than the X versions

4.45ghz all core on the 3900XT and 4.6ghz all core on the 3800XT

Just watched that video funny enough, its all over the place people reporting better overclocks and actually recommending overclocking these ones rather than leaving them at stock.

The Old School Gamer · 8 Jul 2020 at 03:23

- Updated the first post with OCUK web shop links.
- Added video reviews from Hardware Unboxed, Gamers Nexus, KitGuru and OC3D.
- Added links to TechPowerUp written reviews.

As expected disappointing as they don't really offer any real meaningful uplift over the older X range.

Slightly better top end manual OCs, but Zen 2 does not really scale that well with frequency anyway so the gains are marginal at best.

Conclusion - wait for Zen 3 or buy the older SKUs at a lower price point if you cannot wait.

Boot_Loop · 8 Jul 2020 at 08:24

4.6 on 8 Zen 2 cores (3800XT) is pretty beastly for a price premium admittedly.

Richdog · 8 Jul 2020 at 08:38

Boot_Loop said:
4.6 on 8 Zen 2 cores (3800XT) is pretty beastly for a price premium admittedly.

It makes a negligible difference over the 3800x in real terms.

SupraWez · 8 Jul 2020 at 09:49

As mentioned earlier in this thread somewhere by another member, would like to see how high a 3900XT or 3800XT can be OC`ed with SMT disabled, wonder if it makes a difference.

ljt · 8 Jul 2020 at 10:23

Clock speed is not what is holding back gaming performance on ryzen.

I remember watching a video where they managed to overclock a ryzen 3000 chip to 5ghz to run some gaming benchmarks and it barely showed much improvement in framerates.

They concluded it was latency that holds back the performance the most, not clock speed.