While most of us are anxiously waiting for the reviews and availability of the RTX 3080 to go live; AMD is about to steal NVIDIA’s thunder. The company has recently announced the date when they will unveil the highly anticipated AMD Ryzen Zen 3 CPUs and Radeon RDNA 2 GPUs. Both the Zen 3 and RDNA 2 will be presented next month, October 2020; naming both events as “A New Journey Begins“.
AMD Ryzen Zen 3 CPU On October 8th
You might be thinking that AMD will announce the GPU first since NVIDIA already announced its latest RTX 30 series GPUs. But that’s not the case. AMD will be revealing new Ryzen desktop processors first, based on the Zen 3 architecture. AMD Ryzen 4000 Series desktop CPUs here we go!
“We are incredibly excited to invite you to learn more about the next wave of Ryzen desktop processors with “Zen 3” architecture; taking our PC gaming and content creation leadership to new heights. Dr. Lisa Su and other AMD senior executives will kick-off this new journey for “Zen 3” and AMD Ryzen at 12 p.m. ET, October 8th.”
Rumors are circulating that in the upcoming Ryzen 4000 series CPUs, a 10-core part will be released to combat Intel’s current 10 core CPU; the Intel Core i9-10900K and i9-10850K. That is going to be very exciting and hopefully, AMD could release a CPU matching the clock speeds that Intel CPUs currently hold.
If the Ryzen 4000 series could achieve 5GHz, that would be a game-changer. The upcoming CPUs are said to be based on TSMC’s improved 7nm process. We don’t have an idea yet whether we will see more cores, or higher clock speeds, or both. But I’m hoping to see some noticeable improvements; both in the architecture and performance of the upcoming Ryzen Zen 3 CPUs.
AMD Radeon RDNA 2 GPU On October 28th
Interestingly, I’m not sure why AMD decided to announce their RDNA 2 GPU on a much later date in October. Perhaps they are waiting for NVIDIA to release the RTX 3070 first; before they reveal what the Radeon RX 6000 GPUs are capable of. I’m just speculating here.
“Preparing to delight gamers globally with the next horizon of Radeon Graphics; we invite you to learn more about our RDNA 2 architecture; Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards; and our deep collaboration with game developers and ecosystem partners who will help us bring the best of Radeon to gamers. Tune in for the reveal of the future of Radeon PC gaming at 12 p.m. ET, October 28th.”
We don’t know if AMD’s RDNA 2 will be an Ampere-killer; or perhaps would present as a serious competitor when it comes to the mid-range and lower-end GPUs. However, we do know that the RDNA 2 will be a DirectX 12 Ultimate compliant GPU. The RX 6000 GPUs are expected to support ray tracing as well.
AMD also targets a 50% jump in performance-per-watt from the RDNA. In case you are not familiar, RDNA GPUs are the current Radeon RX 5700 (XT), 5600 (XT), and 5500 XT graphics cards. The company is also planning to release a gaming GPU that is fully capable of 4K gaming. Now that is an interesting one!
If I have to guess, I think one of the GPUs in the RX 6000 series is capable of matching NVIDIA’s RTX 3070 and RTX 3080. That’s probably one reason why there is a huge gap between the RTX 3080 and the RTX 3090. NVIDIA could be pre-empting AMD’s move.
Anyway, mark your calendar, and let’s see what AMD has to offer for us gamers and enthusiasts.
