AMD Ryzen 3rd Generation release date, news and rumors

AMD changed the world with its first Ryzen processors and impressed us even more with its sophomore release of CPUs, but we expect Ryzen 3rd Generation will truly blow Intel out of the water. With Ryzen 3rd Generation, we expect AMD will introduce its first 7nm mainstream processors.

If Team Red manages to pull this off, it will have created the first 7nm architectures to come to PCs. Considering Intel’s well-documented struggles to introduce 10nm Cannon Lake chips, AMD could swoop in and upstage its rival completely even before it gets a chance to launch Sunny Cove, while also introducing some of the most impressive CPUs ever created.

Cut to the chase

What is it? AMD’s next line of mainstream processors
When is it out? Likely March to August 2019
What will it cost? TBD

AMD Ryzen 3rd Generation release date

Although there’s haven’t been any rumors or hard evidence to help us predict when Ryzen 3rd Generation processors will release we can make an educated guess based on previous launches. The first generation of Ryzen processors hit the market in March 2017 and Ryzen 2nd Generation arrived a month later in 2018.

With that in mind, it seems almost certain that Ryzen 3rd Generation processors will release in sometime in Spring (or within the months of March-August for those on the other side of the hemisphere).

More immediately, we fully expect AMD will introduce its Ryzen 3rd Generation family at CES 2019, where the company has promised to talk about 7nm processors and graphics cards.

AMD Ryzen 3rd Generation price

Once again we don’t have any empirical proof to list the price of AMD’s upcoming Ryzen 3rd Generation processors. However, thanks to a curiously detailed report from a YouTuber named AdoredTV, we have model names and prices for nearly every possible Ryzen 3rd Generation processor.

Here’s how much Ryzen 3rd Generation processors may cost:

Ryzen 9 3850X: $499 (about £400, AU$700)
Ryzen 9 3800X: $449 (about £350, AU$600)
Ryzen 7 3700X: $329 (about £260, AU$450)
Ryzen 7 3700: $299 (about £230, AU$400)
Ryzen 5 3600X: $229 (about £180, AU$320)
Ryzen 5 3600G: $199 (about £160, AU$270)
Ryzen 5 3600: $178 (about £140, AU$240)
Ryzen 3 3300X: $129 (about £100, AU$180)
Ryzen 3 3300G: $129 (about £100, AU$180)
Ryzen 3 3300: $99 (about £80, AU$140)

Although, this list of prices seems compelling and on track with the prices of AMD’s current lineup of Ryzen 2nd Generation processors, we would buy into them until Team Red officially announces prices.

Now what’s interesting here is AMD has a track record of lowering the prices of its processors going from Ryzen to Ryzen 2nd Generation. The AMD Ryzen 7 1700X originally launched with a $399 (£389, AU$569) price and it was succeeded by the more affordable $329 (£349, AU$515) AMD Ryzen 7 2700X.

With that in mind, we couldn’t imagine/would be disappointed if the Ryzen 7 3700X were to cost more. For now, it seems AMD will hold onto the same pricing scheme from its current slew of chips going into the next generation.

AMD Ryzen 3rd Generation specs

Here’s where things get exciting. Whereas Ryzen 2nd Generation processors were built on a 12nm Zen+ architecture that introduced a slight die shrink from the original 14nm Zen architecture, Ryzen 3rd Generation is said to be built upon a much smaller 7nm Zen 2 platform.

As with most die shrinks, this refinement in process should lead to increases in speed and power efficiency. However, what is interesting is there are many rumors pointing to Ryzen 3rd Generation CPUs that will feature dramatic increases in core counts.

Thanks to a multitude of leaks we pretty much can fully outline what Ryzen 3rd Generation processors there will be and they are as follows:

Ryzen 9 3850X: 16-cores, 32-threads, clocked at 4.3GHz to 5.1GHz
Ryzen 9 3800X: 16-cores, 32-threads, clocked at 3.9GHz to 4.7GHz
Ryzen 7 3700X: 12-cores, 24-threads, clocked at 4.2GHz to 5.0GHz
Ryzen 7 3700: 12-cores, 24-threads, clocked at 3.8GHz to 4.6GHz
Ryzen 5 3600X: 8-cores, 16-threads, clocked at 4.0GHz to 4.8GHz
Ryzen 5 3600G: 8-cores, 16-threads, 12 GPU cores, clocked at 3.2GHz to 4.0GHz
Ryzen 5 3600: 8-cores, 16-threads, clocked at 3.6GHz to 4.4GHz
Ryzen 3 3300X: 6-cores,12 -threads, clocked at 3.5GHz to 4.3GHz
Ryzen 3 3300G: 8-core, 12-thread, 12 GPU cores, clocked at 3.2GHz to 4.0GHz
Ryzen 3 3300: 6-cores, 12-threads, clocked at 3.2GHz to 4.0GHz

We heard the first murmurs of what Zen 2 processors could do as early as October 2018. In the report suggested that AMD Radeon Technologies Group received its first engineering sample for the unreleased architecture in the form of an 8-core chip capable of reaching frequencies up to 4.5GHz.

In December 2018, the rumors began to really head up as we received an almost complete breakdown of this new series of CPUs. This nearly complete set of listings came from a YouTuber named AdoredTV and while they seemed unlikely to be true, a Russian retailer would later back up the Influencer’s report with nearly identical specs on all its product pages for the whole series of chips.

We’re not sure if the Russian retailer was just cribbing AdoredTV’s video like a cheat sheet, but so far no other rumors or reports have contradicted what we know so far. This is also all we know so far, but we’re certain that AMD will officially announce Ryzen 3rd Generation processors and a whole lot more at CES 2019.