AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3000 Zen 2 Many-Core CPUs Rumored For October Debut

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AMD pretty much dropped a nuke on the desktop processor market with its new 7nm Zen 2 based Ryzen 3000 family of processors. As our review of the Ryzen 7 3700X and Ryzen 9 3900X showed, these processors offer strong single- and multi-core performance in a wide variety of applications, and AMD is being very aggressive with pricing compared to its Intel counterparts.

So where does that leave AMD's Ryzen Threadripper family of HEDT processors? If a new report is accurate, the Zen 2-based Ryzen Threadripper 3000 processors will start arriving in October. This news hails from DigiTimes, which says that its sources come from motherboard manufacturers familiar with AMD's plans. 

With the new Ryzen 3000 consumer processor family adding new 12-core and 16-core SKUs, many thought that we'd seen the end of Ryzen Threadripper. However, AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su laid those rumors rest in May, stating, "You will see more [Threadripper] from us; you will definitely see more. “If mainstream is moving up, then Threadripper will have to move up, up—and that’s what we’re working on."

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The Ryzen Threadripper 2000 family, which was introduced in 2018, doubled the maximum number of available cores from 16 to 32, and there is wild speculation that AMD may do the same thing once again by doubling the core count to 64 (128 threads). There could even be a half-step in there as well with 48 cores (96 threads). But that's just pure speculation at this point.

Whatever the case, AMD will need to do something big to differentiate Ryzen 3000 from Ryzen Threadripper 3000. Our own testing showed that the Ryzen 9 3900X is able to outgun the Ryzen Threadripper 2950X in some benchmarks. When the 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X arrives in October, priced at $749, it's likely to further put pressure on the existing Ryzen Threadripper 2950X and higher-end parts like the Ryzen Threadripper 2970WX.