AMD launches new Ryzen 3000 XT chips

The Ryzen 9 3900XT, Ryzen 7 3800XT, and Ryzen 5 3600XT are now official.

AMD has fired back at Intel’s Comet Lake processors with three new XT-series Ryzen 3000 processors that slot in as the new leading chips for the Ryzen 9, Ryzen 7, and Ryzen 5 families. The new processors bring AMD’s Radeon XT branding to its desktop processor line, but they are physically similar to their respective predecessors. That means they come with the same 7nm process and Zen 2 architecture, number of cores and threads, L3 cache capacity, and TDP ratings, but serve up an extra 100 to 200 MHz over the standard boost frequency.

Base frequencies remain unchanged. AMD says the incremental clock speed improvement provides up to four percent higher performance in single-threaded Cinebench benchmarks.

In a shift from AMD’s standard practice, the Ryzen 9 3900XT and Ryzen 7 3800XT come without bundled coolers, while the Ryzen 5 3600XT comes with a bundled Wraith Spire cooler. The XT processors drop into any existing motherboard with a Ryzen 3000-ready BIOS, and offer drop-in compatibility with all 500-series motherboards.