AMD’ S Z E N 3

You’d be forgiven for thinking Zen 3 is a simple evolution of Zen 2, but it’s actually a complete redesign. A redesign that fuels the 19 percent IPC improvement over Zen 2, which isn’t a boost that comes easily – you need only look at Intel’s modest improvements over its last few generations for proof of this. And it’s that 19 percent boost that is responsible for AMD finally managing to not only catch up with Intel but overtake it in gaming.

For Zen 3, AMD has moved to an eight-core chiplet design as opposed to the previous four-core model, which improves communication between the cores and the cache. Now all eight cores can access 32MB of L3 cache directly, and don’t need to go through the I/O die to do so. There are other improvements as well, but this one shift is key to improved throughput for videogames.