Well, we have our answer today, as AMD has just launched its Ryzen 3000-series CPUs. For desktop, these are codenamed Matisse, and succeed the last-gen Pinnacle Ridge. In addition to a die-shrink to 7nm, these new processors include numerous enhancements to improve IPC performance, more cache, and higher clocks. Best of all, they even feature more cores in some cases.

We have two of the first chips to launch on our test bench today, including the 8-core Ryzen 7 3700X and 12-core Ryzen 9 3900X. Prior to this generation, only the Ryzen Threadripper offered 12-cores in AMD’s lineup, so it feels like Threadripper’s potential market is being eaten into here, and that will especially be the case once the 16-core 3950X arrives in a few months. Rumor has it that AMD plans to impress on the third-gen Threadripper parts, so things could get really interesting.