Advanced Micro Devices Inc. has unveiled a pair of central processing units for high-end desktop computers that it hails as the fastest of their kind in the world.

Announced on Thursday, the Ryzen Threadripper 3960X and Ryzen Threadripper 3970X are based on the company’s latest seven-nanometer chip architecture. The 3960X packs 24 processing cores with a 3.8-gigahertz base clock rate that be boosted all the way up to 4.5Ghz. The 3970X, in turn, features almost identical base and maximum frequencies but packs eight extra processing cores for a total of 32.

AMD claims both CPUs outperform Intel Corp.’s top-end Core i9-9980XE chip for desktops. The company cited an internal benchmark test that had shown the 32-core 3970X runs Adobe Premiere up to 47% faster, while the 24-core 3960X provides up to 22% more horsepower. Another internal assessment found that the Threadripper CPUs offer over 30% better performance than Intel’s rival chip when it comes to running video games powered by the Unreal Engine framework.

It’s worth noting that the Core i9-9980XE AMD evaluated in the tests is not Intel’s newest high-end desktop chip. There’s an upcoming successor to the CPU called the Core i9-10980XE Extreme Edition that will go on sale later this month and has slightly better specifications. But even with the upgrades, it still lags behind the latest Threadripper chips in base clock rate and core count.

The 24-core 3960X will retail for $1,399 while the 3970X is set to come with a $1,999 price tag. Both are slated to become available later this month together with a low-end, $50 CPU dubbed the Athlon 3000G that AMD said beats Intel’s comparable product in the category. 

The new processors could contribute to the wave of sales growth AMD has been riding since 2017, the year when its chips started catching up with Intel’s CPUs in performance. The company last quarter set a 14-year revenue record after shipping  $1.8 billion worth of silicon. Much of the growth came from AMD’s flagship Computing and Graphics unit, which saw sales spike 36% year-over-year, to $1.28 billion, in a jump attributed primarily to the success of the Ryzen product line. 

Photo: AMD