Advanced Micro Devices Inc. today refreshed its desktop processor line with the introduction of the Ryzen 5000 chip series, which features sizable performance improvements and a new architecture.

AMD competes with Intel Corp. in the desktop processor segment. Intel has reigned as the category leader for years, but AMD is narrowing the gap, with one recent analyst report putting its share at nearly 20%.

Compared with the company’s previous-generation central processing units, the Ryzen 5000 series promises a 19% increase in the number of instructions, or computations, that are carried out per clock cycle. The series includes four processors on launch with maximum clock frequencies of between 4.6GHz and 4.9GHz. Core counts, in turn, range from 6 cores to 16.

AMD says that these improvements allow the flagship 16-core Ryzen 9 5950X model in the series to provide better performance than Intel’s high-end I9-10900K desktop CPU. In an internal test measuring single-threat speeds using the Cinebench R20 benchmark, the Ryzen 9 5950X scored 631 points compared versus the i9-10900K’s 544. AMD also claims that its processor has been shown to run an array of popular video games an average of 7% faster than Intel’s rival CPU.

The performance improvements are the result of a new chip architecture AMD calls Zen 3. The chipmaker’s engineers have rearranged the layout of the CPU cores so that each has direct access to the onboard L3 cache in which the processor stores data, which allows information to be processed faster. According to AMD, the Ryzen 5000 series is made by TSMC Ltd. using a seven-nanometer manufacturing process.

“There’s a new layout of our processor that brings all the cores onto a unified  eight-core complex, and that accelerates core-to-core communications,” Mark Papermaster, AMD’s chief technology officer, detailed during the virtual launch event for the new chips. “That consolidation actually allows every core to directly access the 32 megabytes of L3 cache, and that directly accelerates workloads that are latency-sensitive.”

The Ryzen 5000 chips are set to become available on Nov. 5 starting at $299. The top-end Ryzen 9 5950X, with its 16 cores and high single-threaded performance, will launch with a $799 price tag. 

Image: AMD