E3 2019 | AMD Ryzen 9 3950X is a 16C/32T CPU for US$749 that can potentially take Intel to the cleaners

We've been expecting this for a while now and it's finally here. At E3 2019, AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su introduced what is the world's first 16-core mainstream gaming CPU, the Ryzen 9 3950X. The Ryzen 9 3950X is AMD's answer to Intel's much costlier Skylake-X CPU, the Core i9-9960X. 

With the Ryzen 9 3950X, AMD is bringing HEDT-class performance to mainstream gamers and content creators. Like the rest of the lineup, the 3950X is a 7nm part based on the Zen 2 microarchitecture. It runs at a base clock of 3.5 GHz with boosts up to 4.7 GHz and comes with a 72 MB of total cache. The most interesting aspect of it all is that all this power is delivered with a TDP envelope of just 105W. The number of PCIe lanes from the CPU remain unchanged at 24. 

Apropos to the announcement, AMD also showed off some benchmarking world records achieved by the Ryzen 9 3950X overclocked on liquid nitrogen that include the following —

• Cinebench R15 16-core score - 5434
• Cinebench R20 16-core score - 12167
• Geekbench 4 Multithread 16-core score - 65499

Videocardz too tweeted about Ryzen 9 3950X performance in comparison with HWBOT world records and the CPU was shown to beat the Core i9-9960X by a fair margin. These numbers are certainly impressive and the CPU can be expected to find a lot of takers among gamers who game at 1440p or 4K Ultra and also stream at high-bit rates in 1080p simultaneously.

Even the 12-core Ryzen 9 3900X should prove to be excellent for streamers as demonstrated by AMD Senior Technical Marketing Manager, Robert Hallock on stage. Hallock showed off a demo of Tom Clancy's Division 2 running at 1440p High on a Ryzen 9 3900X. He also demonstrated how well the 12-core chip is able to smoothly stream a 1080p feed at 10,000 Kbps CBR bitrate using the 'Slow' quality preset in OBS without any major frame drops while the Intel Core i9-9900K put up a slideshow. 

The 16-core 32-thread AMD Ryzen 9 3950X is slated to be available from September for a price of US$749 — US$100 less than half the price of a Core i9-9960X (US$1,699). We can't wait to take this beast for a spin in our reviews so stay tuned for those.