AMD Ryzen 9 5950XT to take Vermeer to 5 GHz heights as incoming beefed-up Zen 3 desktop CPU refresh seems likely

Patrick Schur has shared some interesting specification information about a couple of AMD processors. Along with the CPU identifiers, there are details about the clock rates and the core counts. Schur speculates that these relate to B2 stepping for Vermeer, or in other words, new finely tuned Ryzen 5000 desktop processors with Zen 3 microarchitecture. As the core counts are mentioned as "16" and "6", this neatly correlates to the Ryzen 5 5600X and the Ryzen 9 5950X chips, leading to the conclusion that AMD could be preparing “XT” variants of these two SKUs.

The apparent AMD Ryzen 5 5600XT has the same clock rates as its non-XT counterpart, at 3.7 GHz to 4.6 GHz, so it’s unclear what advantages this tweaked Zen 3 refresh processor could provide. However, Wccftech offers up a possible explanation, suggesting the XT edition could be “better at overclocking”. The likely Ryzen 9 5950XT is a more interesting prospect, as it offers an actual clock rate increase over the Ryzen 9 5950X, and it even takes Zen 3/Vermeer to 5.0 GHz heights. While the “vanilla” version of the 16-core chip has rates of 3.4-4.9 GHz, the B2 stepping unit delivers 3.4 GHz up to 5.0 GHz.

The increased stepping level of the incoming Zen 3 “XT” chips might also result in slight additional IPC gains over the original variants, but the extra boost clock of just 100 MHz has been met with some surprise by commenters so far, especially with Intel’s 10 nm Alder Lake series looming on the horizon. AMD’s reasoning behind a possible “XT” refresh is unknown at the moment and a potential launch may come to nothing, especially considering the global chip shortage. But it’s also important for Team Red to keep Ryzen 5000 in hearts and minds right before Team Blue introduces its 12th-generation lineup.

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