AMD's 16-core Ryzen 9 CPU beats Intel's 18-core i9-9980XE in Cinebench

AMD finally revealed the specs and pricing for the 7 nm Ryzen 3000-series complete with demos and comparisons to Intel’s gen 9 processors. The top of the line appeared to be the 12-core Ryzen 9 3900X, but YouTuber Bryan from Tech YES City reports that there was a behind-the-scenes presentation of the rumored 16-core version that was tested out by professional overclockers.

It is important to note that the 16-core / 32-thread CPU was an engineering sample, so the performance could further improve for the final version. The overclockers were able to easily push the 16-core CPU to 4.1 GHz on liquid cooling, and the highest clocks achieved were just under 4.3 GHz, with voltages upped from 1.4 V to around 1.57 V. As far as benchmark results are concerned, the unnamed 16-core Ryzen managed to score 4,346 points in Cinebench R15, a result that is several points higher than Intel’s 18-core i9-9980XE. It is not yet confirmed, but the 16-core CPU from AMD would be priced at around US$800, making it a great deal when compared to the US$2,000 price tag on the Core i9-9980XE.

These performance metrics sure look like they could be coming from a HEDT chip, and AMD already confirmed that the Threadripper lineup will soon be refreshed, so we could be seeing the 16-core unnamed processor replacing the lower-end of the current Threadripper family.