Guide

Zen 3 and Big Navi: Why you shouldn't buy a new CPU or GPU just yet

15.10.2020

Translation: machine translated

An announcement of new processors and graphics cards is always imminent. No sooner have you bought new hardware than manufacturers introduce new products. Nevertheless, you should wait to buy a new CPU or GPU in October 2020, because the situation is more exciting than ever.

Last week, AMD presented its new CPUs with Zen 3 architecture. And for the first time in a decade, Intel's supremacy in the gaming sector appears to be falling. According to AMD, the two fastest processors in the Ryzen 5000 series, the Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 9 5900X, are faster than the Intel Core i9-10900K in gaming. The chip that Intel has rightly labelled the "Gaming King" to date.

Here is an overview of the Ryzen 5000 presented:

Processors of the Ryzen 5000 series	Cores / Threads	Base / boost clock	TDP	L3 cache
Ryzen 9 5950X	16 / 32	3.4 / 4.9 GHz	105 W	64 MB (2x32)
Ryzen 9 5900X	12 / 24	3.7 / 4.8 GHz	105 W	64 MB (2x32)
Ryzen 7 5800X	8 / 16	3.8 / 4.7 GHz	105 W	32 MB (1x32)
Ryzen 5 5600X	6 / 12	3.7 / 4.6 GHz	65 W	32 MB (1x32)

If you missed the launch and would like to find out more about Vermeer, the codename of the Ryzen 5000 series, I recommend this overview article from Tom's Hardware.

On 28 October, AMD will introduce its Radeon 6000 graphics card series. According to benchmarks from AMD and various leaks, the performance doesn't quite match the recently released Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080, but the leap in performance from AMD's previous top product, the Radeon 5700 XT, is enormous.

So why should you wait to buy a CPU and GPU?

The situation with GPUs

Only a few have been able to get hold of a new Nvidia graphics card so far. According to Nvidia, availability is likely to continue into next year. This is also likely to be the case for the other cards in the GeForce 30 series that have not yet been released. This will increase the price of the cards. Some of you have already written about this in the comments on the review of the RTX 3080. The fact that something like this happens when a product is released is nothing new. However, in the case of the RTX 30 series, the extent is enormous. Whether this is intentional on Nvidia's part, as Moore's Law is Dead writes in a blog post or not, remains to be seen. The fact is that even if you want to buy an RTX 3080 or 3090, you'll need a lot of patience and money before you actually get your hands on one.

Whether this will be different with the Radeon 6000 series remains to be seen. And we don't yet know what the presumed top-of-the-range RX 6900 XT model will actually achieve. What's more, AMD has only recently produced decent drivers for the 5700 XT. We can only hope that the drivers for the 6000 series will be good from the start. AMD cannot afford another debacle like its predecessor. One consolation for AMD, however, is that the RTX 30 series was also plagued by driver problems at the beginning. Despite all these downsides: As the availability of the Nvidia cards will remain difficult and you need patience anyway, you might as well wait until 28 October. That's when we'll have more information on the Radeon 6000 series and the release date shouldn't be too far away. And if AMD enters the ring with a competitive price, the card should be very interesting for many. It's best to decide which card is right for you.

The situation with CPUs

The reason why you haven't read anything about the Ryzen 5000 series launch at digitec is because I was on holiday. I probably wasn't completely back from holiday when I wrote the review of the Intel Core i9-10850K. User cankonpc, for example, rightly criticises me

Ashes on my head. It won't happen again and I'll post this article here at the end of the review of the i9-10850K - to make up for it.

Now that that's out of the way, it should be clear why you should wait to buy a CPU - apart from those who only have Intel on their minds anyway: The new Ryzen CPUs promise a lot First and foremost, they promise that Intel will finally have to relinquish its long-standing supremacy in the desktop CPU sector. Good for consumers, everyone will benefit from this competition.

It is premature to claim that Intel will become the new underdog. In any case, it is clear that the Ryzen 5000 chips will be more expensive on release than the Ryzen 3000 when they are released. The top models are expected to cost 50 dollars more. It remains to be seen what this will look like for us. This price increase also means that Intel's Comet Lake series is now cheaper than Zen 3, which is an unusual situation compared to recent years. Intel needs to take action on the price of its products in order to remain attractive. AMD, on the other hand, must fulfil its promise of better single-core performance. The statement "true gaming leadership" and the associated benchmarks come from AMD itself. The first independent benchmarks will show whether the surcharge from Intel to AMD pays off. Of course, this only applies to gaming. It is undisputed that AMD will have the edge with the Ryzen 5000 in applications that favour multiple cores. This is already the case with the Ryzen 3000 series.

If independent benchmarks actually show that the Ryzen 5000 chips are superior to Comet Lake in every respect, AMD will definitely be ahead for a few months. Intel's Rocket Lake chips are scheduled for the first quarter of 2021. Although these will most likely still be manufactured using the 14nm++ process, they will be based on a new microarchitecture. Skylake - on whose architecture Comet Lake is also based - will then finally be passé. Despite the five-year-old production process, Intel is therefore also expected to see a major leap in performance.

So should you wait until the first quarter of 2021 for Intel? No, wait for the first independent benchmarks of the Ryzen 5000 processors on 5 November. If they convince you: Go for it! If you then consider the Comet Lake chips to be a better deal: Go for it! But be sure to give yourself time until then.

Colleague Yannick Cejka will keep you up to date on the availability of new CPUs and GPUs.

The best way to make sure you don't miss the sales launch is to follow him as an author.

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