Early AMD Ryzen 4000 Desktop CPU clock speeds leak

The German hardware website Igor’s Lab has uncovered the clock speeds of AMD’s early Vermeer (Zen 3) CPU samples, revealing higher base clock speeds than AMD’s existing Zen 2/Ryzen 3000 series processors. 

Vermeer is due to replace AMD’s Ryzen 3000 series of desktop processors later this year with new Ryzen 4000 series models, boasting new architectural enhancements and increased single-threaded and multi-threaded performance levels.

Note that Igor’s Lab findings are for early Vermeer CPU samples, which means that clock speeds can increase further before launch. Even so, these early samples already promise notable boosts in base/boost clock speeds. These initial samples are 8-core and 16-core models. 

With AMD’s early test processors, the company uses an OPN (Ordering Part Number) to name their processors. These names often feature hints at processor specifications, which include base/boost clock speeds. Below are the names that Igor’s Hardware uncovered. 

Name: Vermeer (VMR)
Family: 19h
Models: 20h-2Fh
CPUID: 0xa20f00

OPN 1: 100-000000063-07_46 / 40_N
OPN 2: 100-000000063-08_46 / 40_Y
OPN 3: 100-000000063-23_44 / 38_N
Revision: A0
Cores: 8
Threads: 16

OPN 1: 100-000000059-14_46 / 37_Y
OPN 2: 100-000000059-15_46 / 37_N
Revision: A0
Cores: 16
Threads: 32

These processors appear to be possible replacements for AMD’s Ryzen 7 3700X, Ryzen 7 3800X and Ryzen 9 3950X, offering the same core/thread counts as their predecessors. 

When compared to their Ryzen 9 3950X, AMD’s early Vermeer 16-core samples feature base clock speeds that are 200MHz higher and a boost clock speed that’s 100MHz lower. Vermeer’s clock speeds are likely to increase further as it approaches its launch, though a 200MHz increase in base clock speed is nothing to be sniffed at. 

AMD’s Vermeer 8-core samples feature two variants, a version with base clock/boost speeds of 3.8GHz and 4.4GHz respectively and a model with a 4GHz base clock speed and a 4.6GHz boost clock. The lower model features a base clock speed that’s 200MHz higher than AMD’s Ryzen 7 3700X, and the higher-end model features a base clock speed that’s 100MHz higher than AMD’s Ryzen 7 3800X.  

While these clock speed gains are modest, AMD’s Vermeer series of processors will feature AMD’s new Zen 3 CPU architecture, which promises some radical changes in AMD’s core designs. These changes will result in both single-threaded and multi-threaded IPC boosts, which when combined with higher clock speeds will result in significant performance gains. 

  

Major Cache Alterations 

This isn’t new information, but AMD’s leaked Zen 3 slides have revealed a combined L3 cache for each Zen 3 chiplet. This alteration unifies the L3 caches of each CPU die and makes L3 cache access times more even across a Zen 3 chiplet. 

Larger cache sizes often mean longer cache latencies, and this is true for Zen 3 though some sources have claimed that these latencies are only “slightly” increased. Regardless, this increase will be mitigated by more even cache access times, allowing information to be more easily shared between CPU cores. 

This alteration could help increase Zen 3’s multi-threaded performance, especially on single die Ryzen series processors. This change could also improve Zen 3’s gaming performance, just like Zen 2’s doubling of L3 cache accomplished over AMD’s older Zen/Zen series chips. 

Based on these slides, Zen 3 will mark another major design change for AMD’s Zen CPU architecture, offering changes what will be hugely beneficial for the processor’s internal cache latencies. While little is known about AMD’s Zen 3 core design, these slides show us that AMD’s next-generation architecture aims to mitigate more of the shortcomings of AMD’s existing designs. These downsides were already largely reduced with Zen 2, but Zen 3 seeks to take things to another level. 

When AMD launched the Ryzen 3000 series, the company heavily marketed Zen 2’s cache alterations, using the term “gamecache” to highlight how their large L3 caches impacted Zen 2’s performance in gaming workloads. Zen 3’s cache changes are likely to have a similar impact, by giving each CPU core faster access to a larger pool of L3 cache.   

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