AMD has, in the space of only a few short years, become a formidable presence in the desktop and mobile CPU space. From the first Ryzen processor making its debut back in 2017 to the brilliant Zen 2 revision that saw an impressive uptick in gaming performance - as seen in our review of the Ryzen 7 3800X. Overnight AMD introduced the next chapter in the Ryzen story with new Zen 3-based Ryzen 5000 Series. And to put it mildly - it's a game changer.

With the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, Ryzen 9 5900X, Ryzen 7 5800X, and Ryzen 5 5600X set to launch on November 5. Here's the full presentation by AMD CEO Dr Lisa Su and the AMD team. Which opens up with a nice little nod to both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X (both next-gen consoles are powered by AMD's Zen and Radeon architecture) before jumping into the Ryzen 5000 Series goodness.



With the flagship AMD Ryzen 9 5900X offering a 26% generational uplift in gaming performance over the AMD Ryzen 9 3900X - AMD showcase the exact percentage when comparing CPU-intensive games running at 1080p on either CPU.


A story which also carried over when comparing the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X with the Intel Core i9 10900K - where the new Zen 3 architecture offers up 2.8X better power efficiency than Intel's Comet Lake CPU. Now, even though 1080p might seem old-hat this is where the biggest CPU benefits are seen. 1080p is the resolution of choice for esports - where frame-rate is king - so the new Ryzen 5000 Series will no doubt become something of a must-have item for pro and serious League of Legends and CS:GO players. Those gains are insane because we're talking about a CPU here, and not a GPU.


This is all puts Ryzen in the lead across all categories, including single core performance - one area it has lagged a little behind Intel. Thanks in part to the 19% uplift to IPC (instruction per cycle) throughput and improvements made to L3 cache, the new Ryzen 5000 Series presents one of those hard-to-ignore generational leaps for gamers, content creators, and those that put their CPU through its paces.

And for the high-end market AMD is also releasing a beastly 16-core, 32-thread Ryzen 9 5950X too - which takes the performance gains even further.

“Our commitment with each generation of our Ryzen processors has been to build the best PC processors in the world. The new AMD Ryzen 5000 Series Desktop Processors extend our leadership from IPC, power efficiency to single-core, multi-core performance and gaming,” said Saeid Moshkelani, senior vice president and general manager, client business unit, AMD. “Today, we are extremely proud to deliver what our community and customers have come to expect from Ryzen processors – dominant multi-core and single-core performance and true gaming leadership - all within a broad ecosystem of motherboards and chipsets that are drop-in ready for AMD Ryzen 5000 Series Desktop Processors.”

One of the cool features of the Zen 3 range is its support for current AMD-based chipsets and motherboards (AM4 socket), so swapping out the old with the new shouldn't be too much of a hassle. The new Ryzen 5000 Series is set to debut on November 5, with the full model details and pricing as per below.

AMD Ryzen 9 5950X

CPU Cores: 16
Threads: 32
Max Boost Clock: Up to 4.9GHz
Base Clock: 3.4GHz
Total Cache: 72MB
Default TDP / TDP: 105W
Price: $799 USD

AMD Ryzen 9 5900X

CPU Cores: 12
Threads: 24
Max Boost Clock: Up to 4.8GHz
Base Clock: 3.7GHz
Total Cache: 70MB
Default TDP / TDP: 105W
Price: $549 USD

AMD Ryzen 7 5800X

CPU Cores: 8
Threads: 16
Max Boost Clock: Up to 4.7GHz
Base Clock: 3.8GHz
Total Cache: 36MB
Default TDP / TDP: 105W
Price: $449 USD

AMD Ryzen 5 5600X

CPU Cores: 6
Threads: 12
Max Boost Clock: Up to 4.6GHz
Base Clock: 3.7GHz
Total Cache: 35MB
Default TDP / TDP: 65W
Price: $299 USD