AMD announced the Ryzen 9 3950X, a 16-core mainstream processor

At E3 2019, AMD announced the Ryzen 9 3950X, a 16-core, 32-thread processor aimed at the mainstream. This makes it the highest core count chip ever released for a mainstream audience.

This beast of a processor not only rocks 16-cores, but it also features a whopping 72MB of L3 cache, a boost clock of 4.7 GHz and it does all of this while maintaining a low 105W TDP.

And, while we won’t have any hard performance numbers until we get it in-house for a review, this spec sheet alone is enough to promise some mighty performance. AMD showed off some rapid-fire quotes like “world record Cinebench score”, but we’d take that with a grain of salt.

It should be noted, however, that while the rest of the Ryzen 3rd Generation lineup will be hitting store shelves on July 7, the AMD Ryzen 9 3950X will come out in September 2019 for $749 (about £590, AU$1,080). That’s a lofty price tag for a mainstream component, but with its 16-cores it’s kind of in a league of its own.

At that price tag, it might be a hard sell to mainstream audiences, but for creatives and professionals looking for a more affordable alternative to an HEDT chip like the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2950X, the Ryzen 9 3950X seems like a no-brainer.

Source: TechRadar