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AMD’s Ryzen 3000 CPUs start in the middle of 2019. However, Intel’s opponent for this is Comet Lake and thus again a 14nm processor and not a 10nm Ice Lake.

Is Intel falling behind because of Ryzen 3000?

With the Zen architecture and the resulting products Ryzen, Threadripper and Epyc, AMD has succeeded a real stroke of genius two years ago. With twice the number of cores and good, constant prices, the company has forced its competitor Intel to rely on more cores in the desktop and server sector and triggered a new trend. Before that, the quad-core in the desktop was the ultimate thing. Thanks to the Zen architecture, AMD has once again made a good comeback to the CPU market.

With the Zen 2 architecture and Ryzen 3000, the next milestone is already on the agenda. AMD doesn’t rely on refreshs from his old series, but radically transforms the structure. Both Epyc 2 alias Rome and Ryzen 3000 rely on a central management chip that serves as a memory controller and I/O hub. The actual processor cores are located in 7nm chiplets next to or around it. This not only makes production cheaper, it also enables up to 64 cores in Epyc 2 and up to 16 cores in Ryzen 3000 – while keeping the same socket and downward compatibility. Through these innovations it could happen that AMD could gain a decent distance to Intel. The competitor does allegedly not plan any desktop processors for the year 2019.

No Ice Lake in the desktop, 14nm Comet Lake planned for 2020

What sounds like a joke at first could become a bitter reality. Intel is said to be unable to counter AMD’s first 7nm desktop processors in 2019 or 2020 with 10nm desktop processors. This is suggested by a report from redgamingtech.com. The website has learned from a source that the first Ice Lake products with a 10nm structure width are planned for 2019, but no desktop versions. The first desktop processors after Coffee Lake Refresh are therefore the Comet Lake processors that have already appeared earlier. With them Intel once again wants to get everything out of the 14nm structure. The processors should be optimized for the highest possible IPC. A processor with 10 cores is also planned. However, Comet Lake is not supposed to start before spring 2020 – and even then Intel fights with a 14nm processor against a whole series of 7nm processors with up to 16 cores.

According to the report, the 10nm structure will not enter the desktop market until 2021 at the earliest. Intel allegedly simply skips Ice Lake in the desktop. Only the successor Tiger Lake should be able to offer desktop processors again. Thus, AMD with Ryzen 3000 and the 7nm structure would not have a worthy opponent for one and a half to two years. It remains to be seen how much of the story is true that Comet Lake is planned, but several other sources have already confirmed this. Accordingly, in 2019 the i9-9900K remains the only opponent for Ryzen 3000.