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At CES, AMD compared a Ryzen 3000 CPU with an Intel Core i9-9900K. The Ryzen processor is said to have been slowed down by 30 to 40 percent.

Ryzen 3000 slowed down during demonstration at CES?

At CES 2019, AMD presented the Radeon VII and talked about some details of the new Ryzen generation. In addition to the confirmation of PCIe 4.0 and a planned chiplet design, there was also a performance demonstration. The company has had a Ryzen 3000 processor with eight cores and an unknown clock speed compete against an Intel Core i9-9900K in Cinebench R15. While the i9-9900K reached 2,040 points, the Ryzen processor ended up just ahead with 2,057 points. AMD also highlighted the power consumption. Thus, the overall system with AMD processor only consumed 133.4 watts, while the overall system of the Intel processor consumed 179.9 watts. The processors themselves reached a good 75 watts (Ryzen 3000) and 125 watts (Core i9-9900K).

The YouTuber DannyzPlayz now claims to have received some details about the demonstration at CES 2019 from AMD internal sources. Accordingly, the company deliberately slowed down the tested Ryzen processor in order to demonstrate its efficiency. The CPU would have run a good 30 to 40 percent slower than it actually could.

Ryzen 3000 will be a tough opponent for Intel

The YouTuber is not yet really known as a reliable Leaker and the sources are not confirmed, so this information should be handled with care. However, if you analyze the demonstration, you will notice some things. While the i9-9900K consumed a good 125 watts with a TDP of 95 watts, the Ryzen 8-core only consumed 75 watts. Since the top models are normally delivered with 95 or 105 watts TDP, the stated consumption of 75 watts is rather low. For comparison: in our tests, the Ryzen 7 2700 (65 watts TDP) came to a good 70 watts in Cinebench, while the i9-9900K took a good 143 watts. A Ryzen 8-core core with 95 or 105 Watt TDP could therefore have significantly higher clock rates due to the higher possible consumption.

If we now assume that AMD actually slowed down the Ryzen processor shown in the CES demonstration, this shows how strong the new Ryzen generation could actually become. Since the processor was probably also an engineering sample, the final mass product could be even better. Since Intel cannot currently match the Ryzen 3000 processors with a suitable 10nm product, the company inserts a 10-core Comet Lake series processor. AMD could therefore also be surprisingly victorious against the Comet Lake processor, which would also explain the restrained demonstration at the CES. Since the new Ryzen generation should come onto the market with 16 cores and up to 5.1 GHz clock speed, Intel is currently lagging behind anyway.

The Ryzen 3000 series is due to start in the middle of this year. The launch date is either Computex 2019 or a separate event on 7th July, at which Radeon Navi could also be presented. Until then some more leaks and information will appear. We’ll keep you updated.