Ahead of its launch of Zen 3 CPUs towards the end of 2020, AMD is set to refresh its Ryzen 3000 Zen 2 CPUs with a new batch of higher-clocked versions to combat the new release of Intel's 10th-generation Comet Lake processors. These chips, which will be designated as XT variants, will have the same core and cache counts as their namesakes, but will have higher single core boost clocks, potentially making them much greater rivals for Intel's new CPUs.
AMD's Ryzen 3000 processors made a huge splash when they were released in 2019, raising the core counts of mid-tier and high-end CPUs by a significant margin, while raising clock speeds and instructions per clock over their last-gen counterparts. That gave AMD's chips a serious advantage over Intel's best ninth-generation CPUs as well as competitiveness in gaming, even if Intel still retained the top spot. New 10th-gen chips from Intel have clawed back some of that productivity advantage and pushed further ahead in gaming, so while AMD rushes to get its next-gen chips to the public, we have some stopgap solutions with the now mature Zen 2 silicon to tide us over.
The Ryzen 3600XT, 3800XT, and 3900XT, will maintain the six, eight and 12 core makeups, but will raise the single core boost frequencies to 4.7GHz, 4.7GHz, and 4.8GHz, respectively. Those boost clocks will also be much more consistent and reachable, something that wasn't the case at the launch of this new generation of chips. That should make these processors much more competitive in gaming and potentially reach near parity with Intel's new CPUs.
Base clocks have also been raised well above 4GHz across the board, making these exciting gaming CPUs ahead of the release of Zen 3 later this year.
