Just when we started to think that the techsphere is winding down for the weekend we get a barrage of leaks and rumors show up on our desks. Well folks, this is going to be a fun one, so let's get straight to it!

AMD's Zen 3 Architecture Delivers More Than 8% Better IPC vs Zen 2

So, let's start with this one and it comes straight from CrimsonRayne of RedGamingTech. AMD's Zen 3 architecture is set to launch next year and if this rumor pans out it will bring no less than 8% greater performance per clock vs current Ryzen 3000 series processors.

Following the recent Innovators Highlights Epyc conference in the UK, several key pieces of information were confirmed about the Zen 3 microarchitecture.

Including the fact that the company is maintaining the 8-core per chiplet design of current Zen 2, with a few significant improvements to the cache hierarchy, infinity fabric and the clock mesh. Which would translate to lower cache latencies, higher IPC and higher clock speeds.

However, this fueled some speculation around the company's next generation Zen 3 microarchitecture, specifically around Zen 3 potentially being a just a mid generational stop-gap with mild performance improvements and refinements.

If the rumorsource is to be believed, this is far from the truth and Zen 3 is going to bring big performance improvements over Ryzen 3000 series chips. More akin to the jump from the Ryzen 2000 series to the Ryzen 3000 series, rather than Ryzen 1000 to Ryzen 2000.

AMD Zen 3 Capable of ~200MHz Higher Clock Speeds vs Zen 2

With that out of the way, let's get into the second part of this rumor storm. This one comes from a source claiming to be familiar with AMD's Chinese labs and alleges that early Zen 3 engineering samples are able to operate at roughly 200Mhz higher clock speeds compared with the company's early Zen 2 engineering samples.

It's not entirely clear if this is largely due to the maturation of TSMC's 7nm FinFET manufacturing process, or mainly due to the improved clock mesh of the Zen microarchitecture. But if true, this could mean that we could potentially see some AMD Ryzen 4000 series CPUs hit clock speeds close to 5 GHz with overclocking, which is a far cry from the ~4.1Ghz of first generation Ryzen.

That being said, I'd be remiss not to urge readers to take these rumors with a grain of salt, we're still ways out from the Ryzen 4000 series making it to market and things are always subject to change.

AMD Ryzen Desktop Generations

Family Name	1st Gen Ryzen	2nd Gen Ryzen	3rd Gen Ryzen	4th Gen Ryzen	TBA
CPU Architecture	Zen 1	Zen+	Zen 2	Zen 3	Zen 4
Process Node	14nm	12nm	7nm	7nm+	TBA
Max CPU Cores	8	8	16	TBA	TBA
Max CPU Threads	16	16	32	TBA	TBA
PCIe Support	PCIe Gen 3.0	PCIe Gen 3.0	PCIe Gen 4.0	PCIe Gen 4.0	TBA
Max L2 Cache	8 MB	8 MB	16 MB	TBA	TBA
Max L3 Cache	32 MB	32 MB	64 MB	TBA	TBA
Socket	AM4	AM4	AM4	AM4	TBA
Chipset	X370	X470	X570	TBA	TBA
Launch	2017	2018	2019	2020	2022

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More than 5.0GHz on all 8 Cores 5.0GHz on all 8 Cores 4.8GHz on all 8 Cores 4.6GHz on all 8 Cores Less than 4.6 GHz on all 8 Cores

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