Monday, August 26th 2019

AMD Ryzen 5 3500 to Lack SMT, Takes on Core i5-9400

As AMD's Ryzen 5 3500 processor is inching closer to launch, we learn more possible specifications of the chip AMD is designing to take on Intel's popular Core i5-9400/9400F processor. Late July, we learned that the chip will be a 6-core model, breaking away from convention set by past generations, of the x500 Ryzen SKU being 4-core/8-thread. Thai PC enthusiast TUM_APISAK, who has a fairly high hit-rate on unreleased products, predicts that the 3500 will be six-core, but lack SMT (it will be 6-core/6-thread).

The Ryzen 5 3500 will be clocked at 3.60 GHz nominal, with a boost frequency of 4.10 GHz. There's no word on other specs, such as L3 cache amount. A single "Zen 2" chiplet normally has 32 MB of it (16 MB per CCX). The main competitor from the Intel stable is the Core i5-9400 / i5-9400F, which ticks at 2.90 GHz with 4.10 GHz boost. The i5-9400F in particular has had a big impact in the sub-$200 segment, as it's been aggressively priced under promotions by various DIY retailers. The chip lacks an iGPU, but has the specs to pull a fairly powerful gaming PC. With the Ryzen 5 3600 at $199, AMD could price the new chip around $169-179.
Source: TUM_APISAK
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85 Comments on AMD Ryzen 5 3500 to Lack SMT, Takes on Core i5-9400

#51
ironwolf
TurmaniaI have been a very hard critic of AMD lately but I think the CPU of the year came from them with Ryzen5 3600.ability to hit all cores constantly to 4.2 as advertised is a golden strike. On the other hand it should be lower price sits somewhere between i5 9500f and i5 9400f in performance. So should be around 175 USD.and you have to consider the rising costs of x570 system even a standard board costs around 250 USD and memory requirements for Ryzen are more pricier to perform well.
Cost of a standard x570 board is $250? :confused: Not sure what you define "standard" as but they at least start at just over $150. [not saying those lowest priced boards are worth a flip]
Posted on Reply
#52
Vayra86
AldainNo smt??

Come on AMD, going Intel BS route?
You'd almost think AMD is in business to make money.

Strange times, indeed.
Posted on Reply
#53
phanbuey
HD64GMany people seem to forget that SMT off helps in gaming even by adding a few % more FPS. So, with Zen2 arch being clearly superior for heavily-threaded apps and 9400F being equal to 3600 in gaming when tested @1440P on a 2080Ti (that means 3500 will get on par to 9600K for gaming), any budget sensible gamer will get 3500 both for gaming and multitasking if they have similar price. Time will tell though as pricing is an unknown factor atm and Zen2 is made with very small(=cheap) chiplets, especially the lower binned ones such this.
yes but you lose that in an ultra budget setup when you factor in ram speed, so it will be a wash if not a few% slower.
Posted on Reply
#54
Keullo-e
S.T.A.R.S.
HD64GMany people seem to forget that SMT off helps in gaming even by adding a few % more FPS. So, with Zen2 arch being clearly superior for heavily-threaded apps and 9400F being equal to 3600 in gaming when tested @1440P on a 2080Ti (that means 3500 will get on par to 9600K for gaming), any budget sensible gamer will get 3500 both for gaming and multitasking if they have similar price. Time will tell though as pricing is an unknown factor atm and Zen2 is made with very small(=cheap) chiplets, especially the lower binned ones such this.
Depends on game. When I upgraded from 7600K to 7700K, I had a huge boost.
Posted on Reply
#55
Darmok N Jalad
A relatively simple move, IMO. AMD is moving down the market with salvaged parts, but they still have to slot it against something. and no, Intel can’t go lower than AMD on prices. They have substantially higher overhead as a much larger company. Yes, they sell in more volume, but you’ll note that prices never get that low and die sizes never get that high. 14nm++++ is already hurting Intel. They probably never wanted to make 6 and 8 core consumer chips on 14nm. Too big for their margins. I could see them stop producing the 9400F altogether if they have to go lower and come up with something different, like a 5.0ghz i3 with SMT.
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#56
Bluescreendeath
Raendor9400F filled in that niche for a long while already. And it actually began with pretty identical 8400 even earlier. Without smt this 3500 is doa.
i5-8400 sold very well. Not everybody needs SMT (especially since HT and SMT makes your PC more vulnerable) and this 3500 priced effectively could be the new bang for buck CPU for gamers and general consumers.
jmcslobThat might be changing somewhat.
From what I understand Microcenter has or is going to start a store on the Amazon Market place to strictly sell Clearance items such as the R5-1600..
From what I gather they won't be offering the combo prices and you won't get the In Store price.
If I understand it right if the in store price of something is say $80 you can expect to pay $90 which is still probably 10-15% less than Newegg.

I wish I had more details but I can't even remember who told be this so...
It is unlikely Microcenter will be selling cheap CPUs online. Even when you buy CPUs in stores, they typically have a 1 per customer limit. More importantly, Microcenter prices their CPUs much cheaper than competitors at nearly what they cost to procure them as a way to attract customers to the store. I remember working at Microcenter and our employee discounts could never make CPUs any cheaper even though we could get like 80%+ discounts on things such as cables and adapters. It would make no sense for them to offer super cheap CPUs online as it would contradict their goal of marketing their other stuff in their stores.
TurmaniaSo if you are a new cpu buyer. You need to cough up 300 usd for a x570 motherboard to run a 150 usd cpu.considering you need a bios upgrade for older chips. I wonder who is the real devil here intel or AMD? :)
TurmaniaI have been a very hard critic of AMD lately but I think the CPU of the year came from them with Ryzen5 3600.ability to hit all cores constantly to 4.2 as advertised is a golden strike. On the other hand it should be lower price sits somewhere between i5 9500f and i5 9400f in performance. So should be around 175 USD.and you have to consider the rising costs of x570 system even a standard board costs around 250 USD and memory requirements for Ryzen are more pricier to perform well.
The Ryzen 3000 doesn't need an X570 motherboard to run. X570 is for people who want fancy new features like PCIe 4.0. I'm running a Ryzen 3600 on a cheap B450M motherboard myself. The Ryzen 3000 cpus can actually run on cheap B350 board from the Ryzen gen 1 days too.

Techspot has a review of a cheap B350 board running a 12 core 3900X, and the B350 can come close to 97-98% of the performance of a X570 board
www.techspot.com/review/1872-ryzen-9-on-older-motherboards/

So you really need like 50 bucks for a B350 or B450 board to run any of these cpus.
Posted on Reply
#57
phanbuey
Bluescreendeathi5-8400 sold very well. Not everybody needs SMT (especially since HT and SMT makes your PC more vulnerable) and this 3500 priced effectively could be the new bang for buck CPU for gamers and general consumers.



It is unlikely Microcenter will be selling cheap CPUs online. Even when you buy CPUs in stores, they typically have a 1 per customer limit. More importantly, Microcenter prices their CPUs much cheaper than competitors at nearly what they cost to procure them as a way to attract customers to the store. I remember working at Microcenter and our employee discounts could never make CPUs any cheaper even though we could get like 80%+ discounts on things such as cables and adapters. It would make no sense for them to offer super cheap CPUs online as it would contradict their goal of marketing their other stuff in their stores.




The Ryzen 3000 doesn't need an X570 motherboard to run. X570 is for people who want fancy new features like PCIe 4.0. I'm running a Ryzen 3600 on a cheap B450M motherboard myself. The Ryzen 3000 cpus can actually run on cheap B350 board from the Ryzen gen 1 days too.

Techspot has a review of a cheap B350 board running a 12 core 3900X, and the B350 can come close to 97-98% of the performance of a X570 board
www.techspot.com/review/1872-ryzen-9-on-older-motherboards/

So you really need like 50 bucks for a B350 or B450 board to run any of these cpus.
B350 guys who bought a 1700, got lucky with ram @3200, and are now dropping a 3900x in there hit the upgrade dream.
Posted on Reply
#58
Xzibit
TurmaniaSo if you are a new cpu buyer. You need to cough up 300 usd for a x570 motherboard to run a 150 usd cpu.considering you need a bios upgrade for older chips. I wonder who is the real devil here intel or AMD? :)
Hmm
TurmaniaI have been a very hard critic of AMD lately but I think the CPU of the year came from them with Ryzen5 3600.ability to hit all cores constantly to 4.2 as advertised is a golden strike. On the other hand it should be lower price sits somewhere between i5 9500f and i5 9400f in performance. So should be around 175 USD.and you have to consider the rising costs of x570 system even a standard board costs around 250 USD and memory requirements for Ryzen are more pricier to perform well.
So we went from 300 USD to 250 ?

Just checked pricing and your still way off

MSI X570-A Pro $159
ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming 4 $154
Gigabyte X570 UD $159
Asus Prime X570-P $169

Even buildzoid liked Asus TUF Gaming X570-Plus $189
Posted on Reply
#61
GoldenX
lynx29I don't really count those as desktop gamer chips though, not many gamers play on a APU, that is a very niche market and separate from the desktop proper.
My IGP-less R3 1200 games perfectly, thank you very much. Funny how that level of specs used to be for the old overpriced i5s.
Posted on Reply
#62
1d10t
Wow so much fuss :D
It easier to tell, I suppose there will be no Ryzen 3 SKU using Matisse core, these Ryzen 5 3500 will be the lowest end CPU without iGPU, replacing Ryzen 3 tier on last gen Summit Ridge.
Posted on Reply
#63
Mussels
Freshwater Moderator
In all honesty this could be a smash hit, if the price and wattage are low

6 cores is enough for 99.999999999999% of users, and its good enough for serious gaming at a low price
Posted on Reply
#64
sutyi
brian111Micro Center pricing doesn't apply to a lot of the US, much less the rest of the world.

There's no guarantee that this will even be a retail chip. It could be only OEM like the 2500X.
Hungarian pricing with 27% VAT. Pretty much the same picture with the local skyhigh tax added. Still needs to be priced at or below the 9400F to make it a valuable alternative, if they want it to really sell... then lower. Could be an OEM part tho as you said, but to be honest sitting on an R5-1600 I would rather get a 3600.

i5-9400F - 48k HUF ~ 162USD
R5-2600 - 42k HUF ~ 142USD
R5-2600X - 49k HUF ~ 165USD
R5-3600 - 66k HUF ~ 222USD
Posted on Reply
#65
XiGMAKiD
If this is real and AMD can undercut Intel's pricing it would be great also don't forget upgrade path is better on AMD
Posted on Reply
#66
Blueberries
No SMT and no iGPU? Boring. Snoozefest. The SKUs are made up and the points don't matter.
Posted on Reply
#67
Chomiq
More options is always better for consumer.
Posted on Reply
#68
TheinsanegamerN
lynx29SMT helps a lot in games like AC Odyssey, Far Cry New Dawn, etc. so...
Both of which are Ubisoft games. I dont buy ubisoft games, because I already have enough generic sandboxes filled with lootboxes and pointless achievements. That and screw uplay, I dont need more DRM on my system, and dont buy games that require online activation (see all uplay titles).

so I guess if you are a ubisoft fanboy and game on a 240hz monitor, then yes you would want SMT. But for most any other PC gamer, not so much. I mean we are talking one or two titles that benefit, the rest of the PC gaming market benefits from having SMT turned off.
Posted on Reply
#69
Space Lynx
Astronaut
TheinsanegamerNBoth of which are Ubisoft games. I dont buy ubisoft games, because I already have enough generic sandboxes filled with lootboxes and pointless achievements. That and screw uplay, I dont need more DRM on my system, and dont buy games that require online activation (see all uplay titles).

so I guess if you are a ubisoft fanboy and game on a 240hz monitor, then yes you would want SMT. But for most any other PC gamer, not so much. I mean we are talking one or two titles that benefit, the rest of the PC gaming market benefits from having SMT turned off.
then buy the ryzen 3500 when it launches, it will suit you well! :D
Posted on Reply
#70
eidairaman1
The Exiled Airman
TurmaniaSo if you are a new cpu buyer. You need to cough up 300 usd for a x570 motherboard to run a 150 usd cpu.considering you need a bios upgrade for older chips. I wonder who is the real devil here intel or AMD? :)
Right- b350, x370, b450, x470,
BlueberriesNo SMT and no iGPU? Boring. Snoozefest. The SKUs are made up and the points don't matter.
Buy a R5 3400 then. What you fail to understand is that a 3500 fills in a part of the market that has a gap in it and also this is a way for Advanced Micro Devices to sale processors that had bad IGPs.

Intel does the same thing so let's stop calling the kettle black shall you?
MusselsIn all honesty this could be a smash hit, if the price and wattage are low

6 cores is enough for 99.999999999999% of users, and its good enough for serious gaming at a low price
Today it is considering the FX83** was needed from 2011-2017, and console development started growing outside of four cores.
Posted on Reply
#71
medi01
Let's compare MSRP of one manufacturer to street price of another, shall we?
lynx29but the i5-9400f already beats ryzen 3600 at many games across the board
On average by 1% across all tested games.
At 1080p.
When GPU is 2080Ti.

3500, given it's clock speed, will likely perform very close to 3600 in games.
Posted on Reply
#72
TheGuruStud
medi01Let's compare MSRP of one manufacturer to street price of another, shall we?


On average by 1% across all tested games.
At 1080p.
When GPU is 2080Ti.

3500, given it's clock speed, will likely perform very close to 3600 in games.
Stop fanboying. Everyone has a ReTardX 2080ti and plays at 1080. No reason to EVER mention lower cards or higher resolutions. :roll:

Seriously, though, imagine how much you'll lose with background apps eating at least a few percent (5+ easy JUST with discord) and you're all out of the threads...but the 3600 has 6 more. No SMT is a dead end even for budget cpus.
Posted on Reply
#73
Unregistered
medi01Let's compare MSRP of one manufacturer to street price of another, shall we?


On average by 1% across all tested games.
At 1080p.
When GPU is 2080Ti.

3500, given it's clock speed, will likely perform very close to 3600 in games.
It's still better...Enthusiasts sometimes don't care...sometimes it's fanboi=ism sometimes it's ignorance and sometimes the best is the best....even if under the most retarded circumstances...such as low end cpu's

I can't wait for Ryzen 4000's...I hope they match my CPU by then so I know for sure when I have another 2 years of good performance.

I am at heart an AMD fanboi...I have built 4 Ryzen systems and have loved them all...I'm quite positive I'll be building a 3500 or 3600 Ryzen sometime...maybe in February when I'll be able to the 3600 for like $169.99 with $30 combo at MicroCenter (it's only $10 less than current price because of the $50 combo discount on the R 3000's) Because that's an attractive price to me.
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#74
eidairaman1
The Exiled Airman
jmcslobIt's still better...Enthusiasts sometimes don't care...sometimes it's fanboi=ism sometimes it's ignorance and sometimes the best is the best....even if under the most retarded circumstances...such as low end cpu's

I can't wait for Ryzen 4000's...I hope they match my CPU by then so I know for sure when I have another 2 years of good performance.

I am at heart an AMD fanboi...I have built 4 Ryzen systems and have loved them all...I'm quite positive I'll be building a 3500 or 3600 Ryzen sometime...maybe in February when I'll be able to the 3600 for like $169.99 with $30 combo at MicroCenter (it's only $10 less than current price because of the $50 combo discount on the R 3000's) Because that's an attractive price to me.
Id like to but my living situation prevents me from having my rig hooked up.
Posted on Reply
#75
Unregistered
eidairaman1Id like to but my living situation prevents me from having my rig hooked up.
I hope that improves and I'm sure you heard about your Bulldozer CPU... You can get a $35 rebate for false advertisement.
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