You may have heard rumors of AMD's new vicious-sounding CPUs codenamed "Threadripper," and now it looks like the full lineup has been leaked ahead of their supposed release in June. According to WCCFTech, the enthusiast line of CPUs will be compatible with a modified version of the SP3 socket, which was originally designed for the company's 32 core Naples servers. These new processors are basically AMD's competitors to Intel's new Core i9 chips, and it will be interesting to see how they eventually size up against each other. Keep in mind that the information below is part of a leak, so don't expect 100 percent accuracy.
Starting with the big boys, we've got the 16-core/32-thread Ryzen 9 1998X and Ryzen 9 1998. The 1998X has a base / boost clock speed of 3.5/3.9GHz, while Ryzen 9 1998 is only a little behind, with a 3.2 / 3.6 GHz base / boost clock speed on 16 cores. Both CPUs are rated at 155W TDP.
Next are two CPUs with 14-cores/28-threads, the Ryzen 9 1977X and Ryzen 9 1977. The 1977X has a base clock speed of 3.5GHz, and a boost clock all the way up to 4.1GHz with a 155W TDP. Bear in mind that 4.1GHz has been the top overclock on most liquid cooled Ryzen chips so far, but getting a single core or two that high has been easier. The slightly lower end 1977 has a base / boost clock of 3.2/3.7GHz and 140W TDP, a decent step down from the 1977X.
Three 12-core/24-thread processors will be available: Ryzen 9 1976X with 3.6/4.1GHz base/boost clocks and 140W TDP, while Ryzen 9 1956X is 125W TDP and runs at 3.2/3.8GHz. Finally, the Ryzen 9 1956 is also 125W TDP, and has a base/boost clockspeed of 3.0/3.7GHz.
At the low end of the Ryzen 9 spectrum are the 1955X and 1955, with a measly 10 cores apiece, both with 125W TDP. The Ryzen 9 1955X has a base clockspeed of 3.6 GHz and a boost of 4.0GHz, while the 1955 has base/boost speeds of 3.1/3.7GHz.
As for gaming, these new chips might be a little overkill. Current 8-core/16-thread processors are already ahead of the curve, so you're not going to see much of a benefit from these monster CPUs in the short term. Price is likely to be a big factor here too. High end Ryzen 7 CPUs like the 1800X are already well above $400, so expect these to be even more expensive. But if you're doing more than just gaming, like heavy video editing, more cores could be very enticing.
Again, these are all leaked specs, and things may change. The 14-core and 10-core models are particularly interesting to see, as AMD's AM4 Ryzen parts have used symmetric core counts for each module. With Ryzen 9 effectively stuffing two Ryzen chips into a single package, 14-core might imply that AMD is able to disable cores on a more granular level. That or AMD will just use a 6-core module combined with a fully enabled 8-core module.
