3700X and 3900X Raising The Bar
by Andrei Frumusanu & Gavin Bonshor on July 7, 2019 9:00 AM EST
by Andrei Frumusanu & Gavin Bonshor on July 7, 2019 9:00 AM EST
Power consumption of the new Ryzen 3900X and 3700X are of particular interest because it’s a very key aspect of the new generation chipsets, and AMD promises some extremely large improvements thanks to the new 7nm process node as well as the optimised chiplet design.
When comparing the single-chiplet Ryzen 3700X to the previous generation Ryzen 2700X, we’re seeing quite some dramatic differences in core power consumption. In particular power consumption at each chip’s respective peak frequency is notably different: Although the new 3700X has a 100MHz higher clock speed and thus is further up the exponential power curve, it manages to showcase 32% lower absolute power than the 2700X.
We have to remember that we’re talking about overall absolute power, and not efficiency of the chip. When taking actual performance into account through the higher clock as well as Zen2’s increased performance per clock, the Performance/W figures for the new 3700X should be significantly higher than its predecessor.
What is curious about the new chip is just how closely it follows its power limitations. The new boosting algorithm on the Ryzen 3 series is a particularly “opportunistic” one that will go as high in frequencies as it can go within its constraints, no matter the amount of CPU cores.
