Recent years have seen AMD move from strength to strength in the CPU space, but with Intel’s 11th Gen Tiger Lake processors looming on the horizon, the red team has found its next moves under the microscope. While we wait for official news, the rumour mill is beginning to pick up traction with whispers that some of AMD’s Zen 3-based Ryzen 4000 CPUs, codenamed Vermeer, will sport 10 cores.
The potential for 10-core SKUs in the Ryzen 4000 desktop line-up was unearthed by Yuri Bubliy when diving into AMD’s new AGESA 1.0.8.1 firmware. Given that he is known as the author of two popular performance enhancing tools for Ryzen CPUs, ClockTuner and DRAM Calculator, his claims could very well hold water.
AMD’s current Ryzen 3000 series skipped 10 cores due to the limitations of Zen 2 architecture, with the line-up comprised of 8-core and 12-core CPUs. If Bubliy’s rumours are true, not only would Zen 3 include AMD’s first 10-core processors, but it could possibly be an attempt to rival Intel’s 10th Gen flagship i9-10900K core-to-core at a more affordable price.
Bubliy’s discoveries didn’t end there: he also found that AMD will be leaning into easy overclocking with a new feature dubbed the ‘Curve Optimiser.’ Available in the BIOS, this will enable Zen 3 users to change up the boost clock and frequency of each individual core without restrictions.
And lastly, ‘Infinity Fabric dividers’ are also mentioned several times. Although the mechanism remains a mystery for the time being, these will apparently help increase the memory controller frequency in mixed mode.
AMD has repeatedly assured us throughout 2020 that Zen 3’s release date remains on track, launching at the end of the year. If all goes according to plan, we won’t have too long to wait to verify this information. But for now, take these rumours with a dash of salt, just in case.