The short and clear answer to this question, yes. AMD launched their entire Ryzen 5000 product stack on October 8th and used the live stream event to show consumers what we should be expecting with each Ryzen tier. Among the four CPUs launched, the Ryzen 7 5800X is the new 8 core part boasting some remarkable generational improvements in single-core, multi-core and interconnect latency. Numbers suggest it may well be the best 8-core processor the market has ever seen in both gaming and workstation environments.

One of AMD’s big focuses with the Zen 3 Vermeer CPUs was a complete overhaul of the architecture in order to greatly improve core to core communication, branch prediction and cache access in order to be much faster in latency-sensitive applications. They have been already providing the best multi-core performance at each and every price point so they improved their architecture by optimizing many on-die components; together with the manufacturing process enhancements, they are claiming a whopping 19% IPC performance uplift as an average in all tested applications. This metric is the most important variable in single-core speed calculation since it is not coming with additional power draw like increasing the clock speed does; its much harder but always better to optimize the IPC of a CPU instead of just boosting its clock speed and hope for the best.

Why you would ask? Because manufacturing processes become exponentially more power-hungry and inefficient if they are run well above their efficient range. Think of how Intel is trying to push their clock speed further and further with each new generation without actually providing any meaningful IPC improvements; their CPUs are becoming more and more inefficient and power-hungry with minimal performance uplift.

The core to core latency has also been essentially halved (by AMD’s presentation numbers) by switching from a 4 core CCX (Core Complex) to an 8 core CCX design. As you probably already knew, the first three Ryzen generations, 1000 series, 2000 series and 3000 series have all been manufactured using one or multiple 4 core CCXs. That means a 16 core CPU would use 4 x 4 CCX, a 12 core would use 4 x 4 CCXs with a few defect cores disabled on each CCX and so on. This approach has been a great advantage for AMD thanks to improved yields, ease of manufacturing and cheaper prices for consumers. The Ryzen 5000 series has switched from a 4 core CCX to an 8 core CCX thus severely decreasing core to core latency. There’s no CCX to CCX communication for the Ryzen 7 5800X since it only has one CCX with the fully enabled 8 cores. The 5800X is the new best gaming octa-core CPU out there and for the slightly steeper price of $449 it may well be one of the best overall gaming CPUs, decimating the entire Intel lineup in the process.

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