AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT Processor without Cooler

AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT 12-Core 3.8GHz (4.7 GHz Max Boost)

AMD’s new Ryzen XT lineup comes as a refresh that’s designed to tackle Intel’s new Comet Lake processors. The XT family brings three new flagships to bear: The Ryzen 9 3900XT, the Ryzen 7 3800XT, and the Ryzen 5 3600XT that will all vie for a spot on our list of Best CPUs. Surprisingly, on the surface, the XT lineup looks a lot like what we’ve seen in the past from Intel: An iterative lineup of chips with small differentiation from their predecessors in terms of features and clock speeds, not to mention the same number of cores, same process node/density (albeit with some refinements), and the same microarchitecture as their predecessors.

AMD even eliminated bundled coolers from two of its three new models, which runs counter to its standard value proposition of throwing in all the goods with each chip. Overall, the Ryzen XT series doesn’t appear to have the explosive gains like we’re used to with AMD’s gen-on-gen improvements, but there’s a lot more nuance to the XT story than what we see on the spec sheet.