Two (Well, Three) Dies Are Better Than One, As Is 208MB Of Cache

Happy Friday from AMD, with the announcement of the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition.  While it may sound a bit like a Star Wars droid it is instead a interesting new chip design from AMD.  It’s not quite the same as two Ryzen 9 9950X3D in one package as the two dies share 208MB of cache, there is 16MB of shared L2 cache, 32MB of L3 cache on each die and another 64MB chunk of 3D V-Cache per die; the two dies share a single I/O die.  In theory this should give another 10% boost in performance over the 9950X3D, even with a slightly reduced peak clock speed of 5.6 GHz.  It also slurps up 30W more power with a TDP of 200W.

The launch is set for April 22 and we don’t yet have a confirmed price, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 will certainly be a bit more than the $699 MSRP of the Ryzen 9 9950X3D but certainly not twice the price.  In theory it should be a simple upgrade, though a new set of AGESA code and new BIOS version will likely arrive simultaneously with the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2.  Ars Technica has a few more details to spill or you can pop by AMD for even more.