The first wave of AMD’s mainstream Ryzen chips was split across three families: Ryzen 7, Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 3 . The higher the numeral, the higher the spec of the processor. Simple enough, right? This initial three-tiered approach also made it pretty easy to compare AMD’s Ryzen chips against the competition. The Ryzen 3 was an entry-level alternative to the Intel i3, the Ryzen 5 was a mainstream counterpart to the Intel i5, and the Ryzen 7 was pitched in opposition to the performance offered by an Intel i7. Then, in 2018, AMD introduced their second wave of Ryzen CPUs. Relying on a new 12nm manufacturing process and Zen+ architecture, this second series of Ryzen CPUs was broken out into four families. The Ryzen 3, Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 all returned. This reincarnated Ryzen family offered higher boosted clock speeds, reduced power consumption. Ryzen range offers an impressive 8 cores and 16 threads, while the AMD Threadripper series starts at 12 cores and 24 threads and goe...