Over at Igor's Lab, sources have indicated that the upcoming Ryzen 9 4950X will have a boost frequency of 4.8 GHz, which is seriously impressive given that it's expected to be a 16-core, 32-thread part. As with any leaked information, we do have to take it with a grain of salt, though, and preliminary specs are always subject to change.
The information comes from an OPN code Igor managed to get his hands on, which reads "100-000000059-52_48/35_Y." Decoding that, the 35 at the end signifies the 3.5 GHz base clock, with 4.8 telling us the boost clock is 4.8 GHz.
Reports indicate that this also pertains an engineering sample of the 16-core part, making it the successor to the 3950X, likely to be called the 4950X -- unless AMD jumps straight to the 5000 nomenclature for the Zen 3 "Vermeer" parts, in which case it will likely be called the 5950X. A move such as this wouldn't be all too surprising given that the current 4000-series chips are APUs based on the Zen 2 architecture.
AMD has also already confirmed that it will release the first Zen 3 based processors this year, which paired with this rumor could spell some serious number-crunching hardware from Team Red.
Although Intel might be running behind in the process node race, it has always had the upper hand in the GHz race, which is what most games tend to favor in the end. If this rumor is true that AMD's top Zen 3 part will boost to 4.8 GHz, then it might also end up taking the crown for best gaming CPU soon. A new architecture, paired with these high frequencies could lead AMD to win both on per-core performance as well as multi-core performance.
For comparison, the current Zen 2 based 3950X has a base clock of 3.5 GHz and a boost clock of up to 4.7 GHz, which isn't much lower. It's surprising to see AMD's chips boosting to 4.8 GHz, but it's only 100 MHz more than the current-gen parts, and AMD has shown as that its silicon yields are good enough for high boost frequencies, as proven by the new XT line of processors.
But, we do have to play the devil's advocate. There is nothing here to prove that this product actually exists, or that this OPN belongs to a 16-core Zen 3 part. With many CPU leaks, we often have an entry in a digital databank to prove that a test was actually run on the hardware, but all we have to go by with this leak is an OPN code from a source we cannot confirm.
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