AMD officially announced its 3rd Gen Ryzen processors over at CES this year and of course the unstoppable SEO behemoth has already sputtered into life to gain those sweet, site-building Google rankings. But there’s a danger lurking in that SEO soup, a dreadful term set to confuse and complicate: Ryzen 3.
I get it, Ryzen 2 made some sort of sense being simply the most search-friendly term for the 2000-series Ryzen CPUs launched back in 2018. You may not have liked it – I certainly didn’t – but before we could say ‘2nd Gen Ryzen’ the cogs were in motion and it was Ryzen 2 or nowt if you wanted to read about AMD’s next processors. But this set us on a doomed path….
A spectre is haunting PC hardware – the spectre of the Google-friendly phrase ‘Ryzen 3 Ryzen 3 3300X’. Now, you finally understand what’s at stake here. By the time we’re on Zen 4, we’ll be facing the Ryzen 5 Ryzen 5 5500X. Is that what you want people?! The proletariat must rise up and fight the evils of convenient SEO search terms – if we want to avoid the crushing yoke of ‘Ryzen 3’ we need to be the oppressive minority, we need to keep typing ‘3rd Gen Ryzen’ into Google as often as possible.
Okay, maybe looking at this through the lens of the communist manifesto is neither constructive nor particularly fitting. And this also may all be pointless rhetoric – my voice echoing into the infinite internet abyss as this unstoppable juggernaut steamrolls towards consumer consternation. But at least I can link back to this piece when I receive a comment telling me I’m the problem. No, I’m not the problem, I’m just complicit. That’s way better. At least I can say I tried.
Unfortunately AMD’s naming schema has been a point of contention online. It’s all a bit of a gamble as to which basket you should put all of your eggs into, with codenames and product nomenclature changing on a whim. It’s not just AMD either, you might remember the whole Nvidia RTX 2080/1180 debacle that erupted last year. Even now there are rumours circulating that Nvidia is planning a coy return to the 11-series, not that we’re totally convinced as of yet.
AMD can be a bit flippant to the rules around consistent naming conventions, most tech companies are. The red team is responsible for both the RX 580X: an identical card to the RX 580; and the RX 580 2048SP: an RX 570 that AMD took a sharpie to.
But the buck ends with us this time. When AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su took to the stage over at CES to announce the Zen 2 Ryzen chips were set to launch mid-2019, the slide clearly stated 3rd Generation Ryzen. So this one’s on us to stick to the same, sensical naming convention team red has already settled on.
It all comes down to Google juice, and 3rd Gen Ryzen isn’t yet particularly powerful. At least it hasn’t been. Scraping Google’s November numbers – pre-official announcement – 3rd Gen Ryzen only managed a pitiful 720 average searches a month.
Ryzen 3, however, has plenty of keyword magic. AMD has already employed this particular phraseology for its own i3, i5, i7 comparable price/performance structure, hence this term has since been plastered across the web. Every retailer and outlet has used this phrase extensively across product listings, specs sheets, and articles ever since Ryzen first launched. As a result, search term ranking for Ryzen 3 is 12,100 avg/month. In other words: it’s not looking good for our people’s manifesto.
And we mustn’t forget the Ryzen 3000-series. This term is already a little ambiguous, ostensibly describing any 3xxx Ryzen chip out in the wild – including second-gen 12nm Raven Ridge chips. Nevertheless, it’s got a little Google juice on its side – a pre-match favourite of sorts. Back in November it managed 1,600 avg/month.
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So if we can please disregard Ryzen 3 on grounds of being super dumb, we’re left with Ryzen 3000-series or 3rd Gen Ryzen. They’re not perfect, but they’re hella better than the alternative. And together we can stop Ryzen 3 before it’s too late.
Now, say it with me: AMD 3rd Gen Ryzen. Just keep typing that into Google for the next few months and we’ll be golden. And this way you won’t have to listen to me rant about ‘Ryzen 5’ once Zen 4 launches, too.
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