The specific release date remains unclear, but a leak from Twitter @ Broly_X1 says Zen 4 could be announced in September 2022 with its availability coming a month later:
- AMD Ryzen 7000 Series: Release date, price, and everything you need to know
- AMD Ryzen 7000 Series CPUs: Specifications
- AMD Zen 4 CPU: Innovations
- AMD Zen 4 CPU: Design
- Share this story
- Further Reading
- The Ryzen 7 5800X3D: 3D V-Cache for Gamers
- AMD’s Zen 3 5800X3D CPU: Expected performance
- But what exactly is 3D V-Cache?
- AMD Zen 4 release date
- AMD Zen 4 devices
- How much will the AMD Ryzen 6000 series cost?
- What specs and features does the AMD Ryzen 6000 Series have?
AMD Ryzen 7000 Series: Release date, price, and everything you need to know
The launch of AMD’s 2022 products included an assortment of new processors, desktop and mobile graphics cards, and some laptop APUs. In addition to the new Ryzen 6000 series APUs and the Ryzen 7 5800X3D V-Cache processor, AMD also unveiled the Ryzen 7000 series of processors. This was not a particularly surprising discovery considering that the arrival of the new chips had already been confirmed, but we received some new information. Here’s everything you need to know about AMD Ryzen 7000 series processors:
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AMD Ryzen 7000 Series CPUs: Specifications
We are still a few months away from the official premiere of the Ryzen 7000 series desktop processors, so at the moment there is not much available for us in the name of the “specification”. That being said, we know that the Ryzen 7000 series processors will be based on AMD’s Zen 4 architecture. The new Zen 4-based chips, which will join AMD’s list of best processors, will be built on the 5nm TSMC process and will be compatible with the new AMD AM5 platform.
After successfully deploying Zen 3-based 7nm 3D V-Cache processors in the next few months, Zen4 is next in line for AMD in 2022. Even though the upcoming Ryzen 7 5800X3D and at least one more V-Cache processor is expected to be on par with the Core i9-12900K in the performance chart, the new Zen 4-based 7000 series desktop processors will truly compete with the current generation the dominant Intel processors in the market. The new Ryzen 7000 series processors will also support DDR5 as well as PCIe Gen 5, something already supported by the Intel Alder Lake platform.
We’ll update this article as soon as we know more about Zen 4. There’s already news about its successor – check out our Zen 5 architecture guide. You may also want to learn more about the current Zen 3+ based Ryzen 6000 series processors designed for integration with many of the best laptops and other mobile computers of 2022.
AMD Zen 4 CPU: Innovations
While Intel designs and manufactures its chips in-house, AMD’s internal designs are produced by the Taiwanese company TSMC. A report from Wikichip suggests the new TSMC 5nm process has an 80 percent greater improvement in transistor density compared to the older 7nm process – which AMD currently uses in its Zen processors and Xbox Series X and PS5 power hardware – while reducing chip size between 35 and 45 percent Design improvements should result in a 15 percent increase in efficiency when using the same power.
Another design feature expected from Zen 4 processors is the new 3D V-Cache stacking technology. This technology was first announced by Dr. Lisa Su in 2021 and is already being implemented in the upcoming Zen 3 processors. It relies on an additional Level 3 (L3) cache to be vertically stacked on top of the existing L3 cache to improve performance.
Current Zen 3 processors like the 5900X have two core complexes inside, each with 32MB of L3 cache for a total of 64MB. 3D V-Cache stacking technology ties an additional 64MB of L3 cache to each complex, increasing the overall L3 cache to 192MB.
According to AMD’s Computex presentation, the 3D V-Cache stacking technology improved performance by about 15 percent in 32 games. Some games, such as Monster Hunter World, saw a huge 25 percent improvement, while others, such as League of Legends, saw only an 8 percent increase.
AMD Zen 4 CPU: Design
The new Zen 4 processors will run on the new AMD AM5 socket, providing significantly more cores than the current Zen 3.
Bits and Chips has posted on Twitter a list of what to expect from the new processors, with Ryzen 3 processors up to four cores and Ryzen 9 with up to 24 cores. AMD’s current flagship Ryzen 5000 series processors have a maximum of 16 cores, so the new 24-core models will be a significant leap, especially when we consider the additional L3 cache.
Another Chips and Cheese tech blog post suggests it could be as high as 40%, while the IPC (clock instructions) could go up 25%. The article goes on to say that early samples of AMD processors with fewer EPYC processors show a 29% speed improvement over the current generation despite having the same number of cores and clocks.
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At today’s CES press conference, AMD did not provide much information about its desktop processors, but did offer a quick demo of its next-gen Ryzen 7000 processors and Zen 4 architecture. These chips will be released in the second half of 2022 and will require a completely new motherboard with new processor socket AM5.
We know a few details about the Ryzen 7000 processors, except that they will be built with TSMC’s 5nm manufacturing process, and the sample AMD demonstrated on stage ran at 5GHz (5950X currently hits 4.9GHz). We also didn’t hear anything about the AM5 socket that we didn’t know – only it would be a Land Grid Array (LGA) socket that places pins on the motherboard rather than the bottom of the CPU, same thing as Intel desktop chips. We also know that CPU coolers made for AM4 motherboards should still work on AM5 motherboards.
Further Reading
AMD has been using the physical AM4 socket since 2016, but still has some life in it – the new Ryzen 7 5800X3D processor is an 8-core, 16-thread chip that uses the AM4 socket and increases speed by stacking an L3 cache on top of the CPU chip, something what AMD calls “3D V-Cache Technology.” This increases both the cache bandwidth and the amount of cache; the standard 5800X only includes 32MB of cache, compared to the 96MB of the 5800X3D.
AnandTech delves into the technology in this article, but in the short version, gaming performance improves by an average of 15 percent with 3D V-Cache, even though the Ryzen 7 5800X uses the same Zen 3 architecture, the same 7 nm manufacturing process and the same 105W TDP as other Ryzen 5000 series chips and sockets on same motherboards (BIOS update will be required presumably).
AMD has not announced the prices of the 5800X3D or announced that it has more 3D V-Cache processors to be announced. However, with a production capacity constrained by an ongoing chip shortage, the smaller selection of chips that is consistently available for purchase is arguably better than an announcement of a complete refresh that no one can find. AMD struggled to meet demand for its 5000 series processors in early 2021, but caught up with demand later in the year. And AMD hasn’t said whether there will be Ryzen 6000 series desktop processors – though it looks like the Ryzen 6000 will be reserved for laptop chips and APUs, as in the Ryzen 4000 nomenclature.
The 5800X3D should be a decent makeshift for people looking to throw a new processor into their existing AMD system, rather than paying more for a 12th Gen Intel Core processor or waiting for the Ryzen 7000 to roll. But that’s still not targeting the under $ 200 CPU market that Intel has just made a lot more interesting with some of its new Core i5 and Core i3 chips. It is not known whether AMD will introduce new products or lower prices to compete with these budget processors.
For those of you who don’t know, this change also means that the underside of Zen 4 processors will now only have contact pads instead of pins. Instead, the pins will be defined at the socket level, not at the CPU. Here’s a quick look at what Ryzen 7000 processors will look like:
The Ryzen 7 5800X3D: 3D V-Cache for Gamers
That’s all we know so far about the upcoming AMD Zen 4 and AM5 products, but by the time they launch this year, AMD has something else to move us on the desktop. The new Ryzen 7 processor with socket AM4, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, will arrive this spring. The Ryzen 7 5800X3D will be the first consumer-oriented processor from AMD to feature 3D V-Cache hardware, which should increase performance in many tasks, but (according to AMD) especially in games.
On paper, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D is almost identical to the regular Ryzen 7 5800X we tested at the end of 2020. Both chips have eight Zen 3 CPU cores with support for SMT thread doubling and 105-watt TDP. The Ryzen 7 5800X3D is clocked slightly lower, with a 3.4 GHz base clock and a 4.5 GHz boost clock, compared to the Ryzen 7 5800X 3.8 GHz base clock and a 4.7 GHz boost clock. The new processor, however, makes up for this difference with the large (64MB) AMD 3D V-Cache pool that comes bundled with the 32MB 2D L3 cache.
This 3D V-Cache resides on the CPU as a separate chip that is attached to the CPU core. The 64 MB pool can be accessed at a reported rate of up to 2 TB per second by the CPU. Applications that are particularly bandwidth-hungry and memory-intensive should benefit significantly from this, while programs less sensitive to bandwidth changes are likely to experience little effect – or perhaps even worse performance, due to the reduced CPU clock speed.
AMD in particular reports that the new Ryzen 7 5800X3D will perform exceptionally well when launching games. According to the company, when playing at 1080p (1920 by 1080 pixels) with high graphics settings, you should see an average performance gain of 15% over the company’s current 12-core flagship, the Ryzen 9 5900X.
According to internal AMD testing, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D also sometimes outperforms the Intel Core i9-12900K. It’s worth noting, however, that in the three games tested, AMD recorded a draw with the Intel Core i9, with the overall increase being closer to an average of 7%. Of course, all of this should be taken with a grain of salt as we have not yet been able to verify these performance results with our own tests on our own test machines.
Regardless of how well (or not) the Ryzen 7 5800X3D performs, it’s certainly an interesting new addition to the Ryzen 7 5000 series product line that we can chew while we look forward to seeing the Zen 4, AM5 and Ryzen 7000 arrive to be taken at Intel’s strong show thanks to the latest Core processors.
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One thing is for sure: Zen 4 processors will be released in 2022. The question is when? Tomsguide suggests that Zen 4 processors could be rolled out as early as the first quarter of 2022, although that wouldn’t leave much time between the release of the refreshed Zen 3 processors.
AMD’s Zen 3 5800X3D CPU: Expected performance
Image: AMD (YouTube)
Without any other design changes, the updated 5900X ran from Gears 5 12 percent faster at 1080p – despite no other change in power consumption and a fixed frequency between the two processors. Other games have taken advantage of the technology as well, according to AMD’s presentation, with Monster Hunter World seeing a 25 percent improvement over the new design. (A footnote in the AMD presentation added that the refreshed Zen 3 processor was 15 percent faster on average in 32 separate PC games, although some titles such as League of Legends saw only a fractional performance boost.)
The new 3D V-Cache technology was announced by AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su at Computex 2021. In the presentation, AMD presented a demo where the current 5900X generation benchmarked the Gears of War 5 against the 5900X prototype built with the new Technology 3D V-Cache.
At CES 2022, AMD announced the official nomenclature of the new chips: X3D. The average performance improvement for X3D chips across games was 15 percent, although some titles – such as Watch Dogs: Legion and Far Cry 6 – saw an increase of 36 and 24 percent over the regular Ryzen 5900X.
Image: AMD (YouTube)
Compared to the i9-12900K, AMD showed off slides that claimed the 5800X3D was 17 percent faster than Intel’s fastest Alder Lake processor in Final Fantasy XIV and 8 percent faster in Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Interestingly, the refreshed 5800X3D could only achieve parity from 12900K in Gears 5, and the Intel processor was 2 percent faster in CS: GO.
But what exactly is 3D V-Cache?
AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su announces a new technology that will appear in the Zen 3 refresh at Computex 2021. Image: AMD
To understand the benefits of V-Cache, we need to take a look at how current Ryzen Zen 3 processors actually work. If you were to take the Ryzen 5000 series processor apart today, you would see the core complex (CCD.
Each CCD can attach up to 32MB of L3 cache. If you’re using the 5900X or 5950X in your gaming PC, these processors have two separate CCDs for a total of 64MB of L3 cache.
The L3 cache can be very useful in games, often more than having more cores or threads. While more of everything is generally a good thing when it comes to gaming performance, a Techspot analysis found that a larger L3 cache can often be more beneficial, provided the game isn’t entirely GPU related.
“If you were to upgrade a Core i7-8700K – which is essentially a Core i5-10600K – to a Core i7-10700K or something faster, and you noticed an increase in performance, it’s probably not due to the extra cores but rather the extra cache,” summed up Techspot.
So, to increase the amount of L3 cache on their CPUs, AMD invented the 3D V-Cache technology. The design vertically stacks an additional 64MB L3 cache on each CCD, allowing for a maximum of 192MB L3 cache. That’s more than double what the current Ryzen chips offer, and by linking the new cache directly to the complexes and adding some structured silicon, AMD says the refreshed chips look identical to their Zen 3 counterparts.
Image: AMD
“The mere existence of the 3D V-Cache is a generational leap in performance,” said Robert Hallock, AMD director of technical marketing, in an October interview.
There is also a server processor called Genoa with up to 96 cores and 192 threads, and one cloud computing processor called Bergamo with 128 cores and 128 threads.
AMD Zen 4 release date
During the Zen 3 disclosure in October 2020, AMD chief technology officer Mark Papermaster confirmed that Zen 4 was “on the right track in design.” His presentation was accompanied by the following schedule:
Image: AMD
Our next official update came in July 2021, when AMD CEO Lisa Su confirmed that Zen 4 is on track to launch the following products. At CES in January 2022, the company was a bit more specific – the goal is the second half of 2022.
This is more or less in line with AMD’s usual update cycle for CPU architecture:
- Zen – March 2017
- Zen 2 – August 2019
- Zen 3 – November 2020
The specific release date remains unclear, but a leak from Twitter @ Broly_X1 says Zen 4 could be announced in September 2022 with its availability coming a month later:
Rafał ZEN4
announce 2022 9 ~ 10？
run 2022 10 ~ 11？
I only know about this time– vegeta (@ Broly_X1) May 3, 2021
The YouTube video “Moore’s Law is Dead” claims that Zen 4 will debut in the third quarter of 2022 – anytime between July and September. However, further tweets from @ Broly_X1 suggest Zen 4 will arrive with AMD’s RDNA 3 GPU architecture in Q4 2022. It’s sometime from October to December this year:
AMD Zen 4 devices
The official Zen 4 release date is expected to coincide with the first processors to take advantage of it. As AMD itself confirmed, it will be the Ryzen 7000 series.
PC users regularly turn to AMD chips to update their existing machines, with the main limitation being a compatible motherboard. The transition to the new 5nm process, as indicated in the official screenshot above, likely means motherboards using the existing AM4 socket will not be supported. A new AM5 socket is expected, but it wouldn’t work with current AMD A520 and X570 motherboards.
According to a leaked Twitter Bits And Chips, the new AM5 socket will bring more cores to the Zen 4 Ryzen processors:
We will see 24-core Zen4 / 5 processors on the AM5 socket. Probably the SKUs listed are:
Ryzen 9 = 24/20 core
Ryzen 7 = 16/12 core
Ryzen 5 = 8/6 core
Ryzen 3 = 4/2 core– Bits And Chips – Eng (@BitsAndChipsEng) August 19, 2021
The Ryzen 5000 series based on Zen 3 has a maximum of 16 cores, so it’s a big update. However, having more cores does not always provide a performance boost, so it remains to be seen how much of an impact this will have. The leak in question has a history when it comes to component news, but still no guarantee that we will see a Zen 4 core 24-core processor.
Zen 4 will almost certainly hit laptops at some point, although we can wait until CES 2023 to see them. Even then, these processors are designed to integrate with devices, so they will depend on interest from laptop manufacturers (or OEMs, as they are often called).
Our next official update came in July 2021, when AMD CEO Lisa Su confirmed that Zen 4 is on track to launch the following products. At CES in January 2022, the company was a bit more specific – the goal is the second half of 2022.
How much will the AMD Ryzen 6000 series cost?
The Ryzen 6000 series processors are designed to be integrated with laptops and other hardware. You won’t be able to buy them as standalone components, making the price of each processor irrelevant. You will pay for each device as a whole, and the total price depends on many different factors.
More than 150 projects for Ryzen 5000 mobile processors have been created, but AMD says there are 200 in the works on their successor.
It has been confirmed that companies such as Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo and Razer are releasing devices with a Ryzen 6000 processor, some of which have even been announced at CES 2022. We will update this article as more devices are revealed.
What specs and features does the AMD Ryzen 6000 Series have?
Despite being limited to mobile processors, there is a total of 13 different Ryzen 6000 processors to choose from. Several features are consistent across all of them, including the new 6nm process and the improved Zen 3 architecture.
The Ryzen 6000 series supports Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2, as well as USB 4 – AMD claims it can reach speeds of up to 40Gbps, enough to transfer a 4K movie in less than 7 seconds. You also get PCIe Gen 4, DDR5, and HDMI 2.1 support.
The new AMD RDNA 2 graphics architecture is supported by the Ryzen 6000 series, which means it will work with GPUs such as the new Radeon RX 6500 XT.
Image: AMD
Once again, the lineup is divided into two distinct categories. The H premium series focuses on gaming and creating high-end content, while the U series is aimed at thin and light devices. AMD has not adopted the hybrid design found in Intel Alder Lake processors, but is expected to excel in both performance and energy efficiency. The company says the Ryzen 6000 can run for up to 24 hours on battery, but that will largely depend on the other hardware it’s connected to.
No wonder AMD describes the top-of-the-line Ryzen 9 6980HX as “the world’s best notebook processor.” There were no direct comparisons to the competition during the speech, but it reportedly offers a 28% increase in performance over the Ryzen 5000 series in terms of productivity and multi-threaded performance, as per PCMark 10 and Cinebench R23 respectively.
The Ryzen 6000 series also focuses on security, becoming the first processors to support the Microsoft Pluto chip. This allows you to take advantage of the advanced security features of Windows 11 that would otherwise be unavailable.
