AMD Announces Latest Ryzen 5000 Processor and Announces All-New Ryzen 7000 Series

AMD didn’t reveal much about its desktop processors at the CES press conference this morning, but it did provide a sneak peek at its next generation Ryzen 7000 processors and Zen 4 architecture. These chips will launch in the second half of 2022 and will require a brand new motherboard with new processor socket AM5.

We know few details about the Ryzen 7000 processors, except that they will be built on TSMC’s 5nm manufacturing process and that the sample shown by AMD on stage was clocked at 5GHz (the current 5950X tops out at 4.9GHz).

We also haven’t heard anything about an AM5 socket that we didn’t know about yet – it’s just going to be a Land Grid Array (LGA) socket that puts the pins on the motherboard instead of on the bottom of the CPU, same thing. like Intel desktop chips. We also know that AM4 motherboard CPU coolers should continue to work on AM5 motherboards.

AMD has been using the AM4 physical socket since 2016, but there is still some life left in it – the new Ryzen 7 5800X3D processor is an 8-core, 16-thread chip that uses the AM4 socket and boosts speed by stacking L3 cache. on top of the processor die, which AMD calls “3D V-Cache technology”. This increases both the cache bandwidth and size; the standard 5800X includes just 32MB of cache, compared to 96MB for the 5800X3D.

AnandTech goes into more detail on the technology in this article, but it briefly states that gaming performance is improved by an average of 15 percent thanks to 3D V-Cache, although the Ryzen 7 5800X uses the same Zen 3 architecture, the same 7 nm, and the same TDP of 105 watts as other Ryzen 5000 series chips and slots for the same motherboards (presumably will need a BIOS update).

AMD hasn’t announced pricing for the 5800X3D or if it has more 3D V-Cache processors. But with manufacturing capacity limited by an ongoing chip shortage, a smaller selection of chips that are always available for purchase is probably better than announcing a complete upgrade no one can find.

AMD had trouble keeping up with demand for its 5000-series processors in early 2021, but caught up with demand later this year. And AMD hasn’t said if Ryzen 6000 desktop processors will arrive, though it looks like Ryzen 6000 will be reserved for laptop chips and APUs, as it was in the Ryzen 4000 nomenclature.

The 5800X3D should be a worthy stop for people looking to install a new processor into their existing AMD system instead of paying more money for a 12th Gen Intel Core processor or waiting for the Ryzen 7000 to come out. But it still doesn’t apply to the sub-$200 processor market, which Intel has just made much more interesting with some of its new Core i5 and Core i3 chips.

It remains to be seen if AMD will introduce new products or cut prices to compete with these budget processors.