ryzen again — AMDs next-gen Ryzen 9000 desktop chips and the Zen 5 architecture arrive in July But AMD says AM4 will hang around for budget PCs well into 2025.
Andrew Cunningham – Jun 3, 2024 3:00 am UTC reader comments 36 AMD is announcing Ryzen 9000 and Zen 5, the second CPU architecture for its AM5 platform. AMD AMD’s Ryzen 9 9950X heads up the new Ryzen 9000 family. AMD There are three other variants here, with 12, 8, and 6 Zen 5 CPU cores. The Ryzen 7000 series launched with chips at the same tiers. AMD AMD is also announcing a pair of high-end chipsets, though they don’t offer much that’s new; 600-series boards should all support Ryzen 9000 after a BIOS update. AMD The Zen 5 CPU architecture powers the Ryzen 9000 series. AMD A handful of architectural highlights from Zen 5. AMD The performance improvements with Zen 5 are occasionally quite impressive, but on average we’re looking at a 16 percent increase over Zen 4 at the same clock speeds. That’s decent, but not as good as the move from Zen 3 to Zen 4. AMD Further ReadingEverything you need to know about Zen 4, socket AM5, and AMDs newest chipsets
Its been almost two years since AMD introduced its Ryzen 7000 series desktop CPUs and the Zen 4 CPU architecture. Today, AMD is announcing the first concrete details about their successors. The Ryzen 9000 CPUs begin shipping in July.
At a high level, the Ryzen 9000 series and Zen 5 architecture offer mostly incremental improvements over Ryzen 7000 (Ryzen 8000 on the desktop is used exclusively for Zen 4-based G-series CPUs with more powerful integrated GPUs). AMD says that Zen 5 is roughly 16 percent faster than Zen 4 at the same clock speeds, depending on the workloadcertainly not nothing, and there are some workloads that perform much better. But that number is far short of the 29 percent jump between Zen 3 and Zen 4.
AMD and Intel have both compensated for mild single-core performance improvements in the past by adding more cores, but Ryzen 9000 doesnt do that. From the 9600X to the 9950X, the chips offer between 6 and 16 full-size Zen 5 cores, the same as every desktop lineup since Zen 2 and the Ryzen 3000 series. De-lidded shots of the processors indicate that they’re still using a total of two or three separate chiplets: one or two CPU chiplets with up to 8 cores each, and a separate I/O die to handle connectivity. Enlarge / Ryzen 9000 has the same layout as the last few generations of Ryzen desktop CPUtwo CPU chiplets with up to eight cores each, and an I/O die to handle connectivity. AMD
These chips include no Zen 5c E-cores, as older rumors suggested. Zen 5c is a version of Zen 5 that is optimized to take up less space in a silicon die, at the expense of higher clock speeds; Zen 5c cores are making their debut in the Ryzen AI 300-series laptop chips AMD also announced today. Boosting the number of E-cores has helped Intel match and surpass AMDs multi-core performance, though Ryzens power consumption and efficiency have both outdone Intels throughout the 12th-, 13th-, and 14th-generation Core product cycles. Apple also uses a mix of P-cores and E-cores in their high-end desktop CPU designs. Advertisement
Ryzen 9000 doesnt include any kind of neural processing unit (NPU), nor does AMD mention whether the Ryzen 7000s RDNA 2-based integrated GPU has been upgraded or improved.
AMD is also announcing new X870 and X870E motherboard chipsets to accompany the new processors; as with the X670, the E-series chipset is actually a pair of chipsets on the same motherboard, boosting the number of available USB ports, M.2 slots, and PCIe slots.
The only real improvement here seems to be that all X870-series boards support USB4 and higher EXPO memory overclocking speeds by default. The chipsets also support PCIe 5.0 speeds for the main PCIe slot and M.2 slot, though the X670 chipsets already did this.
The processors power requirements arent changing, so users with 600-series motherboards ought to be able to use Ryzen 9000 CPUs with little to no performance penalty following a BIOS update. AMD plans to keep the AM4 socket around as a budget platform until at least 2025, according to this slide. AMD To that end, it’s announcing a couple more riffs on the old Zen 3-based Ryzen 5000 series, to entice budget builders and upgraders. Pricing hasn’t been announced. AMD
Ryzen 9000 doesnt seem likely to resolve the biggest issues with the AM5 platform, namely the high costs relative to current-gen Intel systems, the high cost relative to AM4-based systems today, and even the high cost relative to AM4-based systems at the same point in the AM4 sockets lifespan. Motherboards remain more expensive, DDR5 memoy remains more expensive, and there are still no AM5 processors available for significantly less than $200.
According to AMDs own timeline, it plans to keep the AM4 socket around until at least 2025. AM4 is still a surprisingly decent budget platform given that the socket was introduced eight years ago, and AMD does, in fact, continue to trickle out new Ryzen 5000-series CPUs to give buyers and upgrades more options. But it still means that system builders either need to choose between an expensive platform that has a future or a cheaper platform thats more or less a dead end.
Listing image by AMD reader comments 36 Andrew Cunningham Andrew is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica, with a focus on consumer tech including computer hardware and in-depth reviews of operating systems like Windows and macOS. Andrew lives in Philadelphia and co-hosts a weekly book podcast called Overdue. Advertisement Channel Ars Technica ← Previous story Next story → Related Stories Today on Ars
