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AMD’s “together we advance_PCs”l ivestream presentation just wrapped up moments ago, where AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su set the stage for the release of the next generation of AMD Ryzen desktop CPUs. Building off of AMD’s Ryzen 7000 announcement back at Computex 2022, the eagerly anticipated presentation laid out AMD’s launch plans for their first family of Zen 4 architecture-based CPUs, which will see AMD kick things off with a quartet of enthusiast-focused chips. Topping out with the 16 core Ryzen 9 7950X, AMD’s Ryzen 7000 chips will be launching in just over 4 weeks’ time, on September 27th, with AMD expecting to handily retake the performance crown across virtually all categories of the PC CPU space, from gaming to content creation.
Driving AMD’s gains in this newest generation of desktop CPUs is a combination of architectural improvements underpinning the Zen 4 architecture, as well as moving production of the CPU core chiplets to TSMC’s leading-edge 5nm process. The combination of which will allow AMD to deliver what they are saying is now a 13% increase in IPC over their Zen 3 architecture – up from an 11% claim as of Computex – as well as a sizable increase in CPU clockspeeds. The top-end Ryzen 9 7950X will have a maximum turbo clockspeed of 5.7GHz, 800MHz (16%) higher than the equivalent Ryzen 9 5950X. As a result, AMD expects to deliver a 29% generational increase in single-threaded performance, and even more in multi-threaded workloads.
Launching in conjunction with the new Ryzen 7000 series chips will be AMD’s AM5 platform, which will be cornerstone of AMD’s consumer desktop platform through at least 2025. AM5 introduces DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 support for AMD’s chips, as well as a new LGA socket. 4 chipsets are planned thus far – X670 Extreme, X670, B660 Extreme, and B660 – with X670 series boards available for the September launch, and B660 series boards set to follow in October.
For regular AnandTech readers and AMD followers, AMD’s product stack for next month’s launch should look very familiar. AMD has done very well for themselves by starting things off with an enthusiast-focused desktop launch that’s built around a group of four high-end processors, and for the Ryzen 7000 generation, AMD isn’t deviating from this.
As established by AMD back at Computex, Ryzen 7000 chips top out at 16 cores. So across AMD’s product stack, the core counts are the same in this generation versus the last. AMD’s top SKU will offer 16 cores, followed by 12, 8, and finally 6 CPU cores. And as before, AMD is building their chips using up to two Zen 4 CPU core chiplets (CCDs), each comprising 8 Zen 4 CPU cores.
As an aside, AMD is not disclosing any further details about the integrated RDNA2 architecture GPU at this time. So while all of the Ryzen 7000 chips come with an iGPU, we still do not have specifications to speak of. Regardess, AMD has made it clear at multiple points that the iGPU for these desktop chips is a relatively small configuration for basic desktop work, and is not designed to be a high-performance GPU like on AMD’s APUs.
Ryzen 9 7950X: The Fastest CPU In the World
Leading the pack is the Ryzen 9 7950X. The very best of AMD’s Zen 4 architecture will use two fully enabled CCDs to deliver a total of 16 CPU cores. Thanks in large part to TSMC’s 5nm process, it comes with some very high clockspeeds as well; the base clockspeed alone is 4.5GHz, and the turbo clockspeed will reach up to 5.7GHz for a single thread. The latter is actually 200MHz higher than AMD’s Computex presentation, where the company hit just 5.5GHz.
AMD is advertising this chip as coming with 80MB of cache. That breaks down to 64MB of L3 cache – 32MB on each CCD – as well as 1MB of L2 cache paired with each Zen 4 CPU core. This is the same amount of L3 cache as found on the Ryzen 5000/Zen 3 family, but the amount of L2 cache per core has doubled over the previous generation.
The 7950X will also be AMD’s most power hungry mainstream desktop Zen chip yet. The TDP for the chip is 170W, and as we know from previous AMD disclosures, the Power Package Tracking (PPT) limit for these chips will be 230W. This is one of the major reasons that AMD is seeing such significant MT performance gains – exceeding their average ST performance gains – as previous Ryzen 5000 chips were often TDP limited when all of their CPU cores were under heavy load, leaving them well short of hitting the higher clockspeeds they’d otherwise be able to support.
Since AMD is the first CPU vendor out of the gate with this generation of parts, the 7950X doesn’t have any direct competition – though if you’re considering an Intel Core i9 12900K, AMD would be more than happy to upsell you on a 7950X instead. According to AMD’s figures the fully fleshed out Zen 4 chip should easily be the most powerful desktop CPU in the world, something we’ll of course need to confirm at review time, but is not hard to believe given AMD’s architecture updates and improvements brought by TSMC’s 5nm process. Still, a bit farther down the line it will eventually do battle with Intel’s Raptor Lake CPUs once those launch.
AMD is, a little surprisingly, pricing their new flagship chip at $699. This is actually $100 below the launch price of the 5950X back in late 2020, wich hit the streets at $799. The higher price of that chip was not especially well received, but none the less for quite a while AMD sold everything they could make. Still, the chip shortage has abated and AMD has more access to both wafers and substrates, and the company will not be going without competition for the entire life of the chip.
Ryzen 9 7900X
A step below the 7950X we have the Ryzen 9 7900X. This is another two CCD part, but with only 6 cores enabled on each CCD for a total of 12 CPU cores and 24 threads.
