AMD’s Zen 5 CPUs will debut on July 31, and they may well bring with them the biggest performance boost in generations.
AMD Zen 5 is the next-generation Ryzen CPU architecture for Team Red. And after a major showing at Computex 2024, it’s ready for a July launch. AMD promises major performance advantages for the new architecture that will give it a big leap in performance in gaming and productivity tasks, and the company also claims it will have major leads over Intel’s top 14th-generation alternatives, allowing it to compete among the best processors.
We’ll need to wait for the release to know for sure how these chips perform, but here’s what we know about Zen 5 so far.Zen 5 release date, availability, and price
AMD confirmed that the Ryzen 9000 desktop processors will launch on July 31, 2024, which marks two weeks after the launch date of the Ryzen AI 300. The initial lineup includes the Ryzen 9 9950X, the Ryzen 9 9900X, the Ryzen 7 9700X, and the Ryzen 5 9600X.
This was a surprise early release and seems likely to be an effort to get ahead of Intel, which is slated to debut its Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake CPUs much later in the year. It also gives AMD a chance to get its CPUs into the new breed of “AI” laptops that many major manufacturers are pushing.
Additional non-X and X3D variants are expected in the months that follow, with Club386 teasing that we might see the X3D chips as soon as September. That’d be sooner than expected, given that in the previous generation, the gap between the initial release and the X3D variants was longer.
The pricing for the Ryzen 9000 lineup remains a complete mystery at this point. Although AMD showcased the new processors during the Zen 5 Tech Day, it still stayed silent on the pricing. However, rumor has it that AMD might cut the recommended list price (MSRP) compared to Zen 4 at launch.
The first preorders for Ryzen 9000 appeared at a Slovenian retailer. The flagship Ryzen 9950X was listed at 660 euros, which is roughly $708. That’s a lot more than the Ryzen 9 7950X3D, but it’s also cheaper than the European launch pricing for the Ryzen 9 7950X, which arrived with an 850 euro price tag. We’ll have to wait and see what AMD does this time around.Zen 5 specs and architecture
AMD detailed the specifications of the four new Ryzen 9000 processors at Computex 2024, showcasing comparable core counts and clock speeds to the previous generation, while claiming inter-process communication (IPC) uplifts from the new architectural design.
These specs are very comparable to their Ryzen 7000 equivalents, with the same cache quantities, thread counts, and clock speeds. What is different this time around is power draw. While the top-tier 9950X still has the same 170-watt thermal design power (TDP) of its 7950X predecessor, the other CPUs require far less.
The 7900X was a 170W TDP component, but the new 9900X pulls a mere 120W, and both the 9700X and 9600X are just 65W chips. While the power draw figures may be a little higher in real-world use, this is a notable improvement over their last-generation counterparts, and shows a big uplift in efficiency for the new Zen 5 design.
Despite previous rumors that AMD may want to tweak the TDP on the Ryzen 7 9700X in order to make it more competitive, AMD is sticking to the TDP that it initially announced — and it appears to be quite proud of its efficiency gains. During the Zen 5 Tech Day, AMD shared some initial slides regarding gen-on-gen improvements between Zen 4 and Zen 5.
Three out of the four new AMD processors saw a significant decrease in their power consumption. This could mean bad news for performance, but AMD claims otherwise. For instance, the Ryzen 5 9600X is said to be up to 17% faster while consuming far less power. On the other hand, the Ryzen 9 9950X may not feature a drop in TDP, but AMD claims that it’ll be up to 22% faster than its predecessor.
