AMD's Zen 4-based desktop processors will reportedly ship with a maximum of 16 cores and up to 170W TDP

At this point, the chances of AMD's Zen 3 refresh, aka Warhol, being launched later this year are quite low. Instead, we may have to wait until Q3/Q4 of 2022 to see some new AMD hardware in action in the form of Zen 4 aka Raphael. It seems that AMD's next-generation Ryzen 6000 series of processors will ship with the same number of cores/threads as Vermeer.

The information comes from two reputable sources, Twitter users ExecutableFix and Patrick Schur. Both of them state that the Zen 4-based desktop processors will be limited to 16 cores. Some unconfirmed leaks from earlier told us that AMD could up the core count to 24 on some of its high-end Ryzen 6000 series SKUs. Patrick adds that the top-of-the-line Zen 4 processor (presumably the Ryzen 9 6950X) will have a TDP of 170W. The remaining SKU's will draw 120W, 105W, 95W and 65W. These could correspond to the Ryzen 9 6900X, Ryzen 7 6800X, Ryzen 5 5600X and a mystery low-power processor. Lastly, he also confirms that the processors will be manufactured on TSMC's 5nm process node.

While this information might seem disappointing to a few, it makes sense for AMD to keep its 24-core SKUs restricted to the Threadripper and Epyc platforms. Most consumer-grade applications stand to benefit little from the additional cores. It also lets AMD bake in a more powerful iGPU into the processor. Rumour has it that all Raphael processors will ship with an RDNA2-based iGPU, similar to what Rembrandt has in store for us.

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