Zen 4

RedGamingTech has leaked some early AMD Zen 5 info. The leak suggests Zen 5 chips will come with a hybrid design similar to Intel Alder Lake CPUs and will pack impressive gen-on-gen IPC performance gains.

Even though Intel was first to market with the Alder Lake DDR5 implementation, the performance gains over the DDR4 did not wow anyone, as the DDR5-4800 modules are barely faster than DDR4-3200, and the memory controllers add too much latency at higher frequencies. AMD wants to tackle this problem for the upcoming Zen 4 processors by introducing improved overclocking features.

The AMD Ryzen 7000 “Raphael” series is allegedly soon to be in its mass production phase. This has led to speculation in regard to a potential Zen 4 release date, which could excitingly end up being close to the rumored launch window for Intel’s Raptor Lake processors. AMD would likely benefit more by beating Intel to market.

The AMD Ryzen 7000 series of desktop chips will allegedly challenge Intel Raptor Lake might by utilizing more power as opposed to more cores. A leaker has claimed that the top-end Ryzen 9 processor in the Zen 4-based Raphael series will stick to the familiar 16-core/32-thread configuration but offer performance gains via 170 W TDP.

AMD made great progress in reigniting the CPU wars with its impressive and ongoing Ryzen series of processors. Intel finally caught back up with the release of its 12th Gen Alder Lake parts; however, recent leaks suggest that AMD's Zen 4 Raphael processors could give Alder Lake more than a serious run for the money.

The Zen 4 release date has become bogged down in conjecture as a noted leaker has admitted to some confusion over when AMD’s Ryzen 7000 “Raphael” series of desktop processors might actually arrive. Previously, there was some expectation for a Zen 4 release in July or August; however, there is even speculation that 2023 might be a target now.

The latest version for AMD's System Management Unit driver is suggesting that the RDNA2 iGPUs found in the upcoming Ryzen 7000 desktop processors could run at 1.1 GHz, and, according to industry insiders, there could be a lower-end model with 4 CUs that only has a third of the Steam Deck's RDNA2 performance.

AMD's upcoming Ryzen 6000 series of processors were benchmarked across various games and synthetic benchmarks. Both the Ryzen 5 6600H and Ryzen 6800H easily trounced their 12th-generation Intel Alder Lake counterparts. The former uses an RDNA2-based Radeon 680M iGPU with 12 CUs, and the latter cuts that down to 6 CUs.

Intel Alder Lake chips now occupy all top 10 positions in the current PassMark CPU Mark single-thread performance chart for high-end desktop processors. The highest-ranked AMD chip is the Ryzen 9 5950X in a lowly 26th place. Hopes are high for Ryzen 7000 “Raphael”, but there is a steep mountain to climb to topple the Intel Core i9-12900 family.

A new rumour online says AMD will unveil its new Ryzen 7000 series processors sometime in Q3, 2022. AMD could announce it at Computex 2022 in late May, and the CPUs could hit shelves as early as July 2022.