In the night from Tuesday, AMD could surprise with quite impressive numbers, prices and first benchmarks for its new Zen 4 processors of the Ryzen 7000 family, which are manufactured in the 5 nm process. Contrary to the previously targeted eight to ten percent increase in IPC performance (instructions per cycle), the increase compared to the Zen 3 generation is now an unexpected 13 percent. In combination with high clock rates of up to 5.7 GHz and the doubling of the L2 cache, the additional performance in single-core mode increases up to 30 percent according to AMD.

On September 27, 2022, the chip manufacturer will start with four high-end processors for the time being and expand its portfolio downwards over the course of the current and coming year. Chips with 3D cache are also planned. The top model of the Ryzen 7000 family is the new Ryzen 9 7950X with 16 processing cores, a Turbo clock of 5.7 GHz and a TPD of 170 watts. The Ryzen 9 7900X with 12 cores and 5.6 GHz and the 105 watt Ryzen 7 7700X (8 cores, 5.4 GHz) and Ryzen 5 7600X (6 cores, 5.3 GHz) CPUs follow with the same power consumption.

Productivity and gaming: AMD Zen 4 beats Intel Core i9-12900K

Depending on which benchmarks AMD uses, the additional performance of the new Zen 4 CPUs compared to the older Ryzen 5000 processors and the Intel Core i9-12900K (Alder Lake) is 50 to 60 percent. Even the low-priced Ryzen 5 7600X is said to outperform Intel’s flagship chip by up to 17 percent in games like F1 2022, GTA 5, Cyberpunk 2077 and Rainbow Six Siege. However, practical comparisons remain to be seen.

New motherboards with AM5 socket (LGA 1718) and DDR5 RAM are required for operation. Similar to the XMP profiles, AMD’s new EXPO function is supposed to be available for overclocking the RAM. At the market launch at the end of September, the new X670 chipsets will be available first, and B650 chipsets from October. Extreme chipsets that are also available have also taken it upon themselves to offer the new PCIe 5.0 technology on both a PCIe and at least one M.2 slot for SSDs.

Prices and availability

There is no sign of the expected price increase compared to the Zen 3 generation, quite the opposite. The recommended retail price of the new AMD Ryzen 9 7950X is even 100 US dollars lower than that of the 5950X at 699 US dollars. The Ryzen 9 7900X (549 US dollars), Ryzen 7 7700X (399 US dollars) and Ryzen 5 7600X (299 US dollars) will also start at the same or even lower prices than their predecessors. According to AMD, they have secured a higher quantity of wafers and also countered the substrate shortage to ensure good availability at the market launch on September 27.