AMD today announced the Ryzen 7000 series "Zen 4" desktop processors. These debut the company's new "Zen 4" architecture to the market, increasing IPC, performance, with new-generation I/O such as DDR5 and PCI-Express Gen 5. AMD hasn't increased core-counts over the previous-generation, the Ryzen 5 series is still 6-core/12-thread, the Ryzen 7 8-core/16-thread, and Ryzen 9 either 12-core/24-thread, or 16-core/32-thread; but these are all P-cores. AMD is claiming a 13% IPC uplift generation over generation, which coupled with faster DDR5 memory, and CPU clock speeds of up to 5.70 GHz, give the Ryzen 7000-series processor an up to 29% single-core performance gain over the Ryzen 5000 "Zen 3."

At their press event, AMD showed us an up to 35% increase in gaming performance over the previous-generation, and an up to 45% increase in creator performance (which is where it gets the confidence to stick to its core-counts from). The "Zen 4" CPU core dies (CCDs) are built on the TSMC 5 nm EUV (N5) node. Even the I/O die sees a transition to 6 nm (N6), from 12 nm. The switch to 5 nm gives "Zen 4" 62 percent lower power for the same performance, or 49% more performance for the same power. versus the Ryzen 5000 series on 7 nm. The "Zen 4" core along with its dedicated L2 cache is 50% smaller, and 47% more energy efficient than the "Golden Cove" P-core of "Alder Lake."The "Zen 4" CPU core gets a bulk of its 13% IPC gain from the core's front-end, followed by load-store, branch-prediction, and execution engine. The company also doubled the size of the per-core L2 cache to 1 MB. The core introduces support for AVX-512 instruction set. Eight cores share a 32 MB L3 cache on a CCD. The 6-core and 8-core SKUs in the Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 series, come with a single CCD, whereas the 12-core and 16-core Ryzen 9 parts come with two.AMD introduces a brand new socket with Ryzen 7000, Socket AM5. This is a resilient 1718-pin LGA, with the ability to delivery up to 230 W of power, and comes with next-generation I/O that includes DDR5 and PCIe Gen 5. Physically, the coolers are compatible with Socket AM4 thermal solutions, so you can carry over your old coolers. AMD is promising to launch future generations of Ryzen processors that are AM5-compatible going up to 2025 at least.There will be four chipset choices with Ryzen 7000, these include the X670E and X670 in the high-end; and the B650 and B650E in the mid-range. Motherboards with X670/E debut in September, and the B650/E in October. AM5 is the first platform with CPU-attached NVMe Gen 5, and the company predicts the first Gen 5 SSDs should arrive by November. We confirmed with AMD that they are not artificially limiting the performance of processors running on the B-Series chipsets vs the X-Series chipsets. The difference between B650 and B650E is that B650E offers support for PCIe Gen 5 for graphics cards and SSDs, while B650 non-E supports PCIe 5.0 SSDs, and PCIe 4 GPUs. AMD is introducing a new memory profile technology called EXPO that eases memory overclocking. It is a royalty-free technology, and includes memory settings specific to the AMD architecture. You are of course able to use Intel XMP-compatible DDR5 memory modules, these might just not have the most perfect settings out of the box. As many as 15 memory kits are being launched at speeds of up to DDR5-6400, from various manufacturers.The AMD Ryzen 5 7600X is a 6-core/12-thread processor with 4.70 GHz nominal clocks. up to 5.30 GHz boost, 105 W TDP, and is being launched at $299. The Ryzen 7 7700X is 8-core/16-thread, clocked at 4.50 GHz, with up to 5.40 GHz boost, 105 W TDP, and is being launched at $399. The Ryzen 9 7900X is 12-core/24-thread, clocked at 4.70 GHz, with up to 5.60 GHz, 170 W TDP, and is being launched at $549. The top 7950X is 16-core/32-thread, clocked at 4.50 GHz, with up to 5.70 GHz boost, 170 W TDP, launching at $699. All SKUs available to purchase on September 27, 2022. This is an on-shelf date, not a preorder date (we have that confirmed personally).

The complete slide-deck follows.