Thursday, January 8th 2026
Amid Memory Crisis, AMD Considers AM4 Zen 3 Revival
An elevation of computer memory prices—throughout late 2025 and early 2026—has prompted revisits of older generation hardware. After all, cheaper DDR4 memory offers an alternative route in the current climate. Prime examples turned up last week, when Gigabyte unveiled and launched four new AM4 socket-based motherboard models. At the end of December, ASUS was reportedly engaged in a bolstering of its AM4 motherboard production lines. Pleasingly, AMD seems to considering similar steps with its compatible Ryzen desktop processor families. Tom's Hardware gathered relevant information during a pre-CES 2026 round-table discussion.
During an interview session, David McAfee—Team Red's VP and GM of client channel business—reportedly dropped a hint about potential revivals of AM4 CPU products. In the recent past, AMD has continued to roll out (sort of) new chips based on "Zen 3" architecture. Conversely, supplies of popular SKUs—like the gaming-centric Ryzen 7 5700X3D model—have dried up. When asked about a possible older generation re-release strategy, McAfee stated that the Red Team: "(is) certainly looking at everything that (it) can do to bring more supply and kind of reintroduce products back into the (AM4) ecosystem to satisfy the demands of gamers that maybe want that significant upgrade in their AM4 platform, without having to rebuild their entire system." Elaborating a tad more, he said: "(it is) definitely something (AMD is) very actively working on." According to the TechPowerUp news archive and GPU database, Team Red's most recent new "Zen 3" desktop releases include the Ryzen 5 5600F (last September) and Ryzen 5 5500X3D (mid-2025) SKUs.
Source:
Tom's Hardware
During an interview session, David McAfee—Team Red's VP and GM of client channel business—reportedly dropped a hint about potential revivals of AM4 CPU products. In the recent past, AMD has continued to roll out (sort of) new chips based on "Zen 3" architecture. Conversely, supplies of popular SKUs—like the gaming-centric Ryzen 7 5700X3D model—have dried up. When asked about a possible older generation re-release strategy, McAfee stated that the Red Team: "(is) certainly looking at everything that (it) can do to bring more supply and kind of reintroduce products back into the (AM4) ecosystem to satisfy the demands of gamers that maybe want that significant upgrade in their AM4 platform, without having to rebuild their entire system." Elaborating a tad more, he said: "(it is) definitely something (AMD is) very actively working on." According to the TechPowerUp news archive and GPU database, Team Red's most recent new "Zen 3" desktop releases include the Ryzen 5 5600F (last September) and Ryzen 5 5500X3D (mid-2025) SKUs.
112 Comments on Amid Memory Crisis, AMD Considers AM4 Zen 3 Revival
Happy 2021 to all 🍾🎆
But sure Zen 3 is fine. A nice upgrade over the Zen 3 processor I have now.
FX rack was much better suited for it but I'm not doing that to a dedicated editor station.
I'm still on a R5 3600 so this might be the time to upgrade, if it matters. Is 5000 worth it?
I've been eyeballing price drops of the 5900X for a while. 5700X3D looks good too.
And I can certainly see myself using my AM4 gaming PC in 10 years from today :rockout:
Hell, that made me wonder. I have some ancient P4 PCs lying around back at work. I may try something if time allows, would be curious to see how bad things really would be in terms of UX.
If there were some cost effective ITX board to slot my Phenom II X4, I'd use that in a hurry for my dedicated storage, editing and streaming.
The AM3+ box outlived its purpose as the most compatible of all these systems. It was also the small push needed to get VR stuff working.
This is not slow to me. Slow on paper, in benchmarks and high CPU crunch apps like Folding but for gaming, VR and general tasks it's still fine.
It has better PCI-E support than my Ryzen and TUF board pairing, which is insane to think about. One generation of separation doesn't matter.
The only real issue as usual is chipset thermals. That's the only advantage the Ryzen system has over it and right now I want the space heater.
Keeps my room a way more tolerable 20℃ vs waking up freezing. Sometimes water cooling does its job a little too well. Ryzen likes it though.
Sometimes Ryzen feels sluggish the way some apps load but the overall experience is much faster. The only hook that got me onto this platform was M.2 and it was worth it.