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
DDR4 & DDR5 use the same silicon wafers, and all that is going to DDR5, so, who would be making new DDR4?
Nobody, they can't get enough silicon wafers to do it.
If they did, AND they somehow happen to get enough silicon wafers, then the price would skyrocket pretty much like DDR5, so there is no good solution here, and AMD shouldn't shoot themselves in the foot by doing Zen 3 again, or if they did, it would have to be mainly for OEMs who are most likely stockpiling DDR4 now as we speak
Also LGA1151 (Intel 6th and 7th gen) supported DDR3L and DDR4, though I did never read anyone using a DDR3 board and a Sky/Kabylake having any problems with normal DDR3.
They just do not think.
It is always short term profits.
Short term goals.
Short term mindsets.
They have gotten too damned big to quickly do anything and once they do they SCREW it up!!!
SO lets us smart people on this site and put on our thinking caps and see what we can do.
Some Suggestions on my end.
1. Do an Intel and have your mother board use both DDR4 and DDR5. Already proven that at the most it is around a 10% difference in performance when testing during that time period.
2. create the New AMD 5900 Special Series of CPU's. I know there is still more power under the hood and the AM5 was just a money grab (as proven by the AMD tax AND DDR5 crisis of that time)
3. ADD more L3 cache across the board on their newest AM4 CPU's. This can be a gold mine for them IF DONE RIGHT!!!
4. AS done 30+ years ago have the motherboard be able to take on addtional L3 cache AND/or something that will enhance performance of the CPU in question.
5. AS posted previously... Create a Riser Card to take DDR4 memory and use it on a DDR5 motherboard. ASUS already created this.
6. INCREASE THE RAM SPEED. There are samples of DDR4 5000 floating out there... BUT of course GREED CAME FIRST AND CORPORATIONS JUMPED ON THE DDR5 MONEY WAGON.
7. Dual... CPU on the motherboard. I Owned a Abit BP6 that I used to create... ANIMATION!!! YES it worked well without issues. So a Dual Motherboard would be AWESOME... I would personally buy one and slap a second matched CPU.
Unfortunity I know that somehow corporations will screw this opprotunity up as well.
Here's is some vids.
1. Meet Kevin... Kind of slimy individual of the types unfortunately have to deal with from time to time. The only reason why I bring this up is about the AI bubble and all of this nonsense this dude brings up. Again I don't care about this guy, but even slime balls can give out some useful information.
2. Gamers Nexus Steve and his comments about AMD @ the CES Show or as one poster commented. CES = Comsumers Eat Sh!#.
Yup... Enjoy's Steve's Logical Rant
On the other hand we have news of memory companies completely stopping making products for consumers, some even cancelling their consumer departments, contracts being rendered void due to “external reasons”. Alarms are being raised there won’t be enough memory produced for all the items we’re shoving it into - all the toys,vacuum cleaners, fridges, cars (even the not self driving ones)…
CES “launches”, announcements and showcases of products mean exactly nothing. All the hardware presented there was developed and researched in a world before AI plague. Even when they carry the “AI” badge. All the computer sector is now a whole different world, some manufacturers are acknowledging this and are open about how they don’t know when or how we’ll see these products - when they paid their booth, none of this was in anyone’s forecasts.
Yes, i know that the ecc price would increase as well, but more potential ram is never a bad thing.
The same thing happened when cryptominers bought all the higher end GPUs - due to shortage even prices of outdated slow GPUs skyrocketed, and even second hand crap was selling for high prices. And that was a commodity most PCs don't even need, ALL PCs need memory.
What a shitshow of a PC time this is
Jensen Huang, September 2022
When AM5 came out, at first mainboards were so expansive that I decided to keep my 3900x a while longer.
Then I had some other stuff going on in my life so that I didn't really use my rig for a year.
When DRAM crisis started to hit last fall, I decided to skip AM5 completely and wait for AM6.
Seems like I did all the right things, and now I see myself holding a brand new 5850x3d2 a couple of weeks from now ;)
For productivity, Zen4 is 20-30% faster than Zen3, and Zen5 is outside of a few scenarios 5-10% faster than Zen4, here it's a more substantial difference, but nothing big.
Zen6 might be a big upgrade though.The joke he made.If TSMC had competition that might not be the case.
If you want to keep board, RAM, 5700X3D is a good upgrade if the price is right and you mainly game. 5900X is not recommended as it's just two 5600Xs on the same CPU.