Thursday, October 22nd 2026
Ryzen 5800X3D Revival was Lisa Su's Initiative, and Other Interesting Details in AMD Interview with MyNavi Tech+
Japanese tech publication MyNavi Tech+ interviewed Travis Kirsch, the client-segment product manager for AMD, and there are some interesting excerpts from the conversation. It turns out that reviving Ryzen 7 5800X3D for the Socket AM4 market earlier this year, was an initiative going as far up as CEO Lisa Su. The effort required certain manufacturing process updates with TSMC to ensure they can build new 5800X3D chips that are identical in specs to the original ones, without having to revive deprecated manufacturing processes.
AMD says that 5800X3D AM4 Anniversary Edition was released as a parting gift to the loyal Socket AM4 crowd that's holding on to DDR4 memory in the wake of brutal overpricing of DDR5. It was planned to help users better plan their transition to AM5 and DDR5 memory. The 5800X3D offers contemporary levels of performance with games, and its re-launch triggered a new wave of product launches from motherboard vendors.
Next up, AMD was quizzed on why it decided to launch the Ryzen 7 7700X3D based on the slightly older "Zen 4" microarchitecture instead of the "Ryzen 7 9700X3D" positioned below the 9800X3D and 9850X3D. The company said that it wanted to use up its volumes of "Raphael" chips. Launching a "9700X3D" would've meant eating into the common stock of "Granite Ridge" chips meant for higher 9850X3D SKUs.
When asked to comment on the state of the memory market, Kirsch said that the current situation with the memory pricing is beyond anyone's control, and AMD has to respond to market realities ensuring consumers get an AMD-powered PC regardless of the price-point. The company still has an active Socket AM4 product line, including the top performing 5800X3D.
Tech+ then steered towards the juicy topic of why AMD isn't offering entry-level Ryzen 3 SKUs, leaving Intel uncontested in that segment, to which AMD responded that the component market for Ryzen 3 is "small," and that the focus for the company is premium gaming.
Lastly, AMD confirmed that the upcoming "Zen 6" microarchitecture will continue to see a common CCD being shared between consumer and enterprise products, and the company's strategy remains unchanged in this regard. Having a common CCD lets AMD build these chiplets at scale and dynamically allocate them between vastly diverse product lines.
Find more insights and the interview in the source link below.
Sources:
MyNavi Tech+, via Harukaze5719 (Twitter)
AMD says that 5800X3D AM4 Anniversary Edition was released as a parting gift to the loyal Socket AM4 crowd that's holding on to DDR4 memory in the wake of brutal overpricing of DDR5. It was planned to help users better plan their transition to AM5 and DDR5 memory. The 5800X3D offers contemporary levels of performance with games, and its re-launch triggered a new wave of product launches from motherboard vendors.
When asked to comment on the state of the memory market, Kirsch said that the current situation with the memory pricing is beyond anyone's control, and AMD has to respond to market realities ensuring consumers get an AMD-powered PC regardless of the price-point. The company still has an active Socket AM4 product line, including the top performing 5800X3D.
Tech+ then steered towards the juicy topic of why AMD isn't offering entry-level Ryzen 3 SKUs, leaving Intel uncontested in that segment, to which AMD responded that the component market for Ryzen 3 is "small," and that the focus for the company is premium gaming.
Lastly, AMD confirmed that the upcoming "Zen 6" microarchitecture will continue to see a common CCD being shared between consumer and enterprise products, and the company's strategy remains unchanged in this regard. Having a common CCD lets AMD build these chiplets at scale and dynamically allocate them between vastly diverse product lines.
Find more insights and the interview in the source link below.
17 Comments on Ryzen 5800X3D Revival was Lisa Su's Initiative, and Other Interesting Details in AMD Interview with MyNavi Tech+
And thank you Lisa... Good call! Too bad the price wasn't a bit lower though. :D
Now just sitting on my 9700X waiting for Zen6.
Motherboard suppliers started cranking out new AM4 boards with the idea of making a quick buck using up resources and components for newer platforms.
I'm not convinced if that was a good strategy.
That CPU was not that old that it needs adoption.
You know how small of a market share that AMD has in the GPU business? It's under 10%
They are just a small drop of water compared to how much GDDR/HBM that Nvidia buys, so, they can offer 100% more RAM, and that still isn't enough to make a blip in the RAM situation
The new CPU is only meant to tie over people who are still on AM4, so it's a nice bone to have if you don't want to pay crazy prices for DDR5Yes, they are all different, some can only make certain things, they don't got any "generic" fabs that can make anything you throw at them, they need the right tooling to make things happen, and putting all the needed equipment for everything possible in one fab would be very, very expensive, not to mention all the needed space for all the machines, and it would end up being wasted anyway, that is why they got so many different fabs for different things, so they can do this optimally
Some SKUs have full cache but many disabled cores. These would be dies that would have otherwise gone to low end desktop.
Plus the fact that you have to pay for the IO die, makes better sense to serve that with leftovers from mobile chips. (which pricing wise are Ryzen 3).
And if I remember correctly they changed the interconnect PHY between the CCD and the IO die when they made Zen4. So not compatible either.
Keeping AM4 around longer would only impact DDR5 if DDR4 and DDR5 where manufactured side by side using the same exact equipment. The problem is AM4 will keep the more limited supply of DDR4 demand high which impacts prices of DDR4. But it is still half the cost of DDR5.
It's like the difference between building something on 2nm vs building something on 16nm. Those 16nm machines can't make 2nm chips. So coming out with chips on 16nm won't impact 2nm supply. Designing and building on 16nm though when you can, actually helps 2nm supply by keeping those on an older production node.
Zen4/5 where designed to connect to a specific 6nm IO die. Not the 12nm IO die that already exists for AM4.
And there are electrical and logical differences in the Infinity Fabric between Zen2/3 and Zen4/5.
The CCDs or the IO die would need to be redesigned to make the hybrid you point at.
It's obviously possible and probably quite easy but still a lot more work than to adjust Zen3 for the slight manufacturing differences at TSMC, that's just a new stepping.