AMD Zen 5: Everything we know so far

AMD has finally officially announced the Zen 5 processor series. Here’s everything we know so far about the Ryzen 9000 desktop CPUs.

Since the launch of the Ryzen series of CPU chips, AMD has emerged from Intel’s shadow to become a huge name in PC gaming.

As a result, many are keen to see where the company will take the next iteration of its processor technology, Zen 5.

The first Zen 5 line, also known as Granite Ridge or the 9000 series, was officially announced at Computex 2024, with the 9950X, 9900X, 9700X, and 9600X SKUs all officially revealed.

Zen 5 release date

AMD has shared that the release of its Zen 5 Ryzen 9000 CPUs has been delayed from July 31, 2024. The new release date is now August 8, 2024 for the Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X. The higher-end Ryzen 9 9900X and 9950X will launch a week later on August 15, 2024.

AMD’s SVP of Computing and Graphics, Jack Huynh stated: “The initial production units that were shipped to our channel partners did not meet our full quality expectations.”

There is no current indication of what elements of the early chips suffered from the “quality issues”, but AMD has been quick to delay the chips, which were just a week away from release.

This release date is earlier than anticipated but will allow AMD to prepare for the launch of the 9000X3D series, which is expected for Q4 of 2024.

The X3D chips with their specialist V-Cache have proved to be very popular amongst gamers. We’ve chosen the AMD 7800X3D CPU as the best current gaming CPU.

Thankfully customers will not have too long to wait. According to Club386, AMD is planning to launch 9000X3D processors, which will begin to roll out on store shelves in September 2024. This is in line with the release schedule for X870E motherboards.

As of July 11, some early review samples have started to appear. HXL on Twitter/X has posted photos of three Zen 5 review samples. As reported by Videocardz, Kyle from the Bitwit channel also showed off a sample of the Ryzen 9 9950X CPU obtained for review.

AMD Ryzen 9000 Zen 5 price

AMD has now confirmed the official pricing for the AMD Ryzen 9000 series.

• Ryzen 9 9950X – $649
• Ryzen 9 9900X – $499
• Ryzen 7 9700X – $359
• Ryzen 5 9600X – $279

These prices are lower than the Ryzen 7000/Zen4 processors were at launch. The 9950X and 9900X are both $50 cheaper than the equivalent Ryzen 7000 CPU was at launch. The lower-end Ryzen 5 9600X is just $20 lower than its equivalent Zen 4 CPU was at launch.

Specifications

AMD has confirmed that the new CPUs will use an improved version of its AI accelerator for AI-driven tasks. The Zen 5 chips will also feature the new RDNA 3.5 graphics architecture, providing more capabilities for onboard graphics without needing a discrete graphics card.

This could mean that AMD is planning on phasing out entry-level GPUs and making onboard CPU graphics a more attractive and capable option for devices such as budget laptops.

It has also been confirmed, by AMD, that they plan to keep the AM5 socket around for “As long as possible”. This gives Zen 5 customers the option of saving money by buying a previous-generation motherboard.

For the Zen 5 ‘Strix’ APUs, the Q1 2024 earning call for AMD revealed that two SKUs were planned. The first would use a high-end distributed chiplet architecture. This is designed for use in premium ‘enthusiast’ products, such as high-end gaming laptops.

The second, more budget option, would use a traditional monolithic architecture and was intended for use in light and portable devices, such as handheld gaming devices.

According to WCCFTech, consumers can expect the following features from the Zen 5 platform:

• Support for all existing AM5 platforms using LGA1718 socket.
• Faster dual-channel DDR5 memory support
• Up to DDR5-5600 native speeds
• 28 PCIe Gen5 lanes
• 65W-170W TDPs

Ryzen 9000X3D leaks

Dexerto

AMD confirmed at Computex that a 90000X3D chip was on its way. As reported by Videocardz, AMD representative Donny Waligorski further stated that the new X3D series would have “cool differentiators” to make the series stand out.

Waligorski declined to provide further details, but the most likely result is that different X3D models would have varying V-cache sizes.

The upcoming X3D version of the Ryzen 9000 series, as reported by WCCFTech, has indicated that AMD will support overclocking.

Previous generations from Zen 3 and Zen 4 did not support full overclocking, as AMD insisted that this practice led to system instability. This is due to the 3D V-Cache being very sensitive to changes in voltage.

On the topic of 3D V-Cache, the Ryzen 9000X3D variations will share 3D V-Cache specs. This isn’t anything to worry over, as it’s still a lot of L3 cache to play with.

AMD’s 3D V-Cache is built, in the most basic of terms, stacking another L3 Cache onto the CPU. While the 9800X might have only 32MB of L3 cache, by adding a 3D V-Cache to it, AMD can add another 64MB. This provides the PC with 96MB to play with.

WCCFTech does mention that this is early information and the naming scheme for the Ryzen 9000 series hasn’t been solidified yet. With that said, mapping this information based on current leaks would lead to the following specs:

With a bigger L3 cache pool, more data can be stored and shared with the CPU. This isn’t only great for speedy PCs in everyday tasks, but the X3D CPUs are part of our go-to recommendations.

Performance

According to internal AMD tests, the flagship Ryzen 9 9950X is said to be up to 23% faster in gaming scenarios when compared to the Intel Core i9-14900K. In productivity, the difference was even more stark, with the 9950X outperforming the i9-14900K by up to 56%.

AMD is claiming that the Zen 5 architecture chips are showing a 16% increase in Instructions Per Clock (IPC) when compared to Zen 4.

AMD

Leaked Geekbench benchmark scores: 9900X, 9700X & 9600X

Eagle-eyed Geekbench users have spotted some benchmarks for AMD’s upcoming CPUs. The only one missing from the list is the 9950X. Performance-wise, we’re seeing massive gains over the 7000 series. In the high-end kaiju battle, the 9900X’s leaked Geekbench single thread score bests the 7900X’s 3401 to 2925. It even beats the 7950X by 460 points.

The 9600X also beats Intel’s flagship, the i9 14900K by 200 points. However, in multithreaded benchmarks, even the 9900X can’t defeat Intel.

• 9700X Geekbench score page
• 9600X Geekbench score page

More Ryzen 9000 benchmark leaks

As reported by TechPowerUp, a demo of the Ryzen 9 9900X was spotted at Computex 2024, where its capabilities were being Benchmarked using Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora.

The demo showed the 9900X working with a Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics card to run the Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora benchmark.

The game was running on 1080p High settings, which gave the result of 229 FPS on average. It has not been confirmed if FSR frame generation was enabled during the demo, however.

Another benchmark has emerged for the Ryzen 5 9600X. This is the entry-level Desktop CPU in the Zen 6 Ryzen 9000 lineup, featuring 6 cores, 12 threads, and a 3.9 GHz base clock and boost clock of 5.4 GHz.

As reported by WCCFTech, an engineering sample of the Ryzen 5 9600X was put through the AIDA64 Cache and Memory benchmark tests. Despite a lower base clock speed, the 9600X posted some significant performance gains when compared to the previous generation Ryzen 6 7600X, as listed below:

The results show an uplift in performance of roughly 5%, but that is likely to improve as this is only an early engineering sample.

One curious additional note was a recent interview involving AMD’s Senior Technical Marketing Manager Donny Woligroski conducted by Tom’s Hardware. In this interview, Woligroski said that the new Zen 5 CPUs such as the Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 9 9950X will not exceed the performance figures of the existing Zen 4 7800X3D and 7950X3D in gaming workloads.

This is likely due to the additional V-Cache sported by the X3D line, but it is still surprising that AMD’s new architecture cannot outpace the previous generation.

A member of the Anandtech forum, Igor_kavinski has been putting the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X flagship CPU through a series of benchmark tests using the 3D modeling software Blender.

Igor was using an engineering sample for the tests, which is likely to have a slightly lower clock speed than the final retail version. The chip was pitted against the Intel Core i9-14900K CPU in a series of three tests. These tests involved the rendering of complex 3D objects and environments, points were then awarded according to performance.

As reported by WCCFTech, the test results showed that the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X could outperform the Core i9-14900K, even when the Ryzen chip was restricted to 120W PPT and the Intel chip did not have its power limited. This suggests that AMD will be able to claim the power efficiency crown this generation.

The embargo on reviews is set to be lifted on August 7th.