AMD Zen 4 launches in Ryzen 7000 series starting in fall 2022

AMD’s Zen 4 processors for desktop PCs will be marketed as the Ryzen 7000 series and will be launched in fall 2022. They rely on the new LGA1718 boards, which will enable the use of DDR5 memory and PCIe 5.0.

Details on the AMD Zen 4

After almost six years, AMD is phasing out the old familiar AM4 platform and replacing it with the new AM5 standard, also known as LGA1718, which features an AMD Zen 4 processor. Thereby, the new Zen 4 cores can not only use the fast DDR5 working memory, but also absorb more power. AMD speaks of up to 170 watts. PCI Express 5.0 also makes its way into the new Ryzen 7000 CPUs.

The new AMD CPUs are manufactured in the TSMC chip factory in Taiwan using the 5 nm process. AMD again targets the gaming sector with the Ryzen 7000 processor series, where the new generation is supposed to replace the AMD Ryzen 5000 CPUs and compete against the Intel Core i9-12900K. However, Intel’s Raptor Lake architecture is already expected at the end of 2022, which will compete with the Core i-13000 CPUs.

AMD Ryzen 7000 listens to the codename “Raphael”. Two CPUs with 8 and 16 Zen 4 cores of the Ryzen 7000 series have already appeared in the database of the MilkyWay@home project, which uses distributed computing to create a 3D computer model of the Milky Way and relies on the BOINC platform for this. This is reported by Twitter user BenchLeaks. Especially the doubled L2 cache of 1,024 kilobytes caught the eye.

AMD Zen 4 in 5 nanometer and with over 5 GHz clock speed

At CES 2022, AMD showed a sequence from the shooter Halo Infinite with the CPU cores in the Zen 4 running at more than 5 GHz clock speed. Whether the Turbo clock will be equally high for all cores obviously depends on the workload.

However, thanks to a higher TDP and the 5-nanometer technology, the new architecture offers enough leeway to enable such high clock rates permanently. The new AM5 version of the LGA1718 boards uses a Land Grid Array (LGA). The springs for the contact to the CPU are located directly in the motherboard, which makes the boards potentially more sensitive.

Corresponding LGA sockets have already been used by AMD for a few years. So far, however, only for server and workstation CPUs like Epyc 7001, 7002 and 7003 as well as their workstation offshoots Ryzen Threadripper (Pro). Now, the version is also supposed to be used for the desktop CPUs of AMD’s Zen 4 series.