In a piece of recent news, AMD’s upcoming Ryzen 7000 chips will mark another major milestone for the company: they will be the first desktop processors running 5-nanometer cores.
Upcoming Ryzen 7000 Chips
During her Computex keynote presentation today, AMD CEO Lisa Su confirmed that Ryzen 7000 chips will launch this fall. Under the hood, they will feature dual 5nm Zen 4 cores, as well as a redesigned 6nm I/O core (which includes RDNA2 graphics, DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 controllers and a low-power architecture). Earlier in May 2022, the company teased its plans for high-end “Dragon Range” Ryzen 7000 chips for laptops, which are expected to launch in 2023.
Since this is just a Computex glimpse, AMD is not giving many other details about the Ryzen 7000 yet. The company says it will offer a 15% performance jump in Cinebench’s single-threaded benchmark compared to the Ryzen 5950X. Still, it would be more interesting to hear about multi-threaded performance, especially given the progress Intel has made with its 12th-gen CPUs.
Motherboards Alongside Flagship Processor
AMD is also debuting Socket AM5 motherboards alongside its new flagship processor. The company is moving towards a 1718-pin LGA socket, but it will still support AM4 coolers. Since Intel still won’t have a 7nm desktop chip until next year (barring any additional delays), AMD seems poised to once again take the performance lead for another generation.
While Ryzen 7000 chips will be AMD’s main focus for the rest of the year, the company is also throwing a bone to mainstream laptops in the fourth quarter with its upcoming 6nm ‘Mendocino’ CPUs. They will sport four 6nm Zen 2 cores, as well as RDNA 2 graphics, making them ideal for systems priced between $399 and $699. Sure, that’s not much to get excited about, but even basic machines like Lenovo’s Ideapad 1 deserve decent performance. And for many office drones, it could mean having work-issued machines that finally do not stink.
