Ryzen 9000 in H2 2024, there has reportedly been a delay
First there was a report that things might not be so hot with Intel’s next generation of desktop processors – the 2nm Arrow Lake on the LGA 1851 platform. To make things better, the other side seems to have its own issues too: AMD’s Zen 5 will be delayed. Hopefully it won’t be anything dramatic, but the reports of spring launch that we recently shared won’t come true. It’s not clear if this will also delay gaming models with 3D V-Cache.
AMD itself has shed new light on the question of when processors with the new architecture will be released. During a conference call with analysts covering the recently released financial results, company representatives confirmed that Zen 5 is heading for release in the second half of the year (this means that April, which was recently mentioned as a possible unveiling date, can not happen any more).
Unfortunately, the date is not further specified, but it has been clarified that the release is for the “consumer market”, which can mean either laptop processors or the AM5 desktop socket. AMD always releases desktop processors first in a certain generation of architectures, so it’s almost certain that this statement applies to the Ryzen 9000s codenamed Granite Ridge. These will be chiplet CPUs using the IO chiplet from today’s Ryzen 7000/7000X, but combined with a new 4nm CPU chiplet using Zen 5 cores (the maximum configuration will apparently still be 16 cores / 32 threads). So consider these coming CPUs to be similar to processors like the Ryzen 9 7950X, Ryzen 5 7600X and so on, just with Zen 5 cores instead of Zen 4.
Tip: Official AMD document: Zen 5 has 10–15% IPC improvement, the core has 6 ALUs and a 512-bit SIMD
These processors will therefore come out during Q3 at best, and at worst it could happen in Q4 2024. Perhaps the first option could be more likely to be true, as Ryzen 7000s have already come out at the end of September 2022, so a similar date at the end of September would mean that there will be exactly two years between the generations. However, according to Mark Papermaster, AMD’s CTO, the company is aiming to have a new architecture out every 18 months or so. If AMD were to make a release in July, for example (as it did with the Ryzen 3000X), the gap would be “only” 21 months and a bit.
Strictly speaking, the possibility of a late Q4 release is not ruled out, so we’ll see what further information says. However, we have some indications of earlier than Q4 launch being likely. According to the official AMD announcement, the server version of Zen 5 (Epyc 9005 codenamed “Turin”) will also be released later this year. But since AMD usually releases server processors a few to several months later than the desktop version, this could be an indication that the Ryzen 9000 Granite Ridge shouldn’t be coming out as late as November or December. So we’d rather be slightly optimistic and expect a summer launch – possibly July, August, or September.
3D V-Cache models next year
According to Kepler_L2, who previously tweeted the possibility of an April release, Zen 5 has in fact been delayed. According to him, the original plan was to actually release the processors (for desktop) in the first half of this year. We don’t know what is behind the delay, but it may be generally due to various errata (bugs) that have not yet been resolved and the need for additional respins or silicon revisions.
According to this leaker, AMD was supposed to release or announce a version of Zen 5 with 3D V-Cache (i.e. “X3D” gaming processors) at CES in January 2025, creating a sort of mid-generation refresh for 2025. However, this was information from before the confirmation that the regular Zen 5 won’t come out until the second half of the year instead of H1 2024. So it’s not certain that the plan is still on track for CES. We have to consider the possibility that the release of X3D models of Zen 5 will be delayed too, perhaps until Computex (May-June 2025), for example.
Sources: VideoCardz, Paul Acorn, Kepler_L2
English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš
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