More Ryzen 4000 and 5000 series processors going on sale soon
AMD is now preparing a sort of mid-generation refresh of its CPU and GPU offerings – Ryzen 5000 and Radeon RX 6000. There have been several reports about them in the last few days, but we’ll have to add one more. It looks like the company will be releasing even more CPUs than the six new models we wrote about last time. Seems the chip crisis is finally getting better and that will bring us a quad-core Zen 3, for example.
The first group of cheaper Ryzens will be released on April 4th
New information on the planned new processors was recently provided by the WCCFtech website. It confirms the previous info that AMD is preparing a group of six CPUs for the cheaper parts of the range – a trio with Zen 3 architecture (8-core 5700X, 6-core 5600 and 5500) and a trio with Zen 2 architecture (Ryzen 4600G with integrated graphics and 4500 and 4100 models without).
What is new, however, is we have learned their release date: according to WCCFtech, they are said to be coming out on April 4. This is supposed to be the day of real availability in stores, not just a paper launch. It should be added, however, that previous news also mentioned that some models might be limited in availability to certain regions, so it’s possible that not all of these new SKUs will appear in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Three other available processors
More importantly, WCCFtech is also adding another new piece of news. The processors that AMD is now set to start selling in the cheaper price ladders of the market that it has neglected for so long, are said to include three more models alongside the previously listed group. Two of these are based on the latest Zen 3 architecture.
First of these upcoming addition is Ryzen 7 5700 – another cheaper 16-thread 8-core (in addition to the already discussed 5700X model) probably with 65W TDP and a price probably lower than 299 USD. We don’t know the parameters yet, so we don’t know what the clock speeds will be. However, it is said that the processor could have a reduced L3 cache with a capacity of only 16 MB. It’s therefore possible that it won’t be based on the chiplet-using Vermeer CPU and instead it will be a product based on the monolithic Cezanne APU, but with the integrated graphics disabled. AMD could use this model to harvest partially faulty dies with defects in the GPU area. If it is Cezanne-based, then not only would the L3 cache be only 16MB, but also the processor would not support PCI Express 4.0. Thus, this chip will be a bit less suitable for use in gaming PCs, but on the other hand it should be more power efficient.
The next upcoming model, the Ryzen 7 4700, seems to be very similar case with the difference that previous-generation silicon is used. Here it’s probably already more or less certain that the CPU is a 7nm Renoir die with graphics disabled. It will also be a 65W 8-core with 16 threads, but in this case the CPU architecture is Zen 2 with 2×4MB L3 cache. This model could probably be similar to the Ryzen 7 4700G APU, in which case it could have 3.6 GHz base and 4.4 GHz boost frequencies (the actual boost maximum is about 4.45 GHz). And it also won’t support PCI Express 4.0.
Four-core Zen 3
The last of the newly leaked processors might be the most interesting one: the Ryzen 3 5100. This is supposed to be a 4-core (8 threads) model with Zen 3 architecture, something that’s currently lacking on the market. We don’t have the specs, so again, it’s not clear yet whether the processor will be based on the chiplet Vermeer design or will be a monolithic Cezanne APU. If it is the latter case, then PCI Express 4.0 would not be supported.
In either case, this could be the cheapest Zen 3 processor available on the market, although we don’t know the price yet. AMD does have a 4-core Ryzen 3 5300G on offer that also has an integrated GPU, but that SKU is limited to the OEM market, so you’ll only find it in complete PCs. So far AMD doesn’t seem to be planning to make it freely avaible in the retail market (i.e. on the open market of standalone components purchaseable in e-shops and such), but unlike it, the Ryzen 3 5100 could perhaps be generally available .
April release
These processors are also said to go on sale next month (April). In their case, however, it is not yet known if we are also talking 4/4 here. It is possible that these chips won’t be available on that date, and instead will come sometime later in the month. But it is said AMD could officially announce them (and thus confirm this rumor) on the 15th of March.
The fact that AMD will be releasing cheaper derivatives of its current generation of Zen 3 architecture processors and at the same time there are also Zen 2-based Ryzen 4000 models mixed in, looks odd at first glance. The explanation could probably be that it comes as a response to the chip shortage, when cheaper processors were simply missing and the company couldn’t keep up with producing them. The cheap Ryzen 4000s being released now are probably a band-aid in a sense, and AMD is also probably using chips with faulty GPUs that would otherwise be only good for garbage bin (they can’t be used for laptop processors, for example) in this way.
In addition, it is possible that the regional limitations mentioned as possible with some of the models will play a role. AMD could make it so that, for example, the Ryzen 5700, 5600, 5500 and 5100 models would be on sale in the US and Western Europe, but poorer or developing markets would receive the Ryzen 4700, 4500 and 4100 instead. And in turn these chips would not be available for sale in the west. But this is just speculation, who knows how it will turn out in the end.
Will there be Athlon as well?
It’s possible that the 4-core Athlon 4100GE we recently reported on (or rather, the “Business version” of it, the Athlon Pro 4150GE) could go on sale alongside all these other processors. This is a 35W TDP processor built on a Renoir die with four cores without SMT (four threads).
In particular, it is supposed to have integrated graphics with 320 shaders (5 CU). This could be a rather interesting cheap APU providing low power draw option as well as some decent basic 3D performance for less demanding gaming. But we don’t know if this processor will make it to our market and be available openly in stores. It is possible that AMD might only supply it to OEMs for complete PC builds.
All processors discussed here will still use AM4 socket and should probably work in all boards that already have support for that Ryzen generation (4000 renoir and 5000 Cezanne or Vermeer respectivelly). So if you already have a BIOS with support for Ryzen 4000/5000, then you probably won’t need an update for these newly released (old) processors, as they are just new configurations of the already used dies. However, a new BIOS version may be required for the Ryzen 7 5800X3D.
Sources: WCCFtech, VideoCardz
English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš, original text by Jan Olšan, editor for Cnews.cz
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