AMD held its Computex 2022 keynote today, and with it came a few announcements for the near future. More specifically, the company gave us a closer look at the upcoming AMD Ryzen 7000 series desktop processors based on the Zen 4 architecture, and we also got to see the new AMD Socket AM5 that the new processors will use.

AMD Ryzen 7000

These products were first teased at this year's CES, and they're planned to launch sometime this fall, but now we have some more details. Starting with the AMD Ryzen 7000 series processors, they'll be using the new Zen 4 architecture, using a 5nm manufacturing process for the compute die. AMD says the new Ryzen 7000 series processors will double the amount of L2 cache per core. The latest AMD Ryzen 9 5950X has a total of 8MB of L2 cache, for reference.

The processors will also have a higher clock speed and AMD claims they will feature up to a 15% increase in single-core performance. Perhaps more importantly, the company showed off a pre-production 16-core processor performing over 30% faster than the Intel Core i9-12900K in a multi-threaded Blender workload. AMD also showed the processor running consistently at 5.5GHz during a gaming session.

AMD Ryzen 7000 processor shown performing 31% faster in a Blender workload compared to an Intel Core i9-12900K

AMD is also using a new I/O die in these processors, and that one is built on a 6m process. This new die includes an RDNA 2 graphics engine, meaning you'll likely get a decently powerful integrated GPU. It also includes a new low-power architecture based on AMD's mobile processors, support for up to four displays, and technologies like DDR5 and PCIe 5.0.

AMD Socket AM5 Platform

To go along with the Ryzen 7000 processors, AMD is also launching the new AMD Socket AM5 platform, featuring an LGA design with 1718 pins, though AMD did say you'll be able to use existing AM4 coolers with the new AM5 platform, so you won't have to replace all the components in your PC. This new socket supports processors with up to a 170W TDP, plus it has up to 24 PCIe 5.0 lanes, dual-channel DDR5 memory support, and the new SVI3 power infrastructure. Those PCIe 5.0 lanes enable things such as support for up to 14 SuperSpeed USB ports, with speeds up to 20Gbps.

AMD Socket AM5 Platform

AMD also announced three new AM5-based motherboard families: the B650, X670, and X670 Extreme. All three support PCIe 5.0 storage, but the X670 comes with optional support for PCIe graphics, and the X670 Extreme motherboards can support two PCIe 5.0 graphics slots. The X670 Extreme models also support the best overclocking capabilities, though you can also get some overclocking support on the X670. Boards based on the new platforms will be coming from multiple partners including ASUS, ASRock, and more, plus AMD says we'll also be seeing PCI 5.0-based SSDs launch around the same time to take advantage of the increased bandwidth, promising up to 60% faster storage speeds.

AMD laptops

Over on the laptop side of things, AMD announced a new line of APUs called Mendocino, coming in the fourth quarter of 2022. These new processors are meant for laptops priced from $399 to $599, and they combine AMD's Zen 2 cores (with up to four cores and eight threads) with integrated RDNA 2 graphics. That means you should get great overall performance for both CPU and GPU tasks considering the price point. Plus, these processors are built on a 6nm process, similar to the Ryzen 6000 family that's available on this year's laptops, and they include support for LPDDR5 memory.

AMD Mendocino platform for laptops

Finally, AMD also touched on AMD Advantage, its framework for laptops that combine AMD CPUs and GPUs to leverage their enhanced connectivity with smart features like Smart Access Memory, SmartShift, and more. The company announced SmartAcess Storage, which builds on Microsoft's DirectX storage technology and Smart Access Memory to reduce game load times. We should hear more about this new feature in the next few months.


Source: AMD