Early this morning, during Computex 2024, AMD announced its new line of Ryzen 9000 processors.
The AMD Ryzen 9000 desktop processor family, codenamed Granite Ridge, is based on the latest Zen 5 core architecture and is aimed at high-performance gaming computers. The chips come with a range of new features, with Zen 5 cores being the highlight, while also supporting existing and upcoming AM5 platforms with improved I/O and DDR5 memory support. They will feature up to two Zen5 chiplets, each with up to 8 cores, for a total of 16 cores and 32 threads, similar to the Ryzen 7000 series.
Before we talk about the Ryzen 9000 processors, let’s first take a look at the new and improved Zen 5 core architecture, which offers:
- Improved branch prediction accuracy and latency
- Higher throughput with wider pipelines and vectors
- Enhanced design for more parallelism
In several aspects, the Zen 5 core architecture offers up to a 2x increase. The core chiplets (CCD) are based on TSMC's 4nm process node, while the IOD is based on TSMC's 6nm process node. They are offered in the same peak configuration of 2 CCDs and 1 IOD on consumer platforms.
These changes lead to a significant increase in IPC - an average of 16% compared to Zen 4. In certain cases, the Zen 5 core can achieve up to +35% IPC like (Geekbench 5.4 AES XTS), and another key area that has been improved is the L2 and L3 cache structuring. AMD is also making significant changes to the IMC, which now leads to much higher support for EXPO/XMP memory, and the frequency of Infinity Fabric has been increased from 2000 MHz in Zen 4 to 2400 MHz in Zen 5 with native support for DDR5-5600 speeds.
AMD Ryzen 9000 Desktop Processor Range
As for the range, the AMD Ryzen 9000 "Granite Ridge" consists of four models to start. They include Ryzen 9 9950X, Ryzen 9 9900X, Ryzen 7 9700X, and Ryzen 5 9600X. Let’s take a look at their specifications.
The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X is the flagship offering with two Zen 5 CCDs and one IOD. The processor offers 16 cores, 32 threads, and a maximum clock speed of up to 5.7 GHz, the same as the Ryzen 9 7950X. It comes with 80 MB of cache (64 MB L3 + 16 MB L2) and has a TDP of 170 W.
Next, we have the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X, the 12-core and 24-thread variant. It has a clock speed of up to 5.6 GHz and 76 MB of cache. Interestingly, it has a TDP of 120W, which is much lower than the 170W of the Ryzen 9 7900X chips.
- Ryzen 9 7950X (170W) -> Ryzen 9 9950X (170W)
- Ryzen 9 7900X (170W) -> Ryzen 9 9900X (120W)
- Ryzen 7 7700X (105W) -> Ryzen 7 9700X (65W)
- Ryzen 5 7600X (105W) -> Ryzen 5 9600X (65W)
For more mainstream users, AMD offers the Ryzen 7 9700X, which is an 8-core processor with 16 threads, clock speeds of up to 5.5 GHz, 40 MB of cache (1 CCD with 32 MB L3 + 8 MB L2), and a TDP of 65 W, which is also much lower than the 105W TDP of its predecessor, the Ryzen 7 7700X.
Finally, the AMD Ryzen 5 9600X processor features 6 cores and 12 threads. This chip has a maximum clock speed of up to 5.40 GHz and has 38 MB of cache and the same 65 W TDP. Only the AMD Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 5 processors see an increase in clock speed compared to their predecessor, while the Ryzen 9 chips retain the same clock speeds.
Performance
AMD also shares some performance data for its upcoming Ryzen 9000 "Zen 5" desktop processors. The Ryzen 9 9950X is compared to Intel Core i9-14900K. It offers up to a +56% performance jump (+29.8% average increase) and up to a +23% jump in gaming performance (+13.2% average increase), a significant leap over Intel's flagship processor.
In gaming, the Ryzen 9 9950X should be faster than the Zen 4 3D V-Cache chips, but we can expect the Zen 5 3D V-Cache to make this leap forward even greater. AMD states that the improvement in gaming performance comes from reduced latencies associated with the chip.
AMD also states that the Ryzen 9000 "Zen 5" desktop processors provide the best AI platform for content creation with a 100% increase in graphics bandwidth thanks to dedicated PCIe 5.0 lanes that are missing in Intel's current lineup, and a 20% AI acceleration in LLMs like Mistral. Note that AMD does not include an NPU in its Ryzen 9000 desktop processors, but the new architectural improvements lead to better AI performance than the competition.
Prices and Availability
Currently, no details about pricing are shared, but we can expect the prices to be approximately similar to those of the Ryzen 7000 series at the time they were initially launched. Meanwhile, AMD confirms that the processors will launch in July this year, so expect more information on prices and availability in the Bulgarian market very soon.
