Ryzen 5000XT series is coming in July
Somehow, it seems that the news slipped through the cracks that during his opening speech at Computex 2024, AMD announced its intention to release two new Ryzen 5000 processors for its previous AM4 platform. The new chips, both with the XT designation, will be Ryzen 9 5900XT, a 16-core Zen 3, and Ryzen 7 5800XT, an 8-core Zen 3.
They are intended to highlight AMD's ongoing commitment to supporting their consumer platforms over the years. Although the changes in specifications are relatively minor – the Zen 3 architecture has long reached its maximum potential, this allows AMD to refresh the platform by offering hardware at new price points. The company did something very similar with the Ryzen 3000 generation, by releasing the late Ryzen 3000 XT chip models.
Zen 3 and the Ryzen 5000 series have been discussed numerous times since their release at the end of 2020, so there is nothing new to add here. Zen 3 is no longer AMD's latest and greatest technology, but the platform as a whole is quite cheap to produce, making it a good budget offering for new builds or a last upgrade opportunity for older ones.
Ryzen 9 5900XT
Ryzen 9 5900XT is a 16-core chip and should not be confused with Ryzen 9 5900X, which is a 12-core. It has a peak turbo frequency of 4.8GHz, which is 100 MHz lower than the highest model Ryzen 9 5950X. This makes the XT designation somewhat strange compared to previous generations of XT chips, although it is clear that AMD is in a difficult naming situation, but they still need to find a way to indicate that this is a new chip that sits below the 5950X.
Ryzen 7 5800XT
The second processor, Ryzen 7 5800XT is an 8-core chip that improves upon its predecessor, offering a maximum turbo frequency of 4.8GHz - 100MHz more than Ryzen 7 5800X. Aside from this difference, they share the same specifications, including 6 MB L2 cache and 32 MB L3 cache. Like previous models, the updated ones also come with a 105W TDP.
All AM4 motherboards that currently support the Ryzen 5000 series are also compatible with the Ryzen 5000XT series, although users will likely need to perform a firmware update to ensure smooth operation; these are the same chips, but the microcodes are likely different.
AMD provided some performance data in gaming, comparing Ryzen 9 5900XT with the 13th generation Intel Core i7-13700K. We see very modest improvements in gaming - up to 4%; not impressive, but price may be the deciding factor here.
As for that, AMD still has not provided official information ahead of the expected launch of the Ryzen 5000XT series in July. It is hard to say that the two new processors can be considered a full-fledged series, but this opens up the possibility for AMD to release even more chips from the 5000XT series in the future.
Expected prices and availability for Bulgaria will be clear very soon.
Sources: AMD; AnandTech
