AMD confirms Ryzen 9000 CPUs will go on sale on July 31, but we’re still guessing at pricing for Zen 5 chips
AMD has confirmed that its Ryzen 9000 processors will be released on July 31 and has given us some additional details about the next-generation CPUs.
As we already knew, the initial lineup of these Zen 5 processors – which will continue to use the AM5 socket – will consist of four models. Those are the high-end Ryzen 9 9950X and Ryzen 9 9900X, along with the Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 5 9600X, two key models aimed at more mainstream buyers.
It’s no big surprise that AMD announced the July 31st date, but we needed official confirmation to be sure. The rumor mill has been throwing this date around with great enthusiasm, with multiple retailers listing Zen 5 chips with this date on them.
Additionally, we’ve recently seen photos of packaged Ryzen 9000 processors already showing up at retailers. (AMD has only said so far that the Zen 5 CPUs would arrive sometime in July.)
Unfortunately, we don’t have any pricing details from AMD yet, although as always, there are some rumors floating around on the subject. The sentiment seems to be that AMD probably won’t change the pricing much compared to the current Ryzen 7000 CPUs. You never know.
AMD edges it out in terms of specs and the IPC uplift the Ryzen 9000 will deliver on average, which is 16% over the Ryzen 7000 – in other words, a respectable streak of gains for the new Zen 5 lineup.
There are some interesting bits here, though, including the official introduction of ‘Curve Shaper’, an overclocking feature that was previously announced. We can also see the TDPs of the Zen 5 processors confirmed, and they remain as first announced by AMD at Computex, with both the 9700X and 9600X listing their power consumption at 65W. Why is that worth mentioning? We’ll discuss that later.
Comparison of oddities
Some background: the Ryzen 9700X’s TDP is down from 65W in power consumption of its predecessor (the 7700X).
Now, as you may recall, there was a bit of a song and dance (or at least a tune) surrounding the 9700X when an AMD executive noted that the current-gen Ryzen 7800X3D would be faster for gaming – and that this was to be expected. Well, as we pointed out at the time, not really – if we go back a generation, that wasn’t the case with the 5800X3D versus the 7700X, with the latter actually being a to touch faster (although to be fair they were pretty much equal).
So, there was a little bit of disappointment about the potential gaming performance of the 9700X based on these AMD statements. This, in turn, led to a rumor that Team Red would bump up the TDP of the 9700X at the last minute (in other words, increase the clock speed and get better gaming performance in light of said criticism).
Well, we always thought that a potential doubling of the TDP – which is what the rumor suggested – seemed highly unlikely (to say the least), and AMD has confirmed that this isn’t happening and that it’s sticking with 65W.
While AMD compares the 9700X to the 5800X3D (two generations removed) in the materials AMD highlights, Wccftech – which seems like a cowardly excuse to say the least – in fact, according to OC3DTeam Red also compared the 9700X to the 7800X3D and found it to be 2% faster than the current 3D V-Cache workhorse.
That wasn’t the earlier suggestion, and it’s an interesting little twist in the tale here. Are AMD’s comparative gaming benchmarks cherry-picked to a greater extent here? Well, we don’t know, and we’ll really have to wait to run our own tests to find out how the Ryzen 9700X performs with its much lower TDP. If it can essentially match the generational gains made by the 7700X, with far less power consumption, that’ll be pretty impressive – but until we see the CPU in action, we’ll, as ever, reserve judgement.
Either way, those looking for a mid-range CPU for a gaming PC will likely want to wait for the 9800X3D anyway, especially since the next-gen X3D could theoretically arrive as early as September.