AMD Unveils New Ryzen 9000 'Zen 5' Desktop Processors, X870 Chipset (2024)

At Computex 2024, AMD laid out the plan for its next-generation Ryzen 9000-series processors based on its new Zen 5 microarchitecture, which are almost ready to slot into desktops. These new CPUs are slated for introduction this July and will ship alongside an updated AM5 platform. (Two new CPUs for the aging AM4 platform will also land then.) These new components come with impressive performance claims and upgraded features, but it remains to be seen if they can stand up against Intel’s upcoming "Arrow Lake" desktop chips.

'Granite Ridge' Gets Real: AMD Ryzen 9000 Series

AMD’s new Ryzen 9000-series processors are codenamed “Granite Ridge,” with key changes in the design, including up to a twofold increase in instruction bandwidth for front-end instructions. The data bandwidth between the L2 and L1 caches also increased by up to double that of Zen 4, and the bandwidth between the L1 cache and floating point unit has increased by a similar amount. You'll also enjoy a 2x increase in AI performance and AVX-512 vector extension throughput.

(Credit: AMD)

These changes have helped boost the overall performance throughput in several benchmarks. AMD claims an average overall 16% uplift in overall instructions per clock cycle (IPC) over the Zen 4 architecture, giving these CPUs a reasonably significant boost. The exact performance increase depends on the application in question, with AMD suggesting up to a 35% increase in Geekbench but as little as a 10% increase in Far Cry 6 or an 11% increase in HandBrake.

(Credit: AMD)

AMD will launch four new chips in July: the Ryzen 9 9950X, the Ryzen 9 9900X, the Ryzen 7 9700X, and the Ryzen 5 9600X. The Ryzen 9 9950X closely matches the last-gen AMD Ryzen 9 7950X, with both chips having 16 CPU cores, 32 threads, 16MB of L2 cache, and 64MB of L3 cache. Both are set with a max boost clock of 5.7GHz. They also share the same 170-watt (W) thermal design power (TDP).

(Credit: AMD)

Based on this information, the Ryzen 9 9950X should perform roughly 16% faster than the Ryzen 9 7950X. As both chips are clocked the same, the difference in IPC should be the only significant factor impacting performance. We can also extrapolate how it might perform in a few benchmarks.

(Credit: AMD)

The Ryzen 9 9950X’s performance numbers are estimated based on the 7950X’s numbers and increased by AMD’s claimed IPC gains for the two applications. In this case, that’s a 17% increase for Cinebench R23. We haven’t tested one of these chips yet to say for sure, but this should give a rough idea of what to expect if AMD’s performance claims are accurate.

However, these claims paint a less-than-ideal picture of the Ryzen 9 9950X. Performance is higher, and the Ryzen 9 9950X would have an estimated 9% lead over the Intel Core i9-14900K in the multithreaded test with nearly identical performance in the single-threaded test. It’s certainly competitive, but Intel’s Arrow Lake processors are expected out later this year, too, which are expected to gain in kind. We do not know what that will look like, but the Ryzen 9 9950X and Core i9-14900K are already close in estimated performance. So, it's likely that any increase Arrow Lake brings will likely give Intel the advantage. Suppose AMD were to implement a true big.LITTLE design with more specialized cores, this situation would likely improve considerably.

Chips further down the stack fare a bit better and may prove more promising. Like the Ryzen 9 9950X, the Ryzen 9 9900X is similar to its direct predecessor, the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X. We see parity in clock speeds, cache, and core count on both of these chips, but the Ryzen 9 9900X has a lower 120W TDP, whereas the Ryzen 9 7900X has a 170W TDP.

(Credit: AMD)

The Ryzen 7 9700X and the Ryzen 5 9600X are 100MHz or 0.1GHz faster than their direct predecessors and have significantly lower TDPs. The AMD Ryzen 7 7700X and AMD Ryzen 5 7600X have TDP ratings of 105W, which is reduced to 65W on the Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 5 9600X.

Evaluating the real-world effect of these changes is difficult without testing the chips first-hand, of course. In some circ*mstances, a reduction in TDP could negatively impact performance, causing the chips to Turbo Boost less frequently and maintain their max clock speeds for shorter periods. The significant advantage to the lower TDP is that the chips will likely draw much less power and generate less heat.

Many of the Ryzen 7000-series chips that carried the X-suffix struggled with heat issues when we tested them, which did not come up with other 7000-series chips running on lower TDP ratings. For example, when we tested the Ryzen 7 7700X, it hit its thermal limit of 95 degrees C while running Cinebench R23. Still, the AMD Ryzen 7 7700 ran significantly cooler during the same test, maxing out at 71 degrees C. The Ryzen 7 7700X still performed better, as it had higher clocks, but those temperatures are a bit concerning, especially for continuous use.

Going with lower TDP ratings on the Ryzen 9 9900X, Ryzen 7 9700X, and Ryzen 5 9600X will likely prove more advantageous, especially as these lower TDP numbers were achieved without reducing the overall clock speed.

AMD's X870 & X870E Chipsets: USB4, Expanded PCIe 5.0 Support at Last

AMD has two new chipsets to support the Ryzen 9000 processor line. Skipping past the potential 700-series of chipsets, AMD has instead introduced the 800 series with the AMD X870 and the AMD X870E chipsets.

We don’t have many details about these chipsets yet, but they generally appear to pick up where the 600 series left off. Both incorporate support for USB4, which wasn’t included on any of the 600-series chipsets. However, we do not know how many of these updated ports the chipsets can handle.

(Credit: AMD)

Improved PCIe 5.0 support joins AMD's list of features, at least for the X870. Both the X670 and the X670E shipped with PCIe 5.0 support, but only the X670E could support a PCIe 5.0 x16 connection for a graphics card and a PCIe 5.0 x4 connection for an NVMe M.2 SSD. The X670 chipset still had PCIe 5.0, but only for graphics cards. The X870 and X870E will support at least one PCIe 5.0 x4 connection for ultra-fast SSDs and the graphics card.

These chipsets are also rated to support higher clocked AMD EXPO memory profiles, but we have no word if the official max supported memory speed has increased on Ryzen 9000-series parts.

AM4, 4Ever? New XT Chips for an Old Platform

We’ve reported a few times on what we thought would be the last new AM4 processors. We’re not doing that this time, as AMD has shown it can and will keep the aging AM4 platform alive for as long as it can, with now no clear end to the platform in sight. This year, the platform has already received a few new processors with integrated graphics, like the new Ryzen 5 5600GT. In addition to those, AMD now has the Ryzen 9 5900XT and the Ryzen 7 5800XT.

(Credit: AMD)

Though it’s nice to see new chips coming for AM4, it’s also difficult to understand precisely how they fit the current market. The Ryzen 9 5900XT ships with 16 CPU cores, 32 threads, and a max clock speed of 4.8GHz. This makes it theoretically faster than the original AMD Ryzen 9 5900X, which only had 12 CPU cores. However, it’s slightly slower than the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, which has 16 cores and is clocked at 4.9GHz.

The Ryzen 7 5800XT is a near match for the Ryzen 7 5800X, with both having eight cores, but the Ryzen 7 5800XT has a 100MHz-higher boost clock of 4.8GHz. Pricing will likely be pivotal to these CPUs' success, as they don’t present anything new over the existing AM4 processor line. If priced low enough, though, they could be smart upgrade options for people with an existing AM4 system running a Ryzen 3 or Ryzen 5 CPU.

No matter their cost, it's tough to recommend buying one of these for a wholly new system, except potentially in the budget market. We have nothing against AM4 or these new chips (and they look like potentially great upgrades for the big installed base of legacy AM4 boards), but more modern options like those in the Ryzen 9000 series would be a wiser investment, especially for long-term use.

Also, Here Comes a Dual-Slot AMD Radeon Pro W7900 for Workstations

Amid its Computex reveals, AMD showed off another new upcoming product: a revised Radeon Pro W7900 GPU for desktop workstations. This may sound a little off, as the Radeon Pro W7900 was released in 2023, but that card filled three add-on card slots, with a cooler that expanded the card's body to 2 to 2.5 card slots in width.

(Credit: AMD)

The Radeon Pro W7900 revamp this year features a smaller dual-slot cooler. This naturally takes up less space, enabling it to fit in smaller cases or more of these cards in larger cases in a GPU-compute array. Besides that, you'll find no difference between the new Radeon Pro W7900 and the old one. They have feature parity with identical core counts and clock speeds and retail for $3,499.

Ryzen 9000 Drops in July—But No Prices Yet

AMD didn’t reveal pricing information for any of the new parts announced at Computex, and it still has more details to share before then. AMD did not mention AI hardware on the Ryzen 9000-series chips or chipsets, and it appears that AMD has skipped past including its XDNA AI technology on 9000-series chips for now. We also weren’t given any details about the graphics side of these chips, though we would expect them to continue to feature integrated (and probably modest) RDNA graphics processors just like the Ryzen 7000 series. The Ryzen 9000-series processors, the two new AM4 chips, and the new 800-series chipsets are all slated for release in July.