AMD Zen 5: Everything we know so far

AMD has finally officially announced the Zen 5 processor series. We have collected everything we know so far about the Ryzen 9000 desktop CPUs.

Since the launch of the Ryzen series of CPU chips, AMD has emerged from Intel’s shadow to become a huge name in PC gaming. As a result, many are keen to see where the company will take the next iteration of its processor technology, Zen 5.

The first Zen 5 line, also known as Granite Ridge or the 9000 series, was officially announced at Computex 2024, with the 9950X, 9900X, 9700X, and 9600X SKUs all being revealed.

Zen 5 specs

The first wave of Zen 5 CPUs have been unveiled. This initial line is known by the code name Granite Ridge, and four models were announced at Computex 2024. Here are the specs revealed so far:

CPU Model	Core Count	TDP	Boost Clock
Ryzen 9 9950X	16 Cores	170 W	5.7 GHz
Ryzen 9 9900X	12 Cores	120 W	5.6 GHz
Ryzen 7 9700X	8 Cores	65 W	5.5 GHz
Ryzen 5 9600X	6 Cores	65 W	5.4 GHz

AMD has confirmed that the new CPUs will use an improved version of its AI accelerator for AI-driven tasks. The Zen 5 chips will also feature the new RDNA 3.5 graphics architecture, providing more capabilities for onboard graphics without needing a discrete graphics card.

This could mean that AMD is planning on phasing out entry-level GPUs and making onboard CPU graphics a more attractive and capable option for devices such as budget laptops.

It has also been confirmed by AMD that they plan to keep the AM5 socket around for “As long as possible” and the Zen 5 chips will be compatible with the Zen 5 platform. This gives Zen 5 customers the option of saving money by buying a previous-generation motherboard.

For the Zen 5 ‘Strix’ APUs, the Q1 2024 earning call for AMD revealed that two SKUs were planned. The first would use a high-end distributed chiplet architecture and is designed for use in premium ‘enthusiast’ products, such as high-end gaming laptops.

The second, more budget option, would use a traditional monolithic architecture and was intended for use in light and portable devices, such as handheld gaming devices.

Zen 5 performance

According to internal AMD tests, the flagship Ryzen 9 9950X is said to be up to 23% faster in gaming scenarios when compared to the Intel Core i9-14900K. In productivity, the difference was even more stark, with the 9950X outperforming the i9-14900K by up to 56%.

AMD is claiming that the Zen 5 architecture chips are showing a 16% increase in Instructions Per Clock (IPC) when compared to Zen 4.

AMD

As reported by TechPowerUp, a demo of the Ryzen 9 9900X was spotted at Computex 2024, where its capabilities were being Benchmarked using Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora.

The demo showed the 9900X working with a Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics card to run the Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora benchmark.

The game was running on 1080p High settings, which gave the result of 229 FPS on average. It has not been confirmed if FSR frame generation was enabled during the demo, however.

Zen 5 release date

AMD announced at Computex 2024 that the Ryzen 9000 series will launch on July 31, 2024. This release date is earlier than anticipated but will allow AMD to prepare for the launch of the 9000X3D series, which is expected for Q4 of 2024.

The X3D chips with their specialist V-Cache have proved to be very popular amongst gamers, with the AMD 7800X3D CPU getting our pick as the best current gaming CPU.

Zen 5 price speculation

So far, there has not been any information on what price structure AMD plans to implement for the Zen 5 series of CPUs. As comparative data, here are the prices of the first four Zen 4 CPUs at launch.

CPU	Price
Ryzen 9 7950X	$699
Ryzen 9 7900X	$549
Ryzen 7 7700X	$399
Ryzen 5 7600X	$299

Based on previous patterns, we can expect some slight price increases, especially for the high-end flagship chips, but the rough price ranges between each CPU will probably remain consistent.