Wednesday, March 30th 2022
AMD Ryzen 7000 "Raphael" Zen 4 Processors Enter Mass-Production by April-May?
The next-generation AMD Ryzen 7000 "Raphael" desktop processors in the Socket AM5 package are rumored to enter mass-production soon, according to Greymon55 on Twitter, a reliable source with AMD leaks. Silicon fabrication of the chips may already be underway, as the source claims that packaging (placing the dies on the fiberglass substrate or package), will commence by late-April or early-May. "Raphael" is a multi-chip module of "Zen 4" CCDs fabricated on the TSMC N5 (5 nm) node, combined with a cIOD built on a yet-unknown node. A plant in China performs packaging.
It's hard to predict retail availability, but for the Ryzen 5000 "Vermeer" processors, this development milestone was reached in June 2020, with the first products hitting shelves 4 months later, in November. This was, however, in the thick of the pre-vaccine COVID-19 pandemic. The "Zen 4" CPU cores are expected to introduce an IPC increase, as well as higher clock speeds. Also on offer will be next-gen connectivity, including PCI-Express Gen 5 (including CPU-attached Gen 5 NVMe), and DDR5 memory. These processors will launch alongside Socket AM5 motherboards based on the new AMD 600 series chipsets.
Sources:
Greymon55 (Twitter), VideoCardz
It's hard to predict retail availability, but for the Ryzen 5000 "Vermeer" processors, this development milestone was reached in June 2020, with the first products hitting shelves 4 months later, in November. This was, however, in the thick of the pre-vaccine COVID-19 pandemic. The "Zen 4" CPU cores are expected to introduce an IPC increase, as well as higher clock speeds. Also on offer will be next-gen connectivity, including PCI-Express Gen 5 (including CPU-attached Gen 5 NVMe), and DDR5 memory. These processors will launch alongside Socket AM5 motherboards based on the new AMD 600 series chipsets.
31 Comments on AMD Ryzen 7000 "Raphael" Zen 4 Processors Enter Mass-Production by April-May?
Personally, I hope they stick to 16 cores. 24 cores just doesn't make any kind of sense in a consumer platform beyond MT benchmark padding. There are so few applications that can make use of those cores it would bring way more problems (power density, heat) than advantages.
Of course will be a few with deep pockets that upgrade still, but also will be who perhaps wait for 2nd or 3rd chip release to justify the cost more.
I have friends who are waiting for used 5000 to hit the market when the 7000 is released and will use it on first gen AM4 boards.
I mean, if you're sitting on Zen, Zen+ or Zen2, then Zen3 is still a good upgrade, and waiting for lower prices absolutely makes sense. That's a no-brainer. But that only applies if you're very strongly budget constrained (or just don't want to spend that much, which is essentially the same thing), in which case the new CPUs would be too expensive anyway, rendering that point of the argument moot.
Oh, and not to forget that Intel has been replacing their platforms every 1-2 generations for a decade, and certainly don't seem to be struggling with sales. As long as the new parts are sufficiently fast and deliver new I/O, people will be willing to pay. If you can't afford it you can't afford it, and that's understandable, but that's not down to it being a new platform, it's down to not having the money.
There's also the competitive disadvantage they would place themselves at compared to Intel by rehashing AM4 once again, with its ever-older I/O. Not that PCIe 5.0 will matter for consumers for half a decade or more, but DDR5 does, as does USB4 and other fast I/O, neither of which would be possible on AM4. And don't discount the poor PR of having woefully out-of-date I/O compared to your competitors.
Its probably only seems weird if you have no money problems.
Many people dont upgrade every gen in the first place, but I think a few did it on AM4 as it was just a CPU replacement. So my prediction is this.
I think Ryzen 7000 will have the lowest sales on the AM5 platform, assuming it lasts 3 full gen's again, the 9000 will sell better, and 11000 maybe even better still. Also considering the budget boards come out later so by the time 9000 series is around, there will be bigger supply and lower priced boards available, DDR5 probably as well.
As for Intel, thats why so many jumped on Ryzen 1st gen :) It was a complete breath of fresh air, much cheaper CPUs and a promise the chipset will last longer, not to mention motherboards were still cheap then. :) Of course AMDs last chip before Ryzen 1 was the horrible FX chip, but this time the predecessor is a much better chip (They now have same issue as Nvidia/Intel they competing against themselves own older gen). I have defenitly observed on Intel it was common to keep the CPU for 3-4 gens minimal because of platform upgrades, whilst on AM4 many people were upgrading at least twice during AM4s lifetime, so it changed habits. We will see, thats my prediction, if AMD release sales numbers then we know. :)
You're entirely right that Zen1 got a huge boost for delivering a lot of things Intel had failed to deliver for years, and Zen4 doesn't have that. But nothing AMD could do now would do that - they're evenly matched now. Now the challenge has shifted to competing on level ground, matching or beating them in performance and features. And to do that, they need a new platform. It sucks that this makes things more expensive, but if you're on an older platform and can't afford that, there is plenty of room to grow on AM4, or there's the option that's always there: saving up. Heck, before AM4, this was what you had to do, as no Intel platform lasted more than two generations anyhow. And if you're on Zen1, + or 2, there's room to improve with Zen3, and if you're on Zen3 ... wait, save up, upgrade when you can afford it. That's just reality, and while living under late-stage capitalism leads to borderline poverty and massive precarity for nearly everyone, this is hardly a particularly direct consequence of that.