An AMD Ryzen 9 7950X "Zen 4" 16-core/32-thread processor was put through the Geekbench 5.4.5 benchmark, and it's becoming all too clear that AMD has a highly competitive product on its hands. The 7950X yielded a single-threaded score of 2217 points, and 24396 points in the multi-threaded tests. With these scores, the 7950X is about 14% faster than the "Golden Cove" P-cores of the i9-12900K "Alder Lake" processor in the single-threaded tests, and comes out as being 41% faster than it in the multi-threaded test. Against the leaked i9-13900K "Raptor Lake," the 7950X is shown being about 4% slower in the single-threaded test (against the "Raptor Cove" P-cores); and about 7.8% slower in the multi-threaded test.

AMD in its Ryzen 7000 launch event teased its next-generation Radeon graphics card based on the RDNA3 graphics architecture. Built on an advanced process node just like "Zen 4," AMD is hoping to repeat the magic of the RX 6000 series, by achieving a 50% performance-per-Watt gain over the previous generation. which allows it either to build some really efficient GPUs, or consume the power headroom to offer significantly higher performance at power levels similar as the current-gen.

AMD's teaser included a brief look at the air-cooled RDNA3 flagship reference-design, and it looks stunning. The company showed off a live demo of the card playing "Lies of P," a AAA gaming title that made waves at Gamescom for its visuals. The game was shown playing on an RDNA3 graphics card running on a machine with a Ryzen 9 7950X processor at 4K, with extreme settings. AMD CEO Dr Lisa Su confirmed a 2022 launch for RDNA3.

A screenshot of an alleged AMD Ryzen 9 7950X "Zen 4" processor surfaced on the web, courtesy of OneRaichu, and this time there's no blur-out with the score field—15645 points. When compared to the alleged CPU-Z Bench scores of the Core i9-13900K "Raptor Lake" from last week, the Intel 8P+16E hybrid processor ends up 7.9% faster than this score, but still a very close second.

The Ryzen 9 7950X ends up a significant 23.47% faster than the leaked score of the Core i7-13700K (8P+8E), and the AMD flagship scores 33.5% faster than the previous-gen Intel flagship Core i9-12900K. While both the i7-13700K and i9-12900K are 8P+8E, the "Raptor Lake" gets ahead with higher IPC for the P-cores, slightly higher clocks, and more cache for the E-core clusters. The 7950X is also 32.12% faster than its predecessor, the Ryzen 9 5950X "Zen 3," and a whopping 58.39% faster than the Core i7-12700K (8P+4E).

Possible launch SEP pricing of AMD's Ryzen 7000 series "Zen 4" desktop processors leaked to the web by Wccftech, which appear to be similar to those of the Ryzen 5000 "Zen 3" at launch. AMD will launch a slim set of four SKUs in its first round of these processors—the flagship Ryzen 9 7950X (16-core/32-thread), followed by the second-best Ryzen 9 7900X (12-core/24-thread), the Ryzen 7 7700X (8-core/16-thread), and the mid-range Ryzen 5 7600X (6-core/12-thread).

Apparently, the series debuts with the Ryzen 5 7600X at $299, or the same SEP of the Ryzen 5 5600X at launch. The Ryzen 7 7700X launches at $449. The Ryzen 9 7900X comes in at $549, and the flagship Ryzen 9 7950X at $799, which again, is identical to that of the 5950X. Besides processors, motherboard vendors are expected to launch their first Socket AM5 motherboards, debuting with the AMD X670E and X670 chipsets. There's talk of mid-range chipsets such as the B650 and B650E, but we haven't seen any confirmed products show up on motherboard vendors' websites, yet. Pre-launch pricing for the X670E and X670 put them at a significant premium over the current Socket AM4 flagship boards based on the X570. Besides processors and motherboards, we could see announcements from memory vendors launching their first DDR5 memory products to feature AMD EXPO technology.

Fmax (or Frequency max), is the maximum clock speed an AMD "Zen" processor will automatically boost/overclock to, at stock multiplier settings. To go beyond this, you'll have to increase the multiplier value, and overclock the traditional way. The Fmax value for AMD's upcoming flagship desktop processor, the Ryzen 9 7950X "Zen 4," is reportedly set at 5.85 GHz. To facilitate this, you'll have to enable settings such as Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO), to eke out the power limits needed to get here. Competing Intel parts, such as the "Raptor Lake" Core i9-13900K, is reported to have a similar maximum boost frequency, of 5.80 GHz, but that's just for its 8 P-cores.

The upcoming AMD Ryzen 9 7950X 16-core/32-thread processor is allegedly over 40% faster than its predecessor, the 5950X, at the CPU-Z Bench multi-threaded test, according to a leaked benchmark screenshot scored by harukaze5719, and tabulated by Wccftech. The 7950X is shown with a score of 16809 points, which puts it 41 percent faster than the 5950X, and 43% faster than the i9-12900K. It's also shown to be behind the leaked benchmarks of the i9-13900K by a whisker—with the upcoming Intel chip being 0.5% faster.

Y-Cruncher is a multi-threaded Pi calculation benchmark. Its author, Alexander Yee, has access to an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X 16-core/32-thread sample, and has developed the latest version 0.7.10 of the Y-Cruncher binary with optimization for the "Zen 4" microarchitecture, and to take advantage of the AVX-512 instruction-set on these chips. Without disclosing the juicy performance numbers obtained in his testing, Yee posted a screenshot of Y-cruncher with the 7950X, on a machine with Windows 11 22Hx, and 64 GB of memory. You know it's optimized, since the multi-core efficiency is as high as 98% (all threads are being saturated with the Pi calculation workload).

For those of you that are eagerly awaiting the Ryzen 7000-series CPUs, details of the potential pricing has appeared over at Canadian e-tailer DirectDial. @momomo_us was first to post the details on Twitter, but didn't provide any details of who the e-tailer was, but some sleuthing using the AMD ordering codes soon brought us to DirectDial. The company has listed the all four expected CPU models with pricing and it appears that AMD has decided to stop providing coolers entirely, as none of the four upcoming CPUs appear to be available with a cooler in the box. All the model names ending WOF are retail packaged CPUs and the ones missing WOF at the end of the product number are tray CPUs from what we can tell.

As for the pricing, the Ryzen 5 7600X is listed at CA$435 or about US$340, with the Ryzen 7 7700X coming in at CA$631 or US$494. The Ryzen 9 7900X is CA$798/US$625 and finally the Ryzen 9 7950X is a steep CA$1158/US$907. @momomo_us also found some tray pricing from a different retailer and these CPUs are priced a few bucks cheaper, but we were unable to locate who the retailer is. Note that electronics and computer parts appear to be priced a fair bit higher in Canada than the US on average. As such, these prices should only be taken as an indication of what the retail price in Canada might end up being and not what the actual MSRP will land at, when AMD decides to launch these CPUs. Currently the retail date is expected to be on the 15th of September.

Update 10:49 UTC: The tray CPU retailer is PC-Canada.

It's pretty clear that we're getting very close to the launch of AMD's AM5 platform and the Ryzen 7000-series CPUs, with spec details and even pricing brackets tipping up online. Wccftech has posted what the publication believes will be the lineup we can expect to launch in just over a month's time, if rumours are to be believed. The base model is said to be the Ryzen 5 7600X, which the site claims will have a base clock of 4.7 GHz and a boost clock of 5.3 GHz. There's no change in processor core or thread count compared to the current Ryzen 5 5600X, but the L2 cache appears to have doubled, for a total of 38 MB of cache. This is followed by the Ryzen 7 7700X, which starts out a tad slower with a base clock of 4.5 GHz, but it has a slightly higher boost clock of 5.4 GHz. Likewise here, the core and thread count remains unchanged, while the L2 cache also gets a bump here for a total of 40 MB cache. Both these models are said to have a 105 W TDP.

The Ryzen 9 7900X is said to have a 4.7 GHz base clock and a 5.6 GHz boost clock, so a 200 MHz jump up from the Ryzen 7 7700X. This CPU has a total of 76 MB of cache. Finally the Ryzen 9 7950X is said to have the same base clock of 4.5 GHz as the Ryzen 7 7700X, but it has the highest boost clock of all the expected models at 5.7 GHz, while having a total of 80 MB cache. These two SKUs are both said to have a 170 W TDP. Price wise, from top to bottom, we might be looking at somewhere around US$700, US$600, US$300 and US$200, so it seems like AMD has adjusted its pricing downwards by around $100 on the low-end, with the Ryzen 7 part fitting the same price bracket as the Ryzen 7 5700X. The Ryzen 9 7900X seems to have had its price adjusted upwards slightly, while the Ryzen 9 7950X seems to be expected to be priced lower than its predecessors. Take these things with the right helping of scepticism for now, as things can still change before the launch.

An innocuous search through the media asset-bank on the AMD website revealed the processor model numbers of the four Ryzen 7000 series "Zen 4" chips the company plans to debut its next-generation lineup with. These include the Ryzen 9 7950X, the Ryzen 9 7900X, the Ryzen 7 7700X, and the Ryzen 5 7600X. Older reports theorized that AMD could stick to a slim launch cycle with just 4 SKUs to be launched initially, and the series expanding to cover various price-points, later in 2023. The company didn't provide any specifications of these processors. It is rumored that AMD could announce these processors as early as in August, with availability slated for mid-September, 2022.

15th September, 2022, is when AMD will debut its Ryzen 7000 "Zen 4" desktop processors. The launch strategy of these chips looks similar to that of the Ryzen 5000 series. The company is preparing a lean launch lineup with just four SKUs—the Ryzen 9 7950X, the Ryzen 9 7900X, Ryzen 7 7800X, and the Ryzen 5 7600X. These SKUs succeed the 5950X, 5900X, 5800X, and 5600X, which made up the previous launch lineup. AMD in its recent interview with us, made it clear that 16-core/32-thread is the maximum core-count for the 7000 series, which would make the 7950X such a chip. The core-counts of the other SKUs are not known. All these models are built in the Socket AM5 package, featuring PCI-Express Gen 5 and DDR5 interfaces. But wait, there's more.

Although AMD led us to believe that it's going all-in with DDR5, we're hearing a spectacular rumor that suggests otherwise. Apparently, the company is designing Socket AM4 processors with "Zen 4" chiplets, possibly paired with the existing cIOD that supports PCI-Express Gen 4 and DDR4 interfaces. The rumor surfaced among sources lower down the supply-chain (resellers). It seems like AMD isn't convinced it could target the lower-end of the market with AM5 just yet, and isn't 100% confident that affordable DDR5 memory will come through in time. The "Zen 4" + AM4 processors would compete with Intel 600-series chipset motherboards that have DDR4 and PCIe Gen 4 connectivity. Trouble is, you can upgrade your Intel LGA1700 motherboard to one that has DDR5+PCIe Gen5 while keeping your processor; but you can't do so with an AM4 Zen 4 processor (you're stuck on AM4). AMD still gets to sell some processors, and those with AM4 platforms can rejoice.

AMD's Ryzen 7000 series of desktop processors based on the novel Zen 4 core architecture are scheduled to arrive in the second half of 2022. While we are not sure just how big the architectural differences will be going from Zen 3 (with or without 3D V-cache) to the new Zen 4 core, we have some leaked information that confirms the existence of two SKUs that reveal additional details about the processor configuration. In the MilkyWay@Home project, aiming to create a model of the Milky Way galaxy by utilizing countless PCs across the globe, we found two next-generation Ryzen 7000 SKUs. The MilkyWay@Home project isn't a benchmark. However, it is a valuable reference where the next generation processors appeared.

First in line is the 100-000000666-21_N CPU, a codename for an eight-core, sixteen-threaded design. This model should correspond to the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X CPU, a successor to the Ryzen 7 5800X model. Next in line is the 100-000000665-21_N CPU with 16 cores and 32 threads, a successor to the Ryzen 9 5950X named Ryzen 9 7950X. One important thing to note is that these new CPUs feature different level two (L2) cache configurations. With the previous generation 5000 series "Vermeer" processors, the L2 cache was locked at 512 KB per core. However, according to today's leak, the upgraded Zen 4 IP will bring 1024 KB of L2 cache per core, doubling the cache size at one of the fastest levels.