AMD
AMD this week released more information about its next-generation Ryzen 9000 processors and their underlying Zen 5 CPU architecture, ahead of their late July launch. The company reiterated some of the high-level performance claims it made last month: low- to mid-double-digit performance improvements over Zen 4 across both single- and multi-threaded tasks. But AMD also boasted about the chips’ power efficiency compared to the Ryzen 7000, hinting that they would draw less power despite the improved performance.
Prioritizing energy efficiency
AMD said it has lowered the default power limits for three of its four Ryzen 9000 processors — the Ryzen 5 9600X, Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 9 7900X — compared to the Ryzen 7000 versions of the same chips. Despite the lower default power limits, all three of those chips still see double-digit performance improvements over their predecessors. AMD also says the Ryzen 9000’s CPU temperatures have been reduced by up to 7º Celsius compared to Ryzen 7000 chips at the same settings.
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Ryzen 9000’s low-double-digit performance gains come despite the company lowering the default TDPs of most of its chips. These TDP settings determine how much power one of AMD’s CPUs can use (but not necessarily how much they can use). shall usage).
AMD
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Because the TDPs have been lowered, AMD claims that Ryzen 9000 chips will have slightly more overclocking headroom than Ryzen 7000.
AMD
It’s worth noting that we tested the original Ryzen 7000 CPUs at multiple power levels across the board, and for most of the chips, particularly the 7600X and 7700X, we found that the increased TDP levels didn’t help performance all that much initially. The TDP reduction in the Ryzen 9000 may have been made possible in part by architectural improvements or a newer manufacturing process, but AMD already had some room to lower those power consumption figures without impacting performance too much. TDP is also best thought of as a power boundary rather than the actual amount of energy a CPU will use for a given workload, even when fully utilized.
Still, we appreciate AMD’s focus on power efficiency for the Ryzen 9000 series, especially since Intel’s high-end 13900K and 14900K have been plagued by crashes that corpses related to high power consumption and incorrect motherboard configurations. Intel has yet to make a definitive statement on what the problem is, but it is plausible (perhaps even likely!) that it is a side effect of pushing these chips to their thermal and electrical limits.
Ryzen 9000 CPUs can be pushed even further by users who want to crank up the power limits and overclock. AMD points out that the chips all have more headroom for Precision Boost Overdrive automated overclocking, precisely because the default power limits leave a bit more performance on the table. But as long as the chips still perform well at their stock settings, people who just want to build a computer without much tinkering will be better off with chips that run cooler and consume less power.
More time on the clock for socket AM5
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AMD has committed to supporting the AM5 socket until “2027+,” two years longer than the “2025+” the company promised in late 2022.
AMD
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Ryzen 9000 launches with some slightly updated chipsets, though existing AM5 motherboards can use these chips after a BIOS update.
AMD
Another small but notable change buried in AMD’s slide decks, and good news for anyone who’s already invested in a Socket AM5 motherboard or plans to do so in the near future: AMD has officially extended the socket’s guaranteed support timeline until at least 2027, leaving the door open for support beyond that point. That’s a two-year extension from the company’s “2025+” timeline of late 2022.
Of course, “support” can mean a lot of different things. AMD is still officially supporting the AM4 socket with new CPU releases, and continues to lean on AM4 as a budget platform as the cost of socket AM5 has remained stubbornly high. But these “new” releases have all been repackagings of various iterations of the late-2020 Ryzen 5000 CPUs, rather than truly new products. Still, AMD’s formal commitment to the longevity of socket AM5 makes it a bit easier to recommend for people who upgrade their CPU regularly.
Ryzen 9000 chips can be installed in any current AM5 motherboard via a BIOS update. The company has also announced a line of 800-series chipsets for new motherboards, though these generally only feature minor improvements over the 600-series chipsets they replace. The X870E and X870 are guaranteed to have USB 4 ports, and the X870 supports PCIe 5.0 speeds for the GPU slot, while the X670 only supported PCIe 4.0 speeds for the GPU slot. The lower-end B850 chipset still supports PCIe 5.0 speeds for SSDs and PCIe 4.0 speeds for GPUs, while an even lower-end B840 chipset is limited to PCIe 3.0 speeds everything else. The B840 also does not support CPU overclocking, though it can still overclock RAM.
List image by AMD