Conclusion
Zen 5
Overall we are very excited about the Zen 5 desktop CPUs. It seems that the core and thread count remains the same, which is to be expected, but where AMD has improved is on architecture performance, and delivering more performance at lower power demands. This is pretty incredible, because Zen 4 was already very efficient, and really gave the competition a run for its money.
With Zen 5, the power savings should be even greater, really hitting Intel over the head on power delivery efficiency. The fact that more performance can be extracted, with lower power, is everything you want from a new generation. We can’t wait to get them in for testing and find out the real-world advantages in gaming and productivity.
Ryzen AI 300
We are also excited about the Ryzen AI 300 series processors, ok not the naming, but the processors themselves do seem impressive on the hardware side of things. Sure, we can sit here and knock the naming scheme all day long, and the idea of including “AI” in everything, but let’s look past that for a moment and talk about the hardware that is integrated. With Ryzen AI 9 processors you are getting the new Zen 5 architecture which puts the processors in parity with what is available on the client-side desktop PCs in terms of generations and architectures.
The Zen 5 architecture is looking very powerful at lower TDPs, and this is where these mobile processors will sit, at lower TDPs. In addition, AMD is bumping up the core count in the high-end for these mobile processors. Second, the NPU seems to be very powerful on paper at 50 TOPs of FP-16 accuracy performance it really is second to none.
AMD is leading this class of processing in NPU performance at this level of accuracy. Finally, the Ryzen AI 300 series gets an updated iteration of RDNA 3 with RDNA 3.5, with Radeon 890M and Radeon 880M. This should allow new levels of graphics performance at this power range. Overall, they really sound good on paper, so we can’t wait to see it implemented in the mobile space.
AM5 Platform Longevity
We know a lot of PC enthusiasts were worried or weary about AMD stating AM5 platform longevity to 2025. There was concern that Zen 5 would be the last generation on AM5, meaning AM5 would have only received 2 CPUs worth of support. However, AMD has officially announced that longevity is being extended to 2027+, that + or “beyond” as they stated it is very interesting. At the very least, it looks like Zen 6 will be on AM5, but will Zen 7?
Who knows what AMD’s release schedule will be for future CPUs, but one could imagine at least one more, maybe even two, iterations on AM5 with this new announcement. I guess we will just have to wait and see, but it looks like the AM5 platform is going to be around for a while.
Final Thoughts
When all is said and done, a lot of these announcements were expected for Computex 2024. It seemed like the right moment to announce the Zen 5 and the Ryzen 9000 CPUs, as well as the upcoming mobile processors. It seems AMD’s Ryzen team is very strong, and bringing great iterations and new technologies to the table.
Now if only their Radeon division could keep pace, there was no information in the press deck about RDNA 4 or the next graphics cards that could come this year, despite rumors that they may launch sometime this year. We also did not see any information about the X3D variants of CPUs in the press deck either, so we do not know when to expect those at this point. On the bright side, we can’t wait to test Zen 5, it should be an exciting summer for PC enthusiasts.