AMD Announces Ryzen 7000 Series "Zen 4" Desktop CPUs - Linux Benchmarks To Come

AMD CEO Lisa Su today formally introduced their Ryzen 7000 series desktop processors built atop their Zen 4 architecture.

From a resort in Texas, AMD just announced their initial Ryzen 7000 series line-up as the highly anticipated Zen 4 desktop processors as well as touching ever so lightly on Zen 4 based AMD EPYC "Genoa" and teasing RDNA3 graphics (reaffirming it coming later this year and showing some brief gameplay from a Zen 4 + RDNA3 system). The embargo has just expired concerning the Ryzen 7000 series processors and can now talk about the information disclosed at the Texas event while the actual Ryzen 7000 series Linux review will come at a later date. AMD's initial Ryzen 7000 series processors are shipping on 27 September.

Ryzen 7000 series processors are built on the new AM5 platform with most notably moving to PCIe 5.0 and DDR5 system memory. AM5 can handle up to 230 Watt socket power delivery though the new Ryzen 9 7950X announced today has a 170 Watt TDP. AMD sees a 13% IPC uplift going from Ryzen 5000 to 7000 series. At the top is a maximum frequency of 5.7GHz, up 800MHz generationally. AM5 is intended to be used for future AMD desktop processors until at least 2025.

The AMD Ryzen 9 7950X at the top of the stack features 16 cores / 32 threads, up to a 5.7GHz boost, 80MB L2+L3 cache, and a 170 Watt TDP. The Ryzen 9 7950X will be priced at $699 USD.

Other SKUs being announced today include the Ryzen 9 7900X (12 core / 24 thread with 5.6GHz boost and 170 Watt TDP), Ryzen 7 7700X (8 core / 16 thread, 5.4GHz boost and 105 Watt TDP), and the Ryzen 5 7600X (6 core / 12 thread, 5.3GHz boost, 105 Watt TDP).

AMD firmly believes Zen 4 can solidly outperform Intel's Alder Lake processors. We'll see when testing ourselves how well AMD Zen 4 competes to Intel Alder Lake and upcoming Raptor Lake under Linux.

Zen 4 brings a new front-end design, AVX-512 including VNNI extensions, and is manufactured on a 5nm process. The Zen 4 AVX-512 makes use of a double pumping approach of 256-bit width to help avoid some of the high frequency switching impact of conventional AVX-512.

To no surprise, all of the numbers shared by AMD at the event were running Windows... It will be fun once having the new hardware in the lab for seeing how well the Ryzen 7000 series performs under Linux generationally and against the Intel competition.

AVX-512 on the AMD side is something I am very much looking forward to testing under Linux and looking at it more closely, especially ahead of EPYC Zen 4 "Genoa" processors shipping in the coming months.

For as great as the raw performance is, AMD was also talking up the leading performance-per-Watt, to which I look forward to examining closely under Linux as well.

Zen 5 was reiterated as being on track for 2024. Zen 4C with Bergamo was reaffirmed for H1'2023 with a smaller core area but otherwise same capabilities as Zen 4.

As for the Linux support, it wasn't touched on during the event itself. But with my close monitoring of things and communications, I expect it to be largely in good shape. After all, AMD wouldn't have sent me down here if not good Linux support and being concerned about the AMD Linux presence (I also wouldn't have bothered with the loss of productivity/downtime to travel if not sure of Zen 4 being primed for Linux). As I've been covering over the past great number of months, AMD has been quietly getting their Zen 4 support into place with the Linux kernel.

Excitingly this time around there should be even CPU temperature monitoring support at launch! Yes, a small feature, but something that with prior Zen desktop launches has tended to only come after launch.... This time all the IDs and adjustments were already mainlined as part of AMD continuing to ramp up in their Linux client efforts. Some of the other Zen 4 related patch series on our radar over the past several months include Last Branch Record V2, the new Raphael audio driver, Zen 4 IBS support, PerfMonV2, Upper Address Ignore (UAI), AMD SMCA updates, preparing for up to 12 CCDs, Virtual NMI, and much more... The AMD Ryzen 7000 series at-launch Linux support will hopefully be the best on record I am hoping, but we'll see with our hands-on next month.

Concerning though is no optimized Zen 4 compiler support yet. As of writing AMD (or their partners such as SUSE with GCC) haven't yet posted any "Znver4" compiler tuning for new instructions and cost tables / scheduler model updates. So sadly that is going to be another Zen launch with compiler support not coming in released versions until post-launch, though presumably AMD will have a new version of their AOCC downstream of LLVM/Clang soon with their initial Znver4 tuning there. It's too bad they still aren't ahead of the game in getting that compiler support out ahead of launch especially with the new front-end design, AVX-512 + VNNI, etc. There are likely other new extensions with Zen 4 yet to be formally announced.

That's the short summary given that AMD provided their Ryzen 7000 series briefings just hours in advance of launch. Most of my interesting commentary will come once having the hardware in hand to talk about the Linux support and performance/benchmarks in great detail... Stay tuned for then to see exciting AMD Ryzen 7000 series Linux benchmarks, as I'm very excited for this AMD launch and the Linux prospects are looking to be in good shape. AMD Ryzen 7000 series desktop hardware will be hitting store shelves on 27 September.