AMD is on a spree to launch new processors every now and then, while each of them providing significant improvements over last-gen. It’s only been a few months since we got the Zen 3 based CPUs and already we have rumours about AMD’s next-line of CPUs.
It will take some time for AMD to announce Zen 4 and Zen 5, and now they have started to make refreshed CPUs as well, almost what they did with Zen+, Zen 2+ and it expected that AMD would refresh the Zen 3 line as well at the end of this year.
Zen 4 & Zen 5
The much anticipated Zen 4 microarchitecture will be based on TSMC’s 5nm node, and that should provide significant improvements. Chips and Cheese suggest with a pinch of salt that Zen 4 will bring 25% IPC gain over Zen 3 and a huge 40% overall performance improvement.
Also, with Zen 4 we could see all core boost to 5 GHz as with 5nm efficiency, the TDP is supposed to decrease, helping to provide more performance on the same die. When Zen 3 focussed mostly on the single-core performance, Zen 4 could take advantage of a finer node without having to sacrifice on the efficiency.
Not only desktop CPUs but also Zen 4-based EPYC Genoa server chips will also benefit from 5nm process. So, without having to sacrifice on efficiency the next-gen AMD server chips will be 29% faster, with the same clock rates and identical core configuration.
Talking about Zen 5 architecture, which is still in its research stage, is rumoured to provide a potential IPC uplift of +40% from Zen 4. This is info is already tagged to be less assured than Zen 4’s, and even if Zen 5 is based on 3nm, those high gains seem unrealistic, but you never know what AMD is possible of.
Though Zen 5 is still far away, for sure AMD is not resting to give this excellent momentum it has gained.
Zen 3+
It seems most likely the Zen 3 refresh or dubbed as Zen 3+ Warhol should be AMD’s answer to tackle Intel’s promising Alder Lake-S CPUs based on 10nm process. Much like what we saw with Ryzen 3000XT processors, we will see refreshed Ryzen 5000 processors at the end of this year.
RedGamingTech‘s sources have confirmed that Warhol will release sometime later this year presumably in Q4 2021, as speculated previously. So, the core counts and the architecture will remain the same, but we could see a minor bump in IPC if AMD pushes the clock speeds well within the thermal limits.
Also, good news for gamers and enthusiasts come with the information that AMD is most likely to retain its much loved AM4 socket for another generation. So, there will not be significant changes for the motherboards with the same PCIe Gen4 support and Warhol should also max out at 16-core 32-threads as Rocket Lake-S is limited to 8 cores only.
Warhol will not be a generation to crush Intel but let everyone know AMD has something to challenge its competitors, so do not expect unrealistic improvements on the same 7nm process. While Intel’s 16-core, 24-threaded Alder Lake-S engineering sample has been spotted on Geekbench to provide Core i9-10900K like performance.
So, even if Intel matches AMD’s multi-threaded performance somehow, AMD could something to answer with in the form of Warhol and challenge in 2022 with 5nm based Zen 4. This is the reason why AMD is still focussing to get as much of 7nm nodes from TSMC this year, potentially becoming the largest importer in 2021.
via Notebookcheck
