AMD's Zen 4 and RDNA 3 on track for a 2022 launch

Plans surrounding the much anticipated AMD Zen 4 processors and RDNA 3 GPUs appear to be on track, with the expected launch date moving closer by the minute. As far as we know, despite recent chip shortages causing issues across the breadth of the tech industry, the red team roadmap remains unswerving.

Back in March, tasty Zen 4 server specs had us salivating for Ryzen 6000, but we were still mostly in the dark about the next-gen 5nm Ryzen desktop chips. Since then, a slew of rumours has broken through, teasing us with righteous specs that were sure to make the competition quiver in their blue and green boots.

Among these has arisen the potential for Zen 4 chips to come with integrated RDNA 2 GPUs. This would explain the projected power consumption numbers floating around (up to 170W), and would position AMD as a worthy contender for use in office-based machines that don't require power-hungry GPUs.

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Some reports suggest Raphael will support DDR5 exclusively, though considering Intel's Alder Lake CPUs will support both DDR4 and DDR5 for pricing reasons, we're dubious. Surely that would really limit their potential consumer base—not the most pragmatic move on AMD's part.

Other rumours from renowned Twitter leakers place Raphael's core count at 16, which would suggest Zen 3's current eight-core chiplet pair design will be sticking around for the next generation.

And having supposedly scrapped its Warhol Zen 3+ refresh, we could be seeing some 3D V-cache Zen 3 chips coming up as early as this year, boasting a wicked 15% performance improvement in games. Of course, AMD wouldn't want Intel's 2021 Alder Lake launch to steal the limelight for too long. Gotta keep the punters interested.

Whatever happens, all this conjecture is getting us all riled up in the wake of the next round of AMD CPUs. And as for RDNA 3, we're just as titillated. The potential of 15,360 cores for Navi 31 SKUs is pretty astounding—that's triple that of the already beastly Radeon RX 6900 XT. Lots to look forward to then.

With all the noise permeating the web, we're betting AMD has everything on track for an autumn 2022 launch. And although we're taking the rumours with a pinch of salt, and plans could still change between now and then, we can't help but swoon over the thought of slotting some powerful red team silicon into our test machines next year.

Having been obsessed with game mechanics, computers and graphics for three decades, Katie took Game Art and Design up to Masters level at uni and has been writing about digital games, tabletop games and gaming technology for over five years since. She can be found facilitating board game design workshops and optimising everything in her path.