AMD announces Zen 5 and the Ryzen 9000 series, with a 16% IPC uplift shipping in July

Promotional image of an AMD Ryzen 9000 series processor
(Image credit: AMD)

It's been less than two years since the Zen 4 CPU architecture was launched but progress waits for nobody; today at the Computex 2024 event AMD announced its new Zen 5 design. The new Ryzen 9000 series of desktop processors will ship in July with an average IPC uplift of 16% compared to their predecessors.

At first glance, Zen 5 doesn't seem to be much different to Zen 4. The compute chiplets (CCDs, Core Complex Dies) still have eight cores, all sharing 32MB of L3 cache. The top-end Ryzen models still sport two CCDs, so you won't be getting more than 16 cores and 32 threads in a standard gaming PC. Even the clock speeds haven't increased in this new generation.

And yet, AMD reckons that the new Ryzen 9 9950X, the direct successor to the Ryzen 9 7950X, offers 16% more performance on average, with the likes of Blender being up to 23% faster—all despite having an identical number of cores, threads, cache, and clock speeds.

You can see more detail about the specific changes that deliver this ~16% IPC bump in my Zen 5 architecture dive but suffice it to say, while they look quite minor on paper, they're actually pretty significant. AMD is adamant that Zen 5 is "not a trivial update" and that it is, in fact, "a sweeping update." We'll know for sure once the independent reviews come in, of course.

AMD's figures for the IPC uplift in Zen 5 are for the Ryzen 9 9950X flagship but you should expect to see improvements across the whole series, especially with the new Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 5 9600X, as these also have minor increases to the maximum boost clock.

What isn't clear at this point is what process node the CCDs are being manufactured on—still over at TSMC's foundries, so it will be either N5 or N4—but it is interesting to note that the default TDP (thermal design power) limits for the lower-spec 9000 chips are much lower than their Zen 4 equivalents. Whether that means they'll be easier to overclock is another matter, but it is good to see power limits going down, rather than up, for a change.

Swipe to scroll horizontally
AMD Ryzen 9000-series vs Ryzen 7000-series
CPU modelArchitectureCores / threadsMax boost clockTotal L2+L3 cacheDefault TDP
Ryzen 9 9950XZen 516 / 325.7 GHz80MB170 W
Ryzen 9 7950XZen 416 / 325.7 GHz80MB170 W
Ryzen 9 9900XZen 512 / 245.6 GHz76MB120 W
Ryzen 9 7900XZen 412 / 245.6 GHz76MB170 W
Ryzen 7 9700XZen 58 / 165.5 GHz40MB65 W
Ryzen 7 7700XZen 48 / 165.4 GHz40MB105 W
Ryzen 5 9600XZen 56 / 125.4 GHz38MB65 W
Ryzen 5 7600XZen 46 / 125.3 GHz38MB105 W

It will certainly mean they'll be easier and cheaper to keep cool and the 65W Ryzen 9 7900 I have in one of my test rigs is one of the coolest running CPUs I have right now. It's also barely any slower than the 170W Ryzen 9 7900X, so the new 9700X and 9600X could be serious contenders for the best gaming CPUs for SFF builds and, well, anyone really.

All of the new Ryzen 9000 processors will use the AM5 socket but AMD also announced two new motherboard chipsets to complement the Zen 5 architecture. The X870 and X870E both support USB4 and PCIe 5.0 graphics cards and SSDs as standard, along with higher EXPO DDR5 memory speeds. How much faster is, again, not entirely clear but I suspect that it will go from the current DDR5-5200 to DDR5-5600, perhaps even 6000.

At the moment, it's not clear what differences there are between the two chipsets, but it's most probably going to be the number of additional ports and M.2 sockets on offer, the E-version having a lot more connectivity options than the standard X870.

If you were hoping to see 3D V-cache variants launch alongside the main chips, I'm afraid there was no sign of them in the announcement, but that's par for the course with AMD chip launches. There was a big gap between the Zen 4 announcement and the launch of the Ryzen 9 7950X3D, so it'll probably be the same here.

The best part of the Zen 5 and Ryzen 9000 series announcement is that we won't have to wait very long to see just how good the new CPUs are, as everything will commence shipping in July. Once we get our hands on them, we'll give them a thorough testing, of course, and let you know just how good Zen 5 really is.

Best CPU for gamingBest gaming motherboardBest graphics cardBest SSD for gaming


Best CPU for gaming: Top chips from Intel and AMD.
Best gaming motherboard: The right boards.
Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits.
Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game first.

Nick Evanson
Hardware Writer

Nick, gaming, and computers all first met in 1981, with the love affair starting on a Sinclair ZX81 in kit form and a book on ZX Basic. He ended up becoming a physics and IT teacher, but by the late 1990s decided it was time to cut his teeth writing for a long defunct UK tech site. He went on to do the same at Madonion, helping to write the help files for 3DMark and PCMark. After a short stint working at Beyond3D.com, Nick joined Futuremark (MadOnion rebranded) full-time, as editor-in-chief for its gaming and hardware section, YouGamers. After the site shutdown, he became an engineering and computing lecturer for many years, but missed the writing bug. Cue four years at TechSpot.com and over 100 long articles on anything and everything. He freely admits to being far too obsessed with GPUs and open world grindy RPGs, but who isn't these days? 

TOPICS