Watch the AMD Ryzen 5000 Zen 3 livestream here today

It's a big day, it's AMD Ryzen 5000 day, and today we'll find out just what Dr. Lisa Su and Co. have planned for the next-gen Zen 3 gaming processors. We're liveblogging the Zen 3 announcement, so check that out for the very latest updates once the show starts.

 The AMD Ryzen 5000 livestream, dubbed 'Where gaming begins', kicks off today at 9am Pacific, 12pm Eastern, or 5pm UK time, and you can watch it live right here.

AMD's popular CEO, Dr. Lisa Su, will be running the event today, along with a select bunch of other senior execs, and will be introducing us to the new Ryzen 5000 lineup, the desktop gaming chips powered by the new Zen 3 CPU architecture.

But what are we expecting to find out about the new processors today? Obviously there should be a firm release date for at least the first Ryzen 5000 CPUs, and hopefully prices too, but we're also likely to see some gaming performance numbers too. 

This new generation of AMD processors is expected to move the game on, both figuratively and literally, because the Zen 3 architecture is promising some serious IPC gains. With a slightly updated 7nm production node, and a new design we could be looking at 10 - 15 percent higher IPC, with some rumours suggesting a 20 percent uplift. 

Cut the cord...

(Image credit: Steelseries)

Best wireless gaming mouse: ideal cable-free rodents
Best wireless gaming keyboard: no wires, no worries
Best wireless gaming headset: top untethered audio

Along with an expected bump in clock speeds that could put the new AMD Ryzen 5000-series CPUs in the driving seat when it comes to gaming performance, and mean the red team has the lead over Intel for the first time in years. Given that's the only place Intel could realistically claim the win, having lost the core-count battle and process node superiority, the Zen 3 chips really could represent a true changing of the gaming guard.

I'd say that Intel will definitely be paying attention. The announcement yesterday that the 11th Gen desktop processors, code-named Rocket Lake, would be launching early in 2021, with Alder Lake also following later in the year, is likely no coincidence of timing ahead of AMD's big announcement.

We've only heard tell of a pair of AMD Zen 3 CPUs so far—the Ryzen 5800X and 5900X—and it's possible those are going to be the first chips to hit the shelves. But there are sure to be more following, a full family to usher in a new era of gaming CPUs. And that starts today. 

Dave James
Editor-in-Chief, Hardware

Dave has been gaming since the days of Zaxxon and Lady Bug on the Colecovision, and code books for the Commodore Vic 20 (Death Race 2000!). He built his first gaming PC at the tender age of 16, and finally finished bug-fixing the Cyrix-based system around a year later. When he dropped it out of the window. He first started writing for Official PlayStation Magazine and Xbox World many decades ago, then moved onto PC Format full-time, then PC Gamer, TechRadar, and T3 among others. Now he's back, writing about the nightmarish graphics card market, CPUs with more cores than sense, gaming laptops hotter than the sun, and SSDs more capacious than a Cybertruck.

TOPICS