AMD Reveals ‘3-D’ Ryzen 7, Teases 5nm Ryzen 7000 Desktop CPUs

In addition to the new Ryzen 7 5800X3D due out this spring, AMD is promising a whole new generation of Ryzen desktop processors in the second half of this year and said that the CPUs will be capable of hitting 5GHz on all cores.

AMD is seeking to take the gaming crown from Intel with a new version of its Ryzen 7 CPU, which it said is the “world’s fastest gaming processor” thanks to its use of the chipmaker’s 3-D chiplet technology.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company said the new Ryzen 7 5800X3D desktop CPU, revealed at AMD’s virtual CES 2022 press conference Tuesday, will arrive this spring, but even more processors will arrive in the second half of this year in the form of the Ryzen 7000 series, which will use the company’s next-generation Zen 4 architecture on a 5-nanometer manufacturing process.

AMD has been hyping the advantages of its “industry-leading” 3-D stacking technology since last May, and the company said the Ryzen 7 5800X3D will provide, on average, 15 percent faster performance for gaming compared with the Ryzen 9 5900X.

This performance gain is made possible by a vertical cache that is stacked on top of the CPU, appropriately called the 3-D V-Cache. This gives the Ryzen 7 5800X3D a total L2 and L3 cache of 100 MB, 64 MB of which comes from the 3-D V-Cache. That is significantly higher than the Ryzen 9 5900X’s 70 MB of total cache and even more so when compared with the Ryzen 7 5800X’s 36MB.

AMD said 3-D V-Cache provides 200 times more connection density than its own 2D chiplet technology, plus 15 times more interconnect density and three times more interconnect energy efficiency than Intel’s Foveros 3-D stacking technology. 3-D V-Cache will be used in a refresh of AMD’s third-generation EPYC processors, which are code-named Milan-X and due out in the first quarter of this year.

David McAfee, corporate vice president and general manager of AMD’s client business unit, said the 3-D V-Cache has a bigger impact on games that “have an incredible sensitivity to memory latency.” This includes “Watch Dogs: Legion,” which saw up to a 40 percent performance improvement when comparing the Ryzen 7 5800X3D with the Ryzen 9 5900X.

The 3-D chip also saw up to a 20 percent improvement for “Far Cry 6,” “Gears 5” and “Final Fantasy XIV.” “Shadow of the Tomb Raider,” on the other hand, only saw a 10 percent improvement while there was no difference in performance recorded for “Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.”

On a competitive level, AMD is considering the Ryzen 7 5800X3D a victory against Intel, based on a handful of tests, only half of which showed AMD in the lead. The 3-D chip was 20 percent faster for “Final Fantasy XIV” and 10 percent faster for “Shadow of the Tomb Raider” and “Far Cry 6,” according to AMD. But it was a tie for “Watch Dogs: Legion,” “Gears 5” and “Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.”

“Clearly, we’re delivering the world’s fastest gaming processor, edging out the performance of the fastest Intel 12th-gen processor and, once again, taking the gaming performance leadership crown with the 5800X3D,” McAfee said.

In addition to its 100-MB cache, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D sports eight cores, 16 threads, a 4.5GHz boost frequency, a 3.4GHz base frequency and a 105-watt thermal design power. The processor is compatible with AMD 400 and 500 Series motherboards.

5nm Ryzen Desktop CPUs Will Push 5GHz On All Cores

AMD is promising a whole new generation of Ryzen desktop processors in the second half of this year, and it showed that the CPUs will be capable of pushing more than 5GHz on all cores.

This new lineup will be known as the Ryzen 7000 series, and they will use the company’s Zen 4 architecture on a 5nm manufacturing process. The processors will arrive in the second half of 2022 alongside the new AM5 LGA1718 socket for motherboards that will enable new capabilities like DDR5 memory and PCIe 5.0 connectivity.

McAfee promised that Zen 4 is the “next big step” in AMD’s computing portfolio. The company previously teased next-generation EPYC server processors, code-named Genoa, that will use Zen 4 and an optimized version of TSMC’s 5nm process when they launch in 2022.

“It delivers incredible performance and power efficiency. It will extend that performance-per-watt leadership that we have delivered in our desktop processor line for many years,” he said.

As a teaser, AMD showed a live demo of “Halo Infinite” running on a Ryzen 7000 CPUs at high frame rates and with all cores running at 5GHz.

While the new AM5 socket means customers will have to buy new motherboards for Ryzen 7000 CPUs, McAfee said the socket will be compatible with existing AM4 coolers.