AMD Unveils Ryzen 7000 With 5.5GHz Desktop Boost

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip company will also update its platform to accommodate the new CPUs on Zen 4 architecture, which will require a new motherboard.

AMD Monday doubled down on its reputation for speedy processors, announcing blazing fast Ryzen 7000 desktop CPUs that will allow a boost of up to 5.5GHz of speed – making it the fastest desktop chip from the company so far.

Scheduled to ship this fall, the Ryzen 7000 CPUs are the first PC chips to feature 5nm manufacturing process from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC). The companies first announced the 5nm would be featured in the chips back in January. AMD CEO Lisa Su unveiled the new releases at Computex Taipei 2022.

During her keynote address, Su said the improvements to AMD’s Zen architecture will allow “more performance, more features and more capabilities for our desktop PCs.” She said the new Zen 4 Core would deliver 15 percent better performance over the previous generation architecture and will make significant advancements in power management. These improvements will force the company to transition from its well-received AM4 motherboards to the new AM5, which will allow the new Ryzen chips up to 170 watts of power.

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“As we approached the design (of the AM5), we wanted to create a platform designed for flexibility and built for the future,” said David McAfee, vice president and general manager for client channel business at AMD, during the keynote. While much of the presentation was focused on performance boosts benefiting the gaming community, the company also stressed advancements for content creators.

While Intel and AMD have both broken the 5GHz speed barrier in laptops, these will be the first desktop chips to deliver that top-tier performance. The AM5 platform will also support 6E Wi-Fi connectivity, up to 24 PCIe 5.0 lanes for storage and graphics, up to 14 SuperSpeed USB with 20 Gbps and Type-C connectors, up to 4 HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 2 ports.

Su demoed a 16-core Ryzen 7000 clocking in at 5.5 GHz during a gaming session and showed the chip completing a 3D render in Blender in 31 percent less time than Intel’s flagship Core i9 chip. Su said the chips will also feature integrated RDNA 2 graphics for the first time. The company also said the Ryzen 7000 will feature expanded instructions for AI acceleration.

AMD said it also doubled the cache on Zen 4 to include 1MB to handle large workloads – primarily a plus for datacenter work.