AMD Ryzen 7000 series: Zen 4, DDR5, ready to battle Alder Lake in 2022

AMD kicks off its huge CES 2022 press conference in a couple of hours, but ahead of that, we have some juicy leaks about their next-gen Zen 4 CPU architecture.

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The new AMD Zen 4 CPU architecture will power the next-gen Ryzen 7000 series desktop processors, which will be based on Zen 4-based chiplets on TSMC's exciting new 5nm process node. We should see CPU designs packing 16 Zen 4 cores on their Raphael chiplets, while 8 of them would be "Priority" cores.

The difference there would be that the "Priority" cores would run at full TDP mode, while the other Zen 4 cores would be Low-TDP optimized cores and would operate at a combined 30W TDP. We should see AMD's Zen 4-powered Ryzen 7000 series desktop CPUs will ship with up to 170W TDP, so there should be a lot of fun in between.

• Read more: AMD EPYC 'Turin' Zen 5 CPU: 256C/512T, up to 600W on TSMC 3nm tech
• Read more: AMD's next-gen RDNA 3 + Zen 4 architectures both launching in Q4 2022
• Read more: AMD's next-gen Zen 4 desktop CPUs will offer 16 cores max
• Read more: AMD Zen 4: next-gen CPUs with 128 cores, 256 threads + 12-channel DDR5

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AMD Ryzen 'Zen 4' Desktop CPU Expected Features:

• Brand New Zen 4 CPU Cores (IPC / Architectural Improvements)
• Brand New TSMC 5nm process node with 6nm IOD
• Support on AM5 Platform With LGA1718 Socket
• Dual-Channel DDR5 Memory Support
• 28 PCIe Lanes (CPU Exclusive)
• 105-120W TDPs (Upper Bound Range ~170W)

It looks like AMD will be shifting the V-Cache off-die, and will be vertically stacked with each stack packing 64MB of L3 cache, so if the company uses two Zen 4 dies on its desktop Ryzen 7000 series CPUs we're looking at a whopping 128MB of L3 cache in total.

AMD is expected to have a huge 25% performance improvement from IPC gains alone, with CPU clock speeds expected to hit 5.0GHz or so -- the new CPUs will go into new AM5 motherboards with new LGA1718 sockets -- this means we've also got some delicious DDR5 memory support, 28 PCIe lanes, NVMe 4.0 and USB 3.2 connectivity, and so much more coming in 2022, 2023, and beyond from Team Red.

• Read more: AMD says it will spill some beans on Zen 4 architecture at CES 2022
• Read more: AMD's next-gen Zen 4 Dense (Zen 4D) tech: fights Intel Hybrid CPU tech
• Read more: AMD's new Zen 4-based Ryzen CPUs will have integrated GPUs