AMD Ryzen 7000 CPUs confirmed to arrive by September

AMD’s Ryzen 7000 desktop CPUs will be launched before the current quarter is out, meaning September at the latest.

As Tom’s Hardware (opens in new tab) reports, CEO Lisa Su confirmed this release timeframe in an earnings call following the revelation of AMD’s Q2 fiscal results.

Su said: “Looking ahead, we’re on track to launch our all-new 5nm Ryzen 7000 desktop processors and AM5 platforms later this quarter with leadership performance in gaming and content creation.”

Previously, AMD had been telling us to expect its next-gen Zen 4-based processors in the fall, which could theoretically have meant October or November, but this narrows it down to Q3 definitively.

The AM5 platform refers to the new chipset for Zen 4 – it’ll require a new socket, and therefore a motherboard upgrade – and the mention of the launch coming later in Q3 means it’ll almost certainly be September.

Analysis: Pipping Intel to the launch post

Of course, technically saying it’ll be this quarter means that Zen 4 chips might arrive in either August or September, but the former seems too close, based on what the rumor mill has been telling us pretty consistently now. Namely that September is the month to watch for the Ryzen 7000 launch, with the idea of a mid-September launch being floated a couple of times.

It looks like we will be treated to something in the form of a teaser or initial reveal in August, mind, as the rumor mill has discovered that AMD is set to do something along these lines for Zen 4 chips at an event on August 5. So we’ll (hopefully) find out what that is in just a couple of days, though we’re not expecting much in the way of details at this point.

A further rumor contends that we will see the Ryzen 9 7950X and 7900X, Ryzen 7 7700X, plus the Ryzen 5 7600X as the initial launch line-up, which is interesting as we were expecting the 7800X rather than 7700X. With Ryzen 5000, AMD elected to push out the 5800X, not 5700X, in the initial batch of CPUs released, but with the new range, the 7700X would be a better option (for the majority) as a more affordable 8-core model.

This would make Ryzen 7000 a slightly more potent force going up against Intel’s CPUs, which are currently Alder Lake (12th-gen), but are about to transition Raptor Lake. However, Intel’s 13th-gen processors aren’t expected to go on sale until October, so it’s looking like AMD could win the race of the next-gen CPUs vying to reach the shelves first.

In the aforementioned earnings call, Su also told us that next-gen RDNA 3 graphics cards are still set to launch later in 2022, but didn’t get any more specific than this (and we have, of course, heard that before – though it’s at least confirmation that things are still on track).