AMD stole the show at CES 2022 when the chipmaker gave the world a sneak peek at the company's upcoming Ryzen 7000 (Raphael) processors that will soon vie for a spot on our list of Best CPUs for gaming. It didn't take long for hardware sleuth Benchleaks to dig up two of AMD's Zen 4 5nm chips, so it won't be long before we know how these chips will stack up on our CPU Benchmark hierarchy.
The alleged Ryzen 7000 processors showed up on the MilkyWay@Home project on the BOINC platform. It's a weird way to appear since the platform isn't a benchmark. Instead, the MilkyWay@Home project consists of users coming together and using their combined computing power to create a three-dimensional model of the Milky Way galaxy.
The BOINC platform erroneously lists "number of processors," but it should be the number of threads. So, for example, the Ryzen 9 5950X shows up with 32 "processors" when in reality, those are threads. Secondly, the platform also exposes the "Cache" for each processor. Although the tool doesn't specify the cache level, it correlates to the L2. Once again, we can verify that metric by looking at the Ryzen 9 5950X, where it appears with 512KB, which we know is the L2 cache.
The first chip out of the two emerged with the 100-000000666-21_N codename and carried eight cores. Assuming that these are Ryzen desktop processors and AMD doesn't rework the model names, the obscure octa-core part may be the Ryzen 7 7800X, the successor to the Ryzen 7 5800X. The other processor has the 100-000000665-21_N codename and wields 16 cores. It has the specifications to be the Ryzen 9 7950X, making it the direct replacement for the existing Ryzen 9 5950X.
According to Benchleaks, the CPUIDs for the two Ryzen processors correspond to AMD's Zen 4 desktop chips. Of course, these are engineering samples. We don't know the clock speeds of the processors; however, the system description does reveal what appears to be the L2 cache.
As a quick refresher, AMD's current Ryzen 5000 (Vermeer), which employs Zen 3 cores, has 512KB of L2 cache per core. The report from BOINC shows Zen 4 with 1,024KB of L2 cacher per core. If the information is accurate, AMD would have effectively doubled the L2 cache for each core on Zen 4.
AMD has committed to launching Ryzen 7000 in the second half of 2022. The next-generation processors will slot into the brand-new AM5 socket that transitioned from a PGA (Pin Grid Array) design to LGA (Land Grid Array). The chipmaker also confirmed that AM5's lifespan would be similar to AM4. More importantly, Ryzen 7000 will usher in DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 support to level the playing field with Intel's 12th Generation Alder Lake army.
