During a Meet the Experts webcast with retail channel vendors, AMD has confirmed some important aspects of the design of its Ryzen 8000 series processors for desktops, specifically workstations and value server. In brief, these AM5 socketed chips are going to mix both the next-generation Zen 5 CPU architecture with an incremental upgrade to the graphics architecture, dubbed Navi 3.5.
During the webcast, a roadmap for AM5 spanning from 2022 was shared (PDF link). It shows the final throes of the AM4 platform, with the Ryzen 5000 series mixing Zen 3 and Vega graphics. The current Ryzen 7000 desktop processor series mixing Zen 4 CPU cores and Navi 3.0 graphics were sensibly placed under the 2023 banner. Meanwhile, we see AMD confirm for the first time the following: AMD Ryzen 8000 series processors for AM5 will debut in 2024, packing Zen 5 CPU cores and Navi 3.5 graphics.
With the Ryzen 8000 series of chips now firmly on the horizon, those patient enough to wait out another generation for upgrades / new PC builds have something definitive to wait for. Importantly, the slide also confirms that AM5 will soldier on into 2026, and at this rate, we could be seeing two further Ryzen desktop generations before the socket gets usurped by a shiny new socket, which may or may not be called AM6.
Previous next-gen AMD Ryzen desktop roadmaps have suggested that what we now know as the Ryzen 8000 series will be codenamed ‘Granite Ridge’ (or ‘Strix Point’ for laptops). Moreover, these chips will feature up to 16 Zen 5 CPU cores across two CCDs. Also nestling on the SoC will be the Navi 3.5 GPU, which we are guessing will be a die shrink of Navi 3 for improved clocks / efficiency – but largely the same features.
An interesting congruent aspect of the newly shared slide is that it claims the current gen Ryzen 7000 series of processors for AM5 use ‘Navi 3.0’ graphics, but in fact those chips seen so far in 2023 use RNDA 2 (Navi 2.x) integrated GPUs. Are we going to get a refresh later in the year, so that this roadmap becomes more accurate? Time will tell.
