AMD’s comeback over the past couple of years has reached a new level with its Ryzen 5000 processors. The desktop parts have already been announced, from the Ryzen 5 5600X up to the insanely powerful Ryzen 9 5950X, and the results are stunning.

And the mobile counterpart to Ryzen 5000 is also in the works for laptops. Ryzen 5000 represents a nomenclature jump from previous generations. Instead of the expected Ryzen 4000 range, in line with the Zen 2 mobile CPUs released earlier this year, the new desktop CPUs jumped ahead to Ryzen 5000 and will likely be based on the Zen 3 architecture of desktop Ryzen 5000.

That may mean AMD’s mobile and desktop CPUs that share the same architecture will share the same naming scheme moving forward, but we’ll need to await the debut of Zen 3 mobile CPUs to find out.

Pricing and availability

AMD officially announced the Ryzen 5000 series on October 8 with a lineup of four distinct desktop CPUs. The company’s latest processor became available on November 6, with the 5600X priced at $299, the 5800X at $449, the 5900X at $549, and the 5950X at $799.

AMD’s Ryzen 4000-series mobile processors were announced at CES 2020, and took the better part of the year to proliferate among laptop manufacturers. We expect AMD to follow suit with mobile Ryzen 5000, with a possible announcement at the company’s keynote at CES 2021. Given the strong reception to Ryzen 4000-powered laptops, we expect a wide variety of manufacturers to build notebooks ranging from slim-and-light to robust mobile gaming rigs.

Architecture

At the heart of both the desktop and mobile parts is AMD’s Zen 3 architecture. It builds upon the success of Zen 2, with some significant architectural changes that lead to performance enhancements. With Zen 3, AMD is focused on improving gaming performance, with CEO Lisa Su stating that the company is already “the highest in multi-threaded performance and the best in efficiency.”

While based on the same 7nm process node as Zen 2 and leveraging the same chiplet layout, Zen 3 moves from a four-core CCX design to a unified eight-core CCX instead. That allows for sharing of L3 cache among a greater number of cores, effectively letting individual cores access twice as much cache as before. Cache latency is reduced, which could have a measurable effect on gaming performance. The company revealed that it began its work on Zen 3 more than five years ago.

Wider Float and Integer engines, advanced load/store flexibility, and a new “zero bubble” branch prediction system allow, as AMD claims, as much as a 19% improvement in instructions per clock (IPC).

That’s greater than even the most optimistic rumors had suggested. Ryzen 5000 has borrowed many of the enhancements from AMD’s Epyc Rome server CPUs, which also benefit from a unified cache design. Looking ahead, AMD confirmed that it will be moving to a 5nm process once Zen 4 debuts.

Performance

Third-party reviews are a must for confirming real-world performance, and AMD’s new Zen 3 architecture delivers stellar performance based on early benchmarks. Many reviewers confirmed AMD’s stated claims of a 19% improvement in instructions per clock when moving from Zen 2 to Zen 3 on Ryzen 5000.

In its benchmarking, PCWorld noted a 20.7% performance increase going from a Ryzen 9 3900X to a Ryzen 9 5900X, for example. Compared to Intel’s 10th-Gen Core i9-10900K, AMD’s latest processor blows the competition out of the water.

The publication noted that the Ryzen 9 5950X — with more cores — outperforms the 10-core Core i9 by 36%. What’s more incredible is that when using the Cinebench R20 nT test, AMD’s 16-core processor even outperforms Intel’s premium 18-core Core i9-10980XE by as much as 19%. The 4.9GHz Ryzen 9 5950X delivers the highest single- and multi-core performance, according to AMD.

Additionally, to show the strength of Ryzen’s performance, AMD revealed during the 5000 series’ unveiling that the 5900X was the first processor to break the 600-score barrier at stock speeds, easily outpacing the Intel Core i9 10900K. The Ryzen 9 5950X targeted at enthusiasts scored a whopping 640 points on the same Cinebench benchmark. AMD’s own chart-topping results were subsequently confirmed by many media outlets in their early reviews, with sites declaring Intel’s gaming advantage largely wiped out by the latest Ryzen generation.

Given that AMD is targeting the same gaming audience that Intel has long courted, the company also published benchmarks to highlight Ryzen 5000’s strong performance across a range of titles. AMD’s internal benchmarks showed that the latest processors had improvements of between 5% and 50% in a selection of games at 1080p resolution when compared with the Ryzen 3900XT from the last generation. It’s unlikely that most gamers spending almost $550 on a CPU will play at that resolution, but that’s the best one to show the raw performance improvements of the AMD CPU.

AMD also used those same benchmarks when the 5900X faced off against the Intel Core i9-10900K flagship CPU, which resulted in more modest, but still noticeable, performance gains. These benchmarks were largely confirmed by third-party reviewers, who found that the Ryzen 5000 is very competitive in gaming performance with Intel’s best at 1080p and 1440p resolutions.With AMD’s launch of the Radeon RX 6000 GPUs, Team Red gamers who play within AMD’s CPU and GPU ecosystem could potentially squeeze out even more performance, thanks to AMD’s Smart Access Memory that allows system resources to be shared between the two silicon. The company promised up to 11% additional performance improvements across select games with Smart Access Memory.

And even though not many reviewers have focused on 4K benchmarks, gamers will be happy to know that a leaked Ashes of Singularity test posted by Twitter user @TUM_APISAK showed the Ryzen 7 5800X handily beating the Intel Core i9 10900K at 4K.

A few days after the Ashes of the Singularity benchmark, a CPU-Z screenshot started making the rounds, showing a Ryzen 7 3700X up against an unnamed AMD CPU. The screenshot shows 12 cores and 24 threads, so it’s likely the Ryzen 9 5900X. The benchmark showed a 25% improvement in single-core performance and 15% improvement in multi-threaded performance over last-gen’s 3900X.

100-000000061-08 pic.twitter.com/DwPS6W88co

— HXL (@9550pro) October 1, 2020

And while Ryzen 5000 delivers significantly improved performance, AMD also noted that it did not do this at the expense of power efficiency. The company claimed that its latest chipset delivers 24% better power efficiency compared to the previous generation and up to 2.8x better power efficiency compared to Intel’s 10th-Gen Core i9 processors.

Yet, despite strong performance gains posted by the top-of-the-line Ryzen 9 5950X, many reviewers found that if you don’t need AMD’s best-in-class processor, scaling down to a Ryzen 7 5800X still delivers terrific performance at a more affordable price point. This makes the Ryzen 5000 family very competitive against rival Intel in both price and performance.

Mobile Zen 3

Though unannounced, AMD is widely believed to bring the same Zen 3 architecture found on its desktop silicon to laptops. To date, the company hasn’t made any mentions of the Ryzen 5000 processors for notebooks, but early benchmark leaks suggest that test systems are out there.

In mobile devices, AMD’s mobile Ryzen 5000 lineup will be divided into two families. A more powerful Ryzen 5000 H family will be geared toward gamers and mobile workstation users, while productivity needs can be handled with slim-and-light laptops powered by the Ryzen 5000 U-series processors. Previously, Ryzen 5000 APUs were referred to by their Cezanne code name.

Not a lot of information about mobile Zen 3 is known, but if Ryzen 4000’s mobile performance is any indicator of AMD’s performance trajectory, then we can expect a lot of uplift with a new generation of mobile silicon — AMD stated a 19% uplift in performance on Zen 3 for desktop. More performance will definitely make AMD Ryzen 5000-powered notebooks appeal to mobile gamers.

High-end notebooks will likely top out with the Ryzen 9 5900H laptop, according to leaked specifications reported by Tom’s Hardware. There will be two versions of this APU — a standard 5900H with 35W TDP and an unlocked variant called the 5900HX, which could potentially come with a higher clock speed.

The base Ryzen 9 5900H is expected to launch with a base speed of 3.1GHz and a boost speed of 4.5GHz, while the more powerful HX variant could be clocked at 3.3GHz and go as high as 4.6GHz with boost, if the leak is accurate. Both processors are believed to come with eight cores and 16 threads along with 16MB of L3 cache.

Compared to the Ryzen 4000 series, both high-end Ryzen 9 5000 models are only modestly clocked higher than the Ryzen 9 4900HS, which is clocked at 3.0GHz base and 4.3GHz boost. Most of the uplift on the new generation, like on desktop, will be gained from the internal architectural improvements, like more accessible cache. Both new Ryzen 5000 chips here ship with 16MB of L3 cache, or double what’s available on the Ryzen 9 4900HS.

For non-gaming needs, productivity and multitasking-oriented laptop buyers will likely want to look at the U-series processors, and like on Ryzen 4000, the U family tops out with a Ryzen 7 5800U, the successor to the popular Ryzen 7 4800U. Similar to the previous generation, the Ryzen 7 5800U is configured with eight cores and 16 threads, but you’re getting twice as much L3 cache this year with 16MB.

The U-series is designed for power efficiency, and these processors top out with 15W TDP, compared to the H-series, which goes up to 45W on many configurations. The low power requirements here could make Ryzen 5000 U-series laptops competitive against Intel’s Evo platform, which debuted with Intel’s 11th-Gen laptop silicon. With the U-series, you’ll also find modest improvements in clock speed, with AMD speculated to add approximately 200MHz overall to both boost and base speeds to most of its configurations.

The Ryzen 7 5800U is expected to debut with a boost speed of 4,4GHz and a base speed of 2.0GHz, compared to last year’s model which is clocked at 4.2GHz and 1.8GHz, respectively. Similarly, the Ryzen 5 5600U is believed to reach up 4.3GHz speeds and has a base speed of 2.3GHz in a six-core configuration with 12 threads from early leaks. Last generation’s Ryzen 5 4600U tops out at 4.0GHz and has a base speed of 2.1GHz, for comparison.

90NR0684-M00690 pic.twitter.com/3EKQnOutwR

— 188号 (@momomo_us) December 5, 2020

A more recent leak posted by Twitter user @momomo_us revealed several laptops that are expected to ship with Ryzen 5000 processors. One gaming laptop is the ASUS TUF, which is expected to arrive with a 17.3-inch FHD display, a Ryzen 5800H processor, and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Max-Q discrete graphics.

Another Asus laptop allegedly powered by Zen 3 is the ROG Zephyrus G14. The specifications for this devices include a Ryzen 9 5900HS processor and 32GB of RAM, according to the same Twitter user.

The AM4 socket remains, for now

One of the best features of AMD’s Ryzen desktop CPUs has been their inter-generational support of the same AM4 socket. Those who bought older-generation Ryzen CPUs and motherboards have been able to upgrade their processors without the need to buy a new motherboard — they just need to update the BIOS. That will be the case with Zen 3 Ryzen 5000 processors too, though this will be the last generation of Ryzen chips to use the AM4 socket.

The Ryzen 5000 CPUs will support existing X570 and B550 boards with a BIOS update, as well as select X470 and B450 boards, with a non-reversible BIOS update if manufacturers choose to support it. There has been no news on a Zen 3 specific chipset, though rumors of an x670 design have been around for well over a year.

Some suggested that it would feature enhanced PCIe Gen 4.0 support, as well as increased I/O from additional M.2, SATA, and USB 3.2 ports. Wccftech reported that native Thunderbolt 3 support still may not happen on this chipset.

AMD’s next-generation Zen 4 CPUs, expected in 2021, will move beyond AM4 to a new AM5 socket design that’s alleged to be built around technologies such as DDR5 memory and PCIe 5.0, according to Wccftech.

Editors’ Recommendations