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The road to AMD's Ryzen 7000 series CPU

Note: The article is now updated with the Ryzen 7000 series launch article link and context.

The award-winning Ryzen series is about to get a big update.

AMD's much-awaited Ryzen 7000 series is almost upon us (now publicly launched) and while there have been plenty of leaks leading up to its launch, it's good to take stock of Ryzen's progress and key breakthroughs since 2017 before welcoming the most awaited CPU launch of 2022. After all, Ryzen's top-end 5000 series has clinched a solid editor's choice recommendation not once, but twice. Adding on to its accolades, for the first time since the HWM+HWZ Tech Awards began 13 years back, AMD has clinched the Readers' Choice recommendation! Clearly, AMD has much to celebrate, so let's kick things off with a look back.

Ryzen 1000 series (early 2017 debut)

In a nutshell, the first Ryzen series ploughed the way forward for AMD's future. It may not have been the leader then, but it showed a marked improvement over everything else AMD offered at that point in time. Its lead processor model was Ryzen 7 1800X with eight cores, 20MB total cache, 95W TDP, 3.6GHz base clock and 4.1GHz boost clock.

All-new Zen microarchitecture and the first AMD architecture designed to give equal priority to performance and power consumption.
More power efficient with multi-level clock gating and new 14nm FinFET process.
This allowed Zen processor designs to be scaled for use in notebooks or high-end desktop systems - yet another first for AMD.
Up to 40% IPC uplift over the previous generation through new cache hierarchy, better branch prediction and SMT.
Also the first AMD microarchitecture to incorporate micro-ops cache to reduce the number of stages in the processing pipeline, thus enabling more operations per CPU cycle, improving performance and saving power.
First to debut SenseMI, a group of new sensing and adaptive prediction technologies, including Precision Boost, XFR, Smart Prefetch and more.
Brought about the new AM4 socket platform that unified board designs and is still in use today.
Platform also offers support for new DDR4 memory, PCIe 3.0, USB 3.1 Gen2, NVMe and SATA Express.
More details: Here and here.

Ryzen 2000 series (April 2018 debut)

A year later, AMD pushed up its process technology which has helped it crank up the clock speeds a fair bit and made Ryzen 2000 series a really strong contender for anyone at any price point. Its lead processor model was Ryzen 7 2700X with eight cores, 20MB total cache, 105W TDP, 3.7GHz base clock and 4.3GHz boost clock.

Updated Zen+ microarchitecture with design optimisations to ramp up access to cache and memory.
New 12nm process tech for power efficiency and higher base clocks.
First to debut Precision Boost 2 to boost frequencies intelligently based on CPU temp, current and loading levels.
Supported faster DDR4 memory, and new X470 chipset with StoreMI technology (equivalent to Intel Optane).
More details: Here.

Ryzen 3000 series (July 2019 debut)

The third-gen Ryzen was when Intel really met its match through a new chiplet processor topology, updated microarchitecture and a big bump in capabilities, while still championing the AM4 socket platform, thus making it a great upgrade path for those running on an older AM4 socket based system.

Zen 2 microarchitecture on a 7nm process technology.
Chiplet processor topology where twin core complex dies (with four cores each) and an IO die are interconnected via AMD's new Infinity Fabric.
Doubles L3 cache which lowered memory latencies markedly (AMD GameCache).
Larger branch target buggers, improved branch prediction and larger micro-ops cache to handle more dedcoded ops.
First to have Windows 10 optimisation where the OS process scheduler has better topology awareness and speedier clock speed selection for burst micro workloads.
Precision Boost Overdrive + Auto OC.
First AMD processor to support PCIe 4.0 with AMD X570 chipset.
More details: Here.

Its lead processor model was Ryzen 9 3900X with 12 cores, 70MB total cache, 105W TDP, 3.8GHz base clock and 4.6GHz boost clock. By late 2019, AMD had a 16-core content creation monster with the Ryzen 9 3950X, while still operating within the same 105W TDP.

Ryzen 3000XT series (July 2020 debut)

This series is basically a more capable version of the same Ryzen 3000 series, thanks to the more mature process technology that allowed AMD to comfortably offer higher Boost clock speeds anywhere between 100 to 200MHz more for each SKU. These models were actually priced similarly to their predecessors, like the Ryzen 9 3900XT lead model.

Ryzen 4000 series (July 2020 debut)

The Ryzen 4000 series still uses the Zen 2 microarchitecture, but it offers integrated Radeon graphics, similar to the mobile variants launched earlier in the year. Its lead processor model was Ryzen 7 4700G with eight cores, 65W TDP, 8 GPU cores.

Ryzen 5000 series (Nov 2020 debut)

The Ryzen 5000 series is the very best AMD has to offer now and fulfils the needs of value for money hunters, gamers and serious content creators with aplomb.

New Zen 3 microarchitecture with the biggest change being an eight-core CCX design instead of a dual quad-core CCX on the Zen 2 with 16MB L3 each. This allowed all eight cores have direct access to the 32MB L3 cache concurrently, cutting down latency and boosting performance.
Overall efficiency and IPC improvements amount to up to 19% more than the previous generation.

In August 2021, AMD changed up their Ryzen G-series lineup to harness Zen 3 microarchitecture and adds updated integrated Radeon Graphics.

Just months back in April 2022, AMD added 3D V-Cache technology to selective SKUs that massively ramped up L3 cache to 96MB, thus creating the fastest gaming processor in the market at a much lower price point. The lead model to sport this is the Ryzen 7 5800X3D and it is still our gaming processor of choice.

Brief expectations

We expect the 3D V-Cache technology to be offered as a new lineup in AMD's Ryzen 7000 series, while the new AM5 socket platform is raring to debut new technologies to catch up with Intel's 12th Gen Core series like DDR5, PCIe 5.0 and more. While the Ryzen 6000 series mobile processors currently support DDR5 and have Zen 3+ core optimizations, we expect the Zen 4 microarchitecture on the Ryzen 7000 Series to pack more enhancements to hopefully make it a future-proof choice for upgraders. The current AM4 socket has lasted AMD supporters a good six years, so here's hoping AM5 will last just as long.