Zen 5 delivers 16% increase in IPC, 9950X, 9900X, 9700X, 9600X SKU, up to 16 cores at 5.7GHz, launching in July

AMD has finally announced its Ryzen 9000 “Zen 5” desktop CPUs, which arrive with up to 16 cores and feature some huge IPC gains versus Zen 4.

AMD Ryzen 9000 desktop CPUs offer up to 16 cores, 5.7GHz frequency, and a 16% IPC improvement, and the Ryzen 9 9950X leads the pack

The AMD Ryzen 9000 Desktop CPU family, codenamed Granite Ridge, is based on the latest Zen 5 core architecture and is targeted at high-performance gaming PCs. The family offers a host of new features with Zen 5 cores being the most notable being supported on current and upcoming AM5 platforms with I/O memory support and enhanced DDR5 memory.

So before we talk about the Ryzen 9000 Desktop CPU family, we first take a quick look at the new and improved Zen 5 core architecture that offers:

• Improve branch prediction accuracy and latency
• Higher productivity with wider pipelines and conveyors
• Deeper window size across design for greater parallelism

In many aspects, the AMD Zen 5 infrastructure delivers up to 2x increase such as instruction bandwidth for front-end instructions, data bandwidth (L2 to L1 and L1 to FP), and AI performance (AI throughput and AVX512).

These new changes resulted in a significant bump in IPC with an average of 16% versus Zen 4. In some cases, Zen 5 cores can reach +35% IPC (Geekbench 5.4 AES XTS) and another key area that has been improved. It is the structure of L2 and L3 cache. AMD has also made some significant changes to the IMC which has now resulted in much higher support for EXPO/XMP memory and the Infinity Fabric clock has been raised from 2000MHz on Zen 4 to 2400MHz on Zen 5 with DDR5-5600 speeds supported natively.

AMD Ryzen 9000 desktop CPU lineup

As for the lineup, the AMD Ryzen 9000 “Granite Ridge” family consists of four SKUs to start. These include the Ryzen 9 9950X, Ryzen 9 9900X, Ryzen 7 9700X, and Ryzen 5 9600X. Let’s take a look at the specifications of these chips.

The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X CPU is the flagship offering with two Zen 5 CCDs and one IOD. The CPU offers 16 cores, 32 threads, and a maximum boost clock of 5.7GHz, the same as the Ryzen 9 7950X. It comes with 80MB cache (64MB L3 + 16MB L2) and has a TDP of 170W.

Next up, we have the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X, the 12-core, 24-thread version. This chip has a boost clock of up to 5.6GHz and a cache of 76MB. The interesting thing about this chip is that it has a TDP of 120W which is much lower than the 170W of the Ryzen 9 7900X chipset.

• Ryzen 9 7950X (170W) -> Ryzen 9 9950X (170W)
• Ryzen 9 7900X (170W) -> Ryzen 9 9900X (120W)
• Ryzen 7 7700X (105W) -> Ryzen 7 9700X (65W)
• Ryzen 5 7600X (105W) -> Ryzen 5 9600X (65W)

For more common users, AMD has the Ryzen 7 9700X which is an octa-core CPU with 16 threads, a boost clock of up to 5.5GHz, and 40MB of cache (1 CCD of 32MB L3 + 8MB L2), and a low TDP of 65W which is also significantly lower than the 105W TDP found in its predecessor, the Ryzen 7 7700X.

Finally, the AMD Ryzen 5 9600X CPU features 6 cores and 12 threads. This chip has a maximum boost clock of 5.40GHz, has 38MB cache, and the same 65W TDP. Only the AMD Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 5 CPUs see a clock increase over their predecessors while the Ryzen 9 chipsets maintain the same clock speeds.

AMD Ryzen 9000 “Zen 5” desktop CPU performance.

AMD is also sharing some performance numbers for its upcoming Ryzen 9000 “Zen 5” desktop CPUs. The Ryzen 9 9950X was compared with the Intel Core i9-14900K. It offers up to a +56% jump in productivity performance (+29.8% average lift) and up to a +23% jump in gaming performance (+13.2% average lift), which is a big jump compared to Intel’s flagship CPU. .

In gaming, the Ryzen 9 9950X should be faster than the Zen 4 3D V-Cache chipset but we can expect the Zen 5 3D V-Cache to take that leap forward. AMD states that the improvement in game performance comes from the lower latency associated with the chip.

AMD also states that its Ryzen 9000 “Zen 5” desktop CPUs are the ultimate AI platform for the content creator with a 100% increase in graphics bandwidth thanks to dedicated PCIe 5.0 lanes that Intel’s current lineup lacks and 20% AI acceleration in LLMs such as Mistral. Note that AMD does not integrate the NPU into its Ryzen 9000 Desktop CPUs but the new architectural improvements result in better AI performance than competitors.

Price and availability of AMD Ryzen 9000 “Zen 5” desktop CPU.

No pricing details are being shared currently, but we can expect the Ryzen 9000 CPUs to cost the same as the Ryzen 7000 series. Meanwhile, AMD confirms that the CPUs will launch in July of this year, so we’ll get an update or two very soon.

Ryzen 9000 CPU Package:

A shot of the Ryzen 9000 CPU chip:

Initial specifications for AMD Ryzen 9000 “Granite Ridge” desktop CPUs: