AMD is expected to launch both of its next-gen Radeon RX ‘RDNA 3’ GPU & Ryzen ‘Zen 4’ Raphael CPU families in Q4 2022. The rumor comes from Twitter leaker, Vegeta, who has been spot on with his recent leaks and also hinted at the possible specifications and launch timeframes of several next-gen products.
AMD Radeon RX ‘RDNA 3’ Gaming GPUs & Ryzen Raphael ‘Zen 4’ Desktop CPUs Rumored For Q4 2022 Launch
In his latest tweet, the leaker states that AMD will be launching both of its next-generation CPU and GPU families in Q4 2022. AMD introduced its RDNA 2 and Zen 3 based families in Q4 2020 so it will be two years after those when we will be getting next-generation products from AMD. AMD will be launching a few key products that will serve as an intermediate between Zen 3 / Zen 4 and RDNA 2 / RDNA 3 such as the rumored Ryzen 5000XT CPUs and the recently announced Zen 3 processors with 3D V-Cache technology.
Q4 2022
— vegeta (@Broly_X1) June 7, 2021
It is also stated that AMD is expected to tape out its first RDNA 3 based Navi 3X GPUs later this year and will be successors to the existing Navi 2X GPUs that have been featured on the RX 6000 series graphics cards. There’s definitely a lot of reasons to be excited about this news even though we are still more than a year away from the launch of next-gen products.
Here’s Everything We Know About AMD’s Raphael Ryzen ‘Zen 4’ Desktop CPUs
The next-generation Zen 4 based Ryzen Desktop CPUs will be codenamed Raphael and will replace the Zen 3 based Ryzen 5000 Desktop CPUs that are codenamed, Vermeer. From the information we currently have, Raphael CPUs will be based on the 5nm Zen 4 core architecture & will feature 6nm I/O dies in a chiplet design. AMD has hinted at upping the core counts of its next-gen mainstream desktop CPUs so we can expect a slight bump from the current max of 16 cores and 32 threads.
AMD Ryzen Raphael ‘Zen 4’ Desktop CPU Expected Features:
- Brand New Zen 4 CPU Cores (IPC / Architectural Improvements)
- Brand New TSMC 5nm process node with 6nm IOD
- Support on AM5 Platform With LGA1718 Socket
- Dual-Channel DDR5 Memory Support
- 28 PCIe Gen 4.0 Lanes (CPU Exclusive)
- 105-120W TDPs (Upper Bound Range ~170W)
The brand new Zen 4 architecture is rumored to deliver up to 25% IPC gain over Zen 3 and hit clock speeds of around 5 GHz.
‘Mark, Mike, and the teams have done a phenomenal job. We are as good as we are with the product today, but with our ambitious roadmaps, we are focusing on Zen 4 and Zen 5 to be extremely competitive.
‘There will be more core counts in the future – I would not say those are the limits! It will come as we scale the rest of the system.’
AMD CEO, Dr. Lisa Su via Anandtech
AMD’s Rick Bergman on Next-Gen Zen 4 Cores For Ryzen CPUs
Q- How much of the performance gains delivered by AMD’s Zen 4 CPUs, which are expected to use a 5nm TSMC process and might arrive in early 2022, will come from instructions per clock (IPC) gains as opposed to core count and clock speed increases.
Bergman: “[Given] the maturity of the x86 architecture now, the answer has to be, kind of, all of the above. If you looked at our technical document on Zen 3, it was this long list of things that we did to get that 19% [IPC gain]. Zen 4 is going to have a similar long list of things, where you look at everything from the caches, to the branch prediction, [to] the number of gates in the execution pipeline. Everything is scrutinized to squeeze more performance out.”
“Certainly [manufacturing] process opens an additional door for us to [obtain] better performance-per-watt and so on, and we’ll take advantage of that as well.”
The complete leaked AMD Desktop & Mobility Ryzen CPU roadmap compiled by @Olrak29_
As for the platform itself, the AM5 motherboards will feature the LGA1718 socket which is going to last quite some time. The platform will feature DDR5-5200 memory, 28 PCIe Gen 4.0 lanes, more NVMe 4.0 & USB 3.2 I/O, and may also ship with native USB 4.0 support. The lineup is stated to get CPUs up to 170W (120W base TDP) on the AM5 platform.
The Raphael Ryzen Desktop CPUs are also expected to feature RDNA 2 onboard graphics which means that just like Intel’s mainstream desktop lineup, AMD’s mainstream lineup will also feature iGPU graphics support. The Zen 4 based Raphael Ryzen CPUs aren’t expected till late 2022 so there’s still a lot of time left in the launch. The lineup will compete against Intel’s Raptor Lake 13th Gen Desktop CPU lineup.
AMD Zen CPU / APU Roadmap:
| Zen Architecture | Zen 1 | Zen+ | Zen 2 | Zen 3 | Zen 3+ | Zen 4 | Zen 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Process Node | 14nm | 12nm | 7nm | 7nm | 6nm? | 5nm | 3nm? |
| Server | EPYC Naples (1st Gen) | N/A | EPYC Rome (2nd Gen) | EPYC Milan (3rd Gen) | N/A | EPYC Genoa (4th Gen) | EPYC Turin (5th Gen) |
| High-End Desktop | Ryzen Threadripper 1000 (White Haven) | Ryzen Threadripper 2000 (Coflax) | Ryzen Threadripper 3000 (Castle Peak) | Ryzen Threadripper 5000 (Chagal) | N/A | Ryzen Threadripper 6000 (TBA) | TBA |
| Mainstream Desktop CPUs | Ryzen 1000 (Summit Ridge) | Ryzen 2000 (Pinnacle Ridge) | Ryzen 3000 (Matisse) | Ryzen 5000 (Vermeer) | Ryzen 6000 (Warhol / Cancelled) | Ryzen 7000 (Raphael) | Ryzen 8000 (Granite Ridge) |
| Mainstream Desktop . Notebook APU | Ryzen 2000 (Raven Ridge) | Ryzen 3000 (Picasso) | Ryzen 4000 (Renoir) Ryzen 5000 (Lucienne) |
Ryzen 5000 (Cezanne) Ryzen 6000 (Barcelo) |
Ryzen 6000 (Rembrandt) | Ryzen 7000 (Phoenix) | Ryzen 8000 (Strix Point) |
| Low-Power Mobile | N/A | N/A | Ryzen 5000 (Van Gogh) Ryzen 6000 (Dragon Crest) |
TBA | TBA | TBA | TBA |
Here’s Everything We Know About AMD’s Radeon RX 7000 ‘RDNA 3’ Navi 3X GPUs
The AMD RDNA 3 based Radeon RX 7000 gaming graphics card lineup will feature the Navi 3X GPUs and we have so far seen leaks around three key chips. These include the Navi 31, Navi 32, and Navi 33. The RDNA 3 family is expected to utilize the TSMC 5nm process node and will be leveraging the latest packaging technologies such as chiplet (MCM) design which we have seen on Ryzen Desktop CPUs.
AMD has also talked about its next-generation GPUs and how David Wang & his team at RTG brought RDNA 2 to life. They are extremely happy with the results (performance per watt / general performance gains) which were achieved with 2nd Generation RDNA cores and the same philosophy will be used in designing the third generation RDNA architecture or RDNA 3.
Also on GPUs, David Wang and the team focus on our long term roadmaps, and we pick the right mix of risk to get innovation, performance, and predictability. Bets are made, and we track the progress. We’re happy with RDNA2 on performance per watt and overall performance, and we have a lot of focus on RDNA3.
AMD’s Rick Bergman on Next-Gen RDNA 3 GPUs For Radeon RX Graphics Cards
Q- Whether AMD is aiming for its RDNA 3 GPUs, which will use a more advanced manufacturing process, to deliver performance-per-watt improvements similar to the 50%-plus improvements delivered by its RDNA 2 GPUs, and its future plans for the Infinity Cache technology used by RDNA 2 GPUs.
Bergman: “Let’s step back and talk about the benefits of both. So why did we target, pretty aggressively, performance per watt [improvements for] our RDNA 2 [GPUs]. And then yes, we have the same commitment on RDNA 3.”
“It just matters so much in many ways, because if your power is too high — as we’ve seen from our competitors — suddenly our potential users have to buy bigger power supplies, very advanced cooling solutions. And in a lot of ways, very importantly, it actually drives the [bill of materials] of the board up substantially This is a desktop perspective. And invariably, that either means the retail price comes up, or your GPU cost has to come down.”
“So [there are] actually a lot of efficiencies…if you can improve your perf-per-watt substantially. On the notebook side, that’s of course even more obvious, because you’re in a very constrained space, you can just bring more performance to that platform again without some exotic cooling solutions…We focused on that on RDNA 2. It’s a big focus on RDNA 3 as well.”
“On Infinity Cache, it’s somewhat linked to that as well, to a certain degree. If you’ve been in graphics for a long time, you realize there’s a pretty good correlation between memory bandwidth and performance. And so typically, the way you do it is you jack up your memory speed and widen your [memory] bus to open up performance. Unfortunately, both of those things drive up power [consumption].”
Recent rumors have indicated that the flagship Navi 31 GPU will house 160 compute units, over 10,000 cores, and feature a 3x performance uplift over the Big Navi 21 GPU. The Navi 33 GPU has also been reported to offer 80 compute units, 5120 cores, and more performance than the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT. AMD has already patented an active bridge chiplet solution for its next-generation GPUs which comes with an integrated cache and interconnects the multiple dies featured on the Navi 3X (RDNA 3) GPUs, you can read more on that here.
The AMD RDNA 3 ‘Navi 3’ GPU lineup of Radeon RX graphics cards will be competing with NVIDIA’s own MCM GPUs based on either the Ada Lovelace GPUs. As of now, the next-gen parts still aren’t expected till the end of 2022 or early 2023 so treat this information with a slight grain of salt.