According to a recent report by DigiTimes, AMD is planning on bringing its Ryzen 4000 series desktop processors to the market as early as the end of this year. Tantalizingly, the report also offers an indication about release timeframes for Intel’s competing 10th Gen Comet Lake-S desktop lineup.
According to the report, AMD had initially planned to unveil the Ryzen 4000 desktop processors at Computex 2020. However, that particular event was pushed back to September due to COVID-19. As a result, it appears that AMD will now introduce its 4th Gen Ryzen lineup in August or September this year. Because of the delayed announcement cycle, we might actually get our hands on these new processors almost as soon as they’ve been announced.
The DigiTimes report also talked about a release timeframe for Intel’s 10th Gen Comet Lake-S desktop lineup. According to the report, Intel is expected to introduce both its Comet Lake-S series of CPUs and their accompanying 400-series motherboards on LGA 1200 by the end of April.
This means that Comet Lake-S parts will be competing against Ryzen 3000 CPUs for several months. Intel might just be able to claw back some of its desktop market share during this short interval because of Comet Lake-S’s improved single and multithreaded performance relative to the Ryzen 3000 series.
4th Gen AMD Ryzen 4000 (Vermeer) Specifications
Zen 3 Core Architecture: The 4th Gen Ryzen lineup will be based on the Zen 3 microarchitecture. As per AMD’s higherups, like Zen 2, Zen 3 will also be a new design. As such, we can expect healthy IPC gains, potentially pushing AMD’s single-core performance ahead of Intel’s.
Faster die-to-die interconnect: AMD will likely also improve the speed and latency of the Infinity Fabric connecting the various CCDs. This should result in major performance boosts in latency-sensitive applications, most notably gaming. There’s also a chance that the peak operating speed of the IF will be raised from 1800MHz to 2000MHz or higher.
Enhanced 7nm+ Node: The 4th Gen Ryzen lineup will leverage the improved version of the 7nm node. We can expect higher boost clocks (at least by 100-200MHz), better yields and at the same time a lower power draw. It should also lead to better overclocking potential. These three factors together should lead to significant performance uplifts in gaming workloads. Keep in mind that this isn’t TSMC’s 7nm EUV process, just a more mature form of the existing N7 node.
Core Counts: With the 4th Gen Ryzen lineup, the core clocks will most likely remain the same. AMD has Intel beat in terms of multi-threaded performance on all fronts. The company will now focus on the IPC and single-threaded side of it.
SMT4: There have been many rumors on SM4, i.e, four threads running simultaneously on one core but according to what I’ve heard, that won’t happen, at least not the consumer space. The Epyc Milan range might get the feature, but that’s about it.
AM4: AMD has already said that it plans on retaining the AM4 socket for another generation, so there’s a chance that those of you with a B450 motherboard will get a chance to upgrade to the 4th Gen Ryzen lineup. X570 and B550 boards will almost certainly be retained.
The server-range Epyc parts have got a more detailed roadmap. Zen 3 based Milan is expected in early 2021 while its successor Genoa will probably be announced in late 2021 with a launch in 2022. Unlike Milan and Vermeer, Genoa and the Zen 4 processors will be fabbed on TSMC’s 5nm node. As such, we can expect even more efficient chips with a healthy performance upgrade.
Milan is expected to retain the same socket as Rome along with DDR4 support, however, Genoa will most likely adopt DDR5 and a new socket, and maybe even PCIe 5. Similarly, the desktop Zen 4 counterparts will also use a new socket (AM5) and existing users will have to retire their boards if they want to upgrade.
