The launch of AMD Zen 4 processors is imminent!
So what should you know before running out to buy one? The first thing you'll probably notice if you buy a Zen 4 or Ryzen 7000 series chip is
that AMD has finally switched to a more Intel-like LGA socket.
This is actually Team Red's first ever mainstream consumer LGA socket, which AMD is using to
increase pin density. AM5, as they're calling it, increases the pin count from 1331 to 1718, which will allow
the CPU to receive up to 230 watts of power, increase bandwidth for DDR5 and PCIe 5.0,
and make the CPU itself more durable. But of course, you'll have to take care not to bend the pins on the motherboard.
Oh wait, back up a second. DDR5 and PCIe 5?
That is indeed what I said. The Zen 4 features support for both.
But you'll need to pay attention to what motherboard you're buying if you want PCIe
5.0. It's potentially important for future graphics cards, but the only chipset that features
it as standard is the new X670 Xtreme.
However, DDR5 will be supported by Zen 4, regardless of what chipset you have, along
with a new feature called Expo.
But Expo isn't a fancy soiree at the London Crystal Palace.
Instead, it's AMD's answer to Intel's XMP memory profiles.
And yes, I realize that's like saying ATM machine, but we're trying to make things
easy here. Okay. Anyway, this might sound a little confusing if you're used to setting your memory speeds
and timings with DOCP or EOCP.
But the thing is, these solutions are only offered by ASUS and Gigabyte, respectively.
Expo, by contrast, was developed by AMD itself, so you should be able to get one-click memory
overclocking, regardless of who made your motherboard.
Now, here's the nitty-gritty. AMD's internal benchmarks, taken with a grain of salt, indicate 13% more instructions
per clock cycle, partly thanks to a larger cache size as well as better branch prediction.
But the bigger advancement is probably the 5nm process that Zen 4 is built on.
AMD partnered with TSMC to develop a chip that would get higher performance despite
an overall smaller die size than Zen 3.
Team Red also included support for AVX 512 extensions.
And if you have no clue what that is, it's a set of instructions that Intel actually
axed from its Alder Lake CPUs in favor of power efficiency.
AMD clearly thought it was still worth keeping in, so they baked in partial AVX 512 support
in order to help with deep learning and AI applications.
And speaking of power efficiency, we're looking at 62% less power draw for the same performance
as Zen 3, which AMD attributes to not only the new manufacturing process, but also lessons
they learned in the mobile arena. Of course, it remains to be seen how all these improvements will translate to performance
in the applications you use the most. And AMD has already admitted you shouldn't expect Earth's shattering performance from
the integrated RDNA2 graphics compared to their upcoming APU lineup.
But at least it looks like integrated graphics are coming standard in case you just need
a display out. It won't be long, though, until we get independent testing available for broad consumption, as
the Ryzen 7000 series is due out on store shelves on September 27th.
And more variations, including cheaper, non-X versions, should be coming our way sometime
next year. Best of all, there's no price increase compared to what Zen 3 sold for, and there's actually
a discount at the top end of the product stack.
Let's all just keep our fingers crossed that we can actually get chips at MSRP instead
of selling our spleens to some dude in a back alley. I don't want to do that again.
And I don't want to keep doing this video because it's over. Thanks for watching! Like the video if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked it.
Check out our other videos, comment below with video suggestions, and don't you forget
to subscribe and follow you, cutie you.