Will Zen 4 be the real deal and a worthy upgrade from Zen 3

Wolverine2349 · Jun 19, 2022

Your thoughts. I have heard mixed reviews. No one will know for sure until it is out. Its set for September 15 barely under 3 months away. But what is your estimate?

How much performance improvement do you see for gaming and future high end video cards installed in a Zen 3 vs Zen 4 system with same core count CPU. Do you think Zen 4 will make a big difference?

Will Zen 4 age much better than Zen 3 for handling future high end video cards and future games while still having good performance compared to Zen 3??

Does the fact Zen 4 will be on a new platform going to make it age better if you do not care about more USB ports nor PCIE Gen 5 other than video cards that may use it but not at all for SSDs or other things??

Pee-C · Jun 20, 2022

Zen 4 will have more cache and be about 15-37% faster so yeah its better for gaming than Zen5. Imo it will really shine with the faster DDR5. It is said that Zen 4 will mostly be an overhaul of the Zen 3 core with bumped-up cache and higher clocks. Zen 4 is expected to bring an IPC uplift between 15-24%, a single-threaded performance increase between 28-37%, and a similar or higher multi-threaded performance increase over the Zen 3 cores.

bwana · Jun 20, 2022

I thought zen4 was not going to have 3D cache? When you say 'more cache' what are you referring to?

Wolverine2349 · Jun 20, 2022

bwana said:
I thought zen4 was not going to have 3D cache? When you say 'more cache' what are you referring to?

I do not think the initial release will. Eventually they will have 3D cache versions?? Though its not a complete overhaul. It still has the 2 CCXs for the 12 and 16 core variants and 1 CCX for 6 and 8 core variants, but with double L2 not L3 cache and uses DDR5 RAM and new socket and 5nm TSMC node instead of 7nm.

Taraquin · Jun 20, 2022

Depending on how far DDR5 will clock (infinity fabric) I`m not sure if Zen 4 will perform much faster than 5800X3D in games when running xmp. If you tuned\overclock Zen4 I`m sure it will be 10%+ faster than the best of Zen3 i gaming, but not sure if it can beat 12900KS running 6600+ tweaked ram. In productivity it will beat Zen3 easily. Zen4 3D is more interesting for me.

Zver1 · Jun 20, 2022

Taraquin said:
Depending on how far DDR5 will clock (infinity fabric) I`m not sure if Zen 4 will perform much faster than 5800X3D in games when running xmp. If you tuned\overclock Zen4 I`m sure it will be 10%+ faster than the best of Zen3 i gaming, but not sure if it can beat 12900KS running 6600+ tweaked ram. In productivity it will beat Zen3 easily. Zen4 3D is more interesting for me.

A big part of the change is new processing nodes shrinking I/O(to 6nm) and CCD chiplets(to 5nm). Lower power operation should make heat dissipation easier hints at much higher clock speeds. Expect to get 5.5GHz plus clock speeds on multiple cores. Reworked 6nm I/O die and new generation Infinity fabric should clock higher. Would really not be much point to switching to DDR5 if fabric clock not able to go up significantly as fabric clock significantly impact overall performance of ZEN designs. Main benefit of DDR5 is ability to clock much higher. If Infinity fabric could not keep up, it would make more sense to stick with DDR4 and avoid designing a new socket and motherboard.

Blameless · Jun 20, 2022

Zver1 said:
If Infinity fabric could not keep up, it would make more sense to stick with DDR4 and avoid designing a new socket and motherboard.

I do expect fabric clocks to increase, probably significantly, but DDR5 would be the only rational choice for AM5 regardless. With how long they intend the socket to last DDR5 will be cheaper than DDR4 when AM5 still has years left.

ozlay · Jun 20, 2022

I would probably hold out until Zen4D if you already have a Zen3D. Zen4D is going to be bigger uplift. And then you can skip the early adoption bugs.

I might wait for Zen5 in 2023/2024. Which is going to be an even bigger upgrade. And it should have pcie 6.0 as well. Zen5 is the real deal.

Audioboxer · Jun 20, 2022

It's going to be great, but unless you have money to burn the first iteration (after launch line-up) or even 2nd will be worth waiting for. DDR5 is a bit of a bust right now, in terms of cost/performance and waiting for more real world uses for it. Latency is still king for most things.

That's if you have a 5900x/5950x/5800X3D and a really good EoL DDR4 bin. They'll still carry us for another year or so yet whilst offering good performance.

3xxx and/or a weaker DDR4 bin, and I'd say if you can budget for it being an early adopter will be a great upgrade. Keeping in mind AMD hopefully treat AM5 like AM4 and keep the mobos supported for years.

mtrai · Jun 20, 2022

I am just planning on skipping the entire 1 gen, not going to subject myself to the stress as I did on the 1st gen 1700x

Wolverine2349 · Jun 20, 2022

Audioboxer said:
It's going to be great, but unless you have money to burn the first iteration (after launch line-up) or even 2nd will be worth waiting for. DDR5 is a bit of a bust right now, in terms of cost/performance and waiting for more real world uses for it. Latency is still king for most things.

That's if you have a 5900x/5950x/5800X3D and a really good EoL DDR4 bin. They'll still carry us for another year or so yet whilst offering good performance.

3xxx and/or a weaker DDR4 bin, and I'd say if you can budget for it being an early adopter will be a great upgrade. Keeping in mind AMD hopefully treat AM5 like AM4 and keep the mobos supported for years.

By 3XXX you mean Ryzen 3000 series CPUs? And what would you define weaker DDR4 bin?? Is 3600MHz CL14 DDR4 one of the strongest DDR4 bins??

How would you say upgrade is compared from 3000 to 5000 series? It seems IPC was higher going from 3000 to 5000, but clock speed upgrades will be higher going from 5000 to 7000?

Audioboxer · Jun 20, 2022

Wolverine2349 said:
By 3XXX you mean Ryzen 3000 series CPUs? And what would you define weaker DDR4 bin?? Is 3600MHz CL14 DDR4 one of the strongest DDR4 bins??

How would you say upgrade is compared from 3000 to 5000 series? It seems IPC was higher going from 3000 to 5000, but clock speed upgrades will be higher going form 5000 to 7000?

Yeah, 3xxx. The 5xxx range did a good job really squeezing the most that AM4 could out of single core, because the 3xxx is pretty weak on single core boosts/performance. Still really good MT, but if you do gaming then it was a bit of a "let down". I went from a 3900XT to a 5950X and it was quite the boost in FPS in games.

Depends on your budget really, if you're on 3xxx right now grabbing 2nd hand 5xxx chips when people flood them onto eBay and the likes for AM5 launch, or even a 5800X3D will still be great for gaming for years to come. There will definitely be some good 5xxx deals later this year.

As for bins, 3600C14 is indeed a really good EoL bin for DDR4. I more so mean DDR4 bought years ago with looser timings and not much OC potential. Kind of where DDR5 is just now. Latency remains king for games and until MS directstorage is actually seen in gaming, having fast memory for the next years will be crucial for new games releases.

Wolverine2349 · Jun 20, 2022

Audioboxer said:
Yeah, 3xxx. The 5xxx range did a good job really squeezing the most that AM4 could out of single core, because the 3xxx is pretty weak on single core boosts/performance. Still really good MT, but if you do gaming then it was a bit of a "let down". I went from a 3900XT to a 5950X and it was quite the boost in FPS in games.

Depends on your budget really, if you're on 3xxx right now grabbing 2nd hand 5xxx chips when people flood them onto eBay and the likes for AM5 launch, or even a 5800X3D will still be great for gaming for years to come. There will definitely be some good 5xxx deals later this year.

As for bins, 3600C14 is indeed a really good EoL bin for DDR4. I more so mean DDR4 bought years ago with looser timings and not much OC potential. Kind of where DDR5 is just now. Latency remains king for games and until MS direct storage is actually seen in gaming, having fast memory for the next years will be crucial for new games releases.

When you say good EOL DDR4 bin? You mean end of life? Cause in your opinion is all DDR4 actually end of life even though there is so much more than DDR5 despite DDR5 shortages ending months ago? And even though the only platform that supports and can use DDR5 right now is Alder Lake and still 3 months to go before X670 and Zen 4 are next to support and use DDR5??

Audioboxer · Jun 20, 2022

Wolverine2349 said:
When you say good EOL DDR4 bin? You mean end of life? Cause in your opinion is all DDR4 actually end of life even though there is so much more than DDR5 despite DDR5 shortages ending months ago? And even though the only platform that supports and can use DDR5 right now is Alder Lake and still 3 months to go before X670 and Zen 4 are next to support and use DDR5??

Yes, EOL, as in, they aren't going to be binning for more DDR4, its best has pretty much been released. I don't even think there would be a way to top the 3600 14-14-14-14 and 4000 14-14-14-14 bins.

Zver1 · Jun 20, 2022

Blameless said:
I do expect fabric clocks to increase, probably significantly, but DDR5 would be the only rational choice for AM5 regardless. With how long they intend the socket to last DDR5 will be cheaper than DDR4 when AM5 still has years left.

There is a rumor that AMD will introduce a version of Zen4 with the old IO chiplet that will use DDR4 and work on the AM4 motherboards. The change to DDR5 is the primary driver to the new pinout and AM5 socket. Given modular chiplets, would not be hard to create such a version(only i/o chiplet changes). Suspect that AMD is hedging its bets in case DDR5 shortages/high prices restrict CPU sales in which case the DDR4 version can be introduced.

Taraquin · Jun 21, 2022

Audioboxer said:
It's going to be great, but unless you have money to burn the first iteration (after launch line-up) or even 2nd will be worth waiting for. DDR5 is a bit of a bust right now, in terms of cost/performance and waiting for more real world uses for it. Latency is still king for most things.

That's if you have a 5900x/5950x/5800X3D and a really good EoL DDR4 bin. They'll still carry us for another year or so yet whilst offering good performance.

3xxx and/or a weaker DDR4 bin, and I'd say if you can budget for it being an early adopter will be a great upgrade. Keeping in mind AMD hopefully treat AM5 like AM4 and keep the mobos supported for years.

Actually if you go placeholder dies for DDR5 you can get 2x8gb 6000c30 (Hynix) for well below 200usd. Not that bad, may clock to 6500+.

Nighthog · Jun 22, 2022

Zver1 said:
There is a rumor that AMD will introduce a version of Zen4 with the old IO chiplet that will use DDR4 and work on the AM4 motherboards. The change to DDR5 is the primary driver to the new pinout and AM5 socket. Given modular chiplets, would not be hard to create such a version(only i/o chiplet changes). Suspect that AMD is hedging its bets in case DDR5 shortages/high prices restrict CPU sales in which case the DDR4 version can be introduced.

If they do this this would extend the life of AM4 by a few more years and cripple sales on AM5 to a large extent. Don't think all partners will be overjoyed if their new stuff gets passed on for older cheaper stuff on AM4 going ahead.
And I don't see them doing this but 1+ year later after AM5 launch to offer a budget upgrade to AM4 platform users.

Too unlikely not giving them a good return rather than wholesale going AM5.
It doesn't make buisness sense other than some manufacturer demaning it like a OEM.

ozlay · Jun 22, 2022

I think AMD might release Ryzen 6000 on AM4. But I can't see them releasing Ryzen 7000 on AM4.

I'd love to see a 35w athlon 6000G.

Wolverine2349 · Jun 22, 2022

ozlay said:
I think AMD might release Ryzen 6000 on AM4. But I can't see them releasing Ryzen 7000 on AM4.

Is Ryzen 6000 supposed to be better than 5000? Or is it just mobile CPUs? I have researched Ryzen 6000 and they look like they are mobile SKUs only and ironically DDR5. Lol AMD has had DDR5 on mobile before on the desktop??

I wish AMD sold binned 12 and 16 core Zen 3 Ryzen 5000 CPUs to give a guaranteed or at least best chance of all core overclock to 4.8GHz or higher. They only have the 5800 X3D and sadly no 5900 nor 5950X 3D version.

Will Zen 4 be the real deal and a worthy upgrade from Zen 3

Wolverine2349

Pee-C

bwana

Wolverine2349

Taraquin

Zver1

Blameless

ozlay

Audioboxer

mtrai

Wolverine2349

Audioboxer

Wolverine2349

Audioboxer

Zver1

Taraquin

Nighthog

ozlay

Wolverine2349

Top Contributors this Month

Recommended Communities