For a while, AMD’s highly anticipated new CPUs seemed like they had slipped to 2025. That would have been bad news for AMD, but according to some new reporting on the topic, Zen 5 chips may be getting announced sooner than we thought.
As reported by Paul Alcorn of Tom’s Hardware, an AMD rep confirmed that the Zen 5 lineup is on track for a 2024 release, likely in the second half of the year. The information was shared during an AMD earnings call for the final quarter of 2023.
While we now know that Zen 5 is coming this year, it’s hard to tell if AMD meant desktop or mobile — although we do know that the rep said “consumer market,” so that rules out AMD’s data center solutions. This points to either Granite Ridge, which is AMD’s next-gen desktop lineup, or Strix Point, its mobile counterpart.
Although AMD has launched its fair share of laptop processors, the adoption has been pretty slow. Still, AMD CEO Lisa Su revealed that Strix Point is coming later this year. It’s still possible that desktop CPUs may arrive in 2024, although according to some leakers, the X3D series may not appear until 2025, possibly at CES 2025 in January. In the case of Zen 4, AMD waited a few months before unleashing the 3D V-Cache versions of its processors.
X3D is CES 2025.
— Kepler (@Kepler_L2) January 23, 2024
In a transcript of the earnings call, Su briefly spoke about Zen 5, saying: “Strix combines our next-gen, Zen 5 core with enhanced RDNA graphics and an updated Ryzen AI engine to significantly increase the performance, energy efficiency, and AI capabilities of PCs. Customer momentum for Strix is strong, with the first notebooks on track to launch later this year.”
Based on the launch window, it seems reasonable to speculate that Zen 5 could get announced officially at Computex, which will take place in the first week of June this year.
Assuming that AMD meets this release date, and both desktop and laptop models of Zen 5 chips will be out by late 2024, Intel should start getting worried. With a new platform and a lackluster track record in the past year, Intel’s next-gen CPUs, dubbed Arrow Lake, may face some fierce competition from AMD.
Intel’s recently seen its share prices drop by a massive 12%, so if AMD can keep up the momentum, we might see an interesting shift in the CPU market this year.
