AMD fans are hoping that the company’s next generation of CPUs will bring it back into competition with Intel and herald a resurgence of interest in the long-time second-fiddle player in the processor game. While we don’t know if that will happen the way they hope, if it does, it may happen sooner than expected, as one industry insider is claiming that the AM4 motherboards and perhaps even one of the Zen CPUs, are going to be released in March 2016.
If true, that is far, far sooner than expected. The AMD platform isn’t currently set to launch until late 2016 at the soonest, but according to the sources at German site Planet3DNow, it’s going to be March instead.
It’s not stated why the date has jumped, but there are some suggestions. Recently the Zen CPUs were taped out and the results from internal testing were promising. If they’re further along in production than expected, then motherboard makers may be speeding things up as they’ll need to have their socketed PCBs (with the additional DDR4 support) in place for when the Zen chips arrive.
It could also be because of AMD’s current financial situation. Although revenue is up this year, AMD’s monetary situation in recent years hasn’t been strong and there have even been rumors of it being bought out by the likes of Apple. The luke-warm reception it received for its Fury line of graphics cards may also force AMD into rushing Zen to market so that it has something new and exciting to show.
It should be exciting in any case, as AMD is promising big performance gains over its previous generations, with a new caching system, and a brand new design of the core itself. Few expect it to be able to compete directly with Intel’s high-end CPUs, but if AMD can offer a credibly performing chip to go against the i5s of the world while maintaining a decent price tag, AMD could start to make a little comeback in the central processing game.
If that only makes Intel come back stronger with its next generation, that would be worth it in its own right.
