Enlarge / AMD's Ryzen 9 7950X3D. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Toward the end of Ryzen 5000's run, AMD released the Ryzen 7 5800X3D , a special version of the eight-core 5800X with 64MB of extra L3 cache stacked on top of it.

The result was an interesting but niche experiment. The extra "3D V-Cache" helped the CPU perform particularly well in games, but lower clock speeds (plus higher power use and heat generation) hurt its all-around app performance. The extra cost was (and remains) way out of proportion to the speed gains over the 5700X or 5800X. And the 5800X3D was the end of the line for the old socket AM4 platform, making it an interesting upgrade option if you already had an older Ryzen PC but an awkward choice to build an all-new PC around.

Now AMD is back with an expanded range of Zen 4-based Ryzen 7000X3D processors. The $599 12-core Ryzen 9 7900X3D and $699 16-core Ryzen 9 7950X3D are available now, while the 8-core Ryzen 7 7800X3D will arrive on April 6.

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A few months ago, AMD introduced a new numbering system for its upcoming laptop processor refresh. The schema is, as we wrote at the time , simultaneously less and more confusing than one which simply assigns a larger number to a faster product. It does make it possible to know exactly what's in the processor you're using, as long as you have the handy decoder ring that tells you which number means what. But it's also a way for AMD to relabel as "new" a handful of older processors from years past.

There are five different CPU series that comprise the Ryzen 7000 lineup that AMD is announcing today. Below is the AMD-provided table that tells you what parts each series uses, along with some additional context

The spec table for each of the five subcategories of the Ryzen 7000 lineup. (credit: AMD)

• Ryzen 7045 series ("Dragon Range") : For high-end gaming and workstation laptops, meant to be paired with a dedicated GPU. Essentially Ryzen 7000 desktop processors repackaged for laptops, like Intel's HX series.
• Ryzen 7040 series ("Phoenix") : The only all-new chip in the lineup. A Zen 4 CPU combined with an RDNA 3 integrated GPU and built on a 4nm process, this is the flagship for premium thin-and-light laptops without dedicated GPUs.
• Ryzen 7035 series ("Rembrandt-R"): Ryzen 6000 with a new name.
• Ryzen 7030 series ("Barcelo-R"): Ryzen 5000 with a new name. Barcelo was technically launched in 2022, but for most intents and purposes it was identical to 2021's "Cezanne" processors. These are the only CPUs in the lineup to include an integrated GPU based on the aging Vega architecture, and to support DDR4 and LPDDR4 instead of DDR5 and LPDDR5.
• Ryzen 7020 series ("Mendocino"): Already announced and launched , these use the old Zen 2 CPU architecture but otherwise are purpose-built from modern parts on a modern manufacturing process specifically for cheap laptops.

The 7045 and 7040 series are the most significant of the new announcements. There are four of the 7045 CPUs, each corresponding to a different Ryzen 7000 desktop CPU : the 7645HX is a refactored 7600X, while the 7745HX, 7845HX, and 7945HX map roughly to the 7700X, 7900X, and 7950X. Each has the same amount of cache as its desktop counterpart, each supports the same DDR5 memory (notably not LPDDR5), and the same basic integrated GPU.

Enlarge / The Ryzen 7000 series is getting a little cheaper today, though the cost of motherboards and DDR5 remain barriers for budget buyers. (credit: AMD)

AMD is officially lowering the barrier to entry for the Ryzen 7000 series today, announcing a handful of new models aimed at more price-conscious buyers. For people on the money-is-no-object end of the spectrum, the company is also introducing new 3D V-Cache-enabled processors with extra L3 cache that will benefit games and other cache-sensitive workloads.

The three cheaper CPUs are versions of the existing 7600X, 7700X, and 7900X, but without the X suffix. The $229 Ryzen 5 7600, $329 Ryzen 7 7700, and $429 Ryzen 9 7900 all have the same core counts and cache sizes as their counterparts but with 65 W TDPs, slightly lower clock speeds, and bundled CPU coolers. That's an $80 reduction compared to the retail prices of the cooler-less 7600X and 7700X, and the 7900 is $120 cheaper than the 7900X.

Zen 4's most important features are all present and accounted for on the new 65 W chips, and they all include usably decent (if not impressive) CPU coolers, too. (credit: AMD)

As we found in our initial reviews of the Ryzen 7000 series , setting the chips to a 65 W TDP usually reduces their performance, but not by as much as you'd think—all three chips should run cooler than the X-series CPUs while still being comfortably faster than older Ryzen 5000-series CPUs, and the 7600 shouldn't need more than 65 W to provide peak performance. If you want to run the CPUs faster, setting higher TDP values and overclocking is still possible on all these processors.

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Shortly after our review of the Ryzen 5 7600X and Ryzen 9 7950X were published late last month, AMD sent us a box containing the other two members of the Ryzen 7000 launch family: the $400 Ryzen 7 7700X , and the $550 Ryzen 9 7900X .

Absent a six-core member of the family in the $200 range, AMD's eight-core, 16-thread processors usually represent a sweet spot in the lineup—great gaming performance without being overkill and enough cores to handle fairly heavy professional workloads like photo and video editing and rendering without feeling slow.

That's still true of the 7700X, which handily outspeeds the six-core 7600X and costs $50 less than the first 8-core member of the Ryzen 5000 family did a couple of years ago. Right now, it has two problems. The first is that, like the other Zen 4 CPUs, it requires a substantial investment beyond the $400 that you'll spend on the CPU itself in the form of a pricey new motherboard and DDR5 RAM that's still quite a bit more expensive than DDR4. The second is that its out-of-the-box power settings aren't ideal—with a little tuning, the processor can run a little cooler and consume less power while delivering similar results. Here's what we found.

Enlarge / The MSI MEG X670E Godlike raises interesting questions, like, "could God make a motherboard so expensive that even He could not afford it?" (credit: MSI)

Building a PC around a new processor is expensive at the best of times, and that's triple-true of AMD's new Ryzen 7000 chips. AMD has started with its $300-and-up high-end chips , leaving mid-range options until next year. The CPUs only support DDR5 RAM, which is still more expensive than DDR4 at the same capacities. And the first round of motherboards that include the new AM5 CPU socket are here, and they're pretty expensive.

The cheapest motherboard currently available from the likes of Newegg and Micro Center is the ASRock X670E PG Lightning , which, despite being the least expensive motherboard available, is an X670E board that will support PCIe 5.0 GPUs when they eventually arrive (even the newly announced GeForce RTX 4000-series still uses PCIe 4.0). The motherboard is missing a few features we like to see—no built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, limited audio outputs, relatively small heatsinks for the voltage-regulator modules (VRMs) and other components—but it does have four M.2 SSD slots of varying speeds and plenty of hookups for case fans and front USB ports.

If it's something you care about, the cheapest X670E board with Wi-Fi is also one of ASRock's, the X670E Pro RS , available for $280 at Newegg and Micro Center .

Enlarge / AMD's Ryzen 7600X, nestled into the brand-new Socket AM5. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

AMD's latest Ryzen processors are here , along with the Zen 4 CPU architecture that powers them. And if you don't want to wade through a bunch of words, tables, and charts, the short version is: They're pretty good! Even if we miss the days when AMD prioritized midrange systems as much as it did high-end ones, and even if Intel's offerings now are more compelling than they were in 2020 when Zen 3 was competing against the fifth consecutive iteration of Intel's Skylake architecture , there's a lot to appreciate here.

For those of you prepared to read on, this piece will focus on two Ryzen 7000 CPUs. AMD sent us a $299 six-core, 12-thread Ryzen 5 7600X and a $699 16-core, 32-thread Ryzen 9 7950X. These are (respectively) the lowest- and highest-end members of the Ryzen 7000 family as it exists today. (The company also provided a motherboard and DDR5 RAM, as well as travel and lodging for the Ryzen 7000 unveiling and tech sessions we attended in August.)

We'll compare both chips to each other as well as to various members of the Ryzen 5000 and 12th-generation Intel Core CPU families to get a sense of how Ryzen 7000 and Zen 4 improve on their immediate predecessors and their competition. If you're more interested in a high-level overview of the Zen 4 architecture, the AM5 socket and 600-series chipsets that AMD is also launching today, and other Ryzen odds and ends, that info is available in a separate piece for your reference and convenience.

Enlarge / AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su holding a sample of the flagship Ryzen 9 7950X. (credit: AMD)

Nearly two years after releasing its first Ryzen 5000 desktop processors, AMD is finally ready to follow them up. Today, the company announced pricing and availability for the first wave of Ryzen 7000 CPUs based on the Zen 4 architecture, along with more details about the accompanying AM5 platform and the performance increases that early adopters can expect.

The first four Ryzen 7000 CPUs will be available on September 27, and AMD is using the same strategy it used to launch the 5000 series (if you're wondering about the skipped number, 6000-series CPUs are only available for laptops). It's starting with four higher-end, higher-priced parts, while lower-end CPUs for mainstream and budget builds will follow next year.

AMD is sticking to the same core counts it used for Zen 3. The entry-level model is the 6-core Ryzen 5 7600X, launching for the same $299 that the 5600X cost in 2020; the 12-core Ryzen 9 7900X is also launching for $549, the same price as the Ryzen 9 5900X. The other two chips are a little cheaper than their Ryzen 5000 counterparts; the 16-core Ryzen 9 7950X launches for $699, $100 less than the 5950X, while the 8-core Ryzen 7 7700X starts at $399, $50 less than the launch price for the Ryzen 7 5800X (technically, this is a price increase over the $299 Ryzen 7 5700X, but that chip wasn't released until nearly a year and a half after the 5800X ).