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AMD's Zen 5 series is one of the most hotly anticipated launches of 2024, right alongside the Nvidia RTX 5000 and the Radeon RX 8000 series. Every possible detail about the entire Zen 5 series of CPUs has been leaked. In the past, I talked about the Zen 5-based Ryzen 9000 leaks and whether you should wait for the new CPUs. And if you did, you are in for a treat.
In this article, I'll go over all the details of the leaks and discuss what sort of performance you can expect from the new Zen 5-based Ryzen 9000 CPUs.
Note: Many aspects of this article are based on leaks and solely reflect the writer's opinions. Given the nature of leaks, images of AMD Zen 4 CPUs have been used as visual aids.
AMD Zen 5 series leaks
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The whole flock of AMD Zen 5 CPUs has been leaked, thanks to Bilibili user Golden Pig, who has provided credible PC hardware leaks for a long time. They have shared a significant amount of details regarding the Zen 5 CPU family.
Some of the information has been known for a while and was previously leaked by High Yield, Olark29_, and Moore's Law is Dead, but the new details provide more depth to the story. Let's go over these leaks quickly, starting with Granite Ridge.
Granite Ridge
The Granite Ridge CPU family will power the Ryzen 9000 series, which will be released later this year. It will feature a multi-chip module (MCM), a.k.a. Chiplet design, just like Zen 4 and other Ryzen CPUs. These CPUs will have three dies in total, and that includes two Zen 5 CCDs and a Raphael IOD die.
Each CCD has a total of eight cores, so two CCDs will lead to a total of 16 cores and 32 threads. All CCDs will have a 64MB L3 cache for a total of 128 MB of L3 cache per CPU. Those who have been waiting for 32 cores will be sadly disappointed. The last CPU die is the IOD die, which remains unchanged from the Zen 4 Raphael-based Ryzen 7000 CPUs.
So, it should theoretically have the same DDR5 RAM support, but the new CPUs may have slightly higher transfer speeds out of the box. As for the iGPU, it will have two RDNA 3 compute units, which won't break any gaming records but will be enough to power the display output without requiring a dedicated GPU.
That said, Golden Pig has reported the NPU will not be present on this CPU, so on-die AI processing is out of the question without a dedicated GPU. It will also have 28 PCIe Gen 5 lanes, which can be further expanded with the chipset lanes. Also, the CCD dies will be manufactured on TSMC's 4nm N4 process node, while the IOD die will remain at its previous 6nm process node.
Fire Range
The Fire Range of CPUs are designed for laptops. Although extremely similar to Granite Ridge, it will be power-constrained to make it suitable for the laptop's battery and limited thermal headroom, so expect lower clock speeds. It will feature the same 16 cores and 32 threads as Granite Ridge, along with 128MB of L3 cache. Also, it will have the same Raphael IOD die, so expect DDR5 RAM support.
Besides that, there will be two RDNA 3-based GPU cores, and the same support for 28 PCIe Gen 5 lanes. This CPU range will be designed specifically for the ultra-enthusiast range of laptops where performance is the top priority. But at the end of the day, it will still be a laptop CPU, so its TDP will be limited with lower clock speeds, compared to the Granite range counterpart.
The Fire Range CPUs will also be manufactured with a combination of TSMC's 4+6nm process node.
Strix Point
The Strix Point of CPUs is specifically designed for mainstream laptops, so it must feature a balance of performance and battery life. To achieve this, AMD is using two types of cores — regular Zen 5 cores and slimmed-down Zen 5c cores. The latter range will probably have a reduced cache and lower clocks, which will help with the battery life.
It will be a monolithic CPU, which will be manufactured with the same TSMC's N4 process node. As for the CPU configuration, it will have a combination of four Zen 5 and eight Zen 5c cores along with 16MB and 8MB of L3 cache respectively. This will lead to a total of 24MB of L3 cache. Its clock speed will also be conserved at up to 5.1 GHz to help with the battery life.
It possesses 16 RDNA 3.5-based Compute Units, which will deliver a decent level of gaming performance. It will also have an NPU that can do 40 trillion operations per second. For the RAM, the CPU will have support for both DDR5 and LPDDR5X, which will certainly help with power consumption.
However, the DDR5 support will be available to OEMs at a later date, and they will have to contend with LPDDR5X at the initial release. The first two Strix Point CPU model names have been leaked — Ryzen AI 9 HX 170 and Ryzen AI 165. The former will have a total of 12 cores (four Zen 5 + eight Zen 5c cores), while the latter will have 10 (four Zen 5 + six Zen 5c cores).
Strix Halo
The Strix Halo is designed as something of an elite-level chipset. It will have an iGPU that will be capable of delivering the performance level of a dedicated GPU. This may make it an instant hit among ODMs and gamers alike. Imagine the performance of a high-end CPU and GPU in a single chipset, which is exactly what the upcoming Strix Halo CPUs will hope to boast.
It will be based on the MCM design with a high-speed Die-to-Die interconnect for an instant handshake between the Zen 5 CCDs and RDNA 3.5 GCD. This allows super-fast data transfer between the CPU and the GPU cores for extremely low latency and enhanced processing power.
There will be two Zen 5 CCDs for a total of 16 cores, but this configuration is said to be different from Granite Ridge and Fire Range. For the iGPU, there will be 40 RDNA 3.5 Compute Cores for a total of 2560 stream processors. For context, that's the same number of stream processors as the Radeon RX 6700 XT.
On top of that, this iGPU will be based on the newer RDNA 3.5 architecture, so it won't be wrong to assume this chipset may deliver a performance similar to the RX 6700 XT. To back up this level of performance, the leak suggests it will also have 32MB of Infinity Cache (MALL cache).
For the memory system, the CPU will have support for 16-channel 16-bit LPDDR5 RAM support, which won't be as fast as GDDR6 memory but way faster than traditional LPDDR5 memory chips. Besides that, it will have an NPU capable of providing 70 TOPS.
This will be the most exciting CPU release from the entire Zen 5 family. It could compete with Nvidia's lower-end laptop GPUs like the RTX 4050 and more.
Krackan
This is another variant of Zen 5-based mobile CPUs but designed for the budget market. It will have a total of eight cores (four Zen 5 + four Zen 5c) along with 16MB of L3 cache. It will also have eight RDNA 3.5-based Compute units, which should deliver the same level of gaming performance as Hawk Point CPUs. It will also have support for DDR5 and LPDDR5 RAMs.
Krackan will have a similar NPU unit capable of delivering 40 TOPS and should also have 16 lanes of Gen 4 PCIe. However, the codename is still the most confusing part of this CPU series.
A previous leak from Moore's Law is Dead suggested that the name would be Kraken, but the new leak claims it's Krackan. Whatever the case might be, it's still a fascinating release.
The Bottom Line
A total of five different variants of the Zen 5 CPU family are under development and could launch later this year. In fact, an AMD representative confirmed via Tom's hardware that the first Zen CPU is launching later this year. This should be followed by Strix Point and even Strix Halo in CES 2025. Nonetheless, exciting times are ahead as AMD will be pushing Intel from both fronts, desktop and laptop.
Intel is already at a weak point in desktop and even its lead in the laptop segment could be under threat from AMD's latest range of CPUs. Does Intel have something new to counter AMD's upcoming release? Well, we do have some whispers of Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake CPUs, but there's nothing concrete yet, at least not to the level of this leak.
That said, Intel may have something good in the labs. After all, more competition is always good since it leads to competitive prices and better value for the CPU. So, which CPU are you most excited about? Let us know in the comment section.
