In the face of continuous Zen 5 leaks, AMD has kept the finer details of its plans for upcoming Ryzen processors close to its chest. However, the company has begun to let slip some details on its next chips, with the name of the new CPU series now getting a surprise confirmation.
Given the excellent performance of its Ryzen 7000 series processors, it’s a safe bet that the next batch of chips from AMD will find their way onto our best gaming CPU list. However, this of course is still dependent on how much of a performance uplift they offer, which remains to be seen.
Previous references to Zen 5 CPUs have appeared in BIOS release notes, but under the guise of codenames such as ‘Granite Ridge’. This has changed recently, though, following updates to AMD chipset drivers that now explicitly refer to 9000 series CPUs.
As highlighted by X user 9550pro, diving into the release notes for ‘AMD Chipset Driver V6.03.19.217’ for the Asus ROG Crosshair X670E Hero motherboard, a new entry, listed as ‘AMD PMF-9000Series Driver’, has appeared in one of the tables. Given that the preceding entries are all known previous generations of Ryzen processors, we can easily conclude this is the official name for the next series of AMD CPUs.
The Zen 5 release date (or Ryzen 9000 series release date, as we can confidently call it now), is expected to be announced at Computex in addition to specifications and possibly pricing. Given the increased frequency (no pun intended) of leaks on these CPUs, their launch is likely to be relatively soon.
While we wait for AMD to spill the beans on its Ryzen 9000 processors, check out our review of the Ryzen 7 7800X3D. Even in the face of fresh-faced competition from Zen 5 siblings, 3D V-Cache should keep this CPU towards the top of performance charts until a successor rolls around.