In the wake of the success that Intel is enjoying with its new Alder Lake processors, all eyes are on AMD to see how it will respond. We might not have to wait too much longer to find out, as a recent post by previously reliable leaker Enthusiastic Citizen (via Wccftech) claims that we could see Zen 4 ‘Raphael’ chips by Q3 2022.
Not a great deal is known about the microarchitecture, but we do know that it will be manufactured with a 5nm process, use a new AM5 socket type, and support PCIe Gen5. In terms of performance, rumours suggest Zen 4 will outperform Zen 3 by as much as 40%, which could make these new Ryzen processors among the best gaming CPUs of 2022.
Unfortunately, it looks like you’ll need to grab a new motherboard and some DDR5 gaming RAM if you plan to use these new Ryzen CPUs, as Enthusiastic Citizen states that they won’t support DDR4, unlike Alder Lake.
It’s worth noting that this release date would see these AMD chips go toe-to-toe with Intel’s 13th generation CPUs, codenamed Raptor Lake, rather than act as a direct response to Alder Lake. Instead, it appears that AMD is expecting its upcoming Zen 3 processors with 3D V-Cache technology to hold the line, which we should hopefully hear more about at CES 2022.
Enthusiastic Citizen also claims that AMD will release new processors based on the older Zen 2 microarchitecture, which will be “roughly the same specifications as a Ryzen 4000G” but will not feature an integrated GPU. However, it’s not yet known when they will be released.