The next generation of AMD’s Zen processor is rumored to release around summer of this year. Leaked information has suggested that AMD will be announcing products in June for Computex and the release is slated for July 7^th. The main focus of the release will be the Ryzen 3000 desktop processors, X500 chipset based motherboards, and the anticipated 7nm “Navi” consumer video cards.

Zen 2 is a major architectural step for AMD’s desktop processors using a 7nm process node. The 7nm process node will improve Ryzen’s IPC and single threaded performance from the previous generation. This will allow the Zen 2 chips to hit frequencies up to 5 GHz. AMD’s rumored monster consumer chip, Ryzen 3850X will have 16 cores with a base frequency of 4.3 GHz and a turbo of 5.1 GHz with 135W TDP. Compared to Intel’s top end consumer desktop processor, the i9-9900k offers 8 cores with a base frequency of 3.6 GHz and a turbo of 5 GHz. Furthermore, the Ryzen 9 3850X is rumored to be priced at $520 and the more mainstream chips like the Ryzen 7 3700X with 12 cores will likely be priced around $330. The 3700X is no slouch either; it will have 12 cores with a base frequency of 4.2 GHz and a turbo of 5 GHz. AMD’s approach for stuffing 16 cores on a chip is not traditional either, the 7nm process node allows AMD to combine two 7nm 8 core CPU dies on a single CPU die effectively making it 16 cores.

The most interesting chip in the Zen 2 line is going to be the Ryzen 3300X with 6 cores and 12 threads. Priced at $130 will also make it a compelling budget gaming and light workstation. As streaming becomes popular and with PC gaming growing, it is essential to have a computer that can do everything. Of course this doesn’t mean that a PC equipped with a Ryzen 3 will compete with a Ryzen 7 equipped PC but it may be more capable compared to its Intel counterpart – i5-9600k.

The next generation Radeon GPU’s code named “Navi” is also rumored for release on July 7^th. “Navi” will also be 7nm like its predecessor “Vega” but the new architecture will compete with Nvidia’s RTX line up. Earlier this year AMD released the Radeon VII which is the world’s first 7nm gaming GPU. The Radeon VII is based on the previous “Vega” architecture but using 7nm process node. This GPU trades blow with the RTX 2080 especially at high resolutions. The “Navi” based chips are most likely going to have GDDR6 which could raise the costs but detailed specs are still not available.

AMD will continue to improve on the AM4 socket with the X500 series of motherboards which will have PCIe 4.0. This will allow motherboards to feature 10GbE and 100GbE networking, as well as SSD’s and GPU’s with high bandwidth requirements.

AMD has yet to confirm all of these rumors and leaks so we wait to see what is revealed at Computex 2019 in June. Stay tuned!