Word on the grapevine is that AMD’s looking to combat Intel’s 12th Gen Alder Lake CPUs in more ways than one.
According to Twitter leaker Zed__Wang, the chip giant plans to augment Ryzen 5000 Series with four new CPUs tailored to compete on price. In addition to the flagship Ryzen 7 5800X3D, AMD will reportedly launch three mid-range parts in the form of the 6C/6T Ryzen 5 5500, 6C/12T Ryzen 6 5600, and an 8C/16T Ryzen 7 5700X.
AMD will release 4 new CPUs this month:
— MEGAsizeGPU (@Zed__Wang) March 5, 2022
R5-5500 6C6T
R5-5600 6C12T
R7-5700X 8C16T
R7-5800X3D 8C16T
5500 has the same price as 12100, 5600 will be cheaper than 12400, and 5700X will be cheaper than 12600KF.
Seemingly caught off guard by Intel’s combination of strong performance and aggressive pricing, it is no surprise to see AMD refreshing the line-up in an effort to stay at the front of the pack.
Manufacturing slowdowns have led to the Ryzen 5000 Series growing stagnant while AMD’s attention has been focussed elsewhere, and it is in the mainstream segment that the Ryzen catalogue comes up short.
Budget Ryzen 3 parts based on the Zen 3 architecture are still nowhere to be seen, but the rumoured Ryzen 5s do hold promise. According to the leak, Ryzen 5 5500 will go head-to-head with the $122 Core i3-12100, while the SMT-enabled Ryzen 5 5600 will attempt to undercut the impressive $192 Core i5-12400.
Further up the stack, Ryzen 7 5700X has sights set on Intel Core i5-12600KF. We’ve seen AMD take the axe to pricing in recent months, and if these latest rumours are anything to go by, we may soon see an eight-core, 16-thread Ryzen 7 5000 Series processor come in close to the £250 mark.
