AMD plans Ryzen 5000 refresh to counter Intel Alder Lake threat

CPU price wars to begin in earnest later this month?

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.

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.

Parm Mann
Parm Mann
Club386 founder and editor-in-chief, his journey with hardware pre-dates Google. To this day, nothing beats the nostalgic nineties, piecing together a Pentium CPU and 3DFX graphics card from a Wolverhampton computer market. Away from his computer, Parm is all about Manchester United, woodworking, and family – not necessarily in that order.

Deal of the Day

Hot Reviews

Preferred Partners

Related Reading