Despite significant stock shortages, the Ryzen 5000 series has been well received since launching in November 2020. The subsequent arrival of Intel’s Rocket Lake chips has intensified the competition, with some benchmarks putting the CPUs neck-and-neck.
However, we’re looking to head to what AMD has planned next. Here’s everything you need to know about what we assume will be called the Ryzen 6000 series at this early stage.
When will the AMD Ryzen 6000 series be released?
Nothing has been revealed at this early stage, so our best guess on the Ryzen 6000 release date comes from when previous generations were launched:
- Ryzen 1000 Series – from March 2017
- Ryzen 2000 Series – from April 2018
- Ryzen 3000 Series – from July 2019
- Ryzen 5000 Series – from November 2020
With that in mind, it’s looking likely that Ryzen 6000 CPUs will be released in early 2022. WePC is reporting on a leaked roadmap which suggests it will be unveiled sometime that year.
The launch could potentially coincide with CES, which we’d expect to take place in January once again.
How much will the AMD Ryzen 6000 series cost?
With no concrete rumours so far, we can again use the pricing of the Ryzen 5000 series as a guide.
- Ryzen 9 5950X – £735.84/US$799
- Ryzen 9 5900X – £505.61US$549
- Ryzen 7 5800X – £413.51/US$449
- Ryzen 5 5600X – £275.36/US$299
That was a US$50 increase on its predecessor across the board, so there’s a chance we’ll see similar price hikes for the Ryzen 6000 Series. That’s especially true if it makes the move to Zen 4 architecture.
What specs will the AMD Ryzen 6000 Series have?
As you might expect, concrete rumours about the Ryzen 6000 Series are relatively thin on the ground.
The same WePC article above suggests the new chips will be the first manufactured using a 6nm process and based on a new Zen 3+ architecture. It goes on to say that the current Vega GPU will be replaced by RDNA 2, with AMD skipping the first-gen for its desktops. This could bring about significant changes where gaming is involved, with an expected improvement to performance per watt and ray-tracing support.
An earlier report from Wccftech also suggested that the CPUs, codenamed ‘Rembrandt’ will ditch the AM4 socket for the newer AM5 technology. This will likely make a number of existing motherboards incompatible, but will bring features like DDR5, LPDDR5, USB 4.0 and PCIe 5.0 with it.
A May 2021 Wccftech article then suggested the Ryzen 6000 series will use a 6nm process – the current Ryzen 5000 chips use 7nm. It goes on to say that the top-spec CPUs will have up to 12 cores, based on the below tweet:
Rembrandt is RDNA 2 based with a maximum of 12 CUs 🔥
— ExecutableFix (@ExecuFix) May 8, 2021
This claim should be taken with a pinch of salt, but the leaker in question has a history of revealing key processor specs ahead of time.
Twitter leaker @Broly_X1 then revealed what looks to be an official roadmap for AMD’s upcoming processor launches:
This is the complete roadmap, although the gpu part of Rembrandt has improved a lot, the cpu part is not very competitive with the 16-core ADL-P. Maybe AMD should cut prices to attract players. https://t.co/1aWbaZXnLc pic.twitter.com/gfRGfijDaM
— vegeta (@Broly_X1) May 20, 2021
The Ryzen 6000 Series processors here are codenamed ‘Rembrandt’. According to this image, it will use a 6nm process and ship with Zen 3+ architecture. It also looks likely to support DDR5 memory and PCIe Gen, which should both improve the speed of the chips.
Those are the only rumours we have so far, but we’ll update this section as and when more information becomes available.
What about the Zen 4 architecture? Will the Ryzen 6000 series be based on it?
At AMD’s October 2020 launch of Zen 3, it revealed that the Zen 4 architecture had reached the design stage and was on track for release in 2022. We haven’t had any updates since then, but it’s likely to be roughly the same.
That would continue the company’s fairly regular update cycle, following the Zen in February 2017, Zen 2 in July 2019 and Zen 3 in November 2020. It’s rare to hear official company announcements this far ahead of time, although no further details were given.
AMD has confirmed that Zen 4 be its first CPU architecture to support the 5nm process, which is expected to offer big improvements to speed and efficiency within a more compact body. More details will no doubt be revealed in due course.
That begs the question – will the Ryzen 6000 series be running on Zen 4 architecture? Rumours above suggest that won’t not be the case, but it all depends on release date. With early indications suggesting both will arrive within the first few months of 2022, it’s possible that Ryzen 6000 CPUs will be the first Zen 4 chips from AMD.
However, a tweet from prolific leaker @ExecuFix suggests that the new AM5 socket will come to the Ryzen 6000 series:
AM5 😏
– LGA-1718
– Dual-channel DDR5
– PCI-e 4.0
– 600 series chipset— ExecutableFix (@ExecuFix) May 22, 2021
With Wccftech reporting that AM5 will debut on Zen 4, it paves the way for AMD’s next desktop chips to use Zen 4. The sources here have been fairly reliable for component rumours, but we’ll have to wait and see if this one turns out to be true.
Indeed, with the Ryzen 2000 and Ryzen 3000 both based on Zen 2 architecture, there’s a chance the company will persist with Zen 3 for at least another generation. Perhaps a tweaked architecture will be known as Zen 3+.
To see how it compares to the current generation, check out our guide to the Ryzen 5000 series. If you’d like to look even further ahead, we have a separate article on the Ryzen 7000 series, which might not debut until 2023.