CPUs the latest generation

The processor industry moves quickly, and a lot can change between laptop or PC purchases. Darien Graham-Smith breaks down all the latest chips from the big three CPU firms - and shares what we know about what's coming next

- Darien Graham Smith

AMD's Ryzen processors have always been popular with cost-conscious shoppers seeking performance on a budget. One reason for this is that AMD generally manages to cram more cores into its chips than competing Intel models. AMD long ago outsourced its chip production to Taiwan-based specialist TSMC, so it's been able to take advantage of industry-leading manufacturing processes; as a result, very complex chips with a dozen cores or more can be reliably manufactured with smaller and smaller process sizes. Meanwhile, as we noted last month, Intel has struggled to shrink its own in-house manufacturing processes, meaning it's been playing catch-up almost since the very first AMD Ryzen processor was released in 2017.

The latest AMD processors are based on the fifth major generation of its Zen core, officially dubbed "Zen 5", and internally codenamed "Nirvana" by AMD. This replaces the Zen 4 "Durango" core, introduced in 2022.

Chips based on the Zen 5 core are known either as the Ryzen 9000 series or as Ryzen AI for models that include a dedicated NPU. The core logic is the same across the whole range, which currently comprises eight desktop chips and 13 mobile processors - not to mention 27 server-oriented Zen 5 chips sold under AMD's Epyc brand.

The consumer chips covers a wide spread of capabilities (see p44). As well as differing core counts and clock frequencies, different models include different GPU and NPU hardware and varying quantities of cache. The X3D” models have an extra-large 128MB L3 cache to boost performance in games and other demanding applications - it's called 3D cache because it's physically stacked on top of the regular cache. Many models are also available in “Pro” variants, which (similarly to Intel’s vPro technology) include business-oriented management and platform-security features, but are otherwise identical.