According to recent rumors, AMD is considering introducing Zen 4 CPUs compatible with the AM4 socket. This would mean that after more than 5 years, we might be able to fit some of the future Ryzen 7000 CPUs on the usual motherboards. Let’s take a look at the implications of this move and how likely it is to happen.
AMD Ryzen 7000 / Zen 4 processor compatible with AM4? It’s a real possibility?
The future AMD Ryzen 7000 processors, with the new Zen 4 architecture, will be introduced along with the new AM5 platform, with a completely new socket and supporting only DDR5 memory. At the same time, they should continue to release some CPUs for the AM4 socket (with DDR4 memory), which is not possible at the moment.
Well, the latest rumor published by Greymon55 suggests that AMD might release special variants of Zen 4 chips with DDR4 memory support and the usual AM4 socket to be able to use them on current boards:
According to an AMD CPU distributor, AMD plans to make Zen 4 products compatible with DDR4 and AM4. But this is just a plan, it is not known if it will be available.
Socket AM4 at a glance the 5 years of its existence, Socket AM4 already supports 5 CPU architectures, which have taken a total of 4 different manufacturing nodes, and there are already more than 125 processors and more than 500 different motherboards. It’s quite a milestone that makes AM4 boards (B350, B450, B550, X370, X470, X570…) really valuable, and continuing it with a new architecture and manufacturing process would be impressive.
It is to be expected that this processor (or these processors), when it hits the market, will not have top-of-the-line features. Rather, one might expect a CPU with, say, 8 cores.
Still, it would benefit greatly from the higher IPC, efficiency, and better clock speeds of the AM5 processors, which would be excellent news.
As always, rumors remain rumors, and as much as there are leaks that have a pretty high hit rate, the rumor itself tells us that this is nothing more than a plan. Still, we have to contrast this with the fact that AMD has already said that the AM4 socket will be alive and well with new CPUs, we just didn’t expect those new CPUs to be Zen 4, and now we can think about it.
If this is confirmed, it would be great news. AMD learned a few years ago not to treat AM4 board users badly. Let’s remember that there were already big controversies pointing out the incompatibility of the first generation boards with series like Ryzen 3000, 4000, or 5000, and today almost all B350 and X370 boards are valid for any Ryzen CPU.
Although we shouldn’t consider it “essential” for AMD to offer a Ryzen 7000 / Zen 4 CPU compatible with AM4, since the socket is already more than 5 years old, in truth it would be a great thing to offer users another upgrade path and a possible cheap alternative.