AMD CEO Lisa Su proposed bringing back the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, set plan in motion before DDR5 shortages

extract

AMD CEO Lisa Su proposed bringing back the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, set plan in motion before DDR5 shortages — AM4 CPU considered a ‘final gift’ to loyal fans of the decade-old socket The relaunch of the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D coincided with the memory chip shortage. AMD Director of Client Product Management Travis Kirsch sat down with a Japanese publication to share the backstory of the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D and its relaunch this year. Kirsch told MyNavi Tech+ [machine translated] that AMD CEO Lisa Su was one of the proponents of bringing back the groundbreaking X3D processor that first debuted in April 2022. While some may think this was a simple relaunch of a four-year-old processor, the company had to do extensive re-engineering and update its manufacturing process with TSMC just to bring it back. The decision to relaunch it was well-timed, too. While the world is suffering from extremely high DDR5 memory prices when it finally arrived in the middle of 2026, Kirsch said that “this was planned before changes in the memory market occurred, not as a countermeasure to DDR5 shortages,” and that it was “the final gift to local users who have used our AM4 for nearly a decade, offering systems that use DDR4 the last change to upgrade their PCs.” Beyond the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, the Japanese publication also touched on AMD’s value offerings, or lack thereof. Four Ryzen 3 processors are available new today—one for AM5 and three for AM4—which raises the question of whether AMD is abandoning the entry-level market. Kirsch said that while the company aims to offer a product for every price point, AMD is mostly focused on the premium, high-performance gaming market — we see this in the October Steam Survey results, with AMD closing in on Intel at 48.4% CPU share. As for the affordable CPU market, he said it’s no longer as big as it used to be, as laptops have taken over this segment. Of course, any discussion with a tech executive these days would almost always touch on the memory chip shortage. “…there are things we can control and things we cannot. Market price trends are the result of everyone moving (and there’s nothing we can do about it),” Kirsch said. “We are simply focused on providing consumers with choices in any situation. This is to ensure that consumers have the opportunity to purchase the best AMD PCs, regardless of the price.” Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds. Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics. - usertests Beyond the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, the Japanese publication also touched on AMD’s value offerings, or lack thereof. Four Ryzen 3 processors are available new today—one for AM5 and three for AM4—which raises the question of whether AMD is abandoning the entry-level market. Kirsch said that while the company aims to offer a product for every price point, AMD is mostly focused on the premium, high-performance gaming market — we see this in the October Steam Survey results, with AMD closing in on Intel at 48.4% CPU share. As for the affordable CPU market, he said it’s no longer as big as it used to be, as laptops have taken over this segment.Over multiple generations of 8-core chiplets shared between product segments, there wasn't a good reason to disable mostly good chiplets down to quad-cores. If we start seeing more types of chiplets on the desktop socket, rumored divergence between Zen 7 Silverking (8-core) and Silverton (16-core), etc. then I think they bring back Ryzen 3, and give it 6-8 cores. They could do it with a monolithic Krackan-tier APU die first (graphics enabled or disabled), and Silverking later. It will be interesting to see what happens to the 9600X's position during the Zen 6 generation. One rumor said there would be a 6-core at the bottom again, but whatever the 9600X morphs into could have 8-10 cores. Reply - MikeMIke86 At $350, it’s not a deal when the much cheaper 9600X outperforms by a significant amount. Just another money grab. They’re doing this because they’re no longer selling enough AM5 components.Reply - usertests MikeMIke86 said:At $350, it’s not a deal when the much cheaper 9600X outperforms by a significant amount. Just another money grab. They’re doing this because they’re no longer selling enough AM5 components.https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/amd-ryzen-5-9600x-cpu-review/2 The main reason to buy X3D is gaming performance, and the 9600X is slower than the 5800X3D in games. And the 9600X multithreading performance is only a little faster (6% in PassMark). The other benefit is being able to use cheaper or already owned DDR4 memory. Obviously, we would have loved to see a $200 price on the relaunched 5800X3D. But it's good that they are making more at all. More of the CPUs on Earth means more will be hanging around in the used market 5-10 years from now, driving the prices down. Reply - Thunder64 usertests said:Over multiple generations of 8-core chiplets shared between product segments, there wasn't a good reason to disable mostly good chiplets down to quad-cores. If we start seeing more types of chiplets on the desktop socket, rumored divergence between Zen 7 Silverking (8-core) and Silverton (16-core), etc. then I think they bring back Ryzen 3, and give it 6-8 cores. They could do it with a monolithic Krackan-tier APU die first (graphics enabled or disabled), and Silverking later. It will be interesting to see what happens to the 9600X's position during the Zen 6 generation. One rumor said there would be a 6-core at the bottom again, but whatever the 9600X morphs into could have 8-10 cores. No way there will but a six core Zen 6, that would be cutting off half the cores. Too wasteful. If we see a six core variant it will almost be a repurposed laptop APU and honestly that should be good enough. Reply - TerryLaze usertests said:more will be hanging around in the used market 5-10 years from now, driving the prices down.The prices of 10 year old CPUs??? It's already 4 years old, even in 5 years it will be 9 years old let alone in 10 years from now. That's too many years for any CPU to even still be relevant. Reply - usertests TerryLaze said:The prices of 10 year old CPUs??? It's already 4 years old, even in 5 years it will be 9 years old let alone in 10 years from now. That's too many years for any CPU to even still be relevant.1. 5800X3Ds were selling for as high as $800 on the used market after RAM prices spiked, despite being years old. AMD's legacy Ryzen 7 5800X3D chips now sell for up to $800, more than a new 9800X3D — AM4 chip costs twice as much as MSRP, as enthusiasts flock to old DDR4 memory 2. People are still using 10-20 year old CPUs for various reasons, and buying and selling them. Personally, I wouldn't want to go older than a Skylake/Kaby Lake quad-core, but I could continue to use Skylake/Kaby Lake (currently 11 years old) far into the future. 3. It's unlikely that a PC with 8-core Zen 3 w/ 3D cache will feel "slow" for the foreseeable future. Not for basic usage, and for gaming, it may be able to pull 30-60 FPS out to the early 2040s (it needs to match what could be a very low-clocked ~6-core Zen 6 in a PS6 handheld). 4. If a used 5800X3D is $50 or less in the far future, that is going to be a good buy for someone. Increasing the total supply of 5800X3Ds in existence will ensure lower prices in the future. I don't know how many of the Anniversary Edition 5800X3Ds AMD is making, but it's probably at least in the tens of thousands. Thunder64 said:No way there will but a six core Zen 6, that would be cutting off half the cores. Too wasteful. If we see a six core variant it will almost be a repurposed laptop APU and honestly that should be good enough.I strongly agree that 12-core chiplets should not be disabled into 6-cores, but this extremely vague tweet by leaker HXL suggests there could be 6-core "Olympic Ridge": https://wccftech.com/amd-zen-6-ryzen-olympic-ridge-desktop-cpus-24-20-16-12-10-8-6-core-configs/ It's not without precedent since AMD briefly sold Ryzen 3300X and 3100 quad-cores, although the non-unified Zen 2 CCD might have made that viable, and it disappeared off the market rapidly anyway. Disabling Krackan or some other APU down to 6 cores would make more sense. "Bumblebee" on desktop would make more sense. Some of the iGPUs are so weak (Krackan has 2/4/8 CUs, Bumblebee may be 4 CUs max) that they aren't likely to step on other products. Reply - Thunder64 usertests said:1. 5800X3Ds were selling for as high as $700 on the used market after RAM prices spiked, despite being years old. 2. People are still using 10-20 year old CPUs for various reasons, and buying and selling them. Personally, I wouldn't want to go older than a Skylake/Kaby Lake quad-core, but I could continue to use Skylake/Kaby Lake (currently 11 years old) far into the future. 3. It's unlikely that a PC with 8-core Zen 3 w/ 3D cache will feel "slow" for the foreseeable future. Not for basic usage, and for gaming, it may be able to pull 30-60 FPS out to the early 2040s (it needs to match what could be a very low-clocked ~6-core Zen 6 in a PS6 handheld). 4. If a used 5800X3D is $50 or less in the far future, that is going to be a good buy for someone. Increasing the total supply of 5800X3Ds in existence will ensure lower prices in the future. I don't know how many of the Anniversary Edition 5800X3Ds AMD is making, but it's probably at least in the tens of thousands. I strongly agree that 12-core chiplets should not be disabled into 6-cores, but this extremely vague tweet by leaker HXL suggests there could be 6-core "Olympic Ridge": https://wccftech.com/amd-zen-6-ryzen-olympic-ridge-desktop-cpus-24-20-16-12-10-8-6-core-configs/ It's not without precedent since AMD briefly sold Ryzen 3300X and 3100 quad-cores, although the non-unified Zen 2 CCD might have made that viable, and it disappeared off the market rapidly anyway. Disabling Krackan or some other APU down to 6 cores would make more sense. "Bumblebee" on desktop would make more sense. Some of the iGPUs are so weak (Krackan has 2/4/8 CUs, Bumblebee may be 4 CUs max) that they aren't likely to step on other products. I've felt for some time at launch we will only see 8/12/20/24. Any more is too many SKU's and makes things too crowded. 16 and 6 are wasteful, so though I believe we will see a 16 I expect to come much later. 10 seems likely and should show up within a more reasonable amount of time. We could see 6 but again it is very wasteful, so if we do see it I expect it will come years later like the 5500(F). Reply - usertests Thunder64 said:I've felt for some time at launch we will only see 8/12/20/24. Any more is too many SKU's and makes things too crowded. 16 and 6 are wasteful, so though I believe we will see a 16 I expect to come much later. 10 seems likely and should show up within a more reasonable amount of time. We could see 6 but again it is very wasteful, so if we do see it I expect it will come years later like the 5500(F).My preference for Olympic Ridge (the 12-core chiplet, no APUs) is 10/12/16/24. A 10-core would be a bold choice for the entry-level, helping to counter Intel's usual MT lead with E-cores. 7600X/7700X/9600X owners could be convinced to jump to a cheap 10-core. 12-core is self-explanatory, and 12-core X3D will be the most CPU needed for gaming. A 16-core would be a better use of chiplets disabled to 8 cores, than an entry-level 8-core would be. It would make a good 5900X/7900X/9900X replacement that wouldn't feel like it is missing too many cores per CCD. It's directly comparable to the previous-gen 16-core flagships. With no 20-core in the lineup, there would be a nice gap between the 16-core and the 24-core that would make the 24-core feel more "special". That's just my fanfiction lineup. We've got HXL claiming 6/8/10/12/16/20/24 which is way too crowded IMO, but if accurate, maybe it represents releases over a couple of years. But I would like to see 10/12/16/24. Reply - Thunder64 usertests said:My preference for Olympic Ridge (the 12-core chiplet, no APUs) is 10/12/16/24. A 10-core would be a bold choice for the entry-level, helping to counter Intel's usual MT lead with E-cores. 7600X/7700X/9600X owners could be convinced to jump to a cheap 10-core. 12-core is self-explanatory, and 12-core X3D will be the most CPU needed for gaming. A 16-core would be a better use of chiplets disabled to 8 cores, than an entry-level 8-core would be. It would make a good 5900X/7900X/9900X replacement that wouldn't feel like it is missing too many cores per CCD. It's directly comparable to the previous-gen 16-core flagships. With no 20-core in the lineup, there would be a nice gap between the 16-core and the 24-core that would make the 24-core feel more "special". That's just my fanfiction lineup. We've got HXL claiming 6/8/10/12/16/20/24 which is way too crowded IMO, but if accurate, maybe it represents releases over a couple of years. But I would like to see 10/12/16/24. I see the logic in that. I could see AMD doing 8 or 10 at the entry level. I think 10 would be better but I have a feeling AMD thinks people would just go for the "close enough" 10 core rather than pay for the full 12. Of course, they could do some "creative pricing" to basically force the upsell like they did with the 7900XT/7900XTX or 9070/9070 XT where it simply doesn't make sense to get the cheaper one. As for 16/24, at that point may as well go with 18/24, right? Wastes less resources and competes better with NVL. Just my thinking though. Reply