This post is also available in: Deutsch (German)

AMD is updating its entire product range this year. Ryzen 3000, the chipset X570 with PCIe 4.0 and Radeon Navi will be released on July 7th.

All eyes on AMD with excitement

2019 will probably be a very good year for AMD. The company has several products at the start, which could hit the market like a bomb. The focus is on the switch to 7nm technology, which replaces 12nm and 14nm. From now on, AMD sets the processors with Zen 2 as well as the graphics cards with Vega and Navi to 7nm and lets TSMC manufacture instead of Globalfoundries. The switch to the smaller structure width opens up possibilities in terms of energy efficiency on the one hand, but also a significant increase in performance at the same time. In addition, the chips are smaller and easier to produce. With the switch to 7nm, AMD is also ahead of the competition in the form of Intel and Nvidia. While Intel continues to have problems switching to 10nm, Nvidia uses 12nm with Turing, which is why the chips are relatively large.

AMD is a kind of pioneer in the 7nm range. This is also reflected in the plans that the company is pursuing. This year, the first 7nm GPUs with Vega 20 chips came onto the market. The Radeon Instinct MI50 and MI60 are intended for the server market, but with the Radeon VII there is also an offshoot for the consumer sector. The next AMD GPUs will be codenamed Navi and are expected to be launched in the third quarter of 2019. The processors Epyc 2 alias Rome and Ryzen 3000 will be launched in the middle of the year. Both are based on a new chiplet design that connects a management chip in the middle with several 7nm chips containing only the processor cores. This means that more cores are possible again, in the case of Epyc 2 up to 64, while Ryzen 3000 will come with up to 16 cores. The X570 chipset, which is bringing PCIe 4.0 to the end customer market for the first time, also comes with Ryzen 3000. Now we have the first information about the launch.

Navi, Ryzen 3000 and X570 on July 7th

There was little concrete information at the last events about a precise launch. AMD deliberately kept a low profile here, possibly also because delays may still occur. According to a report by RedGamingTech there will be a big date for the launch of three new product series from AMD. Already with the Radeon VII, the launch date was deliberately the 7th of February to underline the seven in the name. The 7th of July 2019 (i.e. the 7.7.2019) even contains the seven twice, which would be a genius thing in marketing terms. RedGamingTech has received the date from unspecified sources. Accordingly, on the one hand the Ryzen 3000 processors, codenamed Matisse, together with the matching X570 chipset and new motherboards start on the date. With them, PCIe 4.0 is available for the consumer market for the first time. However, Ryzen 3000 should still run on the AM4 socket and be compatible with the previous chipsets and motherboards.

It gets more exciting with the Radeon Navi generation. The new generation is also said to be launched on July 7th. However, the source is not certain about the graphics cards, as AMD appears to be under pressure from TSMC’s heavily utilized 7nm production capacity. It is therefore possible that the graphics cards will officially be on sale on 7th of July, but only a few will be available, as was the case with the Radeon VII. A previous leak said that Navi is generally delayed until October 2019. Possibly a kind of double event will take place on July 7th, during which Ryzen 3000 will be released into the market, but Radeon Navi will also be introduced first and will only be sold later. A high availability of the Navi graphics cards would be very important for AMD, since the generation should cover above all the mainstream range, where the enterprise can make the most profit through high sales. According to an earlier leak, graphics cards with the names RX 3080, RX 3070 and RX 3060 will come onto the market, competing against the RTX 2070, RTX 2060 and GTX 1660 Ti.

Presentation at Computex 2019

A market launch in July would also make another important date possible. The Computex, which will take place at the beginning of June, has been traded for a long time as a presentation date for at least Ryzen 3000. With the launch on July the 7th, AMD could at least present the new processors, if not also Navi, to the press at a Computex event. The July date could reach a much larger audience than would be the case at a separate press event.