AMD was rumored to be planning to have its Ryzen 7000 processors launch – as in hit the shelves, and be available to buy – on September 15, but a fresh leak suggests that Team Red has pushed back that date, and the intended new timeframe happens to coincide with the expected Intel Raptor Lake unveiling.
That’s the word from sources who spoke to Wccftech, who believe that AMD has shifted the launch of next-gen CPUs based on Zen 4 to late September.
The contention is that the new date is September 27, which as mentioned is the day on which Intel has its Innovation event, and is rumored to be readying our first glimpse at next-gen Raptor Lake processors. Note that for Intel, this will just be a reveal, ahead of sales kicking off in October (in theory); whereas for AMD, this will supposedly be when the actual products are on sale.
AMD’s reveal will come much earlier, at the end of this month if rumors are right, on August 29 to be precise. The thinking is that we’ll be treated to a quartet of new CPUs: the Ryzen 9 7950X, 7900X, and 7700X plus 7600X.
Analysis: Running interference with Raptor – or something else?
If true – and we’d be very careful about assuming it is – this would be a pretty confident move for AMD on the face of it. In effect, by shifting the date to coincide with the Raptor Lake launch, it’s pretty much a direct challenge; a throwing down the gauntlet, if you will, and the assumption would be that this is how confident AMD is in Zen 4.
After all, if AMD had any doubt here, surely the company would want to get Ryzen 7000 out there before Raptor Lake, with the window of opportunity to rack up a couple of weeks of sales (if it went with that previous rumored date of September 15), before anyone knew about the relative power of Intel’s 13th-gen range.
Unless there’s another reason for this apparent pushback. We have also heard that AMD wants to get large volumes of the initial Zen 4 CPUs out there, so maybe production hasn’t gone as swiftly as Team Red envisaged, and it needs more time to ensure high stock levels from the get-go.
Either way, this should be music to the ears of consumers, if you think about it: either AMD is highly confident in its Ryzen 7000 silicon, or it wants to make sure there’s plentiful supply (which would certainly be refreshing at launch time, particularly for the top-end Ryzen 9 models). Maybe even both of the above will be true, but we shouldn’t get carried away with rumors, as we’ve all been burnt before on that score.
There is another way to look at the purported date shift, however, namely that AMD doesn’t want to give Intel the chance to evaluate Ryzen 7000 CPUs for comparisons with Raptor Lake at the latter’s unveiling. Ultimately, we can’t be sure of the reasoning here – if any – but our personal feeling for a while now, based on the various leaks which have sprung up in recent times, is that the race between Zen 4 and Raptor Lake is going to be a pretty close call.