AMD Extends Socket Support for AM4 and AM5 Platforms

One of the benefits of building an AMD PC is that AMD has historically supported its processor sockets for longer than Intel does, allowing the same motherboard (and RAM kit, if you want) to power your PC through multiple CPU upgrades. Today at Computex, AMD announced chips for the current AM5 socket and the improbably-still-around AM4 socket that will help extend their lives a little further, a nod to just how expensive it has become to build a new PC or perform a major upgrade these days.

The first of these announcements is something we knew about already: the re-launch of 2022’s Ryzen 7 5800X3D, the first of AMD’s commercially available 3D V-Cache processors. Dubbed a “10th Anniversary Edition” in reference to how long Socket AM4 has been around, the re-released chip is slower than regular 8-core Ryzen 5000-series CPUs in general productivity tasks, but comes with 64MB of extra L3 cache that disproportionately benefits games. If you’re trying to use a high-end GPU with an AM4 motherboard, it could help keep your CPU from being a performance bottleneck. The 5800X3D (re-)releases on June 25 for a suggested retail price of $349, which is less than it currently costs to buy secondhand.

As for the current AM5 socket, AMD officially announced that it was extending its support to at least 2029—it was originally planned to last until 2025, and then until “2027+,” so this means between two and four years of additional support, depending on how you’re counting.

This should mean that AM5 owners can expect at least one or two more all-new generations of Ryzen processors to be compatible with their boards, though it’s always possible that AMD could decide to “support” AM5 with additional permutations of previously released chips. In any case, CPUs based on the upcoming Zen 6 architecture should be supported, and these are said to boost the Ryzen chips’ maximum number of CPU cores from 16 to 24, a sizable bump for people running heavy multicore workloads.

For people with entry-level AM5 systems they’d like to upgrade, AMD also announced one new CPU today: the Ryzen 7 7700X3D is an 8-core 3D V-Cache chip that launches on July 16 for $329, around $50 less than the 7800X3D and $110 less than the current retail price for the 9800X3D. The chip’s clock speed maxes out at 4.5 GHz, quite a bit lower than the 7800X3D’s peak of 5 GHz. But games should still benefit from the extra 64MB of cache.

“A longer platform roadmap can reduce the need for full system replacements and gives PC builders more confidence when choosing AMD Ryzen processors, AM5 motherboards and compatible memory,” reads AMD’s press release. “Our dedication to Socket AM5 reflects the same long-term commitment we made to Socket AM4.”