AMD's High-End Ryzen 9 7000 Zen 4 CPUs Are Allegedly Due For A Big Power Jump
Back at Computex, AMD announced some extra details about the AM5 socket that its Zen 4 processors will slot into. In case you missed that information, Socket AM5 will be a Landing Grid Array (LGA) like Threadripper and competitor Intel's processors, and it will bring support for DDR5 memory and PCIe 5.0. It'll also be compatible with Socket AM4 CPU coolers, as long as they use the "two clips" mechanism for the included plastic frame (through-board mounting mechanisms will need a new backplate).
While not the highest TDP that AMD has ever offered in a desktop CPU—that honor goes to the 220W "Centurion" FX-9000-series processors released on Socket AM3+ back in 2013—it's still higher than any Socket AM4 CPU. It would have been a reasonable guess at that time that the first 170 W Ryzen CPUs would be from the "Ryzen 9" tier, but now we have corroboration of that thinking from regular leaker kopite7kimi.
It would be easy to bemoan the ever-rising power demands of computer processors, but remember that AMD has affirmatively stated its commitment to efficiency, and that the company seems quite confident in Zen 4. It's possible that the new chips are fast enough to the point that they are still more power-efficient than Zen 3 despite drawing quite a bit more power. With the architecture refinements, new socket, and die shrink, we're certainly expecting big things from Zen 4.