Something to look forward to: While AMD has said that Zen 3 is on track to launch this year, the company could have been referring only to its Epyc data center chips, with the consumer processors not arriving until 2021. Now, team red has confirmed that Zen 3 for consumers will launch within the next five months.
Back in June, AMD refuted rumors that Zen 3 would be delayed into next year. Rather than being a Covid-19 issue, it was claimed that Ryzen 3000's success meant AMD didn't want to impact sales of a top-selling product. The arrival of the admittedly underwhelming Ryzen 3000XT CPUs also suggested that the next-gen desktop chips would launch in 2021. AMD, however, denied it, calling the rumor "inaccurate."
Earlier this month, AMD boss Dr. Lisa Su reiterated that Zen 3 is on track to release later this year, adding that the architecture is "looking great in the labs." But the company has always avoided specifying whether it's talking about the consumer or the enterprise chips---or both. Its roadmap already confirmed that the Zen 3-based Epyc Milan data center chips are coming in 2020, causing concern among PC fans eager to upgrade.
But in a blog post from Rick Bergman, AMD's executive vice president of Computing and Graphics confirms that the first Zen 3 client (consumer) CPUs are launching this year.
"So, what's next for AMD in the PC space? Well, I cannot share too much, but I can say our high-performance journey continues with our first "Zen 3" Client processor on-track to launch later this year. I will wrap by saying you haven't seen the best of us yet...," reads the post.
Bergman never specified when the Zen 3 consumer chips would arrive, or whether the Ryzen 4000 (Vermeer) desktop processors would get here first, rather than their laptop equivalents. Either way, it looks almost certain that we'll be able to buy the new AMD chips for our builds sooner rather than later.