Team red has officially revealed their new Ryzen 7000 series of processors, along with the new AM5 socket standard, with four different models launching on the 27th of September this year. 

The initial launch line-up will include the 6-core Ryzen 5 7600X for $299, an 8-core Ryzen 7 7700X for $399, and the Ryzen 9 7900X for $549. This puts the pricing of the new CPUs roughly on-par with previous generations of Ryzen CPUs, with the 7950X even promising to be around $100 cheaper.

The new chips are based on the Zen 4 architecture, which will finally deliver max boost clock speeds above 5GHz on Ryzen, along with new AI acceleration and a doubling of the L2 cache. This is backed up by the new AM5 socket, which will require DDR5 RAM. The new chips are also manufactured using a new 5nm process that promises to provide more performance per watt and more power efficiency for gamers.

According to AMD, the new CPUs will be roughly 29% faster than their equivalent 5000 series models in single-threaded workloads, which is great news for gamers, especially those who are still playing older titles. 

The lower-end Ryzen 7 chips won't be arriving until next year, unfortunately, so if you are holding out for the more affordable options in the lineup, you may be waiting a little while. The good news is that AMD hasn't entirely abandoned AM4 just yet, and promises to continue selling processors based on the old socket for the time being.

AMD have also committed to supporting the new AM5 socket standard through 2025 "and beyond," so its great to see that, much like last time, motherboards will be able to support newer and newer processors for some time to come.