The Ryzen 8000 series will be the name given to AMD’s desktop part for the next-generation “Zen 5” architecture, according to one of its Meet the Experts presentations to retail channel sellers. This is an interesting development because the company is known for skipping a thousand-number sequence every generation for its mainstream desktop series. For example, it skipped the nomenclature for the Ryzen 4000 series between the Ryzen 3000 “Vermeer” and Ryzen 5000 “Vermeer” based on “Zen 2” and more recently between “Vermeer” and the Ryzen 7000 “Raphael” based on “Zen 4”. AMD’s upcoming mainstream desktop processor, code-named “Granite Ridge,” is anticipated to have up to 16 “Zen 5” CPU cores spread across up to two CCDs. With the possible exception of an upgrade to accommodate faster DDR5 memory rates, it is anticipated that the CPU I/O (and its 6 nm cIOD) will remain substantially same.

The first mention of “Navi 3.5” is another significant reveal. This suggests a generational upgrade to the “Navi 3.0” generation (Radeon RX 7000 series, RDNA3 graphics architecture), or perhaps a series-wide die-shrink to a new foundry node like TSMC 4 nm or even 3 nm, which frees up headroom to increase clock speeds. AMD’s current GPU product stack is undoubtedly a bit of a jumble. Although the “Navi 31” can compete with NVIDIA’s premium SKUs like the RTX 4080, the company plans to introduce the slightly faster RX 7950 series to take on the RTX 4090; With its recently announced RX 7600 being based on older 6 nm foundry tech and performing a segment lower than the RTX 4060 Ti, the company’s performance-segment and mid-range GPUs may have drastically missed their performance targets to prove competitive against NVIDIA’s AD104- and AD106-based RTX 4070 series and RTX 4060 series.