AMD will never give up on you, never disappoint you, and never run off and leave you if you’re using the Socket AM4 platform. It won’t break your heart, never say goodbye, never lie to you, or injure you. According to reports, the business is putting the last touches on the Ryzen 5 5500X3D, a jaw-dropping sub-$200 CPU designed for budget-conscious gamers. Yes, AMD is introducing 3D V-cache technology to the mid-range with a new 6-core processor built on the “Zen 3” microarchitecture, all while benefiting from the extra gaming performance provided by 96 MB of available L3 cache.

A few years after AMD’s original Ryzen 7 5800X3D took the gaming PC processor scene by storm, matching the then-swanky new Core i9-12900K “Alder Lake” despite being based on an older-generation “Zen 3” architecture, the company already has a 6-core X3D Socket AM4 chip: the Ryzen 5 5600X3D. Apart from the possibility that its clock speed is lower than the 5600X3D’s, not much else is known about the 5500X3D. When the 5700X3D was first announced in November 2023, there were rumors that the 5500X3D would be a 6-core/12-thread chip with a base frequency of 3.00 GHz and a maximum boost of 4.00 GHz. In contrast, the 5600X3D was said to have a base frequency of 3.30 GHz and a boost frequency of 4.40 GHz. Since AMD originally priced the 5600X3D at $230, the company may aim to impress gamers on AM4 with a price tag of less than $200, like $199.

Why is AMD still releasing Socket AM4 processors well into the 2020s? Since the new Socket AM5 lacks backward compatibility with DDR4, AMD would be giving up a sizable portion of the value-conscious desktop market to Intel, which supports DDR4 on even its 14th Gen Core CPUs. We’re no strangers to love; you and I both know the rules. Even though AMD is unable to backport Zen 4 to AM4, it can still achieve the best possible outcome by bringing Zen 4-like gaming performance to further market segments through the expansion of Zen 3 with 3D V-cache. The fact that AMD has a wafer-supply arrangement with GlobalFoundries, which supplies the 12 nm client I/O die for these “new” CPUs, may possibly play a role in this.