As many talks are already going on at Computex 2022, an addition to all those talks is that AMD’s A4 motherboard platform was thought to be a goner as AMD was launching the A5 motherboard platform. Still, at Computex, AMD confirmed that A4 is not going anywhere and will be continuously used in some upcoming projects. And it might hint toward AMD launching a different variation of Zen 4, which will feature the A4 motherboard platform.
AMD Allegedly Considering Ryzen ‘Zen 4’ Launch With DDR4 Support on Existing AM4 Motherboards
All the talks are from rumors; there is no actual definite saying about anything. And talking about leaks, Greymon55 quoting the words of an AMD CPU reseller, stated that AMD might be trying to bring back the Zen 4 architecture series CPUs on the A4 motherboard platform. But as mentioned earlier, it is only a rumor, but it will be pretty interesting to witness such a change.
According to an AMD CPU reseller, AMD plans to have AM4 DDR4 compatible ZEN4 products.but it's just a plan, not sure if it will be available.
— Greymon55 (@greymon55) June 17, 2022
Considering all the things, Zen 4 might not have the DDR4 IMC as AMD already announced that DDR5 memory support will be there for Zen 4 CPUs, either Ryzen or EPYC. As the AM4 is an all DDR4 platform to bring back Zen 4 on the existing AM4 motherboards, the red team would likely have to make unique variants of the chip that house the necessary DDR4 IMC.
Along with the existing cIOD (client IO die), which supports PCIe Gen 4.0 and DDR4, Zen 4 chiplets might feature in the new Ryzen CPUs for the AM4 motherboards, according to the additional information shared by TechPowerUp. AMD has its eyes on some exciting breakthroughs in the lower-end segment as the AMD’s Ryzen 7000 ‘Zen 4’ lineup will likely enter the high-end part first. So, the company’s attention is on the low-end and mainstream segment area because AM5 with DDR5 will not offer what it will be presenting at the start of the journey.
As AMD's Robert Hallock confirmed in an interview that AM4 and AM5 would co-exist, and there might be new CPUs for the existing platforms:
"AM4 + AM5 co-exist, still markets adopting AM4, from a global point of view, AM4 has a lot of life. There might be new CPUs for AM4, but nothing specific is planned now."
With both DDR5 & DDR4 support and featuring full support on the existing 600 series motherboards, Intel’s Raptor Lake will indeed be giving a tough competition to AMD. Knowingly, AMD will come at a tough spot competing against it. AMD quickly launched a slew of mainstream Ryzen 5000 parts & the top-end 5800X3D CPU to compete with and tackle Alder Lake. This time, to keep the Intel’s mainstream Raptor Lake CPUs at their limits, AMD will have to do something a lot better, and having more X3D parts on the existing Zen 3 core architecture or a version of Zen 4 with DDR4 compatibility are probably the only ways to bring this in action. Considering the rivalry between AMD and Intel, this will be an important goal for AMD as they will be looking at keeping their products on top and limiting Intel’s move. Still, you can only do it by taking necessary measures, and everyone is looking out for how AMD will take this on.
If AMD goes according to the events as planned, up to 8 cores and 16 threads can be expected to be seen as the Zen 4 Ryzen CPUs for AM4 socket won’t be hitting the high-end market. For the people who want to hold on to the Zen 4 platforms, it will be an interesting scenario to watch and look at how AMD will be utilizing its AM4 user base. These are all rumors, and all eyes are already on AMD.
