AMD Zen 4 Ryzen 7000 Has 8–10% IPC Uplift, More than 35% Overall Performance Gain

AMD CEO Lisa Su’s Zen 4 teaser of the Ryzen 7000 processors at Computex 2022 was impressive, but the news that the processors would feature ‘only’ a >15% improvement in single-threaded performance left some enthusiasts feeling a bit underwhelmed. During today’s Financial Analyst Day 2022, AMD clarified that it is targeting an 8 to 10% increase in IPC for the Zen 4 processors and that the company is targeting larger gains in single-threaded performance in some types of workloads.

AMD also clarified that Zen 4 processors would have >25% performance-per-watt and >35% overall performance improvements. The company says the Zen 4 chips will also have significant clock frequency improvements, which isn’t surprising given that it has already demoed a Ryzen 7000 processor running at 5.5 GHz on all cores (albeit not with all cores under load). Zen 4 will also have up to a 25% increase in memory bandwidth per core. AMD also made several other announcements today, which you can find listed at the end of the article.

AMD’s Zen 4 disclosures today help clarify the company’s performance targets after the initial reveal. AMD’s original projections of a >15% improvement in single-threaded work led to some consternation because single-threaded performance comes as a combination of both frequency and the all-important IPC (instruction per cycle) throughput, and the relatively low single-threaded performance threshold didn’t seem to leave much room for IPC improvement. However, AMD’s clarification that the IPC gain will range from 8 to 10%, dependent upon workload, is a bit more encouraging.

Whip in the company’s claims of significant frequency improvements for the 5nm Zen 4 processors, and we should see much larger gains than the baseline 15% gain in single-threaded performance in some types of workloads — remember, >15% is a “greater than” value.

AMD also shared a slide showing a greater than 25% performance-per-watt and greater than 35% gain in overall performance in a multi-threaded Cinebench benchmark. This benchmark used a 16-core 32-thread Ryzen 7000 desktop PC processor against the 16-core Zen 3 Ryzen 9 5950X. The slide is a bit misleading as it uses a non-zero axis that amplifies the gain, so keep that in mind. 

AMD CEO Lisa Su’s Zen 4 teaser of the Ryzen 7000 processors at Computex 2022 was impressive, but the news that the processors would feature ‘only’ a >15% improvement in single-threaded performance left some enthusiasts feeling a bit underwhelmed. During today’s Financial Analyst Day 2022, AMD clarified that it is targeting an 8 to 10% increase in IPC for the Zen 4 processors and that the company is targeting larger gains in single-threaded performance in some types of workloads.

AMD also clarified that Zen 4 processors would have >25% performance-per-watt and >35% overall performance improvements. The company says the Zen 4 chips will also have significant clock frequency improvements, which isn’t surprising given that it has already demoed a Ryzen 7000 processor running at 5.5 GHz on all cores (albeit not with all cores under load). Zen 4 will also have up to a 25% increase in memory bandwidth per core. AMD also made several other announcements today, which you can find listed at the end of the article.

AMD’s Zen 4 disclosures today help clarify the company’s performance targets after the initial reveal. AMD’s original projections of a >15% improvement in single-threaded work led to some consternation because single-threaded performance comes as a combination of both frequency and the all-important IPC (instruction per cycle) throughput, and the relatively low single-threaded performance threshold didn’t seem to leave much room for IPC improvement. However, AMD’s clarification that the IPC gain will range from 8 to 10%, dependent upon workload, is a bit more encouraging.

Whip in the company’s claims of significant frequency improvements for the 5nm Zen 4 processors, and we should see much larger gains than the baseline 15% gain in single-threaded performance in some types of workloads — remember, >15% is a “greater than” value.

AMD also shared a slide showing a greater than 25% performance-per-watt and greater than 35% gain in overall performance in a multi-threaded Cinebench benchmark. This benchmark used a 16-core 32-thread Ryzen 7000 desktop PC processor against the 16-core Zen 3 Ryzen 9 5950X. The slide is a bit misleading as it uses a non-zero axis that amplifies the gain, so keep that in mind.