AMD is seemingly a staunch fan of its AM4 socket as the brand aims to release more products on the successful and long-lived platform. The Red Team is preparing to launch XT-branded chips on its Ryzen 5000 series CPUs for the first time.
During the AI PC summit in Beijing, AMD presented its roadmap for the Chinese market. In it, we spot the Ryzen 7 8700F and Ryzen 5 8400F which are believed to be missing the iGPU. There’s also the Ryzen 6 5600GT and 5500GT based on the Cezanne architecture used in APUs, plus today’s subject, Ryzen 5000XT CPUs.
Previously, AMD has used the XT suffix on higher-clocked processor models released about a year later as a refresh for existing X and non-X chips. Generally, you could expect a slight clock boost – 100MHz to 200MHz – but nothing groundbreaking.
If history holds true, this means upcoming Ryzen 5000 XT processors will likely also be overclocked versions of their respective models. For example, a hypothetical Ryzen 5 5600XT should once more offer 6 cores/12 threads at 4.7GHz or 4.8GHz boost frequency. Ongoing manufacturing optimisations probably help AMD eke out more clock speed.
While these XT CPUs may sound redundant or pointless, the Zen 3 architecture is still plenty fast. This is especially so for budget-conscious buyers who are not looking for the latest and greatest.
For now, it is unclear if these CPUs will be exclusive to the Chinese market or not. Judging by the recent global launch of the Radeon RX 7900 GRE, which debuted in China, it wouldn’t be surprising to see these CPUs available worldwide. That said, pricing needs to be really good to attract new users to a last-gen platform.