All the major motherboard makers have now introduced support for AMD’s next-gen desktop CPUs with their latest BIOS releases, and another vendor has specifically mentioned that these chips will be the Ryzen 9000 series.
If you recall, Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI have already issued new BIOSes that come with support for these inbound Zen 5 processors, and now ASRock and Biostar have joined the club in laying the groundwork for what should be Ryzen 9000.
ASRock also calls the incoming CPUs ‘Ryzen 9000’ in the release notes, just as Gigabyte did earlier this week. So, that’s the second time the family name has been let slip, and if the first was a mistake, it seems unlikely that errant lightning would strike twice.
So, at this point, it seems all but confirmed that the next-gen chips built on AMD’s Zen 5 architecture will be Ryzen 9000, although that always seemed the most likely bet (seeing as Ryzen 8000 has already been used by some existing APUs and mobile chips).
Analysis: Zen 5 is imminent
What also seems pretty clear is that the rumors about Ryzen 9000 coming close to launch must surely be on the money, as we now have five motherboard makers who have introduced initial support for these Zen 5 CPUs (in beta, mostly, at this stage). Typically, that only happens when a launch is nearing – if it was still a long way off, there’d be no need to bother bringing support in, of course.
To underline this, the press release from Biostar announcing its new BIOS – which isn’t out quite yet, but will be available for download “soon” – states that: “This update is aimed at the imminent release of AMD’s next-generation CPUs, ensuring that Biostar motherboards are primed to unleash the full potential of these cutting-edge processors.”
Note that mention of the “imminent” release of Zen 5 chips, which is quite a strong word to use. Yes, press releases often couch things in more outlandish or exaggerated terms, to be fair, but this isn’t Biostar’s own product, so the observation of the CPUs being imminent is something we can take as another hint that we could see Ryzen 9000 sooner than expected.
There was talk of a very early launch for Zen 5 desktop processors this year, but the consensus from the grapevine seems to have settled on Q3 as the release timeframe. Before they go on sale, we might see the CPUs revealed at Computex though, which happens in June – not far away now.
All signs point to a Q3 launch now – perhaps even July – and that’ll be trouble for Intel, which is rumored to be struggling somewhat to get its rival next-gen CPUs, Arrow Lake, out before the end of the year.
Via Wccftech