Rumor: AMD no longer launching Zen 3+ or any refreshed Ryzen CPUs in 2021

According to recent rumors, AMD may have canceled its Ryzen Zen 3+ lineup (codenamed Warhol) which was expected to release in Q4 2021. The Warhol lineup of CPUs (Ryzen 6000 Series) was planned to be a refresh of Zen 3, however, there may have been a sudden change of plans. This news comes from PC hardware-focused YouTuber RedGamingTech, who claims that several internal sources have provided him with this information.

A couple of sources, which have been reliable in the past, suggest that Warhol has been removed from AMD’s internal roadmap. Additionally, there has been barely any mention of Warhol as of late, leading to the belief that plans have been scrapped. This could mean that AMD won’t be releasing any new Ryzen CPUs in 2021 and we may have to wait until Zen 4 in 2022 to see anything new.

One possible reason for AMD’s alleged canceled lineup could be due to the minimal performance increase when upgrading from Zen 3 to Zen 3+. The increased instructions per clock (IPC) was reported to be anywhere from 3% to 10% on average depending on the applications. Unless AMD were to combine that small boost with something more significant like a shift to a 6nm node, it would make more sense for AMD to skip the refresh and jump directly to Zen 4. This strategy would offer a larger bump in performance with a new architecture that also supports DDR5 memory. Another major contributing factor could be the current silicon chip shortage which is causing AMD to struggle with restocking its existing Ryzen 5000 Series lineup.

Zen 3+ was never a guarantee, and likely got cut to focus resources on more Zen 3 production and finishing Zen 4.

Other complications

Intel has one of its most ambitious CPUs releasing later in 2021 in the form of Alder Lake which is expected to be more powerful than the supposedly canceled AMD Zen 3+, especially while gaming. Intel’s CPUs will also feature a new big.LITTLE hybrid design and PCI Express 5.0. If the Zen 3+ is truly canceled, AMD’s Ryzen 6000 series may have to wait until 2022 to compete with Alder Lake. However, this information is based on rumors and should be taken with a grain of salt for the time being.