The processor market has undergone significant changes in recent years, and AMD played a significant role in these changes. The last generation AM4 socket featured long-term support, and AMD has delivered on that commitment. Introduced in 2017, socket AM4 continues to receive support to this day, with new processor releases planned for the coming year.
Buyers considering upgrading are looking at AMD’s plans as it could mean lower upgrade costs in the future. AMD’s main competitor Intel, made no promises to keep socket support as long as AMD, and if not for the 14th-gen Core Raptor Lake update, this generation would likely be over by now. Intel’s next platform is the LGA-1851 platform, which is said to support at least three generations: Arrow Lake, Arrow Lake Refresh and most likely a series Panther Lake.
AMD’s adoption of the new socket AM5 was slow, largely due to the cost of upgrading to new processors, which also required new motherboards and DDR5 memory, which was not cheap at the time. Now that new memory prices have hit their lowest prices to date, the AM5 motherboard range has dropped below $100, and Ryzen 7000 prices have dropped nearly 20% since launch, the incentive is on AMD’s side and gamers are taking notice.
David McAfee, AMD’s Corporate Vice President and General Manager of Customer Channels, met with Briony Hannam from OverclockersUK, one of the largest computer hardware retailers in England who have been working with AMD for many years.
One of the questions about socket AM5 is whether AMD plans to stick to its long-term plans or whether there are any changes in this regard. To which McAfee replied that AMD will indeed keep the AM5 socket as long as it can. The company intends to support it in 2025 and beyond.
Obviously this is great news, but it should be noted that this is not particularly new information. AMD planned from the beginning to support the platforms until 2025 or beyond, and they clearly haven’t changed their plans. It remains to be seen how long it will be supported, and whether AMD plans to release new processors after the release of the new socket, possibly AM6.
Socket AM4 can expect support for at least 6-7 years. Rumors suggest that AMD will continue to offer new 5000X3D and 5000GT processors for this socket next year. AMD is also looking to improve memory support on the platform. The series has already received many updates in this area, either through support for 24/48/64 GB memory or by increasing data transfer speeds.
