[News] AMD Reportedly Weighs Reviving Older Zen 3 Chips as DDR5 Prices Push Up PC Upgrade Costs

As memory shortages continue to drive costs higher, chipmakers are reassessing their strategies. According to Tom’s Hardware, David McAfee, AMD’s Corporate Vice President and General Manager of the Client Channel Business, said at CES 2026 that the company could consider reviving older AM4 desktop products, potentially including Ryzen 5000-series processors and Zen 3–based APUs.

As cited by the report, McAfee noted that AMD may reintroduce products within the AM4 ecosystem to address demand from gamers looking for a meaningful performance upgrade on existing systems without having to rebuild their entire PCs. The report explains that moving to newer platforms typically requires the purchase of higher-priced DDR5 memory and a new motherboard, as both AMD and Intel’s latest processors rely on new sockets.

While remarks from a single executive do not constitute a formal company directive, the idea appears reasonable. The report adds that AMD’s internal telemetry indicates a significant portion of its user base is still running Ryzen 2000- and 3000-series CPUs.

McAfee also pointed out that many retail partners are seeing increased demand for CPU-only purchases, suggesting that consumers are opting for newer—but not the latest—processors to achieve noticeable performance gains on existing platforms. This behavior reflects mounting cost pressures, as a full platform upgrade can easily exceed $1,000 once a new CPU, motherboard, and 32 GB of DDR5 memory are included.

Alongside reports that AMD is weighing a revival of its AM4 lineup, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has also hinted that the company may consider bringing its latest AI technologies to older-generation GPUs, Tom’s Hardware reports. With DDR5 memory prices surging, SSD costs also rising, and NVIDIA’s flagship RTX 5090 commanding prices of up to $4,000 at some retailers, the report adds that the environment remains challenging for PC builders.

Read more

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(Photo credit: AMD)