Recent rumors claim that AMD is planning to release only four Zen 4 core CPU models in the Ryzen 7000 series. This information comes from greymon55, who says that this CPU lineup will mirror AMD's Ryzen 5000 series, with the launch of four high-end models for the desktop market.
AMD's older AM4 CPU models will be targeted at the budget end of the PC market after the release of Zen 5 and AM5, while more affordable Zen 4 CPU models will arrive later.
Ryzen 7000 will first be for the high end
It appears that AMD plans to launch its Ryzen 9 7950X, Ryzen 9 7900X, Ryzen 7 7800X, and Ryzen 5 7600X CPUs first. These CPUs will likely feature sixteen, twelve, eight, and six cores, respectively. This assumes that the AMD Ryzen 7000 series will maintain the same core count as its Ryzen 5000 series counterparts.
This would mean that AMD's Ryzen 7000 series will launch without a Ryzen 7 7700X model, which would be a more affordable 8-core alternative to the Ryzen 7 7800X. This approach mirrors the original Ryzen 5000 launch, when AMD chose to release its most affordable 8-core CPU later, as it needed to launch more affordable CPU models to counter Intel's new CPU releases.
AMD's Ryzen 7000 series CPUs will not offer consumers a higher number of cores or threads. Instead, the performance improvement will be delivered through IPC increases and higher core clock speeds.
At Computex, AMD already unveiled a Ryzen 7000 series CPU that offered users an all core clock speed of over 5GHz and a single core boost speed of over 5,5GHz. AMD has also promised an 8-10% increase in IPC with its new Zen 4 CPU cores.
A higher clock speed allows AMD to complete more clock cycles per second, and a higher number of instructions per clock will allow AMD to complete more work per clock cycle. This means that AMD's Zen 4 processors will offer much more performance than the current Zen 5000-based Ryzen 3 processors.
Source: Overclok3d