Ryzen 7 Extreme Edition and Ryzen 9 4900U leaks hint that AMD is readying further nails for Intel’s coffin

AMD’s incoming Ryzen 4000 APUs have just become the subject of more leakage, which hints that there might be a Ryzen 7 Extreme Edition eight-core chip in the pipeline, alongside further spillage around a purported Ryzen 9 4900U.

The Extreme Edition was spotted by prolific Twitter leaker TUM_APISAK, and it shows an eight-core, 16-thread chip with a base clock of 1.8GHz and the ability to boost up to 4.3GHz.

This is seemingly a ‘Renoir’ APU, incoming Ryzen 4000 parts which were the subject of other recent leaks, including an eight-core chip spotted on User Benchmark, and news that a purported Ryzen 7 4700G had been identified in an Ashes of the Singularity benchmark. Clocking at a base 1.8GHz speed would seem to indicate that this APU is based on one of AMD’s existing Ryzen 4000 U-series laptop chips with a 15W TDP.

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Furthermore, as Tom’s Hardware highlighted, TUM_APISAK also brought our attention to a leaked Ryzen 9 4900U which has exactly the same clocks and core spec as the purported Ryzen 7 Extreme Edition APU. The reported boost speed of 4.3GHz would make this 100MHz faster than AMD’s existing 4800U, which can reach 4.2GHz.

Speculation aplenty

So, what’s going on here? Several theories are floating around, including that the purported 4900U is simply AMD’s 4800U, and is just a previous name before it was rebranded as the 4800U and launched. Allegedly the 4800U is actually capable of peaking at 4.3GHz speeds (briefly, using PBO or Precision Boost Overdrive), as Twitter user uzzi38 (who chimes in on a lot of Renoir stuff) theorizes (via Notebookcheck.net).

Another theory is that these are chips specially designed for PC manufacturers, or possibly even Microsoft, as Tom’s Hardware guesses – because Surface Edition APUs have been produced by AMD in the past, so perhaps this is a more generalized ‘Extreme Edition’ being made available more widely.

However, we find it difficult to believe that AMD would choose to call one of its chips an Extreme Edition given that this is a label Intel uses, and this points to a stronger than normal possibility that this rumor involves some kind of fakery.

Ultimately, we’d treat both leaks with a good deal of caution, but especially the Ryzen 7 Extreme Edition spillage. There’s been a fair bit of buzz about the 4900U on the CPU grapevine previously, and it certainly seems the more likely of the two rumors to come to fruition.

While any Ryzen 7 Extreme Edition chip may seem a remote prospect, in recent times the rumor mill has started to spin faster with references to AMD’s incoming Ryzen 4000 APUs, so we’re hopeful that we may hear more concrete info on them soon enough. Particularly considering that the previous rumor which just popped up was talking about a release date in July for an eight-core chip (but again, have your salt shaker handy there).

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