At CES 2026 in Las Vegas, AMD Corporate VP of Product David McAfee reported that the company is exploring the possibility of resuming production of desktop processors based on the Zen 3 architecture for the AM4 platform. The statement was made during a meeting with Tom’s Hardware journalists — shortly after a similar question was asked of NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, who admitted the possibility of bringing back old GPUs with new technologies.
According to McAfee, AMD is "actively exploring the possibility of bringing some products back into the AM4 ecosystem to satisfy the demand of gamers who want to upgrade their systems without having to build a new one from scratch." Most likely, this refers to the possible release of additional batches of Ryzen 5000 and G-series APUs based on the Zen 3 architecture.
Statistics confirm the relevance of such a move. According to Adrenalin software data, a significant share of users still utilize Ryzen 2000 and Ryzen 3000 processors. AMD's retail partners also note an increase in sales of previous-generation CPUs — many owners of older systems prefer to upgrade only the processor, avoiding the costs of purchasing DDR5 memory and an AM5 motherboard.
McAfee clarified that his comment is not an official announcement of Zen 3's return, but confirmed that the matter "is indeed under active development." If the decision is made, AMD may release limited batches of updated Zen 3 chips to reduce pressure on the components market and support the mainstream segment.
Meanwhile, the situation in the memory market remains tense. The rise in DDR5 costs, caused by shortages, has become one of the key reasons for the increasing price of PC builds. DDR4 is also becoming more expensive, but manufacturers are trying to stabilize the situation: Samsung has canceled production cuts, and SK hynix has increased production volumes at its plant in Wuxi. Analysts, however, doubt that these measures will be sufficient to curb DDR5 prices in 2026.