Why it matters: When AMD's Lisa Su said "AM4 is a great platform that will continue for many years to come," no one expected new processors to be released for it. One year later, the company launched a new CPU for the seven-year-old socket, and it looks like two more are on the horizon.

AMD may not be completely done with the AM4 platform, even as many of its engineers have been hard at work on the Ryzen 8000 series CPU family for the AM5 socket, RDNA 3.5 GPUs, Threadripper 7000 series CPUs for workstations, possibly even Arm-based CPUs for the consumer PC market.

According to well-known leaker @chi11eddog, Team Red could be preparing not one, but two new Ryzen 5000 series processors featuring 3D V-Cache tech. The unannounced CPUs will reportedly be called the Ryzen 7 5700X3D and the Ryzen 5 5500X3D, and their specs seem to follow the same formula as the Ryzen 5 5600X3D that was launched earlier this year.

Since the leak comes from the same person who broke the news about the Ryzen 5600X3D, there's a good chance that more AM4 CPUs are on the horizon. Both new CPUs are said to feature 96 megabytes of L3 Cache, which would suggest that AMD has manufactured a lot of Ryzen 5800X3D silicon that doesn't clock as high as the official spec and/or has one or two defective cores.

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The 8-core model will supposedly have a base clock speed of 3 GHz and a boost clock of 4.1 GHz, which are a fair bit lower than the 3.4 GHz base and 4.6 GHz boost clock speeds of the regular Ryzen 5700X. As for the Ryzen 5 5500X3D, it will supposedly feature the same base clock speed as the Ryzen 5700X3D and a boost clock of 4 GHz. For reference, the regular Ryzen 5500 features a base clock of 3.6 GHz and can boost up to 4.2 GHz.

Also read: Why Ryzen Was Amazing and the Haters Were All Wrong

Just like the Ryzen 5 5600X3D, the new parts could provide an upgrade path for gamers stuck with Ryzen 1000 or 2000 series CPUs, as well as a way to build a budget system for people who can't afford to go the AM5 route. After all, both the Ryzen 5800X3D and the Ryzen 5600X3D have proven quite capable of running modern AAA titles, including CPU-limited ones like Hogwarts Legacy.

That said, one potential issue that could dampen enthusiasm around new AM4 CPUs is availability. If the Ryzen 5 5600X3D launch is any indication, the new CPUs will likely be limited-run deals that you can only pick up if you live near one of 25 (soon to be 28) Microcenter stores in the US. We can only hope that AMD will think about making these CPUs available to more gamers around the world if the company ever goes ahead with launching them.

In related news, AMD has managed to gain CPU market share in recent months, fueled by strong sales of its Ryzen 7000 and 4th-gen EPYC processors. In turn, this helped the company improve its financial outlook despite lower-than-expected sales of its Radeon GPUs.