If you’re in the market for a new Ryzen PC, beware: AMD is updating some of its old Ryzen processors with fresh branding and updated model numbers and passing them off as new processors.
AMD has carved out a number of “new” Ryzen 100-series chips alongside a pair of new Ryzen 10-series model numbers. However, the chips are apparently identical to a number of older Zen 2 and Zen 3+ processors announced years ago in 2022. The difference is that these new Ryzens “launched” in the past few weeks.
AMD is calling these new chips the Ryzen 7 170, the Ryzen 7 160, the Ryzen 5 150, the Ryzen 5 130, the Ryzen 3 110, and the Ryzen 5 40 and the Ryzen 3 30, 3Dcenter.org reported, citing a post from “Gray” on Twitter. The updated chips are simply rebadges of Zen 3+ (Rembrandt-R) and Zen 2 (Mendocino) chips that AMD had launched years earlier. The chip maker is calling them the “10-series” and “100-series” chips.
As far as I can tell, the new processors are exactly the same as the older versions, both of which appear on AMD’s website. For example, the “new” Ryzen 5 40 is listed as a “Mendocino” core with four cores, eight threads, 2MB of L2/4MB of L3 cache, and at speeds of up to 4.3GHz. It’s manufactured on a 6nm FINFET process at TSMC, so it’s not even a process shrink. It appears identical to the older Ryzen 5 7520U, which also appears on AMD’s site with what appears to be identical specifications.
Well, except one. The “new” chips launched in September and October 2025, while the older chips date back as far as 2022.
AMD had not responded to a request for comment by press time.
To be fair, AMD is not the first to go down this path. As WCCFtech noted, Intel quietly launched the Core 5 120 processor earlier this year, which is just a rebadged “Raptor Lake” processor that the company launched in the third quarter of 2025. Intel has said for some time now that customers prefer its older processors in favor of the latest AI-assisted chips.
Still, the actions by both CPU makers are confusing at best and deceptive at worst. It certainly seems unlikely that a buyer of a standalone CPU wouldn’t research what they’re buying, but what about someone looking for a deal on a “new” laptop? If someone were to buy a new car marketed as a “2026” model when it really just was a 2023 version, are they really buying a “new” car?
You may not need AMD’s decoder wheel to make sense of these new model numbers. But if these new processors appear in laptops and on store shelves, it gives new meaning to “buyer beware.” You could be buying outdated technology presented as the latest and greatest AMD has to offer.