My best guess is that we’ll hear something in the fall, with shipments starting in December. But that’s purely a guess, and I’m hoping for earlier. Framework skipped Ryzen 8000 because it was a nothingburger, plus they were busy getting the Framework 16 built, but Ryzen AI 300 is a significant upgrade (Zen 5 CPU, RDNA 3.5 GPU, plus the huge improvement in the NPU that meets Copilot+ requirements) so it’s worth doing. Again guessing, we’ll get the upgrade for the FW13 first, with the FW16 following a couple of months later because it’s so close on the heels of the original shipments.
Normally a new Intel motherboard would have been released earlier in the year. The 12th and 13th generation upgrades both were. I think this one was delayed because Framework just couldn’t get the chips until now; Intel’s ability to make them has been limited. and Intel prioritizes its big OEMs.
Framework is an AMD strategic partner, so access to the new processors won’t be an issue.
For me, it will be a bit too soon to upgrade again. (I upgraded from 11th gen to Ryzen 7000 last year.) I’ll probably wait for RDNA 5, which will be a much bigger leap in graphics performance than RDNA 3.5. Currently that’s expected to come next year in what will presumably now be called Ryzen AI 400, but if it doesn’t come until 2026 so be it.