AMD Zen 6 Discussion

[David_Schroth]

Getting this party started -

If we look back in time, a new Zen architecture has arrived reliably about once every two years, which puts the Zen 6 chips as being due in Late 2026 given Zen 5's mid to late 2024 launch and will likely remain on the AM5 platform. Engineering samples are said to be out for testing with up to a dozen cores per CCD. To up the ante a bit more, the 7GHz barrier may possibly be handled by Zen 6 as well.

 

[NTMBK]

SMT4 baybeeee

 

[Grimlakin]

SMT4 baybeeee

This has been bandied about for some time now... Do I want a 24 core, 96 thread system... I just dunno....

 

[NTMBK]

Sorry, it's an old Anandtech in joke I absolutely don't expect SMT4, because at that point you start adding more resources prioritising SMT to the detriment of per-core performance. There's some utility as a licensing hack for software that is charged per core, rather than per thread, but that's a serious niche.

I do wonder what level of single thread performance we'll get at reasonable cache sizes and clock speeds. Just from the timing, I expect to see Zen 6 in the next generation of consoles, so it's probably going to set the gaming baseline performance level for the next 10 years.

 

[Marees]

This has been bandied about for some time now

SMT4 on client is like nuclear fusion. Always around the corner

 

[DrMrLordX]

Maybe don't expect 7 GHz. It'll probably be something more conservative than that. There's still a lot we don't know. Perhaps if some of the acerbic leakers follow us over here we can get a repeat of stuff leaked/teased elsewhere. Or people can just mine the Zen6 speculation thread from AT for fodder.

That being said, it would be very sad if Medusa Halo doesn't become a thing. An upgraded Strix Halo sounds kinda neat actually.

 

[Asterox]

Maybe don't expect 7 GHz. It'll probably be something more conservative than that. There's still a lot we don't know. Perhaps if some of the acerbic leakers follow us over here we can get a repeat of stuff leaked/teased elsewhere. Or people can just mine the Zen6 speculation thread from AT for fodder.

That being said, it would be very sad if Medusa Halo doesn't become a thing. An upgraded Strix Halo sounds kinda neat actually.

The ceiling for single-core (maybe even two CPU cores boost)will probably be around 6.5-6.7ghz. This refers to the strongest or best Zen 6 CPU-s.

 

[LazyGamer]

Overclockers are currently hitting ~5.8GHz using bus clock and BIOS trickery on the best Zen 5 samples they can find (including X3D variants). AMD could easily stabilize higher clockspeeds by design IMO. 6.0GHz as a stock all-core might be reasonable for top-end samples.

Much more interested in a new memory controller though, personally. With 12 cores per CCD, they're going to need to get >DDR5-8000 stable across the board, i.e. out of the box with EXPO. I assume CUDIMM support will be included and help with this.

 

[LeRoy_Blanchard]

I just want 12 cores per CCD with more L3 on the CCD. Hopefully its not a 1:1 ratio on the increase and we get a little bump in L3 too.

 

[markfw]

I just want 12 cores per CCD with more L3 on the CCD. Hopefully its not a 1:1 ratio on the increase and we get a little bump in L3 too.

and a little more memory speed with less latency....

 

[LazyGamer]

and a little more memory speed with less latency....

They'd need to abandon their multi-CCD configuration that adds another interconnect stage if they want to drop latency any significant amount really.