Leaked 256-core Zen 6c EPYC CPU destroys Zen 5 in early single-threaded benchmarks hints at 24% IPC gain
A benchmark leak and a direct clock-matched comparison from an enthusiast seed the idea that Zen 6 may come with a decent IPC bump as well as increased clocks.
AMD has unveiled the EPYC 9006 family of server CPUs, featuring the 256-core Zen 6c EPYC processors. These processors are set to debut on the market, albeit not for everyday consumers. A recent GeekBench 7 benchmark on one of these CPUs has sparked speculation about a 15% increase in single-threaded IPC. However, HXL (@9550pro) spotted the results, and Russian enthusiast three twenty six (@326powah) directly compared them to a Ryzen 7 9700X desktop CPU.
The EPYC 9996 boasts 256 Zen 6c cores across eight Monarch CCDs, each with 128MB of L3 cache split into two 64MB domains for each 16-core CCX. Meanwhile, the Ryzen 7 9700X has eight Zen 5 cores and 32MB of L3 cache. The EPYC CPU also features a massive 1GB of L3 cache and a 1024-bit memory bus running at 12,800 MT/s, providing 1.64 TB/second of memory bandwidth.
In single-threaded benchmarks, the EPYC 9996 outperforms the Ryzen 7 9700X by an estimated 24%, particularly excelling in media processing tests. This suggests that Zen 6 could deliver a significant IPC advantage and potentially a substantial clock speed increase over current-generation parts, making it an exciting development for desktop users.
Written by urgent.news from Tom's Hardware's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
