AMD Zen 6 could put 12 cores and 144 MB of cache in a Ryzen gaming chip
AMD’s Zen 6 design puts 12 cores and 48 MB of shared L3 cache on one chiplet, up from eight cores and 32 MB in Zen 5; PCWorld and Notebookcheck say that could let a future 12-core Ryzen gaming processor avoid the extra latency of spreading cores across two chiplets. AMD has not announced consumer Zen 6 chips, but its Venice-X server design combines 48 MB of on-die L3 with 96 MB of stacked 3D V-Cache, for 144 MB total per chiplet.
Bottom line — AMD’s server design demonstrates 144 MB per 12-core chiplet; gaming performance awaits consumer chips and independent benchmarks.
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PCWorld notes that games already keeping their critical threads on one chiplet may not benefit from a single-chiplet layout.
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Notebookcheck says Zen 6 also improves branch prediction and can deliver up to 18 operations per cycle.
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AMD reported about 27% higher geometric-mean IPC for Zen 6c in AI and server workloads; PCWorld cautions this is not a gaming result or a measurement of standard Zen 6 cores.
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PCWorld says a 12-core chiplet could simplify scheduling in future Ryzen X3D chips, which currently steer games towards cores with access to extra cache.
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AMD has not disclosed consumer Zen 6 clock speeds, power use, final configurations or a launch window, according to Notebookcheck.