The next generation of AMD’s Zen 5 architecture CPUs isn’t expected until 2024, but a new benchmark leak suggests it will be worth waiting for.
According to a report by Moore’s Law is dead (opens in new tab) (and reported by kitguru (opens in new tab)), an engineering sample of a dual AMD Zen 5 CPU system has achieved an impressive score of 123,000 on the popular multi-threaded benchmark Cinebench R23. For comparison, a dual AMD Zen 4 setup scored 108K on the same test, which is a 12% difference between the two.
The example was shown clocked up to 3.85GHz (no confirmation if that’s max or average), and the CPU appears to have 128 cores and 256 threads with eight CCDs and eight cores each. A screenshot shown in the report shows that the Zen 5 chip would have 10MB of L1 cache, or 80KB per core. It was also mentioned that a variant of the CPU called Turin-Dense would have 16 cores per chiplet.
We’re not sure if the screenshots are accurate, but if they are, there’s good reason to be excited about the CPU’s performance potential – especially since this supposedly dual Zen 5 setup is just an engineering example. In short, we could see some significant benefits in future AMD CPUs using the Zen 5 architecture.
Zen 5 could pose serious competition for Team Blue
Given that Zen 5 isn’t due until at least 2024 based on AMD’s confirmation in 2022, that’s all we know about the chip and its architecture.
We know it will involve AI-related optimizationswhich would be a huge potential upside to the rumours AI enhanced FSR 3.0 framerate booster. While FSR is a GPU technology rather than CPU driven, Zen 5’s AI optimizations should definitely work in tandem with AMD GPUs to significantly improve the quality of FSR 3.0. This would get it right on its way Nvidia DLSS – and considering that 8K gaming through technology is much more than just a pipe dream, Team Red has to take that into account to remain competitive.
The next question is what would Zen 5 compete with when it debuts? Depending on when the Zen 5 chips launch in 2024, AMD could see competition from two different Intel chip generations.
An earlier publication would speak against it Intel’s Meteor Lakewhich will appear and be introduced at the end of 2023 7nm process technology. This would be the ideal release window as the competition would be tight and AMD would have a good chance of coming out on top in terms of performance.
However, if Zen 5 makes its debut in late 2024, then from what we know from Intel’s existing roadmap, it will be competing against Intel’s 15th gen arrow lake processors. Considering that Arrow Lake is expected to bring a massive leap in integrated graphics performance, Team Red could be left behind.
Of course, all of this is just guesswork at this point, but rest assured that when we get official information about the new CPU, we’ll report back here. In the meantime, check out our guide best processors to see what our current favorites are.
