Here’s what AMD EPYC Venice tells us about Zen 6 Ryzen

AMD’s EPYC Venice CPUs signal strong performance gains from Zen 6

AMD has just unveiled its Zen 6 “Venice” CPUs, boasting strong generational performance gains in all metrics. 70% gen-on-gen performance gains have been promised, and that has implications for AMD’s entire Zen CPU lineup, including the company’s consumer-grade Ryzen CPUs. AMD’s “Venice” CPUs are due to launch in 2026.

With EPYC “Venice”, AMD will increase its maximum EPYC core count from 192 cores to 256 cores. This is a 33% increase in CPU core count. This alone isn’t enough to increase AMD’s raw computational performance by 70%. If AMD has achieved 70% performance gains, much of these gains need to come from improved per-core CPU performance.

Alongside increased throughput, AMD promises a 2x increase in CPU-GPU bandwidth with EPYC Venice. While not explicitly confirmed by AMD, these gains should come from AMD’s move from PCIe 5.0 to PCIe 6.0. Whether or not AMD plans to move to PCIe 6.0 with Zen 6 Ryzen CPUs is unknown. AMD also promises 1.6 TB/s of memory bandwidth, which comes through support for more memory channels, faster DDR5 memory modules, and new memory types like MR-DIMM and MCR-DIMM. For Zen 6 Ryzen CPUs, we expect AMD to deliver faster DDR5 memory support, enabling increased bandwidth and lower latencies.

We expect strong per-core performance gains from Zen 6

If AMD has achieved 70% more CPU performance with only 33% more cores, that means that AMD’s Zen 6 CPU cores are much more performant than its Zen 5 CPU cores. To achieve 70% gains, AMD needs 33% more cores that are 27.5% faster than before. If that is the case, we can expect strong performance gains from AMD’s Zen 6 CPUs on a per-core basis. This can come through higher clock speeds or increased IPC (Instructions Per Cycle/Clock).

AMD has confirmed that its Zen 6 “Venice” CPUs are built using TSMC’s 2nm lithography node. This is a huge leap from the 4nm node that has been used to make AMD’s Zen 5 CPUs. AMD has skipped TSMC’s 3nm node and moved straight to 2nm. This should give AMD a larger-than-normal leap in silicon density and power efficiency. This should result in higher CPU clock speeds for Zen 6. Add on Zen 6’s architectural improvements, and large per-core performance gains should be expected.

AMD’s EPYC Venice announcement should have PC enthusiasts excited. Faster memory support and stronger CPU cores should make AMD’s Zen 6 lineup much faster than its predecessors. That’s great news for PC builders. Better still, AMD’s planned Venice launch in 2026 signals that we can also expect to see Zen 6 Ryzen CPUs in 2026.

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