The next generation of AMD’s CPUs with Zen 5 architecture aren't expected until 2024, but a new benchmark leak suggests they'll be well worth waiting for.
According to a report from Moore's Law is Dead (and reported on by Kitguru), an engineering sample of a dual AMD Zen 5 CPU system has managed an impressive score of 123,000 on the popular Cinebench R23 multi-threaded benchmark. To compare, a dual AMD Zen 4 setup scored 108K on the same test, which is a 12% difference between the two.
The sample was shown clocked up to 3.85 GHz (no confirmation whether that’s maxed out or the average), and the CPU apparently has 128 cores and 256 threads, with eight CCDs and each having eight cores. A screenshot shown in the report indicates 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 don't know for sure that the screenshots are accurate, but if they are there's good reason to be excited about the CPU's performance potential – especially given that this supposedly dual Zen 5 setup is only an engineering sample. In short, we could be looking at some significant gains in future AMD CPUs that use Zen 5 architecture.
Zen 5 could make for some serious competition for Team Blue
Given that Zen 5 isn’t due until at least 2024, based on AMD confirmation in 2022, we only know so much about the chip and its architecture.
We do know that it’ll include AI-related optimizations, which would be a huge potential benefit for the rumored AI-enhanced FSR 3.0 frame-rate booster. While FSR is a GPU technology, rather than a CPU-driven one, Zen 5’s AI optimizations should definitely partner with AMD GPUs to improve the quality of FSR 3.0 substantially. This would put it right on the path of Nvidia DLSS – and considering that tech makes 8K gaming much more than a pipe dream, that's something Team Red needs to consider to stay competitive.
The next question is, what would Zen 5 be competing against once it does make its debut? Depending on when in 2024 the Zen 5 chips will launch, AMD could be seeing competition from two different Intel chip generations.
An earlier release would pit it against Intel’s Meteor Lake, which is set to release in late 2023 and which will be introducing 7nm process technology. This would be the ideal release window, as competition would be tight and AMD would have a strong chance of coming out on top in terms of performance.
However, if Zen 5 makes its debut in late 2024, then according to what we know from Intel’s existing roadmap, it’ll be going against Intel’s 15th-gen Arrow Lake processors. Considering that Arrow Lake is expected to bring about a massive leap in integrated graphics performance, that could leave Team Red lagging behind.
Of course, all of this is mere conjecture at this point, but you can be sure that when we get official word on the new CPU we'll report it here. In the meantime, check out our guide to the best processors to see what our current favorites are.
