I have been half deafening myself to the rumours of the Zen 6. AMD leaks have a history of going nowhere, conflicting core counts, new codenames every few weeks, forum arguments about stuff that turns out to be completly wrong. So I ceased to be attentive awhile.
Then AMD actualy confirmed it. Zen 6, Ryzen 10000 series, codename Medusa. And there is more here than I thought.
What Medusa is all about.
The headline thing is the move to a 2.5D interconnect. Sounds complicated but it isn't realy.
The CPU cores and the I/O die in earlier generations of Zen used a conventional organic substrate to communicate. Works well, Zen 5 is a good chip, but there has always been a little bit of latency between chiplets. On common things you would never see it. It appeared on high core count chips performing memory intensive work occasionally.
Zen 6 uses a silicon based 2.5D interconnect, the same strategy as high end AI accelerators. The chiplets communicate more quickly, with more bandwidth and less latency. The large Ryzen 9 processors are supposed to be more of a single processor than two dies working together.
Will you notice it gaming. Most likely not in the majority of titles. However, when you are doing video editing or simulation or anything that is going to be hammering memory on multiple cores, then that is where it really counts.
24 cores and almost 100MB of cache.
AMD is finaly breaking the 8 core per chiplet limit on the consumer side. The Ryzen 10000 flagship is expected to go up to 24 cores and 48 threads. That is a big leap over the 16 core ceiling that has been there since the Ryzen 3000 days.
The chiplets are also rumoured to have 48MB of L3 cache, compared to 32MB in Zen 5. A dual chiplet Ryzen 10000 chip hits nearly 100MB of total L3 cache. And that's before the 3D V-Cache versions show up, which they will, AMD always does them eventualy.
Production shifts to 2nm at TSMC. That ought to provide a good performance per watt improvement over the current position of Zen 5. The extent of this we will not know until real benchmarks are available but 2nm is a significant generational leap.
Most of you will be interested in the AM5 news.
AMD has assured AM5 platform support up to 2027. If you're on an X670, B650, or any of the newer 800 series boards, you should be able to drop in a Ryzen 10000 chip with just a BIOS update.
This is sincerely good to anyone who has constructed an AM5 system within the past year or two. You're not stuck. You can upgrade without a new board, new RAM, new everything at once.
AMD continued to support AM4 much longer than anyone expected at the time of its release. AM5 receiving the same type of longevity comitment implies that the platform you are currently on has legs.
What is actually different than Ryzen 9000?
Ryzen 9000 on Zen 5 is based on the Granite Ridge codename, conventional Infinity Fabric interconnect, up to 16 cores per chiplet, 32MB L3 per chiplet, based on 4nm and 3nm depending on the die. All on AM5.
Ryzen 10000 on Zen 6 is Medusa. 2.5D silicon interconnect, up to 24 cores, 48MB L3 per chiplet, 2nm node. Still on AM5.
The interconnect and the cache are the two things that I find myself returning to. The number of cores doubled is impressive on paper but the vast majority of gaming workloads do not scale beyond 8 or 10 cores in any noticeable manner. What may shift the needle of people with demanding workloads in their day to day activities is the latency and cache improvements.
When will it actually launch?
The desktop Ryzen 10000 chips are indicated by internal roadmaps as late 2026. In early 2027, laptop versions under the Medusa Point name are anticipated.
It is a few months to late 2026 and AMD has been known to move things. Formally registering the product name is however a good indication that a launch is imminent. Firms do not do that when it is still a year and a half away in general.
The Ryzen 9000 chips are genuinely good at the moment, should you be choosing between building now or waiting. Zen 6 will be improved. It is always the case with the next generation and it is never a clean answer. It all depends on what you are going through.
I can only say that, at this point, with AM5 already under your belt, your board resale value will be more resilient now that the platform longevity is a reality. That's worth something at least.
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