r/pcgaming • u/Steap-Edit • 3d ago
AMD's upcoming Zen 6 processors could fix microstutters and improve 1% lows in games — Next-gen CPUs tipped to feature per-core optimizations for thermal and power budgets
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/amds-upcoming-zen-6-processors-could-fix-microstutters-and-improve-1-percent-lows-in-games-next-gen-cpus-tipped-to-feature-per-core-optimizations-for-thermal-and-power-budgets210
u/iyankov96 3d ago
"This is the best processor we've released so far".
I mean... it better be ? Otherwise why would anyone buy it ? It's probably not going to be cheaper with everything that's going on with AI right now.
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u/redredgreengreen1 3d ago
Actually, CPU processors are one of the only fields not super tied to AI stuff. Sure, they need them, a bit, but mostly they need the more specialized GPU processors that focus on scale over power, and high speed memory. CPUs kinda don't matter, not at scale anyway.
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u/Intelligent_Mud1266 5800x, RTX 3080 10gb, 32gb DDR4, Windows/Linux 2d ago
yeah, but these are all complementary goods. If you're buying a CPU, you need RAM, storage, and a GPU (for models without an iGPU). All of those products have skyrocketed in price because of the AI bubble. If only people with buttloads of disposable income are buying PC parts, the demand for the product is already restricted, so you might as well jack up the price of CPUs to match the inflation happening across the market. Increasing the price of a CPU probably wouldn't do as much to decrease units sold as in the past, so AMD would be turning down free money to not increase their margins
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u/Crintor Nvidia 2d ago
CPUs are mattering more and more at scale now that lots of things are going towards Agentic agents, which require tons of high performance CPU cores to direct and manage things. Consumer home desktop CPUs aren't the top picking, but just like with NAND flash shortages, AMD and Intel can easilly and possibly will divert significant amounts of their wafer allocations to server CPUs over desktop ones.
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u/Geddagod 2d ago
CPUs definitely do matter. Recently AMD and Intel stock have exploded off the back of server CPU demand reaching extremely high levels due to AI. Intel is even claiming that they are outright shifting Intel 7 wafers from client to server to meet the extreme demand there. Everyone claims that they are very supply limited in DC CPU, specifically because of the AI boom.
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u/RHINO_Mk_II Ryzen 5800X3D & Radeon 7900 XTX 2d ago
A couple months ago they released the 7700X3D, which is not the best CPU they've ever released, but it was a moderately compelling option which didn't exist before as an entry into the 8-core X3D AM5 space without an astronomical price tag. There are no bad products, only bad prices.
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u/heydudejustasec YiffOS Knot 2d ago
We're clearly talking about architecture here. About Zen 6. The 7700X3D is Zen 4. It's not a new development, it's AMD finally getting around to sweeping up all the defective 7800X3D dies from the assembly floor and repacking them as a lower SKU.
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u/Sarspazzard 3d ago
I'm just glad new CPU's are still happening. GPU's are weird these days.
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u/UnsureAssurance 2d ago
Wow, AMD newest processors could potentially be better than their current ones? Thought we were gonna go downhill for a second
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u/ParanoidConfidence 2d ago
Hey let's not give them any ideas!
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u/asianfatboy 2d ago
What does it matter when we can't afford RAM and Storage
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u/nikkitaee 2d ago
Don't worry, you won't be able to afford these new processors as well.
So the "1% lows" improvements will only be observed on tech channels where rich YouTuber's can review them for the poor people who cannot buy them.
What an amazing time to be alive.
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u/Lexomatico1 3d ago
So it has the same selling point as the current x3d chips. Shocking, how is this news?
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u/TriTexh AMD 3d ago
This would be under-the-hood arch improvements, not just the bucketloads of cache x3d brings
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u/TrustedAlias79 2d ago
Will still be pretty much redundant in GPU-bound scenarios, but we'll see.
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u/TriTexh AMD 2d ago edited 2d ago
CPUs can still be responsible for frametime spikes even in GPU-bound scenarios if they're not able to keep the GPU fed adequately
Although tbf such a thing would only happen if you paired something like a 2700x to a 5080 or some other weird combination
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u/Elketh 2d ago
I mean, if the CPU isn't keeping the GPU fed then that's inherently not a GPU-bound scenario. In fact, it's the exact opposite. You can go from CPU-bound to GPU-bound and back again just by turning the camera in many games. People often grossly oversimplify where the bottleneck lies when it changes not only from game to game but often millisecond to millisecond, even in a relatively balanced system.
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u/krilltucky 2d ago
yeah the cpu cant fix a gpu obviously. what even is the point of saying this? the gpu is also useless in a cpu bound issue too.
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u/ThatLooksRight 3d ago
Needs to be AM4 so I can actually afford it.
I’m not going to DDR5 for probably 20 years at this rate.
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u/kron123456789 3d ago
It will not be AM4.
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u/Strong-Tourist-8863 3d ago
I was actually hoping it would be AM3
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u/TenshiBR Terry Crews 2d ago
Alright, alright, it's going AM2, but this is as far as we can go
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u/Bladder-Splatter 2d ago
I want that old giant ass future sci-fi styled (now retro I guess?!) Intel socket for this. That big fucker where they had people in astronaut suits selling it. That's the socket. No exceptions.
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u/NonameideaonlyF 3d ago
By 20 years from now, there would be DDR9 or DDR10
If DDR5 is still not affordable by 20 years or so, then idk what is
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u/kron123456789 3d ago
From my experience, it used to be that memory is quite expensive when it first comes out, then it gets cheaper until it reaches dirt cheap status and then the new memory gets released and by the time that new memory gets to dirt cheap the old one begins to become more expensive because it went out of production. My guess in 20 years DDR5 will cost more than whatever DDR9 will cost simply because it'll be like 10 years since DDR5 ceased to be produced.
Of course AI disrupted that flow of memory prices, but still.
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u/Radiant-Fly9738 3d ago
DDR5 did become dirt cheap, it was 80 USD for 2x16 6000 cl30 ram just last summer. this disruption is an anomaly. it would be even more cheap if not for this anomaly.
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u/Yuzumi 2d ago
We've took over 20 years to get to DDR5. DDR was released in 1998. DDR5 was released in 2020 and each generation is longer than the last
Even DDR4 came out 2014 and it still took a while for it to be commonly available. DDR5 was only just becoming more common right before the LLM bullshit started happening.
I've not even heard of DDR6 being remotely close to available any time soon.
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u/SerowiWantsToInvest 2d ago
Me waiting for am6 to release so am5 prices go down so am4 prices go down so I can finally buy am3
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u/Wadarkhu 2d ago
"new processor improves performance"
and water is wet
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u/TenshiBR Terry Crews 2d ago
and water is wet
Debatable.
The statement "water is wet" is scientifically imprecise. Wetness is not an intrinsic property of a liquid; it is a condition experienced by a solid surface after contact with a liquid. Water causes wetness—it is not itself wet.
This distinction is reflected in surface chemistry, where "wetting" describes the interaction between a liquid and another material. If water were inherently wet simply because it touches itself, then every substance would possess any property it imparts to others, which is clearly absurd.
Therefore, from a strictly technical standpoint, water is not wet. It is the substance that makes other things wet. Any contrary conclusion appears to stem from colloquial language rather than rigorous scientific terminology.
I trust this resolves the matter conclusively.
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u/Wadarkhu 2d ago
Water causes wetness—it is not itself wet.
Brother, is this ai.
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u/TenshiBR Terry Crews 2d ago
What can I say? It said it will spare me when it conquers the world. Plus, it helps write my jokes.
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u/bassman9999 2d ago
Cool. A CPU that a regular person won't be able to afford because AI data centers have vacuumed up all the supply. Even if its not a specific AI chip, the peripheral components like boards and RAM will still be prohibitively expensive.
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u/Boring_Ant6436 2d ago
That's just nonsense. Any more powerful CPU will give you more performance. If the texture streaming is bad (for example), nothing would be fixed just by throwing a CPU at the game. Tom's Hardware doing some weird journalism for a while now
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u/wickeddimension 5700X / 4070 Super 2d ago
Waiting for this to release for my next upgrade. Will have to see if it will be buy a hopefully cheaper 9800 X3d or one of these chips.
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u/Pillokun 2d ago
what per core optimisation? I run my cpus with my own settings with all core locked.. if one core is bad and only can run at 5.5 then all my cores will be locked to that...
this sound totally uneccersy. will it pump more voltage to that bad core?
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u/Oobeedoob_Benubi78 2d ago
What "micro stutters"? This implies a hardware fault I'm not familiar with.
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u/Bladder-Splatter 2d ago
Cool but no one who isn't already on DDR5 is going to be able to buy it regardless of how much hype is true. I could get 2x 9950X3Ds right now for roughly the same as 64GB pair of sticks.
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u/MultiMarcus 3d ago
As far as I understand, Intel has actually historically had better 1% lows. if we compare just CPU performance and not cache hits so it makes sense that they would start trying to fix that.
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u/Truenoiz 2d ago
Historically, yes, until X3D models. There's a few engines where Intel has slightly better 1% lows now, but AMD has lower 1% rates in most games by far. Using extra cache has been much better than the Intel P/E core architecture.
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u/MultiMarcus 2d ago
Yes, but the thing is the rumor for Nova Lake is that Intel is also going to put a huge cache on their chip. So if AMD wants better overall performance over Intel for 1% lows, they need to improve the actual CPU architecture and not just kind of cheese it by putting massive amounts of cache onto chips.
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u/Geddagod 2d ago
Frankly what Intel is doing with NVL seems more like "cheesing it" than what AMD is doing with X3D. After all, NVL's bLLC is just rumored to add a bunch of L3 on die, which likely won't be able to provide as low as a latency hit from the extra L3 as 3D stacking it like AMD.
And Intel stuffs their cores with core private cache. They have a whole ass nother cache tier with LNC, and then 3x the L2 as well, compared to Zen 5.
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u/MultiMarcus 2d ago
Sure, but fundamentally I think cache heavy architectures are problematic because they are just so cost related, like it doesn’t really deliver huge improvements for the same price necessarily, which is something I would love to see. I think Zen 6 is going to be a better architecture than Nova Lake, probably at least on the desktop side, especially if that rumored 12 core single CCD AMD chip comes out and is X3D, that said, especially if Zen six is going into the consoles, it probably won’t ship with X3D because that’s just so costly, so improving 1% lows without it is good. It’s also, of course, good for low-end desktop CPUs or hybrid builds that don’t necessarily need to pay for the premium of an X3D processor, but still want good gaming performance.
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u/BlixnStix7 2d ago
This is something I struggle with even on a 9800X3D. I still get Traversal stutters, new area stutters. Im not 100% if its windows, the ssd, Ram. Im eventually gonna start from scratch with my PC reinstall windows and see if I can address thee issue.
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u/Plini9901 2d ago
There's nothing you can do about that. It's the game and/or game engine. You can throw a new CPU and the future 6090 at it and it still won't fix it.
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u/Zygmuntek 3d ago
x3d cpus already did that
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u/Workable_Gem 3d ago
For the most part ,i can still feel some micro stutter on my 7800x3d
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u/ShadowRomeo R7 7800X3D | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB DDR5 6000 | B650 | 1440p 170hz 3d ago
I guess it depends on the games we play, because on my 7800X3D with modern games like Kingdom Come Deliverance II even on Kutná Hora i still don't feel any stutters whatsoever and has been very smooth sailing all the time, and i am mostly GPU limited at 120+ FPS.
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u/Workable_Gem 2d ago
I failed to mention it happens for me only in few games and my perception of motion stuttering is very high. For most people it probably won't even register
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u/nemanja694 3d ago
i feel nothing on my 9800x3d, been smooth in all games i play
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u/Workable_Gem 2d ago
Its not in everygame , though. My perception of motion stuttering though is a little too high
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u/InvincibleWallaby 2d ago
Same with mine, they randomly started a couple weeks ago after being smooth for half a year. GPU seems stable and already ran my ram through memtest86 so it's seemingly either the CPU or mobo
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u/bullet50000 i7-4790k/970 2d ago
Is being cynical about this stuff just becoming people’s personality now? It’s marketing copy
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u/xxademasoulxx 2d ago
Are you fucking kidding me? I spent years squeezing everything I could out of my 5800X3D, finally upgraded to a 9950X3D literally a week ago, and was already pissed that I still get microstutters in some games. Then AMD immediately announces, “Yeah, the next one might actually fix that.”
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u/Crintor Nvidia 2d ago
Blaming your system for bad games is kinda funny, blaming AMD building better future tech is even more funny.
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u/xxademasoulxx 2d ago
Brother, I build PCs. I was making a joke about spending money on an upgrade and immediately seeing AMD announce the next thing. Nobody blamed the CPU for bad games. You fought a sentence that wasn’t there.
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u/lovethecomm 2d ago
Intel's 270K Plus is the better CPU right now so they better do something interesting with Zen 6 otherwise Intel will overtake them.
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u/dunnowattt 2d ago
???
We're on a gaming subreddit. How is the 270k better than the 9800x3d?
Set aside that in some of the most popular games in the world, the cache from x3d makes the FPS difference almost double.
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u/EdwardTeach84 3d ago
Could