We've known for some time now that AMD was planning on launching next-gen Zen 6 CPUs in 2026, but hardware has been in a weird place for a while, so it's best not to assume something will be going into your rig / server until it's in your hands. And yet AMD has confirmed it will begin rolling out the next generation on the 22nd and 23rd of this month, starting with server-focused EPYC processors.
As spotted by Overclock3D, AMD's Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President, Mark Papermaster, announced as much at Raise Summit 2026. He said, "What we've done at AMD, you know, since we launched the new Zen processor back in 2017, we're now on our sixth generation. So at our advancing AI event on July 22nd and 23rd, we're rolling out this new generation."
AMD's next-generation EPYC processor, codenamed Venice, is said to give 1.7x performance and efficiency over the last generation and will have a 30% increase in thread density, according to AMD. We'll have to wait until they get into the wild to see if that matches with real-life testing, though.
Papermast claims it is 'optimised for standalone x86 traditional workloads', and given its placement in servers, this makes sense. Venice is built on TSMC's 2 nm process and is the first AMD CPU to do so. Many previous AMD processors are actually built on the ageing 5 nm process or on 4 nm, so big performance lifts are expected.
That swap to 2 nm could be very important for the eventual release of a Ryzen gaming chip, as not only should such a chip be plain more efficient given the ability to have more densely packed transistors, but it could technically cram 12 cores into each CPU chiplet, as opposed to the eight AMD currently gets in them. As our Jeremy said in May, "That opens up the possibility of both 12-core gaming-optimised CPUs with 3D V-Cache and monster 24-core dual-die models for heavily multithreaded applications."
It seems like, as of right now, AMD is still set for a 2026 launch for its desktop Zen 6 chips, but the memory crisis is naturally a huge elephant in the room. Both the Zen 6 desktop chips and Intel's Nova Lake are going to have to launch into a market where worldwide PC shipments are down, and RAM and storage are prohibitively expensive. How excited can one be for a shiny new processor when a memory bottleneck gets in the way?
Still, rumours so far are positive about desktop Zen 6. One hardware leaker claimed last month, with "100%" certainty, that it will run at over 6.5 GHz. It will seemingly have a lot of power on the top end, and yet it will also reportedly come in a low-power compact model, too. Best of both worlds. We'll have to actually test it for ourselves to see if it was worth the wait.
1. Best overall:
AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D
2. Best budget:
AMD Ryzen 5 5500
3. Best mid-range:
Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus
4. Best high-end:
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D
5. Best AM4 upgrade:
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6. Best CPU graphics:
AMD Ryzen 7 8700G
