Zen 6 leak suggests AMD is targeting up to 7 GHz boost clocks, with focus on gaming performance

A new leak from Moore’s Law Is Dead suggests that AMD’s next-generation Zen 6 CPUs could feature dramatically higher clock speeds than any previous Ryzen chipset. While the exact number has not been disclosed, the leak, shared during a discussion between host Tom Guinet and guest Jesse Brandon, describes it as “as crazy as you think it is” and hints at frequencies approaching, or even surpassing, 7 GHz in select scenarios.

The YouTuber and host, Tom, also claims that Zen 6 will involve a “two to three node jump” over Zen 5, pointing to a significant leap not just in clock speeds, but in overall architectural efficiency and transistor density. Zen 6 X3D variants are expected to combine massive 3D V-Cache with unprecedented clock speeds, potentially redefining the ceiling for gaming performance, as suggested by Tom.

Speaking with Tom, Jesse noted that AMD is targeting 12 unified cores for Zen 6, while Intel’s upcoming Nova Lake could feature 16 unified P-cores. 

The conversation also touched on concerns raised by several game developers, particularly those working with Unreal Engine, about the long-term practicality of extremely high core counts in consumer CPUs.

While Unreal Engine 5.6 has made strides in parallelizing workloads, Jesse alleges that this progress often comes with trade-offs. These include increased race conditions, rendering glitches, and added complexity that makes development and debugging significantly more challenging.

For context, race conditions occur when multiple threads attempt to access or modify the same data simultaneously, leading to unpredictable bugs that are notoriously difficult to reproduce and debug. As a result, Jesse argues that single-threaded performance and high clock speeds remain critical for consistent gaming performance in current real-world scenarios.

An intriguing possibility discussed by Tom involves low-power Zen 6 cores that consume less than 1 watt. According to the host, that level of efficiency could make the cores viable for devices like the Steam Deck or even future gaming consoles. For reference, the PS4 included a dedicated ARM processor to handle sleep mode and background tasks, and while the PS5 is believed to use a similar setup, there’s no official confirmation or teardown evidence to verify the presence of a separate ARM chip.

There were also concerns about potential compatibility issues with older games when running at extremely high clock speeds, along with a broader conversation about the trade-offs between frequency and core count. For the full context and technical breakdown, you can watch the complete video below.