Saturday, October 24th 2026
AMD EPYC 9996 Geekbench Listing Offers First Look at Zen 6 Single-Core Gains
AMD's Zen 6 just got one of its first rough per-clock comparisons against Zen 5, and the early numbers look good. Leaker HXL spotted a Geekbench 7.1.0 listing for the 256-core EPYC 9996, the flagship "Venice" chip AMD launched in July, scoring 2,847 points in single-core on a Dell PowerEdge R9815 server running Linux. User three twenty six on X then locked a Ryzen 7 9700X to 4.1 GHz, matching the EPYC 9996's maximum boost, and got 2,444 points on the same Geekbench version. That works out to roughly 16.5% higher single-core performance for Zen 6 at the same frequency. Apparently, Zen 6 came out ahead in all 15 single-core subtests, with gains ranging from 8.2% in File Compression to 25.7% in HTML5 Browser.
Of course, these scores only give us a general idea about the gains. The EPYC 9996 uses the dense Zen 6c cores, not the full Zen 6 cores expected in desktop Ryzen chips, so it's hard to say how closely these numbers will carry over. The two systems are also wildly different, with a server platform on one side and a 9700X running DDR5-6000 CL34 under CachyOS Linux on the other, and the EPYC listing has since been pulled from the Geekbench database. Still, a double-digit per-clock gain from the dense core variant is quite encouraging. AMD has already confirmed that "Olympic Ridge" desktop CPUs will stay on AM5, though they reportedly won't arrive until 2027, so we can expect more comprehensive performance leaks well before then.
Sources:
Geekbench 7.1.0, HXL on X, three twenty six on X, via Wccftech
Of course, these scores only give us a general idea about the gains. The EPYC 9996 uses the dense Zen 6c cores, not the full Zen 6 cores expected in desktop Ryzen chips, so it's hard to say how closely these numbers will carry over. The two systems are also wildly different, with a server platform on one side and a 9700X running DDR5-6000 CL34 under CachyOS Linux on the other, and the EPYC listing has since been pulled from the Geekbench database. Still, a double-digit per-clock gain from the dense core variant is quite encouraging. AMD has already confirmed that "Olympic Ridge" desktop CPUs will stay on AM5, though they reportedly won't arrive until 2027, so we can expect more comprehensive performance leaks well before then.
19 Comments on AMD EPYC 9996 Geekbench Listing Offers First Look at Zen 6 Single-Core Gains
In this benchmark that Zen 6c core is only alittle slower than my Zen 5 X3D core
6.4% slower at 4.1 vs 5.4 Ghz
But a 10%+ gain in IPC is always welcomed.Except that the L3 cache slices are not shared between CCDs.
That means 128MB of L3 with direct access per chiplet.
7800x3D/9800x3D/9850x3D have 96MB per chiplet.
7700x/9700x got 32MB per chiplet.
128MB L3 may help a "little" in ST task but its not 32 times bigger.
What you really need to do is compare a single-threaded geekbench score against the same test on a Zen5 Epyc 9965, then scale the score for clockspeed (4.1 vs 3.7GHz)
Epyc 9965 = 1838 points at 3.7 GHz.
Epyc 9996 = 2847 points at 4.1 GHz.
1838 x 4.1 / 3.7 = 2037. 2847 / 2037 = 1.3976.
So 40% faster. Even further apart than the Ryzen 9700X result.
browser.geekbench.com/v7/cpu/157801
2164 x 4.1 / 3.7 = 2398 points, => 2847 / 2398 = 1.1872. Almost 19% faster against a cherry picked Epyc 9845 (Zen 5C).
Then retail launch in 2-3 months?
Those marks are actually discouraging to me. Only the standard typical bump? Sh!t! I was expecting a lot more from Zen6! The claims about the near elimination of 1% and 0.1% lows in gaming will likely not be realized as hyped and advertised if all we're getting is the standard bump. Insiders have said Zen6 will be the biggest thing since Zen1 was released. This leak makes that sound like total BS!
Dang it, I went for a DDR5 system for nothing? Damn! :D
Ofc, there's always hope this "leak" isn't representative of Zen6 and it actually is encouragingly impressive - <crosses fingers>, <knocks on wood>, <buys more crystals>
On the other hand, 0.1% lows are more about rendering engine behaviour, and game devs utilising it effectively.