How did AMD Ryzen get 50% faster in two years?
Lemire's analysis shows AMD Ryzen X3D chips gained ~50% Geekbench 6 performance in two years through wider cores, larger caches, and 512-bit SIMD units.
Daniel Lemire compares AMD's 5800X3D (Zen 3, 2022), 7800X3D (Zen 4, 2023), and 9800X3D (Zen 5, 2024), finding Geekbench 6 single-core performance rose 47% and multi-core 58% in two years. Clock speeds increased only about 15% (4.5 to 5.2 GHz max boost), while transistor counts grew roughly 50% to around 16 billion. Gains came from a wider core: dispatch width up from 6 to 8 instructions per cycle, doubled 1 MB L2 cache, 6 integer ALUs, a 448-entry reorder buffer, and four 512-bit SIMD units. He notes Zen 6 is next, with AMD discussing a 256-core Epyc 'Venice' part carrying a gigabyte of L3 cache.
- Zen 5 9800X3D hits 2,969 single-core and 18,751 multi-core Geekbench 6, up 47%/58% over Zen 3.
- Max boost rose only ~15% (4.5 to 5.2 GHz); transistors grew ~50% to roughly 16 billion.
- Zen 5 widened dispatch to 8 instructions/cycle, doubled L2 cache to 1 MB, and moved to 512-bit SIMD.
- Reorder buffer grew from 256 to 448 entries; L1 data cache increased from 32 KB to 48 KB.
- Zen 6 is coming; AMD discusses a 256-core Epyc 'Venice' with a gigabyte of L3 cache.
From the original article
2 min read at lemire.me
People still tell me that CPUs are boring. That nothing much happens anymore. Let us look at AMD Ryzen 7 processors from 2022 to 2024: the 5800X3D (Zen 3), the 7800X3D (Zen 4) and the 9800X3D (Zen 5).
By ibobev · lemire.me
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