New AMD Ryzen gaming CPU reportedly smashes 6GHz barrier to "insane" level

AMD is apparently not only looking to pack loads more cores into its next-gen CPUs, but it's also reportedly looking to crank up the clock speeds to an "insane" level. According to the latest word from the rumor mill, we're looking at speeds that don't just break the 6GHz barrier on next-gen AMD Ryzen CPUs, but smash it into oblivion, and that's good news for gamers, where clock speed is arguably much more important than having more than eight cores.

With a 52-core Intel CPU reportedly in the works, AMD is going to need a trick up its sleeve to compete, and while there are rumors that AMD Zen 7 will bring chips with up to 32 cores, it is expected to top out at 24 cores with Zen 6, with 12 cores on each chiplet. That means AMD's CPUs will need more oomph if they're expected to compete with a 52-core Intel chip, and that's where this rumored extra clock speed could help out, maximizing the performance per core.

This latest rumor comes from YouTube tech leaker Moore's Law is Dead (MLID), so take it with a grain of salt for now, but it follows on from an earlier report from the channel, where AMD engineers reportedly told MLID that AMD Zen 6 CPUs run at 6GHz. However, in the latest video, which you can see below, the channel claims to have "spoken to some additional AMD engineers from different teams than those that I consulted for those Zen 6 leaks earlier this year," and these sources reportedly said that the 6GHz+ rumors going around right now are "very conservative".

In fact, MLID even says that the clock speed suggested by these AMD engineers is "just so insane I don't think any of you will believe me," adding that he's going to hold back from spilling the beans for the moment until he can verify it from more sources, and because Zen 6 is still a long way off and AMD may end up falling short of that target.

"I've heard that there is also a roadblock there," says MLID, when talking about the sky-high click speed figure, but adds that "the scaling wall they're trying to get past to get to this insane clock I've heard for desktop Zen 6, that roadblock is still well above 6GHz." MLID also says that the team behind the Zen 6 design is the same as those behind the Zen 4 design - the latter was also said to clock beyond 5GHz at first, but the Ryzen 9 7950X could actually boost to 5.6GHz when it came out, and the X3D version even hits 5.7GHz.

As such, it's possible we may see the same sort of performance jump between Zen 5 and Zen 6 as we saw between Zen 3 and Zen 4, with a big increase in clock speeds. MLID also points to a big jump between TSMC manufacturing processes when AMD moves from Zen 5 to Zen 6, with AMD potentially skipping several nodes between Zen 5 and Zen 6, resulting in much smaller transistors, which could enable AMD to crank the clock speed higher.

Even though MLID stops short of revealing his "insane" clock speed figure, he reiterates that "it's probably going to be well above 6GHz, not like 6.1 or 6.2." At a guess, we'd say we might be looking at 6.7GHz here, but that would be a colossal jump. Of course, this is also just rumors about a far-off product at the moment, and none of this has been officially confirmed by AMD, but it's fun to imagine what might be going on behind the scenes.

In the meantime, check out our full guide on buying the best gaming CPU for your budget, where we take you through all our favorite options right now. You can also read our guide on how to install a CPU, which takes you through the whole upgrade process.

You can also follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides. In addition, we have a vibrant community Discord server, where you can chat about this story with members of the team and fellow readers.