Will AMD Stick With Socket AM5 For Next-Gen Zen 6 CPUs? What We Know

AMD's Zen 5 processors have been out a few months, and you know what that means for journalists like us -- it's time to start looking to the future. The successor to the Zen 5 architecture will naturally be Zen 6, and while AMD has confirmed that detail, the company said nothing else about its next-generation CPU architecture.

We know from earlier leaks that Zen 6 is called "Morpheus," named after the god of dreams in classical mythology. This follows on from a trend of naming CPU cores after mythological figures, like "Persephone" for Zen 4 and "Prometheus" for Zen 5c. Zen 6 is expected to be a revision of the clean-sheet Zen 5 architecture, but a new post from recognized leaker Kepler (@Kepler_L2 on Xwitter) says that we may be waiting a while.


Responding to a question from another user, Kepler says that Zen 6 is slated for late 2026 or early 2027, meaning that Kepler expects AMD to go the entirety of next year and most of the year after on the Zen 5 architecture.

That query was in reply to Kepler posting about his surprise at the capabilities of the Ryzen 7 9800X3D. He noted that the uplift over the Ryzen 7 7800X3D implies that the other Zen 5 processors were "hamstrung" by the cIOD that they used. AMD hasn't confirmed this, but it's thought that the cIOD, or "I/O chiplet" used by the desktop Ryzen 9000 processors is the exact same one used by the Ryzen 7000 CPUs.

That means that those processors have the same memory controller as Ryzen 7000, and it's thought that Zen 5 really wants faster memory access. If that's true, then that theory is validated by the high performance of the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, as the large cache helps to counteract the effects of the old cIOD.


However, there is some arguably-good news. Kepler also confirmed that the future Zen 6 processors will likely use the same AM5 socket as the extant Ryzen 7000 and Ryzen 9000 CPUs. That means there's a solid possibility that an eventual Zen 6 CPU may plug into your existing Socket AM5 motherboard, offering whatever benefits the new chips bring.

AMD already confirmed that it was going to support the AM5 platform through at least 2027, so it's really no surprise that Zen 6 will come to AMD's current socket. The real question is whether AMD's next-gen parts will bring platform features that make buying a new motherboard an interesting prospect. We suspect it depends on what motherboard you have now and whether upcoming PCIe 5.0 graphics cards are compelling.