Tests find AMD's Zen 6c leads Zen 6 per clock in estimated SPEC results

Chips and Cheese found that AMD's Zen 6c core outperformed Zen 6 at a matched 4.1 GHz in estimated single-threaded SPEC CPU 2026 results. The EPYC 9996 led the EPYC 9686F by about 6.7% in integer performance and 4% in floating point at that clock. The analysis found larger structures for keeping work in progress on Zen 6c, alongside 128 MB of shared L3 cache per chiplet versus Zen 6's 48 MB. These differences can help absorb memory delays. At their normal clocks, the 9686F finished about 18% ahead of the 9996 in both suites. The results make workload behavior and clock speed material to choosing between the designs.