I think Zen 6 is going to be limeted by AM5 but they are also talking about quad channel memory support, so they may be brewing up some HEDC kung-fu beyond AM5 but they also intend to support AM5. Certainly the 9950X is hampered by the socket. I assume it could dominate every benchmark over Intel, if it had quad channel memory. As it is, Intel beats AMD in a small handful of benchmarks that are memory constrained. AM6 will move to 24 cores, 20% higher clock, predicted 10% IPC uplift. That is going to be a problem for AM5.
Lots of people applaud AMD for being so faithful to its sockets over time, but this is a consequence of that. As someone who always buys a new board with a new CPU, I find it to be a hinderance to progress.
I will point out, AMD is the CPU leader so whatever they are doing can't be all bad. Perhaps not worthy of mentioning is they have an RX 9080 product coming out in the next couple of months that should compete with the RTX 5080. It won't be the most relevant product, as it won't be large volume and it won't establish any sort of leadership but AMD is a lot closer to the front of the pack than nVidia fan boys will admit. It sounds like there will be a Zen 5 refresh in the middle of this year. It will include mostly or exclusively laptop parts, from what I can tell.
The Zen 5 refresh is now in question. If it happens, it will almost certainly use Strix chiplets which have advantages over current Zen 5 desktop parts. Zen 6 is now looking like the end of 2026 or the start of 2027. Anything AMD releases in 2025 will be products on the Zen 5 product roadmap. There are a ton of web articles saying TSMC N2 is ahead of schedule but AMD is moving back N2X product. I believe the more pessimistic thoughts and have no trouble believing every web report is inaccurate. To be precise, I don't believe TSMC N2 is in any danger, other than being late. I have no reason to suspect N2 will be discontinued, like Intel 20A was. Further, there are rumors AMD is considering a Zen 6 chiplet on N1.2x. I suspect this node will be used for Zen 6 Strix but doubt it will be used in any Zen 6 desktop. Of course, the projected release date of Zen 6 N1.2X parts is late 2027.
