AMD EPYC 9686F Linux Benchmarks: 96 Zen 6 Cores At Up To 5.3GHz

In addition to the AMD EPYC 9996 256-core CPU benchmarks out today in that dual socket configuration for a combined 512 cores / 1024 threads flagship Zen 6C server configuration, also tested recently at Phoronix was the EPYC 9686F part. The AMD EPYC 9686F is their new high-frequency Zen 6 part that features 96 cores / 192 threads at a boost clock of 5.3GHz! When the AMD EPYC 9686F they originally disclosed a 5.0GHz boost clock but with how well their production silicon panned out and/or marketing reasons, it's actually now confirmed to be 5.3GHz in production. The AMD EPYC 9686F is a beast with 96 cores / 192 threads with the 5.3GHz boost clock while the base clock is 3.4GHz. This is a big boost from the flagship high frequency Turin part of the EPYC 9575F at 64 cores / 128 threads of 5.0GHz boost clock while also having 32 additional cores. The EPYC 9686F also has 384MB of L3 cache compared to 256MB with the EPYC 9575F. This Venice HF part does come with higher power requirements of a 500W default TDP compared to 400W prior gen, but the EPYC 9686F does also allow a cTDP range from 400 Watts up through 600 Watts. The AMD EPYC 9686F does support 96 lanes of PCIe 6.0 and DDR5 RDIMM 8000 MT/s or MRDIMM 12800 MT/s memory like the other EPYC 9006 SP7 processors. As another perspective, over on the Intel Xeon 6 side the Xeon 6980P flagship has 128 cores / 256 threads but with a 2GHz base frequency, 3.2GHz all-core turbo frequency, and 3.9GHz max turbo frequency... The AMD EPYC 9686F being able to boost up to 5.3GHz will do wonders for single threaded server tasks and also when paired with MRDIMM 12800 MT/s memory deliver very nice memory bandwidth too. Should be a real treat for some HPC and technical computing workloads and more, which we are looking at in today's article. The EPYC 9006 SP7 series processors at up to 600 Watts manage to be air-cooled. While prior generation AMD Volcano 2U reference server for EPYC 9005 opted for liquid cooling, the AMD Nigeria 2U reference server gets by with some rather hefty air cooling. The heatsinks for the SP7 processors are massive but able to effectively cool these high power processors paired with some powerful fans. For today's launch/availability day for the AMD EPYC 9006 SP7 series, the processors tested for this article included the EPYC 9575F 2P as the prior-generation Turin HF flagship part and the EPYC 9755 2P as the 128 core flagship Zen 5 server processor configuration. On the Intel side was the Intel Xeon 6980P 2P flagship configuration. No NVIDIA Vera benchmarks for this article since I don't have Vera on-hand for being able to run clean 1:1 comparison benchmarks with the OS software stack and benchmark versions. But in a follow-up article I'll have NVIDIA Vera versus AMD Venice numbers based on my prior Vera runs. Similarly, no AmpereOne comparison data in this article or other ARM server options for not having any other latest-gen ARM servers on-hand. The AMD EPYC 9668F and the Nigeria SP7 reference server were working out well with Linux - I've done tests with both Ubuntu 26.04 LTS and Ubuntu 26.10. For the EPYC 9686F 2P server and all other processors/servers in this review, Ubuntu 26.10 was tested across all the hardware for a very up-to-date software stack with the Linux 7.3 kernel and other leading-edge software. That was based on my time available and server time availability leading up to today's embargo lift for re-testing existing CPUs/servers. I'll have more prior-generation comparison benchmarks and the likes in the days/weeks ahead. Thanks to AMD for supplying the Venice processors and reference server for being able to run benchmarks today and in the days/months ahead; stay tuned for all the sort of usual Phoronix benchmarking that comes with new and exciting CPU launches.