AMD Launches Sixth-Gen EPYC 'Venice' Server CPUs, Claims 3.7x Edge Over Nvidia

At a glance

AMD has officially started selling its sixth-generation EPYC 'Venice' server CPUs, the chips that act as the main processors in servers. The company is pitching better performance for the price to win more market share. Major server makers have already begun shipping systems built on Venice.

Key points

1. 1

   Large cloud providers such as Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud plan to offer Venice-based virtual machines to general customers soon.

2. 2

   AMD has split the lineup into three groups: GPU host nodes, multi-AI-agent workloads, and general enterprise use.

3. 3

   AMD says its general-purpose EPYC 9996 scored up to 3.75 times higher than Nvidia's Vera CPU system on one benchmark test.

4. 4

   The EPYC 9996 costs $14,904, more than Intel's Xeon 6980P at $13,955, but AMD argues it delivers better performance per dollar.

Why it matters

Competition in AI server chips is heating up, so a new product that changes the balance of server performance and cost matters.