Threadripper 9000 CPUs spotted with 16 to 96 Zen 5 cores — Shimada Peak expected to max out at 350W

The upcoming Threadripper 9000 series, codenamed Shimada Peak, has leaked yet again through shipping manifest data (via @Olrak29_ on X).

A different shipping manifest outed the Zen 5-powered high-end desktop CPUs in significant detail back in August. The latest manifest reveals a couple of previously unknown points about the soon-to-be-released CPUs.

The upcoming 96-core flagship, which will likely be called the Threadripper 9980X, has a 350-watt TDP, just like the preceding Threadripper 7980X had. The 16-core model that the shipping manifest mentions also has a 350-watt TDP, and while that’s significantly overkill for a CPU with so few cores, all Threadripper 7000 series chips had that 350-watt TDP, so it’s not without precedent.

A reduction in TDP was possible, considering that most of the Ryzen 9000 series, namely the Ryzen 9900X, 9700X, and 9600X, have lower TDPs than their predecessors. However, Threadripper 9000 won’t be going in the same direction, likely because performance is a bigger priority than efficiency for the HEDT segment.

The 16-core Threadripper mentioned in the shipping manifest is unlikely to feature in the regular Threadripper 9000 lineup; the 7000 series bottoms out at a 24-core model, and the last time we saw a regular 16-core Threadripper was with the 2000 series back in 2018. Instead, this 16-core CPU will almost certainly be a PRO model; the PRO variants of Threadripper 7000, 5000, and 3000 all included a 16-core model.

Clock speed is still unknown for Threadripper 9000. Still, considering Zen 5-based 5th Generation EPYC CPUs feature much higher frequencies across the board than their Zen 4-powered predecessors, an uplift may be in the cards. The 7000 series already achieves up to 5.3 GHz, and the Ryzen 9 9950X is limited to 5.7 GHz (the highest on any Zen 5 CPU), so there’s probably not much headroom for significantly higher clock speeds.

The absence of a model with more than 96 cores may also indicate that there will be no Zen 5c-based Threadripper 9000 CPUs. That isn’t entirely surprising since the c-variant Zen cores are mainly intended for cloud servers where massive cores are more important than per-core prowess. Zen 4c likely skipped the Threadripper 7000 series for that reason, and given that the HEDT market’s needs haven’t changed since the 7000 series, it’s unlikely AMD would suddenly start offering Zen 5c Threadrippers.