The AMD EPYC 8434PN is a server/workstation processor with 48 cores, launched in September 2023, at an MSRP of $3150. It is part of the EPYC lineup, using the Zen 4c (Siena) architecture with Socket SP6. Thanks to AMD Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT) the core-count is effectively doubled, to 96 threads. EPYC 8434PN has 128 MB of L3 cache and operates at 2000 MHz by default, but can boost up to 3 GHz, depending on the workload. AMD is building the EPYC 8434PN on a 5 nm production process using 35,500 million transistors. The silicon die of the chip is not fabricated at AMD, but at the foundry of TSMC. The multiplier is locked on EPYC 8434PN, which limits its overclocking capabilities.
With a TDP of 155 W, the EPYC 8434PN is extremely power hungry, which means you need top-notch cooling. AMD’s processor supports DDR5 memory with a six-channel interface. The highest officially supported memory speed is 4800 MT/s, but with overclocking (and the right memory modules) you can go even higher. ECC memory is supported, too, which is an important capability for mission-critical systems, to avoid data corruption. For communication with other components in the machine, EPYC 8434PN uses a PCI-Express Gen 5 connection. This processor lacks integrated graphics, you might need a graphics card.
Hardware virtualization is available on the EPYC 8434PN, which greatly improves virtual machine performance. Programs using Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) will run on this processor, boosting performance for calculation-heavy applications. Besides AVX, AMD has added support for the newer AVX2 and AVX-512 instructions, too.