# AMD says 96-core Venice CPU is about 20% faster than Nvidia Vera in SPEC CPU 2026

Digest AI · Hardware & Compute · published 2026-09-18T21:51:29Z

Canonical: https://digestai.news/story/amd-says-96-core-venice-cpu-is-about-20-faster-than-nvidia-vera-in-spe

## Summary

AMD claims its 96-core, high‑frequency Venice processor is around 20% faster than Nvidia's 88-core Vera in the SPEC CPU 2026 Integer Rate benchmark.

AMD also reports a 78% speedup over its prior 192-core EPYC 9965 and an 18% advantage in the Stream memory‑bandwidth test, with per‑core performance about 8% ahead. The benchmarks mix different GCC versions (AMD used GCC 16.1, Nvidia used GCC 15.2) and power budgets (the 96‑core chip runs at 500W, while a 600W budget is mentioned for the 256‑core version), which the article notes can affect results. AMD ran most tests itself, while some cloud‑workload figures come from an AWS Graviton5 instance.

## Key points

- AMD says the 96-core Venice chip is around 20% faster than Nvidia's 88-core Vera in SPEC CPU 2026 integer rate test.
- AMD reports a 78% speedup over the prior 192-core EPYC 9965 and about 18% higher Stream bandwidth, with per‑core ~8% lead.

## Why it matters

If AMD's performance claims hold, its Venice CPUs could give data‑center operators a faster, potentially more power‑efficient alternative to Nvidia and Intel chips, influencing server hardware choices.

## Sources

1. [AMD shares first official benchmarks for EPYC 'Venice' CPUs, targets Nvidia — company claims 256-core chip is more than twice as fast as Nvidia Vera, 96-core model 20% faster per-core](https://tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/amd-shares-first-official-benchmarks-for-epyc-venice-cpus-targets-nvidia-company-claims-256-core-chip-is-more-than-twice-as-fast-as-nvidia-vera-96-core-model-20-percent-faster-per-core) (Tom's Hardware, 2026-09-18)

## Cite

Digest AI, "AMD says 96-core Venice CPU is about 20% faster than Nvidia Vera in SPEC CPU 2026", 18 September 2026, https://digestai.news/story/amd-says-96-core-venice-cpu-is-about-20-faster-than-nvidia-vera-in-spe

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