From Ryzen to EPYC: how AMD’s CPUs are powering modern-day titles

It comes as no surprise that as games continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible, the infrastructure that powers them must keep pace too.

Taking Unreal and Unity’s engines as an example, they have been driving new demands on hardware - particularly around clock speeds - for the last few years. Unreal-based games often rely heavily on single-core performance, where the speed of each core matters more than the total number. While Unreal Engine 5 is making strides toward better multi-core scaling, higher clock speeds are still what keep most modern titles running smoothly.

From a developer’s point of view, keeping up with this demand isn’t about throwing more resources at the challenge. It’s a balancing act: optimizing the performance of the hardware while keeping cost-per-player under control. You can’t have one without the other.

Growth and optimization go hand-in-hand, and for striking this balance in today’s gaming industry, one CPU stands out above the rest...

Enter AMD

AMD burst onto the gaming processor scene with the Athlon 64 X2 in 2003, and have continued to develop CPUs for the consumer market ever since.

Fast-forward twenty years, and AMD Ryzen is now a household name for gamers globally (I’m still proudly rocking the 5800x3d).

So, when AMD announced the Ryzen 7950X in 2022 – their most powerful consumer grade CPU yet – it swept the industry by storm. As part of the 7000 series, the 7950X boasted 16 cores, a high single-thread/multi-thread performance, and the best clock speeds ever seen on a mainstream CPU at the time. PC Mag went on to describe the 7950X as “the fastest CPU that you can buy without jumping into server-grade hardware.”

But this time, it wasn’t just gamers who couldn’t get enough: enterprises were beginning to bring the 7950X into their data centers, too.

With success comes demand

AMD knew they were onto a winner with their 7000 series. But I’m sure they never anticipated the demand for the 7950X across the entire gaming industry. The Zen3 EPYC CPUs – AMD’s enterprise grade series – had already been around for some time, but Ryzen’s developments in 2022 quickly trumped that of any CPUs studios or hosting providers had been using prior. Very quickly, the 7950X evolved from a B2C product to a B2B product as well.

The in-game benefits are clear: higher thread performance and faster clock speeds allow more players to be supported on a single machine, without any compromise to the gameplay experience. Just as I mentioned earlier, progress in game development is always a balancing act between growth and optimization; the power of the 7950X strengthens gaming infrastructure, delivering a smoother, more immersive experience for players, without any additional cost. A win-win.

In fact, many of our partners – from big AAA developers we support directly, to B2C private hosting companies and B2B managed hosting providers – have been using the Ryzen chip, reducing costs while gaining access to more powerful technology. As the leading game studios know, building modern games demand an important combination of powerful technology and the right expertise to guide its use. You can read more about how they bring their work to life here.

Ready player two

The Ryzen 7950X had captured the hearts and minds of both consumer and enterprise. Three years on, it even topped TechRadar’s ‘The best AMD processor in 2025’ list.

But this level of demand came at a price. AMD now had to accommodate both the gamers and data centers, and coupled with the resurgence of cryptocurrency mining also making use of the CPU last year, AMD’s stock was struggling to cope.

In May 2024, AMD’s solution was to launch the EPYC 4004 – a new lineup of enterprise grade CPUs, based on the same Zen 4 architecture as the Ryzen 7000 series. They already had a recipe for success with the 7950X, and so the aim behind EPYC was to offer equivalent CPUs, but designed for enterprises, not consumers: 24/7/365 data center loads, ECC memory (error-correcting memory support) and memory mirroring for further redundancy.

Enter the EPYC 4564P – the flagship CPU for the 4004 series, and the chip made to take the business demand off the 7950X. And, as you can see, their configurations are near identical:

Not only that, but EPYC CPUs also benefit from a healthier TCO (total cost of ownership), as the servers will have enterprise warranties, less downtime and fewer replacements.

For developers and hosting providers, conversations about CPUs have shifted. Raw speed is important, but how that performance holds up over time is vital too, and that’s where the AMD EPYC 4564P shines. Built on the same Zen 4 architecture as the Ryzen 7950X, it delivers the same single-thread performance, but fine-tunes it for the data center with the reliability features needed for continuous workloads: high concurrency, uptime, and stability.

EPYC chips also share Ryzen’s strengths in single-thread performance, so it’s essentially the same powerhouse, just built for the environments that never sleep.

I’ve seen more and more partners choosing EPYC for these reasons, acknowledging that the technology gamers love for their desktops has now matured into a fully-fledged data center CPU. The same performance, the same architecture, just optimized for the always-on world of modern gaming.

What comes next

Over the last four years, developers, publishers, managed hosting services and B2C private rented server providers have all been in a great spot when it comes to optimizing their multiplayer titles. Progress in game development seems to keep to the same beat as the development of the gaming infrastructure that hosts it, and the Ryzen EPYC conversation is proof of that.

While the AMD Ryzen 7950X continues to deliver exceptional performance for gamers, those renting servers from suppliers using the EPYC 4564P can expect the same power with the added advantages of enterprise reliability and efficiency.

At servers.com, we see these shifts play out daily as we work with hosting providers who rely on consistent performance and availability. As a gamer myself, I understand the drive for performance; my role is to ensure that with EPYC-powered infrastructure, our customers have the performance and support they need to deliver seamless multiplayer experiences every time.

I hope that in time, the EPYC chip will build as much of a profile for the enterprise side, as the 7950X has for the consumer side.