Well we kinda heard about 7nm 12-core and 16-core dies incoming, I don't doubt if AMD had the opportunity to go for the bleachers, they will.

Question is, what happened to the 12-core die. It could be for mobile since Intel's i9 mobile only goes to 6-cores with no 8-core mobile rumor surfacing yet.

Right now it seems a 6c/12t cpu does everything a gamer could want, including streaming while gaming. If they keep increasing core count at the expense of clock speed, that's going backwards for gaming currently. Intel's 6c/12t 8700k is a better gaming cpu then AMD's 8c/16t 2700X cpu because of Intel's higher clock speed.

09973
Honestly, 10 - 15% would be a bit disappointing. Starting to Mirror Intel too much.

Unless the prices are kept reasonable. Pricing from Zen to Zen + was fair but it could have been slightly better. We'll see where Zen 2 slots in.

veganfanatic
I was looking at those new processors and they do look rather interesting
 
realistically how many cores does a gaming box really need?
 
 

As many cores as possible.  The more cores you have, the more things they can do.  Remember, Intel kept innovation at a standstill and tick tocked the market for a decade.  We're about to have innovation at the speed of light, and it seems everyone is just going to complain.  The more cores we have, the better.

HaywireHaywood
I'm far from knowledgeable about computer architecture, but from the reading I've been doing lately, it seems to me that till game tech can load 6 cores to 75% or more, having 12 or 16 cores won't help.  I read that games as they stand are reacting to player input instead of going through a predetermined process like video encoding.  They can't process in advance of receiving player input, hence having speedier single cores reacting faster to the input are more important than having multiple cores at lower speeds.

There was a HUGE thread about this on hardOCP with it getting very, VERY heated, to the point I think mods had to intervene to shut it down as the person taking taking the "we don't need more than 4 cores" argument didn't understand any of the benchmarks, the data, or anything that was being posted.  Most of the newer games actually do use more than 4-6 cores, and actually will use 8 cores perfectly fine, like TombRaider, Assassin's Creed Origins, Deus Ex mankind divided, both Watchdogs games, Witcher 3, Crisis 3 of course! haha, and anything built on the Frostbite engine.
 
More cores is good for everyone.  The fewer systems in deployement, the less power used (think of data centers that can replace their old dual & quad cpu systems).  As for end users, less time spent doing things like uncompressing data to install things, encoding things on the fly while streaming, installing that update while playing, scanning for viruses while playing, etc.  More horsepower is never a bad thing, as long as it doesn't come with an exponential increase in power usage. 

"But we don't need more cores for gaming." Because gaming is what PC's were exclusively designed for.