CPU, APU & Chipsets News - Page 1

AMD's Ryzen 9 9950X, the incoming flagship for its new Zen 5 chips which debut in July 2024, could be cheaper than its predecessor from the Ryzen 7000 family - if a pricing leak is on the money, so to speak.

Wccftech spotted that the Ryzen 9950X was listed early by a Canadian online retailer, with the processor being priced at CA$839 before the product listing was taken down.

It's not unusual for early pricing leaks like this to happen, and they could be mistakes or, the more cynical might suggest, an opportunity for a retailer to generate a bit of traffic and publicity.

Intel has responded to recent report the root cause behind instability issues being reported by 13th and 14th Gen CPU users has been discovered, with the company saying an investigation is still underway to determine the source of the problem.

The response from Intel came after a report from Igor Wallosek of Igorslab.de, who claimed he obtained a statement from an Intel official that the instability issues with the company's later generation CPUs were being caused by an incorrect value in the microcode algorithm that's associated with the chip's Thermal Velocity Boost (eTVB). For those who don't know, this feature enables the chip to detect when there is enough thermal headroom and respond by increasing clock speed.

However, Intel has now responded to those claims specifically, saying that while an error was detected in the microcode algorithm, and it may have contributed to the instability issue, it's not the "root cause." While the problem with the algorithm isn't believed to be the main problem, at least according to Intel, it's still recommended to owners of 13th and 14th Gen CPUs to update their BIOS to microcode 0x125 or later, as this microcode includes the eTVB fix.

Qualcomm must be absolutely loving the exclusivity of Copilot+ right now, with its new Snapdragon X Series processors soon to be out in the wild, running Copilot+ experiences... meanwhile, AMD's new Ryzen AI 300 series and Intel's Lunar Lake series processors won't have Copilot+ features at launch.

Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X-powered laptops will be launched on June 18, supporting the new Copilot+ features, including Auto Super Resolution, Recall, and more. Qualcomm Snapdragon X-powered laptops can run the Copilot+ features like AutoSR, Recall, Restycle Image, and Cocreator... while new AMD and Intel processors will have to wait.

AMD will have its new Ryzen AI 300 series "Strix Point" APUs available in July, but you'll have to wait for a Windows Update to get those Copilot+ experiences. Intel will launch its new Core Ultra 200V series "Lunar Lake" processors in Q3 2024, and once again, you'll need to wait for a Windows Update to enjoy Copilot+ features.

AMD's next-generation Zen 5-based Ryzen 9000 series desktop processors are nearly here, and now we have some juicy leaked pricing on the first four Ryzen 9000 series CPUs.

In a new video, leaker Moore's Law is Dead provides Zen 5 early pricing as well as some awesome X3D whispers (which has me far more excited than stock Ryzen 9000 series chips). In his video, one of his sources said: "Some distributors have just had pre-markup pricing loaded into their systems for Zen 5. If I extrapolate final pricing from what the markup was last gen, and assume AMD won't massively increase margins this generation (which is a notable assumption), the current loaded pricing suggests these MSRP ranges":

MLID's second source said: "Multiple AMD sources communicated to me that Zen 5 X3D may have less limitations on boost clocks, and have overclocking support! However, there were issues controlling thermals with Zen 5 X3D with high clocks, and so I cannot yet 100% confirm this'll happen, but based on Donny W's recent statements it seems likely".

Qualcomm is gearing up to the launch of its exciting new Snapdragon X Series, and now we're finally getting some more details on the Adreno X1 GPU that's inside of the new SoC.

The new Adreno X1 series is the first generation of integrated graphics fro the X-series SoCs for Windows on ARM, with the "1" denoting the generation, with successors to be named Adreno X2, Adreno X3, and so on. The highest-end configuration -- X1-85 -- includes the "8" for the GPU level, and "5" for the SKU.

Qualcomm's new Adreno X1 GPU features up to 6 shader processors, combining 1536 FP32 ALUs and capable of processing 96 texels per cycle. We have performance of up to 4.6 TFLOPs at its peak, processing up to 72 gigapixels per second. The new Adreno X1 GPU supports major graphics APIs, including DirectX 12.1 (Shader Model 6.7), DirectX 11, Vulkan 1.3, and OpenCL 3.0.

AMD formally announced its next-generation Zen 5-based Ryzen 9000 series CPUs at Computex 2024 earlier this month, and the company is already optimizing and tweaking its 3D V-Cache driver.

This is getting us all excited about Ryzen 9000X3D processors, which will fight Intel directly with its upcoming Arrow Lake-S CPUs as the best gaming CPU on the market. In a post on X, leaker "harukaze5719" discovered AMD's new 3D V-Cache Performance Optimizer driver.

AMD last updated the 3D V-Cache driver when it launched the Ryzen 7000X3D processors, and there's not much information on what the 3D V-Cache driver actually does. It was first released as a Windows 10 exclusive driver for the Ryzen 7 5800X3D processor, but it's also available with AMD's bigger Ryzen 7000X3D family of processors and works in Windows 11 with the 7000X3D series chips.

Reuters reports that Taiwanese chip design giant MediaTek is developing an Arm-based PC processor that will run Windows. " Three people familiar with the matter" say this.

We have been hearing whispers of MediaTek teaming with NVIDIA for a new Arm-based AI PC processor and comments from Dell CEO Michael Dell that we will see an NVIDIA-based processor released for a next-gen AI PC in 2025.

Microsoft also revealed its next-generation laptops with chips designed by Arm last month, its huge new Copilot+ PC push, and the huge relationship with Qualcomm and its Arm-based Snapdragon X series of processors that are inside Copilot+ PC systems running Windows. It seems Qualcomm has the exclusivity here, but that will run out in 2025 and we're going to see an absolute flood of Arm-based AI PC processors hitting the market.

AMD has one of the best gaming processors on the planet with its Ryzen 7 7800X3D and its second-gen 3D V-Cache technology. However, it looks like the 7800X3D will be a faster gaming CPU than the next-gen Zen 5-based Ryzen 9 9700X, and that's coming directly from AMD.

In an interview with Tom's Hardware, AMD's Senior Technical Marketing Manager, Don Woligroski, said: "Is it the fastest in gaming? It's faster than the competition in our tests. X3D is still the king of the hill, but by a much smaller margin than typically between X3D and non-X3D. So a 7800X3D would, yes, be faster than 9700X, but maybe not by as much as you would expect".

In an interview with PCGamer earlier this week, Donny said: "The X3D stuff, we have a lot to say about it. The best part about it is we're not just resting on laurels. We're improving what we can do with X3D, it's really exciting and I'm super looking forward to talking to people about that. It's not like, hey, we've also added X3D to a chip. We are working actively on really cool differentiators to make it even better. We're working on X3D, we're improving it".

Computex 2024 featured many announcements from AMD regarding its incoming next-generation Ryzen 9000 series CPUs, and with many excited about the performance uplift in specific tasks, gamers shouldn't be, or at least if you have a specific previous-gen CPU.

Toms Hardware interviewed AMD's Senior Technical Marketing Manager for Consumer Processors, Donny Woligroski. In the interview, he told the publication that the difference between AMD's new Ryzen 9000 series CPUs and the Ryzen 7000X3D chips in gaming is very little.

Woligroski stated that while its coming Ryzen 9000 series chips won't be the Ryzen 7000X3D chips in gaming, they will still be top-of-the-line CPUs for gaming, but the difference between chips will be extremely small. However, the Ryzen 9000 series CPUs will still beat the 7000X3D chips in non-gaming tasks, meaning the Ryzen 9000 series will be the overall better CPU in terms of overall performance.

Computex 2024 has finally wrapped up, and the madness of the AI-based announcements from various companies has returned to a steady yet exponentially growing stream. Amongst the talk of new AI innovations was CPU hardware - new chips from both Intel and AMD.

A new rumor has surfaced from Club386, who said they spoke to an unnamed source at Computex that informed them AMD was planning on releasing its new 3D V-cache-equipped version of new Ryzen 9000 processors sometime in September. If this rumor is true, AMD would have achieved a new record in terms of how soon they release the X3D version of new CPU generations. For example, AMD released the X3D version for its Zen 3 CPUs 18 months later, while Zen 4 was six months later.

So, what models of new Ryzen 9000 series CPUs will be getting the extra 64MB slices of extra L3 cache? Judging from what has already been announced by AMD, it won't be surprising if the company's top contending CPUs are selected, which appear to be the 16-core Ryzen 9 9950X3D, 12-core 9900X3D and an 8-core 9800X3D. That doesn't rule out the possibility of some mid-range CPUs getting some X3D variants, as AMD did say they were currently testing "cool differentiators" with the cache technology.