Processors

Intel is reportedly set to launch its new Core Ultra 200S Plus "Arrow Lake Refresh" desktop CPUs next month, with the flagship Core Ultra 9 290K Plus cancelled, and the new Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and Core Ultra 5 250K Plus reviews going live on March 23.

We'll also see the KF variants of these two Arrow Lake Refresh processors, sans their integrated graphics, while the K series models keep the integrated GPU. Intel hasn't announced its Core Ultra 200S Plus processors to the public just yet, but the latest leaks suggest a March 23 embargo for Intel and its board partners for its new Arrow Lake Refresh processors.

Rumors from the last couple of weeks have suggested that Intel has nixed its upcoming Core Ultra 9 290K Plus processor, which would've featured the same 24-core CPU with 8 P-Cores and 16 E-Cores as the current Core Ultra 9 285K processor, but with higher CPU clocks and a higher Intel Thermal Velocity Boost peak.

Qualcomm's next-gen Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro and Gen 6 mobile processors to support LPDDR6 + UFS 5.0 storage for the flagship SoC, the Gen 6 non-Pro to offer LPDDR5, to save partners on costs to the consumer.

The latest rumor on the next-gen Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro chip is that it will be compatible with new, and older memory and storage standards, which will help reduce costs for Qualcomm's vast family of partners... some somewhat good news to hear in the midst of the ongoing DRAM crisis.

Qualcomm is expected to charge even more for its next-gen flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro processor, with Weibo's Fixed-focus digital cameras claiming that phone makers will have multiple options when it comes to integrating LPDDR6, LPDDR5X, or LPDDR5 memory as well as UFS 5.0 storage. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 (non-Pro) chip is expected to only feature LPDDR5.

AMD's new Ryzen Threadripper PRO 9995WX processor is a 96-core, 192-thread Zen 5-based workstation beast CPU launching at $12,000... with a new OC mod applied that keeps the chip at under 50C under load at 1550W power.

Geekerwan has uploaded a new build video using the Ryzen Threadripper PRO 9995WX processor, where he attempted to reduce the thermal bottleneck of the cold plate by modding the CPU's integrated heat spreader (IHS) into the cold plate itself, with coolant channels machined directly into the IHS.

After some tests and prototypes the team purchased chips and machined channels into spare heat spreaders in order to compare against conventional high-end blocks, after iterating on water routing to improve the match on chiplet layouts, as the uneven flow can see one CCD running hotter than another when heat sources are spread out across the package.

ASRock has released a statement in response to reports that AMD Ryzen 9000 Series processors have been experiencing issues when paired with the company's AM5 motherboards. Although the statement doesn't provide specific information on models or the extent of the reported issues and failures, it notes that the company is "seamlessly" working with AMD to continue optimizing firmware (BIOS) and improving system stability.

In addition, ASRock notes that it has begun a "comprehensive internal review" and a "rigorous verification process," and has opened a direct channel to its technical support team for customers with issues to get the help they need. The company views all feedback as a "cornerstone" of its improvement process, so it's taking the issues surrounding its motherboards and AMD Ryzen CPUs very seriously.

Although recent reporting from Puget Systems confirms that the failure rate of AMD's Ryzen 9000 Series processors is sitting at around 2.52%, with AMD's Ryzen 9000 X3D Series processor failure rate sitting at just 1.51%, there have been multiple reports on sites like Reddit of AMD Ryzen 9000 CPUs failing on ASRock motherboards. Here's ASRock's statement in full.

Intel was meant to launch its new Panther Lake CPUs for gaming handhelds in the weeks ahead, but an "unexpected delay" has occurred, and now rumor has it we'll be waiting until sometime in Q2 2026.

Intel's VP and GM, Robert Hallock, confirmed not too long ago that its dedicated Panther Lake SoC for gaming handhelds would be released this year, without being specific on when. Then there was leaker "Golden Pig Upgrade" who said not shortly after Hallock's comments that the new Panther Lake chips for next-gen gaming handhelds will be coming towards the end of Q1, or start of Q2.

There has reportedly been an "unexpected delay" in its launch according to the latest rumors, without being clear again, just "Q2" which could be anytime up until Computex 2026 in late May. Intel's new Panther Lake SoCs for gaming handhelds will feature 16 cores of CPU power, and up to 12 Xe3 GPU cores for integrated graphics, providing a true upgrade over its current-gen handheld offerings.

Apple is expected to unveil its more powerful M5 Pro and M5 Max processors with the launch of its updated 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros next month, with new rumors suggesting we'll see improved 2.5D advanced packaging that will improve heat dissipation.

The new rumors claim that TSMC's 2.5D advanced packaging will be used versus the company's Integrated Fan-Out (InFO) technology, which will improve heat dissipation and lower resistance. In a new report on Weibo, insider Fixed-focus digital cameras explains: "the advantages of heat dissipation and low resistance are obvious. Although, it is still a 2.5D package, its density is higher than that of Info, making it a very promising direction for Apple this year".

Apple Silicon has been going from stride to stride, with its M5 Pro and M5 Max to offer some serious additional power over the stock M5 chip, and with that... comes improvements to how it is fabbed, as packaging everything onto a monolithic die creates a "hot spot" and that is hard for a single heat pipe that Apple has been trying to dissipate the heat from powerful M5 Pro and M5 Max processors.

It's no secret that AMD's Zen-powered Ryzen CPUs have not only been growing in popularity over the years but have also become the CPU of choice among PC gamers, with processors like AMD's Ryzen 7 9800X3D outperforming Intel's lineup when it comes to pure gaming performance.

This has been reflected in Valve's monthly Steam Hardware & Software Survey results. As the data here is limited to people who use Steam to play PC games, it reflects current hardware trends amongst gamers. Thanks to the success of AMD Ryzen CPUs over the past couple of years, AMD has been slowly gaining market share in what has traditionally been an Intel-dominated space.

The latest Steam Hardware & Software Survey results for January 2026 show that Intel remains in the lead with 56.64% CPU market share, followed by AMD at 43.34%. Over the past year, AMD's CPU market share has gained 0.5 to 1.0% each month, but as 2026 kicks off, Intel has surprisingly regained some ground.

Although AMD's Data Center segment led the company's Q4 2026 revenue by recording a record $5.4 billion, thanks to AMD EPYC processor and AMD Instinct GPU shipments, the company's Client and Gaming segment was not far behind. This covers AMD's consumer market, from Ryzen CPUs and Radeon GPUs to mobile chips and even custom APUs for consoles like the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.

AMD's Client and Gaming segment recorded $3.1 billion in revenue for Q4 2026, with the Client side of the business recording a record $3.1 billion, up 34% year-over-year. Although the Gaming side's $843 million was lower, it was still up 50% year over year, thanks primarily to "semi-custom revenue" from consoles and gaming hardware, as well as from Radeon GPUs. Interestingly, AMD doesn't highlight or mention the RDNA 4-powered Radeon RX 9000 Series in its report.

For the full 2025 calendar year, Client and Gaming revenue hit a record $14.6 billion, up 51% from 2024. AMD attributes this to strong demand for Ryzen processors, which continue to gain market share at the expense of Intel's consumer-facing CPUs. And yes, even though AMD's big financial success in 2025 was AI, it's good to see Ryzen included in the mix.

Intel has announced its new Xeon 600 "Granite Rapids" workstation CPUs, offering up to 86 cores and 172 threads of CPU power, 8000 MT/s memory support, 128 PCIe Gen5 lanes, 350W TDP with OC support, and costs up to $7699.

This is the company's answer to AMD and its fantastic Ryzen Threadripper 9000 series CPUs, with the new Intel Xeon 600 series CPUs fabbed on its in-house Intel 3 process node using Redwood Cove P-Cores. Xeon 600 workstation processors are aimed at content creators, data scientists, professionals, AI workloads, and other workstation segments. These include AI Dev, Media, Energy & Geo-Sciences, Life Sciences & Healthcare, and Financial Services.

Intel says its new Xeon 600 "Granite Rapids" workstation CPUs are designed to "Unleash Heavy-Duty Compute" with higher performance efficiency in an expandable platform, and with vPro technologies, the new Granite Rapids CPUs are ready for modern AI developers.

Apple's next-gen M6 processor has been rumored on TSMC's new "N2P" 2nm process node, but recent reports suggest N2P will be for Qualcomm and MediaTek, while Apple's new M6 will be fabbed on N2 to save on semiconductor manufacturing costs.

In a new report from China Times, it will be Qualcomm and MediaTek having an exclusive over Apple by using TSMC's freshest N2P process on its chips.

Apple will reportedly continue using the N2 process node from TSMC for its next-gen M6 processor to save on manufacturing costs, as there's only a touted 5% performance uplift at the same power consumption between the N2 and N2P process nodes. Apple's also expected to continue using the cheaper N2 node from TSMC for its next-gen iPhone chips in the A20 Pro and A20.

Apple's upgraded M5 Pro and M5 Max processors will reportedly be launching with its new macOS 26.3 operating system, powering a new wave of faster MacBook Pro laptops.

In his latest Power On newsletter, Bloomberg writer Mark Gurman said that the M5 Pro and M5 Max versions of the MacBook Pro would be launching alongside macOS 26.3, which will be a free download for Apple Mac users. Gurman didn't say exactly when, but Weibo tipster Fixed-focus digital cameras said Apple's new M5 Pro and M5 Max would be launching in March 2026.

Gurman teased that Apple's new M6 processor is "coming sooner than people anticipate", so we'd assume Apple would release its beefier M5 Pro and M5 Max chipsets before its next-gen M6 launches. MacRumors also reports that Apple's new macOS 26.3 operating system is currently in beta testing, and could be released to the public in February, which means the new M5 Pro and M5 Max chipsets could be announced and launched in the coming weeks.

NVIDIA hasn't said much about its upcoming Arm-based N1X + N1 processors, but now NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has mentioned the N1X + N1 and his company working with MediaTek on the new chips.

Jensen is in Taiwan right now where he talked with local media, bringing up the N1X + N1 chips and saying they're a joint venture with MediaTek as a system-on-a-chip (SoC) designed for "AI computers". Jensen said the new N1X + N1 processors are being tweaked for low power and high performance, with rumored gaming performance levels of an RTX 5070.

NVIDIA's new N1 branding goes hand-in-hand with the company's push into AI PCs and laptops using an Arm-based CPU complex developed with MediaTek, and will compete directly against AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm in the laptop market.

AMD's next-generation Zen 6 architecture will debut this year, with its CCD packing more density, more CPU cores, more cache, and it'll only be a bit bigger than the CCDs on the Zen 5 and Zen 4 chips, all fabbed on TSMC's fresh new N2 process node.

In a new post on X by leaker "HXL" who provided the Zen CCD die sizes starting from Zen 2 through to the next-gen Zen 6 CCD, you can see that the new Zen 6 CCDs will feature 50% more cores (12 cores per CCD versus 8 cores on Zen 3/4/5), 50% more cache (48MB per CCD versus 32MB on Zen 3/4/5) and fabbed on TSMC's latest N2 process node using NanoSheet technology.

AMD is expected to use TSMC's new N2P process node for all of its Zen 6 processors, with the IOD fabbed on N3P, which we heard about in leaks previously (more on that in the links below). The CCD die size is only a bit bigger with Zen 6 coming in at around 76mm2, compared to 71mm2 for Zen 5's CCD and 72mm2 for Zen 4, but smaller than Zen 3's CCD which is 83mm2.

Apple has quite the span of new MacBook laptops and desktops to roll out this year, with new MacBook Pros, MacBook Airs, a refreshed MacBook Pro with an OLED screen and touch support, a new Mac mini and Mac Studio, a new low-cost MacBook powered by an iPhone-grade processor, and even a new Apple Studio Display for 2026.

But in a new Power On! newsletter, Bloomberg writer Mark Gurman says that the new MacBook Pros, MacBook Air, and Mac Studio systems are due out in the first half of 2026, while the revamped MacBook Pro "should be hitting" towards the end of 2026.

Gurman writes that Apple's next-generation M6 processor is "potentially coming sooner than people anticipate" and that it might not release in the coming laptops, but "still in the near future" in some configurations. He notes that Apple released its M5 processor in three devices last October, and that "it might seem soon" for an M6, there was only a 5-month gap between the M3 and M4 chips.

NVIDIA is reportedly considering outsourcing semiconductor production to Intel in 2028, as well as a partial cooperation between the companies on its next-generation Feynman GPU architecture.

In a new report from DigiTimes picked up by analyst @Jukan on X, we're hearing that thanks to TSMC pretty much dominating advanced processes and advanced packaging, it is a new target for the United States.

Chip companies are having to deal with the 'heavy responsibility' of American manufacturing, with cost issues and capacity shortages. The current model of highly concentrated semiconductor production with TSMC over the last few years has moved towards a new strategy: 'multi-sourcing and risk diversification'.

NVIDIA will be offering its next-gen Vera CPUs as a standalone part of the infrastructure, with wherever the CPU workload is, it will run on NVIDIA CPUs... meaning it'll compete against AMD's mega-successful EPYC processors as well as Intel's fleets of Xeon CPUs.

In a new interview between Bloomberg and NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang regarding the upcoming Vera CPU plan, Jensen said: "For the very first time, we're going to be offering Vera CPUs. Vera is such an incredible CPU. We're going to offer Vera CPUs as a standalone part of the infrastructure. And so not only, not only can you run your computing stack on NVIDIA GPUs, you can now also run your computing stack, wherever their CPU workload, run on NVIDIA CPUs".

Jensen continued, adding: "Vera is completely revolutionary...Coreweave is going to have to race if Coreweave's going to be the first to stand up Vera CPUs. We haven't announced any of our CPU design wins, but there are going to be many".

With AMD's Ryzen 9850X3D about to be released, a fresh leak shows that this new CPU is purportedly just a few percent faster (on average) than the 9800X3D for frame rates in 1080p.

VideoCardz picked up a post from a known leaker on X, chi11eddog, who showed a comparison between these CPUs in seven games (running with an RTX 5090 at Full HD resolution).

Check out the graph above, and as you can see, in some games, the difference is, well, nothing - which is the case for Battlefield 6 and Monster Hunter Wilds, which are essentially a dead heat.

PC component bundles have been around for a long time, but are often tied to retailers putting together packs of essential parts needed for an upgrade or new build. From motherboards to coolers, CPUs, and memory, bundles make sense when you're looking to pick up two, three, or more parts at a time.

What makes this latest bundle interesting is that it looks like AMD has partnered with Cooler Master and V-Color to offer a CPU kit (sans motherboard) for PC enthusiasts and gamers in China - via @unikoshardware on X. The bundle pairs AMD's brand-new Ryzen 7 9850X gaming CPU, which was announced earlier this year at CES 2026, with Cooler Master's HYPER 612 APEX PRO air cooler and 32 GB of V-Color's Manta XFinity RGB DDR5-6000 memory.

According to reports, the bundle was announced at a recent Cooler Master press event, but there's no word on a potential price. With the current memory crisis affecting retail DDR5 pricing, the hope is that this bundle offers consumers a more affordable way to pick up 32GB of V-Color DDR5 memory with their new CPU.

Microsoft has marked another milestone for gamers with its Xbox app now available on all Arm-based Windows 11 PCs, paving the way for NVIDIA's new N1X and N1 Arm-based processors expected to be baked inside of new waves of gaming laptops later this year.

Players are now open to download and enjoy a huge range of games from the Xbox PC app game catalog on Arm-based Windows 11 systems, with over 85% of the Game Pass catalog compatible on these PCs. Microsoft is also actively working with partners to expand support for Arm-based games "even further".

For titles that aren't supported locally just yet, Xbox Cloud Gaming remains an "easy way to jump in" while Microsoft works with partners to broaden compatibility.

AMD's recently announced Ryzen AI 400 Series of processors, aka 'Gorgon Point,' kept the same mix of Zen 5 and Zen 5c cores, RDNA 3.5 graphics, and XDNA 2 NPUs, as the Ryzen AI 300 Series - albeit with increased frequencies and expanded memory support. According to a new report over at Videocardz, AMD is planning to do the same for its Ryzen AI MAX 300 Series, which will include a new flagship 'Gorgon Halo' processor.

AMD Ryzen AI MAX+ 395, codename 'Strix Halo,' is a beast of an APU, featuring 16 cores, 32 threads, and an integrated Radeon 8060S graphics card with an impressive 40 RDNA 3.5 Compute Units. 'Gorgon Halo,' which we presume will be part of a new Ryzen AI MAX 400 Series, will reportedly follow the same path by increasing CPU and GPU frequencies and clock speeds.

Strix Halo's Radeon 8060S is currently clocked at 2900 MHz, so the expectation is that it will be pushed to 3+ GHz, similar to the GPUs in the Ryzen AI 9 HX 475 and HX 470, which top out at 3.1 GHz.