CPU, APU & Chipsets News - Page 1

AMD's Ryzen 9 7950X processor reportedly suffers from a bug we've seen in the past with Team Red's CPUs, whereby the silicon appears to be boosting much faster than it should.

AMD's Zen 4 flagship can appear to be running a fair bit faster than it actually is thanks to this bug (Image Credit: AMD)

In reality, though, the RTC (Real Time Clock) bug simply means that the CPU is having the speed it's running at misrepresented, when in fact, it's actually at lower (normal) clock frequencies.

This is a problem that has dogged AMD (and Intel) processors in the past, causing trouble with Ryzen 3000 models for Team Red, with fresh evidence of the bug affecting the Ryzen 9 7950X having been provided by a Russian tech blogger.

AMD's incoming Ryzen 7 7800X3D could be a costlier processor than we thought, at least if early pricing in product listings for the chip over in Europe are on the money (so to speak).

AMD's more affordable 3D V-Cache CPU for the Zen 4 generation is keenly awaited (Image Credit: AMD)

VideoCardz has scoured online retailers, finding prices in various European countries that range from slightly beefier than the recommended price to quite a way above that MSRP.

Regarding the MSRP, we know that the Ryzen 7 7800X3D - an 8-core CPU with 3D V-Cache on-board - is set to retail at US$449 in the States. And given that, German tech site ComputerBase has come up with an expected price in Europe, based on comparing the MSRPs of the 7950X3D and 7900X3D in Euros compared to the US recommended price.

If AMD's internal gaming benchmarks are anything to go by, then the upcoming launch of the 3D V-Cache enabled Ryzen 7 7800X3D could see it becoming the CPU of choice for new PC gaming builds.

Although we've seen some impressive in-game results for the flagship Ryzen 9 "Zen 4" 7950X3D (check out our review for that here), the eight-core, 16-thread Ryzen 7 7800X3D is shaping up to be a worthy successor to the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, not only in terms of performance but in price too. The Ryzen 7 7800X3D is priced at USD 449, and compared to Intel's USD 589 flagship Core i9-13900K - its gaming chops look very tasty.

The benchmarks arrive courtesy of Tom's Hardware, where we see 1080p benchmark results comparing the Ryzen 7 7800X3D to the Intel Core i9-13900K in games like Rainbow Six Siege, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Horizon Zero Dawn.

A yet unheard-of future generation of Intel processors might have been revealed courtesy of a leak via a LinkedIn profile.

We're looking a long way down the line for Intel's Panther Lake processors to possibly arrive (Image Credit: Intel)

Tom's Hardware spotted the profile in question for an Intel graphics hardware engineer, which contained details of the products they're working on - and that included Panther Lake.

As a graphics engineer, they are of course on the integrated GPU side of the equation, and apparently, Panther Lake processors will use Intel's Xe3 Celestial GPU architecture.

We've got some initial sales numbers for the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X3D processor (from Europe), and the CPU looks to be selling well - perhaps to the surprise of some - although the flagship 7950X3D is a bit more of an enigma (we'll come back to that).

The latest figures from major German retailer MindFactory were shared on Twitter by TechEpiphany, showing how many units of the 7900X3D were sold on launch day - 360 to be precise. (Add your own seasoning with leaked sales stats, as ever).

That made this processor the third best-selling model at MindFactory, behind the top seller which was the 5800X3D (that shifted 490 units), and the 5700X (on 400 units).

If you've just bought an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D or 7900X3D processor, then there's a quickstart guide on getting up and running with these new X3D chips you might be interested to see.

Make sure you have the latest AMD Chipset Driver installed (Image Credit: AMD)

Basically, this is a bunch of helpful tips AMD has put together in order to facilitate a smooth installation of your shiny new 3D V-Cache-toting CPU, and to ensure it's working to the best of its abilities.

The gist of the preparation work is to make sure you have an up-to-date version of Windows 10 or 11, meaning in the case of Windows 11 you want version 21H2 build 22000.1455 or better, or with Windows 10 version 1903 build 19044.2546 or newer.

The new high-end mobile Ryzen 9 7945HX with 16 Zen 4 cores has been tested in the latest ASUS ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 over at Notebook Check. Initial benchmarks showcase multi-core performance faster than Intel's flagship Core i9-13980HX (inside an MSI Titan GT77).

ASUS ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 (2023) with an AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX CPU

Although the 5% lead might seem slight, it's all the more impressive because the Ryzen 9 7945HX tops out at 120W compared to the 150W and higher for the Intel Core i9-13980HX.

The tests included a range of popular CPU benchmarks, including the various versions of Cinebench, Blender, 7-Zip, and Geekbench. To get a more like-for-like comparison, the outlet limited the Intel CPU to 120W, and with that, the Cinebench R23 score was 22% higher on the AMD Ryzen 9 with the same power consumption.

The integrated RDNA graphics hardware inside AMD's latest Ryzen 7000 desktop CPU range features only 2 compute units with up to 0.563 TFLOPs of performance. It's the first time AMD put RDNA graphics inside a desktop CPU, but its addition was purely made to improve diagnostic capabilities and offer basic GPU functionality. Translation, it's not meant to be used to play games.

This, in a way, is almost like asking tech reviewers to do precisely that - and with the launch of the new (and impressive) AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D CPU with 3D V-Cache technology, that's what happened over at PCMag. It seems that 3D V-Cache is brilliant for gaming, even in integrated RDNA GPU form, with performance gains in the region of 4X in 720p and 1080p.

The outlet tested four games; F1 22, Total War: Three Kingdoms, Bioshock Infinite, and Tomb Raider. Using the Ultra-Low preset in the visually demanding F1 22 and the average frame rate at 720p for the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D CPU was an impressive 62 fps compared to the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X's 19 fps. Which is playable, with the Ryzen 9 7950X3D also hitting 33 fps in 1080p. This puts its performance slightly faster or on par with the integrated graphics of the Intel Core i9-13900K.

Intel's next-generation Meteor Lake is an important CPU launch for Intel. It will be built on the company's new 7nm process and be its first "chiplet" processor with separate dies for CPU cores and integrated graphics. It's also expected to introduce AI capabilities, which are set to become a mainstay in all processing and gaming hardware in the future. It's also expected to launch later this year or early 2024.

And with that, a new leak by a reputable Intel leaker @leaf_hobby (which has since been deleted, so take all of this with a big ol' grain of salt) has revealed that Intel's 14th-generation Meteor Lake-S desktop processors list Windows 12 as a supported operating system.

The gap between Windows 10 and Windows 11 was around six years, but it's being reported that Microsoft is moving to a three-year cycle for Windows, which puts its potential release sometime in 2024. This adds some weight to Meteor Lake-S listing Windows 12 as a supported OS, as Microsoft's next major Windows release could arrive sooner than expected.

AMD's new Ryzen 9 processors with 3D V-Cache tech are now officially launched, but there's been something of a question mark that has remained hanging over the lesser of the two models.

The Ryzen 9 7900X3D has yet to appear in reviews (at least not from any mainstream sites), and there's been some uncertainty about how the cores are split between the two chiplets onboard the CPU.

Well, now we know courtesy of Andreas Schilling, who is the editor at German tech site Hardwareluxx.de. Schilling claims to have official confirmation (apply a pinch of salt now) from AMD that the cores are split evenly between the two chiplets. (See the tweet above for the full details, including diagrams of core and cache distribution).