CPU, APU & Chipsets News - Page 2

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).

AMD's top-end Ryzen 9 processors with 3D V-Cache on-board will be something special for gamers, and the company has been busy elaborating on the reasons why.

Info on the Ryzen 9 7950X3D and 7900X3D as leaked by VideoCardz (Image Credit: VideoCardz)

These X3D chips, namely the Ryzen 9 7950X3D and 7900X3D, have two separate chiplets (known as CCDs), and in a fresh info dump, AMD has made it clear that the fastest chiplet for any particular game will be used.

For the uninitiated, the difference between the two chiplets is that one has the 3D V-Cache, and the other doesn't - although that second (non-X3D) chiplet can run at a faster boost speed as a result.

AMD is set to debut its new AMD Ryzen 9 7000X3D CPUs this week, and it's expected that the 3D V-Cache will deliver excellent results for PC gamers. As official reviews have yet to appear, we have some in-game benchmark leaks for the flagship AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, where we see up to 35% faster performance than the Intel Core i9-13900K.

AMD Ryzen 9 7000X3D CPU

The CPU was paired with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card and MSI MAG X670E Tomahawk motherboard. The five games tested in 1080p include; Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Far Cry 5, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Metro Exodus, and Star Control.

Of the five games, Assassin's Creed saw the biggest performance bump, with the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D being 35% faster than the Intel Core i9-13900K. That said, the second biggest result was for Far Cry 5, which was 12% faster. Taking the average across these five games and the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D is 12% faster than the Intel Core i9-13900K.

AMD's incoming Ryzen 9 7950X3D and 7900X3D processors will come with the ability to manually modify the CCD priority via the BIOS, according to fresh details unearthed on Twitter.

HXL, a regular hardware leaker, tweeted to flag up the new ASUS X670 beta BIOS, which allows the user to tweak what workloads are assigned to which CCD.

And that's an important feature because of the way these Ryzen 9 chips are configured.

The AMD's Ryzen 7000-series of CPUs feature integrated graphics with an RDNA 2-based GPU. However, we're talking about something basic, as you've got 128 stream processors and 2 CUs designed purely to display graphics. And not, you know, play games. As with all tech, this hasn't stopped someone from overclocking the GPU to see how far the performance can be improved.

AMD Ryzen 7000 Radeon GPU Overclocked, credit: SkatterBench

And that's precisely what SkatterBencher has done, pushing the clock speeds to an impressive 3.1 GHz - delivering a performance uplift of roughly 42%. Overclocking the integrated GPU wasn't easy as it required playing around with AMD's Precision Boost Overdrive settings and increased voltages and power limits.

"While overclocking the Ryzen 7000 integrated graphics was not supported at launch, recently AMD has expanded the overclocker's toolkit with options to do so," Pieter at SkatterBench writes. "While I wouldn't say overclocking the integrated graphics provides a viable path to meaningful gaming performance, I wouldn't be a SkatterBencher if I didn't try overclocking it anyway."

Even though PC sales have seen a historic decline in the past year, with companies across the board feeling the pinch, one company is bucking the trend - Arm. For those needing a refresher, Arm processors are based on reduced instruction set computer (RISC) architecture, where Arm Limited designs the core CPU components and then licenses the IP to partners to build Arm-based chips according to their specifications, which is a very different approach to what we see from Intel and AMD.

MacBook Air with M2

And yeah, 2022 was a good year for Arm. Thanks partly to Apple's success with the Arm-based MacBook series, Arm-based laptops could capture a 25% market share within five years. Apple's M1 chip, which wowed many with its performance and power efficiency, is generally considered the major success story for Arm-based CPUs in recent years. It has seen the Arm laptop market grow from 2% to over 12% at the end of 2022.

Arm Limited has reported revenue growth of 28% too, which is larger than any of the other major tech giants. And even though Apple has a 90% share of the Arm-based laptop market, companies like Qualcomm are expected to deliver Arm laptops for the traditional PC market in the coming years. And with that, we get the magic 25% figure being reported, but even if Arm doesn't manage to capture a quarter of the laptop CPU market in five years, there's no doubt amongst industry analysts that it will continue to grow.

AMD has broken the 30% threshold for CPU market share, with a new report from Mercury Research highlighting that AMD now has 31.3% of the x86 processor market - up from 28.5% in the previous year. Naturally, Intel still has the lion's share with 68.7%. Still, the company recently reported historic losses due to the drop in PC shipments that highlighted its waning dominance in the PC server space.

AMD's EPYC server CPU range

It's here where we see some of the most impressive strides made by AMD, where its server CPU market share increased from 4.2% at the close of 2018 to 17.6% at the end of 2022. Desktop CPUs, aka the Ryzen range found in PCs, hit 18.6% market share at the close of 2022, a slow-but-steady increase for AMD - though on that front, it's down from 2020's peak of 20.1%.

Although the bump in market share is great news for AMD, the report also highlights the current state of the PC business, with Mercury Research stating that Intel and AMD have experienced the most significant year-over-year (around 34%) and quarter-over-quarter (around 19%) decline in 30 years of tracking.

Intel has announced that its 11th Generation Intel Core i9, i7, i5, and Intel Xeon W processors have reached the 'end of life' stage. After partners place final orders (and they have until August 25, 2023), the last 11th Generation CPUs and chipsets will ship this time next year. As expected, Intel's 400 and 500 series chipsets supporting Rocket Lake CPUs are also going away.

Intel Core i9-11900K Desktop Processor 8 Cores up to 5.3 GHz

Intel's 11th Generation 'Rocket Lake' processors have an interesting history, as they're built on a 14nm node that was considered a step back at the time. According to reports, the architecture was initially intended for use with 10nm, but due to delays and setbacks, 'Rocket Lake' was shoehorned onto 14nm to be released. And it never made its way into laptops.

Even so, the performance was a step up from its predecessor, but the larger node meant it used a lot of power. At the time of release, its desktop competition came from AMD's Zen 3 Ryzen CPUs, which offered more cores. The 10th Generation 'Comet Lake' was generally seen as a better option because it provided 10 cores versus the eight in 'Rocket Lake.'

We recently looked in-depth at the search trends for GPUs in 2022 courtesy of Raul Bilc at Razzem, where we learned that NVIDIA dominated Google searches, with nearly 80% of all searches being for GeForce-related products. Today comes a new report, this time looking at CPUs, and as per the headline, AMD dominates the results, with over 60% of all search queries in 2022 being for Ryzen CPUs. AMD Ryzen Threadripper, Intel Xenon, and Intel X-series CPUs were excluded, with the results focused on the consumer market.

Ryzen dominates the Top 10 CPU Google searches for 2022, Source: Raul Bilc/Razzem

The top results are all Ryzen, with the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X being the most popular CPU searched for alongside the AMD Ryzen 5 3600, Ryzen 7 5800X, and even the Ryzen 5800X3D making the top 10 list. With the Ryzen 7000 series making its debut last year, it's interesting that the only entries in the top 50 are for the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X and the Ryzen 5 7600X.

It's easy to understand why the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X made the top of the list, and it's affordability and performance make it a great option for new builds or upgrades. Plus, it comes with packed with a cooler.