Processors - Page 30

Intel has announced it will no longer be using its in-house Intel 20A process node for its next-gen Core Ultra 200 series "Arrow Lake" processors, and that it will use external nodes from partners... you know, TSMC.

TSMC will handle most of the Tiles on the Arrow Lake SoC -- CPU, GPU, NPU, I/O -- while Intel Foundry will handle the packaging of the manufactured chiplets into the final processor. Intel CFO Dave Zinsser said that the company would "skip over productizing" the 20A node to reduce capital expenditures and spending. Intel should save around $500 million from skipping its 20A process node.

Intel says that its upcoming 18A process node remains on track to launch in 2025, with the company shifting resources from 20A to the newer 18A. No more spending time and money on Intel 20A, everything is being poured into Intel 18A now, to bring the node to full production.

Intel has only just launched its new Core Ultra 200V series "Lunar Lake" CPUs, but we're hearing morer and more details of its next-gen Core Ultra 300 series "Panther Lake" in new leaks.

In a post on X, leaker "Jaykhin" teased the final SKUs of Panther Lake with a more powerful Panther Lake-H processor that offers up to 18 cores of CPU power and up to 12 Xe2 "Celestial" GPU cores and a higher 45W TDP. This is a slight bump from the 16 cores total (Hyper-Threading died with Lunar Lake, and it isnt on Panther Lake) on the just-launched Lunar Lake CPUs, to 18 cores on Panther Lake-H.

The two Panther Lake-H processors that Jaykhin referred to as "pre-EDS" which stands for External Design Specification, which are a range of specifications that Intel releases externally to its partners. With this information, partners will know configurations, power, performance, I/O functionality, compliance, and other aspects companies need to know when developing a product based on that processor, in this case, Panther Lake.

Intel's 2024 has been defined by bad news. One of the biggest stories in the PC gaming community has been reports surrounding faulty 13th and 14th-Gen Core CPUs - primarily Core i9-14900K and Core i9-13900K processors. This issue has been ongoing for months, with Intel and its motherboard partners releasing a BIOS or microcode update that 'fixes' the problem last month.

However, the voltage issues have led to numerous faulty CPUs with irrevocable damage. Intel has opted not to issue a product recall and confirmed that the problem affects all 13th and 14th Gen CPUs, including the lower-power 65W models. What it has done is extend the warranty for all affected CPUs while offering a no-fuss replacement program for its customers experiencing issues.

According to several sources, the RMA process for affected 13th and 14th Gen CPUs has been fast, smooth, and reliable in recent weeks. For others, it has been slow going. One Reddit post by 'Towel4' shows that Intel sent him a notification that they have run out of replacement Core i9-14900K and Core i9-13900K processors and that it's going to take "4 to 5 weeks or more before our stocks are replenished."

Acer has just unveiled its new Predator Orion 7000 desktop PC which is the world's first system to have Intel's next-generation Core Ultra 200 series "Arrow Lake-S" desktop CPUs.

The new Predator Orion 7000 systems will feature Intel Arrow Lake-S processors, up to 128GB of DDR5 memory, and an NPU integrated into the Arrow Lake CPU for AI workloads just like the just-released Core Ultra 200V series "Lunar Lake" laptop processors.

Inside, Acer is baking in a custom Cyclone X 360 system fan and CPU cooler, a 360mm AIO liquid cooling system that is engineered to maintain optimal temperatures, combining enhanced airflow, efficient heat dissipation, and superior thermal management to ensure your system performs at its best during intense gaming and heavy workloads. It also looks fantastic.

Intel has officially launched its new Core Ultra 200V series "Lunar Lake" processors, to take on the next-generation thin-and-light laptop market against AMD and Qualcomm.

The company has tweaked virtually everything under the hood of Lunar Lake, with new P-Cores and E-Cores, a massively upgraded integrated GPU, and even more AI performance. Intel is also debuting on-package memory with its new Core Ultra 200V series "Lunar Lake" CPUs -- RAM that is next to the chip itself.

Intel is using its new Lion Cove P-Cores for more performance than the previous-generaiton, and Skymonth E-Cores that are tuned for efficiency. For Lunar Lake, Intel is using Low-Power variants of its E-Cores called LP-E, which sit on a dedicated low-power island.

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger is reportedly planning to present the board on how to streamline the company, including selling some parts of the business off and scrapping projects, to the board later this month.

In a new report from Reuters, we're learning that Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger and key executives are expected to "present a plan" later this month to Intel's board of directors, to "slice off unnecessary businesses and revamp capital spending" according to a source familiar with the matter.

The plan will reportedly include ideas from Gelsinger and his team to shave overall costs by selling businesses, including its programmable chip unit Altera, as Intel can no longer continue to fund the company. Reuters' source said that Gelsinger and the other high-ranking executives are expected to present the plan at a mid-September board meeting.

Free performance boosts via updates are always welcomed by gamers just like discounts on hardware that powers those games, and now AMD's latest Ryzen 9000 series CPUs have been hit with price reductions.

AMD released its Ryzen 9000 series Zen 5 desktop CPUs on August 8 and August 15, meaning they haven't even been out an entire month, and we are already seeing price reductions. Reports indicate that prices have been cut by up to 12% on some select CPUs, which is particularly good for those who weren't entirely sold on the new generation of CPUs from AMD and were slightly hesitant to make that upgrade from likely a CPU that's several generations older.

As for more performance for your dollar, Ryzen CPUs are seemingly getting significant performance boosts from new Windows 11 updates. The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X has been discounted by nearly $30 at Microcenter, with the Ryzen 9900X being discounted by a much grander 12%, or $60 by reducing the price from $499.99 to $439.99. As for the Ryzen 7 9700X Microcenter is listing it $349.99 from its original $359.99, a saving of $10.

Great, so now people have to be careful when purchasing AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D processors with a new scam exposed by Der8auer. The scammers are selling 7800X3D CPUs with fake heatspreaders, and empty PCBs... check it out:

Overclocking legend "Der8auer" purchased an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D processor from an enthusiast, who had fallen victim to the scam. The processor was sold on the second-hand market in Romania, through a platform called OLX. OLX doesn't allow people to return items purchased from individuals, but there are protections in place that let customers counter-claim if the product delivered is fraudulent, making sure that the scammer doesn't receive their money.

VideoCardz notes that some buyers will try and save money, negotiating a deal directly with the seller outside of OLX, but that removes any protection to the consumer. This consumer purchased a second-hand AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D processor that turned out to be fake.

Intel's next-generation Panther Lake CPUs have been in the headlines a few times this year, but now we've got some new information on CPU configurations of Intel's next-gen processors.

First up, we'll be introduced to the new Core Ultra 200V series "Lunar Lake" CPUs later this month for laptops, with the desktops getting Core Ultra 200 series "Arrow Lake" CPUs (200V = laptops, 200 = desktops) later this year. After that, is when we'll be introduced to the Core Ultra 300 series "Panther Lake" CPUs that will be unleashed in the second half of 2025.

The new information on the Panther Lake processors is coming from a Coreboot patch, detailing 4 different Panther Lake SKUs. Intel will be using its new Cougar Cove P-Cores and Skymont E-Cores, while the Skymont E-Cores featured on Panther Lake are expected to be optimized, or possibly updated so we could see a naming change of the E-Cores before Panther Lake launches in 2H 2025.

Intel has been suffering of late, we all know it, but the "Royal Core" project was meant to destroy Zen 5... and rumor has it, CEO Pat Gelsinger killed the project.

Intel hired Jim Keller years ago -- the father of the Zen CPU architecture from AMD -- who worked on the "Royal Core Project" which was an architecture that moved past Core, which would be the largest upgrade in CPU architecture for Intel in decades.

2024: Arrow Lake was (meant to be) the bridge architecture to "Royal Core". Hyper-Threading was removed with the knowledge that it was going away soon anyways, and so it was time to focus on any extra single-threading you can get by simplifying the core design.

Okay, so this is more for marketing than something you'd consider practical - Cooler Master has used its Cryofuze 5 thermal paste to paint a landscape mural on a CPU. Available in a range of colors, the Cryofuze 5 Prism lineup promises high-performing thermal conductivity, and here, we see the various colors mixed up and used by an artist to turn a CPU into a work of art.

Naturally, once the cooler is on, the PC fires up, and the thermal paste binds to both the cooler's cold plate and the CPU; the art is basically ruined, but this is cool nonetheless. If the scene of a mountain surrounded by clouds in the sky and trees in the foreground is reminiscent of painter Bob Ross's iconic TV show, you're not alone. Cooler Master even includes the theme song from the show at the end of the clip.

We don't expect this to become a "thing," but it does show that mixing various thermal pastes of different colors could be a way to add some flair to a new build - just for fun.

Intel has shared a new update on the instability issues plaguing its 13th-gen and 14th-gen processors, soothing the doubts of those who are paranoid that Arrow Lake might suffer from the same problems - and Lunar Lake laptop CPUs get a clean bill of health, too.

The new statement from Intel spokesperson Thomas Hannaford relates to the "Vmin Shift Instability issue investigation," pinned down as a root cause of the mentioned stability woes (though not, we should note, necessarily the sole root cause).

At any rate, we're told in no uncertain terms that:

AMD's Ryzen 7600X3D has been rumored for a while, and now we've had it confirmed by AMD that this 3D V-Cache processor from the Zen 4 range actually exists - but with a chunky caveat.

Speculation around this last-gen X3D addition held that it might not be in the DIY market, and that the 6-core Ryzen 7600X3D would be sold mainly via OEMs, but it turns out that it will be on sale to consumers - but only via Micro Center.

Yes, it turns out that one of the things we feared about the 7600X3D has come true, because like the 5600X3D before it, this is being sold as a Micro Center exclusive, at a price point of $299.99.

AMD Ryzen Zen 5 processors have just received a performance boost on AM5 MSI motherboards as the company has rolled out a fresh BIOS update that implements a new overclocking mode.

The BIOS update was originally spotted by WCCFTech and is the BIOS version AGESA 1.2.0.1, which includes the new performance mode "105W TDP". As you can probably already expect, the new mode increases the total amount of power available to the CPU, which in this case are AMD's mid-range Ryzen 9000 processors - the Ryzen 9700X and Ryzen 9600X. Typically these processors run at 65W, which means this mode increases power usage by 60%, but how much performance does that gain?

The new mode was benchmarked in Cinebench R23, and on the Ryzen 9700X the mult-core score was 23,153, which is quite a step up from the 20,409 score on the 65W mode. The discrepacy between the two scores indicates a performance increase of 13%, but that isn't indicative of every task, or particularly gaming.

Intel will be revealing its next-gen Core Ultra 200V series "Lunar Lake" laptop CPUs next week, while cooking its next-gen Core Ultra 200 series "Arrow Lake" desktop CPUs later this year... and now rumors of "Arrow Lake Halo" are emerging.

First, AMD has just pushed out its new Ryzen AI 300 series "Strix Point" APUs while rumor has it we're going to see "Strix Halo" later this year offering heavy, heavy upgrades in CPU and GPU power (over double the GPU performance) as well as much higher TDPs. Strix Halo, will be battling against the newly-rumored "Arrow Lake Halo" processor.

In a new shipping manifest spotted by NBD.LTD, an early sample of Intel's new Arrow Lake Halo CPU has been teased for an enthusiast mobile workstation system. The chip in question was tested on the "CEDARLHX5SO1DPC1" which is an RVP (Reference Evaluation Platform) which is used to test the chip internally before it's sent out. The CPU was recently sent, and produced on the 34th week of 2023, meaning it's close to a year old now.

Intel has detailed its next-generation Core Ultra 200V series "Lunar Lake" processors at Hot Chips 2024 this week, highlighting major 3x improved latency and bandwidth improvements over Meteor Lake.

The company will launch its new Lunar Lake CPUs as its new flagship SoC for the next-gen of AI PCs, with a breakthrough in x86 power efficiency -- up to 40% lower SoC power consumption. Intel promises "exceptional core performance" with similar single-threaded performance at half the power.

Intel says its new Xe2-based Battlemage GPU inside of Lunar Lake chips will offer a "massive leap in graphics" performance, with 50% more gaming performance from the integrated GPU inside of Lunar Lake -- Battlemage -- versus the integrated GPU inside of current-gen Meteor Lake chips: Alchemist. There will be "unmatched AI compute" performance from Lunar Lake with up to 120 TOPS platform-wide (CPU, GPU, NPU combined).

Last week, we reported on a new Windows-specific "branch prediction" patch for AMD's Zen 4 and Zen 5 Ryzen desktop processors that would increase performance when gaming with a Ryzen 9000 Series or Ryzen 7000 Series processor.

With a massive 13% improvement in some games (some apps and games would experience no change), the only catch was that this free performance upgrade for Ryzen owners was limited to the Windows 11 24H2 - which is currency in preview as part of the Windows Insider Program.

Well, it's no longer a catch as Microsoft has back-ported these specific AMD Ryzen "branch prediction" optimizations to the current Windows 11 - 23H2 version. Early testing of the update from outlets like Hardware Unboxed shows impressive gaming performance, making this a must-have for Ryzen 9000 Series or Ryzen 7000 Series CPU owners.

AMD is cooking up its next-gen Zen 5-based Ryzen Threadripper 9000 series "Shimada Peak" CPUs, which are leaking through new shipping manifests spotted online.

The first SKU to pass through is a 96-core part, which could very well be the full-fat version of the next-gen Zen 5-based Threadripper CPU. We should expect the new Zen 5-based Ryzen Threadripper 9000 series CPUs to slot into the existing sTR5 socket that the current "Storm Peak" CPUs use.

AMD has the WRX90 and TRX50 motherboards on the market supporting the current-gen Zen 4-based Ryzen Threadripper 7000 series CPUs, so we should expect motherboard upgrades with some new support (USB4, etc) when Ryzen Threadripper 9000 series CPUs are gearing into launch.

AMD took the time at Hot Chips this week to deep dive into its new Zen 5 core architecture, which is already powering the Ryzen AI 300 series "Strix Point" APUs for laptops, and new Ryzen 9000 series "Granite Ridge" CPUs on the desktop.

At Hot Chips this week, AMD went into detail abhout the journey of its Zen core architecture and how it launched in 2017 to fight Intel at levels never before seen, and AMD hasn't let up since. Zen was quickly followed by Zen+, Zen 2, Zen 3, Zen 4, and now Zen 5.

Zen 3 launched with a 19% increase in IPC performance over the Zen 2 architecture, while Zen 4 delivered another 14% IPC performance improvement over Zen 3, and now Zen 5 delivers a 16% IPC lift over Zen 4. Along the way, the Zen architecture picks up new features and tricks, like AVX-512 (FP-256) instructions, more cache, X3D models, and using TSMC's newest nodes.

Microsoft's new Windows 11 24H2 update is ushering in boosts in performance for both Zen 4 and Zen 5 processors from AMD.

The new Windows 11 24H2 update has been tested briefly so far, with fellow Aussie outlet HardwareUnboxed testing the new Windows 11 update with the Zen 4-based Ryzen 7 7700X and Zen 5-based Ryzen 7 9700X processors between 24H2 and 23H2 updates on Windows 11.

AMD's previous-gen Ryzen 7 7700X saw a 10% average performance boost at 1080p across a multitude of games, while the new Zen 5-based Ryzen 7 9700X was 11% faster on average at 1080p with the new Windows 11 24H2 update installed.