Processors - Page 37

Intel hasn't said much about its new Arrow Lake CPUs, but now some log files have revealed some key details about what we can expect performance-wise.

X user @InstLatX64 shared some log files that revealed three new chips: Arrow Lake-S 24-core, Arrow Lake-HX 24-core, and Arrow Lake-H 16-core. The log files reveal that the Arrow Lake-S 24-core and 24-thread chip has a base clock speed of 3.6 GHz, which, if proven to be true, would mean a 600 MHz increase compared to the previous desktop flagship CPU, the Raptor Lake Core i9-14900K.

Also featuring a significant clock speed improvement is the Arrow Lake-HX 24 core and 24 thread chip with a 3.0 GHz, an 800 MHz increase compared to the Core i9-14900HX, the previous gen HX flagship. However, that isn't the biggest increase with these new Arrow Lake CPUs, as the Arrow Lake-H SKU, a 16-core and 16-thread CPU whose base clock is 1200 MHz faster than the previous gen Core Ultra 9 185H.

The "PC was reborn," said Qualcomm CEO Christiano Amon upon the announcement of the company's new Arm-based Snapdragon X series processors inside of Microsoft's newly-announced Copilot+ PC family of AI-ready laptops.

Qualcomm and Microsoft are in for a fight with Copilot+, which is being rocket-fueled by Charlie Demerjian, the founder of SemiAccurate. In a direct sniper headshot to both companies and especially the Arm-based Snapdragon X series processor -- Microsoft doesn't get out of this easily, either -- Charlie said: "Lets start out with a simple fact of product launches, when you have a good product, get it out there to everyone as early as possible".

"When you have a bad one, make sure no one can independently test it and therefor contradict your rosy messaging with hard facts. Qualcomm and Microsoft have gone far above and beyond the call of duty to make sure independent reviews of their new SoC in the AI/Copilot PCs can't happen. This isn't by chance".

AMD's upcoming Strix Halo APU is going to be one of the best APUs on the market when it releases, with the latest shipping manifestos showing Strix Halo with up to 128GB of RAM on board.

We've already heard whispers about AMD's upcoming Strix Halo APU featuring 32GB and 64GB of RAM, but now we're seeing the gigantic leap up to 128GB of RAM with the Zen 5-based APU. AMD's new Strix Halo APU will be compatible with the FP11 (BGA) platform with TDPs ranging between 55W to 130W.

This new spotting of the Strix Halo APU with 128GB of RAM is the highest we've seen yet, blowing away most high-end desktop gaming PCs that usually get packed with 32GB or 64GB of RAM. That doesn't stop you from upgrading to 128GB, but having 128GB of RAM with an APU... is just something special.

AMD isn't too far from launching its newly rebranded Ryzen AI 300 series "Strix Point" APUs, with David Huang testing the new Ryzen AI 9 365.

Huang has gotten his hands on some pre-launch Ryzen AI 300-powered devices. His review looks at Zen 5's architectural improvements, with detailed, high-level comparisons between AMD's previous-gen Zen 3, current-gen Zen 4, and next-gen Zen 5 architectures. He even includes some separate testing on the Zen 5c dense cores on the new Strix Point APU.

The new AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 features 10 cores and 20 threads of Zen 5 power, boosting up to 5.0GHz (4 x Zen 5 cores and 6 x Zen 5c cores). AMD hasn't confirmed the boost clocks of the Zen 5c cores, but David's early testing has the Zen 5c cores at 3.3GHz, with David noting that both Zen 5 and Zen 5c cores were operating at their respective frequencies without affecting one another. In his testing, David used a product with 32GB of LPDDR5X memory at 7500MT/s.

AMD has just dropped the prices of its Ryzen 8000G series "Hawk Point" APUs across the range, with around $20 to $30 discount off each of the SKUs.

AMD launched its new Ryzen 8000G series "Hawk Point" APUs earlier this year, based on the Zen 4 CPU architecture and RDNA 3 GPU architecture on the AM5 socket. AMD launched the Ryzen 7 8700G, Ryzen 5 8600G, and Ryzen 5 8500G APUs, now all discounted.

The flagship Ryzen 7 8700G APU has dropped to $299 from its original $329 price, while the Ryzen 5 8600G has dropped to $199 from $229, and finally, the Ryzen 5 8500G has dropped to $159 from $179. Not bad savings across the board there, especially if you were about to buy one of these Hawk Point APUs.

AMD unveiled its next-gen Zen 5-powered Ryzen 9000 Series 'Granite Ridge' desktop processors at Computex 2024, alongside its new Ryzen AI 300 Series 'Strix Point' processors with powerful NPUs and RDNA 3.5 graphics for Copilot+ PCs. With benchmarks, architecture breakdowns, and model info, the only things not confirmed were the pricing and release dates. All we've got officially is a general July 2024 release window.

With the release potentially weeks away, we've now got some info on when to expect AMD's latest chips to hit retail, thanks to retail listings from U.S. outlets like BestBuy and B&H Photo. According to the listings, the Ryzen 9000 Series of desktop processors (AMD Ryzen 9 9950X, Ryzen 9 9900X, Ryzen 7 9700X, and Ryzen 5 9600X) are launching on July 31.

By that same token, retail listings for new Ryzen AI 300 Series laptops, like the ASUS Zenbook S 16, indicate the Ryzen AI 300 Series launch is happening on July 15.

According to a new report from DigiTimes, TSMC has started mass production of Intel's next-generation Lunar Lake CPUs on its new 3nm EUV FinFET process node.

Intel's next-gen Lunar Lake processor is a chiplet-based design that sees CPU cores, an integrated GPU, NPU, and even on-package memory on a single chiplet on a compute tile, all made on TSMC's 3nm process node. The SoC and I/O dies will be the only other part of the chiplet made on TSMC's 6nm process node.

The new Intel Lunar Lake CPU will have a fourth-generation NPU that has up to 48 TOPS of AI performance. Intel reiterates that Lunar Lake has 4x the AI compute performance over Meteor Lake. Lunar Lake also features a heavily beefed-up Battlemage "Xe2" GPU, which offers up to 50% more performance over the integrated Xe-based GPU inside Meteor Lake.

Intel's Open Image Denoiser (OIDN) is an open-source library that uses the GPU for the "denoising process" which has been updated to include support for its upcoming Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake chips with integrated GPUs, as well as its next-gen Battlemage "Xe2" GPU.

The denoising technology removes grain and artifacts in a ray-tracing rendered image using multiple algorithms, preserving the original image quality and fidelity. OIDN includes faster rendering times, with the "noise" being removed, hardware resources are used in the best way possible.

Intel's new OIDN v2.3 supports new CPU architectures with Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake, as well as Battlemage "Xe2" GPUs coming later this year. The updated OIDN software has 1.5x to 2x speed improvements in real-time previews using the high-quality mode.

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.

AMD has one of the best mid-range processors on the market with its Zen 4-based Ryzen 5 7600X, but the next-gen Zen 5-based Ryzen 5 9600X looks to be a champion.

In some new leaks, we're seeing that a Ryzen 5 9600X engineering sample (ES) processor being overclocked to a very nice 5.7GHz across all cores, up 300MHz from its max CPU boost clock of 5.4GHz. AMD isn't just cranking the CPU clock speed by 100MHz from the Ryzen 5 7600X, but the internal Zen 5 CPU architecture will provide IPC improvements, and a much lower 65W TDP is welcomed (105W on the 7600X).

The leaker posted some CPU-Z benchmark results, where we can see single-threaded performance with 871 points, and multi-threaded performance at 7096 points at all-core 5.7GHz. This is compared to 776 points and 6201 points for single-threaded and multi-threaded performance, respectively, on the Zen 5-based Ryzen 5 9600X ES chip at its stock 5.4GHz.

AMD has one of the best CPUs for gaming with its current-gen Zen 4-based Ryzen 7 7800X3D processor, but we're now expecting next-gen Zen 5-based Ryzen 9000 series, which will have SKUs that will be powered with 3D V-Cache technology.

But now AMD has spoken with PCGamer about some new CPUs, with AMD's senior technical marketing manager Donny Woligroski saying: "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".

If you were expecting to see AMD do what it did last time: slapping second-gen 3D V-Cache to its CPUs this time around, you'd be wrong. AMD has been making improvements to 3D V-Cache, and it seems that we're going to see just what those improvements are -- sorry, 'really cool differentiators' -- when the next-gen Zen 5-based Ryzen 9000 series X3D processors launch.