Processors - Page 48

At the company's recent Scary Fast event, Apple announced new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models that would use the brand-new M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max chips - the first chips to hit the home PC market using the cutting-edge 3nm or N3 process node from TSMC. However, based on leaked benchmark results, the jump from M2 Pro to M3 Pro might not be worth it.

It's worth highlighting that we're only looking at a single Geekbench 6 result (spotted by the YouTube channel Max Tech), but it shows that the M3 Pro is only 6% faster than the M2 Pro regarding multi-core performance. In single-core performance, the M3 Pro is up to 14% faster than the M2 Pro - more impressive though still underwhelming results.

Is there a reason why moving to TSMC's cutting-edge 3nm process hasn't yielded more impressive results for the M3 Pro? Yes, it probably has more to do with the M3's architecture than the process itself.

AMD has just launched its new Ryzen 7040U series processors, which feature their Zen 4c cores borrowed from the datacenter-focused EPYC family of processors. The entire Ryzen 7040 series of APUs has been popular for systems with different designs, and recently, TianBei launched its new Cyberpunk GOD78 Mini-PC.

Inside, it features the AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS processor. This APU inside features 8 cores and 16 threads based on the Zen 4 architecture at up to 5.1GHz, a Radeon 780M based on the RDNA 3 GPU architecture with 12 compute units clocking at up to 2.7GHz, with a 35-54W TDP.

The new Cyberpunk GOD78 Mini-PC has "CYBERPUNK" plastered on top of it and a wicked aesthetic with RGB lighting peaking out from multiple parts of the system. It looks futuristic, and I kinda dig it... with the cyberpunk-style armor on top and interesting RGB lighting designs, it'll look great on your desk. Speaking of being on your desk, it measures 131.5mm x 131.5mm x 55mm.

AMD has made its new Ryzen 7040U series official, with the launch of two parts of that series: the Ryzen 5 7545U and Ryzen 3 7440U processors, which will both feature smaller Zen 4c cores that is currently used in the EPYC family of processors.

The special thing about AMD's new Ryzen 7040U series CPUs is that they're the first to feature a hybrid-style architecture with performance-focused and efficiency-based cores, similar to how Intel uses a hybrid design with P-Cores and E-Cores on their Core CPUs.

Now, AMD is saying it has even better performance with its new processors over the competitor, and they all feature "AMD Ryzen AI" technology. AI will be a huge focus moving forward on CPUs over the coming months -- Intel's new Meteor Lake packs an AI chip -- and Microsoft will change to "AI PC" recommendations and scores on systems in 2024.

Intel's Core i7-14700HX processor has been spotted in a leaked benchmark, and it shows the next-gen laptop chip having considerable promise.

The 14700HX (Raptor Lake Refresh) is the successor to the 13700HX (Raptor Lake) and the benchmark is drawn from Geekbench, as spotted by Benchleaks on X (formerly Twitter).

Intel's Core i7-14700HX managed to hit 2,921 in single-core and 17,475 points for multi-core performance in Geekbench 6.

Minisforum has teased its next-gen 3-in-1 tablet, which will feature a high-end display, and it'll be powered by AMD's new Ryzen 8000 series "Hawk Point" APU.

The new Minisforum 3-in-1 tablet teased its new slate a month ago, but now we know the Minisforum V3 will be the first step into the tablet business for the company, and what a big one it'll be. Minisforum's new V3 tablet will be one of the first to use AMD's new Ryzen 8000 series "Hawk Point" APU and, with that power, will look at Microsoft's higher-end Surface Pro as its competitor.

Minisforum will use a higher-end 14-inch 1440p 165Hz display, so it will be in the middle of being a high-end panel mixed with a fantastic refresh rate. The whole 3-in-1 use of being a notebook, a portable display, or a tablet powered by AMD's new Hawk Point APU will be a refreshing entry into the market from Minisforum.

At Apple's recent 'Scary Fest' event, the company announced a range of new products that would feature its new M3 chip - making them the world's first personal computers to hit the scene with the latest in 3-nanometer process technology. The M3 chip was the star of the recently released iPhone 15 lineup, so seeing it unleashed at home is pretty exciting.

And Apple is throwing out some bold performance claims. iMacs with the new M3 chips are set to deliver up to 2X faster performance than the previous M1 generation and up to 2.5X faster than Intel-based iMacs.

The M3 Chip in the new iMac features an 8-core CPU with up to a 10-core GPU, with Apple stating that this will lead to up to 30 percent faster Safari and Microsoft Excel performance, with games loading faster and offering up to 50 percent faster frame rate.

AMD is currently cooking its next-gen APUs that will need a little longer in the oven, according to leaker Moore's Law is Dead, which has new information on Kraken Point, Strix Point, Strix Halo, and Fire Range APUs.

The next-gen APUs have been delayed into 2025, which means we'll see the following APUs in 2024: Mendocino, Barcelo-R, Rembrandt-R, Hawk Point, and Dragon Range. AMD will reportedly have its beefed-up Strix Point APU in the second half of 2024. The APUs with -R on them are refreshes, with Barcelo and Rembrandt both getting refreshed in 2024.

However, the future is all about AI, with NVIDIA leading the charge there with AI GPUs, but Intel and Qualcomm are all about AI right now with the new Meteor Lake CPUs from Intel having AI processing on board, with the same going for the new Snapdragon X Elite SoC from Qualcomm. AMD is making the same move with AI, with its new Hawk Point APU featuring 16 TOPS of AI performance. We also have some numbers on the newer 2025 and beyond APUs that are much more powerful when it comes to processing AI workloads.

Intel's new Core Ultra branding, its new Meteor Lake CPU, new AI abilities, and more will be oh show at Intel's just-announced "AI Everywhere" event, which will take place on December 14.

We can expect a live stream from Intel that will see the company introduce Intel Core Ultra CPUs, shifting away from the Core i3, i5, i7, and i9 branding and into Core Ultra 5, Core Ultra 7, Core Ultra 9, and more. These new CPUs will feature the new Meteor Lake architecture, which will power the new Core Ultra CPUs. Inside, we have a CPU, GPU, and an AI-dedicated VPU design. This event is "AI Everywhere," so we can see Intel wants to highlight its big entry into AI.

Intel will call the AI side of its Meteor Lake CPU as "Core AI capabilities," but we won't know the nitty gritty of that until the AI Everywhere event on December 14. Intel explains: "Join Intel Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger and other Intel leaders for Intel's "AI Everywhere" event. Marking a momentous year for the company, Intel will accelerate its execution engine and power AI workloads across the data center, the cloud and the edge with the launch of 5th Gen Intel® Xeon® processors and Intel® Core™ Ultra processors".

Last week, we reported on some interesting CPU news. NVIDIA and AMD (among others) were looking at creating new CPUs using Arm technology that could run Windows. Effectively, these would be for Windows PCs and, based on the original report from Reuters, would see the AI giant work alongside Microsoft to create Arm-based PC solutions for AI and other applications.

Throw in AMD and Qualcomm doing the same, and it's looking like PC hardware makers are following Apple to utilize Arm-based technologies to create new CPU designs. These PC chips for Arm-based Windows PCs could arrive as soon as 2025, with the eye-opening part being a situation where a desktop or otherwise traditional PC running Windows could feature an NVIDIA-developed Arm-based CPU.

NVIDIA and AMD have declined to comment on the report, but with news of Arm-based CPUs entering the PC race, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has chimed in as part of its latest earnings call with investors.

Apple has been steadily making fantastic improvements on its in-house M-series processors, starting out as the M1 family, evolving into the M2 family, and on October 30 at Apple's just-announced "Scary Fast" event, we'll see the next-gen M3 family.

The company only recently held its iPhone 15 announcement, unleashing tens of millions of new iPhone 15 smartphones into the market. We had updates to the Apple Watch, AirPods Pro with a USB-C charging case, and more. But now, we're getting another event -- Scary Fast -- where we should see the new M3 chip unveiled... and used in a new Apple product, of course.

Apple could also unveil a new M3-powered iMac as well as an M3-powered MacBook Pro, both utilizing Apple's next-gen M3 in the best way possible: the highest-end Mac products that Apple sells. The iMac and MacBook Pro can be configured into higher-end specs and be quite damn powerful -- especially with the M2 Max + lots of RAM + lots of SSD -- so the M3 is only going to amplify that. We should see refreshes of the MacBook and MacBook Air in 2024 with the M3 processor, but this event should see the new iMac and MacBook Pro getting M3 upgrades.

NVIDIA has been reportedly working on making Arm-based CPUs that would run Windows, and not just Android-powered devices like the NVIDIA Shield. It shouldn't come as a surprise, given NVIDIA acquired Arm Limited back in September 2020 for a hefty $40 billion... they've been cooking.

A new CPU from NVIDIA that runs Windows would be quite a thing to see, instantly entering the central processing unit ring against AMD and Intel, which each make GPUs as well. NVIDIA won't be happy not dominating in a particular market, and I'm sure Jensen is flexing in his leather jacket at the fact that there's not NVIDIA dominating the CPU market success he wants.

It's a very strategic move that would only help the entire industry -- AMD and Intel with a serious competitor, and Microsoft, Arm, and NVIDIA all working together on a Windows-capable Arm-based CPU. Qualcomm has been playing in this space for a while now, recently announcing its new Snapdragon X Elite SoC which is a powerhouse new chip that's ready to do this exact thing in 2024. NVIDIA could be a huge contender to that, and it has me very, very excited. I truly miss the days of the NVIDIA chipsets on motherboards... flexing age here.

Intel's new Core i9-14900K is now out in the wild, available on Amazon and Newegg for around $600 or so -- Newegg is cheaper, $599 right now -- and into Der8auer's hands for some ultra-cool testing.

Before Der8auer delidded his new Core i9-14900K processor, he created a baseline using a CPU at stock settings cooled by a 360mm AIO liquid cooler from Corsair. He proceeded to fix the fan speeds and core frequencies, using the same DDR5-7600 XMP memory profile the entire time. Core settings were locked at a 56 ratio, with a fixed v-core at 1.39V. Der8auer also used a power calibration setting of load level 5, which is what you'd use for a little overclock.

Intel's new Core i9-14900K before it was delidded, running on the 360mm AIO liquid cooler, saw peak CPU power consumption of 294W. Once the 14900K was delidded and liquid metal was applied, peak power consumption came down 10W to 284W. Der8auer was expecting temperature drops, but not to this level, and to reduce power consumption by 10W, too. But once it was delidded... that's when the fun began.

AMD might have a couple of fresh top-end Ryzen processors for laptops inbound which will sit just under the current Dragon Range top dogs.

The rumor, which comes from Golden Pig Upgrade, a regular leaker on Bilibili - a source that must be treated with some caution (though any rumor should be, really) - claims Ryzen 9 7840HX and Ryzen 9 7940HX CPUs are incoming.

Those processors will sit under the current Ryzen 9 7845HX and Ryzen 9 7945HX mobile chips, carrying the same spec, but with one change: The clock frequencies will be adjusted down slightly.

With the launch of the new 14th Gen Core processors from Intel, the company introduced something called Intel Application Optimization (APO), a technology designed to optimize multithreaded performance.

Building off of the mature Thread Director that sits within Windows, we recently sat down with Roger Chandler, Intel vice president and general manager, Enthusiast PC and Workstation​, Client Computing Group, who informed us that Intel was looking at individual games to see which could benefit from better thread management to boost in-game performance.

And the boost looks to be substantial, with new owners of the flagship Intel Core i9 14900K taking to Reddit to confirm that APO is delivering an extra 200+ FPS in some games.

Last week, Intel announced and launched its 14th Gen Core processors for desktops, with the flagship Intel Core i9 14900K leading the pack. The company made a mistake when formally revealing the 14th Gen 'Raptor Lake Refresh' lineup; the new desktop processors will not support the latest Thunderbolt 5 spec.

It's not the sort of mistake you see in a product reveal of this stature, with the statement proclaiming that the 14th Gen processors would support "upcoming Thunderbolt 5 wired connectivity."

To make the situation a little more confusing, the announcement has been updated with an Editor's Note (via Tom's Hardware) stating, "While some processors in the Intel Core 14th Gen processor family will include support for Thunderbolt 5, Intel Core 14th Gen desktop processors, specifically, will not support it." Adding it will share details on "Intel Core 14th Gen CPUs that support Thunderbolt 5 at a later date."

AMD's new Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7995WX processor is an absolute champion of silicon, offering up to a mighty impressive 96 cores and 192 threads of Zen 4-powered CPU power... so much power that it has more FP32 compute performance than the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 consoles.

That new flagship Ryzen Theadripper PRO 7995WX processor offers up to 12.16 TFLOPs of FP32 compute performance, whereas if we compare this to the Xbox Series X with its 12.1 TFLOPs and the PlayStation 5 with its 10.2 TFLOPs, we can see that the new TR PRO 7995WX is quite the beast. It's almost at the performance of the GeForce RTX 3060, too, which is the most popular GPU on the Steam Hardware Survey.

AMD recently launched its Ryzen Threadripper 7000 and Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7000 series CPUs, with a few big differences between the two: the Threadripper 7000 (non-PRO) is for HEDT users and enthusiasts, offering up to 64 cores and 128 threads. Meanwhile, the Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7000 scales up higher, with a 96-core, 192-thread Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7995WX processor.

Qualcomm's next-gen Snapdragon X has been teased before, but now we're getting the nitty gritty of the specs, the official name, and what this new SoC can really do, thanks to new leaks.

The new Qualcomm Snapdragon X SoC is the first step in a new family of chips that are built for Windows, and with it comes a new name: the Snapdragon X Elite SoC, Elite meaning it's, well, elite. Qualcomm is using new high-performance Oryon cores and a seriously beefed-up Adreno GPU.

Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X Elite SoC is built on TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) and its new 4nm process node, with 12 of Qualcomm's new Oryon CPU cores at up to 3.8GHz, while single- and dual-core boosts will see the Oryon CPU at up to 4.3GHz. Meanwhile, the updated Adreno GPU now packs 4.6 TFLOPs of FP32 compute performance, meaning it has greater GPU performance than the Xbox Series X... now we're talking.

When Intel formally announced and launched the new Intel Core 14th Gen processors, with the flagship Intel Core i9 14900K leading the pack, one the significant features of the new 'Raptor Lake Refresh' lineup was a sizable boost to performance in games - with Intel citing "up to 23% gaming performance uplift compared to leading competitor processors."

How it manages this isn't simply due to the impressive out-of-the-box boost clock frequency of 6 GHz for the 14900K; some of it comes from the new Intel Application Optimization (APO) tech exclusive to the 14900K and 14700K. With Intel's hybrid architecture of P-cores (Performance or 'big') and E-cores (Efficient or 'small') maturing, this performance uplift technology works alongside the existing Intel Thread Director application thread scheduling.

At IEM Sydney 2023, we had the opportunity to sit down with Roger Chandler, Intel vice president and general manager, Enthusiast PC and Workstation​, Client Computing Group, to talk about the new APO tech, why it works for some games, and how the performance uplift works.

Team AU Overclocking and Intel put the new 14th Gen Core i9 14900K through the ringer at SXSW Sydney - showcasing the latest CPU generation's capabilities in pushing in-game performance to new heights. In a world where GPU grunt drives a lot of performance, it's a great reminder that the CPU still plays a significant role in getting the most frames. As Dino Strkljevic from Intel said, "You can never have enough frames."

Yes, a lot of liquid nitrogen was involved, with Roger Chandler, Intel vice president and general manager, Enthusiast PC and Workstation​, Client Computing Group, helping to keep a steady flow of LN2.

With IEM Sydney 2023 ((Intel Extreme Masters) taking place alongside SXSW Sydney, the game of choice was Counter-Strike 2. With the new Intel Core i9 14900K featuring a 6 GHz boost frequency out of the box, Team AU and Intel pushed that to 7.5 to 8 GHz. And with that, the performance shot up to a mind-blowing 1310 FPS.

AMD has unleashed its beyond ridiculous Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7000 WX series CPUs; they've been benched in Cinebench and absolutely demolished every previous score and world record for Cinebench R23.

The new AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7995WX processor features 96 cores and 192 threads of Zen 4-based processing power, boosting up to 5.1GHz on a 350W TDP. The new Dell Precision 7875 workstation features the new Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7995WX processor and was benchmarked against various competing Intel Xeon CPUs.

But, at a live demonstration at AMD headquarters over the last week, an overclocking session was had using the new Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7995WX processor... and boy, they've got some awesome results to share. Photos were taken by QuasarZone, but VideoCardz isn't under any NDA or embargo, so we've got some delicious scores to check out.