CPU, APU & Chipsets News - Page 1

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 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.

Intel's next-generation Core Ultra 7 268V "Lunar Lake" CPU has been putting in some hours on Geekbench, with a new chip pushing even higher results than the last time we saw the Core Ultra 7 268V on Geekbench.

In the new results, the Core Ultra 7 268V "Lunar Lake" CPU scores 2915 points in the single-core run of Geekbench 6, and 11448 points in the multi-core run. This is compared to 2739 points and 9907 points for single- and multi-core, respectively, with the previous leak on the Core Ultra 7 268V processor being benched on Geekbench.

That's a decent 7.4% improvement in single-core performance, and a 14% increase in multi-core performance between the new, and older Core Ultra 7 268V processor. We should expect slightly better performance as we get closer to the retail Lunar Lake processors, and their launch in early September.

AMD's Ryzen 9000X3D processors won't be with us until early 2025, with a reveal planned for the next-gen 3D V-Cache CPUs at CES 2025 - or that's the latest rumor.

The news comes from HXL, a regular leaker on X, who offers up a very short and simple post as you can see above. The tweet was spotted by Wccftech, which backs up the notion of a CES 2025 launch for Ryzen 9000X3D in the thread on X, and shares in a separate report that AMD has told its motherboard partners that the release timeframe has indeed been pushed back.

Previously, those motherboard vendors had been informed by AMD that Ryzen 9000X3D chips were going to launch later in 2024 (as ASUS recently leaked, in fact), but apparently that isn't the case any longer.

AMD has just published a new blog explaining that a new Windows update will boost gaming performance on its Zen 5 processors, and talks about the discrepancy in performance between its internal gaming benchmarks, and reviewers' data.

In the blog post, AMD kinda dodges the entire thing... but it tries to explain why its new Zen 5-based Ryzen 9000 series "Granite Ridge" CPUs aren't performing as well with tech reviewers and gamers compared to its internal benchmarks.

Some of the reasons that AMD said including the different test configurations of reviewers, which definitely makes sense, but we didn't have these defensive blog posts when Zen 4 launched, or Zen 3, or Zen 2, or Zen 1. AMD also said it's using a specific configuration of hardware for its Intel system that it uses in-house for benchmarking comparison, with DDR5-6000 memory and Intel's new Default Settings (Baseline) which wouldn't align with how most reviewers have their Intel setups configured.

Intel's next-gen Core Ultra 200 series "Arrow Lake-S" desktop CPUs were rumored for an October 10 release, but new information points to a retail launch on October 17.

The company has been struggling big time over the last couple of months especially, but its next-gen Arrow Lake CPU is nearly here, with Chinese social media site QQ had a poster called "ChannelGate" explain (machine translated):

"The sales of AMD platform solutions have been relatively active recently, and there are more and more inquiries from consumers. Unfortunately, the supply of AMD 9000 CPU is insufficient. INTEL has no choice but to work hard to deal with the problems of I7I9. The upstream end is still solving the problem. The CPU warranty is extended for 2 to 5 years, and it is negotiating with motherboard manufacturers to jointly solve the instability problem of 13th and 14th generation CPUs".