Intel Architecture Day 21: Alder Lake, Arc, Sapphire Rapids And More Revealed

Intel held its annual Architecture Day earlier this week, and it’s safe to say that members of the press and analyst communities were waiting with baited breath for the deep dive disclosures on the company’s next-gen silicon architectures and products that are typically unveiled at the event. This year, Intel gave us a densely-packed view of what it has in store for PC consumers, the enterprise and data centers. From Alder Lake to Intel Arc, Sapphire Rapids, Ponte Vecchio and more, Intel laid down the gauntlet in fair detail on a number of fronts. As usual, there was a lot to digest,...

AMD Ryzen 5000G Series Review: Zen 3 APUs Deliver Big Value

by Marco Chiappetta - Tue, Aug 03, 2021

AMD is officially taking the wraps off of its latest APUs, the Ryzen 7 5700G and the Ryzen 5 5600G. As their branding suggests, these new products are based on the same technology as Ryzen 5000 series processors, namely AMD’s excellent Zen 3 core architecture, but with integrated graphics capabilities as well, hence the “G” designation. These particular processors, however, mark somewhat of a departure from similar, previous-gen AMD products. While Ryzen 3000G series APUs were relegated to entry-level systems with a maximum of 4 cores and somewhat tame CPU and GPU clock speeds,...

Intel Details Ambitious Chip Fab Roadmap With Cutting-Edge RibbonFET, PowerVia And Foveros Tech

by Marco Chiappetta - Mon, Jul 26, 2021

The ‘Intel Accelerated' webcast kicked off today, hosted by newly-minted CEO Pat Gelsinger and Dr. Ann Kelleher, SVP and general manager of Technology Development. The dynamic duo disclosed a number of new and interesting details regarding the company’s IDM 2.0 strategy along with Intel’s process and packaging technology roadmaps. Some of the news was related to branding and messaging, but Pat and Ann also talked about some transistor and packaging innovations that will have a significant impact on the way Intel manufactures and builds its chips moving forward. Intel Renames Its...

Intel Expands Tiger Lake-U Laptop Line-Up, Teases Vicious Beast Canyon NUC

by Ben Funk - Sun, May 30, 2021

Computex might be a virtual online-only show this year, but you should expect some big announcements from many of the heavy hitters in tech. The virtual show kicks off May 31 at 7:30 AM local time in Taipei, which translates to 10:30 PM Eastern on Sunday the 30th in the U.S. While there will undoubtedly be a ton of announcements over the next few days coming out of the show, we do have some early news tonight from Intel, to get the show started. Intel hosted a press and analyst Performance Workshop, and has lifted the curtain on how it's expanding the Tiger Lake product lineup, with a few new point...

Intel Core i9-11980HK Preview: 8-Core Tiger Lake-H Unleashed

by Marco Chiappetta - Mon, May 17, 2021

Last week, Intel officially unveiled its Tiger Lake-H45 based H-Series 11th Gen Core processor line-up, for high-performance gaming laptops and mobile workstations. The flagship consumer processor in the family is the Core i9-11980HK. The Core i9-11980HK is an 8-core / 16-thread processor, with a base clock of 2.6GHz and maximum turbo clock of 5GHz on one or two cores, when Intel’s Turbo Boost technology kicks in. The Core i9-11980HK supports DDR4 memory at speeds up to 3,200MHz, but this particular “HK” processor is also fully unlocked and overclockable via Intel’s XTU...

How Many CPU Cores Do You Need For Great PC Gaming?

by Ben Funk - Wed, May 12, 2021

Back in The Day, figuring out which PC processor was better for gaming was a matter of architecture and clock speed. More megahertz on a fast CPU architecture generally also meant that the CPU would be better for a whole host of tasks, in addition to games, versus a lower clocked chip. An Intel Pentium II 450 MHz was faster than a Pentium II 366 MHz, and there wasn't much debate about that. First AMD, and later Intel, broke away from this simple equation by creating model families and tiers within those families. Multi-core CPUs were born, integrating two (or more) independent processor cores...

Intel 3rd Gen Xeon Scalable Launched: 10nm Ice Lake-SP To Supercharge Data Centers

by Marco Chiappetta - Tue, Apr 06, 2021

Intel is launching its first server products built using its advanced 10nm manufacturing process today: the 3rd Gen Xeon Scalable family of processors. 3rd Gen Xeon Scalable processors are based on the Ice Lake-SP microarchitecture, which incorporates a number of new features and enhancements. For example, core counts have been significantly increased; Intel 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors feature up to 40 cores per processor versus 28 cores with 2nd gen offerings. The 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processor platform also supports up to 8 channels of DDR4-3200 memory, up to 6 terabytes of...

Intel Core i9-11900K And i5-11600K Review: Rocket Lake-S Liftoff

by Marco Chiappetta - Tue, Mar 30, 2021

After disclosing some architecture details a few months back, and revealing the initial line-up of Rocket Lake-S based 11th Gen processors a few weeks ago, Intel is officially launching its latest family of mainstream desktop CPUs today, along with some new chipsets to enable all of their features in motherboard platforms. As most of you probably know by now, 11th Gen Intel Core processors based on Rocket Lake-S are manufactured using Intel’s mature 14nm process, but they feature the company’s latest microarchitecture and technology, which was backported from 10nm. We’ve got the...

AMD EPYC 7003 Series Unveiled: Big Iron Zen 3 Takes Flight

by Marco Chiappetta - Mon, Mar 15, 2021

AMD just launched its next-generation EPYC server processors, codenamed Milan, based on the company’s leading Zen 3 microarchitecture. The new EPYC 7003 series is an important milestone for AMD. The company has made significant in-roads in servers and data centers in recent years, and the arrival of the EPYC 7003 series brings with it significantly improved IPC and per-core performance, better multi-core scaling, and more flexible memory configuration options (among other new features), in a package that’s socket compatible with previous-gen offerings – existing EPYC platforms...

Maximizing Ryzen 5000 Performance With AMD Curve Optimizer

by Ben Funk - Fri, Jan 29, 2021

Overclocking a CPU used to be a pretty simple process: change a bus speed or a multiplier, set an appropriate voltage, and voila: your Celeron 300A was running at 450 MHz, or your 600 MHz Duron was knocking on the 1 GHz barrier. These days with the advent of dynamic boost speeds and optimized frequency and voltage curves, processors intelligently push themselves up close to the limit straight out of the box. Setting a multiplier, even if it's higher than the base clock, might actually result in lower performance than stock speeds under certain conditions. The CPUs that likely have the most headroom,...

AMD Ryzen 5000 Mobile Explored: The Future Of Zen 3 Laptops

by Marco Chiappetta - Tue, Jan 26, 2021

During her CES2021 keynote address, AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su, along with a handful of partners, revealed the AMD Ryzen 5000 series mobile processors. At that event, the overall line-up and a few details were disclosed, and over the course of CES many design wins were announced by multiple OEMs as well. Shortly thereafter though, AMD hosted a deep-dive press briefing and discussed a number of additional details regarding the Ryzen 5000 Mobile Series. And today, we’re able to disclose to you more details of AMD's robust new laptop platform, but before we do, a bit of a recap is probably in order......

AMD Unleashes Ryzen 5000 Mobile Processors For Big Laptop Performance Gains At CES 2021

by Marco Chiappetta - Tue, Jan 12, 2021

AMD CEO Dr. Lisa kicked off the company’s highly-anticipated CES 2021 keynote with some discussion about the importance of high-performance computing and the gaming industry in general. She talked about the latest AMD-powered game consoles and the recent launch of the Radeon RX 6000 series, otherwise known as “Big Navi”. Dr. Su also used the big stage to chat with a number of key AMD partners, like Panos Panay, Microsoft Chief Product Officer; HP’s President and CEO Enrique Lores, François Chardavoine; the head of technology for Lucasfilm and ILM; Lewis Hamilton and...

Intel Takes Fight To AMD With Bevy Of New Mobile And Desktop CPUs Unveiled At CES 2021

by Marco Chiappetta - Mon, Jan 11, 2021

At its virtual CES 2021 event today, Intel’s Executive Vice President Gregory Bryant, along with a host of additional executives, engineers, and partners, unveiled an array of new processors and technologies targeting virtually every market, from affordable Chromebooks, to enthusiast-class gaming laptops, and high-end desktops, to big-iron servers. Whereas some companies tend to focus on just a handful of specific products during CES, it seems Intel is making a stand in multiple market segments with no less than 50 processors being announced or teased, with hundreds of design wins in tow....

AMD Ryzen 9 5950X Zen 3 Brain Transplant Yields Huge Performance Gains

by Dave Altavilla - Tue, Dec 15, 2020

There was little question, when we took a deep dive look at AMD's Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 9 5900X in our launch day review, we came away thoroughly impressed. Not only did AMD deliver on its promise of a significant performance lift in many areas, versus its previous gen Ryzen 3000 series, but we also realized better power consumption characteristics for even better performance-per-watt results than we expected. But let's take a step back. You might recall that a little over a year ago, we trucked on down to scenic Kenilworth New Jersey to meet with our buds at Maingear for a very special all-AMD...

AMD Unveils Precision Boost Overdrive 2 To Amp-Up Ryzen 5000 Performance Even Further

by Marco Chiappetta - Mon, Nov 23, 2020

AMD introduced Precision Boost Overdrive, or PBO, a couple of years back to make extracting additional performance from its Ryzen processors, in systems with additional power and thermal headroom, as simple as a few clicks in Ryzen Master. And today, the company just updated the feature with a couple of new wrinkles to boost performance of Ryzen 5000 series processors even further. Unlike a manual overclock which can lock cores at a particular frequency, with Precision Boost Overdrive SenseMI is left in control of the processor, so frequencies and voltages can still dynamically scale up and down...

AMD Ryzen 9 5950X And 5900X CPU Review: Zen 3 Dominates

by Marco Chiappetta - Thu, Nov 05, 2020

AMD made some bold claims when it unveiled the Zen 3-based Ryzen 5000 series during its event early last month. Terms like “historic IPC uplift”, “fastest for gamers”, and “leading power efficiency” -- among a few other superlatives -- were bandied about with impunity. Over the course of the announcement, however, as AMD disclosed actual performance data and ran a few live demos, it became clear the company wasn’t kidding. If all of AMD’s claims proved true, the Ryzen 5000 series would be poised to lead the industry in content creation and gaming...

Intel Tiger Lake-H And Alder Lake 8-Core 16-Thread CPU Platforms Detailed In Extensive Leak

by Ben Funk - Sun, Oct 04, 2020

Intel's ultra-portable Tiger Lake aspirations got off to a great start and reset the playing field for laptop performance, once retail examples broke cover last week. We've all been interested in seeing what the company would do for an encore in segments where power budgets are higher. Current speculation is that Intel might be ready to talk about Tiger Lake-H processors around CES, and perhaps in conjunction with its first discrete GPUs in more than 20 years. However, we might already know quite a bit more than that about the world's biggest x86 chip maker's plans, thanks to leaks inside notebook...

Intel Tiger Lake And Xe Graphics Benchmarks: Laptops Will Roar

by Dave Altavilla - Thu, Sep 17, 2020

Intel has been showcasing its forthcoming Tiger Lake mobile processor line-up since its public debut in January of this year at CES. However, more recently the company disclosed the architecture powering the 11th Gen Core series CPUs at its Architecture Day 2020 event and then followed-up quickly with a full product stack unveil. To say anticipation is high for this product would be an understatement. Intel has a lot riding on Tiger Lake, with its Willow Cove cores and more importantly perhaps, its 10nm SuperFin transistors and Xe Graphics technologies that will underpin a whole new family of products...

Intel Unveils Entire Tiger Lake 11th Gen Family, Smokes Ryzen 4000 In Gaming And Creation

by Brandon Hill - Wed, Sep 02, 2020

Today is Tiger Lake's big day, Intel’s 11th generation Core architecture destined for thin and light laptops (read our Intel Architecture Day 2020 coverage of Tiger Lake here). Tiger Lake has been a long time coming and represents a huge leap in performance over the previous generation Intel Ice Lake family, and it's built on a more advanced Intel 10nm process node too. Straight out of the gate during Intel's virtual launch event, Intel came out guns blazing for AMD. AMD has gained market share and clout with its 7nm Zen 2-based Ryzen 4000 mobile processors, which have been very competitive...

Architecture Day 2020: Intel's Tiger Lake, 10nm SuperFin And Xe GPU Arsenal Exposed

by Dave Altavilla, Marco Chiappetta - Thu, Aug 13, 2020

Intel held a virtual Architecture Day 2020 event this week, and similar to its late 2018 event, the company disclosed a number of details regarding its Six Pillars of technology innovation -- Process, Architecture, Memory, Interconnect, Security and Software. During the event, Intel’s execs and architects discussed new transistor and packaging technologies, software and security innovations, and disclosed new information about upcoming CPU, GPU, memory, and hybrid architectures that are designed to advance products across Intel’s entire portfolio. Additional details were revealed regarding...

AMD Brings Power And Performance Of Ryzen 4000 Renoir Processors To Desktop PCs

by Brandon Hill - Tue, Jul 21, 2020

Today is a big day for AMD, as the company looks to spread the reach of its powerful 7nm Zen 2 processor architecture to additional segments. We’ve seen Zen 2 make waves in the server (EPYC 7xx2), HEDT workstation (Threadripper 3000/Threadripper Pro 3000), consumer desktop (Ryzen 3000), and the laptop (Ryzen 4000) markets over the past year. The latest extensions of the Zen 2 family are Ryzen 4000 processors targeting the consumer desktop market. Although it may be a little confusing, since AMD already has the Zen 2-based Ryzen 3000 family to handle desktop duties, but those processors don’t...

AMD Unveils Ryzen Threadripper Pro Processors To Battle Intel Xeon W

by Marco Chiappetta - Tue, Jul 14, 2020

AMD has offered “PRO” branded Ryzen processors for a number of years. Although the base processor architecture and platform is unchanged versus their standard counterparts, Pro series Ryzen processors enable a number of security, reliability, and manageability features targeted at the enterprise market, where Intel’s competitive vPro-enabled products play. Today, however, AMD is pushing its Pro branding and feature set way up its product stack, with a new line-up of powerful Ryzen Threadripper Pro processors, designed for high-end workstations and creative professionals. Unlike...