We often criticise companies for misleading marketing, which typically falls in the direction of deceitful overpromising. With the Ryzen 5 5500F, we have the opposite problem. Its name and branding undersell what AMD is offering here. It’s a marked improvement over the base Ryzen 5 5500, giving AMD better standing among the best budget CPUs.

The 5500F is a Zen 3 CPU from the Vermeer family of chips, packing six cores, 12 threads, and a boost clock of 4.4 GHz. It’s modest by the standards of the best CPUs for gaming, but it also comes in at a suggested retail price of just $100. Those prices have drifted up toward $120, though hopefully they’ll settle down around list price before long.

Along with a 200 MHz jump in boost clock speeds over the 5500, the 5500F critically comes with access to PCIe 4.0. The original 5500 came from the Cezanne family of APUs, which all use monolithic dies and are limited to PCIe 3.0. Although the 5500F lives in the Vermeer family alongside the main Zen 3 stack, it’s still limited to the 16 MB of L3 cache that characterizes Cezanne (Vermeer chips have access to 32 MB of L3 otherwise).

The chip squarely targets Intel’s Core i3-14100F, a quad-core CPU available for around $100 that offers 11% better gaming performance at 1080p on average compared to the base 5500. The new 5500F tightens that gap to just 2.9%, and it manages to outclass Intel in multithreaded performance while offering a 10% average jump over the base 5500.

AMD Ryzen 5 5500F specifications and pricing

AMD gave the Ryzen 5 5500F a bad name. The “F” suffix across both AMD and Intel is typically used to note chips that lack integrated graphics. And indeed, the Ryzen 5 5500F does lack integrated graphics. But so does the Ryzen 5 5500. In reality, the Ryzen 5 5500F isn’t a re-released CPU with the iGPU sliced off, as F-series processors usually are, but rather an updated Ryzen 5 5500 that comes with better specs and, in turn, better performance.

If there’s any chip that falls in the bucket of a re-released CPU with the iGPU cut off, it’s the original Ryzen 5 5500, not this new F-suffix variant. The Ryzen 5 5500 comes from the Cezanne family of Zen 3 CPUs. These chips use the Zen 3 microarchitecture, but they have only 16MB of L3 cache and are limited to PCIe 3.0. Out of the full Cezanne family, the Ryzen 5 5500 is the only chip that isn’t either an APU like the Ryzen 5 5600G, or a laptop chip.

The newer Ryzen 5 5500F is from the Vermeer family, the same as other Zen 3-based desktop CPUs like the Ryzen 5 5600X. That brings with it an update to PCIe 4.0, which is a huge boon for GPU and storage performance, as well as a bump from a maximum boost of 4.2 GHz on the 5500 to 4.4 GHz on the 5500F.

Although the Ryzen 5 5500F falls in the Vermeer family, it still carries some Cezanne DNA. It’s the only Vermeer chip to have 16 MB of shared L3; all other Vermeer chips have 32 MB of L3, at least, with X3D options scaling higher. Both families retain the same L1/L2 setup, naturally, as they share the Zen 3 microarchitecture.

Otherwise, the Ryzen 5 5500F retains the 65W TDP, and 88W platform maximum, and it comes bundled with AMD’s Wraith Stealth cooler. The Wraith Stealth cooler is plenty to keep the Ryzen 5 5500F cool under load, saving you some money on an aftermarket CPU cooler.

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The Ryzen 5 5500F is AMD’s best budget gaming CPU right now, at least assuming you don’t already have a kit of DDR5 laying around. That was also true of the 5500, though begrudgingly. Deals on CPUs like the Ryzen 5 7600X are common, but the exorbitant cost of a kit of DDR5 right now nullifies any real savings there. Although the 5500F is still second chair to Intel’s Core i3-14100F, the battle between the two is much closer now. Plus, the 5500F has access to PCIe 4.0, solving a big sticking point with the original 5500 and its PCIe 3.0 limit.

With the Core i5-14400 and Core i3-14100 in the charts below, we tested both with DDR4 and DDR5. As we saw in our Raptor Lake Refresh DDR4 comparison recently, the newer memory standard brings about a 15% improvement in average gaming performance at 1080p. The DDR5 numbers are mainly here for context. The true battle is between DDR4 platforms, given the high cost of DDR5.

We followed the same testing procedure for this review as we do with any other. We have full platform details at the end of this review. For gaming, we used the RTX 5090 FE and tested at 1080p with a mixture of High and Ultra settings. Undoubtedly, some of our readers will have feedback about the decision to use such a high-performance GPU with such inexpensive CPUs, but this is our standard process for all CPU testing, and the choice to use the RTX 5090 is less impactful than you might think.

As you can see from our $100 CPU shootout, where we tested the 5500 and 14100F with an RTX 5090 and with an RTX 4060, average scaling was largely the same between the two GPUs, with only the baseline performance moving down on the RTX 4060. You’re going to remain CPU-bound with these chips and just about any modern gaming graphics card. Using the RTX 5090 allows us to take these results and compare them all the way up the stack rather than throw them in the bin.

With an extra boost in clock speed and access to PCIe 4.0, the Ryzen 5 5500F comes out 8.6% ahead of the 5500 in our 16-game geomean at 1080p. It’s now just 2.8% behind the Core i3-14100F, though. As we’ll see throughout some of the individual game tests, the four-core setup of the Core i3-14100F is a real limitation. 1% low performance jumped 11.7% from the 5500 to 5500F, as well, resulting in smoother performance.

The Ryzen 5 5500 occupies the bottom of our chart, and that’s mainly due to availability. There aren’t a ton of CPUs available around $100, unless you’re interested in spending $98 on a brand new FX-8300 (don’t). It’s a battle between the Core i3-14100F and Ryzen 5 5500F at this price. In order to step up to that next tier of performance, you need to spend around $150, which is a hotly contested area between DDR4 options like the Core i5-14400F (we only had the more expensive, non-F version on hand) and Ryzen 5 5600, and DDR5 options like the Ryzen 5 7600X.

AMD has brought 3D V-Cache down the Zen 3 product stack, all the way down to the Ryzen 5 5500X3D, though you’ll spend about twice as much on that CPU as the Ryzen 5 5500F or Core i3-14100F.

Still, both of these chips play a great role in a new budget gaming build right now if you have future upgrade aspirations. Compared to the Ryzen 7 5800X3D and Core i7-14700K — our recommendations for gaming on these platforms — you can save around $200 up front and put it toward a nicer graphics card. Intel’s platform has the additional flexibility of a future DDR5 upgrade with a new motherboard, as well.

Between the Core i3-14100F and Ryzen 5 5500F, Intel still holds a small edge in performance. Given how CPU-bound we are, that edge isn’t big enough to sway a buying decision, but the price is. The Ryzen 5 5500F has a recommended price of $100, but we haven’t seen it sold for less than $120. Neither the slightly higher price nor slight performance disadvantage are enough to sway things on their own, but together, they hurt the Ryzen 5 5500F’s place in the $100 CPU bracket.

That comes through clearly in our value geomean, where the Ryzen 5 5500 actually provides a better value than the new 5500F, due to the fact that it’s held onto its $90 price. The Core i5-14400 looks unsurprisingly bad here due to its $208 price tag. The Core i5-14400F is available closer to around $150 though, and it should provide identical performance with a discrete GPU.

With temperature and power, you can see the Ryzen 5 5500F takes better advantage of the 65W thermal design than the original 5500, climbing up to a 61W average in our test suite. Higher power draw is actually better in this case. We’re dealing with relatively low-power desktop chips, so if peak performance is the goal, we want every watt the thermal design can handle being used.

Given that the 5500F ramps up power, it’s less efficient as a result. Perhaps efficiency is important if you plan on using one of these CPUs around the clock in areas with high electricity prices, but in the context of gaming, the power difference isn’t big. It’s less than what a phone consumes with fast charging.

007 First Light benchmarks

007 First Light kicks off our individual game tests, and it happens to be one of the stranger results in our test pool. There was virtually no movement between the Ryzen 5 5500 and Ryzen 5 5500F, despite a jump in power with the 5500F. This is clearly an outlier in our suite, which will become clear as we go through the other games.

Baldur’s Gate 3 benchmarks

Baldur’s Gate 3 aligns more closely with our geomean, with the 5500F outpacing the 5500 by 7.2%. Intel still leads, however, with the Core i3-14100F beating out the 5500F by 5.9% and 5500 by 13.6%.

Cities Skylines 2 benchmarks

Cities Skylines 2 showcases an aspect of gaming performance that’s often overlooked, which is raw CPU compute. Here, we have a fully built city with a population of over one million people, stressing core count, clock speed, and memory capabilities. Although we only have a handful of chips here, the Core i5-14400 with DDR5 provides some important context for how this benchmark stresses different aspects of the system.

Crimson Desert benchmarks

Crimson Desert and its proprietary engine are remarkably well optimized, enough so to allow every CPU in our test suite to maintain a playable frame rate, even with Ultra settings. The 5500F is 7.8% faster than the 5500, though the Core i3-14100F still leads in performance, even when paired with DDR4.

Counter-Strike 2 benchmarks

Counter-Strike 2 shows the first major upset of our test suite, with the Ryzen 5 5500F winning out over the other CPUs we’re focused on; once again, the Core i5-14400 is mostly included for context. Although the 5500F beats out even the Core i3-14100F paired with DDR5, it suffers in the 1% lows, with even the Core i3-14100F paired with DDR4 offering better 1% low performance.

Cyberpunk 2077 benchmarks

One of the better showcases of the Ryzen 5 5500F, Cyberpunk 2077 shows the CPU up 9.2% compared to the base 5500. Intel still leads with the Core i3-14100F, though with a smaller 4.1% margin. Compared to the base 5500, the Core i3-14100F is 13.8% ahead.

The Blood of Dawnwalker benchmarks

The newest addition to our test suite is the UE5-based The Blood of Dawnwalker, and in particular a trot through a dense city in the middle of the game’s map, notorious for ramping CPU usage and introducing stuttering. The 5500F comes out on top by over 8% compared to the base 5500, but once again Intel leads with the Core i3-14100F.

F1 2024 benchmarks

With more modern CPUs, F1 2024 is normally a benchmark that skews heavily toward AMD, but this far down the stack, the opposite is true. Intel leads, even with a solid gain from the 5500F.

Final Fantasy XIV benchmarks

Final Fantasy XIV is balanced between AMD and Intel, though it heavily favors X3D CPUs. Without any of those in the mix here, the Ryzen 5 5500F falls behind the Core i3-14100F by 15%. There’s also little gained from moving to DDR5 with the Core i3-14100F.

Flight Simulator 24 benchmarks

Gaining a few frames in Flight Simulator 24 is nothing to sneeze at, and that’s exactly what the 5500F pulls off with a 9.6% lead over the 5500. Unfortunately for AMD, the Core i3-14100F is much faster in this title, with the 5500F trailing it by 18.9%.

Forza Horizon 6 benchmarks

Forza Horizon 6 shows more movement. The Ryzen 5 5500 already matched the Core i3-14100F in performance, allowing the 5500F to swoop in with a 7.8% lead. The Core i3-14100F with DDR5 unsurprisingly still leads, but this is a big feather in the 5500F’s cap.

Marvel Rivals

Marvel Rivals is an important benchmark, not only because the game is wildly popular, but also because it showcases exactly what AMD wanted to accomplish with the 5500F. The 14100F leads the base 5500 by over 12%, but the 5500F changes that story, leading the 14100F by 6.3%. This is presumably the target AMD set with the 5500, attempting to gain a performance advantage over the 14100F where the base 5500 originally struggled. And it hit that target in this case.

Onimusha: Way of the Sword benchmarks

Onimusha: Way of the Sword is the latest game sporting Capcom’s storied RE Engine, and it’s a title where the base 5500 and Core i3-14100F are in lockstep. The 5500F steps in to take the lead once again, beating the Core i3-14100F out by 6.9%.

Spider-Man 2 benchmarks

The notoriously CPU-heavy Spider-Man 2 jumps back to the pattern established by other titles in our test suite. The 14100F is over 20% ahead of the base 5500, and although the 5500F makes the battle closer, Intel still leads by 11%.

Starfield benchmarks

Starfield shows the Ryzen 5 5500F ahead of the 14100F, though only marginally, and with Intel coming out ahead with slightly better 1% lows. Still, this is another game where the 5500F successfully changes the power dynamic between Intel and AMD’s budget CPU offerings.

Warhammer 40K Space Marine 2 benchmarks

Finally, Warhammer 40K Space Marine 2 shows the 5500F matching the 14100F, whereas the base 5500 trailed by nearly 7%.

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The Ryzen 5 5500F is primarily a gaming CPU, clocked fairly low at a 4.4 GHz boost and packing just six Zen 3 cores. The six-core floor that AMD has maintained for several generations gives the 5500F a significant edge over the Core i3-14100F, which uses a true quad-core design, bypassing the hybrid design that Intel has used on its past several generations of desktop CPUs.

There aren’t a lot of quad-core chips on the market today, so it’s no surprise to see the Core i3-14100F at the bottom of the chart here, regardless of whether it’s paired with DDR4 or DDR5. The Ryzen 5500 already led Intel by 12.8% in our multi-threaded geomean, but the 5500F nearly doubles that lead to 24.2%. Compared to the 5500, the new 5500F is a clean 10% ahead in our multithreaded geomean.

The scales unsurprisingly flip looking at single-threaded performance. Intel usually leads in single-threaded performance anyway, but some context is important here. Zen 3 is much older than Raptor Lake, and those microarchitectural differences really show up in our single-threaded testing.

On microarchitecture, the Ryzen 5 5500F is 5% ahead of the 5500 in our single-threaded geomean, aligning almost perfectly with the 5% boost in turbo clock speed that the 5500F has. That’s a welcome bump, though keep in mind that a 4.4 GHz boost is still relatively low, and the 5500F only has access to 16 MB of L3. Other Vermeer CPUs, such as the 5700X, have 32 MB.

Rendering Benchmarks

CPU rendering workloads are intense, sustained tasks often pinning either an individual core, or all of the cores, at full utilization. Because they’re sustained and demanding, many of our rendering tests factor into the geomean above, and that’s a major driving force behind why tests like Cinebench are such a staple when measuring CPU performance.

For the headline tests like POV-Ray and Cinebench, the results fall as you’d expect. AMD leads in multi-threaded work, Intel in single-threaded work, and the 5500F ends up between 5% and 10% faster than the 5500, depending on the benchmark.

Encoding Benchmarks

Encoding workloads are similarly all-out for the CPU cores, and in heavy, multi-threaded video encoding via HandBrake, the 5500F is only marginally faster than the 5500. Particularly in these heavy video encodes, the fact that the 5500F has access to six cores matters more than anything else. That slight boost in clock speed helps it squeeze out an advantage; however, with any of these workloads, you’ll notice the 5500F struggles to get along, just like the Core i3-14100 and base 5500.

Single-threaded encoding via LAME shows an advantage for Intel, unsurprisingly, but the multi-threaded workloads are what matter here. As a demonstration, look at our VP9 HandBrake results. The 5500 actually ended up faster than the 5500F here, though by just 1 FPS, when the standard for these chips is managing just 4 FPS for this encode.

Creator App Benchmarks

The main CPUs we’re focused on — 5500, 5500F, and 14100F — aren’t the best choice when it comes to modern creative applications, particularly when it comes to the more demanding workloads in nonlinear video editors like Resolve and Premiere, as well as visual effects in After Effects. In Photoshop, the three ~$100 CPUs all hit a performance wall, though likely for different reasons, as you can see the DDR5-equipped 14100F run into the same bottleneck as the DDR4 version.

Web and Office Benchmarks

Web and office workloads are par for the course when it comes to the Ryzen 5 5500F. Although Intel retains a lead in our web and office benchmarks, the 5500F does a lot to close the gap compared to the 5500, at least in some tests. Looking at general web workloads through WebXPRT and Procyon, there isn’t much of a difference between the main chips we’re focused on.

However, the 5500F gains some ground in Excel with a 9.7% jump over the 5500. It was a massive 35% faster in Word, finally closing in on the 14100F, and it was 6.7% faster in PowerPoint. Even by the standards of budget CPUs, the Ryzen 5 5500 didn’t perform well in these applications. The 5500F puts AMD’s budget offering back in contention.

Chess Engines, Compilation, Compression, AVX, and Other Benchmarks

We run hundreds of tests on every CPU that comes across our benches, and not all of them are relevant to every chip. Here, we have a collection of more specialised workloads that don’t factor into our overall geomean. The tests are greatly varied here, including code compilation, compression performance, Java, chess engines, and cryptography, among other tests. We won’t be able to highlight all of them.

The most recognizable is Geekbench, showing a broader view of single-threaded and multi-threaded performance in a machine-gun-style benchmark suite that rips through different workloads in just a few minutes. What’s interesting is that Geekbench multi-thread shows the 14100F paired with DDR5 on top, likely taking into account the memory standard that isn’t represented in tests like Cinebench.

Another interesting test to highlight is memory throughput via WinSAT. This built-in Windows benchmark shows a clear performance wall for the DDR4 chips in our test suite. Of course, DDR5 provides much more throughput, but the interesting bit here is just how bottlenecked the throughput is with these late-stage DDR4 CPUs.

Elsewhere, there are a few broad trends that emerge. In security and cryptography workloads, AMD rules the roost. However, in many scientific workloads, Intel holds an edge. Again, these workloads aren’t particularly relevant for these CPUs, so we’d recommend placing more emphasis on the benchmarks in the sections above.

SPEC Workstation benchmarks

We run SPEC Workstation as part of every CPU pass, and although workstation application performance isn’t relevant to these budget desktop chips, it’s still interesting to see how these applications push against the limitations of such restricted CPU designs. Feel free to peruse, but don’t put too much stock in the actual rankings. These are unrealistic workloads for this class of CPU.

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In games, we saw the Ryzen 5 5500F consume more power than the base 5500, actually reaching toward its 65W thermal design. In applications, the opposite is true. The 5500F actually consumed slightly less power than the base 5500, particularly in all-core workloads where the 5500 pushes past its 65W thermal design.

In y-cruncher multi-thread with AVX enabled, the 5500F drew 14.6% less power on average compared to the base 5500 and Core i3-14100F. In Linpack, the 5500F shaved more than 20% of the wattage of the 5500, and in Handbrake using VP9, it cut 12%. We don’t use software monitoring for our power measurements. Results are gathered from the EPS cables themselves.

Looking at idle and active idle power measurements, the 5500F maintains Zen 3 low-power idle state, sipping just 7 watts during YouTube playback, dropping down to 6 watts at true idle. The 7600X provides a hint at where idle power draw has gone in the Zen 4/5 era.

As a result of lower power draw in some tests, it’s no surprise that the 5500F ends up more efficient than the 5500 in y-cruncher and Linpack. In Cinebench and Blender, however, the two CPUs are closely aligned in efficiency, with the 5500F actually coming out slightly less efficient in the Junkshop scene.

Our scatterplots are a good way to visualize efficiency. In Handbrake, you can see the 5500F provided better performance than the 5500 while consuming less power. In Blender, however, the two CPUs consumed roughly the same power, while the 5500F provided better performance.

Across all of our efficiency tests, the comparison for Intel isn’t great. Not only does the 14100F struggle in all-core workloads, it does so with higher power consumption, occasionally pushing above 80W.

Test Setup

As with all of our CPU reviews, we used as close to identical test setups as possible to isolate CPU performance. There are several steps we take with hardware to normalize results, such as using the same fan speed across each test bench, as well as tweaks we make to the software stack to represent true performance.

Our test images are based on Windows 24H2. We use the same Nvidia driver across both the RTX 2080 Ti and RTX 5090. Additionally, our test images never cross platforms, so chipset drivers on an Intel platform never see an AMD chip, or vice versa. Application versions are pinned where possible. For games, where pinning isn’t possible, we do regression testing in the event of an update, and if required, retest the pool of chips if the performance profile has changed.

Finally, we tweak the BIOS. Every system has access to EXPO/XMP, as well as ReBAR. Virtualization-Based Security (VBS) is disabled. For Intel systems, we use the default power profile, not more extreme power profiles that aren’t covered under warranty. Similarly, we disable AMD’s Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO), as it can push the processor outside warrantied specifications.

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The Ryzen 5 5500F is a compelling chip right now. When memory, storage, and GPU prices are at an all-time high, it offers a simple entry point into the AM4 platform, which remains relevant for midrange gaming rigs, on the heels of AMD re-releasing the Ryzen 7 5800X3D. The 5500F solves the major issues with AMD’s previous budget offering, upgrading the PCIe standard to Gen 4 and offering gaming performance that can rival the Core i3-14100F.

Price is the only issue. As is the case with many lower-end SKUs, availability of the Ryzen 5 5500F has been spotty at MSRP. It’s sold north of $120 in many cases, while the Core i3-14100F is available for around $100. AMD has the upside of a 5800X3D upgrade in the future; Intel has the Raptor Lake Refresh stack and DDR5 options. The right choice between them largely comes down to what your future upgrade plans are, especially if inflated RAM and storage prices persist.

Gaming is a major focal point here. You can buy a much better CPU for $150 or $200, but going with a $100 chip such as the 5500F gives you that much more money to spend on a graphics card. Intel still leads in our 1080p geomean with the Core i3-14100F paired with DDR4, though only by 2.9%. That’s enough of a lead to still call it a lead, but we’re not far off noise levels.

Intel comes out ahead overall, but as you can see from our gaming benchmarks, the 14100F and 5500F swap places for the top slot between them from title to title. What was consistent was the uplift the 5500F showed over the 5500, often running ahead by around 7%, and by as much as 10%.

Although the modern dynamic between Intel and AMD shows Team Red ahead in games and Team Blue ahead in applications, the opposite is true here. The lowly quad-core Core i3-14100F can’t muster better multi-threaded performance than the Ryzen 5 5500, and certainly not the 5500F.

That’s despite the fact that the single-threaded performance of the Core i3-14100F is superior. The extra cores on the Ryzen 5 5500F pull their weight in threaded applications, though neither chip is built for much beyond basic office and web productivity. As a host CPU for a server, the nT performance of the Ryzen 5 5500F is a safer bet.

It’s a toss-up between recommending the Core i3-14100F or Ryzen 5 5500F; as mentioned, both have their advantages when it comes time to upgrade. Hopefully the price on the 5500F will come down. As it stands, the extra $20 is an annoyance more so than a dealbreaker, but it would nice to see the 5500F on level footing with the 14100F when it comes to price.

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Intel and AMD are integrating their CPU optimizations for PyTorch into a unified library, offering tuning for both AMD and Intel chips through the oneDNN library. AMD has maintained a downstream version of oneDNN called ZenDNN, which is now moving into the open-source oneDNN, published by the UXL Foundation and driven by Intel. AMD also announced it's joining the UXL Foundation as a "steering member," which "influences the future of the UXL Foundation" in exchange for a contribution of $20,000 per year.

AMD says the move to unify these efforts under oneDNN was recommended by the x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group (EAG), which is a joint initiative that primarily exists between Intel and AMD and was established in 2024. The two companies have collaborated through the EAG previously, such as with the ACE extensions for x86 that we learned about earlier this year.

The oneDNN backend is used for CPU inference, and it's built to accelerate that workload for the latest Intel (and now AMD) chips in frameworks like PyTorch. When oneDNN was added to PyTorch as a backend in late 2023, it showed a 1.24x improvement with the Float32 data type, and 2.21x for the BFloat16 data type.

From the oneDNN GitHub, the library "detects hardware features at runtime" to generate optimized kernels for the platform, as well as provides low-precision data types. It also features optimized instructions for common AI and machine learning operations, such as matrix multiplication and convolution.

For developers, the move simplifies working with PyTorch across different systems, ensuring a single backend provides the proper optimizations for whatever hardware you're running. Although the news here is focused on the x86 guard, oneDNN is a cross-platform library that works on Arm and RISC-V architectures as well.

Intel originally developed oneDNN, built on top of previously deep learning libraries, before it was folded into the UXL Foundation. Intel was among the founding members of the UXL Foundation, alongside Arm, Qualcomm, Google Cloud, and others.

An AMD engineering sample has made an appearance in a listing on OpenBenchmarking. According to a report by TechPowerUp, the chip could potentially be a part of AMD’s upcoming Gainsborough family and a possible candidate for the next-generation Steam Deck handheld console. As per the OpenBenchmarking listing, the chip comes with a six-core, 12-thread processor paired with 24GB of high-speed LPDDR5 memory.

The engineering sample with part number 100-000001930-12_Y was tested on an AMD GBR-FF6-SKT validation board, with the CPU running at clock speeds of 2.4 GHz. The system also features four 6GB SK Hynix memory packages, resulting in 24GB of LPDDR5 memory running at 9,600 MT/s. That’s a big jump when compared to the current Steam Deck, which comes with 16GB of LPDDR5 memory running at 6,400 MT/s, alongside a four-core, eight-thread AMD Zen 2 processor.

The benchmark listing also provides some clues about the processor’s underlying architecture. As per Notebookcheck, the sample’s CPU microcode revision corresponds to AMD’s Family 1Ah, model DCh. Linux kernel changes indicate that this model falls within the range reserved for newer Zen 6 processors, suggesting that Gainsborough could use AMD’s next-generation CPU architecture. However, there is no clarity or any confirmation whether it will use standard Zen 6 cores or the denser Zen 6C variant.

The integrated GPU is listed with a clock speed of 2,400 MHz, although its architecture and compute unit count remain unknown. The sample was tested using the GpuTest benchmark suite on Ubuntu 24.04 at 1024 x 768 resolution, resulting in scores of 3,871 in GiMark, 3,508 in FurMark, and 9,319 in TessMark. While the FurMark score is comparable to the original Stam Deck, we can’t really come to any conclusions at this point, as the tests were conducted on an engineering platform using development software rather than a finished handheld. For now, the results do not establish how the chip would perform in games, as power limits, cooling, driver maturity, and the final GPU configuration all contribute to the performance in a compact gaming device.

If these specifications carry over to a future Steam Deck, the additional CPU cores along with the larger and faster memory would provide a meaningful hardware upgrade. That being said, neither AMD nor Valve have confirmed a connection between the Gainsborough family and a future Steam Deck. Thus, it is best to take this with a grain of salt and wait until there is more concrete information in the future.

Nvidia has earned billions selling AI accelerators, but with the emergence of agentic AI, CPUs are going to play a considerably more significant role than before, which creates new opportunities for the company. Reuters reports that Nvidia has secured a major design win with its Vera CPUs with AI cloud provider Modal. According to Modal, preliminary evaluations showed that Vera could deliver twice the throughput of its existing AMD and Intel processors, although the company does not intend to cease using CPUs from its current suppliers.

Modal provides cloud infrastructure that enables AI developers to deploy AI agents that can perform complex operations autonomously over extended periods. Such workloads require substantial CPU resources for software execution, data processing, and other tasks that cannot be efficiently handled by GPUs. Modal currently relies exclusively on AMD and Intel processors for these operations, but its tests indicate that Nvidia's new Vera CPUs could significantly improve performance in its specific workloads. Of course, since Vera is based on an Arm instruction set architecture, Modal's decision to adopt Vera will require substantial modifications to its software. Nevertheless, Modal believes that the potential performance improvements justify the additional engineering effort.

The reported 2x throughput advantage is particularly interesting because agentic AI workloads can involve numerous independent tasks that compete for CPU cores, cache capacity, and memory bandwidth. However, Modal has not disclosed detailed benchmark configurations it used, specific AMD and Intel processor models, or performance-per-watt figures. Consequently, it remains unclear whether Vera's advantage is enabled by advantages of its Arm v9.2-based Olympus CPU cores that can decode and execute up to 10 instructions per cycle, its memory subsystem with 1.2 TB/s of bandwidth, or other architectural characteristics. Also note that tests compared Vera against currently available AMD and Intel processors rather than their upcoming generations that will compete against Vera in the coming years.

Since Modal cannot port all of its software to Arm ISA overnight, the company will continue using x86 CPUs from AMD and Intel, according to Modal chief executive Erik Bernhardsson. Rather than sticking to one ISA for everything, Modal intends to operate a heterogeneous server fleet and select the most suitable processors for each workload. Naturally, the company intends to evaluate upcoming AMD and Intel processors once they become available to make its choices in the future.

For Nvidia, the agreement represents a major step toward making Vera a standalone server processor that commands a major share of the server market. The company expects Vera sales to generate at least $20 billion during its current fiscal year and estimates the potential total available market for these CPUs is approximately $200 billion. The company is on track to sell at least four million Vera CPUs in fiscal 2026.

The announcement comes shortly after Modal secured $750 million in financing led by Accel, which valued the company at $15.75 billion. Modal expects its annual revenue to reach $1 billion within the next year. The company's service consumption has increased 3X in the last 12 months, while revenue has surged more than 15 times compared with the previous year, Reuters reports.

Arm announced last week that its AGI CPU, the company's data center CPU for agentic AI workloads, delivers twice the performance per rack as AMD EPYC 9755, calculated from chip performance and server-power assumptions measured across seven workloads. The claim stems from modeled rack results from tests aligned with Arm’s new CPU evaluation methodology, developed with support from Fujitsu, Meta, and OpenAI.

The results — verified in an Arm-commissioned independent analysis by Signal65 — do not establish the AGI CPU as the overall leader for agentic AI, as they apply to the selected processors, workloads, and configuration. They also use the specific Arm-developed evaluation methodology that Arm says should be the new standard for assessing performance. However, other chipmakers like AMD and Intel make performance claims based on different benchmarks. So, how is Agentic AI evolving CPU performance benchmarks, what does Arm propose to measure, and how do the different approaches compare?

Arm’s new CPU evaluation methodology

Agentic AI is changing the role of CPUs in modern AI data centers, requiring them to handle complex, multi-step workflows. Beyond inference, which the accelerator handles, AI agents execute tools, retrieve data, and maintain state within isolated environments, acting like virtual users. The CPU handles these critical surrounding workloads, from running those tools and serving database or API requests to preparing data and coordinating work for accelerators.

As these workloads scale rapidly with agentic capabilities, it becomes increasingly important to gauge CPU performance not just by how many agents can run concurrently, but also by how much useful work gets done. Arm argues that CPU performance is increasingly defined by how much useful work a system can sustain while staying responsive. Supporting more agents simultaneously offers limited benefit if their executions throttle or accelerators have to sit idle waiting for the CPU. Power, cooling, and physical space also limit how much hardware operators can deploy, extending the performance question to the rack.

Arm’s proposed methodology for evaluating CPU performance, developed with support from Fujitsu, Meta, and OpenAI, centers on representative agent workloads, repeatable CPU measurements, and validation against end-to-end task outcomes. In practical terms, the methodology identifies the tools and services an agent uses, measures their CPU performance under controlled conditions, and checks whether improvements help the agent complete its task. For example, a database test can establish how quickly a system handles transactions. An end-to-end evaluation would then examine whether faster database access actually improves the workflow that depends on it.

Executing the second aspect of the methodology, making these comparisons repeatable, presents another challenge, as an agent might choose different commands or take a different route through a task each time it runs. Model inference and remote services also introduce delays. Arm proposes replaying recorded agent actions to separate CPU performance from this variability, allowing different systems to execute a consistent sequence of work. Its whitepaper sets out a framework for selecting and interpreting these measurements, leaving the industry to develop an agreed benchmark suite and scoring approach.

To evaluate the CPU work described in its framework, Arm ran seven workloads — spanning tooling, agentic workflows, and reasoning/planning, plus Sandbench, which measures sandbox-creation overhead for agent execution — on its AGI CPU and AMD’s EPYC 9755. The tests combine established server applications with benchmarks focused on agent workflows.

The vLLM result measures the CPU work around model execution, not GPU inference throughput. Similarly, the report’s “reasoning/planning” category groups supporting CPU workloads and does not assess how intelligently a model reasons.

ARM AGI CPU vs AMD EPYC 9755

For the tests, Arm used two AGI CPU configurations because of hardware availability: a 128-core chip at 2.8 GHz with DDR5-7200 for Terminal-Bench 2 and SWE-bench replay, and a 136-core chip at 3.2 GHz with DDR5-8000 for the other five workloads. The AMD comparison used one socket of the 128-core EPYC 9755 with DDR5-6400. Both platforms ran the same benchmark scripts but used different software environments. Arm used custom Linux 7.1.3 builds, with Ubuntu 24.04 for most tests and Ubuntu 26.04 for SWE-bench, while AMD’s main recorded configuration used Ubuntu 24.04 and Linux 6.8, with settings varying by test.

At the chip level, Arm’s AGI CPU won the majority of comparisons when compared to its AMD counterpart in five of the seven tests. With the EPYC 9755 as the baseline, Arm led by 9% on Terminal-Bench, 13% on SWE-bench, and 97% on fastText, but lagged by 12% and 5% in MySQL and Milvus throughput, respectively. On average, the AGI CPU led by 20% (1.20x) per-chip advantage, calculated across the seven normalized performance ratios.

At the rack level, Arm’s modeled performance averages 1.99x AMD’s, with a lead in all seven workloads. The model uses rated server-power estimates of 950 W for the 128-core Arm configuration, 1,050 W for the 136-core version, and 1,700 W for AMD, including memory and other system components. After reserving about 8% of a 24 kW rack budget for networking and power distribution, this leaves room for 23 or 21 Arm servers versus 13 AMD servers.

For SWE-bench, the 2.00x per rack result was obtained by multiplying the roughly 1.13x chip result by 23/13. The larger gain comes from fitting more servers into the same power budget. Furthermore, these projections use modeled whole-server power, not throughput measurements from two fully populated racks.

Arm’s model also gives the AMD servers about twice as much RAM: roughly 2 TB against 1 TB for Arm. It allocates 4 GB per hardware thread, with each AMD core supporting two threads while each Arm core supports one. This puts the memory-power allowance at 336 W for AMD and 192 W for Arm. Signal65 also calculated what happens when memory is allocated per physical core. In this setup, AMD’s memory and power allowance falls, and Arm’s average modeled rack advantage drops from 1.99x to approximately 1.81x. The usefulness of the 2 TB AMD configuration depends on how much memory the workloads actually need, as SMT does not inherently require twice the memory.

To verify the findings, Signal65 remotely observed Arm’s test runs and examined the original logs, result files, scripts, and configuration records. A separate review team rebuilt the calculations with its own code and reproduced all seven results within 0.5%. However, Signal65 did not run a separate hardware rerun in its own lab. In addition, Signal65 could independently confirm BIOS and memory settings for only the EPYC 9965 system. These settings were unavailable for independent verification on the Arm and EPYC 9755 systems. Along with the software differences, these gaps slightly affect the certainty with which the results can be attributed to the processors themselves.

Arm’s approach vs AMD and Nvidia

While Arm believes its methodology should be the standard, it does not hold a monopoly on how the industry evaluates agentic CPU performance. For example, AMD promotes agents per watt, dollar, and rack. Footnotes on its EPYC 9006 page identify available CPU threads as a proxy for agent capacity, with actual throughput depending on the workload and system. Its separate workload analysis models a 100 kW rack and claims 2.37× performance for EPYC 9965 over Nvidia's Vera, using a geometric mean across six infrastructure workloads.

Nvidia, on the other hand, emphasizes Vera’s single-thread performance and memory bandwidth, and says a 256-CPU rack supports more than 22,500 concurrent CPU environments. These numbers describe different things and do not directly imply any specific advantage. Methodologies vary across manufacturers by workload, power assumptions, and aggregation methods, making direct CPU comparisons complex. The current comparison is against AMD's fifth-generation “Turin” processor with 128 cores. The company launched its latest sixth-generation EPYC 9006 “Venice” family this year, dedicated to agentic AI.

Following its win against Arm in its licensing dispute around CPU cores developed by Nuvia, Qualcomm sued Arm in the U.S. early this year, accusing its partner of breaching the terms of their contract and causing damages to the company. This week a federal jury in Delaware has ruled that Arm indeed breached its contractual obligations with Qualcomm and intentionally interfered with the chipmaker's business relationship with Meta. However, the jury awarded Qualcomm only $2 in nominal damages and rejected several other claims against Arm. As a result, both companies declared victory in the latest round of their legal dispute, which could still have massive financial consequences.

The verdict followed a five-day trial in Wilmington, Delaware, during which Qualcomm accused Arm of violating the Architecture License Agreement (ALA), withholding software patches and processor verification tools, and refusing to offer commercially reasonable licensing terms. In particular, Qualcomm alleged that Arm deliberately withheld Arm Compliance Kit (ACK) verification materials and software patches necessary to validate its custom CPUs. Qualcomm also claimed that Arm refused to renew licenses for Cortex-A720, Cortex-A520, and Cortex-M55 processor cores under its Technology License Agreement (TLA).

Qualcomm further alleged that Arm deliberately undermined its relationships with customers by threatening to terminate its architecture license and leaking the corresponding notice to the media in October 2024. The company said that Arm's actions disrupted its negotiations with Meta and other customers, which caused financial losses as the company failed to land contracts with certain clients. Arm denied any wrongdoing and argued that Qualcomm had failed to demonstrate substantial financial losses. The company also indicated that Qualcomm intended to use the litigation to obtain more favorable licensing terms and avoid billions of dollars in royalty payments.

The jury sided with Qualcomm on two issues. First, it determined that Arm had breached its longstanding ALA, which allows Qualcomm to develop and sell custom processors compatible with Arm's instruction set architecture. Second, it found that Arm had intentionally interfered with Qualcomm's business relationship with Meta. Qualcomm welcomed the verdict and maintained that it exposed Arm's efforts to undermine its business and eventually become a Meta supplier.

"We are gratified that the jury found Arm breached its long-standing Architectural License Agreement (ALA) with Qualcomm, failed to honor its commitments, and intentionally acted to disrupt Qualcomm's businesses," a statement by Qualcomm reads. "Together with Qualcomm's prior court victory, this outcome further exposes Arm’s broader intentions to harm Qualcomm and its ecosystem. This outcome is a victory for innovation and competition, and we remain focused on developing and delivering industry-leading semiconductor products including our Oryon CPUs to customers and consumers worldwide."

However, Arm prevailed on four of Qualcomm's six claims submitted to the jury and was ordered to pay just $1 in damages on each of the aforementioned two. The original complaint included allegations of breaches of the ALA and TLA, violations of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, intentional and negligent interference with prospective economic advantage, and unfair competition. The precise findings on the individual allegations have yet to be revealed, as at press time the jury rulings were not available. Arm claims that the outcome supports its position that it had acted in good faith under its technology license agreement.

"We are pleased with the jury’s decision today finding for Arm on four claims and awarding only one dollar in damages on each of Qualcomm’s other two claims," a spokesperson for Arm said. "Despite Qualcomm's pursuit of this case in an attempt to deprive Arm of billions of dollars under our license agreements, the jury's verdict confirms that Arm operated in good faith under its technology license agreement and its award of only two dollars confirms the merit of Arm’s arguments in the case."

Despite the nominal $2 damages award, the legal battle between Qualcomm and Arm is not over. U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika must still determine whether Arm's breach of its Architecture License Agreement entitles Qualcomm to suspend royalty payments for five years, potentially costing Arm hundreds of millions, or even billions, in revenue. The judge must also decide whether Arm violated its obligation to negotiate future architecture licensing terms in good faith. Both decisions could have substantially greater financial and commercial consequences than the jury's verdict, and either company could appeal an unfavorable ruling.

Just five years after bringing its Software Guard Extensions (SGX) technology to its mainstream server platform, Intel on Friday announced plans to discontinue its support after its upcoming Xeon 'Diamond Rapids' CPUs and concentrate its confidential computing efforts on Trust Domain Extensions (TDX). The company will continue to support existing SGX-enabled platforms into the early 2030s, but at the same time will expand TDX capabilities to address emerging requirements of cloud computing, enterprise workloads, and agentic AI applications.

Without a doubt, data sovereignty requirements are an increasingly important factor as organizations seek to protect sensitive information from unauthorized access even when they process it on infrastructure operated by third parties. Although both Intel SGX and TDX are designed to protect sensitive information while it is being processed, they use substantially different approaches.

SGX provides hardware-protected enclaves within applications to isolate selected code and data from other software, including the operating system and hypervisor. By contrast, TDX isolates entire virtual machines from the underlying host environment, including the hypervisor and other VMs. While SGX requires developers to design or modify applications to use protected enclaves, TDX can protect existing workloads inside confidential VMs without extensive changes to individual applications, something that makes TDX particularly attractive to cloud service providers that operate large numbers of virtual machines.

While both SGX and TDX have faced numerous security vulnerabilities over the years, including side-channel attacks, privilege-escalation flaws, and attacks against their attestation mechanisms, Intel does not cite security concerns as a reason for its decision to discontinue SGX.

Intel's decision to phase out SGX reflects the industry's preference for VM-level isolation over application-specific enclaves. According to Intel, TDX provides scalability, ease of deployment, and the operational model required for widespread adoption of confidential computing. Although SGX enabled confidential computing in the data center and continues to serve security-conscious customers, Intel believes future demand will favor TDX. Diamond Rapids will therefore be the final Xeon generation to support SGX, which gives customers several years to validate alternative solutions based on TDX and migrate existing applications. Intel will continue to provide security updates and support for SGX-enabled platforms into the early 2030s, so its customers will have plenty of time to adopt TDX for new deployments.

Meanwhile, Intel plans to expand TDX capabilities with additional security technologies. These include Intel TDX Connect, which is designed to enable trusted I/O, as well as post-quantum cryptography and enhanced attestation mechanisms. Trusted I/O is particularly important for workloads that communicate with external devices, as protection of computations inside a virtual machine does not necessarily extend to data transferred between the VM and accelerators or other peripherals (read, CXL expanders, though Intel has not stated this for sure). Improved attestation will help organizations verify the integrity of protected environments, while post-quantum cryptography will help address future security threats. Meanwhile, Intel has not disclosed specific availability dates for these enhancements.

One important driver behind Intel's confidential computing strategy seems to be accelerated adoption of agentic AI. Unlike conventional applications, autonomous agents may access sensitive enterprise information, execute operations across multiple systems, and interact with other agents. Intel expects many such workloads to run on CPUs, and here TDX may offer practical advantages for agentic AI applications. Unlike SGX, TDX can protect entire agent execution environments without extensive software modifications and enable multiple agents to operate in separate, hardware-isolated VMs on shared infrastructure. For GPU-accelerated AI workloads, Intel works with Nvidia to coordinate confidential computing technologies across CPUs and GPUs to extend protection to sensitive data and AI models throughout the processing pipeline (which is obviously broader than Intel's development of custom Xeon CPUs for Nvidia).

Intel TDX is already available through major cloud providers, including Alibaba Cloud, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Volcano Cloud. Meanwhile, Red Hat, Canonical, and VMware are adding TDX support to their software platforms to enable adoption in private clouds and enterprise environments.

AMD is bringing a new reference rack-scale design to the data center ecosystem with Helion. It’s a standardized, 21-inch rack reference design that will complement the Helios rack AMD revealed at OCP Global Summit last year. This year, we have Helion, which AMD says can house up to 32,768 Zen 6 cores in a CPU-only deployment using the dense 256-core design available with the EPYC ‘Venice’ 9996.

The rack design is standardized, based on the Open Compute Project’s ORv4 specification, which is slightly wider and taller than a standard IT rack. Helion is designed to support 44 OpenU trays, which are 21 inches wide and 48mm tall, slightly larger than a standard EA1-310 tray. AMD says the reference design supports both air-cooled and direct liquid-cooled deployments.

The design is also compliant with OCP’s DC-MHS (Data Center Modular Hardware System) standard. MHS is designed to bring “interoperability between key elements of data center, edge, and enterprise infrastructure,” according to OCP.

Although AMD has renders of the design you can see in the presentation below, it won’t actually sell racks. This is a reference design that AMD is contributing to OCP, and OEMs and ODMs will actually bring that design to market. AMD didn’t share partners supporting Helion during a pre-briefing with the press. The company says CEO Lisa Su will announce partners during the lead keynote at the OCP Global Summit later today.

AMD also didn’t share deployment partners, though it suggested that Helios customers will also deploy Helion racks.

Unlike Helios, which is built for AI training and inference, Helion is a more flexible rack solution primarily focused on CPUs. In a CPU-only deployment, the design can hold up to 128 EPYC 9996 CPUs, bringing that impressive 32,768 core count per rack. This configuration would likely look something like an agentic AI sandbox system, which is then connected to an inference system.

This model for personal AI agents is in use today, both in Meta’s Muse and OpenAI Dots. Each user has a sandbox with a slice of compute from the host system, with the backbone of an inference server. Some workloads are handled on those CPU-only servers, such as building software, but the heavy-duty AI inference happens elsewhere.

Presumably, this is the model AMD is aiming at with Helion as hyperscalers build out CPU capacity on the back of agentic AI. However, the design is flexible, supporting up to 16 MI350P GPUs and 102 Tbps of networking, though at the cost of CPU capacity. This hybrid configuration is targeted at enterprises, says AMD, giving them an all-in-one rack for data management, networking, and AI usage.

AMD says the Helion rack will be available starting in the first half of 2027, likely riding the wave of Zen 6 deployments that are expected to start ramping up later this year.

Full AMD OCP 2026 presentation

Gigabyte has just confirmed Intel’s plans to introduce new processors compatible with existing LGA 1700 motherboards, with an expected launch in early 2027. According to a press release, Gigabyte is rolling out a new BIOS update to extend support for the upcoming processors across its entire lineup of Intel B760 and H610 motherboards. Owners of supported boards will be able to flash the latest BIOS and upgrade to the new CPUs without replacing their motherboards.

The most interesting bit is that the update covers both DDR4 and DDR5 variants of these motherboard families, allowing existing systems to remain compatible with the upcoming processors. The continued availability of DDR4 compatibility is particularly relevant as rising memory prices have increased the overall cost of building and upgrading a PC. Notably, the announcement does not include certain motherboard series like the Z690, Z790, and B660, which also feature the same LGA 1700 socket.

Gigabyte has not disclosed SKUs, specifications, or pricing of the upcoming processors. However, the early 2027 launch window aligns with previous reports about Intel's rumored Raptor Lake Next lineup. According to previous coverage, Intel is preparing a third refresh of its Raptor Lake architecture based on the LGA 1700 socket, which debuted with the 13th-gen Core desktop processors and was succeeded by the 14th-gen lineup.

Intel’s Robert Hallock, vice president and general manager of Intel’s enthusiast channel business, told Tom’s Hardware Premium in an interview back in August, “LGA 1700 is still a good socket. Lots of people are still interested in DDR4, so we’ll keep offering, and you'll see pricing smooth out over time. It'll come back to normal. That's the plan.” By extending support for the LGA 1700 platform, Intel could potentially give budget-conscious PC builders another option for reusing existing memory and motherboard hardware instead of moving to a completely new platform.

In a separate report, it has been speculated that Raptor Lake Next could adopt Intel's Core 200 branding, spanning across Core 3, Core 5, and Core 7 models. According to leaked specifications shared by tipster Jaykihn, the range could include a 20-core Core 7 model with 8 Performance cores and 12 Efficient cores rated at 65W; a 16-core Core 5 with 8 P-cores and 8 E-cores rated at 125W; a 10-core Core 5 with 6 P-cores and 4 E-cores rated at 65W and equipped with 24MB of L3 cache; and an entry-level, four-core Core 3 featuring only P-cores, also rated at 65W.

A quarter century ago today, AMD launched its AMD Athlon XP processor family. These were highly performant processors based on the firm’s latest Palomino core, but ran at lower raw clock speeds than Intel rivals. Facing a marketing imbalance between perceived and actual performance, AMD mounted a serious campaign to explode the 'megahertz myth' with this generation of CPUs. Thus, it introduced new Athlon XP processors with a Performance Rating (PR) designation, alongside a slogan insisting “Performance matters more than MHz.”

Intel, with its Pentium 4 processors, was clearly winning the MHz race at the time, while a CPU’s clock speed had long been established by marketers as a key performance metric. Unfortunately for AMD, its CPUs of the era didn’t hit such high clocks, even though the application and gaming performance was just as good (if not better) than Intel's.

Thomas Pabst's view

Our tests from October 2001 noted that AMD wisely undersold its chips, using the newly devised PR naming system. Anything less and it would have faced strong opposition and derision. Our tests clearly showed that a new “AthlonXP 1800+ is able to beat Intel's flagship Pentium 4 2 GHz in the majority of benchmarks,” wrote the original Tom, Thomas Pabst, in a 13-page feature about AMD’s newest CPUs. Moreover, it was observed that “AthlonXP at 1533 MHz is able to reach or even beat Pentium 4 running at an almost 33% higher clock speed.” Pabst concluded that AMD’s clocks/performance situation forced this concerted stand against the MHz myth.

As we broke the news about AMD’s Performance Rating system, some almost straight-away alluded to it being a ‘Pentium Rating’ system, but it was very early days. We didn’t know whether it would become a long-term success. It was known that AMD planned to establish an independent institution to create a new performance measure that is fairer and more realistic than the current MHz system in the following year. But, of course, Intel wouldn’t be interested in validating that. Pabst concluded that “I might not like it too much,” but admitted AMD had little alternative marketing-wise in the Pentium vs. Athlon era at the beginning of the millennium.

Please stop, it hertz

The AMD PR system would be abandoned roughly five years after it was initiated. Subsequent AMD (and Intel) architectures stopped the rating from making practical sense as the market evolved. For example, Intel’s big MHz advantage was lost in the transition from Pentium 4 Netburst to Pentium M/Core chips. Then, the Athlon 64 was so well received by reviewers and enthusiasts that AMD probably felt it might be wise to finish with its inferiority complex PR system that tied it to its obvious rival. Lastly, by the end of the AMD PR era, the marketing fight was clearly going multi-core. CPU marketing and naming completely sidelined any hint at CPU clock speeds later in the noughties.

AMD's upcoming EPYC 9006-series 'Verano' CPUs that are specifically designed for AI servers will use an all-new SB1 socket and will require different cooling systems than other processors in the lineup, according to a listing at Dynatron, a leading maker of server coolers, discovered by InstLatX64. The new SB1 socket will be smaller than SP7 and SP8 sockets for other Zen 6-based EPYC CPUs and will therefore have different power and cooling needs.

AMD's Verano is quite different from conventional EPYC processors. The CPU will feature up to 72 Zen 6 cores operating at up to 5 GHz and a massive 24-channel LPDDR5X memory subsystem that uses replaceable SOCAMM2 modules. AMD positions Verano as a host processor for AI servers, where CPUs primarily orchestrate workloads running on AI accelerators rather than provide maximum general-purpose performance themselves. Such specialization could explain why AMD developed SB1 instead of using SP7, which accommodates up to 256-core EPYC 'Venice' processors, or SP8, designed for models with up to 128 cores. Meanwhile, AMD has not disclosed SB1's specifications, dimensions, or capabilities just yet.

In fact, given Verano's highly specialized role as a host processor for AI accelerators, AMD may not need to offer a broad range of Verano SKUs typical of its general-purpose EPYC families. If Verano is deployed in systems with a predetermined number of Instinct accelerators, AMD could offer just one or a small number of CPU configurations to ensure a consistent ratio of CPU cores, memory bandwidth, and host-to-accelerator connectivity per GPU and simplify power, cooling, and system qualification, something that Nvidia does with its Grace and Vera processors.

If AMD decided to take a page from Nvidia's book, this explains why it intends to use a dedicated SB1 socket instead of using existing ones. Rather than supporting a broad range of CPU configurations compatible with SP7 and SP8 sockets and systems, SB1 could be optimized for one or a few CPU SKUs, their 24-channel LPDDR5X memory subsystem, and a particular system topology. Note that AMD has not announced how many Verano SKUs it plans to offer, so consider our thoughts speculation for now.

Dynatron's preliminary SB1-4U-Active cooler provides the first indication of what cooling Verano will require. The 4U unit measures 128.05 × 106.6 × 130.7 mm and uses an aluminum fin stack combined with a vapor chamber and heat pipes. The unit is equipped with a double-ball-bearing fan that operates at up to 6,000 RPM and delivers up to 91.7 CFM of airflow, which makes it a quite powerful device.

It is noteworthy that these specifications are virtually identical to those of Dynatron's J26 4U cooler for AMD's much larger SP7 CPUs, to the degree that even the dimensions are similar. This may either indicate that Dynatron reused the J26 design for SB1, or simply copied and pasted J26's specifications onto the SB1-4U-Active cooler's product page to use them as placeholders until the actual cooler is finalized.

For now, Dynatron does not specify the cooler's maximum supported processor power, so its listing cannot currently be used to determine Verano's TDP with confidence. Nevertheless, a large vapor-chamber-based 4U active cooler suggests that Verano will be a server processor with a rather high power consumption despite having considerably fewer cores than the higher-end EPYC 'Venice' CPUs for general-purpose workloads.

AMD plans to launch Verano in the second half of 2027.

This deal has sold out. The best price currently on the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus is $210 at Newegg.

The Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus is down to its lowest price ever, with Amazon slashing 34% off the list price to bring it down to $145. That's even cheaper than the lowest price we've seen on the Core Ultra 5 250KF. Despite being priced like an entry-level CPU, the 250K Plus ranks among our best CPUs for gaming.

• Check out this Core Ultra 5 250K Plus deal on Amazon

The Core Ultra 5 250K Plus originally launched for $200, but it didn't take long for its recommended price to climb to $220. That's likely because it punches far above what its price would suggest, even at full MSRP. It, along with the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, was framed as a last-ditch effort to bring Arrow Lake to the masses after the failed launch of the original range.

And the refresh has worked. The Ultra 5 250K Plus is an 18-core CPU with a split between six Lion Cove P-cores and 12 Skymont E-cores. As with all Arrow Lake CPUs, the 250K Plus doesn't have Hyper-Threading, but having 18C/18T isn't too shabby, with its AMD arch rival offering 6C/12T. The chip comes with a maximum boost clock of 5.3 GHz, and a PL1/PL2 power of 125W/250W. As it's an unlocked K-series processor, you can overclock the chip, though you'll need to pair it with a more pricey Z-series chipset.

Although we almost always recommend a Z-series chipset with a K-series SKU, there actually isn't a locked version of the 250K Plus. Further, many of the OC improvements are baked into the chip, including a 900 MHz bump in die-to-die frequency and a 400 MHz increase in memory fabric speed. Overclocking is a big upside, though it's not strictly required, especially when we're looking at a $145 CPU.

Although the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus is priced like an entry-level CPU, it performs much better than its current sales price would suggest, particularly in productivity workloads. You can see the results for the 250K Plus from our CPU benchmark hierarchy in the gallery below.

The 18 cores and threads help Intel's mid-ranger punch up in multithreaded performance. The chip is 33% faster in our multithreaded productivity geomean compared to AMD's competing Ryzen 7 9700X, despite Team Red's chip costing twice as much right now. Compared to the Ryzen 5 9600X that's in the same price bracket, Intel is a massive 80% ahead. Check out our Intel Core Ultra 250K Plus vs AMD Ryzen 5 9600X faceoff feature for more about that particular battle.

Intel's multithreaded performance here isn't a result of simply throwing a ton of weak cores at the problem. As you can see from our single-threaded rankings, the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus came out ahead of every AMD offering we tested, including the flagship Ryzen 9 9950X. Last-gen's Core i9-14900K is slightly faster, though it also costs nearly three times as much.

Gaming is where Intel has started to take a backseat to AMD, and the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus slips some rankings. On average, the chip is about as fast as the Core i5-14600K. That's marginally faster than the Ryzen 5 9600X and about 3% behind the Ryzen 7 9700X. AMD's Ryzen 5 7600X3D is about 10% faster, though in this current Core Ultra 5 250K Plus sale, Intel's CPU is about $100 cheaper.

At under $150, just getting a competent CPU is tough — just see our list of the best budget CPUs — and the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus is more than competent. Don't miss this deal on Amazon.

If you're looking for more savings, check out our Best PC Hardware deals for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals, Hard Drive Deals, Gaming Monitor Deals, Graphics Card Deals, gaming chair, or CPU Deals pages.

Intel's Raptor Lake Refresh (aka 14th Gen) CPUs have been tough to recommend over the past several months. Although you could find them readily available online, they almost never went on sale, often selling for above the prices we saw throughout the majority of last year. As Amazon's Big Deal Days event kicks off, Raptor Lake Refresh chips are finally seeing better prices, some of them hitting all-time lows.

• Check out these deals at Newegg

Raptor Lake Refresh has remained a surprisingly relevant platform as DDR5 prices continue to push the cost of building a PC higher. Intel's 14th-Gen chips support DDR4 and DDR5, given you have a compatible motherboard, making them an easy upgrade path if you don't already have DDR5 memory. Keep in mind that DDR4 will give up about 13% of your gaming performance, however.

Earlier this year, Intel's Robert Hallock told Tom's Hardware Premium that Raptor Lake is a core part of Intel's strategy for "years to come," signaling a stabilization in prices and inventory. Hopefully that's what we're seeing in action now. The main Raptor Lake Refresh stack is on sale, with popular chips like the Core i7-14700KF hitting their lowest price ever.

Intel's 14th-Gen CPUs are still its fastest gaming chips, with the Core i9-14900K outclassing the newer Core Ultra 7 270K Plus based on the results in our CPU benchmark hierarchy. Although newer Arrow Lake CPUs are faster in applications, Raptor Lake Refresh still holds some of the best gaming performance for Team Blue.

Both the Core i9-14900K and Core i9-14900KF are on sale, but the KF version (unlocked without integrated graphics) is a particularly good deal. It's down to its lowest price ever at $369.99, beating the low it saw last year of around $391. The only difference between this chip and the Core i9-14900K is the integrated graphics. If that's a dealbreaker, the Core i9-14900K is on sale for $400 right now, too.

The Core i9-14900KF is Intel's fastest gaming CPU based on our test suite. It's also a potent chip in productivity applications with 24 cores split across 8 performance cores and 16 efficiency cores, with single-core boosts up to 6 GHz. If you end up picking up the 14900K (or any chip here), make sure you're using the latest BIOS for your motherboard to apply Intel's Raptor Lake degradation mitigations.

A step down the stack, we have the Core i7-14700KF, which is also down to an all-time low price at $279.99. The Core i7-14700K is also on sale for $299.99. This is the sweet spot for Intel's Raptor Lake Refresh range, especially when it comes to gaming. You get 97% of the gaming performance of the Core i9-14900K for around $80 less.

That's due to the core split. The Core i7-14700K has 20 total cores, but it comes with the same eight performance cores as the Core i9, offering similar performance in applications that primarily live on those cores. The 12 efficiency cores still pitch when in heavily-threaded workloads.

Unfortunately, the Core i5-14600KF is not on sale, though its selling price of $239.99 is better than what we've seen over the past few months. Lower down the stack, the Core i5-14400F is on sale, which is a chip that rarely sees discounts.

The Coire i5-14400F has dropped as low as $130 before, so the price right now isn't the best we've ever seen. However, it's better than the selling price of this chip over the past year. Following the holiday rush at the end of last year, the chip has hovered around $200 for the majority of 2026.

The Core i5-14400F is a good alternative to the 14600K if you only care about gaming. That's because it comes with the same six performance cores, shaving the efficiency cores in half to just four. That limits the chip's multi-threaded grunt in applications, naturally.

Hopefully these price drops are a sign of Raptor Lake Refresh inventory stabilizing, not a clearance sale. Time will tell on that front. For now, these are some of the best prices we've seen on Raptor Lake Refresh chips.

Nvidia is expected to launch RTX Spark devices later this week, following a not-so-subtle tease at the end of last week (and the chip’s announced fall release). Ahead of Microsoft’s event on Wednesday, October 7 (where the launch is expected) AMD has shared some benchmarks for its new Gorgon Halo chips — the range that will directly compete with RTX Spark devices. The extra insight comes a matter of days after the first Gorgon Halo devices launched, some of which cost upwards of $7,099.

Short of a few questionable Geekbench leaks, we haven’t seen any performance results for the RTX Spark yet, so AMD isn’t using it as a comparison point. Rather, it’s comparing the Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 495 to Intel’s Core Ultra X9 388H. These chips aren’t in the same class of device, though AMD would argue that it’s comparing its top-of-stack part to Intel’s top-of-stack part.

AMD used ComfyUI to measure generative AI performance. AMD averaged multiple runs of various models, comparing total throughput to Intel’s competition. AMD used its top-spec 192GB configuration of the Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 495 and compared it to the Core Ultra X9 388H in a system with 64GB of memory (Panther Lake supports up to 128GB).

The performance advantage ranges from 1.1x up to 32.2x, though the end point is a clear outlier. We searched for Yuve on Hugging Face and didn’t find any results. It’s possible this delta comes down to an optimization issue, or that it’s simply too big to run on the Panther Lake machine.

We don’t have gaming or general application performance, but we don’t expect a major swing compared to last-gen Strix Halo chips. Gorgon Halo is largely a refresh of that range.

Gorgon Halo isn’t getting into the ring with Panther Lake, however. It’s going mainly against the RTX Spark, and to a lesser extent, Apple’s larger M-series SoCs. This category of agentic PCs, as AMD calls it, is seemingly expanding, though it’s still far smaller than some of the hype around the RTX Spark would have you believe. AMD bragged in a prebriefing with the press about shipping “10s of millions” of AI PCs (read: laptops) before clarifying that it had slipped “over half a million” agentic PCs. Presumably, those are numbers for Strix/Gorgon Halo devices.

The matchup between Gorgon Halo and the RTX Spark has, up to this point, focused mainly on memory capacity. RTX Spark devices top out at 128GB of unified memory, same as the GB10 in the DGX Spark (the two chips are nearly identical). AMD, on the other hand, supports up to 192GB with Gorgon Halo. Higher capacity means running larger models locally, though at a lower performance level.

In the GLM 5.3 Flash with 320 billion parameters, AMD saw peak throughput of 20 tokens per second, though using Unsloth's UD-IQ4_XS mixed-quantization format. For context, we clocked peak token throughput on the DGX Spark running GPT-OSS 120B with 4-bit quantization at 64 tokens per second, and the last-gen Ryzen AI MAx+ 395 at 56 tokens per second.

Note that although GLM 5.3 Flash has 320 billion total parameters, only 18 billion are activated for each token. Similarly, GPT-OSS 120B is another mixture-of-experts model with 120 billion total parameters, though only around 5 billion are active per token.

AMD also shared Qwen 3.8 Flash Next performance, a multimodal MoE model with 125 billion main parameters, 51 billion embedding parameters, and about 4 billion parameters for multi-token prediction (MTP), with 5 billion parameters active per token. AMD says the Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 495 achieves up to 42 tokens per second with this model, once again using Unsloth’s dynamic 4-bit quantization and MTP.

That’s solid performance, but in both cases, “up to” carries a lot on its shoulders. The story of token throughput is told as the context length increases, showcasing what happens when someone actually runs these models locally, not just boots them up cold. Performance drops at higher context lengths, naturally, which could pose some issues for the larger models. If GLM 5.3 Flash provides up to 20 tokens per second, it could very easily decline into unusable territory as the context length increases.

We largely know what performance to expect out of the Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 495, and Gorgon Halo more broadly. It’s a refresh of Strix Halo, with notable spec changes being the bump up to 192GB of unified memory from 128GB, as well as a 100 MHz jump on boost clocks for the 495. Otherwise, the range is using identical core counts and microarchitectures as previous-gen Strix Halo chips.

With these proxies — Strix Halo for Gorgon Halo, and GB10 for RTX Spark — we can already get a good idea about how these parts will stack up. As you can see in our Ryzen AI Halo review (packing the Ryzen AI Max+ 395), AMD’s part universally underperformed compared to the DGX Spark in both time to first token and tokens per second across three models. More unified memory will allow you to run larger models, but that doesn’t mean those models will run faster.

The first Gorgon Halo devices are available for sale now, such as the Minisforum MS-S1 Max-P495. For the top-line configuration, prices sit around $7,000 right now, though we expect a broad range of prices once different devices are available, likely driving above that $7,000 mark.

Full presentation

Despite being on the market for four years, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D remains one of the best CPUs for gaming on the AM4 platform. A Ryzen 9 5900X3D, if AMD had released it, would surely have given it a run for its money. Now, years later, an engineering sample of the Ryzen 9 5900X3D has emerged on the Chinese Chiphell forums, giving us a taste of what could have been an awesome 12-core chip for gaming and productivity.

What is really funny about the Ryzen 9 5900X3D is that we all knew it existed because AMD teased it at Computex 2021. The chipmaker showcased a “12-core 3D Chiplet Prototype" outperforming a regular Ryzen 9 5900X by up to 15% in average gaming performance, with both processors fixed at a 4 GHz frequency.

The Ryzen 9 5900X3D engineering sample (100-000000652-20_48/32_Y) brought to light by a Chiphell user reveals 128MB of L3 cache, double the amount found on the standard Ryzen 9 5900X. This comes from AMD integrating 64MB of 3D V-Cache onto one of the two Core Complex Dies (CCDs) inside the chip. The CPU-Z screenshot also shows a 4,649 MHz clock speed, which is likely the boost clock. If so, and rounding the boost clock speed to 4.7 GHz, the Ryzen 9 5900X3D could have launched with a boost clock just 100 MHz lower than the Ryzen 9 5900X.

Intriguingly, the 128MB configuration was just one of several experiments AMD was exploring. During a visit to AMD's labs, Gamers Nexus captured a 12-core Zen 3 chip with a staggering 192MB of L3 cache. It is the result of a Ryzen 9 5900X equipped with 64MB of 3D V-Cache on both CCDs. Another 16-core Zen 3 chip also had a similar 192MB L3 configuration, likely a Ryzen 9 5950X3D if it had come out on the retail market.

AMD Ryzen 9 5900X3D Specifications*

*Specifications are unconfirmed by AMD.

These early 12-core and 16-core Zen 3 X3D prototypes paved the way for the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, a processor that reigned as the gaming king for several years. AMD's decision to ultimately pursue an asymmetric design was spot on for gaming. An eight-core chip like the Ryzen 7 5800X3D delivers exceptional gaming performance and is not burdened by cross-die latency that can arise when stacking 3D V-Cache on both CCDs.

While AMD initially skipped equipping its 12-core and 16-core Zen 3 chips with 3D V-Cache, it eventually did so on Zen 4 and beyond, leading to the introduction of the Ryzen 9 7900X3D, Ryzen 9 7950X3D, and, more recently, the Ryzen 9 9900X3D and Ryzen 9 9950X3D, or even the over-the-top Ryzen 9 9950X3D2.

A dual-stack configuration is very advantageous for productivity workloads, but it wouldn’t do much for gaming. Equipping both CCDs with 3D V-Cache means dealing with cross-die latency and lower clock speeds due to thermal and power constraints, which are significant trade-offs for gaming. Our CPU hierarchy shows this clearly: for example, the Ryzen 9 9900X3D (12 cores, 128MB L3) falls behind the Ryzen 7 9800X3D (8 cores, 96MB L3) in gaming. Or, in another scenario, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D (16 cores, 192MB L3) offers similar gaming performance to the Ryzen 7 9800X3D.

AMD knows what it is doing, and the eight-core, single-CCD design is where gaming is at. This winning formula is clearly embodied in the Ryzen 7 5800X3D and, after it, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D and Ryzen 7 9800X3D, chips that have set the standard for high-end gaming processors.

A rumored SKU table for Intel's upcoming Nova Lake desktop CPUs has surfaced, showcasing seven models that will (presumably) make up Intel's initial NVL-S lineup. The list includes three models with the "BFC" tag, which seems to be Intel's branding for bLLC, or big last level cache. It's been heavily rumored to show up with Nova Lake, countering AMD's assault on the best CPUs for gaming with its X3D chips.

As previously rumored, the table tops out at the flagship Core Ultra 9 4970K BFC, which the spec list suggests is a 28-core chip with 8 P-cores, 16 E-cores, and 4 LPE-cores. It also lists a 125W TDP and an integrated GPU with 32 Execution Units (EUs). This 32-EU iGPU is apparently a staple across the range, short of the Core Ultra 5 4650KF, which lacks integrated graphics.

Intel retired the use of "EUs" in favor of its Xe cores several years ago. Rumors suggest Intel isn't releasing a large, 12-Xe core model of Nova Lake. The 32-EU count here likely comes out to 4 Xe cores (each core has eight matrix and vector ALUs).

The table does not include the heavily rumored 52-core Nova Lake model. However, as the Nova Lake launch approaches, it has become clear that the 52-core model, as well as other potential models with a dual-tile configuration, will arrive after the main range of chips. Presumably, these models will target the HEDT crowd with their high core counts.

*Names and specifications rumored, unconfirmed by Intel

There are several interesting details when looking at the range broadly. Most notably is the four-number model identifier, which Intel didn't use with Arrow Lake chips like the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus. This larger identifier has been previously rumored, and it makes sense if the lineup above is indeed real. There's quite a bit of specificity in this stack, and something like the "Core Ultra 9 497K" doesn't signal what a "Core Ultra 9 4970K" does.

Regardless of naming, the SKU table shows three models with BFC, two of which fall under the Core Ultra 9 umbrella. There isn't a Core Ultra 5 BFC option. The most interesting model is the Core Ultra 9 4900 BFC, which matches the 22-core count of the Core Ultra 5 models, though with the addition of BFC and a lower 65W TDP. Given this chip doesn't have a K suffix, it looks like a specialized, low-power gaming chip, perhaps for small form factor desktops.

In addition, the Core Ultra 5 model is the only one with an F suffix, noting that it lacks integrated graphics. As we saw with the Arrow Lake refresh, Intel released a Core Ultra 5 250KF Plus, though it never gave the 270K Plus the KF treatment.

According to the table, Intel could use "BFC" to note chips with a larger L3 cache, something that's been heavily rumored for Nova Lake as AMD's X3D chips dominate gaming in our CPU benchmark hierarchy. This is the first time we've heard it referred to as BFC; however, with previous rumors referring to the additional cache as bLLC.

As for what BFC stands for, there are a few possible candidates, and we'll leave it to your imagination as to what words that start with "F" could fit between "Big" and "Cache."

Although Intel's Nova Lake chips have been the topic of the rumor mill for well over a year, the launch is approaching. At the beginning of the year, Intel's CEO confirmed Nova Lake would arrive before the end of the year. Assuming that's still true, we'd expect to learn more any day now.

Signs certainly point to a launch happening soon. Just this week, Nova Lake platforms passed compliance at USB and PCIe standard bodies. At Computex earlier this year, we saw two Z990 motherboards in the flesh. And last month, a leaked slide presumably from one of Intel's partners provided a tease as to what the platform could look like.

Hopefully we'll have more details soon. In the meantime, make sure to check out our recent interview with Intel's Robert Hallock, where the executive goes into some of the expectations around Nova Lake, on Tom's Hardware Premium.

OpenAI’s new Jalapeño ASIC is being deployed internally alongside AMD EPYC Turin hosts, each with 1.5TB of memory. SemiAnalysis described the rack-scale deployment of Jalapeño following the reveal of the chip, which we asked Richard Ho, VP and Head of Hardware at OpenAI, about in an interview. Ho told us that the decision to use Turin was “pragmatic,” describing Nvidia’s new Vera CPU as “a little bit behind… on that maturity level.”

“The way we approached that design was really in terms of de-risking and being able to do that design fast. Vera, as a standalone, is a little bit behind on that maturity level. The Turing device is strong. It did what we needed to do, and partly our partners had some experience with it,” Ho told Tom’s Hardware Premium. “For the Jalapeño program, we were trying to make very pragmatic decisions. We wanted to be aggressive on the goals of the performance and the cost, but we didn’t want to take unnecessary risks. That felt like a good design decision that would fit within the parameters of how we make these design decisions."

There are many Arm-based CPUs on the market, many of which are deployed internally at different hyperscalers, such as Google Cloud’s Axiom and AWS’ Graviton, but Vera and Arm’s own AGI have been described as agentic CPUs, purportedly accelerating the complex reasoning involved in agentic loops compared to their x86 counterparts from AMD and Intel. We asked Ho about this dynamic, and why Turin was the right choice given the close working relationship between OpenAI and Nvidia, who responded with the quote above.

Arm has long touted the virtues of the AArch64 ISA compared to x86, going as far as to claim that its own AGI CPU provides more than twice the performance of modern x86 platforms. That claim is based on internal estimates, not real benchmarks, however. The company has been naturally bullish on AGI’s adoption in the market, though even with an impressive $2 billion in commitments, analysts say the market penetration will still be in the low single digits after two years.

With the explosion of server CPU demand this year and evolving agentic workloads, Nvidia has been at the forefront of messaging, comparing its Arm-based Vera to the x86 competition, boldly claiming a 1.8x improvement over a competing AMD Turin chip; a figure that’s extracted from an overall benchmark suite showing Vera just 3% ahead of AMD’s EPYC 9755.

Many semi-custom Arm designs, from Graviton to Azure’s Cobalt, have focused on core density and efficiency for cloud workloads. Vera and AGI are a shift toward messaging against peak performance. In early Vera benchmarks, Nvidia’s CPU looks impressive, though we’ve yet to see the chip in action in a wide variety of workloads, much less benchmarked against AMD’s upcoming Venice CPUs or Intel’s Diamond Rapids.

What’s interesting about OpenAI’s decision to use Turin is that it’s one of Arm’s deployment partners for AGI, as well as among the list of customers “exploring the Vera CPU,” according to Nvidia. OpenAI, other frontier labs, and hyperscalers keep a wide variety of hardware in their fleet. Pairing Jalapeño specifically with Turin came down to reducing risk, with Ho pointing to the maturity of the platform.

Broadly, x86_64 is more mature than AArch64; ARM has been around since the mid-1980’s, though a proper 64-bit extension didn’t arrive until 12 years after it was introduced on x86. And although Arm has worked its way into data centers over the past two decades, there’s still a much deeper x86 foundation reaching back several decades.

It doesn’t seem Ho’s comments were specifically on the delineation between AArch64 and x86, however. Rather, the comments are focused on the dynamic between Turin and Vera, with the latter being Nvidia’s first foray into a custom CPU core for the data center. Although the early benchmarks of Vera are impressive, it nonetheless represented an unnecessary risk for OpenAI’s rack-scale Jalapeño deployment.

Ho’s comments about OpenAI’s partners having experience with Turin expose where the thinking for the hardware team was at, as well. There are some differences in the practicality of servicing the host system between Turin and Vera, most notably the fact that Vera is board-mounted while Turin chips are socketed; swapping chips isn’t common in a server regardless, but it’s easier with Turin.

Given that OpenAI has a fleet of hardware available, it’s possible Jalapeño will be deployed with a different host system in the future, potentially paired with Arm’s AGI or Nvidia’s Vera. For now, however, Turin was the right choice.

Unreal Engine 5 isn’t particularly heavy on the CPU, but Gears of War E-Day changes that narrative. If you have a monitoring overlay open when you load into the game, you’ll immediately notice your CPU pinned at between 80% and 90% utilization, which is a far cry from most other UE5 titles. Even stranger is that the scaling between CPUs is clear. For instance, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D netted 42% higher performance than the Ryzen 5 7600X at 1080p with the High graphics preset.

We’ve tested a lot of UE5 games with our pool of CPUs to evaluate them, not only for our rankings of the best CPUs for gaming, but also for our ongoing CPU benchmark hierarchy. Most of them haven’t made the cut, simply because of a lack of scaling. We’ve tried to include games like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, and Halo: Campaign Evolved, due to the prevalence of Unreal Engine 5 in modern AAA games, but the CPU scaling just doesn’t matter.

There are some exceptions, notably Marvel Rivals with its dense fighting arenas, large teams, and destructible environments, and The Blood of Dawnwalker, which has a large, sparsely populated city in the middle of the map that will bring most CPUs to their knees. Even then, however, these UE5 games don’t show the same level of scaling as other games in our test suite, such as Starfield or Baldur’s Gate 3.

Gears of War E-Day is an exception. It’s not only demanding on the CPU, easily spiking even the Ryzen 7 9800X3D to full utilization at 1080p, it also shows scaling across a wide pool of chips. And further, this is true even at the game’s Ultra preset (though not the Ludicrous preset, which we’ll dig into later). This heavy CPU burden was consistent throughout the opening hours of the game, as well, regardless of scene complexity or interactions.

If you're interested in GPU performance, make sure to check out our Gears of War E-Day GPU benchmarks, as well.

Gears of War E-Day CPU benchmarks

We tested Gears of War E-Day on the same test systems we use for CPU reviews, short of the GPU driver, which we changed for this benchmarking session (the game won’t launch without the Game Ready driver). Otherwise, everything is identical, down to the frozen OS images we use across AMD and Intel test systems.

As usual, we tested with the RTX 5090 Founders Edition at 1080p to showcase the differences between each CPU. We ran a handful of chips at 1440p, as well, to get an idea of how performance scales at a higher resolution. We omitted 4K, as our graphics analysis of the game showed that it was completely GPU-bound at that high of a resolution. Go figure.

Before getting to the scaling benchmarks, we looked at scene performance and preset performance in E-Day. The game includes a built-in benchmark, common for titles published by Microsoft, so the first step to evaluating performance is ensuring that the benchmark actually matches in-game performance. It doesn’t, but it’s not far off.

As you can see, we saw slightly higher performance with our two in-game scenes than we did in the benchmark, likely due to the benchmark’s sweeping camera angle that draws much more than you’ll ever actually see on screen. We stuck with an in-game scene (scene 2) for testing, but the benchmark is a good approximation of what’s actually in the game.

For graphics settings, we went with the High preset. Gears of War E-Day includes five presets, and we tested the top four to see where the scaling starts and stops. The dynamic is binary. If you’re using the Ludicrous preset, the scaling between CPUs goes down drastically. We saw a 6.8% difference between the 9800X3D and 9600X with the Ludicrous preset. At the Ultra preset, that jumped up to nearly a 29% difference, which grows further at the High preset.

We eventually settled on High, as that’s the visual floor for becoming CPU-bound. Going down to Medium nets very little extra performance and slightly exaggerates the scaling between chips. High, then, is a good compromise. It shows near-maximum scaling between CPUs without being an unreasonable test case.

It should come as no surprise that the Ryzen 7 9800X3D and Ryzen 7 7800X3D occupy the top two spots on our chart. E-Day, like a lot of titles, is accelerated by X3D chips. You can see that with the Ryzen 7 5800X3D much lower down the chart, as well. What’s interesting here is how E-Day scales with core count, however. Take the Ryzen 5 7600X as an example. We expect less than a 5% jump with the Ryzen 7 7700X on average, but in E-Day, that increase nears 9%.

Elsewhere, the 12-core Ryzen 9 models usually underperform their 8-core counterparts in games. Again, the 7900X and 7700X are in lockstep, while the 9900X is 3.5% ahead. It’s worth stressing that, based on our data, the Ryzen 9 9900X and 7900X are slower than the straight eight-core models from AMD’s last two generations. The fact that they’re ahead here speaks to the importance of core count in this game.

Perhaps the greatest evidence of that comes from the Intel camp. Not only do we see Intel’s main Raptor Lake and Arrow Lake stack outperforming all but AMD’s X3D Zen 4 and Zen 5 CPUs, we also see strange comparisons between Arrow Lake and Arrow Lake Refresh. The Core Ultra 5 250K Plus is typically around 5% faster than the Core Ultra 7 265K on average in games. Here, the situation is flipped, with the Core Ultra 7 265K leading by about 2%.

It’s interesting to see core count as a performance driver, which isn’t usually the case in games past six or maybe eight cores. Although E-Day scales past that point, it still plateaus around 150 FPS.

We ran a few tests at 1440p, as well, foregoing the whole pool simply for the sake of time. For scaling comparisons, the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus is about 18% faster than the Core i5-14400 at 1440p, but it’s about 36% faster at 1080p. Further, that scaling isn’t consistent. Running CPUs at 1440p with our test suite and settings, we found a ceiling around 130 FPS where performance becomes bound by the GPU. Any CPUs that performed above that mark at 1080p normalized to that 130 FPS, while CPUs below that mark offered performance at 1440p within a few frames of the 1080p performance.

When looking at a weak CPU compared to a strong one, there’s clear scaling at 1440p. However, with CPUs within similar product ranges and families, the game is mostly bound to GPU performance at the higher resolution.

Looking at other aspects of performance, there aren’t any surprises. Power use is in line with our expectations, with AMD’s Zen 4 and Zen 5 flagships sitting alongside Intel’s most powerful Raptor Lake chips. And, on the efficiency front, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D and 7800X3D easily win the day with nearly two frames per watt used. Temperatures stayed in check, as well, with even the highest chip in our test pool averaging just 65.4 degrees Celsius.

Investigating ‘low core mode’ in Gears of War E-Day

Buried in the “System” menu of the settings in E-Day, there’s a curious option called Low Core Mode. The game says in the setting’s description that it can improve performance on low core count devices and handhelds, which is worthy of closer inspection. This isn’t a standard UE5 toggle — as we’ve established, the engine is not particularly heavy on the CPU at stock — and we haven’t seen similar settings, at least among most recent AAA releases.

We ran each chip through another pass of tests with this mode turned on, using the same test scene and settings, to see how it impacts performance. It universally lowered performance across our entire pool of 25 CPUs, even going down to the quad-core Core i3-14100. 1% low performance wasn’t improved either. For the sake of clarity, we’ve laid out the results in a table below so you can easily see the performance change between toggling Low Core Mode on and off.

With everything down to a strict quad-core tested — E-Day’s system requirements bottom out at hexa-core chips — we assumed the situation was settled and were content to leave Low Core Mode for others to explore further. However, we gave it one more try with the Core i3-14100, disabling two of the cores in the BIOS to see how the game would function with a dual-core chip.

That revealed a lot about what’s going on behind the scenes with this feature. Above, you can see a screenshot we gathered when booting into the game with the dual-core 14100. The texture streaming system completely breaks. We didn’t wait for an opportune moment to capture this screenshot, either; the low-res, half-loaded assets persisted throughout the entire run.

Further, whenever we went to pause the game to adjust settings or reload the checkpoint, the game froze and hung for upwards of 30 seconds before the menu appeared. Turning on Low Core Mode resolved both the asset streaming issue and the game freezing, as well as improved performance by 30%. That’s impressive, but keep in mind that going from four cores to two on the 14100 resulted in a 59% decrease in performance, dropping from an average of 89 FPS to just 36 FPS.

It appears E-Day switches up the streaming system with Low Core Mode. That would explain a lot, notably the heavy, all-core demand when running the game normally and the severe streaming issue we noted at two cores. E-Day is using some sort of asset streaming system, as most modern games do, and those assets look very expensive. Past a certain point, the streaming simply breaks as the CPU is overloaded with work.

Although we didn’t notice a performance improvement at four cores, keep in mind that we’re testing with the newest true quad-core on the market. The 14100 is one of the best budget CPUs, but it’s still new. The system requirements call for an older hexa-core chip at minimum. Taken together, you may run into issues with older quad-cores that necessitate the use of Low Core Mode, but those situations are few and far between. Assuming you have a relatively recent processor, or a processor with at least six cores, and ideally both, Low Core Mode will reduce your performance.

We didn’t test mobile chips, however, nor the handhelds those chips are inside of. This mode may have more practical applications there.

Test configuration

As mentioned, we used the same platform for testing Gears of War E-Day that we use for a CPU reviews, which you can find in the table below. All configuration and software is duplicated across all test systems, and AMD and Intel configurations never touch each other to avoid any conflicts.

There are a few important configuration details worth highlighting outside of the broad strokes of a frozen OS image. We disable Virtualization-Based Security (VBS) for all platforms, enable ReBAR, and enable XMP/EXPO. We've tested the memory to ensure stability with our platforms.

We also disable any automatic overclocking features that are unstable or not covered by warranty. For instance, we disable AMD's Precision Boost Overdrive and Intel's Extreme power profile, as neither is covered by warranty. Intel's Core Ultra 200S Boost, on the other hand, is covered by warranty, so we enabled it on the Arrow Lake chips we tested. Similarly, the 9600X and 9700X from AMD have a warrantied 105W operating mode, which we use, as it improves gaming performance slightly.

When Nuvacore, a new CPU startup founded by legendary CPU and system architects Gerard Williams, John Bruno, and Ram Srinivasan, emerged from stealth earlier this year, it promised to "rewrite the rules of silicon," but did not say how it planned to do so. On Thursday, the company finally broke its silence and revealed that it is taking an unusual development approach that allows it to design a significant portion of its CPU core IP before committing to a particular instruction set architecture (ISA).

Traditionally, CPU developers start development of a new processor project with a particular ISA — such as Arm, RISC-V, or x86 — already selected. Although modern high-performance processors translate instructions into internal micro-operations and therefore separate the ISA from much of the underlying execution pipelines, the instruction set still influences numerous architectural decisions, including instruction decoding, register handling, memory ordering, and, of course, software compatibility.

Nuvacore says its Core First approach reverses at least part of this process. Instead of designing WarpCore around the requirements and limitations of a predetermined ISA, the company's engineers are developing a significant portion of the foundational CPU IP independent of a particular ISA. To a large degree, one can compare such an approach to the development of a car around its engine and not trying to fit an engine into an already developed platform.

"Rather than beginning with the constraints of an existing architecture and iterating from there, we are starting with the core itself," the company said in its statement.

As a result, the team may be able to better focus on the core's microarchitecture and optimize it for performance, power efficiency, and sustained workloads typical of modern data centers and AI infrastructure, the target application for the company. Nuvacore intends to select an instruction set later based on what works best for the systems that it and its partners plan to build.

There are obvious limits to how ISA-independent a CPU design can be. Eventually, WarpCore will need front-end logic designed around its chosen instruction set, and those architectural requirements will inevitably affect other parts of the processor. Nevertheless, substantial pieces of a modern CPU — such as execution units, branch-prediction units, data paths, caches, and portions of the memory subsystem — can be developed and evaluated before every ISA-related implementation decision is finalized.

In addition to not disclosing its ISA, which is arguably the biggest unanswered question surrounding the project, Nuvacore also has not disclosed the project's schedule, configuration, manufacturing process, power, or performance targets, though given the lack of the ISA commitment, one could say that the remaining details are not that important.

For now, the only thing that Nuvacore discloses about WarpCore is that it is "a new class of general-purpose CPU designed specifically for the sustained performance and power-efficiency requirements of AI infrastructure and contemporary data centers."

AMD's ambidextrous strategy returns?

Nuvacore's approach is not entirely without precedent. Under CEOs Rory Read and Lisa Su, AMD spent part of the 2010s pursuing an "ambidextrous" strategy intended to let it address x86 and Arm customers by sharing substantial processor and platform IP.

Arguably the most detailed part of the initiative was AMD's SkyBridge platform, announced in 2014. Under SkyBridge, AMD envisioned pin-compatible 64-bit Arm and x86 systems-on-chips that were to use AMD's own Puma+ x86 cores and Arm's Cortex-A57 cores with common platform infrastructure. Separately, AMD developed its custom 64-bit Arm K12 core under Jim Keller that was supposed to share microarchitecture features with Zen. Ultimately, due to lack of resources, SkyBridge was ultimately scrapped, while K12 never became a commercial product as AMD only pursued x86 Zen cores. The difference is, of course, that Nuvacore appears to be taking the idea further by deliberately postponing the ISA decision for WarpCore.

Since Nuvacore is still just a startup, we can only wonder whether its business plan includes marketing of CPUs at all. Nuvia, which was also founded by Williams and Bruno along with Manu Gulati, was acquired by Qualcomm and ultimately shaped the company's Snapdragon X Elite SoCs. In that light, its approach could give the company considerable commercial flexibility.

By developing much of its WarpCore design without tying it to a particular ISA, the company could potentially adapt the technology to the requirements of a future customer or partner. An Arm licensee could use the underlying core technology for an Arm implementation; another customer could choose RISC-V or another ISA. An established x86 vendor could potentially acquire or license the underlying microarchitecture and create its own x86 CPUs if it needs to.

Nuvacore, of course, has not indicated that such a transaction is its objective, but keeping WarpCore ISA-agnostic for as long as possible potentially broadens the number of companies to which its CPU technology could be valuable.

All in all, the Core First announcement tells us considerably more about how Nuvacore intends to develop WarpCore than what the processor itself will eventually look like. But if the company really does keep its ISA options open until relatively late in development, WarpCore represents an unusual attempt to separate development of a high-performance CPU microarchitecture from one of the decisions that normally defines a processor project from its earliest stages.

The USB Implementers Forum now lists some of Intel's Core Ultra 400-series 'Nova Lake' platforms in its Integrators List, meaning that the products have passed applicable USB compliance and interoperability tests. The PCI-SIG Integrators List also includes Intel’s 900-series chipsets for Nova Lake-S processors. Such tests are conducted ahead of product launches to ensure interoperability and to gain the right to use the PCIe and USB logos on new products.

The USB-IF listing confirms that Intel's mobile Nova Lake-H processor (Device ID D331, D333) is compliant with the USB4 80 Gbps specification (which is not surprising, as the part is also supposed to support Thunderbolt 5). In contrast, Intel's desktop Nova Lake PCH-S chipset (Device ID 6E6E) is compliant with the USB 3.2 Gen2 standard and supports a data transfer rate of up to 20 Gbps, which is in line with unofficial information about Intel's 900-series chipsets. Meanwhile, the Integrators List lacks Intel's desktop Nova Lake processor that is expected to support USB4 (more on this later).

The choice of the products to certify first — a desktop chipset and a high-performance notebook CPU — may seem a bit odd. However, there is a good explanation for why Intel submitted these parts to the Integrators List ahead of others and why the order of such submissions for compliance testing does not matter significantly in this case.

The USB-IF has a program called Qualification by Similarity (QbS) for sufficiently similar products, under which testing one product can enable related products to be certified and added to the Integrators List with limited or no additional compliance testing. Since USB4 and USB 3.2 circuitry in different Nova Lake products is similar, Intel can submit select CPUs and chipsets for USB-IF compliance tests and then follow up with the QbS.

Meanwhile, since USB-IF certification is formally attached to a specific product name, model, and revision, differently named products are not certified automatically simply because they contain identical USB circuitry. These products must be submitted separately under QbS, after which USB-IF decides whether the differences are significant enough to require additional testing.

The PCI-SIG Integrators List has included Intel's 900-series chipset (Device 6E38-6E3F, 6E30-6E35, 6E40-6E47) for Core Ultra 400-series 'Nova Lake-S' processors since April. In early August, the company’s as-yet-unidentified processor (Device IDs D461, D465, and D467–D46A) with a PCIe 5.0 x16 root complex passed interoperability tests and was listed alongside the chipset. We cannot state with certainty that this is a desktop Nova Lake CPU, although it is reasonable to suspect that the device belongs to the desktop Core Ultra 400-series platform.

As the official launch of Intel’s Core Ultra 400-series ‘Nova Lake’ processors for desktops and laptops looms, these platforms must pass various compliance and interoperability tests administered by industry standards organizations. So far, Intel’s Nova Lake CPUs and supporting chipsets have passed interoperability tests with the PCI-SIG and USB-IF. However, in the coming weeks or months, they will likely appear on other compliance and interoperability lists as well. Intel will also eventually need various regulatory and environmental documents, depending on what exactly is being sold and where, though such documents rarely enter the public domain ahead of formal launches.

Anyway, Nova Lake's listings in PCI-SIG and USB-IF Integrators List point to Intel's preparations for the launch of new CPUs for desktops and laptops. The latest leaks point to Core Ultra 400-series launches in Q1 2027, so setting the stage for their release early next year is a natural move for Intel.

After unveiling the EPYC 9006 (codenamed Venice) series in July and previewing a few impressive Zen 6 benchmarks, AMD has now released full pricing for its highly anticipated next-generation server chips. According to the list StorageReview obtained, AMD has big plans for the data center, with a wide range of SKUs from eight to 256 cores and pricing from $700 to $14,904.

As a quick refresher, AMD strategically divided the Venice lineup into two distinct segments. The SP7 platform is the flagship offering, delivering maximum memory capacity and throughput. It supports up to 16 memory channels, accommodating both RDIMMs and MDRDIMMs up to DDR5-12800. The platform offers up to 96 PCIe 6.0 lanes and supports Venice chips with TDPs between 400W and 600W.

The Venice parts designed for the SP7 socket offer scalable performance for enterprises. The lineup begins with the 64-core EPYC 9556, priced at $8,008, and extends to the flagship 256-core EPYC 9996, which commands $14,904. In retrospect, the EPYC 9996's price tag does not seem particularly shocking, especially since the previous-generation EPYC 9965 (codenamed Turin) launched at nearly the same price, around $14,800.

As is typical for server processors, the total price increases as the number of cores rises. However, the price per core actually decreases substantially as you move up the core ladder. The pricing dynamic is very notable with Venice. For example, the flagship EPYC 9996, with a massive 256 cores, comes out to just $58.21 per core, whereas the "entry-level" SP7 chip, the 64-core EPYC 9556, costs around $125.12 per core. As a result, higher core-count models are more attractive from a per-core value perspective for data centers, cloud service providers, and enterprises.

AMD EPYC 9006 SP7 Specifications and Pricing

The SP7 SKUs support both 1P and 2P socket configurations. The latter, in particular, enables up to 512 Zen 6 cores in one system by pairing two EPYC 9996 chips on a single motherboard. That level of performance logically comes with a substantial investment, since the processors alone would cost $29,808 before factoring in the significant expense of memory today.

Among the nine SP7 SKUs, two models in particular stand out: the EPYC 9686F and EPYC 9586F. The "F" suffix means these chips feature maximum boost clock speeds, in this case, 5 GHz. While both are impressive in their own right, AMD optimized these parts to hit 5 GHz. Naturally, this level of optimization carries a price premium. For example, the 64-core EPYC 9586F costs almost as much as the 96-core EPYC 9656, despite offering 33% fewer cores. The trade-off is also apparent in the thermal envelope. The EPYC 9586F has a TDP that is 100W higher than the EPYC 9656.

AMD EPYC 9006 SP8 Specifications and Pricing

The SP8 platform is a more streamlined and cost-effective counterpart to the SP7 platform for the Venice family. It supports eight-channel memory and does not embrace MRDIMMs. However, the limitation balances out by expansion possibilities, as the SP8 platform offers 128 PCIe 6.0 lanes, 33% more than the SP7 platform. Additionally, the SP8 platform has a lower thermal footprint, as these Zen 6 parts carry TDP ratings between 130W and 400W.

The SP8 platform offers an accessible entry point for organizations, with the octa-core EPYC 9106 priced at just $700. At the other end of the spectrum, the EPYC 9746, which is the top SP8 SKU, offers 128 Zen 6 cores at $11,679.

With the SP8 platform, we also see Zen 6 models with the “P” suffix, which indicates support for single-socket systems only. These variants deliver the same performance as their standard counterparts but at a significantly lower price. For example, the 128-core EPYC 9736P is 6% less expensive than the EPYC 9736. In an even more dramatic case, the 32-core EPYC 9356P retails for 26% less than the EPYC 9356.

One of the more unusual Venice chips is the 16-core EPYC 9176F. Despite its modest core count, it features a massive 192MB of L3 cache, 4X that of the 16-core EPYC 9116, while costing more than 3X as much. This translates to 12MB of L3 cache per core. With its high cache capacity and 5 GHz boost clock, AMD likely designed the EPYC 9176F for organizations seeking to minimize licensing costs for software priced per core.

AMD’s SP7 and SP8 platforms are scheduled to launch in the fourth quarter of this year and the first half of 2027, respectively. However, these Venice prices are not final, as AMD has stated that the list is subject to change. AMD will extend the lineup further later in 2027 with Venice-X chips, which use the company's 3D V-Cache stacking.

Intel has published a patent to integrate MicroLEDs directly into a CPU package. Aside from communication functions, Intel lists many possible uses, including using multi-colored lights to light up the wording on a processor. The patent, filed in 2022 but only published earlier this month, describes embedding a MicroLED into the package by using a glass substrate and through-glass vias (TGV), connecting directly to a die for power and signal routing. The patent says the purpose of the LEDs is "either aesthetic components of the electronic device or to indicate certain operations being performed by the electronic device."

As is the case with any patents, the purpose of embedding MicroLEDs into a chip is left open-ended. However, Intel interestingly calls out implementing MicroLEDs into a CPU, specifically, and provides several examples of how the tech might be used. The patent says the processor "may operate the micro LEDs so that the micro LEDs visually indicate that certain functions are being performed by the processor or simply for aesthetic effects."

In one part of the patent, Intel describes the LEDs being used to "light up wording across a central processing unit," suggesting some sort of read-out available directly on the CPU. How that would work on a standard processor with a heatsink atop remains an open question. In addition, the patent explicitly calls out that the LEDs can be different colors depending on the implementation. That could mean something more akin to RGB memory than a diagnostic readout. The patent leaves room for both designs.

You can see the main drawing for the patent above. In the middle is the glass substrate, sandwiched between two layers of package substrate. A semiconductor die is partially embedded within the glass substrate, leaving just the back surface of the die exposed; however, the patent says the die can be fully embedded in other implementations. The LEDs are connected directly to the semiconductor die, or through nanowires, and TGVs deliver power and signal to the semiconductor die through the glass substrate.

Intel says it builds the package with two layers of silicon nitride, which are formed on the package substrate surface and then attached to the glass substrate. Intel has been working through glass substrates for over three years now, as Intel claims it has 10 times better interconnect density than organic substrates.

The main patent drawing only shows a single IC, though the patent notes that's simply shown "for clarity." A finished product implementing this technology "will have an array or arrays of micro LEDs on one or more IC packages." So, given an ambitious-enough design, Intel could implement multiple LED-based functions directly into the processor.

Patents aren't products, and that's always an important reminder. Intel filed this patent over four years ago, and it's just now being published. Whether we actually see MicroLEDs embedded in a processor remains an open question. However, Intel has laid the groundwork to do something like that in the future.

Meta's new AI agent Muse is powered by AMD EPYC Turin host systems, with each sandbox sporting two dedicated cores and 8GB of memory. Blogger Evan Hoffman and analyst Tae Kim both discovered that Muse will run some rudimentary Ubuntu commands if prompted, passing along the output to help identify things like the specs of the host system. More concerning is that Muse seems able to execute commands that might be unsafe, with Hoffman claiming that Muse offered to set up SSH to Muse's private VM.

Both Kim and Hoffman asked Muse about the VM's specs, and in both instances, Muse revealed that it's running on AMD EPYC 9D25 CPUs, a high-density Turin chip with up to 128 cores (two of which are generally fused off or reserved). The VMs are running on Ubuntu 24.04 and using Linux kernel 7.0. The systems hosting Muse don't include GPUs. The AI agent revealed that Meta uses separate GPU servers for inference, isolating the agent to CPU-only sandboxes.

The agent suggests that each user gets their own private sandbox that's persistent, which allows us to do some math on how many people an individual tray can host. Assuming a 2P system that offers up to 510 vCPUs with 2TB of memory, hosting up to 254 Muse users. Muse has reportedly passed over 500,000 daily active users as of a few days ago, which would come out to somewhere around 2,000 server trays with dual EPYC 9D25 CPUs and 2TB of memory.

This is just some rough napkin math; don't take it as law. It's possible Meta has CPU-only servers deployed with multiple different chips to host Muse, and it's also possible there's overhead in the configuration. Turin chips support up to 6TB of memory with high-density DIMMs, for instance. Still, EPYC hosts seem popular for this use case, mainly because of their core density, as even a dual-core sandbox can add up quickly when multiplied across hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of users.

Muse isn't completely open. Hoffman shared an example where an attempted command failed due to improper permissions when Muse tried to query the kernel buffer. Presumably, sudo (admin) commands would be blocked as well.

However, there might still be some security loopholes. Hoffman says that Muse offered to set up SSH into the private Muse VM. With a reverse SSH tunnel — where the destination machine initiates the connection, bypassing the firewall — an attacker may be able to execute more damaging commands.

Meta's David Singleton says this is intended behavior, however, describing Muse as "a free computer in the cloud." Meta has an extensive white paper on the security architecture of Muse published on its research website.

AMD's new Ryzen 5 5500F and Ryzen 5 7500 are available for sale, though the prices are higher than AMD originally suggested. On Amazon, the Ryzen 5 5500F is available for $120, while the Ryzen 5 7500 is listed at $210, both $20 more expensive than AMD's suggested retail pricing. Both are sold directly by Amazon, suggesting we'll see slightly higher prices for these two chips than AMD originally suggested.

• Get the AMD Ryzen 5 5500F from Amazon
• Get the AMD Ryzen 5 7500 from Amazon

AMD revealed the budget CPUs nearly two weeks ago, and despite launching on that date, the chips haven't been available for sale in the U.S. until now. The Ryzen 5 5500F is particularly interesting, as the $90 Ryzen 5 5500 has continually been among Amazon's best sellers in CPUs. Although the Ryzen 5 5500 and 5500F sound similar, there are actually quite a few differences between the two CPUs.

Both are six-core, 12-thread chips using AMD's Zen 3 architecture, but the 5500 falls under the Cezanne family, while the 5500F falls under Vermeer. The 5500F comes with PCIe 4, compared to PCIe 3 on the 5500, as well as a higher 4.4 GHz boost clock — the base 5500 tops out at 4.2 GHz. These changes apparently allow the 5500F to achieve higher performance, somewhere in the range of 5% to 10%, in games. We'll be getting the CPU in the Tom's Hardware lab to test the performance ourselves.

Although Zen 3 is aging, it has become an ideal home for budget builders as the RAM pricing crisis continues to surge. In addition to the Ryzen 5 5500F, we saw AMD re-release the Ryzen 7 5800X3D earlier this year to combat rising DDR5 prices.

We took the Ryzen 5 5500 (non-F) out for a spin earlier this year for a budget $100 CPU shootout. Generally, it underperforms the Intel competition at this price, but a 5% to 10% jump would close that gap. If performance holds up, the Ryzen 5 5500F may have a shot at our best CPUs for gaming list with its low price.

The Ryzen 5 7500 is easier to parse. It's identical to the 7500F, just with integrated graphics. It comes with six Zen 4 cores for a total of 12 threads, and unlike the 5500, it exclusively supports DDR5 memory. The 7500 comes with a boost clock of 5 GHz and supports PCIe 5. Like the 5500F, it has a 65W TDP and comes bundled with AMD's Wraith Stealth cooler.

AMD originally announced the Ryzen 5 5500F at $99 and the 7500 at $190, though the current Amazon listings are both $20 higher than that — $120 and $210, respectively. At the time of writing, the CPUs are only available at Amazon in the U.S.; Micro Center and Newegg don't have listings available. When other retailers pick up the chips, prices could come down.

This isn't the first time we've seen oddly high prices on new AMD releases at Amazon. Earlier this year, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 went up for sale on Amazon prior to release, selling for $1,000, $100 above MSRP. After the launch dust settled and listings went up at other retailers, the pricing dropped back down to $900. Hopefully, we'll see something similar happen here.

Google’s “brand-new category of flagship laptops,” called Googlebooks, will contain MediaTek’s next-gen Dimensity CX C10 Max processor, the first SoC to launch in the Dimensity CX lineup. It’s built on a 3nm node (TSMC N3) and uses an all-performance-core design, packing eight cores on the CPU and 11 cores on the GPU, along with MediaTek’s NPU 890, delivering up to 55 TOPS of AI performance, according to MediaTek. The new CX lineup will sit between MediaTek’s other offerings, between the RTX Spark in higher-end laptops and Chromebook with Kompanio chips.

MediaTek calls the C10 Max the “flagship of the lineup,” though we don’t have full specs on the chip, and not so much as a name for the other chips in the lineup. MediaTek is launching the CPU on the same day Googlebooks go on sale (September 21), and the company says it will power an upcoming Googlebook device. MediaTek hasn’t explicitly said that the chip is exclusive to Googlebook devices, though that seems likely given the company’s previous work with Google on Chromebooks.

The C10 Max is an “all big core” CPU, according to MediaTek, but not all eight cores are equal. MediaTek is using three different core types: one Cortex-X925 core, three Cortex-X4 cores, and four Cortex-A720 cores. The Cortex-X925 is the successor to the Cortex-X4, with higher clock speeds, a larger 10-wide decode, and larger L2 cache. The Cortex-A720 fits in a different range, though it was succeeded in 2024 by the Cortex-A725. This core split is identical to what MediaTek has used in its Dimensity 9400, 9400+, and 9500s mobile chips (though, presumably, the C10 Max will be afforded a larger power budget and higher boost clocks).

Perhaps more pressing, it’s identical to the core split in the Kompanio Ultra 910, MediaTek’s previous flagship in this category. The C10 Max features the same GPU and NPU, as well: the Arm Immortalis-G925 MC11 for the GPU and MediaTek NPU 890. The C10 Max also comes with the same 12MB of L3 and 10MB of system-level cache. The biggest difference, at least based on the specs MediaTek has shared, is memory speed. Both use LPDDR5X, but the C10 Max climbs up to 9,600MT/s from 8,533MT/s on the Kompanio Ultra 910.

On performance, MediaTek has two rather vague claims, which you can see in the slide below. It claims the C10 Max has up to 15% faster multi-threaded performance and 50% lower power in single-threaded workloads, though without any mention of performance, compared to the Snapdragon X Elite X1E-84-100. That chip is the second from the top of Qualcomm’s last-gen X Elite stack, sporting 12 cores (8+4) and a 4.2 GHz boost clock. MediaTek says it used Geekbench 6.5 and ran the multi-threaded tests at iso-power, that being 12W (the X1E has a base TDP of 35W, and MediaTek didn’t clarify what power usage it was referencing).

Unfortunately, the performance numbers here aren’t worth much, at least not how they’re presented. Perhaps most notably, the test platforms were completely different, with MediaTek using a reference board running ChromeOS R133 for its chip and using a Galaxybook 4 Edge with Windows 11 from Samsung for Qualcomm’s chip. They’re only comparable on memory capacity (16GB) and battery (60Whr). MediaTek also didn’t share any actual numbers, leaving the claim about 50% lower single-threaded power usage dead in the water.

During a press Q&A, MediaTek VP of computing platforms PD Rajput said the C10 Max is competing with the X1 Elite, not Qualcomm’s newer X2 series. “In the category of devices we’re looking at, and the segment we’re on, it’s the X1E we’re competing with.” MediaTek didn’t share any performance numbers comparing the C10 Max to x86 CPUs from AMD or Intel.

Rajput also said that the Dimensity CX C10 Max won’t flow down to Chromebook or Chromebook Plus devices, saying MediaTek is “elevating our compute portfolio” with the C10 Max. We asked if the chip will come to Windows laptops as well, and the company said it’s only confirmed for Googlebooks at this time.

MediaTek says the C10 Max is capable of delivering up to 19 hours of battery life, which is certainly possible, though battery life is more of a system-level concern than a chip-level one. MediaTek arrived at that number testing a reference board with a 60Whr battery, so it's possibly the battery life could climb higher if the chip is paired with a larger battery.

Full MediaTek Dimensity CX C10 Max presentation

An Intel Celeron 1200 (Tualatin) was revived from the dead following an intricate bit of repair work by Bits und Bolts. The quarter-century-old chip looked like it had a fatal injury, with one of the pins missing and the underlying pad ripped off. As things stood, a system with this close relative of the Pentium III installed simply wouldn’t boot. However, thanks to careful digging “deep into the substrate” and some delicate preparation work, the enthusiast managed to solder on a donor pin and get this CPU running again – and then overclocked it by 33%.

As the Celeron 1200’s missing pin was a data pin (D47), this was a definite fix-or-be-damned situation. Sometimes CPUs can have a pin or two missing, and they will work anyway. I’ve seen CPUs shrug off such missing connections when several remaining pins duplicate a function – power or ground pins, for example.

Bits und Bolts started the repair process with a close-up of the serious-looking damage. Then we see the missing pin area after they have apparently “dug a hole” so that the work/issue can be seen more clearly. Zoomed-in images show that there were several layers of copper exposed from under the green surface. The new pin must be connected solely to the central circular area you can see, and not accidentally connect with any of the copper planes surrounding it. Thus, the TechTuber started by applying solder mask to this area. Remember, these pins are very small, and it would have been an intricate job to mask the surrounding area solidly yet cleanly.

While the solder mask surrounding the Intel Celeron 1200’s vacant pin cured, Bits und Bolts harvested a few pins from another Tualatin chip that was “definitely broken.” Returning to the CPU under repair, it was time to add flux, then try to ‘tin’ the central circular copper area to which the donor pin would be soldered.

Soldering the donor pin went smoothly, leaving it perfectly in position and upright. You can definitely see which pin has been added by Bits und Bolts, but after nervously adding the repaired Celeron 1200 to a socket, the TechTuber was relieved that everything mated cleanly.

Instead of firing up the computer with the repaired processor installed straight away, the tech tinkerer took a few readings with their multimeter. There were no obvious issues. At last, the moment of truth came, and the patched-up processor-packing PC system booted without issues. Bits und Bolts commented that this was the first time they’d repaired a processor pin issue that looked so grave. The end of the video sees the CPU tested in various benchmarks, including SiSoft Sandra. Moreover, it was even overclocked by 33%, stable at 1,600 MHz.

Following the launch of AMD's EPYC 'Venice' CPUs in July, AMD extended the performance claims for its upcoming generation of server chips on Friday. The high-level claim hasn't changed. AMD still says a 96-core, high-frequency Venice chip is around 20% faster than Nvidia's 88-core Vera in SPEC CPU 2026's Integer Rate test. However, the company went into far greater detail about the benchmarks in a new white paper.

There are several configuration differences depending on the benchmark throughout AMD's white paper, and although we'll call out those differences here to the best of our ability, we don't have all of the details. For the Vera comparison, in particular, AMD is mixing data from different sources, and in some cases, using different major releases of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC). That can have a substantial impact on performance, so keep your salt shaker handy.

First up are results in SPEC CPU 2026 with the intrate test, looking at total throughput. These are older numbers, gathered in July with GCC 15.2. The intrate test runs multiple copies of an application on the same CPU, and the SOP is to run one copy per thread. Presumably, that's what AMD did here, but the white paper doesn't clarify, even in the footnotes.

The 256-core 9996 is 2.37x faster than the Intel Xeon 6980P and 2.24x faster than Vera according to the slide. The white paper clarifies the mystery 9006 CPU is the 256-core flagship. Perhaps most impressive is AMD's gen-on-gen comparison. According to these results, the 9996 is around 78% faster than last-gen's 192-core EPYC 9965.

Although the high-level results bring in data from Intel and AWS, much of the white paper focused squarely on the comparison between Venice and Vera. AMD broke down the individual subtests of SPEC CPU 2026 intrate in the white paper, which you can see below.

The comparison looks good for AMD, naturally, though there are a few wrinkles in the configuration. AMD is testing a down-cored EPYC 9996, dropping from 256 cores to 96 cores. It made no mention of power budget, but when AMD originally shared SPEC numbers, the 96-core model had access to the same 600W as the 256-core model — AMD's 96-core, high-frequency Venice SKU tops out at 500W. More consequential is the compiler, however. AMD is using GCC 16.1 and comparing the results to the ones Nvidia shared in its Vera white paper. Nvidia used GCC 15.2.

Michael Larabel over at Phoronix has a nice write-up about the difference between GCC 15 and 16, but the short story is that there are performance differences, not always for the better. GCC 16 takes longer to compile due to better optimizations, hence the lower scores on the GCC and LLVM compilations above. However, that leads to faster binaries. By how much depends on the flags, software, and a whole host of other factors. Regardless, it's not best practice to compare benchmarks using two different compiler versions. It makes sense that AMD used GCC 16.1 — it includes support for Zen 6 — but ideally Vera would also be on GCC 16.1.

Speaking of Phoronix, AMD pulled some data for the publication's initial, controlled testing of Vera. Above, you can see the Stream, an industry-standard benchmark for measuring memory bandwidth. Again, AMD is using a down-cored 9996 from 256 cores to 96, and offering it a 600W power budget. Still, this is an impressive showing, as Vera absolutely clobbered the competition in the publication’s original Stream results. Here, AMD is ahead by about 18%, with per-core performance about 8% ahead.

Breaking out of Vera, AMD also showed performance in cloud workloads, including database, Java, and cryptography. Once again, the gen-on-gen comparison stands out, as AMD was already leading in these workloads with its last-gen chips. AMD ran these tests itself, rather than relying on third-party data, though the Graviton5 results came from an AWS cloud instance.

Similarly, in HPC workloads, AMD furthers its lead over Intel's flagship Granite Rapids-AP offering. Intel's next-gen data center CPUs, codenamed Diamond Rapids, are set to be released next year.

Finally, we have "agentic AI workload performance," which uses actual benchmarks for comparison, despite what the names in the chart above suggest. From left to right, AMD used NGINX, TPCx-AI kit, FAISS, TPC-H and TPC-C, and a replay of a multi-persona agent. For TPC-H and TPC-C, AMD says it derived workloads from those benchmarks, so the results here aren't comparable to published results.

Although looking at benchmark results is always interesting, it doesn't say much in the context of a server deployment, at least at the scale that AMD is targeting. Peak performance is only one of the major factors that go into server deployments, after all, and even then, performance can vary wildly depending on what software you're running and how it's built.

Still, Venice looks impressive, perhaps more so in the gen-on-gen comparison than any competitive comparison. Hopefully that bodes well for AMD's future Zen 6 rollout on consumer desktops, but we'll have to wait until Team Red has more to share before drawing any conclusions on that front.

Intel's Nova Lake CPUs are no stranger to leaks. We've been talking about the processors for close to two years now, with rumors swirling about bLLC and a 52-core flagship for well over a year. However, this week (and this month more broadly), we've seen leaks hit a fever pitch, suggesting that Intel is finally gearing up to release a generation of processors that's been the zeitgeist for over 24 months.

Intel hasn't shied away from discussing Nova Lake, with Intel's enthusiast channel VP Robert Hallock telling Tom's Hardware Premium that it's one of the most important launches for the company ever. At the beginning of the year, Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan said that Nova Lake would launch in the second half of 2026, and despite expected hubbub about delays/cancellations, that's the North Star Intel itself has set. So, that's also going to be our North Star here.

There are three stories that have come out over the past week and a half. First, a screenshot of some high-level details about Nova Lake surfaced online, showing the launch schedule and platform details. The slide in question is almost certainly from one of Intel's partners and not Intel itself.

Just in the past few days, we've also seen a barrage of Z990 motherboards from ASRock surface in the NBD shipping database, as well as some entries in the SiSoftware database for a next-gen HP EliteBook X sporting an unknown Intel processor.

An increase in the number of leaks/rumors, especially those that are more than a known leaker writing up a post on X, usually points to an imminent launch. We've heard about Nova Lake for over two years, yes, but now we're seeing more concrete details. In addition to the shipping manifest, snapped slide, and SiSoftware results, we also saw two Z990 motherboards ourselves at Computex earlier this year, with a third rumored. We will not predict the Nova Lake release date here. However, the launch is coming soon. That much we're confident in.

Intel's typical release cycle for desktop CPUs

In order to establish a timeline, we first need to look back. We could go back far, but we're cutting the timeline short here at Alder Lake. That was when Intel finally moved off 14nm, following generation after generation of either an underwhelming launch or a delayed one, and it's most relevant to what Intel is doing today.

The timeline above is fairly straightforward. Intel has, short of 2025, launched a new generation of desktop processors in the fall every year for the past five years. This annual cadence was even more intense previously; 7th-Gen and 8th-Gen CPUs were both released in 2017, and 9th-Gen in 2018. Then, Intel took a year off and followed up with 10th-Gen in 2020 and 11th-Gen in early 2021. Keep in mind that we're talking about desktop CPU launches with a new microarchitecture here. Obviously, Intel has released a ton of other products in between the gaps.

The interesting bit about the timeline is actually the end with Arrow Lake Refresh. When we spoke to Robert Hallock earlier this year, he told us that a team that was "pretty much completely different" worked on Arrow Lake Refresh compared to Arrow Lake. That might explain the strangely large gap between Arrow Lake and Arrow Lake Refresh. Even looking at the Arrow Lake and Arrow Lake Refresh stacks side-by-side, it's obvious that a different mentality went into how they were positioned in the market. That team is in in-place now, and Hallock told us the team is "moving faster than we ever have in product, in release cadence."

Don't take Hallock's comments about Intel moving faster than ever at face value — he was probably being at least a little hyperbolic — but the sentiment is clear. Following the poor reception of Arrow Lake, Intel reorganized and set a new roadmap in motion that extends out to 2030, and now, that roadmap is being executed, starting earlier this year with Arrow Lake Refresh. That sets up Arrow Lake Refresh similar to 11th-Gen Rocket Lake, serving as somewhat of a stopgap before the next generation properly arrives (that is, thankfully, where the comparisons between Arrow Lake Refresh and Rocket Lake end).

Back to Nova Lake. Earlier this year at Computex, we saw two Z990 motherboards, one of which we confirmed was not a finalized unit. The complete development process takes generally four to six months for a motherboard, and you can add another two months or so on top of that for channel sales, as pallets of PCBs are loaded onto ships and swim across the Pacific Ocean. That was in June.

The shipping manifest that surfaced this week showed shipments in July for ASRock. Critically, it also shows shipments from two different sources: Taiwan and Vietnam. Given what we saw at Computex and the two different sources for ASRock, we're firmly past the early prototype and engineering validation stage of motherboard design. Assuming everything goes according to plan, that means Z990 motherboards should be ready to go on store shelves by no later than October or November.

Keep in mind that does not mean Nova Lake will launch in October or November, just that motherboards will most likely be ready by then. This aligns with what motherboard vendors told us earlier this year, with some brands pointing to Q3 but most to Q4 for a Z990 rollout.

Parsing the details about Nova Lake so far

Currently, there are two camps when it comes to when Nova Lake will release. Some say it'll arrive this year, likely in Q4, while others say CES 2027 in January of next year. As we wrote earlier in the article, we will not predict the Nova Lake release date. However, we will side with one of the camps here as more likely based on what we've seen so far.

Given everything we've seen, a late 2026 launch is more likely. The strongest evidence of that is the comment from Tan earlier this year, where the executive said Nova Lake is "coming at the end of 2026." The critical context is that Tan made that comment as part of his prepared remarks, preceding the actual financials that you hear in an earnings call. An earnings call is not a keynote, and making material promises you knowingly can't keep can land you in hot water.

Executives massage the truth all the time during earnings calls — that's half the reason there are prepared remarks ahead of the financials. However, that key detail about an end of 2026 launch isn't massaging the truth. It's a concrete claim devoid of weasel words and qualifiers. In addition, Intel's fiscal year aligns with a calendar year; when Tan said end of 2026, he meant end of 2026, regardless of fiscal or calendar year.

It's possible that something changed between now and January when that call took place. However, the timeline still lines up given the various motherboards that showed up between June and July of this year. At this point, Intel can slide the actual release date around by a bit, but not by months. Retailers aren't going to sit on pallets of motherboards with no home indefinitely.

The one wrinkle in this is the leaked slide you can see above, which claims Nova Lake will enter mass production in Q4, with a launch in Q1 2027. There are reasons to be skeptical of this slide, however. For starters, the slide doesn't say anything that hasn't been heavily rumored for months (sometimes even years) at this point: 52-core flagship, up to 288MB of bLLC, LGA 1954 socket, and multi-generation socket support. The strange bit is a mention of Hammer Lake at the bottom of the slide.

We've heard very little about Hammer Lake, and nothing that's passed muster for us to cover on Tom's Hardware. Even among the rumors, the launch has been pinned somewhere in the 2029/2030 range, if the lineup is even real to begin with. Regardless, Hammer Lake isn't what we'd expect to see next to Razor Lake — the generation rumored to follow Nova — and certainly not what we'd expect to see under a "Q4 2027+" badge.

That doesn't mean the slide is fake; it doesn't appear to be fake. There's some very critical context missing from it, though. It's a Chinese source, but did it come from an OEM? A distributor? A retailer? The validity of the slide changes dramatically depending on that. Further, we're only seeing maybe half of a single slide here. There's too much context missing to take this single slide and run with it as concrete truth.

At the very least, it fares poorly against prepared comments made by Intel's CEO, motherboards we've seen (and held) ourselves, and have circulated through photos online, and strong indications from Intel's motherboard partners that they'll be ready for a launch in Q4. Add on top of that the fact that Intel took 2025 completely off for new desktop launches (and its usual cadence of launching in the fall), and a Q4 rollout of Nova Lake looks far more likely.

Likely isn't the same as confirmed. We're still awaiting details on Nova Lake from Intel proper, and hopefully those will arrive soon. Given the anticipation Intel has already built around Nova Lake without a single performance claim or spec shared, we'll have a lot to talk about.

Intel won't launch a Nova Lake-S SKU with 12 Xe3P graphics cores, according to tipster Jaykihn, who originally flagged a beefed-up APU design with the Nova Lake architecture. The original SKU was said to come with 4 P-cores, 8 E-cores, and 4 LPE-cores, along with the 12 Xe3P cores, presumably offering an inexpensive onramp to a gaming desktop without a discrete GPU. Now, the leaker says that design is cancelled, and Intel intends to pick it back up with Razor Lake, the generation that will follow Nova Lake.

Originally, Intel's 12 Xe3P Nova Lake SKU was said to require 65W of dedicated power to drive the iGPU, necessitating the use of two VCCGT phases on the motherboard for integrated graphics. Intel's Arc B390 GPU, which is the 12 Xe3-core model available in Panther Lake and Arc G-series processors, has a thermal design that can sustain up to 80W. However, it's currently being used in Panther Lake machines and handhelds like MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ that have lower power targets.

The Xe3P architecture is slotted for use in Intel's Crescent Island AI accelerator, but it hasn't been announced for any other products yet. Xe3P supports a wide deployment of Xe cores (up to 32), a deeper XMX engine with support for low-precision data types like FP8 and FP4, an increased 512KB L1 cache per Xe core, and a new unified L2 cache (32MB on Crescent Island).

Even by desktop APU standards, an 80W iGPU is a beefy accelerator to have on the same package. In addition, Intel's Nova Lake stack is said to extend up to a 175W TDP with the rumored top-end 52-core SKU, meaning the full 12 Xe3P iGPU would likely only be possible lower down the stack (and maybe only in the 4 + 8 + 4 + 12 Xe design originally suggested).

Earlier in the year, rumors suggested Intel was working on a mobile APU to counter AMD's Strix/Gorgon Halo products, featuring a large pool of unified memory and a large iGPU, dubbed Nova Lake AX. Now, the rumor mill suggests Intel will recycle the Nova Lake CPU cores for Razor Lake AX on mobile while pushing a larger iGPU.

*Specs rumored, unconfirmed by Intel

Intel has told us that Nova Lake is one of the most important desktop CPU launches for the company ever, following on the heels of the mediocre Arrow Lake rollout. Perhaps the biggest addition to the lineup is rumored to be bLLC, or big last-level cache, which is said to show up on select SKUs to counter AMD's X3D assault among the best CPUs for gaming. The company has yet to confirm that bLLC is even possible with its current packaging capabilities, though enthusiast channel VP Robert Hallock hinted to Tom's Hardware that Intel has plans to address X3D in the next generation.

The main stack is rumored to climb up to 28 cores, with two additional dual-tile SKUs that can go as high as 52 cores. The dual-tile models look like a bid for HEDT, perhaps competing with AMD's Threadripper CPUs, though it's not clear how Intel will position its dual-tile models yet.

Earlier this month, a leaked slide gave us a glimpse into Intel's launch plans for Nova Lake. The slide suggested Intel will announce the main stack (up to 28 cores) in Q4 of this year, with the chips arriving in Q1 2027. Intel will apparently follow up later in the year with the 52-core model. This aligns with what we've heard from our sources about Intel's Nova Lake rollout.

Alongside Nova Lake, Intel will introduce the new LGA1954 socket, along with the flagship Z990 chipset. We've already seen multiple Z990 motherboards in the flesh, suggesting Intel is preparing for a Nova Lake release in short order.

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