TechPowerUp has learned that Intel is planning to bring 16 cores onto the mainstream desktop platform by Spring 2021 by implementing a similar chip-design philosophy as AMD: MCMs. The new "Ozark Lake" processor will pack up to 16 cores and 32 threads by decoupling the "core" and "uncore" components of a typical Intel mainstream processor.

Intel will leverage the additional fiberglass substrate floor-space yielded from the new LGA1700 package to create a multi-chip module that has two [kinds of] dies, the "core complex" and the "uncore complex." The core complex is a 14 nm die purely composed of CPU cores and an EMIB interconnect. There will be as many as 16 "Skylake" cores in a conventional ringbus layout, and conventional cache hierarchy (256 KB L2$ and up to 2 MB/core L3$). The lack of uncore components and exclusive clock and voltage domains will allow the CPU cores to attain Thermal Velocity Boost Pro speeds of up to 6.00 GHz, if not more.

It's not been that long since we praised the worldwide community for allowing Folding@Home to reach double the performance of the world's top supercomputer, IBM's Summit, which ekes out calculations at the petascale with 200 peak petaFLOPS. However, the world has again shown promise when it comes to people selflessly giving their power and performance for a higher cause. Folding@Home now likely smokes performance metrics of some Tier 1 civilizations out there (in the Kardashev scale, of course, should there be some; I'm cautiously jesting in all regards) with its 1.5 ExaFLOP performance.

As it stands, and should users keep on donating their processing power, it seems the community can even go as far as eclipsing the deployment of the world's most powerful supercomputer, El Capitan, which is only meant to be operational - get this - in 2023. This means we are close to offering equivalent performance for multiple disease research (including COVID-19), today, to that of a currently theoretical supercomputer. Of course, queues are long towards receiving work, so now it's become a problem for researchers to keep this computational power fed with data to crunch - we're actually hitting bottlenecks that supercomputers too have achieved before us.

TechPowerUp today released the latest version of GPU-Z, the popular graphics subsystem information and diagnostic utility. Version 2.30.0 introduces several new feature- and stability updates, and adds support for new GPUs. To begin with, support is added for AMD Radeon RX 590 GME, Radeon Pro W5500, Pro V7350x2, FirePro 2260, and Instinct MI25 MxGPU; Intel UHD (Core i5-10210Y), and a rare GeForce GTS 450 Rev 2. TechPowerUp GPU-Z 2.30.0 introduces support for reporting hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling in Windows 10 20H1 in the Advanced tab. The tab now also has the ability to show WDDM 2.7, Shader Model 6.6, DirectX Mesh Shaders, and DXR tier 1.1. A workaround for the DirectML detection on Windows 10 19041 built has been added. Graphics driver registry path is now displayed in the General section of the Advanced tab.

In the Sensors tab, the NVIDIA VDDC sensor has been renamed to "GPU voltage," and AMD's "GPU only power draw" sensor to "GPU chip-only power draw" to clarify that the sensor only measures the power draw of the GPU package and not the whole graphics card. AMD "Renoir" based processors and their iGPUs now show up as 7 nm. Windows Basic Display driver now no longer reports its status as WHQL or Beta. A crash during DirectX 12 detection has been fixed.DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z 2.30.0

The change-log follows.

TechPowerUp and Montech welcomed Spring with a Mega Giveaway, giving eighteen lucky winners a chance to give their battlestations a sweet new beginning. Up for grabs were three sets of Montech's premium Air 900 Mesh Black cases + Z3 ARGB fans + ML900 mouse-mats; five Fighter 400 mid-tower cases, and ten ML900. These represent Montech's strong entry to the PC hardware space with several new cases and gaming peripherals under development. Without further ado, the winners:

• First Prizes (Air 900 Mesh Black cases + Z3 ARGB fans + ML900 mouse-mats): Michael from North Carolina, Mike from the US, and Braxston from New York.
• Second Prizes (Fighter 400 cases): Justin from the US, Matthew from Massachusetts, Jorell from Nevada, Jeremy from Michigan, and Mark from California
• Third Prizes (ML900 mouse-mats): Kenneth from Colorado, Leonard from Colorado, Jacob from Virginia, Justin from Florida, Jack from New York, Colin from Wisconsin, Rodney from Virginia, Aaron from Utah, Michael from West Virginia, and John from Florida

A Huge Congrats for all 18 of you! TechPowerUp and Montech will return with more such interesting giveaways!

TechPowerUp today released the latest version of NVCleanstall, our handy utility that lets you have far greater control over your NVIDIA GeForce software installation. Today's release of version 1.4.0 is hot on the heels of Monday's 1.3.0 release, because we discovered a handful additional things that needed fixing or polish. To begin with, we improved the MSI (enable message signaled interrupts) toggle to work correctly in all cases. We also fixed a bug that caused the "New Version" popup to always show v1.1.0 as the latest available. We also polished the advanced tweaks panel, removing empty spaces when a non-DCH driver is used. Grab NVCleanstall 1.4.0 from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp NVCleanstall 1.4.0The change-log follows.

TechPowerUp today released the latest update to NVCleanstall, our lightweight utility that lets you heavily customize your NVIDIA GeForce software installation, letting you choose not to install a lot more components than what NVIDIA's installer allows. You can disable installation of components you probably don't need, such as telemetry. Version 1.3.0 introduces the ability to install the NVIDIA Control Panel app from Microsoft Store without needing to log-in with a Microsoft account, for the DCH version of GeForce Software. This is particularly useful for those using the DCH version of GeForce software without wanting to log into Microsoft Store.

TechPowerUp NVCleanstall Version 1.3.0 also introduces a tweak that makes the driver use message-signaled interrupts (MSI). We have reorganized the user interface to move a large selection of advanced tweaks to their own page. As part of the driver customization process, you can make advanced tweaks in this page, or move on to building your custom driver package. We've also added the ability for you to drag-and-drop downloaded driver files onto NVCleanstall for them to be used as installer source. Lastly, we fixed background driver update check not getting disabled when its checkbox is unchecked. Grab NVCleanstall from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp NVCleanstall 1.3.0The change-log follows.

People have often asked how to thank us through donations, to show their appreciation for our PC enthusiast content, free software and databases, but we could never find a good mechanism for that. Today we're officially launching our Patreon page, which gives you an easy method to financially support us in a simple way, and get some nifty site-wide features as our own way of saying thank you.

TechPowerUp today released the latest version of GPU-Z, the popular graphics subsystem information and diagnostic utility. Version 2.29.0 introduces new features and support for upcoming new graphics hardware. To begin with, support is added for Intel Iris Plus Graphics 645, AMD "Renoir" Ryzen 4000U and 4000H series processor iGPUs; Radeon RX 5600 XT, RX 5600, Radeon Pro Vega II, and HD 8280E. All Radeon RX 5000-series "Navi" GPUs now report game clock as "GPU clock" instead of base-clock. PCIe speed reporting on AMD "Vega" graphics cards has also been fixed. Fixed a GPU-Z application crash when GPU driver gets stopped (eg: during a driver update). Lastly, fixed a UX issue where window position wouldn't get saved if GPU-Z is running while you shut down or reboot the PC.

DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z v2.29.0The change-log follows.

TechPowerUp and Cooler Master, in partnership with ASUS TUF Gaming Alliance, brought you a cracker of an year-end Giveaway, with a full gaming desktop on offer, equipped with stable and reliable components from the ASUS TUF Gaming Alliance of co-branded hardware. Our TUF Gaming Alliance system includes an ASUS TUF X470-Plus Gaming motherboard, AMD Ryzen 5 2600 processor, ASUS GeForce RTX 2060 TUF Gaming graphics card, 16 GB Apacer Panther Rage RGB TUF Gaming Edition memory, Cooler Master MasterBox MB500 TUF Gaming Edition case, Team Group T-Force Delta S TUF RGB 250 GB SSD, Cooler Master MasterWatt 750 W TUF Gaming Edition power-supply, and a Cooler Master MasterAir MA410M TUF Gaming Edition CPU cooler. The Winner takes all in our Giveaway, and without further ado here they are:

• TechPowerUp Forums user "diatribe" from the United States

Huge Congratulations @diatribe, a winner is you! TechPowerUp and Cooler Master will return with more such interesting giveaways!

We at TechPowerUp wish you and your family a Merry Christmas! We thank you from the bottom of our hearts to help us make 2019 a phenomenal year in the tech world, with the introduction of new computing platforms that set the direction in which the industry will grow in the next decade. Our content teams have kept you on the forefront with lightning fast news and in-depth product reviews. As we begin to turn the page in our calendars, we wish you an equally fruitful New Year, and the beginning of a prosperous new decade. Don't forget to tell us what you found under your tree!

DIYPC partners with TechPowerUp to give our readers from the US a chance to bring home a DIYPC S2-BK-RGB Black PC case. This ATX mid-tower case covers all the essentials to build a contemporary game PC build, including a RGB LED embellishments across the front panel, tempered glass side panel, room for graphics cards up to 37 cm in length, and dust-filters for the intakes and top fan vents. We're giving two of these cases away. To drop your hat in the ring, all you need to do is fill up a short form that helps us get back to you if you've won. Entries close December 16th.

For more information and to participate, visit this page.

With Windows 7 running out of official support from Microsoft this January, it's a good idea to upgrade all the PCs and notebooks in your family to your preferred edition of Windows 10. It's an even better idea to let URCDKeys help you do that. With genuine, globally-valid licenses of Windows 10, Office, games, and system software on sale year-round, and the security of PayPal to protect your payment instruments, why not take the painless and inexpensive path to genuine software? Windows 10 Pro is recommended for power-users and PC enthusiasts. With a TechPowerUp-exclusive discount, you can have it for USD $12.49. Windows 10 Home is perfect for home desktops and notebooks, and can be yours for $12.13.

Don't forget to apply the TechPowerUp-exclusive discount code TP20 at checkout to avail the prices you see here.

Buy Windows 10 Pro for $12.49 from URCDKeys | Buy Windows 10 Home for $12.13 from URCDKeys

TechPowerUp and Seagate brought you the IronWolf Black Friday Giveaway, throwing three of Seagate's finest pieces of consumer storage up for grabs. The IronWolf series from Seagate represent durable internal HDDs and SSDs for NAS, DAS, NVR, and other high-uptime client applications. Among the prizes are the 14 TB IronWolf internal SATA HDD, and 480 GB IronWolf 110 high-endurance SSD. Without further ado, the winners:

• Neil from The Philippines, wins a 14 TB IronWolf SATA HDD and 480 GB IronWolf 110 SATA SSD (one of each)
• Lisa from Virginia, USA, wins a 480 GB IronWolf 110 SATA SSD

A huge Congratulations to you two! TechPowerUp and Seagate will return with more such interesting Giveaways!

Update Dec 17th: Unfortunately Lisa never responded to us to claim her prize, so we randomly picked another lucky winner: Frank from Washington, US.

TechPowerUp and Seagate partner to bring you the IronWolf Black Friday Giveaway. The IronWolf line of storage solutions from Seagate are targeted at NAS, DAS, and other high-uptime, quasi-enterprise environments, spanning both HDDs and SSDs. Two lucky winners stand to bring home IronWolf gear. The first lucky winner receives a 14 TB IronWolf internal SATA HDD and an IronWolf 110 SSD 480 GB (one of each). The second lucky winner gets an IronWolf 110 SSD 480 GB. The Giveaway is open worldwide (wherever legal), till December 4th. Do check out great Black Friday deals on Seagate IronWolf storage products at your favorite retailer.

For more details, and to participate, visit this page.

TechPowerUp today released the latest version of NVCleanstall, our free lightweight utility that gives you greater control over your NVIDIA GeForce driver installation, by letting you select from a more detailed list of components to install than the NVIDIA installer. You can prevent installation of components you don't need, such as telemetry. With version 1.2.0, we've improved in three key areas. To begin with, the driver version selection page loads faster, and consumes 95 percent less bandwidth.

NVCleanstall v1.2.0 also introduces two new features. The first one is the ability to periodically check for driver updates. By default, this feature is turned off — you opt to enable it. When enabled, you can tell the app just how frequently you want it to check for updates. It's optimized to generate as little Internet traffic as possible (800 bytes per check), it does not permanently run in the background, and thus has no additional CPU or memory footprint. No information is transmitted when checking for driver updates. The app merely looks up what's the latest driver version on our server, and if it's newer than what you have, a notification pops up. This notification gives you the option to download and install it, seek more details (change-log), or choose to skip the version altogether. Lastly, we've added a feature that looks for updates to NVCleanstall itself, to ensure you're always up-to-date. Grab NVCleanstall from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp NVCleanstall 1.2.0The change-log follows.

TechPowerUp and TerraMaster brought you the TerraMaster NAS Giveaway, with two of our lucky readers standing a chance to welcome home a TerraMaster F2-210 NAS. The F2-210 is a high price-performance 2-bay NAS server with a powerful application processor for the highest data throughput and multi-layer security. It comes with the TNAS management software, which is a powerful web-browser based suite of data-management applications. Entries for the giveaway are closed and the results are in. Without further ado, the winners:

• Tia from Florida, USA
• Stephen from New Mexico, USA

A huge Congratulations, Tia and Stephen! TechPowerUp and TerraMaster will return with more such interesting Giveaways.

TechPowerUp today released the latest version of GPU-Z, the popular standalone graphics sub-system information, diagnostic, and monitoring utility. The new version 2.27.0 adds support for a few new GPUs, and fixes certain bugs, and improves the user experience. To begin with, we've added support for NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Super, TX 1650 Max-Q, GeForce 945A, Tesla V100-SXM2-16 GB, Tesla P4, and Tesla K8; AMD Radeon Pro Vega 48 and FirePro A300.

The Advanced tab now shows PCI device location of your graphics processor. An application crash on old CPUs that lack SSE has been fixed. EVGA ICX fan-speed reporting for RTX 20-series graphics cards has been fixed. A sensor error with AMD CrossFire setups has been fixed. Default clock speed reporting on NVIDIA GPUs has been improved, even with no drivers installed. Memory type reporting has been improved on setups with multiple graphics cards that have different memory types from each other. Grab GPU-Z from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z v2.27.0The change-log follows.

TechPowerUp is partnering with TerraMaster to present the TerraMaster NAS Giveaway. Open for readers from the US and the EU, two randomly selected lucky winners stand a chance to get a TerraMaster F2-210 NAS. The F2-210 is the most powerful 2-bay NAS priced under USD $200, with a performance-optimized SoC for maximum throughput. It offers multiple layers of data-security over your network and the Internet. The TNAS interface is a powerful browser-based user-interface that lets you access your data over the local network and remotely, with a ton of security settings. Find out more about the F2-210 in its product page.

For more information and to participate, visit this page.

TechPowerUp and Computer Upgrade King bring you a unique opportunity to bring home a Continuum Micro case. The Continuum Micro is a Micro-ATX tower characterized by an infinite-reflection RGB LED front panel, and a conventional horizontally partitioned interior layout, and plenty of fan mounts to build a powerful and compact desktop with liquid cooling to the boot. In this TechPowerUp Giveaway, three randomly-selected lucky winners get one of these cases, each. Open worldwide (wherever legal), entries for the Giveaway close on November 13, 2019. To drop your hat in, simply fill up a short form that helps us get back to you if you've won. Good Luck!

For more details, and to participate, visit this page.

TechPowerUp today released the latest version of NVCleanstall, our free and handy utility that lets you take greater control over your NVIDIA GeForce software installation by customizing it to a far greater degree than the NVIDIA installer, and disabling features such as Telemetry. Version 1.1.0 introduces a few handy changes, beginning with a now working dependency resolution algorithm, improved error-handling when no Internet connectivity is found, and improvements to the user-interface. Crashes have been fixed when certain very old drivers or incompatible hardware is used. A toggle lets you optionally disable automatic reboot, if needed by the installer. We've added an advanced tweak that lets you disable the sleep timer of the GPU-integrated HD audio device, fixing broken audio on VR headsets.DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp NVCleanstall 1.1.0

The change-log follows.

TechPowerUp and Cooler Master late-October brought you the Gaming Gear Giveaway, with three randomly selected lucky winners standing to win combinations of the company's latest and greatest pieces of gaming peripherals. Among these is the GS750 smart headset stand that's packed with features beyond its main function, the Cooler Master MK850 premium mechanical gaming keyboard, the MM710 gaming mouse, and the MH751 gaming headset. Without further ado, the winners:

• Matthew from Michigan, USA, wins a Cooler Master GS750 headset stand, an MK850 premium mechanical gaming keyboard, an MH750 gaming headset, and a MM710 gaming mouse (one of each)
• Daniel from Germany, wins a Cooler Master GS750 headset stand and MH751 gaming headset (one of each)
• Panagiotis from Greece, wins a Cooler Master GS750 headset stand

A huge Congratulations to you three! TechPowerUp and Cooler Master will return with more such amazing giveaways.

Early October, we asked our readers what's the fastest persistent storage device on their computer. Over 11,000 entries and close to 4 weeks into the poll we are calling a winner - NVMe SSD. Over 55 percent or 6,229 of the respondents at the time of this writing chose NVMe SSD. Conventional SATA SSDs, which we felt would to win this poll, comes in second, at 39.1 percent, or 4,423 respondents. Hard drives - either standalone or in RAID setups, added up to a negligible 5.8 percent. This doesn't mean that only 5.8 percent of the respondents have an HDD or HDD RAID, it only means that HDD/HDD RAID is the fastest storage device of only 5.8 percent of the respondents.

The poll results establish that the vast majority of our target audience (the PC gaming and overclocking crowd) is aware of the benefits of flash-based storage, with 94.2 percent responding that they use some kind of SSD. NVMe coming up on top is a surprise. NVMe drives typically offer at least 1 GB/s of transfer-rates (typical of PCIe x2 drives), and their rated transfer-rates can exceed 3 GB/s in short bursts. Besides bring faster, NVMe SSDs in the M.2 form-factor contribute greatly to aesthetics as they lack cables. It's only in the past 18 months that prices of NVMe SSDs are dropping to under $0.25/GB, or what performance-segment SATA SSDs commanded in the years prior.

TechPowerUp and Cooler Master bring you a giveaway that will be music to your ears. Three lucky winners stand to win a Cooler Master GS750, which is quite literally, a stand...for your headset, but it also wirelessly charges your Qi-compatible smartphone and game controllers, packs an onboard external sound card that puts out 7.1 surround sound; is a 2-port USB 3.1 type-A hub, so plugging in flash drives doesn't involve gymnastics; and matches the RGB lighting of your battlestation with synchronized lighting of its own! The GS750 isn't the only piece of Cooler Master engineering you stand to win.

The first randomly-selected lucky winner gets a Cooler Master GS750 headset stand, a Cooler Master MK850 premium mechanical gaming keyboard, an MH750 gaming headset, and a MM710 gaming mouse (one of each). The second lucky winner gets the Cooler Master GS750 headset stand and MH751 gaming headset (one of each). The third lucky winner gets a Cooler Master GS750 headset stand. Open worldwide (wherever legal), entries for the Giveaway close on November 1. To participate, simply fill up a short form that helps us get back to you if you've won.

For more details, and to participate, visit this page.

TechPowerUp and Colorful brought you a chance to bring home the SL500 960 GB SATA SSD, a neat little addition to your battlestation as a game folder drive; with the added bling of its "Glacial Blue" metallic body finish. The drive combines a Maxiotech MAS0902 controller with 3D QLC NAND flash memory, offering sequential speeds of up to 560 MB/s reads and up to 470 MB/s writes. Without further ado, the Winner!

• John from Texas, USA

Congratulations John! Get ready to dump all your %GameDirs% in this nifty little drive!

Unity Engine powers a lot of games across platforms. The game engine includes a telemetry module that dials home every few minutes (depending on the game), pushing usage data and crash reports (if any). Some games, such as "Kerbal Space Program," allow you to opt-out from this telemetry, but even then the engine is known to dial home at game startup and at longer intervals, with far less amount of data.

TechPowerUp Forums member by the night and software developer by the day "R-T-B" created a nifty utility that can modify your game to completely strip it off Unity Engine telemetry, called UnityAnalyticsKiller. "Stop spying on my kerbals," reads the utility's GitHub page, describing UnityAnalyticsKiller as a game library replacement along with a ReadMe with some basic instructions. You can also inspect its source and build it by yourself if you're curious. R-T-B invites gamers and developers to test the utility and offer feedback in the TechPowerUp Forums thread here.

DOWNLOAD: UnityAnalyticsKiller by R-T-B