XFX has prepared its newest "Magnetic Air" series of Radeon RX 7000 series GPUs with hot-swappable fans for the US market, where they were only exclusive to the Chinese region. The company has informed us that the series will be called "Magnetic Air," instead of the previously believed "MagAir." Comprising the XFX Qicksilver Radeon RX 7800 XT Magnetic Air and the XFX Mercury Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air, these GPUs are now available for purchase in the US, with an official launch date set for June 18. What sets the Magnetic Air series apart is its unique cooling design, featuring Honeywell PTM 7950 phase-changing thermal pads that offer superior thermal conductivity. The cooling system boasts 216 ultra-thin matrix fins strategically arranged in a high and low structure to optimize airflow, while the heatsink is attached to a vapor chamber for efficient heat dissipation. Additionally, the backplate is crafted from durable aluminium die-cast, ensuring long-lasting performance.

The XFX Qicksilver Radeon RX 7800 XT Magnetic Air is available in both white and black variants, priced at $529.99, while the XFX Mercury Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air carries a price tag of $979.99. The most innovative feature of the Magnetic Air series is its swappable fan design, allowing users to customize their cooling setup to suit their specific needs. This level of flexibility is sure to appeal to enthusiasts and overclockers seeking optimal performance from their rigs. Currently, only the black variants of the 7900XTX and 7800XT are in stock, but all Magnetic Air models are expected to be available on the official launch date of June 18 for PC enthusiasts in the United States.

[Editor's note: Our in-depth review of the RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air is now live]

BIOSTAR, a leading manufacturer of motherboards, graphics cards, storage devices, and IPC solutions, is excited to introduce its COMPUTEX Taipei 2024 product highlights. BIOSTAR's COMPUTEX showcase features all-new AI PCs powered by Intel Arc graphics cards, the newest high-end AMD X870E motherboards, graphics cards, storage units, and industrial computing solutions.

Catching the eye of many visitors at the show are BIOSTAR's latest flagship motherboards, the BIOSTAR X870E VALKYRIE motherboard with AMD AM5 X870E chipset, built to run the latest Ryzen 9000 series processors. For Intel platform, BIOSTAR's newest VALKYRIE and SILVER motherboards, ideal for gamers, content creators and PC enthusiasts, engineered to deliver superior performance and a next-level user experience.

AMD has finally released some of the official gaming benchmark for its 8-core Ryzen 7 7800X3D processor that should be coming in April, and, now that AMD has released some of the first gaming benchmarks, it appears that it outperforms the Intel Core i9-13900K by up to 24 percent. Officially, AMD is putting the Ryzen 7 7800X3D against the Intel Core i7-13700K, leaving the Core i9-13900K and the Core i9-13900KS to its 16- and 12-core Ryzen 7000X3D SKUs.

Although some of its Ryzen 7000X3D series chips are available as of February 28th, namely the Ryzen 9 7950X3D and the Ryzen 9 7900X3D, AMD has pushed back the launch of its 8-core/16-thread Ryzen 7 7800X3D. This was quite a surprise and a big letdown, especially due to its tempting $449 price tag. One of the reasons might be the fact that the Ryzen 7 7800X3D is simply too good and might put a lot of pressure on even AMD's own SKUs, let alone Intel's lineup.

A few months ago, AMD has launched its highly anticipated Ryzen 7000 series of processors based on Zen 4 architecture. However, the company only launched the "X" SKUs (example being 7900X) for now, while the remaining ones are awaiting a launch date. Today, we have information from VideoCardz that confirm AMD's new launch on January 10th, when team red plans to update its remaining processor family with Ryzen 7000 series non-X SKUs. There will be three initial models to choose from Ryzen 9 7900 (12C/24T), Ryzen 7 7700 (8C/16T), and Ryzen 5 7600 (6C/12T). These SKUs follow the traditional Zen 4 path; however, the only distinction from their "X" counterparts is the reduced TDP to 65 Watts, down from up to 170 Watt TDP in some of those models.

A leaked slide from AMD's product presentation regarding these SKUs is a comparison between AMD's own Ryzen 9 5900X and Ryzen 9 7900, where the Zen 4 variant successfully beat the older SKU by a significant percentage. Pricing and further details are listed on the slides below.

AMD Ryzen 7000-series "Zen 4" desktop processors got their first round of price-cuts on leading retailer Newegg, as the company has a hard time justifying their launch-prices in the wake of Intel's 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" and declining demand in the PC components market. The new pricing sees the top Ryzen 9 7950X 16-core/32-thread chip priced at USD $574, down from $700 (an 18% price-cut). The 12-core/24-thread Ryzen 9 7900X sees its price go down from $550 to $474 (down 14%).

The 8-core/16-thread Ryzen 7 7700X gets a $50 price-cut sending its price down from $400 to roughly $350. The 6-core/12-thread Ryzen 5 7600X gets a similar $50 cut, which means the chip can now be had for roughly $250, down from its $300 launch price. All four SKUs face stiff competition from the aggressively priced 13th Gen Core SKUs, which include the i9-13900K, the i7-13700K, and the i5-13600K. Prices of Socket AM5 motherboards are another big put-off as they're a major contributor to platform costs, which is restricted to DDR5 memory. The Intel platform currently includes entry-level chipset options, as well as motherboards with DDR4 support.

Ahead of its September 27 market availability, AMD Ryzen 9 7950X "Zen 4" has already hit the gray-markets in China. Some retailers in Europe even started listing them. Chinese online gray-markets (peer to peer commerce) sites, list the 7950X at RMB ¥5,999 (around USD $850). None of these listings show a box, so it's likely that the sellers bought a tray of these chips in the OEM or SI channels, and is selling them off piecemeal. OEM-only AMD SKUs usually land in the retail channel this way. Over in Europe, French retailer Cdiscount has the 7950X listed at 1,099€ including taxes ($1,102). The store also lists the 7900X at 749€ ($751), the 7700X at 589€ ($591), and the 7600X at 409€ ($410).

An AMD Ryzen 9 7900X 12-core/24-thread processor sample was put through CPU-Z Bench, the internal benchmark of the app. The chip boosted up to 5.20 GHz in the test, and ran at temperatures as high as 86°C, as reported by CPU-Z. It scored 766 points in the single-threaded test, and 11882 points in the multi-threaded one. The single-threaded numbers in particular are interesting. 766 points would put the 7900X behind the Core i7-12700K and its "Golden Cove" P-core by around 3%. In the multi-threaded test, however, the 7900X, with its 11822 points, is in the league of the next-generation Core i7-13700K (8P+8E) processor, which was recently spotted scoring 11877 points with a 6.20 GHz overclock. The 7900X will hence be pushed as a superior alternative to the i7-13700K for productivity and creator tasks, whereas its single-threaded score ensures that it falls behind the i7-13700K in gaming by a fair bit.

PC Canada has drawn first blood in registering pricing for AMD's upcoming Ryzen 7000 series, the successor to the successful 5000 series. As spotted by renowned leaker momomo_us and shared on Twitter, the specialist retailer based in Canada listed pricing for the Ryzen 7 7600X, 7700X, 7900X and 7950X CPUs. The pricing, if representative, shows an average increase that averages to 10%-12% across SKUs when compared to the previous generation Ryzen. The prices could be placeholders based on the retailers' own expectations, so this information should be taken with a grain of salt (or two).

After conversion from CAD to US dollars, pricing settles at $340 for the Ryzen 7 7600X ($299 for the 5600X at launch, for a 13% premium); $494 for the Ryzen 7 7700X (against the later-released, $299 Ryzen 7 5700X for a 65% premium); $625 for the Ryzen 9 7900X ($549 for the launch Ryzen 9 5900X, for a 13% increase) and finally, the Ryzen 9 7950X for $906 (against the Ryzen 9 5950X's $799 asking price, for another 13% premium).

An innocuous search through the media asset-bank on the AMD website revealed the processor model numbers of the four Ryzen 7000 series "Zen 4" chips the company plans to debut its next-generation lineup with. These include the Ryzen 9 7950X, the Ryzen 9 7900X, the Ryzen 7 7700X, and the Ryzen 5 7600X. Older reports theorized that AMD could stick to a slim launch cycle with just 4 SKUs to be launched initially, and the series expanding to cover various price-points, later in 2023. The company didn't provide any specifications of these processors. It is rumored that AMD could announce these processors as early as in August, with availability slated for mid-September, 2022.

Once again the Eurasian Economic Commission has been helpful by sharing the model names of multiple upcoming graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA, which was dug up by @harukaze5719. This time around it's AFOX, a fairly minor graphics card manufacturer based out of Hong Kong that has submitted products for trademark registration. If these are the final product names or not, it's not clear and there are some "irregularities" in the submission as well, but we'll get to that in a second. Looking at the AMD cards, all the model names are as expected, ranging from the Radeon RX 7500 to the RX 7900XT in even steps of 100, with non XT and XT models for each SKU.

On the NVIDIA side we have the RTX 4050 to the RTX 4090TI, again with even steps, but of 10 this time and TI models of all cards, which seems a bit odd on the lower-end. However, AFOX has also registered trademarks for four RTX 30x0 Super cards, suggesting that NVIDIA might refresh its lineup of Ampere cards before it launches the 4000-series. This is obviously just an indication of things that may happen and should be taken with a fair helping of salt.

Intel's strategy against AMD's unexpected doubling in core-counts of its Ryzen Threadripper HEDT processors has been that of a headless chicken in a room painted Vantablack. It announced a 28-core processor that would require you to buy a new motherboard; and is frantically working on a 22-core processor for the existing LGA2066 platform. It's looking like AMD isn't in a mood to walk into Intel's core-count trap, and could hit Intel where it hurts the most - pricing. The top-dog 32-core part has already reared its head on German web-stores, seeking a little over 1,500€, just 500€ more than the price its previous-generation 16-core flagship, the Threadripper 1950X launched at. At 1,500€-ish, AMD could end up disrupting Intel's entire >10-core lineup that's priced between $1199 to $1999, currently occupied by 12-core, 14-core, 16-core, and 18-core SKUs.

AMD may not spare Intel's sub-$1000 Core X lineup, either. Prices of first-generation Ryzen Threadripper processors are seeing a dramatic drop, with the flagship Threadripper 1950X being priced under 650€. Prices of the 12-core Threadripper 1920X have slipped to just under 550€. The Core i9-7900X, meanwhile, continues to command a touch over 880€. The drop in prices of first-gen Threadrippers is likely retailers trying to clear out inventories to make room for 2nd generation Threadrippers. It could also be a prelude to AMD announcing more affordable 12-core and 16-core Threadrippers based on the 2nd generation "Zen+" architecture.

Processor sales numbers of leading German retailer Mindfactory.de show AMD Ryzen processors to be outselling Intel processors for the first time in over a decade. German and EU DIY PC buyers seem to have developed a taste for AMD Ryzen processors, which is reflecting in Mindfactory's sales figures. Since March 2017, when AMD launched its Ryzen 7 series, AMD processor sales have seen a steady growth from 28% (vs. 72% of Intel), to a stunning 56% by the end of August 2017. Mindfactory's sales is a test case of AMD's growth in the DIY processor market, which forced Intel to rush in its Core X family, and its 8th generation Core processor family, which could be out in Q3-2017.

Ryzen 5 1600 appears to be the most popular AMD choice among Mindfactory's customers, as the 6-core/12-thread processor strikes a price-performance sweet-spot at 198€. The chip is outselling the similarly-priced Core i5-7500 by two times, and the i5-7600K by three times. The 8-core/16-thread Ryzen 7 1700 is the second most popular AMD Ryzen part, priced at 288€. From the Intel camp, the Core i7-7700K still commands the single biggest chunk of Mindfactory's CPU sales. As expected, the Ryzen 7 1700X outsells the 1800X by five times. Also, the Ryzen Threadripper 1950X is outselling the Core i9-7900X by over three times. Find more interesting data in the beautifully drawn graphs by Redditor "Type-21."

LinusTechTips has received an Alienware Area 51, the boutique system which Alienware has developed through its exclusive partnership with AMD for the 16-core, 32-thread Threadripper CPUs.

The system was tested using a proprietary Dell/Alienware motherboard, as well as 32 GB (4x 8 GB) of 2666 MHz DDR4 RAM. Graphics were handled by a Founders Edition GTX 1080 Ti, and storage was etched on a SanDisk A400 256 GB NVME drive (Up to 2050/700 MB/s Sequential Read/Write). The nature of the benchmarked systems, with their myriad of hardware parts, means that the benchmarks are not 100% representative of CPU performance deltas between the tested processors; however, they do put out some interesting numbers. The other HEDT system to be tested was an Intel-based X299 system with a stock Intel Core i9-7900X (10 cores, 20 threads) on an ASUS Prime X299 Deluxe, 4x 8 GB of 3200 MHz DDR4 memory, the same GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition, and a 512 GB Samsung 950 Pro NVME SSD.

AMD today officially announced some more details on its brain-child and market-stormer Ryzen Threadripper HEDT line of CPUs. Ryzen is a true new stand-alone architecture for AMD, the result of more than four years of careful planning and silicon design towards reaching a truly scalable, highly-flexible, non-glued together MCM design that could power all experiences and workloads through a single architecture design. The Ryzen architecture is already powering desktops with Ryzen 3, 5 and 7 desktop CPUs; has extended to server-side deployments through its EPYC line-up and will begin shipping for professionals with Ryzen PRO starting in Q3 2017. Also announced was that it will find its way to mobile APUs around Q4, paired with the new Vega graphics microarchitecture; and will even power professional-geared mobile solutions in 1H18. But more immediately, it's coming to the HEDT market. And AMD is putting that fight in the hands of Threadripper.

AMD pits its HEDT line-up to developers, researchers, prosumers, creators, and even multi-tasking gamers. Increased compute capabilities with up to 16 cores and 32 threads; larger memory footprint, increased I/O and storage, and support for many more GPUs and PCIe lanes ensure a stable, impressive platform for today's large data sets and tomorrow's exponentially more resource-intensive workloads. AMD will execute this with a three-pronged approach. There will be three processor models on offer for their HEDT platform. The $999 TR 1950X and $799 TR 1920X are known quantities already, with their respective 16 cores (32 threads) and 12 cores (24 threads). The new addition, however, comes in the form of the $549 TR 1900X, which offers not only 8 cores (16 threads) and 3.8 GHz base, 4.0 GHz boost clocks, but a clear upgrade path within AMD's new platform. Say what you will about AMD's offerings and execution, one thing is for sure: Zen and all the silicon it powers have prompted a reshuffle of the CPU landscape as we hadn't seen in years. Coincidence? AMD doesn't think so.

Intel has quietly revealed base clocks for their upcoming 12-core, 24-thread Core i9-7920X processor. This particular Intel model materializes (at least for now) the only 12-core processor in Intel's X299 HEDT platform line-up on the LGA 2066 socket. A report from Videocardz pegs the new 12-core processor as having a base clock of 2.9 GHz, a full 400 MHz slower than the company's 10-core, 20-thread i9-7900X. The L3 cache amount appears as well, though it's an expected 16.5 MB (which amounts to around 1.375 MB per core.)

The chip also brought a pricing confirmation for $1,189 in tray quantities (which means final consumer prices will be higher.) On paper, this doesn't trade favorably with the competition's 12-core Threadripper offering, where AMD will be offering the same amount of cores and threads for $799 (final consumer pricing at launch) with a much more impressive 3.5 GHz base clock. Consumers will say whether a $400 price difference for going Intel over AMD is worth it for the same number of cores and threads, though it remains to be seen whether AMD's frequency advantage will translate to performance while maintaining power consumption at acceptable levels (which, from what we've seen from AMD's Ryzen, should, in theory, be true.)

HWBOT user sofos1990 took an Intel Core i9 CPU to party like it was the nineties, straddling it under a LN2 cooling chamber to achieve the enormous 6.01 GHz overclocked frequency (82.3% over stock clocks). The achieved score, at 12189.52 points, settles this run as the highest-scoring 10-core score ever, and also becomes the highest single-processor system score ever achieved in the platform. This was done under an extremely crispy 1.6 V processor vCore, though, so it definitely wasn't for the faint of heart.

With AMD's Threadripper family just a few weeks away from launch, it appears we are already getting some preliminary benchmark results in via both Geekbench and SiSoft Sandra benchmarks. This latest set of leaks isn't the first bench of the flagship 1950X, but it is the newest and thus should give us a more accurate picture of present optimizations.

Interestingly, the single core performance dropped a bit on GeekBench, from 4216 to 4074. It made up for it in multi-threading however, where the chip posted a result of 26768, up from 24723. Sadly, these numbers still pale in comparison to the 10-core i9-7900X, in both single threaded and multi-threaded figures. As the 1950X ships with significantly lower clocks compared to the i9-7900X's clocks (with boost considered, anyway), I suppose it truly will come down to whether these CPUs can close the gap via overclocking, or optimizations towards launch and beyond. Either way, it seems there may be a bit of a hill to climb to get there. Whether or not it is surmountable remains to be seen.

It would seem Intel's X299 platform is already having some teething issues, with user "der8auer" of overclocking fame claiming the platform is essentially a complete "VRM disaster." In the video in which these claims are made, he levies the blame to both Intel and the motherboard manufacturers "50/50." For Intel's part, he blames them for the short product launch which was pulled in from August to June, giving the motherboard manufacturers in der8auer's words "almost zero time for developing proper products."

In the video, der8auer elaborates to basically claim a completely lack of consistency among the quality of VRMs and their heatsinks in various manufacturers. In his first test, he takes a CPU that is known to do 5.0 GHz and on a Gigabyte Aorus branded mainboard found himself unable to even hit 4.6 GHz with dangerously high VRM temperatures. He goes on to blame the heatsinks on the VRMs, going so far to call the Gigabyte solution more of a "heat insulation" device than a cooler, as a simple small fan over the bare VRM array did many magnitudes better than a simple standard install with the stock VRM cooler attached. After an MSI-branded board did similar, it became clear this was not an isolated issue.

Intel announced retail availability of its new Core X-series HEDT (high-end desktop) processors in the LGA2066 package, designed for motherboards based on the Intel X299 Express chipset. These include the 4-core/4-thread Core i5-7640X and 4-core/8-thread Core i7-7740X based on the "Kaby Lake-X" silicon; and 6-core/12-thread Core i7-7800X, 8-core/16-thread Core i7-7820X, and 10-core/20-thread Core i9-7900X chips based on the "Skylake-X" silicon. Compatible socket LGA2066 motherboards based on the X299 chipset began selling, too.

The Core i5-7640X features 4.00 GHz clocks with 4.20 GHz Turbo Boost, and 6 MB of L3 cache. The i7-7740X tops that with 4.30 GHz core and 4.50 GHz Turbo Boost out of the box, 8 MB of L3 cache, and HyperThreading. Both these chips feature just dual-channel DDR4 memory controller, meaning that you'll be able to use just four out of eight DIMM slots in most LGA2066 motherboards. The i5-7640X is priced at USD $242, while the i7-7740X goes for $339. These are the same prices at which you can buy the LGA1151 Core i5-7600K and i7-7700K, respectively, so an attempt is being made to transition all PC enthusiasts over to the HEDT platform.

An Intel Core i9-7900X has appeared for a full review at the site Hexus.net. Spoiler alert, it clocks to 4.7 GHz on all ten cores with relative ease (only taking 1.25 V, apparently, though it racked up nearly 100°C in Cinebench at that voltage).

The review praised Intel's overclocking headroom and general muscle in a mostly positive review. Still, not all is rosy in Intel land. They found performance per watt to not have improved much if at all, criticized the high price tag, and Hexus.net had the following to say about the overall experience:

"X299 motherboards don't appear to be quite ready, there are question marks surrounding the Skylake-X processors due later this year, and at the lower end of the Core X spectrum, Kaby Lake-X is nothing short of puzzling."

AMD has recently announced that at least nine models are in preparation for their new HEDT line-up, which will, for now, feature processors with up to 16 cores and 32 threads. The entry-level 16-core chip, the Threadripper 1998, will come in at 3.20 GHz with 3.60 GHz boost, 155 W TDP, and is absent of XFR.

If recent reports hold true, this entry-level Threadripper 1998 will come in at $849. Now, let's be honest - this seems like an immensely optimistic value, undercutting even Intel's 10-core 7900X, which has been announced at $999 (in tray quantities.) That's over 6 more cores and 12 more threads for $150 less. And let's just say that AMD's IPC isn't that much lower than Intel's to justify such an aggressive undercutting, a high-volume approach to the market.

Videocardz is advancing an exclusive in that Intel seems to be about to introduce even more cores in a single package than previously thought. Intel's X299 platform, which we've just started officially started seeing some motherboards for (just scroll down on our news feed), looks to be the awakening of a slumbering giant. But you don't have to believe me on this: before we ever knew of AMD's Ryzen line of processors (much less about their Threadripper line), leaks on Intel's Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X processors only showed core counts up to 10-cores - in line with previous Intel HEDT platforms (see below image.) Cue more recent leaks, and it would seem that Intel is increasing the core-counts on its upcoming platform on a daily basis - especially if the most recent leak referencing 14, 16 and 18-core parts pans out. (I am reminded of a "moar cores" meme that used to float around the web. Maybe one of you in the comments can find it for me?)

A new, leaked slide on Intel's X-series processors shows 18, 16, 14, and 12-core configurations as being available on the upcoming X299 platform, leveraging Intel's turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0 (which is apparently only available on Intel's Core i9-7820X, 7900X, 7920X (which we know to be a 12-core part), 7940X (probably the 14-core), 7960X (16-core) and the punchline 7980XE 18-core processor, which should see a price as eye-watering as that name tumbles around on the tip of the tongue. There is also mention of a "Rebalanced Intel Smart Cache hierarchy". But you don't want me to be rambling on about this. You want to comment about this story. Feel free to partake in a joyous conversation over these news (I'll also leave you with a bonus picture of some purported, upcoming Intel X-series packaging efforts. They're certainly colorful.)

SiSoft Sandra is one of the best (and more common) sources for details on upcoming, as-of-yet-unreleased hardware details and characteristics. Now, details on one of Intel's upcoming Skylake-X parts have surfaced, which gives us some details on what are likely final specifications, considering how close we are to X299's accelerated release.

The processor in the spotlight is one of Intel's 10-core processors, the Core i9 7900X (which is erroneously reported by the software as the Core i7 7900X), Intel's 10-core CPU. While initial reports pegged this CPU at as running at clock speeds of 3.30 GHz base and with 4.30 GHz Turbo Boost, it would seem Intel's release silicon will leverage much higher stock speeds, with the reported values on this SiSoft report being a staggering 4.0 GHz base, and 4.5 GHz Turbo Boost. These are extremely high clock speeds for a ten-core part, but all the other details about the Core i9 7900X check out: there are 14,080 KB (13.75 MB) of shared L3 cache, 1 MB L2 cache per core (for a total of 10 MB), as well as a 175 W TDP. This difference in clock speeds (especially when you compare it to Ryzen's much lower clock speeds) are probably an indicator of not only architectural differences between both designs, but a statement on Intel's fabrication process capabilities. And as an added bonus, check the motherboard that was used: a juicy, as-of-yet-unknown, X299 Gigabyte AORUS Gaming 7. Two details of this magnitude in a single screenshot? It's clearly a case of having your cake and eating it too.