This week on TechPowerUp News: Intel's next-generation "Kaby Lake" and previous-generation "Broadwell-E" being slated for 2016; AMD Radeon "Star Wars: Battlefront" bundle with Radeon R9 Fury; and Rocksteady's guarded "no" for multi-GPU support on "Batman Arkham Knight" PC.

The next update to Intel's high-end desktop (HEDT) platform will arrive no sooner than Q2-2016 (April-June), according to a leaked company roadmap slide for its client computing platforms. These chips will be based on Intel's 5th generation Core "Broadwell" micro-architecture, although in the lineup, they will be sold as Core i7-6800 and i7-6900 series.

Core i7 "Broadwell-E" will see Intel release its first consumer 10-core processor, besides 6-core and 8-core. The cheapest ($400-ish) part will likely be 6-core, the mid-tier part ($600-ish) will likely be 8-core, and the top-dog $1000 part 10-core. The TDP for these parts will continue to be rated at 140W. These chips will be supported by existing LGA2011v3 motherboards, with a firmware update, just like Core i7 "Ivy Bridge-E" were supported by existing LGA2011 motherboards of the time. Elsewhere on the roadmap, we see Core "Kaby Lake" desktop processors making an entry in Q4-2016.

In what is a confirmation that AMD has killed socket AM3+ and its 3-chip platform, a leaked slide that's part of a larger press-deck addressing investors, tells us that the company is planning to launch a high-performance desktop processor targeting enthusiasts, based on its next-generation "Zen" architecture, in 2016. Our older articles detail the Zen CPU core design, and the way in which AMD will build multi-core CPUs with it. This processor will be codenamed "Summit Ridge," and will be a CPU, and not an APU as previously reported. In AMD-speak, what sets a CPU apart from an APU is its lack of integrated graphics.

AMD "Summit Ridge" will be an 8-core CPU built on the 14 nanometer silicon fab process. It will feature eight "Zen" cores, with 512 KB of L2 cache per core, 16 MB of L3 cache, with 8 MB shared between two sets of four cores, each; a dual-channel integrated memory controller that likely supports both DDR3 and DDR4 memory types; and an integrated PCI-Express gen 3.0 root complex, with a total of 22 lanes. We can deduce this from the fact that "Summit Ridge" will be built in the same upcoming socket FM3 package, which the company's "Bristol Ridge" Zen-based APU will be built on. "Summit Ridge" will hence be more competitive with Intel's 6th generation Core "Skylake" processors, such as the i7-6700K and i5-6600K, than the company's "Broadwell-E" HEDT platform.

Intel is beginning to put out the first details of its next high-end desktop (HEDT) processors, internally. Codenamed "Broadwell-E," the company's next Core i7 HEDT chips will be built in the existing LGA2011v3 package, and will be compatible with existing motherboards based on Intel's X99 Express chipset (with BIOS updates). Much like "Ivy Bridge-E" was to "Sandy Bridge-E," these chips will introduce only incremental updates, and nothing major, in terms of architecture.

To begin with, Core i7 "Broadwell-E" will be built in the 14 nanometer silicon fab process, and will feature 6 to 8 cores based on the "Broadwell" micro-architecture. These cores will be cushioned with up to 20 MB of L3 cache. The chip is pin-compatible to "Haswell-E," and so its I/O will be identical, featuring a quad-channel DDR4 integrated memory controller. One difference is that Intel may can the 28-lane PCIe approach with the entry-level part; or at least it doesn't find mention on the slide. If it's true, all parts based on this silicon, will feature 40-lane PCIe interfaces. The TDP of these chips will be rated at 140W. Intel is expected to launch the Core i7 "Broadwell-E" in 2016.