The first reliable benchmark figures of AMD's Ryzen 7000-series CPUs have arrived, courtesy of SiSoftware. The benchmark suite software developer has released benchmark figures for the Ryzen 5 7600X and Ryzen 9 7950X. Keep in mind that these benchmarks are limited to the different tests in SiSoftware Sandra. Also note that the graphs for the Ryzen 5 7600X have typos, as the SiSoftware wrote Ryzen 5 7760X instead of 7600X and the Core i5-12600K is listed as a Core i7 CPU. Starting with the 7600X, the CPU appears to perform similar to, or slightly slower than the Intel Core i5-12600K in the arithmetic tests. On the other hand, it handily crushes the older Ryzen 5 5600X in every test here, by somewhere between 17 and 36 percent depending on the test.

Moving on to the vector SIMD tests, AMD's Zen 4 architecture shows much greater performance improvements, beating the Intel Core i5-12600K in all but one of the tests, where it loses by a fairly small margin. Here it beats the Ryzen 5 5600X by anything from 28 to a massive 86 percent. Where AMD's Zen 4 architecture really kicks things up a notch is in the image processing test, at least compared to the Zen 3 architecture, thanks to its AVX512 capabilities. As such, it's over twice as fast in many of the tests, but it still loses out in half of the tests to Intel's Core i5-12600K. AMD has also improved the inter-thread/core latency in the same module, by a not insignificant amount. Where the Ryzen 5 7600X doesn't fare so well is when it comes to performance vs. power, largely due to the fact that AMD moved the TDP from 65 to 105 W, but it still offers better performance per Watt than Intel's current models.

Update 17:31 UTC: Updated with the Ryzen 7 7700X results.

As with every generation before it, Intel is preparing a line of 13th Gen Core processors with 35 W processor base power under the "T" brand extension. The Core i7-13700T retains the core-configuration of the i7-13700K (8P+8E), but with a much more aggressive power-management for commercial-desktop applications. Geekbench 5.4.5 scores of the processor were leaked to the web, where the processor was shown matching or beating the Core i5-12600K, a previous-generation 6P+4E core processor with much higher boost frequencies, and power limits.

The Core i7-13700T comes with nominal clock speeds of just 1.40 GHz, compared to 3.40 GHz of the i7-13700K, while its P-core maximum boost is probably 4.90 GHz, compared to 5.40 GHz of its enthusiastic sibling. The maximum boost frequency difference between the two SKUs may not seem like much, but the tighter power limits mean that the i7-13700T will hold on to boost frequencies in much smaller bursts. The chip is shown scoring 1939 points in the single-threaded test, and 11564 points in the multi-threaded one. In the ST test, the chip has sufficient power budget to boost one P-core to its maximum frequency, and so it's beating the i5-12600K with its 1856 ST score. In the multi-threaded test, it's slightly worse than the 11608 points of the i5-12600K. While it has more cores, there simply isn't enough power budget to run them at high frequencies. The Core i7-13700T likely won't be part of the first wave of 13th Gen Core SKUs, and will probably launch by late-2022 or early-2023.

Remember that Xe-HPG Scavenger Hunt that Intel hosted last year? If you somehow missed it, Intel was maybe giving away some Arc graphics cards to 300 lucky winners. There were two different tiers of prizes, grand prize and first prize, which later ended up translating to an Arc A770 and an Arc A750 graphics card respectively. Now news via VideoCardz are suggesting that Intel is trying to get out of giving these 300 people their prize, well, at least the promised graphics card, in exchange for an Alder Lake CPU.

Intel has apparently sent out an email to the winners, asking them to accept an Intel Core i7-12700K if they were a grand prize winner or a Core i5-12600K if they were a first prize winner, instead of the promised graphics card. The winners have until Friday the 19th of August to decide if they want a CPU instead of a GPU, although Intel is apparently still allowing them to wait for a GPU, the company just doesn't say how long the wait will be. As the prize has to have a similar retail price, it's also possible to get a ballpark figure of the MSRP of Intel's supposedly upcoming Arc 700-series graphics cards. The Arc A770 should end up at around the $410 mark and the A750 around the $290 mark, as this is the ballpark MSRP for the CPU's that are being offered. It would be interesting to know how many people would be willing to do the trade, but sadly we're unlikely to ever find out.

It's a busy day when it comes to Intel Raptor Lake benchmark leaks and this time around, we're looking at a pair of Core i5-13600K CPUs, but in two different motherboards. The first CPU sits in an ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme board and is paired with 32 GB of DDR5 memory, whereas the second CPU is in an ASRock Z690 Steel Legend WiFi 6E board, this one also paired with 32 GB of RAM, but DDR4 rather than DDR5. Both systems are running Windows 10 and unlike the Core i9-13900K results that we saw a couple of weeks ago, these two results are both valid according to the Geekbench results browser.

Courtesy of @harukaze5719 we have a nice graph with the results below, even comparing them to the average Geekbench results for a Core i5-12600K, as well as a Ryzen 9 5950X and a Ryzen 5 5600X. The Core i5-13600K beats everything in the single threaded results and the ASUS system is not far behind the Ryzen 9 5950X in the multithreaded tests. The ASUS system is significantly faster than the ASRock one though, so it seems like Raptor Lake is really making the most out of DDR5 memory. As we don't know the memory clocks, it's hard to say if that is also a contributing factor here, but it's likely that the ASUS system uses much faster memory, as in some of the sub-tests like Rigid Body Physics, the two systems are on par in terms of performance. It'll be interesting to see how Intel prices these upcoming CPUs, especially considering that the company has already warned it'll raise its prices in time for the retail availability of Raptor Lake.

The recently announced Intel Core i9-12900K is set to launch on November 4th alongside the i7-12700K, and i5-12600K which is the date when we will see reviews for the processors released. We have already seen numerous leaks regarding the processors performance leading up to the announcement and we have now received some new leaked performance figures for the processors when operating in Maximum Turbo Power (MTP). The MTP is defined by Intel as the maximum sustained power dissipation of a processor compared to TDP which is the base power draw. The performance difference between these two power modes has been revealed from Cinebench R20 multi-threaded results posted by Wofstame the Gaming Desktop Product Planning Manager for Lenovo China.

The Intel Core i9-12900K scores 7492 points when running at its TDP of 125 W and 10180 points or 36% faster when operating at the MTP of 241 W. This performance difference is less notable for the other processors with the Core i7-12700K seeing a 30% improvement between its 125 W and 190 W power modes while the Core i5-12600K sees a 10% improvement from the 125 W TDP to 150 W MTP. Intel appears to be extracting the maximum performance from their Core i9-12900K with diminishing returns from the increased power budget compared to the other processors.

Intel's 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake-S" silicon apparently comes in two variants based on core count. The first one is a larger variant with 8 P cores and 8 E cores, while the second variant is a visibly smaller die with only 6 P cores, no E cores. This was revealed by an MSI Insider video presentation where pictures of LGA1700 packages with the two die types were shown off.

MSI also confirmed die-sizes and dimensions of the two. The larger C0 die measures 10.5 mm x 20.5 mm, working out to 215.25 mm² area. The smaller H0 die measures 10.5 mm x 15.5 mm, and a die area of 162.75 mm². The H0 silicon completely lacks "Gracemont" E-core clusters, and physically features six "Golden Cove" P cores. It's possible that given the 3 MB L3 slice size on the larger C0 silicon, the smaller H0 silicon physically features 18 MB of shared L3 cache.

For those tired of Intel leaks, please look away now, as this is likely to be one of the last leaks before the official reveal later today. The final specifications, as well as pricing for the first six of Intel's 12th Gen Core CPUs has made an appearance online and the good news is that the official pricing isn't as bad as we've been led to believe, based on earlier leaks and it'll at least make up some of the cost increase of the Z690 motherboards over the Z590 models.

Spec wise, we're not looking at anything unexpected here, it simply verifies what has leaked so far, with one exception, maximum turbo power. Although the base TDP of all six CPUs is 125 W, it seems like Intel is using the maximum turbo power as yet another product differentiator, at least more so than it has previously. The Core i9 CPUs get a maximum turbo power of 241 W, whereas the Core i7's top out at 190 W and the Core i5's at 150 W. At least Intel is being open about it and the question is if it will have any affect on overclocking or not. Obviously having fewer CPUs cores would result in a lower power draw overall, but then the question is why the Core i5's have a base TDP of 125 W.

Intel's upcoming Alder Lake-S lineup of processors is shaping up to be a rather good generational improvement. With wonders of the Intel 7 process, previously called 10 nm Enhanced SuperFin (10ESF), the processor lineup will deliver new hybrid technology, mixing new big and small cores into one package. Today, some new CPU-Z validation tests have shown up for the Intel Core i5-12600K CPU, which directly replaces the previous Core i5-11600K Rocket Lake model. With six high-performance Golden Cove and four efficient Gracemont cores, the Core i5-12600K CPU is a ten-core design with 16 threads. And compared to the 6C/12T i5-12600K CPU, the performance is much higher.

According to CPU-Z scores, the new Alder Lake processor scored 7220 and 7156 points for a multi-threaded benchmark in two tests. Compare this to the previous-generation model, which scores 4731 points, and the new chip is almost 50% faster. According to CPU-Z, the new CPU achieved this while running at a boost frequency of 4.5 GHz to 4.7 GHz.

The Intel Core i5-12600K is set to feature 6 high-performance cores and 4 high-efficiency cores running at base speeds of 3.7 GHz and 2.8 GHz respectively. These cores can boost to 4.9 GHz and 3.6 GHz with Turbo Max Boost 3.0 however we don't expect much more speed can be extracted out of them using overclocking so default performance with sufficient cooling should be close to max. We have recently seen some CPU-Z test scores for the processor from prominent leakers which show the chip scoring 746 and 7058 points in the single-threaded and multi-threaded tests when running stock on Windows 11. The processor was also tested with an unknown overclock on Windows 10 where it scored 79X and 72XX points respectively.

These scores are extremely competitive with them easily beating the Ryzen 5 5600X by 19.5% and 46.7% in single-threaded and multi-threaded tests. We still don't know where Intel will position the Core i5-12600K in the market so any judgment on the value of these processors will need to wait until release. While we don't currently know the expected MSRP for the Core i5-12600K we have seen pricing for the Core i7-12700K and Core i9-12900K at 469.99 USD and 669.99 USD respectively. Intel is expected to announce these Alder Lake desktop processors during an event on October 27th with general availability expected November 4th.