PC Games Hardware (PCGH) discovered that certain AMD Radeon RX 9070 graphics cards can be flashed with the video BIOS of RX 9070 XT of a comparable board design, to achieve higher clock speeds and power limits. While the flash won't unlock any new shaders—you're still limited to 56 CU or 3,584 stream processors—it gives the RX 9070 increased power limits and clock speeds of the faster SKU. More importantly, the flashed RX 9070 was found to offer significantly improved overclocking headroom, and PCGH was able to tune up performance by 15-20% over stock RX 9070, bringing its performance to match a stock RX 9070 XT, which was confirmed by a set of 3DMark benchmarks.

There are, however, some caveats. The most obvious one is that BIOS flashing is fraught with risks, and unless you have a card with dual-BIOS, you really need to know what you're doing. Secondly, BIOS flashing might only work between two cards that share a common board design. AMD board partners tend to use nearly identical board designs between the RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT, at least for the value segment SKUs. And lastly, there is no software tool that can flash Radeon RX 9000 series GPUs yet, the modder used a hardware flashing tool that interfaces with the 8-pin BIOS ROM chip on the card. The flashed card does not display "XT" in the name string.

Update 13:23 UTC: Our resident hardware guru W1zzard has the following explanation for why the card's name does not change. On AMD cards, the revision ID field is used to distinguish between variants of the same GPU. On the RX 9070 Series, the XT models uses "C0" and the non-XT uses "C3." In the past, the AMD BIOS stored the revision ID of the card, and flashing the BIOS would change the value that Windows sees, and thus the model name will change accordingly. With Navi 4x, AMD made a change to their BIOS format, so that the revision ID can no longer be changed, which protects against fake cards, but in this case it means that some properties like power limits, clocks, etc. can swap to values from the BIOS, but all the IDs and unit counts remain fixed.

Intel representatives have placed a Panther Lake demonstration sample unit on an actual pedestal; as reported by PC Games Hardware (PCGH). German press outlets and other visitors were greeted by Team Blue's dedicated showcase plinth at this week's Embedded World 2025 expo/trade fair. The Nuremberg-based event is advertised as a "world-leading conference presenting state-of-the art technology and forward-looking research." Attendees and industry watchdogs reckon that the prominently displayed demo piece is an example of Intel's Panther Lake-H (PTL-H) mobile-oriented chip design. Last October, Pat Gelsinger (now ex-CEO) unveiled a physical PTL-H sample on-stage during his special guest appearance at Lenovo Tech World 2024. During a CES 2025 keynote presentation, Michelle Johnston Holthaus (Intel's interim co-boss) confirmed a 2025 launch window, while holding up another (or the same) Panther Lake chip.

Recent industry insider whispers have suggested that the Intel Foundry is encountering problems with their 18A node process; thus causing a shift in Panther Lake's release schedule. One prominent leaker claims that Team Blue's opening salvo of PTL-H products will roll out in 2026, but rumors were dismissed by an official source (last week). John Pitzer—Corporate Vice President of Investor Relations at Intel—insisted on multiple occasions, during a fireside chat, that his team's Core Ultra 300 series (aka Panther Lake-H) is on track for launch within the second half of 2025. Intel's Embedded World 2025 booth does not feature any technical rundowns relating to the showcased next-gen offering; their minimalist plinth is simply adorned with blue text spelling out: "Panther Lake." NDA-busting details have emerged online, courtesy of insider leaks—the top-most PTL-H SKU could appear with a 4P+8E+4LP+12Xe3 configuration.

Recently, we covered a rumor arising from PCGH which stated that the RTX 5090, and perhaps even the RTX 5080, are gearing up to face an extremely stock-limited launch in Germany. Now, it appears that customers in North America will likely face very similar circumstances, if the claims made by tipster Moore's Law is Dead's sources are taken to be true. MLID spoke with several sources, including distributors and AIBs, all of whom had the same thing to say - it is going be quite hard to snag an RTX 5090 or RTX 5080 at launch.

One of the distributors that MLID apparently spoke with, went as far as to comment that they simply won't be having any RTX 5090s at all in the first month of launch. Further, while they received almost 200 RTX 4080s during the previous launch season, they only expect to get 20 units of the RTX 5080 this time around. As for the RTX 5090, they do not foresee inventory before late Q1, or even Q2 of this year. A second source, who claimed to be from an AIB partner, stated that while they will have RTX 5080s ready at launch, they are "only a fraction" of the RTX 4080s they had last time. Moreover, the number of RTX 5090s they claim to have matches that of the RTX 3090s they had, which, for those who don't remember, suffered from severe supply shortages at launch.

Recent rumors suggested that Intel contemplated a price hike across all of its Core processors. This speculation originated from a forum staff member from PCGH who claimed to have received related information indicating a possible correspondence from Intel to its wholesalers about an impending price rise. In response to these rumors, Intel confirmed to HardwareLuxx that it has no plans to increase processor prices currently. The company stated that the Recommended Customer Price (RCP), which is generally quoted in US dollars for 1,000 unit prices as per their Ark database, will persist unchanged. Intel clarified that it hadn't shared such news with its customers or partners, nor was it considering a price change for its CPU portfolio at the moment.

The speculated price increase was reportedly associated with Intel's ongoing and planned factory constructions and company restructuring, according to PCGH. The need to refinance the 'fabs' was cited as the primary reason. Presently, Intel is streamlining its expenses, shutting down multiple smaller business areas, and investing significantly with state aid. However, it is doubtful that these reasons would be expressed in a wholesaler letter as grounds for price hikes. The PC market is currently sluggish, and though an uplift is predicted for the second half of this year, most segments of the PC market are still witnessing double-digit percentage reductions. In such a scenario, where buyers are becoming increasingly price-sensitive, and the market is trying to rebound, a price rise could be counterproductive.

Sharkoon Technologies is an international supplier of high-performance quality PC components and peripherals. With the TG5 RGB Silent PCGH Edition, Sharkoon presents an ATX case that aims to impress not only with its looks but also with its low noise level. The case is based on the visual design of the predecessor model. However, in cooperation with the computer magazine PCGH, a redesign has been made in order to keep the noise level as low as possible.

For the design of the TG5 RGB Silent PCGH Edition, corresponding changes were made to the case in order to be able to reduce the overall volume of the system during operation. For this purpose, insulating mats have been integrated in the top and side panel, which, in combination with the completely closed covering of the case, contribute to a reduction of noise. In addition, special fans are installed in the case which maintain a quiet and smooth operation at 800 revolutions per minute without sacrifices being made in cooling performance.

Perhaps a lot of driver optimization and game patches are due, but early performance numbers for real-time ray-tracing on NVIDIA's thousand-dollar GeForce RTX 2080 Ti don't look encouraging. German tech publication PCGH tested the enthusiast-segment graphics card on "Shadow of the Tomb Raider," one of the poster-boys of NVIDIA's upcoming ray-tracing acceleration, and found that with all its eye-candy cranked up, the card barely manages 30 to 60 frames per second at Full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels).

NVIDIA and Eidos (developers of "Shadow of the Tomb Raider") were quick to respond to the PCGH story. They stated that the build of the game demoed at Gamescom is pre-release, and the studio is still optimizing it for NVIDIA GeForce RTX series; and that the GeForce RTX hardware is running on pre-launch beta drivers that are yet to pack "Game Ready" optimization for SOTR. Catch PCGH's video presentation in the source link below.

Japanese manufacturer Scythe, famous for its innovative and market leading cooling concepts and accessories, introduces a new edition of the popular Mugen 4 CPU cooler. In the past, Mugen series was modified in cooperation with the experts from the Ger-man Computer Magazine "PC Games Hardware". Latest Scythe Mugen 4 CPU cooler was tested by the professional editors and received some optimizations for silent operation.

In result of this cooperation, the improved version by the name "Mugen 4 PCGH Edition" has been created. Main heatsink was considered great and was not modified. Scythe newly developed the T-M.A.P.S. (Threedimensional Multiple Airflow Pass-Through Structure) fin structure for Mugen 4, which increases the airflow inside the cooling heatsink. Furthermore, Mugen 4 PCGH Edition is highly fine tuned for performance with ultra low noise.

The new Enermax CPU cooler product range has made a successful market debut. Especially the side-flow series ETS-T40 has quickly grown in popularity. Many independent hardware testers highlight the performance capability and the excellent price-performance ratio of the Enermax cooler. Equipped with a smooth-running Twister fan and a highly flexible PWM speed control, offering a wide range from 800 to 1,800 RPM, ETS-T40 is not only the best choice for high-end systems, but also for silent PCs.

LGA 2011 ready!

Enermax now delivers all ETS-T40 models with an upgrade kit to support the latest Intel CPU platform LGA 2011. On the product packaging, end users can find a note about the LGA 2011 readiness of the CPU cooler. The delivery includes a set of additional four screws that enables the installation on LGA 2011 sockets.

Japanese cooling expert Scythe has today announced the revision of the popular CPU Coolers Scythe Mugen 3, Mugen 3 PCGH and Ninja 3. Scythe has upgraded the CPU Coolers to Rev. B. Users can easily differentiate the new version from the old ones by the added suffix "Rev. B" in the names: Mugen 3 Rev.B, Mugen 3 Rev.B PCGH and Ninja 3 Rev.B. New Revision B brings support to the recently announced Socket LGA2011 and therefore compatibility to Sandy Bridge-E CPUs.

Japanese cooling expert Scythe is hereby announcing the special edition of Mugen 3 CPU Cooler. Scythe introduced a special PC Games Hardware Edition CPU Cooler already in the past. Back then Mugen 2 CPU Cooler was modified in cooperation with the editors from the German PC Magazine called PC Games Hardware. Today announced special edition of the Mugen 3 CPU Cooler was once again created in cooperation with the editors of PC Games Hardware in order to fulfill the demand of Power Users.

Outcome of the cooperation was a modified Mugen 3 CPU Cooler which was aiming for super silent noise level during operation, yet not sacrificing the high performance level. Hence main aluminum hetasink was not the target of modification instead airflow optimization was chosen. Normal version of Mugen 3 is equipped with one Scythe Slip Stream PWM Silent 120 mm axial fan where the PC Games Hardware Edition comes with the total of two Slip Stream 120 mm fans. Both Slip Stream 120 mm axial fans are constantly rotating with 800 rpm in a Push/Pull alignment, each creating total noise level of only 10.70 dBA. This dual fan setup is able to provide the required high performance level while remaining permanently silent.

AMD is undertaking its product development cycle at a breakneck pace, NVIDIA trailed it in the DirectX 11 and performance leadership race by months. This November, AMD will release the "Cayman" GPU, its newest high end GPU, the expectations are that it will outperform the NVIDIA GF100, that is a serious cause for concern, for the green team. It's back to its old tactics of talking about GPUs that haven't even taken shape, to try and water down AMD's launch. Enter, the GF110, NVIDIA's new high-end GPU under design, on which is based the GeForce GTX 580.

The new GPU is speculated to have 512 CUDA cores, 128 TMUs, and a 512-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface holding 2 GB of memory, with a TDP of close to that of the GeForce GTX 480. In the immediate future, there are prospects of a more realistic-sounding GF100b, which is basically GF100 with all its 512 CUDA cores enabled, while retaining its 384-bit GDDR5 memory interface, 64 TMUs, and slightly higher TDP than that of the GTX 480.

Mushkin announces the availability of a new DDR2 Special-Edition: the 4GB Kit called "996580PCGH" is the continuation of the successful co-operation with the PC Games Hardware print magazine.

"The teamwork with the PCGH is fantastic!" says Steffen Eisenstein, CEO of Mushkin Logistic GmbH very glad. "So it makes perfect sense for us to do another Special-Edition. The new kit is perfect for performance demanding beginners who wants fast timings and rock-bottom prices."