The 14th Gen Core "Raptor Lake Refresh" desktop CPU lineup was not showcased during Intel Innovation's keynote presentation—instead, upcoming Meteor Lake and Lunar Lake generations were put in the spotlight. We will likely have to wait for an official announcement closer to the expected October 17 launch date of K and KF SKUs. The Core i9-14900KF model has emerged once again, thanks to benchmark results hitting the 'net—Passmark's owner, David Wren, declared on social media: "Yet another high-end CPU has made a significant debut on the single-threaded chart today! While it's not available for purchase yet, the Intel 4th Gen i9-14900KF CPU has claimed the top spot on the chart."

The benched Core i9-14900KF scored 4939 points in PassMark's single-thread test, which surpasses equivalent 13th gen heavyweights: Core i9-13900KS—4769 points and Core i9-13900K—4666 points. Intel's iGPU-less flagship desktop processor now sits at the top of Passmark's single-thread rating table. VideoCardz noted: "It's worth mentioning that the i9-13900KS also boasts a 6.0 GHz clock speed, and the 14900KF achieved this score using relatively modest DDR5-5600 memory." Multi-threaded performance is a tad disappointing—this 14900KF sits about level with the 13900K with an extremely narrow 0.6% difference.

Since the launch of AMD's Ryzen processors, the CPU market share has been reshaped in AMD's favor. Intel's offerings were matched by team red, and AMD quickly broke into the consumer market. However, according to the latest round of reports, it seems like that is no longer the case. As per the Japanese DIY market analysis from BCNR, sales of Intel processors started rising in mid-2021, and the company is managing to grab some market share from AMD. After nearly two years of dominance in the Japanese market, AMD is now behind Intel in sales, and team blue is getting back to its older setting.

Another source that is generally a pretty good indicator of the market share of Intel and AMD processor is PassMark. As users submit their benchmark runs, the PassMark software developer has updated the CPU market share statistics chart, mainly showing the desktop segment. It also concludes the same thing as BCRN: Intel is again gaining share in the CPU market. As it always goes hand-in-hand, AMD is losing the CPU marker share naturally. This is due to many reasons, and it seems like Intel's marketing and supply tactics are paying off. Intel now sits at 60% share, while AMD is set at 40%.

The recently announced entry-level NVIDIA GeForce MX550 Turing-based discrete mobile graphics card for thin and light laptops has recently appeared on the PassMark video card benchmark site. The MX550 scores 5014 points in the G3D Mark test which places its performance nearly exactly with that of the integrated Vega 8 iGPU found in the Ryzen 9 5900HS that scores 4968 points in the same benchmark. There is only a single test result available for the MX550 so we will need to wait for further benchmarks to confirm its exact performance but either way it represents a significant performance improvement from the MX450 which scores just 3724 points. The MX550 is a PCIe 4.0 card featuring the 12 nm TU117 Turing GPU with 1024 shading units paired with 2 GB of GDDR6 memory.

If you even came across a PC system that had a problem with its Ram, there are high chances that you have used PassMark Software MemTest86 software for testing and revealing DRAM errors. The software uses a chain of algorithms, including SIMD and row hammer tests, to try to test if the memory is in a good shape or it has some problems. PC builders have used the software for years to detect and isolate any potential Ram issues that occurred. Today, makers of MemTest86, PassMark Software, previewed initial support for DDR5 memory in their internal software builds. That means that by the time DDR5 memory hits the consumer market, we will have software for testing any possible defective Ram.

Passmark Software have recently announced the significant expansion of their cross-platform benchmarking with the latest releases of PerformanceTest. For the first time this cornerstone benchmarking software is now available for Windows ARM, included with every PerformanceTest for Windows license. All CPU, 2D, Memory and Disk Tests have been natively compiled to run on Windows ARM, partial 3D support is also available.

PerformanceTest has also been released as free command line versions for Linux x86 64-bit, Linux ARM 32-bit, Linux ARM 64-bit and for MacOS (CPU Test Suite Only). The Android and IOS Mobile versions have also received updates, with all available versions of PerformanceTest now running the same CPU Test Suite found in V10 for Windows. These releases allow for directly comparable cross-platform CPU results, an apparent necessity as the number of ARM based processors such as Apple's M1 and Qualcomm's Snapdragon enter consumer hardware.