Last week, the Professional Gamers League (PGL) announced an interesting overhaul of tournament hardware—new systems will be fitted with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 graphics cards, then hooked up to BenQ ZOWIE XL2566K 24.5" 360 Hz gaming monitors. Their previous generation machines were (initially) designed around AMD's Ryzen 9 5950X processor, but the organization is leaving AM4 platforms behind: "PGL is excited to announce that our team has fully optimized upgraded gaming PCs in partnership with Afromnazareth, and we are ready to deliver an unparalleled esports experience at the PGL CS2 Major Copenhagen 2024. At the heart of this cutting-edge setup is the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D processor, explicitly chosen for its exceptional performance capabilities and ability to handle the demands of CS2. This processor is renowned for its superior gaming performance, offering players the speed, power, and efficiency required to perform at the highest levels of competition."

The Ryzen 7 5800X3D is a more straightforward upgrade—as an easy drop-in for the PGL's older AM4 platform machines, but a leap into new ecosystems will grant a bit of future-proofing. Team Red is expected to support AM5 across a couple of processor generations. PGL did upgrade systems with 5800X3D CPUs, due to player feedback—according to Tom's Hardware: "there was some discontent among players with the previous configuration with the Ryzen 9 5950X because, while the chip sports 16 Zen 3 execution cores, Counter-Strike 2 doesn't exploit the processor's prowess. Some players criticized PGL's poor processor choice for previous events, claiming lousy frame rates." Performance connoisseurs will be pleased to hear about the tournament organizer's new push into modern platforms—Silviu Stroie, PGL CEO, stated: "we have meticulously optimized this bespoke gaming setup to ensure that every participant experiences CS2 in the highest fidelity without compromise. The AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU stands out as a game-changer in the esports arena, promising to elevate the competitive play of CS2 to new heights."

According to @momomo_us, Intel has discontinued its Cryo Cooling Technology as of July 1, 2023, marking the end of one of the tech industry's few sub-ambient cooling options. The technology, which could chill CPUs to 0 degrees Celsius to enhance performance, accompanied Intel's processors from the 10th-generation Comet Lake to the 13th-generation Raptor Lake. Despite its innovative approach to boosting CPU performance, the cooling solution was not widely embraced. The discontinuation comes just before the arrival of the 14th Generation Raptor Lake Refresh, which will not support the Cryo Cooling tech. Intel plans to maintain updates for the existing Cryo Cooling hardware until December 31, 2023.

This specialized cooling method did see some use in products like the Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML360 Sub-Zero and the EKWB EK-QuantumX Delta TEC waterblocks. Interestingly, the technology has managed to work even with non-Intel CPUs, which famous overclocker der8auer managed to get up and running on AMD's Ryzen 9 5950X. Some modifications were in place, but it was possible to do so. The likely reason for shutting down the cryo cooling project is the need for more financial sense to continue to pursue this technology and the effort to keep the cost of R&D down and make funds available for other projects at Intel's laboratories.

AMD announced that it is bundling "Company of Heroes 3" with retail PIB packages of Ryzen 5000 series "Zen 3" desktop processors. The WWII-setting real-time strategy (RTS) is being bundled with new purchases of Ryzen 9 5950X, 5900X; Ryzen 7 5800X3D, 5800X, 5700X; Ryzen 5 5600X, 5600, and 5500. The 5700G and 5600G APUs are not eligible for this promotion. The bundle is limited to participated retailers, and in select markets. The company also has a separate running promotion for Ryzen 7000 series "Zen 4" desktop PIBs, where the company is giving away "Star Wars Jedi: Survivor."

Cooler Master at the 2023 International CES showed off the Cooling X, a patent-pending unique desktop PC architecture by the company where the liquid cooling of the CPU and GPU isn't confined to a couple of closed loop AIOs, but rather a giant liquid-cooling loop that even involves the side-panels of the case itself, that double up as additional heat-dissipation surfaces. Notice how some compact fanless cases use extruded-aluminium body panels that double up as heatsinks, to cool the hot components? The Cooling X re-imagines this, where instead of dissipating heat from a heatpipe, the extruded-aluminium body panels have coolant channels, so some of the heat from the liquid-cooling loop is dissipated. These panels supplement a conventional liquid-cooling radiator that's located along the rear panel, which has active ventilation. The liquid-cooling loop cools the processor and GPU.

For its compact dimensions of just 266 mm x 149 mm x 371 mm (LxWxH), the Cooling X prebuilt packs some mighty high-end hardware—an AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 16-core processor, and a Radeon RX 6800 XT GPU up to 64 GB of dual-channel DDR4-3200 memory, two 2 TB M.2 NVMe SSDs, and a homebrew 850 W 80 Plus Gold SFX power supply. For now Cooling X is just a codename, and Cooler Master intends to take this concept forward with high-performance gaming/creator prebuilt desktops sold under its own marquee.

AMD, in its technical presentation for the new Radeon RX 7900 series "Navi 31" GPU, gave us an elaborate explanation on why it had to take the chiplets route for high-end GPUs, devices that are far more complex than CPUs. The company also enlightened us on what sets chiplet-based packages apart from classic multi-chip modules (MCMs). An MCM is a package that consists of multiple independent devices sharing a fiberglass substrate.

An example of an MCM would be a mobile Intel Core processor, in which the CPU die and the PCH die share a substrate. Here, the CPU and the PCH are independent pieces of silicon that can otherwise exist on their own packages (as they do on the desktop platform), but have been paired together on a single substrate to minimize PCB footprint, which is precious on a mobile platform. A chiplet-based device is one where a substrate is made up of multiple dies that cannot otherwise independently exist on their own packages without an impact on inter-die bandwidth or latency. They are essentially what should have been components on a monolithic die, but disintegrated into separate dies built on different semiconductor foundry nodes, with a purely cost-driven motive.

Intel today launched its 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" desktop processors, and companion 700-series motherboard chipset. These processors are built in the same LGA1700 package as the previous generation "Alder Lake," and are backwards-compatible with 600-series chipset motherboards through a BIOS update. Likewise, 700-series chipset motherboards support older "Alder Lake" processors. With the new 13th Gen Core, Intel is broadly promising an up to 15% uplift in single-threaded performance, which has a bigger bearing on gaming performance; and an up to 41% multi-threaded performance uplift; over the previous-generation, when comparing the top Core i9-13900K with its predecessor, the i9-12900K. Intel also claims to have outclassed the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X in multi-threaded performance, and the Ryzen 7 5800X3D in gaming performance.

Intel's performance claims are backed by some impressive hardware changes despite the company sticking with the same Intel 7 (10 nm Enhanced SuperFin) foundry node as "Alder Lake." To begin with, the single-thread performance uplift comes from the new "Raptor Cove" performance-core, which promises an IPC uplift over the previous-generation "Golden Cove," comes with more dedicated L2 cache of 2 MB per core (compared to 1.25 MB per core in the previous-generation); and significantly higher clock-speeds, going all the way up to 5.80 GHz. "Raptor Lake" has up to 8 P-cores, but the company has put in a lot of work in improving the contribution of E-cores to the processor's overall multi-threaded performance uplift. This is achieved by doubling the E-core count to 16. These are the same "Gracemont" E-cores as previous-generation, but Intel has doubled the L2 cache that's shared in a 4-core Gracemont cluster, from 2 MB per cluster to 4 MB. There are upgrades to even the hardware prefetchers of these cores.

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.

A user named "orangezone" submitted a CPU-Z validation for an alleged retail AMD Ryzen 7 7700X processor, revealing its key specs that include 5.425 GHz clocks at 1.152 V core-voltage. The submission includes a CPU-Z Bench run for the processor, which puts the single-threaded performance at 774 points, and the multi-threaded performance of the 8-core/16-thread processor at 8381 points. The single-threaded performance is around 20% higher than that of the previous-gen flagship Ryzen 9 5950X, and about 1% faster than the Core i9-12900K ("Golden Cove" P-core). This particular bench run was performed on a Gigabyte X670E AORUS Master motherboard, with DDR5-6400 CL30 memory.

In separate news, BenchLeaks spotted a Geekbench run of the Ryzen 7 7700X (by a different user); on an ASUS ROG Crosshair X670E Hero and DDR5-6000 memory. Here, the processor scored 2209 points in the single-threaded test, and 14459 points in the multi-threaded one, in Geekbench 5.4.5. This is a surprising result, as it puts the single-threaded performance of the 7700X at about 16% higher than the Core i7-12700K, and a fascinating 2% higher than the 8P+4E "Alder Lake" chip in multi-threaded tests. The 7700X launches in the same market segment as the i7-12700K, when it goes on sale this September 27.

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).

Intel's 13th Gen Core i5 "Raptor Lake" desktop processor lineup could see the top Core i5-13600K and i5-13600KF feature a 6P+8E core-configuration (that's six performance cores and eight efficiency cores). Each of the six P-cores has HyperThreading enabled, making this a 14-core/20-thread processor. Each of the six "Raptor Cove" P-cores has 2 MB of dedicated L2 cache. The eight "Gracemont" E-cores are spread across two E-core clusters with four cores, each. Each cluster shares 4 MB of L2 cache among the four E-cores (increased from 2 MB per cluster on "Alder Lake"). The P-cores and E-cores share 24 MB of L3 cache, increased from 20 MB on the i5-12600K.

A qualification sample (QS) of the Core i5-13600K made its way to social media, where it was put through a bunch of synthetic tests. In CPU-Z Bench, the i5-13600K QS scores 830 points in single-thread, compared to 648 points of the Ryzen 9 5950X "Zen 3," and trails it in the multi-threaded tests, with 10031.8 points, compared to 11906 points for the Ryzen. The QS comes with a Processor Base Power (PBP) value of 125 W, same as that of the i5-12600K. "Raptor Lake" is backwards compatible with Intel 600-series chipset motherboards, although it launches alongside the Intel 700-series chipset. It shares the LGA1700 socket with 12th Gen "Alder Lake," and is built on the same Intel 7 node (10 nm Enhanced SuperFin) as its predecessor.

AMD today unveiled its next-generation Ryzen 7000 desktop processors, based on the Socket AM5 desktop platform. The new Ryzen 7000 series processors introduce the new "Zen 4" microarchitecture, with the company claiming a 15% single-threaded uplift over "Zen 3" (16-core/32-thread Zen 4 processor prototype compared to a Ryzen 9 5950X). Other key specs about the architecture put out by AMD include a doubling in per-core L2 cache to 1 MB, up from 512 KB on all older versions of "Zen." The Ryzen 7000 desktop CPUs will boost to frequencies above 5.5 GHz. Based on the way AMD has worded their claims, it seems that the "+15%" number includes IPC gains, plus gains from higher clocks, plus what the DDR4 to DDR5 transition achieves. With Zen 4, AMD is introducing a new instruction set for AI compute acceleration. The transition to the LGA1718 Socket AM5 allows AMD to use next-generation I/O, including DDR5 memory, and PCI-Express Gen 5, both for the graphics card, and the M.2 NVMe slot attached to the CPU socket.

Much like Ryzen 3000 "Matisse," and Ryzen 5000 "Vermeer," the Ryzen 7000 "Raphael" desktop processor is a multi-chip module with up to two "Zen 4" CCDs (CPU core dies), and one I/O controller die. The CCDs are built on the 5 nm silicon fabrication process, while the I/O die is built on the 6 nm process, a significant upgrade from previous-generation I/O dies that were built on 12 nm. The leap to 5 nm for the CCD enables AMD to cram up to 16 "Zen 4" cores per socket, all of which are "performance" cores. The "Zen 4" CPU core is larger, on account of more number-crunching machinery to achieve the IPC increase and new instruction-sets, as well as the larger per-core L2 cache. The cIOD packs a pleasant surprise—an iGPU based on the RDNA2 graphics architecture! Now most Ryzen 7000 processors will pack integrated graphics, just like Intel Core desktop processors.

AMD's current generation flagship desktop processor, the Ryzen 9 5950X, can be had for a steal, with prices now ranging between $520 and $550. Prices of the 16-core/32-thread processor based on the "Zen 3" microarchitecture, have been on a sharp decline since the launch of the Core i9-12900K "Alder Lake," falling from the $750 launch price to $600 in early-March, with current (late-April) prices looking like $549 on Amazon, and $519 on the venerable MicroCenter website, with even lower prices expected in-store. At $520-550, prices of the 5950X would compare with the Core i9-12900 (non-K), but still be higher than the $385 Core i7-12700K. The 12-core/24-thread Ryzen 9 5900X can be had for $399 on Newegg.

AMD is slowly preparing to transition its consumer base into a new platform and processor architecture with the launch of Ryzen 7000 series processors codenamed Raphael. Based on the new AM5 LGA socket, these processors will come with up to 16 cores and 32 threads at the top-end configurations. Thanks to the latest round of rumors, we managed to find out just what TDP rating two SKUs will carry. According to a well-known leaker @graymon55, AMD is rating the 12-core SKU with a TDP of 105 Watts. On the other hand, the top-end 16-core 7000 series SKU replacing the current Ryzen 9 5950X will carry a large TDP of 170 Watts.

The 170 Watt TDP configuration will likely require better cooling efforts. AMD will probably advise users to invest in better cooling solutions, such as AIO liquid coolers or giant air coolers.

Pricing of AMD's Ryzen 9 5950X 16-core/32-thread "Zen 3" processor dropped to a surprising all-time-low of $600 on Newegg, down from its original $800, a 25% drop in price. This puts the 5950X more or less on par with the pricing of the Intel Core i9-12900K (±$20 variance). The 12-core/24-thread 5900X is going for $450, which is still significantly higher than the $380 that the Core i7-12700K commands.

The 5950X continues to lead the i9-12900K in various heavily multi-threaded productivity tasks, although it has lost the gaming performance edge to the new Intel chip. AMD is attempting to remedy this with the Ryzen 7 5800X3D processor that the company claims offers gaming performance parity, but will fall behind in multi-threaded productivity on account of fewer cores. If you're planning to pick a 5950X from Newegg for a build-from-scratch, don't forget to check out combo deals with motherboards, where you get to save a further $30-odd.

AMD's Ryzen 7000 series of desktop processors based on the novel Zen 4 core architecture are scheduled to arrive in the second half of 2022. While we are not sure just how big the architectural differences will be going from Zen 3 (with or without 3D V-cache) to the new Zen 4 core, we have some leaked information that confirms the existence of two SKUs that reveal additional details about the processor configuration. In the MilkyWay@Home project, aiming to create a model of the Milky Way galaxy by utilizing countless PCs across the globe, we found two next-generation Ryzen 7000 SKUs. The MilkyWay@Home project isn't a benchmark. However, it is a valuable reference where the next generation processors appeared.

First in line is the 100-000000666-21_N CPU, a codename for an eight-core, sixteen-threaded design. This model should correspond to the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X CPU, a successor to the Ryzen 7 5800X model. Next in line is the 100-000000665-21_N CPU with 16 cores and 32 threads, a successor to the Ryzen 9 5950X named Ryzen 9 7950X. One important thing to note is that these new CPUs feature different level two (L2) cache configurations. With the previous generation 5000 series "Vermeer" processors, the L2 cache was locked at 512 KB per core. However, according to today's leak, the upgraded Zen 4 IP will bring 1024 KB of L2 cache per core, doubling the cache size at one of the fastest levels.

Eurocom is proud to announce the launch of the 15.6" Nightsky ARX315 Superlaptop powered by the AMD Ryzen 5000 series desktop processors. Supercharged by the latest generation AMD Socket AM4, AMD B550 chipset, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 graphics, up to 24 TB of storage and 64 GB of DDR4-3200 memory, the Nightsky ARX315 delivers an impressive level of performance in a fully upgrade-able laptop form factor.

"The EUROCOM Nightsky ARX315 combines AMD Ryzen 5000 series desktop processors, up to 5950X, with NVIDIA Geforce RTX 3070 graphics in a 15.6" laptop form factor that weighs just 2.6 kg is a remarkable feat that our customers are extremely excited about. The EUROCOM ARX315 truly is King of the Hill in terms of user customization, user upgrade-ability, performance and mobility!" Mark Bialic, Eurocom President.

Although we can't confirm it, the screenshot below is said to be of a retail version of the Intel Alder Lake Core i9-12900K that has been overclocked to 5.2 GHz on all P-cores, with the E-cores at stock clocks. It is said to be drawing a massive 330 Watts at these clock speeds, which is rather a lot for a consumer level CPU.

Sadly details such as the motherboard used and RAM clocks are absent. The E-cores are said to be locked at a maximum clock of 3.7 GHz, so there appears to be no overclocking potential in them. Yes, Intel does manage to edge out AMD's Ryzen 9 5950X at these clock speeds in the multithreaded test, which is no mean feat considering we're looking at eight threads less here, but Intel does so at over twice the power draw.Update: Updated due to a slight misunderstanding, the E-cores were apparently enabled, but running at stock clock.

The upcoming flagship Intel Core i9-12900K has recently appeared in a CPU-Z single-thread synthetic benchmark where the processor scored 825 points. This would place the i9-12900K 27% higher than AMD Ryzen 9 5950X with 648 points and 20% faster then the previous generation Core i9-11900K at 682 points. This leak comes after SiSoftware published an early performance overview which showed the i9-12900K only matching the performance of competitors. We have also seen the processor in Cinebench R23 where it bested the 32-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX HEDT processor. The 12th Generation Intel Core family is expected to be announced later this year alongside the Z690 chipset with the i9-12900K rumored to cost 604.99 USD.

GIGABYTE Technology,an industry leader in high-performance servers and workstations, today announced two new W-series workstations, W771-Z00 for AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO processors and W331-Z00 for AMD Ryzen processors, as well as a WRX80 chipset motherboard, MC62-G40, and a TRX40 chipset rack server, G182-C20. Remote work and a high level of compute for 3D design or engineering are driving factors for these new professional products.

Today's engineers and power users are focused on high demanding workloads and require a powerful workstation to enable them to work effectively and efficiently. The W771-Z00 coupled with a top-tier processor from the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO family, such as the 3995WX with 64 cores 128 threads, make this the most powerful workstation to date. The motherboard for this workstation is the MC62-G40. Based around the AMD WRX80 chipset, the W771-Z00 shares high-end features that are typically only found in servers.

The 8 "Golden Cove" performance cores (P-cores) present on 12th Gen "Alder Lake-S" desktop processors offer an IPC gain of 19% over the "Cypress Cove" cores powering current 11th Gen "Rocket Lake-S" processors, claims Intel. This would put them at roughly 35% higher IPC than the "Skylake" cores that powered Intel client desktop processors until as recently as 2020, with the 10th Gen "Comet Lake." This 19% number, however, is presented as a geomean of performance improvement at iso-frequency, across a wide selection of tests that include SPEC CPU 2017, SYSmark 25, Crossmark, PCMark 10, WebXPRT3, and Geekbench 5.4.1.

The high IPC of the P-cores, coupled with the high rumored frequencies for the enthusiast i9-12900K part running well into 5.30 GHz or beyond, begins to explain how 8 of these "Golden Cove" cores, coupled with 8 fairly fast "Gracemont" cores, closes in on the 16-core AMD Ryzen 9 5950X at Cinebench R20.

With qualification samples of the upcoming Intel Core i9-12900K "Alder Lake-S" processors and companion Socket LGA1700 motherboards hitting the black-market, expect a deluge of benchmarks on social media. One such that stands out makes a fascinating claim that the i9-12900K beats AMD's current flagship Ryzen 9 5950X processor at Cinebench R20, which has been AMD's favorite multi-threaded benchmark. At stock speeds, with liquid cooling, the i9-12900K allegedly scores 810 points in the single-threaded test, and 11600 points in multi-threaded.

To put these numbers into perspective, a retail Ryzen 9 5950X scores 641 points in the single-threaded test, and 10234 points in multi-threaded, in our own testing. The i9-12900K is technically a 16-core processor, just like the 5950X, but half its cores are low-power "Gracemont." The "Alder Lake-S" chip appears to be making up ground on the single-threaded performance of the "Golden Cove" P-core, that's a whopping 25% higher than the "Zen 3" core on the 5950X. This is aided not just by higher IPC, but also the max boost frequency of 5.30 GHz for 1~2 cores, and 5.00 GHz "all-core" boost (for the P-cores).

The Intel Core i9-12900K is the companies upcoming flagship 12th Generation Alder Lake-S processor featuring a hybrid design with 8 high-performance cores and 8 high-efficiency cores. The qualification sample for the processor reportedly features a base clock of 3.9 GHz and a boost clock of 5.3 GHz which is less than initial rumors which claimed boost speeds could reach 5.5 GHz. The processor achieved a multi-core score of 11300 points in Cinebench R20 which is 800 points higher than AMD's flagship Ryzen 9 5950X. Intel's 12th Generation Alder Lake-S processors will be manufactured on the 10 nm Enhanced SuperFin node and will include support for PCIe 5.0 and DDR5. Intel is expected to announce the processors in Q3 2021 for a Q4 2021 release which will position them against AMD's upcoming V-Cache technology expected to arrive in early 2022.

AMD is reportedly preparing to launch a B2 stepping of their Ryzen 5000 series of processors, codenamed Vermeer. Thanks to the findings of Patrick Schur, who was lucky to get ahold of AMD's processor codes, we have information that AMD is slowly preparing a B2 stepping of Vermeer processors, to come as a refresh. First off is the alleged Ryzen 9 5950XT 16 core, 32 threaded models which are supposed to feature a base speed of 3.4 GHz, and a boost frequency of 5.0 GHz, entering the 5 GHz world. Another B2 stepping that we know about is an alleged Ryzen 5 5600XT 6 core, 12 threaded design. This one features the same frequencies as its Ryzen 5 5600X variant, meaning 3.7 GHz base, and 4.6 GHz boost frequencies.

Of course, all this information should be taken with a big grain of salt, as we don't know what AMD is planning to do, or how the company plans to manifest any new product launch.

Intel claims that its upcoming 11th Gen Core "Rocket Lake-S" desktop processors offer up to 11% higher storage performance than competing AMD Ryzen 5000 processors, when using the CPU-attached M.2 NVMe slot. A performance slide released by Intel's Ryan Shrout shows a Samsung 980 PRO 1 TB PCI-Express 4.0 x4 M.2 NVMe SSD performance on a machine powered by a Core i9-11900K processor, compared to one powered by an AMD Ryzen 9 5950X. PCMark 10 Quick System Drive Benchmark is used to evaluate storage performance on both machines. On both machines a separate drive is used as the OS/boot drive, and the Samsung 980 PRO is used as a test drive, free from any OS role.

The backup page for the slide provides details of the system configurations used for both machines. What it doesn't mention, however, is whether on the AMD machine, the 980 PRO was installed on the CPU-attached M.2 NVMe slot, or one that's attached to the AMD X570 chipset. Unlike the Intel Z590, the AMD X570 puts out downstream PCI-Express 4.0, which motherboard designers can use to put out additional NVMe Gen 4 slots. On the Intel Z590 motherboard, the M.2 NVMe Gen 4 slot the drive was tested on is guaranteed to be the CPU-attached one, as the Z590 PCH puts out PCIe Gen 3 downstream lanes. A PCI-Express 4.0 x4 link is used as chipset bus on the AMD X570, offering comparable bandwidth to the DMI 3.0 x8 (PCI-Express 3.0 x8) employed on the Intel Z590. A drive capable of attaining 7 GB/s sequential transfers should be in a sub-optimal situation on a chipset-attached M.2 slot. It would be nice if Intel clears this up in an update to its backup.

Update 02:51 UTC: In response to a specific question on Twitter, on whether the drives were tested on CPU-attached M.2 slots on both platforms, Ryan Shrout stated that a PCI-Express AIC riser card was used on both platforms to ensure that the drives are CPU-attached. 11% is a significant storage performance uplift on offer.

Intel is preparing to launch their latest generation Rocket Lake-S processors in the coming weeks. We recently saw some leaked Geekbench 5 scores for the eight-core Intel Core i7-11700K showing it beating the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X in single-core performance. We have recently received some new benchmarks for the i9-11900K and i7-11700K this time in CPU-Z showing them once again best AMD in single-core performance.

The Cypress Cove core design found in these upcoming processors is expected to bring double-digit IPC gains over Skylake and this is reflected in these scores. Take all these benchmarks with a healthy dose of skepticism as we have no way of confirming these numbers until we can test the chips ourselves. The Intel Core i9-11900K gets a single thread score of 695.4 and a multi-thread score of 6522.1 which puts it 19% ahead of the i9-10900K and 3% ahead of the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X in single-threaded performance. The processor still falls far behind the Ryzen 9 5950X in multi-threaded performance due to it having half the number of cores.