Intel's Rocket Lake-S platform is scheduled to arrive at the beginning of the following year, which is just a few days away. The Rocket Lake lineup of processors is going to be Intel's 11th generation of Core desktop CPUs and the platform is expected to make a debut with Intel's newest Cypress Cove core design. Thanks to the Geekbench 5 submission, we have the latest information about the performance of the upcoming Intel Core i7-11700K 8C/16T processor. Based on the Cypress Cove core, the CPU is allegedly bringing a double-digit IPC increase, according to Intel.

In the single-core result, the CPU has managed to score 1807 points, while the multi-core score is 10673 points. The CPU ran at the base clock of 3.6 GHz, while the boost frequency is fixed at 5.0 GHz. Compared to the previous, 10th generation, Intel Core i7-10700K which scores 1349 single-core score and 8973 points multi-core score, the Rocket Lake CPU has managed to put out 34% higher single-core and 19% higher multi-core score. When it comes to the comparison to AMD offerings, the highest-end Ryzen 9 5950X is about 7.5% slower in single-core result, and of course much faster in multi-core result thanks to double the number of cores.

Cyberpunk 2077 does not leverage simultaneous multi-threading (SMT) on AMD Ryzen processors, according to multiple technical reviews of the game that tested it with various processors. The game does leverage the analogous HyperThreading feature on rival Intel Core processors. While this doesn't adversely affect performance of higher core-count Ryzen chips, such as the 16-core Ryzen 9 5950X or to a lesser extent the 12-core 5900X, lower core-count variants such as the 6-core 5600X take a definite performance hit, with PCGH reporting that a Ryzen 5 5600X is now matched by a Core i5-10400F, as the game is able to take advantage of HyperThreading and deal with 12 logical processors on the Intel chip, while ignoring SMT on the AMD one.

CD Projekt RED may have bigger problems on its hands than performance optimization for a PC processor, such as the game being riddled with glaring performance issues on consoles; but in the meantime, the PC enthusiast community swung to action with a fix. Authored by chaosxk on Reddit, it involves manually editing the executable binaries of the game using a Hex Editor, which tricks the game into using logical processors as cores. This fix has been found to improve frame-rates on AMD Ryzen machines. Before attempting the hex edit, make sure you back up your original executables. The screenshot below provides a before & after-patch view of Cyberpunk 2077 loading a Ryzen 9 5950X. You can learn more about this fix, and a step-by-step guide here.Update 08:28 UTC: We have some technical details on what's happening.

AMD has launched its RDNA 2 based graphics cards, codenamed Navi 21. These GPUs are set to compete with NVIDIA's Ampere offerings, with the lineup covering the Radeon RX 6800, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6900 XT graphics cards. Until now, we have had reviews of the former two, but not the Radeon RX 6900 XT. That is because the card is coming at a later date, specifically on December 8th, in just a few days. As a reminder, the Radeon RX 6900 XT GPU is a Navi 21 XTX model with 80 Compute Units that give a total of 5120 Stream Processors. The graphics card uses a 256-bit bus that connects the GPU with 128 MB of its Infinity Cache to 16 GB of GDDR6 memory. When it comes to frequencies, it has a base clock of 1825 MHz, with a boost speed of 2250 MHz.

Today, in a GeekBench 5 submission, we get to see the first benchmarks of AMD's top-end Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card. Running an OpenCL test suite, the card was paired with AMD's Ryzen 9 5950X 16C/32T CPU. The card managed to pass the OpenCL test benchmarks with a score of 169779 points. That makes the card 12% faster than RX 6800 XT GPU, but still slower than the competing NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 GPU, which scores 177724 points. However, we need to wait for a few more benchmarks to appear to jump to any conclusions, including the TechPowerUp review, which is expected to arrive once NDA lifts. Below, you can compare the score to other GPUs in the GeekBench 5 OpenCL database.

One of the secret sauces of AMD's new "Big Navi" Radeon RX 6800 series GPUs is the ability for the GPU to sustain high engine clock speeds, with the company leveraging boost frequencies above 2.00 GHz in certain scenarios. It was only a matter of time before professional overclockers got their hands on an RX 6800 XT, and paired it with an LN2 evaporator. TecLab_Takukou is the new king of the 3DMark Fire Strike leaderboard thanks to their skills in running an RX 6800 XT at insane 2.80 GHz engine clocks. Takukou overclocked the RX 6800 XT to 2.80 GHz core, and 2150 MHz (17.2 Gbps) memory. This particular configuration yielded a Fire Strike score of 48890 points.

In a separate feat, with the RX 6800 XT running at 2.75 GHz, Takukou chased down the HWBot 3DMark Fire Strike leaderboard, with 49456 points. For both the 2.80 GHz and 2.75 GHz feats, the rest of the system included an LN2-cooled AMD Ryzen 9 5950X processor running at 5.60 GHz all-core, 32 GB of DDR4-3800 memory, and an MSI MEG X570 GODLIKE motherboard. From the looks of it, Takukou is using a reference-design RX 6800 XT board, so we can only hope what else can be accomplished from custom-design RX 6800 XT boards, such as the Sapphire NITRO+, PowerColor Red Devil, or ASUS ROG Strix O16G. Takukou leads the 3DMark Fire Strike leaderboard, followed by another RX 6800 XT-powered close-second, Lucky_n00b (47932 points, 2.65 GHz engine clock on air). Safedisc is third (47725 points, RTX 3090 @ 2.38 GHz).

AMD's Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics card debuted yesterday and in the overall test results, we saw that it runs just a few percent behind NVIDIA's direct competitor - GeForce RTX 3080. However, when it comes to overclocking and world records, the card has just set one. Popular extreme overclocker Alva Jonathan aka "LUCKY_NOOB", has managed to overclock the Radeon RX 6800 XT GPU and set a new world record with the card. Paired with LN2 cooled Ryzen 9 5950X clocked at 5.4 GHz, the graphics card was cooled by... air cooler? Indeed it was. Lucky has managed to clock the RX 6800 XT at 2650 MHz using the reference air cooler. With that system, he managed to score 47932 points in 3DMark FireStrike.

The overclocker has modified 3DMark's tessellation to presumably give the Radeon card more performance, so the score isn't valid on the official 3DMark charts. What gives the overclocker an idea of a world record is the fact that HWBOT actually accepts those numbers, which ranks it higher than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card that scored 47725 points. Despite the modifications, it is impressive to see AMD's card rank that high, and as more overclockers are getting their hands on these cards, it is a question if we are going to see the 3 GHz barrier broken by a Radeon card.

Der8auer has picked up Intel's latest TEC cooler, built in conjunction with EKWB, and unceremoniously plopped it right into an AMD Ryzen 9 5950X CPU. Well, not completely unceremoniously - there were many accommodations that had to be made in order to achieve this. For one, as this is a solution designed specifically for Intel CPUs and sockets, Der8auer had to Frankenstein his way through a number of cooling parts to be able to adapt the TEC solution to the AM4 socket. Not only that, but Intel's TEC requires deep software control for it to work properly - software control which only works with Intel silicon, of course. Der8auer thus had to have a second machine running an Intel 10900K CPU to control the software on the Intel cryo cooler.

All in all, the results were interesting, to say the least. The 16-core, 32-thread Ryzen 9 5950X saw single-core-load CCD temperatures in the 90 °C department with the TEC solution disabled - which promptly dropped down to only 50 °C with the cryo cooler actually operating. With a game load, the 5959X achieved up to 5.050 GHz in single-cores on its automatic boost profile. The entire chip often boosted to 4.8 - 4.9 GHz on all cores at once (with variances between the CCDs) whilst under this cooling solution and workload. With the TEC operating in its unregulated mode - which means, with no considerations for CPU operating temperature and power usage for the cooling process - saw the Ryzen 9 5950X achieving 2 °C core temperature results, and boosted frequencies up to a staggering 5323 MHz on all cores - before crashing. An interesting piece of work which you catch on video after the break; one can rest assured that most PC cooling specialists are already working on their own TEC-based cooling solutions following Intel's achievement in this field.

AMD has just recently announced its next-generation Radeon RX 6000 series GPU based on the new RDNA 2 architecture. The architecture is set to compete with NVIDIA Ampere architecture and highest offerings of the competing company. Today, thanks to the well-known leaker TUM_APISAK, we have some Geekbench OpenCL scores. It appears that some user has gotten access to the system with the Radeon RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT GPUs, running Cinebench 4.4 OpenCL tests. In the tests, the system ran on the Intel platform with Core i9-10900K CPU with 16 GB DDR4 RAM running at 3600 MHz. The motherboard used was ASUS top-end ROG Maximus XII Extreme Z490 board.

When it comes to results, the system with RX 6800 GPU scored anywhere from 347137 points to 336367 points in three test runs. For comparison, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 scores about 361042 points, showcasing that the Radeon card is not faster in any of the runs. When it comes to the higher-end Radeon RX 6800 XT GPU, it scored 407387 and 413121 points in two test runs. Comparing that to GeForce RTX 3080 GPU that scores 470743 points, the card is slower compared to the competition. There has been a Ryzen 9 5950X test setup that boosted the performance of Radeon RX 6800 XT card by quite a lot, making it reach 456837 points, making a huge leap over the Intel-based system thanks to the Smart Access Memory (SAM) technology that all-AMD system provides.

Scalping bots and overpriced re-sales are the new reality of PC hardware launches. The same swarm that wiped out launch inventories of NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30-series graphics cards, now hit AMD Ryzen 5000 series "Zen 3" processor inventories across the US, reports HotHardware. Bots scalped out Ryzen 5000 series inventories using sophisticated scalping services such as Bounce Alerts, and scalpers quickly put their freshly acquired inventory to re-sale on eBay at exorbitant prices, with the likes of an $800 Ryzen 9 5950X being re-sold at over 50% premiums.

ASUS has warned that a similar fate awaits the first inventories of the Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 graphics cards, given that AMD has marketed these next-gen GPUs to offer performance rivaling those of the GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 2080 Ti (in effect RTX 3070), respectively. In the weeks leading up to the Ryzen 5000 market release, AMD issued anti-scalping guidelines to its retail partners, to ensure fair sales of hardware to genuine buyers, and to prevent scalping bots. We now know these guidelines were futile.

The processors may be a few days away from availability, but the overclocking records are already trickling out. Darklord posted a CPU-Z validation for a Ryzen 9 5950X 16-core processor overclocked to 5898.63 MHz (or roughly 5.90 GHz), with all 16 cores and 32 threads enabled, and dual-channel memory. It appears to be a straight up multiplier overclock with the multiplier set to 59.0X, and stock base-clock. What's interesting, though, is the core voltage that this feat took—a scorching 1.656 V. Other components include an ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Impact X570 motherboard, dual-channel DDR4-3600 memory, and basic GT 710 graphics. There's no word on cooling, but with this kind of voltage, an extreme method such as LN2 won't surprise us. Find the validation here.

Scores for AMD's upcoming Zen 3 Ryzen 7 5800X (8 core, 16 thread) and Ryzen 9 5950X (16 core, 32 thread) have surfaced on the CPU-Z benchmark. The results, which should - as always - be taken with appropriate salt, point towards the Ryzen 7 5800X scoring 650 single-core and 6593 points in the multi-threaded benchmark. The Ryzen 9 5950X is rated as scoring 690.2 points in the same single-threaded benchmark and 13306.5 points in the multi-threaded one. CPU-Z scores for the Intel Core i9-10900K (10 cores, 20 threads) are set at 584 and 7389 points respectively. This is further fuel to the fire on AMD's current technology and performance leadership.

It would seem that a number of players have received their Zen 3 samples, considering the amount of performance leaks that have surfaced just in the past two days. The new AMD Zen 3 processors carry a huge weight on their shoulders - demonstrating AMD's touted leadership in CPU performance in all metrics, whilst justifying their increased pricing against Zen 2 offerings. Many rivers of ink (and some tears) have flown in regards to pricing of the new AMD processors, so it all pertains to performance considerations on whether that pricing is justified or not.

Leaker extraordinaire TUM_APISAK has leaked some benchmarks on AMD's upcoming Ryzen 9 5900X and 5950X CPUs - namely, in Geekbench 5. In this round of leaks - which are, admittedly, originating from two different systems), the 12-core, 24-thread AMD Ryzen 9 5900X scores 1605 points in single-core and 12869 in the Multi-core benchmarks. The 16-core, 32-thread Ryzen 9 5950X, on the other hand, scores 1575 points in single and 13605 points in Multi-core workloads. The Ryzen 9 5900X's higher base clocks may be responsible for the higher single-core score; however, the Ryzen 9 5959X pulls ahead - expectedly - in the Multi-core portion of the benchmark. Comparing scores between the Zen 3 5950X and the Zen-based 3950X (via AnandTech), which carry the same amount of cores, the 5950X offers a 18% and 12% advantage, respectively, in the single and multi-threaded tests - not a far cry from AMD's touted 19% IPC uplift.