In what could be a decisive response from Intel towards AMD's recent Ryzen success and core count democratization, reports are making the rounds that Intel is preparing for a shakedown of sorts of its i7 and i5 CPU line-up under the upcoming Coffee Lake architecture. We recently saw (and continue to see) AMD deliver much more interesting propositions than Intel in a pure power/performance/core ratio. And Intel seems to know that its lineup is in dire need of revision, if it wants to stop its market dominant position from bleeding too much.

A report from Canard PC claims that Intel will thoroughly revise its CPU lineup for the Coffee Lake architecture, with an i7-8700K six-core, 12-thread processor being the top offering. This 8700K is reported to deliver its 12 threads at a 3.7 GHz base clock, and a 95 W TDP. These are comparable to AMD's Ryzen 5 1600X processor, which ships with the same six cores and 12 threads under the same TDP, though it has 100 MHz less in base clock speed. However, AMD's Ryzen 5 1600X does retail for about $249 - and you can go even lower to Ryzen 5 1600's $219 - which probably won't happen with Intel's top of the line i7 offering. A slight mention towards the Ryzen 7's 95 W TDP - the same as this reported i7 8700K - even though it has 2 more physical cores, and 4 extra threads.

Intel has recently updated documentation on their available list of processors based on the 7th generation of the Core Family. These new Kaby Lake-based CPUs will further flesh-out Intel's offerings in both the desktop, laptop, and professional segments with new entries in the Core i3, Kaby Lake-U, and Xeon E3 lines of processors.

The new Core i3 processors make use of the S-0 stepping, instead of the B-0 stepping of previously-released processors. The additions are comprised of the i3-7340 (4.2 GHz, 4 MB cache, 51 W TDP); i3-7320T (3.6 GHz, 4MB cache, 35 W TDP); i3-7120 (4 GHz, 3 MB cache, 51 W TDP); and the i3-7120T (3.5 GHz, 3 MB cache, 35 W TDP.) On the laptop side of the equation, Intel is introducing four new processors: the Core i3-7007U (2 cores, 4 threads, 2.1 GHz, 3 MB cache); the Core i3-7110U (2 cores, 4 threads, 2.6 GHz, 3 MB cache); the Core i5-7210U (2 cores, 4 threads, 2.5 GHz base, 3.3 GHz Turbo, 3 MB cache); and the Core i7-7510U (2 cores, 4 threads, 2.7 GHz base, 3.7 GHz Turbo, 4 MB cache.) Lastly, Intel is adding the new E3-1285 v6 Xeon to its lineup. This one brings increased clock speeds (4.1 GHz base, 4.5 GHz Turbo) with Intel's HD P630 integrated graphics, increasing the TDP by 19 W ( to 91 W) compared to the already existing Xeon E3-1275 v6 - for a 300 MHz clock speed increase. This Xeon should be the new highest-end processor for the iMac, which should place its pricing above the $612 mark previously held by the Xeon E3-1280 v6.

The liquid cooled version of AMD's latest graphics card meant for the "pioneering crowd" of prosumers has been made available over at SabrePC. It sports the exact same GPU you'd find on the air-cooled version, featuring all the same 4096 Stream Processors and 16 GB of HBM2 memory. The only differences are, and you guessed it, the higher cooling capacity afforded by the AIO solution, and the therefore increased TDP from the 300 W of the air-cooled version to a eyebrow-raising 375 W. That increase in TDP must come partially from the employed cooling solution, but also from an (for now, anecdotal) ability for the card to more easily sustain higher clocks, closer to its AMD-rated 1,630 MHz peak core clock.

You can nab one right now in that rather striking gold and blue color scheme, and have it shipped to you in 24H. Hit the source link for the SabrePC page.

GIGABYTE today announced its latest generation of servers based on Intel's Skylake Purley architecture. This new generation brings a wealth of new options in scalability - across compute, network and storage - to deliver solutions for any application, from the enterprise to the data center to HPC. (Jump ahead to system introductions).

This server series adopts Intel's new product family - officially named the 'Intel Xeon Scalable family' and utilizes its ability to meet the increasingly diverse requirements of the industry, from entry-level HPC to large scale clusters.. The major development in this platform is around the improved features and functionality at both the host and fabric levels. These enable performance improvements - both natively on chip and for future extensibility through compute, network and storage peripherals. In practical terms, these new CPUs will offer up to 28 cores, and 48 PCIe lanes per socket.

Reeven may be a relatively little-known company, but I know for a fact they are one of the PC cooling companies offering one of the highest bang-for-buck ratio products in the Reeven Justice II (it's actually better than some AIOs; you should check the out.) The company makes use of a pretty distinct design language with their yellow-bladed fans (which they have recently built upon with the RGB Kiran.)

The coolers showcased by the company include the tower coolers Reeven Hans, a slim 120 mm cooler which includes a RGB Kiran fan and the Justice II, which builds upon the company's Justice while improving thermal characteristics. This is a high TDP design, black coated product, which looks gorgeous next to the yellow fans. The six heatpipe design helps this be one of the most effective tower air coolers in the market. Finally, the Ouranos Aero ends the scale on the tower coolers, being a 140 mm tower cooler (bigger than both the Hans and the Justice), and is especially designed for overclockers. The dual fan design ensures a greater airflow (and thus, higher heat dissipation capability.)

Intel is giving final touches to its next-generation "Gemini Lake" SoC, which will be sold under the Celeron and Pentium brands, and will succeed the current-generation "Apollo Lake" SoC. Built on a refined 14 nm process, the chip features a TDP of just 6W for the mobile variant, and 10W for the SFF desktop, but boasts of improved performance-per-Watt than its predecessor, translating into direct performance gains.

To begin with, "Gemini Lake" will embed a dual-core or quad-core CPU based on Intel's "Goldmont Plus" micro-architecture. A Goldmont Plus core isn't physically different from the current-gen "Goldmont," but apparently doubles the L2 cache to 4 MB from the existing 2 MB, and takes advantage of process-level improvements to lower power-draw, which Intel is using to bump up the CPU clock speeds.

Ahead of its launch on 17th May, specifications of NVIDIA's entry-level implementation of the "Pascal" GPU architecture, the GeForce GT 1030, were leaked to the web. This tiny GPU, with a TDP of just 35W, will power entry-level graphics cards of all shapes and sizes, including half-height (low profile) cards with passive cooling. NVIDIA could set the baseline price of the SKU as low as USD $59.99, given that in China, it is expected to start at RMB ¥450.

Based on the GP108 silicon, the GT 1030 will be endowed with 384 CUDA cores across three streaming multiprocessors holding 128 CUDA cores, each. In essence, the GP108 is half the chip the GP107 is, which powers the GTX 1050 Ti. With its three SM units, the GP108 features 24 TMUs, and 16 ROPs. It features a 64-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 2 GB of memory. The host interface is narrow, too, with the chip featuring a PCI-Express 3.0 x8 bus (cards will fit in x16 slots). The chip will be clocked at 1227 MHz core, 1468 MHz GPU Boost, and 6.00 GHz (GDDR5-effective) memory, working out to a memory bandwidth of 48 GB/s. Below is a quick block diagram we made.

Today is an eventful day in the tech world, with two high-impact leaks already offering themselves up to our scrutiny. We had previously covered AMD's upcoming HEDT platform, based on the company's new X399 chipset, as having a quite distinctive lineup of processors, with not only 16 and 12-core offerings hot on foundries presses', but also some 14-core, 28-thread chips as well. Now, a leak has apparently revealed the entire Ryzen HEDT platform, whose processor marketing name, Ryzen 9, sounds really close to Intel's Core i9.

AMD's offerings look to offer an edge at least on core-count, with the Red team's top offerings, the Ryzen 9 1998X and Ryzen 9 1998, bringing in a game-changer 16 cores and 32 threads to the table. Perhaps even more importantly, we have to mention that the 1998X (these names, if true, are quite a mouthful, though) achieves a 3.5 GHz base, 3.9 GHz boost clock, which owes nothing to AMD's Ryzen 7 1800X consumer flagship CPUs. Rumors of AMD's frequency demise on higher core-count Ryzen CPUs have been greatly exaggerated, it would seem. And did I mention that these chips are coming with a TDP of 155 W - 5 W lower than Intel's purported 12-core, i9-7920X offering? Consider that for a moment.

NVIDIA is apparently working on some new iterations of the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 GPUs for the mobile market. These new parts should come with lower clocks than the parts that are currently on the market, as a means for system builders to be able to reduce the profile and overall thickness of their laptops whilst still being able to keep a powerful graphics card at their heart.

The new GTX 1080 is the chip more details are floating about, with some captures from NotebookCheck showing all 2560 CUDA cores enabled, but lower clocks making up a much restrained power consumption. The 1290 MHz base clock (with an unknown boost value as of this point) points to a power consumption of just 110 W (compared to 165 W on the 1556 MHz base-clock GTX 1080; the new GTX 1070 should feature a TDP of 90 W compared to its previous 120 W fully-powered variant.) This naturally means a slower GPU - the new, revised GTX 1080 scored 17000 points on 3D Mark whereas usual implementations of the card score on the vicinity of 21,000. The change in power envelope, however, would enable new notebooks, such as the showcased Acer Predator 700, to deliver more performance than some of last gen's comparable thickness laptops. Its GTX 1080-powered 18.9 mm thickness in the leaked images allows for 600 points more than some previous-generation, 29 mm laptops.

AMD launched the retail versions of its flagship Ryzen 7 1800X and second-best Ryzen 7 1700X processors in WOF (without fan-heatsink) boxed packages, similar to how Intel sells unlocked "K" and "X" series processors, such as the Core i5-7600K and Core i7-7700K. The company is giving final touches to newer packages of the two chips that include a stock cooling solution, probably addressing markets in which socket AM4-compatible aftermarket cooling solutions aren't easily available. These packages will include AMD's largest Wraith-series cooler, the Wraith Max.

Wraith Max is the company's largest stock cooling solution, and is a slight upscale of the original Wraith cooler AMD introduced with the FX-8370. It is rated for CPUs with TDP of up to 140W, and so it could make short work of the 95W Ryzen 7 1800X and 1700X chips. It consists of a dense aluminium fin-stack heatsink to which heat drawn from a copper base is conveyed by heat pipes, and ventilated by a large fan. PIB (processor in a box) retail packages of the two chips with Wraith Max will have clear markings on the box, including stylized artwork of the cooler, besides being noticeably heavier. According to ComputerBase.de, the Ryzen 7 1800X Wraith Max is priced at 579€, compared to the WOF (without fan-heatsink) package's 537€ price; while the Ryzen 7 1700X Wraith Max is priced at 460€, compared to the WOF package's 396€ price (all prices include taxes).

At a press event by AMD, company CEO Lisa Su unveiled the first three AMD Ryzen desktop processor models, the top-dog Ryzen 7-1800X, the Ryzen 7-1700X, and the Ryzen 7-1700. The R7-1800X is priced at USD $499, followed by the R7-1700X at $399, and the R7-1700 at $329. The three chips will be available for purchase on the 2nd of March, 2017. The R7-1800X is clocked at 3.60 GHz, with a TurboCore frequency of 4.00 GHz, and the XFR (extended frequency range) feature, which further overclocks the chip, depending on the effectiveness of your CPU cooler.

The Ryzen 7-1700X ships with 3.40 GHz clocks, with 3.80 GHz TurboCore frequency, and the XFR feature. The Ryzen 7-1700 lacks XFR, and comes with slightly lower clocks, at 3.00 GHz core, and 3.70 GHz TurboCore. All three are true 8-core chips, with 512 KB of dedicated L2 cache per core, and 16 MB of shared L3 cache. Also featured are dual-channel DDR4 integrated memory controllers, and an integrated PCI-Express gen 3.0 root complex. The Ryzen 7-1700 has a TDP of just 65W (for a performance 8-core chip that's a kick in the butts of Intel's engineers), and will include an AMD Wraith Max cooling solution, while the 1700X and 1800X have TDP rated at 95W, and will come without coolers. At its media event, CEO Lisa Su stated that at $499, the Ryzen 7-1800X "smokes" the Intel Core i7-6900K eight-core processor. The company also unveiled the branding of its Radeon Vega enthusiast graphics family. Lastly, feast your eyes on the beautiful, 14 nm, Made-in-USA die-shot of Ryzen.

AMD is expected to package its upcoming Ryzen desktop processors in five ways - OEM trays (for system integrators and big pre-built PC manufacturers), PIB (processor in a box) with its basic fan-heatsink cooling solution, PIB with the new Wraith Spire cooling solution; PIB with the new Wraith Max cooling solution, and WOF (without fan-heatsink consumer). You can find the various models of Ryzen processors listed in our older article.

AMD's first wave of Ryzen processors consist of 65W and 95W TDP chips. Some of the more cost-effective models, such as the quad-core Ryzen R3 and SMT-equipped quad-core Ryzen R5, and certain variants of the six-core Ryzen R5, which have their TDP rated at 65W, could include AMD's basic cooling solution. According to XFastest, this cooler will look identical to the ones AMD used to bundle with its FX-series processors, before it innovated its Wraith cooling solution (representative image below). These coolers were being bundled with 125W TDP FX-series chips, and will now be re-tuned for low noise for the 65W TDP Ryzen chips, and will feature AM4 compatibility. Given this, we expect them to do a good job.

Featuring a total of 11 global patents (pending and granted), iCX from EVGA is efficiency perfected. With 9 additional sensors embedded on the PCB, a newly designed diecast baseplate and backplate, purposefully directed airflow chambers, and full control using EVGA Precision XOC, EVGA's iCX is the very definition of Interactive Cooling.

Why was iCX Technology Created?
With PC gaming growing, it is important to provide "Peace of Mind Gaming" to the user. With EVGA's new iCX technology, users can have a better understanding of their cards operation. This includes temperature monitoring on key components (not just GPU), interaction with other devices and better cooling with asynchronous fan control providing better overclocking capabilities.

With EVGA iCX technology, a new era of PC gaming is coming.

A Reddit user has used some good, old-fashioned thinking and inference (along with a good memory for details and investigative spirit) to try and shed some light on AMD's upcoming Ryzen chips - particularly, on the "X" part of their nomenclature.

As we've previously reported, upcoming AMD Ryzen chips will slot in two versions for each model: for example, there will be a R7 1700X, 8-core, 16-thread processor (with 95 W TDP), and expected to retail for $381.72, and a R7 1700 (sans "X"), also 8-core, 16-thread, with a rated TDP at 65 W, expected to retail at $316.59, almost $70 cheaper than the 1700X. Now, with AMD's promise of all Ryzen processors being multiplier unlocked (and thus user - or even through an automatic BIOS - overclockable), this would mean that acquiring the 1700X chip would somehow feel like bad business - after all, if the only difference between the two models were to be base and boost clocks (thus higher pricing and TDP), that would fall irrelevant to most power users, since the ability to overclock their Ryzen processors to those levels would be there anyway.

AMD Ryzen processors, which are scheduled to hit the shelves later this month, could be priced competitively, and one can read into their performance looking at their prices (compared to Intel's Core i5 and Core i7 "Kaby Lake" series). US pricing of at least three top-tier 8-core Ryzen models surfaced on ShopBLT. The flagship AMD Ryzen R7-1800X, bearing PIB part number "YD180XBCAEWOF," is priced at USD $490.29. The Ryzen R7-1700X (YD170XBCAEWOF), on the other hand, goes for $381.72. It's interesting to note here that the part numbers end in "WOF," designating "without fan-heatsink."

Lastly, there's the Ryzen R7-1700 (YD1700BBAEBOX), with 65W TDP, which is priced at $316.59. Given that all three parts are priced above the Core i5-7600K, and two of these are significantly pricier than the Core i7-7700K, which goes for $330, one could read into the chips' possible performance numbers. Remember, AMD has been selling 8-core FX "Piledriver" chips consistently cheaper than Intel's quad-core LGA115x Core i7 parts, and that has been significantly changed with Ryzen.

Noctua today presented three special-edition models of its award-winning quiet CPU coolers. The new SE-AM4 versions of the NH-D15, NH-U12S and NH-L9x65 are dedicated premium-quality solutions for the new AM4 socket of AMD's upcoming Ryzen architecture. Whereas the NH-L9x65 SE-AM4 is tailored for compact systems and the NH-U12S SE-AM4 offers an excellent balance of performance and compatibility, the NH-D15 SE-AM4 provides maximum cooling performance for overclockers and silent enthusiasts.

"AMD's Ryzen architecture promises exciting possibilities for various applications and the NH-D15, NH-U12S and NH-L9x65 are some of our most popular models, so it was a natural choice to create dedicated special editions for the new platform," says Roland Mossig (Noctua CEO). "Each of these coolers has received more than 100 awards and recommendations from international websites and magazines, so we're confident that the SE-AM4 special editions will be a great choice for anything from compact ITX builds to overclocked gaming rigs."

As TPU has reported before, some versions of AMD's RX 460 graphics cards were able to be unlocked to their full configuration with a simple BIOS update. This raised some questions as to why AMD didn't initially launch the RX 460 as such, increasing their competitiveness against rival NVIDIA's offerings, but now, it seems at least one of AMD's AIB partners has decided to take action in releasing a fully unlocked Polaris 11 GPU.

Marketed as the Sapphire Radeon RX 460 Nitro OC, this is the first officially launched retail version of the full, unlocked Polaris 11 chip, with all of its stream processors unlocked, for a grand total of 1024 SPs against the usual, and much more meager, 896. This brings the card's peak theoretical throughput at 2.56 TFLOPs (versus the base 2.2 TFLOPs on the 896 SP version), while keeping the card's 75 W TDP.

Intel Corporation has made a slight tweak to its product line: the addition of Hyper-Threading to some of its processors which, traditionally, didn't carry it. This includes the Pentium G4620 (3.7 GHz base frequency and integrated graphics HD 630, $93) and G4600 (3.6 GHz base frequency, $82), both at 51 W TDP; G4560 (54W TDP at 3.5 GHz and integrated HD 610 graphics, $64); and the Pentium G4600T (3 GHz, HD 630, $75) and G4560T (2.9 GHz, HD 610, $64) slot in as the low power Pentium offerings with a 35W TDP. All of these processors now carry 2 physical cores, which the system sees exposed as 4 logical cores due to their Hyper-Threading enablement.

Intel today announced availability of its first 7th generation Core "Kaby Lake" desktop processors. All the processor SKUs being launched today are quad-core, across the company's Core i7 and Core i5 brand extensions. Leading the pack is the Core i7-7700K, priced at US $339, with a clock speed of 4.20 GHz, and 4.50 GHz Turbo Boost. This chip offers 8 MB of L3 cache, HyperThreading, and an unlocked base-clock multiplier, which enables easy overclocking. Next up, is the Core i7-7700 (non-K). This chip lacks an unlocked base-clock multiplier, and has lower clocks of 3.60 GHz, with 4.20 GHz Turbo, but offers 8 MB cache and HyperThreading. It is priced at $303.

The next chip which could interest PC enthusiasts is the Core i5-7600K. This chip features 3.80 GHz core, and 4.20 GHz Turbo Boost, 6 MB of L3 cache, and an unlocked base-clock multiplier, but like other Core i5 branded quad-core chips, lacks HyperThreading. It's priced at $242. The Core i5-7600 (non-K) lacks unlocked multiplier, and comes with lower clocks of 3.50 GHz core with 4.10 GHz Turbo Boost. It goes for $213. Priced below the $200 mark at $192, is the Core i5-7500, with its 3.40 GHz clock speed, and 3.80 GHz Turbo Boost. The i7-7700K and i5-7600K come with TDP rating of 95W. The non-K SKUs are rated at 65W. Intel also launched energy-efficient "T" Core i7 and Core i5 processors, with their TDP rated at just 35W.

French tech print magazine "Canard PC" is ready with early benchmarks of an AMD Ryzen 8-core processor. The scan of a page from its Ryzen performance review article got leaked to the web, revealing three key performance takeaways. In the first selection of tests, Canard PC put Ryzen through synthetic CPU-intensive tests that take advantage of as many CPU cores/threads as you can throw at them. These include the likes of H.264 and H.265 video encoding, WPrime, Blender, 3DSMax 2015, and Corona. Ryzen was found to be faster than the quad-core Core i7-6700K, and the six-core i7-6800K, but somewhere between the i7-6800K and the eight-core i7-6900K.

The next selection of tests focused on PC gaming, with a list of contemporary AAA titles, including "Far Cry 4," "Battlefield 4," "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt," "Anno 2070," "GRID: Autosport," and "ARMA III." Here, the Ryzen sample was found to be underwhelming - it was slower than the Core i5-6600 quad-core chip clocked at 3.30-3.90 GHz; but faster than the i5-6500, clocked at 3.20-3.60 GHz. The fastest chip in the table is the i7-6700K (4.00-4.20 GHz). The reviewer still notes that Ryzen has a decent IPC gain unseen from the AMD stable in a while.

The team over at Tom's Hardware have gotten their hands on Intel's new 'Kaby Lake' CPU - The Core i7-7700K. While the chip is not marked as an engineering sample, they cannot confirm with confidence that it is a retail part. They then did what we all hoped and expected, they put the new i7 through a series of benchmarks both at its stock speeds and overclocked. Without a retail Z270 series motherboard to test with, Kaby Lake compatible firmware was loaded onto their Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Ultra Gaming board.

In line with what has been reported so far, the stock clock speeds of their sample was 4.20GHz base and 4.50GHz max turbo boost with a TDP of 95W, up marginally from the i7-6700K's 91W. As tested the 7700K drew slightly more power under load than the 6700K whilst achieving benchmark results that are more-or-less in line with the percentage clock speed increase. Using the same core voltage for overclocking, the 7700K was able to manage a 4.8GHz overclock at 1.3v where the 6700K achieved 4.6GHz. As Intel did not change the core micro architecture between Skylake and Kaby Lake, it appears that save for HEVC and VP9 8/10-bit encode/decode and other possible features we may not yet know of, slightly faster clock speeds is the principal improvement. Given this is a pre-release test conducted on a motherboard that may not be able to unleash the full potential of the i7-7700K, the results should be taken with their appropriate pinch of salt. For the article and detailed findings, please follow the source link.

News and specifications about Intel's upcoming Kaby Lake-based desktop CPUs are thin, but a recent leak has made it possible to discern at least some details, due to an Intel product change notification (PCN) document.

A PCN is a document issued by a manufacturer to inform customers about a change to a mass-produced product or its manufacturing process. In this PCN, Intel details a new factory in Vietnam which will work in order to "ensure a continuous supply of the Select Intel Xeon Processor E3-1205, Intel Core i5-7400 Processor, Intel Core i5-7400T Processor, Intel Core i5-7500 Processor, Intel Core i5-7500T Processor, Intel Core i5-7600 Processor, Intel Core i5-7600K Processor, Intel Core i5-7600T Processor, Intel Core i7-7700 Processor, Intel Core i7-7700T Processor and Intel Core i7-7700K Processor products".

NVIDIA announced retail availability of its GeForce GTX 1050 Ti and GTX 1050 graphics cards. Targeting two key sub-$200 price-points, and positioned as gateways to competitive e-Sports gaming, the two chips compete with AMD Radeon RX 460 and RX 470, and exploit a vast price/performance gap between the two. The GTX 1050 Ti starts at USD $139.99, while the GTX 1050 starts at $109.99. Since there are no reference-design cards, all cards available from today are custom-design implementations of all shapes and sizes.

The GTX 1050 Ti and GTX 1050 are based on the new "GP107" silicon, NVIDIA's first built on the 14 nm FinFET process. Both chips are implementations of NVIDIA "Pascal" architecture. The GTX 1050 Ti features 768 CUDA cores, 48 TMUs, 32 ROPs, and 4 GB of GDDR5 memory across a 128-bit wide interface. The GTX 1050, on the other hand, features 640 CUDA cores, 40 TMUs, 32 ROPs, and 2 GB of GDDR5 memory across the 128-bit memory bus. Both cards have their TDP rated at 75W.

According to TweakTown, AMD may be preparing to bring the fight to the as-of-yet unannounced GTX 1050 Ti with a $10 price-drop on their 1080p price-performance king RX 470 from the current $179, bringing the price down to $169. NVIDIA is purportedly planning to bring the GTX 1050 Ti to market at the $149 price point, with a rated TDP of only 75 W and apparently no need for additional power connectors (at least on reference designs). However, faced with a measly $20 difference from the supposedly higher-performing RX 470 - which could sometimes be up to 30% faster - the battle for the $150 bracket might prove to be an uphill battle for the green camp.

Add to that the latest updates unveiled by Oculus on Oculus Connect 3, with the RX 470 being stamped with the VR-ready approval, as well as the greater availability and lower price of FreeSync monitors (sometimes with as much as four times the number of FreeSync offers versus G-Sync ones), and it really does seem that AMD is poised to offer the best value in its price bracket. Of course, things get muddier if you take into account the current pricing landscape for graphics cards from either manufacturer (where most models are selling upwards of their MSRP).

Intel is reportedly planning launch its 7th generation Core "Kaby Lake" processors by Q4-2016. Its desktop variants, built in the existing LGA1151 package, will be the third Intel micro-architecture built on the 14 nm process (after "Skylake" and "Broadwell" architectures). With this generation, Intel is planning to sub-classify LGA1151 into three categories, to ensure people don't try to install higher-powered CPUs on low-power machines.

These are LGA1151-Standard Power; LGA1151-Low Power; and LGA1151-Ultra Low Power. These are defined by the TDP of the packages. Standard Power chips run at 95W TDP, Low Power at 65W TDP, and Ultra Low Power at 35W TDP. There could be motherboards and machines that, depending on their VRM setup, completely shut out Standard Power or even Low Power chips.