ASRock, with the help of legendary overclocker Splave have used their new W790 WS to take Intel's Sapphire Rapids based Xeon w7-2495X as high as 5.3 GHz to grab a pile of first place global performance scores on HWBOT. In total they've secured 14 global records in the 24-core category, and 18 more records in the w7-2495X hardware category. What is perhaps slightly more impressive is that they managed to exceed the officially supported DDR5-4800 by 2000 MT/s, achieving a frequency of 3400 MHz (6800 MT/s) with a CAS Latency of 32. The results were all produced with a custom water cooled configuration, with many benchmarks needing below 5 GHz clocks to remain stable enough for validation, so there is certainly room for higher scores under more exotic cooling solutions.

One of the more interesting details presented in the screenshots of certain benchmark results such as Y-Cruncher and Cinebench R15 is the gargantuan power draw exhibited by the w7-2495X. With a rated Vcore of 1.22v the 24-core sucks down over 500 W. We have already seen the 56-core w9-3495X pull a full kilowatt in early overclocking sessions, so the power draw here is not entirely without merit. Needless to say while Intel is finally offering a compelling HEDT lineup of unlocked processors, you may not necessarily be able to squeeze much out of them before tripping your breakers. As for ASRock's records it's still early days for the new Xeon W lineup and there will be a revolving door of world record holders before the final ounce of performance is squeezed from these chips.

On Jan. 10, 2023, Intel officially launched its 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors (code-named Sapphire Rapids) for data center customers around the globe. Fueled by years of hard work and focus, Intel delivered its highest quality Xeon product ever, and is already seeing a rapid ramp and the greatest-ever level of customer and partner support.

Launch day brought to market a new Intel leadership product bolstered by significant advancements in performance with industry-leading accelerators, increased core count and improved performance per watt. With a strong new product in the market, customer adoption of these new technologies has been swift. In just eight weeks since launch, Intel has executed the most ever design wins for any Xeon family and the most ever platforms available and shipping in this short time-to-market window.

ASUS IoT, the global AIoT solution provider, today announced PE6000G - the industry's first edge AI system that supports up to a 450 W GPU for high-throughput, demanding GPU-computing applications. Powered by a 12th Gen Intel Core processor and paired with the Intel R680E chipset, PE6000G supports up to 450 W graphics card power and is ready for the latest PCI Express (PCIe ) 5.0 standard, meeting requirements for enabling real-time AI inference at the edge.

Demand for high-performance GPU-accelerated solutions at the edge is increasing to satisfy mission-critical AI applications. Users who require rugged and durable systems to withstand shocks and vibration, plus wide-range operating temperatures to accommodate high GPU computing power, face the dilemma of finding solutions that provide the necessary specifications to meet physical space constraints, along with heat dissipation and power consumption within a rugged mechanical design. The all-new PE6000G series strikes a balance between all these needs for deployment in a variety of challenging environments.

Microsoft Azure announced their new ND H100 v5 virtual machine which packs Intel's Sapphire Rapids Xeon Scalable processors with NVIDIA's Hopper H100 GPUs, as well as NVIDIA's Quantum-2 CX7 interconnect. Inside each physical machine sits eight H100s—presumably the SXM5 variant packing a whopping 132 SMs and 528 4th generation tensor cores—interconnected by NVLink 4.0 which ties them all together with 3.6 TB/s bisectional bandwidth. Outside each local machine is a network of thousands more H100s connected together with 400 GB/s Quantum-2 CX7 InfiniBand, which Microsoft says allows 3.2 Tb/s per VM for on-demand scaling to accelerate the largest AI training workloads.

Generative AI solutions like ChatGPT have accelerated demand for multi-ExaOP cloud services that can handle the large training sets and utilize the latest development tools. Azure's new ND H100 v5 VMs offer that capability to organizations of any size, whether you're a smaller startup or a larger company looking to implement large-scale AI training deployments. While Microsoft is not making any direct claims for performance, NVIDIA has advertised H100 as running up to 30x faster than the preceding Ampere architecture that is currently offered with the ND A100 v4 VMs.

ASUS today announced the ExpertCenter PN64-E1, a mini PC powered by up to a 13th Gen Intel Core processor with up to DDR5-4800 memory and Intel Iris Xe Graphics. The PN64-E1 features two PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots, five USB ports, two Thunderbolt 4 ports with DisplayPort 1.4 support, two HDMI, plus a configurable port for flexibility. In addition, the chassis provides quick access to the storage and memory modules for easy upgrades. Compared to the previous generation, the 13th Gen Intel Core processor that powers the PN64-E1 delivers up to 9% faster performance to enable smooth and efficient processing of intensive business applications. DDR5 memory offers considerably faster data speeds over DDR4, ensuring efficient productivity.

Apex Storage, a new company in the storage world, has announced that its X21 add-in-card (AIC) has room for 21 (you read that right) PCIe 4.0 M.2 NVMe SSDs. The card supports up to 168 TBs with 8 TB M.2 NVMe SSDs and 336 TBs of storage with future 16 TB M.2 SSDs drives and can withstand speeds of up to 30.5 GB/s. Packed inside a single-slot, full-length, full-height AIC, the X21 card is built for a snug fit inside workstations and applications such as machine learning and hyper-converged infrastructure that enterprises need to develop inside servers and workstations across the site.

The X21 AIC has 100 PCIe lanes on the board, which indicates the presence of a PCIe switch, likely placed under the heatsink. To power all the storage, the PCIe slot itself needs to be more, and the card also has two 6-pin PCIe power connectors that provide 225 Watts of power in total. Interestingly, the heatsink is passively cooled, but Apex Storage suggests that there should be an active airflow with a minimum of 400 LFM to ensure the regular operation of the card. In the example application, the company laid out X21 with Samsung's 990 Pro SSDs; however, the card also supports Intel Optane drives. Read and Write IOPS are higher than 10 million. Additionally, the average read and write access latencies are 79 ms and 52 ms. Apex Storage didn't reveal the pricing and availability of the card; however, expect it to come with a premium.

Intel is preparing a revision to the design of the 12+4 pin ATX 12VHPWR power connector, specifically its male connector, to improve connector mating and retention; and to minimize a potential fire hazard asiring from improper retention or mating. The male connector design revision will retain full compatibility with female connectors of devices in circulation. It essentially sees the pins of the male connector switch from a "three dimple" joint to a "push-spring" type joint. This design change makes the male connector much more resilient to weakening contact from pull forces arising from cable bending. The resulting connector would offer superior structural integrity of the connection.

Intel in February launched a couple of China-exclusive 13th Gen Core SKUs to highly optimize their price-performance for the PC gaming crowd there. These included the Core i5-13490F (6P+4E but with 24 MB L3 cache), and Core i7-13790F (8P+8E but with 33 MB L3 cache). In the wake of increased competition from AMD with its non-X Ryzen 5 7600, Ryzen 7 7700, and price-adjustments for its 7600X and 7700X, Intel is giving these SKUs slight price cuts. The i5-13490F launched at ¥1,599 (roughly $230), but is now retailing for ¥1,499 (roughly $200). There's no word on if these SKUs will launch outside China. The idea behind them is to increase the L3 cache sizes without touching the core-counts or clock-speeds, to improve cache-sensitive gaming performance. These chips are packaged in special "dark" retail boxes as shown below.

Over the past couple days ASRock has been busy slashing prices on their lineup of Arc graphics cards. Currently (on Newegg at least) you can now find their Challenger Arc A380 for $120, down from $150, the Challenger Arc A750 8 GB at $240, down from $290, and the flagship Phantom Gaming Arc A770 8 GB at $270, down from $320. The new pricing may be in response to prior price drops by Intel, and possibly hints at more to come.

With its new price ASRock's Arc A770 8 GB in particular is placed in a more advantageous position against NVIDIA's RTX 3060 which has only recently seen reduced prices and still lists for well above $300, even $400 for some partner models. AMD is still placed quite competitively thanks to ASRock themselves listing their RX 6600 XT offerings for $275, making the choice between the RX 6600 XT and Arc A770 8 GB a more difficult one. The RX 6650 XT could also be considered as it regularly appears for $290, a mere $20 more than the revised A770 8 GB pricing, and provides a measurable (if minimal) uplift in performance.

When Intel announced the appearance of the 4th generation Xeon-W processors, the company announced that the clock multiplier was left unlocked, available for overclockers to try and push these chips even harder. However, it was only a matter of time before we saw the top-end Xeon-W SKU take a chance at beating the world record in Cinebench R23. The Intel Xeon W9-3495X SKU is officially the world record score holder with 132,484 points in Cinebench R23. The overclocker OGS from Greece managed to push all 56 cores and 112 threads of the CPU to 5.4 GHz clock frequency using liquid nitrogen (LN2) cooling setup. Using ASUS Pro WS W790E-SAGE SE motherboard and G-SKILL Zeta R5 RAM kit, the OC record was set on March 8th.

The previous record holder of this position was AMD with its Threadripper Pro 5995WX with 64 cores and 128 threads clocked at 5.4 GHz. Not only did Xeon W9-3495X set the Cinebench R23 record, but the SKU also placed the newest record for Cinebench R20, Y-Cruncher, 3DMark CPU test, and Geekbench 3 as well.

BIOSTAR, a leading manufacturer of motherboards, graphics cards, and storage devices today, is thrilled to showcase the latest B760MZ-E PRO motherboard. The BIOSTAR B760MZ-E PRO motherboard is a versatile solution that meets diverse pro-user demands. Whether you are a professional creator seeking the hottest mid-range hardware on the market, a business professional requiring reliable and efficient computing power, or a casual user needing a seamless computing experience, the B760MZ-E PRO has you covered. Its cutting-edge technology, advanced DDR5 memory support, lightning-fast transfer speeds, and connectivity options make it the ultimate choice for those seeking a high-performance motherboard that can handle anything thrown its way.

Built on Intel's B760 single-chip architecture, The BIOSTAR B760MZ-E PRO motherboard supports the latest 12th/ 13th Generation Intel Core Processors, providing robust and stable performance for demanding applications. Its 4-DIMM DDR5 memory support and PCIe M.2 4.0 (64 Gb/s) lightning-fast transfer speeds offer unrivaled computing and file transfer efficiency. Ideal for content designers, business professionals, and casual users seeking the best-performance motherboard of this range.

MSI is a top player in the ICT industry. With over 35 years of experience in R&D. By introducing AI systems, IoT, automation, and remote operations. Leveraging its many years of experience in ODM/OEM and its production capabilities, MSI delivers products that apply to smart transportation, smart cities, innovative automation, digital signage and intelligent retailing, offering top-quality, integrated solutions that best suit client needs. MSI commercial monitors offer crisp visuals and a range of features to enhance the computing experience.

MS-98M3 is the embedded 3.5" SBC that supports multiplexing with 11th generation Intel IOTG Core processor, codenamed Tiger Lake-UP3 series of ultra-low power and high-performance, providing reliability and high durability with lower power consumption, and actively deploy in multiple applications such as AMR-AI-PJ-UVGI Robot, which was verified by Texcell/France to effectively inactivate the new SARS-COV2 virus within seconds.

Today, Intel announced that the LF AI & Data Foundation Technical Advisory Council accepted Open Federated Learning (OpenFL) as an incubation project to further drive collaboration, standardization and interoperability. OpenFL is an open source framework for a type of distributed AI referred to as federated learning (FL) that incorporates privacy-preserving features called confidential computing. It was developed and hosted by Intel to help data scientists address the challenge of maintaining data privacy while bringing together insights from many disparate, confidential or regulated data sets.

"We are thrilled to welcome OpenFL to the LF AI & Data Foundation. This project's innovative approach to enabling organizations to collaboratively train machine learning models across multiple devices or data centers without the need to share raw data aligns perfectly with our mission to accelerate the growth and adoption of open source AI and data technologies. We look forward to collaborating with the talented individuals behind this project and helping to drive its success," said Dr. Ibrahim Haddad, executive director, LF AI & Data Foundation.

After GUNNIR showed the same product back in January, ADLINK is now offering both Intel Arc A-series GPUs in MXM form factor. The MXM (Mobile PCI Express Module) is a standardized form factor that is used mostly in laptops and some small form factor PCs. Product pages confirm that ADLINK offers both the Intel Arc A370M and the Intel Arc A350M in MXM form factor.

According to specifications The ADLINK MXM-AXe, as the product is called, is MXM 3.1 Type A based on Intel Arc GPU, packing 8 Xe-cores, 128 Execution Units, 4 GB of GDDR6 memory, and TDP of 35-50 W, which is pretty much standard for the Arc A370M GPU. The company also offers the same product with A350M GPU with TDP of 25-35 W. With decent power efficiency, full AV1 hardware encoding, and support for up to four 4K displays, such a GPU would be perfect for small form factor machines, and could be even a decent upgrade for some laptops.

Last month, reports were saying that Intel wanted an additional €3.2 billion from the German government in subsidies to build its fab in Magdeburg, but apparently that wasn't nearly enough, as the company has increased its demands to somewhere between €4 billion to €5 billion. What triggered Intel to go ask the German government for even more cash is most likely a combination of things, as Intel is going to want to cover increases in costs courtesy of interest hikes and the inflation that's going on globally, alongside soaring energy prices in Europe. The expected cost of the new fab is said to have increased from €17 billion to €30 billion, which is not exactly pocket change.

In a statement to Bloomberg, Intel said that "disruptions in the global economy have resulted in increased costs, from construction materials to energy," and continued "We appreciate the constructive dialogue with the federal government to address the cost gap that exists with building in other locations and make this project globally competitive." The construction start of the Magdeburg fab has already been delayed and according to Bloomberg, Intel is also considering delaying its planned assembly factory in Italy. It doesn't look promising for either party, as Intel seems to want to spend as little as possible on building its new facilities, while expecting various governments around the world to prop it up until the new facilities are making money. Hopefully neither nation will agree to Intel changing the terms of the deals, as it could cost more nations more than they would earn in long term revenue from Intel.

Simply NUC, Inc, a leading mini computer solutions company, today announced a new Simply NUC branded mini PC product family called Chapel Rock. The ultracompact long life mini PC is built for several use cases, from embedded units like kiosks and vending machines, to edge devices like security systems and sensor arrays. Chapel Rock brings the same reliability and customizability as its predecessor, Chimney Rock, with upgrades like dual 2.5Gb Ethernet and the all-new 12th Gen Intel Architecture. Simply NUC is currently taking orders on Chapel Rock with units expected to ship by the end of March.

"Since launching our long life NUC product line, our customers have successfully leveraged these mini PCs for an array of applications where longer development cycles are required for validation and certifications," said Aaron Rowsell, Simply NUC CEO, "and we're thrilled to extend our long life NUC offering with Chapel Rock."

The leading global motherboard, graphics card, and small form factor PC manufacturer, ASRock, proudly announces its new Mini PC Jupiter 600 series including Jupiter H610 and B660 two models. Jupiter 600 series features the flexibility and expandability in a compact size suited to a wide range of applications such as office, retail, healthcare, transportation and industry.

With support for the latest 13th and 12th Gen Intel Core processors (LGA1700) up to 65 watts, DDR4 3200 MHz memory, the Jupiter 600 series delivers desktop-grade performance for commercial usage. Support up to three-storage design including one M.2 PCIe Gen 4x4 SSD, one M.2 PCIe Gen 3x4 SSD, and one 2.5-inch HDD to provide fast data transfer speed and high capacity storage.

Intel Foundry Services, the in-house semiconductor foundry of Intel, announced that its 2 nm-class Intel 20A and 1.8 nm-class Intel 18A foundry nodes have completed development, and are on course for mass-producing chips on their roadmap dates. Chips are expected to begin mass-production on the Intel 20A node in the first half of 2024, while those on the Intel 18A node are expected to begin in the second half of 2024. The completion of the development phase means that Intel has finalized the specifications and performance/power targets of the nodes, the tools and software required to make the chips, and can now begin ordering them to build the nodes. Intel has been testing these nodes through 2022, and with the specs being finalized, chip-designers can accordingly wrap up development of their products to align with what these nodes have to offer.

Intel 20A (or 20-angstrom, or 2 nm) node introduces gates-all-around (GAA) RibbonFET transistors with PowerVIAs (an interconnect innovation that contributes to transistor densities). The Intel 20A node is claimed to offer a 15% performance/Watt gain over its predecessor, the Intel 3 node (FinFET EUV, 3 nm-class), which by itself offers an 18% performance/Watt gain over Intel 4 (20% perf/Watt gain over the current Intel 7 node), the node that is entering mass-production very soon. The Intel 18A node is a further refinement of Intel 20A, and introduces a design improvement to the RibbonFET that increases transistor density at scale, and a claimed 10% performance/Watt improvement over Intel 20A.

Over the past month, memory manufacturers started releasing DDR5 memory modules of 24 GB and 48 GB densities, which make up 48 GB (2x 24 GB), 96 GB (2x 48 GB or 4x 24 GB) and even 192 GB (4x 48 GB) capacities. There's only one catch—these modules only work with 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" and 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" processors, as their memory controllers support a maximum of 192 GB of memory, and 24/48/96 GB DIMM densities. MEGAsizeGPU decided to find out what happens when one of these kits is installed on an AMD Ryzen 7000 "Zen 4" platform.

A Corsair Vengeance DDR5-5600 48 GB (2x 24 GB) memory kit was installed on a machine consisting of an AMD Ryzen 5 7600X processor, and an ASUS ROG Strix B650E-E Gaming motherboard (BIOS version 1222). It turns out that the machine POSTs, and is able to start the UEFI setup program. Here, the program is able to display the correct 48 GB memory amount, and the memory density of each of the two modules. The trouble is, Windows would not boot, and does not go past the Boot Manager. It halts with an error message that indicates a hardware problem.

Late on Friday in a newsroom posting by Intel's Interim GM Jeff McVeigh a roadmap uplift was quietly revealed. Rialto Bridge, the process improved version of Ponte Vecchio currently shipping under the Max Series GPU branding, has been pulled from the roadmap in favor of doubling down on the future design code-named Falcon Shores. Rialto Bridge was first announced last May at SC22 as the direct successor to Ponte Vecchio, and was set to begin sampling later this year. In the same post Intel also cancelled Lancaster Sound, their Visual Cloud GPU meant to replace the Arctic Sound Flex series of GPUs based on similar Xe cores to Arc Alchemist. In its stead the follow-up architecture Melville Sound will receive focused development efforts.

Falcon Shores is described as a new foundational chiplet architecture that will integrate more diverse compute tiles, creating what Intel originally dubbed the XPU. This next architectural step would combine what Intel is already doing with products such as Sapphire Rapids and Ponte Vecchio into one CPU+GPU package, and would offer even further flexibility to add other kinds of accelerators. With this roadmap update there is some uncertainty as to whether the XPU designation will make the transition as it is notably absent in the letter. It is clear though that Falcon Shores will directly replace Ponte Vecchio as the next HPC GPU, with or without CPU tiles included.

The world's leading computer brand, GIGABYTE has finally made its highly-anticipated AORUS gaming laptop lineup available on the market, including the AORUS 17X, AORUS 15X, AORUS 17, and AORUS 15. These premium laptops are completely re-designed for high-performance gaming at their cores, offering cutting-edge technologies and optimized portability for an unbeatable gaming experience on the go.

The AORUS 17X and AORUS 15X are the flagship models with maximum performance. These powerful gaming machines boast an Intel 13th-gen 24-core CPU and up to NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 GPU with a TGP of 175 W, resulting in a noticeable improvement in gaming performance of up to 86% compared to the previous gen, ensuring that even the most demanding games will run smoothly and without lag. The AORUS 17 and AORUS 15 are super-portable gaming laptops, which have received upgrades in the next-gen chips, featuring Intel Core 13th-gen i7 H series processors and up to NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 GPU with a TGP of 140 W.

GIGABYTE AERO 16 OLED and AERO 14 OLED are now available for purchase. These next-generation creator laptops are designed for both content creators and creative pros, with the latest 13th-gen Intel Core processors and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 Series Laptop GPUs that reduce 3D rendering time from 2.5 hours to just 10 minutes. They also feature a stunning display with exceptional color accuracy and creation-focused designs, all in a slim and portable package for an optimized creative experience anytime, anywhere.

The outstanding display is what sets AERO apart from the vast array of creator laptops. The displays on the AERO 16 OLED and AERO 14 OLED are factory-calibrated with X-Rite 2.0 and validated by Pantone for precise colors right out of the box. With a Delta E value of less than 1, these laptops feature the smallest color difference and offer the most color-accurate displays among others. The AERO 16 OLED comes in a stunning 4K UHD+ resolution, while the AERO 14 OLED boasts 2.8K QHD+ resolution, both with a 16:10 aspect ratio that provides ample screen space for improved productivity. Both laptops have been certified by TÜV Rheinland Eyesafe and feature low blue light certification, allowing creative professionals to work comfortably for extended periods while maintaining color accuracy.

Supermicro, Inc., a Total IT Solution Provider for Cloud, AI/ML, Storage, and 5G/Edge, is announcing the latest addition to its revolutionary ultra-high performance, high-density petascale class all-flash NVMe server family. Supermicro systems in this high performance storage product family will support the next-generation EDSFF form factor, including the E3.S and E1.S devices, in form factors that accommodate 16- and 32 high-performance PCIe Gen 5 NVMe drive bays.

The initial offering of the updated product line will support up to one-half of a petabyte storage space in a 1U 16 bay rackmount system, followed by a fully petabyte storage space in 2U 32 bay rackmount system for both Intel and AMD PCIe Gen 5 platforms.

Intel Graphics has introduced feature rivaling NVIDIA VSR (virtual super resolution) for Chromium-based web-browsers such as Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, which enhances the quality of streaming video, both from lower resolutions to higher; as well as improving the quality at native resolution. This was discovered in the change-log of a Chrome build, which talks about the introduction of a "-features=IntelVpSuperResolution" command-line argument to start Chrome with, to enable the feature.

Apparently, the Intel VSR feature works on Intel iGPUs dating back to the 11th Gen Core ("Tiger Lake" and "Rocket Lake,") based on the Xe-LP graphics architecture. The feature should come particularly handy when trying to upscale online video from lower resolutions (such as SD 360p/480p or HD 720p), up to Full HD (1080p) or higher. It's reported that VSR is enabled by default on Chrome/Edge 110, and doesn't require that command-line argument. To use it, you will need Intel iGPU graphics drivers version 27.20.100.8681 or later.

"Panther Lake" is the codename for the microarchitecture behind Intel's 17th Gen Core processors due for 2026-27. It succeeds the 16th Gen "Lunar Lake" (2025-26), 15th Gen "Arrow Lake" (2024-25); and 14th Gen "Meteor Lake" (2023-24) architectures. While very little is known about "Panther Lake," the first piece of information discovered in the LinkedIn profile page of one Intel Graphics engineer, suggests that the graphics tile of the processor will feature an iGPU based on the Xe3 "Celestial" graphics architecture, which is two generations ahead of the current Xe "Alchemist," and one ahead of Xe2 "Battlemage."

Intel's graphics architectures will continue to be highly scalable and modular in their applications, with variants of them scaling between low-power iGPUs to large client discrete GPUs, and very-large HPC-AI processors. The variant for the iGPU powering "Panther Lake" will be Xe3-LPG, a highly skimmed version of the architecture for lower Xe Core counts, with just the right hardware to operate in power-constrained devices such as mobile processors. From the looks of it, Intel will stick with the disaggregated chiplet design for its processor architectures going all the way down to "Panther Lake," as an older company slide detailing the scalability of "Celestial" highlighted a "next platform" processor succeeding "Meteor Lake" and its immediate successor ("Arrow Lake").