Today, Alienware continues its mission to create premier gaming experiences with a triple-threat of new devices, including: a revamped Aurora R15 Gaming Desktop, a compact and feature-rich Tenkeyless Gaming Keyboard, and our second QD-OLED Gaming Monitor positioned at a lower price point. The new Alienware Aurora R15 desktop sees a significant performance boost, thanks to the latest 13th Gen Intel Core processors, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs and an armada of system refinements.

The Aurora R15 now also includes up to a 1350 W power supply (up from 1000 W in the previous generation), designed to support NVIDIA's flagship GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card. Speaking of the graphics card, we repositioned the graphics slot to enable larger card designs (up to triple wide cards). In addition to offering NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 Series and 30 Series GPUs, Aurora R15 will also be configurable with AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series graphics which pair nicely with our first QD-OLED AMD FreeSync monitor… more on that below.

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.

Popular American PC parts retailer Newegg just made the store pages of Intel 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" desktop processors public. You can't add these to cart and order just yet, but can set up an "auto-notify" for when you can buy. The six processor SKUs Intel is expected to launch today have been leaked. The i9-13900K flagship is priced at $659, the i9-13900KF (no iGPU) goes for $629; the i7-13700K at $449, the i7-13700KF at $429; the i5-13600K at $329, and the i5-13600KF at $309. The store pages also give away clock speeds. The i9-13900K/KF ticks at 3.00 GHz base, the i7-13700K/KF at 3.40 GHz base, and the i5-13600K/KF at 3.50 GHz base. The store didn't put out boost clocks.

Reviews of the Intel Arc A770 Limited Edition desktop graphics card could hit the web by October 5, according to a VideoCardz report. These could succeed unboxing articles without performance numbers, on September 30. Press reviews of the A770 publishing on October 5 could mean that retail availability isn't too far behind, and we could hear more about this later today at the IntelON Innovation online event, where the company is widely expected to announce its 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" desktop processors. The Arc A770 Limited Edition maxes out the 6 nm ACM-G10 silicon, features 32 Xe Cores, 512 XMX matrix processors, and 512 EUs, which work out to 4,096 unified shaders. The card comes with 8 GB or 16 GB of 17.5 Gbps GDDR6 memory across a 256-bit wide memory bus. Given that Intel is extensively comparing the A770 to the GeForce RTX 3070, one can expect a price competitive to that (around $500).

Taiwan-based leading server manufacturing company Inventec's powerhouse GPU accelerator system, Rhyperior, is everything any modern-day business needs in the digital era, especially those relying heavily on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). A unique and optimal combination of GPUs and CPUs, this 4U GPU accelerator system is based on the NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPU and Intel Xeon 3rd Gen (Whitley platform). Rhyperior also equips an NVIDIA NVSwitch to enhance performance dramatically, and its power can be an effective tool for modern workloads.

In a world where technology is disrupting our lives as we know it, GPU acceleration is critical: essentially speeding up processes that would otherwise take much longer. Acceleration boosts execution for complex computational problems that can be broken down into similar, parallel operations. In other words, an excellent accelerator can be a game changer for industries like gaming and healthcare, increasingly relying on the latest technologies like AI and ML for better, more robust solutions for consumers.

If you've been keen on finding out some more details about the upcoming Z790 based motherboards for Intel's upcoming 13th gen Core processors, then we got good news for you. VideoCardz got hold of a treasure trove of board pictures from ASUS, ASRock and MSI for those interested in taking a look at what will be on offer next month from Intel's partners. There are no big surprises when it comes to the leaked board models, but there are one or two things that are worth pointing out.

The ASUS leak is limited to four boards, two Prime models, one TUF board and the ROG Maximus Z790 Hero, which is unlikely to be the top-of-the-range board. ASUS seems to have held back a bit with the Hero board compared to its AM5 equivalent, but it's a bit hard to tell from the picture. ASRock is carrying over its limited edition Carrara look for its Z790 Taichi board and ASRock will also have a Mini-ITX board with Thunderbolt 4 support. MSI will also offer a Mini-ITX board, with a black PCB and white heatsinks and a white rear I/O shield. No additional specs were provided, outside of what can be seen in the pictures. There are additional pictures after the break.

There have been some rumours circulating about Intel looking at increasing the pricing for its CPUs and if a screenshot from Amazon UK posted by @momomo_us on Twitter is to be believed, it looks like it'll be a significant increase in price. The Core i9-13900KF is listed with a price of £750.12, or almost US$815, admittedly including 20 percent VAT. That's a significant price increase over the Core i9-12900KF which normally retails for £679, but is currently offered for £608.99 by Amazon UK. It doesn't look better further down the stack either, with the Core i7-13700K coming in at £547.22 compared to a retail price of £409.88 for the Core i7-12700K.

The Core i7-13700KF should land at £516.58, versus £396.40 for the Core i7-12700KF. Finally the Core i5-13600KF ends up at £349.75 versus £272.99 for the Core i5-12600KF. As such, we're looking at a price increase of somewhere between around £80 and £140 depending on the SKU. These are not insignificant price increases if these are the actual retail prices we can expect when Intel launches its 13th gen Core processors in October. Hopefully we'll get some clarity next week, when Intel is said to be announcing the new CPUs. @momomo_us also provided some box art for the new processor boxes, for your viewing pleasure.

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.

Here's the first picture of an Intel Core i9-13900K "Raptor Lake" retail packaging. It retains the essential design of the fancy Core i9-12900K retail packaging with the jewel-case shaped like a silicon wafer; but while the Alder Lake's box has the wafer placed at an angle, with a large window letting you see it, the new i9-13900K box has it facing the front, such that you can only see its sides. Frankly, it looks more like a microfilm reel from this angle. The paperboard box's cubical shape makes way for a slimmer cuboidal one. Intel's top unlocked processor models lack boxed cooling solutions, and it's no different for the i9-13900K. Intel is expected to launch the 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" processor family on September 27.

ZOTAC launched the ZBOX edge CI342, a compact fanless mini-PC powered by an Intel Pentium N6415 "Elkhart Lake" quad-core processor clocked at speeds of up to 3.00 GHz. The ZBOX measures just 147.2 mm x 147.2 mm x 32.1 mm (WxDxH), with a passive cooling solution for the SoC that has a TDP of just 6.5 W. It offers an impressive set of connectivity options, which include DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI 2.0b making up the display outputs; three 5 Gbps USB 3.1 ports that include a type-C, a microSD card reader, two 1 GbE wired LAN interfaces, and Wi-Fi 6E + Bluetooth 5.2 WLAN. It's still being sold as a "barebones," meaning that you add your own RAM and storage. Memory options include two DDR4 SODIMM slots (dual-channel), and the only storage interface is an M.2-2280 slot with PCI-Express 3.0 x2 wiring. ZOTAC is also offering a non-barebones complete prebuilt with Windows 11, which includes one 4 GB DDR4-3200 SODIMM stick, and a 128 GB NVMe SSD.

The two gaming product leaders, Team Group and BIOSTAR, have joined forces to release the T-FORCE DELTA RGB DDR5 VALKYRIE Edition DESKTOP MEMORY, the first collaboration of T-FORCE brand from Team Group and VALKYRIE series from BIOSTAR. The design is based on the popular DELTA RGB DDR5 DESKTOP MEMORY and its stealth fighter-influenced look, featuring the signature wide-angled heatspreader with dazzling RGB lightning. On top are the logos of T-FORCE's iconic wing and the classic golden wings of the BIOSTAR VALKYRIE series, also integrating the concept of the warriors' majestic wings in the form of a streamlined design spread across the heatspreader. Gamers can enjoy the memory's striking visuals and legendary performance as T-FORCE and VALKYRIE carry them further in the gaming arena.

T-FORCE DELTA RGB DDR5 VALKYRIE Edition DESKTOP MEMORY is equipped with a next-generation RGB smart control chip, allowing gamers to use BIOSTAR's Advanced VIVID LED DJ software to create a unique RGB setup for their PC. With both outstanding hardware and software supports, users can control and synchronize lighting effects any way they like, making it easy to create a divine look all will admire. The VALKYRIE Edition DDR5 supports the latest Intel XMP 3.0, allowing gamers to enjoy the thrill and performance of overclocking in just a few simple clicks. Furthermore, its special thermally conductive silicone and power management chip (PMIC) cooling design significantly reduce heat, providing stable performance while it runs at high speeds.

It appears that we're slowly getting closer and closer to the official launch of Intel's upcoming Arc A770 and Arc A750 graphics cards, as Intel's CEO, Pat Gelsinger, just became the proud owner of the first Arc A770 graphics card. According to a tweet by Pat, he "got a surprise delivery on a rainy Sunday evening from @RajaXG", the latter being Raja Koduri. Pat continued "We are now getting first batch of A770 cards ready for retail …excited!".

Intel has yet to reveal a firm launch date for the Arc A770 and Arc A750 graphics cards, but unless the company launches very soon, the boat might very well have sailed for its first generation of new graphics cards. Summer is already long gone (officially summer ends on the 23rd of September), although Intel has its Innovation event coming up on the 27th of this month and it's possible that the company will launch its higher-end Arc graphics cards then, alongside the it's 13th generation of Core desktop CPUs.

Today, Intel announced the Intel NUC 12 Enthusiast Mini PC and Kit (code-named Serpent Canyon). Designed for gamers and content creators, the compact mini-PC is built to include Intel Arc graphics in the smallest form factor. The NUC 12 Enthusiast features the latest 12th Gen Intel Core processors and is the first Intel NUC to include Intel Arc A-series graphics in the form of the Intel Arc A770M graphics processing unit (GPU).

"The Intel NUC 12 Enthusiast Kit is one of the most exciting NUC's to launch because it's the first to pair an Intel processor with discrete Intel graphics. The system provides a strong combination of high performance in content creation and gaming usages, and wide array of I/O - typically found in larger systems - all in a small form-factor design. More importantly, this NUC features helpful technologies like Intel Thread Director and Intel Deep Link that make it perfect for anyone trying to create and game in the convenience of a truly compact design," said Brian McCarson, Intel vice president and general manager of the NUC Group.

An early review of a retail Intel Core i9-13900K "Raptor Lake" 8P+16E processor shows it holding up to the rumored "20-40" claim, the idea that the processor can be up to 20% faster in gaming, and up to 40% faster in productivity, compared to the current i9-12900K. Much of the gaming performance increase is attributed to the higher IPC of the new "Raptor Cove" P-cores, and the much higher boost clocks they run at (up to 5.80 GHz); whereas the multi-threaded performance boost comes from not just the faster P-cores, but a doubling in the E-core count to 16, and improved E-core cache structures, besides higher clock speeds that they run on. For tests that scale across P-cores and E-cores, the i9-13900K behaves like a 24-core/32-thread processor, which is what it is. Among the tests included are CSGO, AIDA64, 7-Zip, WinRAR, Cinebench R15, R20, and R23; and their average, in comparison to the i9-12900K.

In its latest video presentation dealing with the reference board design and overclocking architecture of the Arc A770 Limited Edition graphics card, Intel revealed that the cards should be "monster overclockers," and that they've been able to get their randomly selected card to run at 2.70 GHz (up from 2.10 GHz reference), without the need for custom-cooling, just by using the overclocking controls on the Arc Control software. The cooler has a noise output of up to 39 dBA, and even with the overclocked GPU, Intel claims, the temperatures never crossed the 80-90 °C range. The GPU power was claimed to be around 228 W.

Intel clarified that the "GPU Clock" advertised with the A770 is the guaranteed clock-speed sustained by the GPU at least 50% of the time, even on the "least performing" silicon. The actual clock will vary around this point. This is represented as a bell-curve on top of the voltage-frequency curve of the GPU. There are two ways to go about increasing the performance of the GPU—increasing the voltage, which would increase the clock residency (sustainability of elevated clock-states); and by increasing the frequency itself. Both of these can be accomplished using Arc Control.

Intel's latest NUC 12 Extreme desktops, codenamed "Serpent Canyon," are up for pre-order. These are the company's first gaming-grade NUCs to pack all-Intel hardware, including the GPU. "Serpent Canyon" combines 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake-H" processors with Arc "Alchemist" discrete GPUs, with options going all the way up to the Arc A770 for graphics, and a Core i7-12700H (6P+8E) for the CPU. In its base configuration with 8 GB (2x 4 GB) DDR4 memory, 256 GB M.2 NVMe storage, i7-12700H processor and Arc A770 graphics; the NUC 12 Extreme can be pre-ordered for £1,499 excluding VAT.

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd, a leading manufacturer of motherboards, graphics cards, and hardware solutions, today announced all Z690, B660, and following motherboards will support EXPO memory. Users can enjoy performance boost with ease on GIGABYTE motherboards of all platforms with either AMD EXPO or Intel XMP supported memories.

AMD recently announced the new EXPO technology for DDR5 memory on the latest AM5 platform, which allows easy DDR5 memory accelerating with built-in overclocking profiles for the performance uplift, just like XMP technology. Along with this new technology, all major memory module brands release EXPO memories correspondingly. GIGABYTE leads to provide both AMD EXPO and Intel XMP DDR5 support on AM5 motherboards, and carry on the innovative design to Intel platform, which enable users to speed up their DDR5 memories on Z690, B660, and following motherboards by simply activate XMP and EXPO in the BIOS setting for the performance boost.

Intel Graphics, in its latest teaser video to the Arc A770 Limited Edition "Alchemist" graphics card, posted detailed renders of the card disassembled. The card features a strictly dual-slot cooling solution that uses an aluminium base-plate and a copper vapor-chamber to pull heat from the various hot components of the PCB. This is conveyed by four flat copper heat pipes through an aluminium fin-stack heatsink, which is ventilated by a pair of 80 mm fans. The cooler and its backplate feature four independent RGB lighting zones—the bores of each of the two fans, a light strip running along the top of the card; and toward the tail-end of the backplate, with a total of 90 LEDs. Intel claims that the maximum noise output of the cooler is 39 dBA.

The PCB is shorter in length than the cooler itself, and is full-height (and no taller). It draws power from a combination of 8-pin and 6-pin PCIe power connectors, which combined with slot-power add up to 300 W. A 6-phase VRM powers the "ACM-G10" GPU, while there are three other VRM phases, which could power the eight GDDR6 memory chips, and other power domains of the card. Display outputs include three standard-size DisplayPort 2.0, and one HDMI 2.1. The card's host interface is PCI-Express 4.0 x16, and although not a system requirement, Intel insists that the card be used on a machine with PCI resizable-BAR enabled.

Today, Intel introduces a new processor for the essential product space: Intel Processor. The new offering will replace the Intel Pentium and Intel Celeron branding in the 2023 notebook product stack.

"Whether for work or play, the importance of the PC has only become more apparent as the torrid pace of technological development continues to shape the world. Intel is committed to driving innovation to benefit users, and our entry-level processor families have been crucial for raising the PC standard across all price points. The new Intel Processor branding will simplify our offerings so users can focus on choosing the right processor for their needs." -Josh Newman, Intel vice president and interim general manager of Mobile Client Platforms

Durabook, the global rugged mobile solutions brand owned by Twinhead International Corporation, today announced the launch of its new Durabook R8, the world's first fanless 8" fully rugged tablet featuring 12th generation Intel Core processors for exceptionally powerful user performance. "Durabook devices are designed to meet the increasing demands of field service workers operating across some of the most demanding sectors, including manufacturing, transportation, logistics, field services and utility industries, as well as law enforcement departments and government agencies," said Twinhead CEO Fred Kao. "These users often require both high performance and the convenience of portability, which are typically conflicting needs. Now, there is R8. The R8 meets all these requirements head-on, allowing workforces to boost efficiency and performance even in the harshest environments."

The only 8" rugged tablet on the market equipped with 12th generation Intel Core processors, the R8 provides an unrivaled combination of power and portability, weighing just 1.9 lbs. Its Pentium Gold CPU offers a performance that's up to 450% faster than competitor devices running on Intel Atom processors and up to 800% for devices using Intel Core processors. In addition, the tablet's Intel Iris Xe Graphics boosts computing power to process large amounts of data, images, and video feeds in real time, providing a reliable mobile solution to support digital and remote operations for diverse professional applications.

Here's the first picture of a custom-design Intel Arc A750 "Alchemist" graphics card, in this case, an ASRock Arc A750 Challenger. ASRock showed the card off at its Tokyo Game Show 2022 booth. The strictly 2-slot thick card appears to have a fairly well-endowed aluminium fin-stack cooling solution featuring a pair of large 100 mm fans. Its cooling solution uses two aluminium fin-stacks skewered by a number of copper heat pipes. The card draws power from two 8-pin PCIe power connectors, and features some illumination in the way of an illuminated Arc logo.

The Arc A750 is based on the same 6 nm "DG2-512" silicon as the A770 Limited Edition—which looks increasingly like an Intel-exclusive that will only be sold in its reference design. While the A770 maxes out the chip with all 32 Xe Cores being enabled (512 EUs, or 4,096 unified shaders), the A750 gets 28 Xe Cores (448 EUs, or 3,584 unified shaders). It also gets 8 GB of 16 Gbps GDDR6 memory across a 256-bit wide memory interface (512 GB/s bandwidth), 448 XMX units (accelerates AI and features like XeSS), and 28 RT units. The reference engine clock of the A750 is set at 2.05 GHz, although it's likely that the ASRock Challenger is a factory-overclocked card.

OneRaichu, who has access to engineering samples of both the AMD "Raphael" Ryzen 7000-series, and Intel 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake," performed IPC comparisons between the two, by disabling E-cores on the "Raptor Lake," fixing the clock speeds of both chips to 3.60 GHz, and testing them across a variety of DDR5 memory configurations. The IPC testing was done with SPEC, a mostly enterprise-relevant benchmark, but one that could prove useful in tracing where the moderately-clocked enterprise processors such as EPYC "Genoa" and Xeon Scalable "Sapphire Rapids" land in the performance charts. OneRaichu also threw in scores obtained from a 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" processor for this reason, as its "Golden Cove" P-core powers "Sapphire Rapids" (albeit with more L2 cache).

With DDR5-4800 memory, and testing on SPECCPU2017 Rate 1, at 3.60 GHz, the AMD "Zen 4" core ends up with the highest scores in SPECint, topping even the "Raptor Cove" P-core. It scores 6.66, compared to 6.63 total of the "Raptor Cove," and 6.52 of the "Golden Cove." In the SPECfp tests, however, the "Zen 4" core falls beind "Raptor Cove." Here, scores a 9.99 total compared to 9.91 of the "Golden Cove," and 10.21 of the "Raptor Cove." Things get interesting at DDR5-6000, a frequency AMD considers its "sweetspot," The 13th Gen "Raptor Cove" P-core tops SPECint at 6.81, compared to 6.77 of the "Zen 4," and 6.71 of "Golden Cove." SPECfp sees the "Zen 4" fall behind even the "Golden Cove" at 10.04, compared to 10.20 of the "Golden Cove," and 10.46 of "Raptor Cove."

Arm, Intel and NVIDIA have jointly authored a paper describing an 8-bit floating point (FP8) specification and its two variants E5M2 and E4M3 to provide a common interchangeable format that works for both artificial intelligence (AI) training and inference. This cross-industry specification alignment will allow AI models to operate and perform consistently across hardware platforms, accelerating AI software development.

Computational requirements for AI have been growing at an exponential rate. New innovation is required across hardware and software to deliver computational throughput needed to advance AI. One of the promising areas of research to address this growing compute gap is to reduce the numeric precision requirements for deep learning to improve memory and computational efficiencies. Reduced-precision methods exploit the inherent noise-resilient properties of deep neural networks to improve compute efficiency.

Andreas Schilling with Hardwareluxx.de, as part of the Intel Tech Tour Israel, got to hold a 12-inch wafer full of "Raptor Lake-S" dies. These are dies in their full 8P+16E configuration. The die is estimated to measure 257 mm² in area. We count 231 full dies on this wafer. Intel is building "Raptor Lake" on the same 10 nm Enhanced SuperFin (aka Intel 7) node as "Alder Lake." The die is about 23% larger than "Alder Lake" on account of two additional E-core clusters, possibly larger P-cores, and larger L2 caches for both the P-core and E-core clusters. "Raptor Lake" gains significance as it will be the last client processor from Intel to be built on a monolithic die of a uniform silicon fabrication node. Future generations are expected to take the chiplets route, realizing the company's IDM 2.0 product development strategy.

Intel's Xeon Scalable "Sapphire Rapids" processor may have a tough time getting to market, as leaked benchmarks suggest that even its premium HPC models with on-package HBM2E memory are outperformed by AMD's older-generation "Zen 3" EPYC processors. The 64-core/128-thread EPYC "Milan-X" processor based on older "Zen 3" microarchitecture with 3D Vertical Cache (3DV cache) chiplets, allegedly outperforms 52-core/104-thread Xeon Platinum 8472C and 60-core/120-thread Xeon Platinum 8490H "Sapphire Rapids" engineering samples in CPU-Z Bench and V-ray tests that scale across cores. These benchmark scores were compared with those of the EPYC "Milan-X" by Tom's Hardware, in which they well woefully short of the AMD chips.