CPU

The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D needs no introduction. The powerful Zen 5 part happens to be the most worthy gaming CPU that money can buy right now, especially for folks who care more about gaming performance than anything else.

A recent product listing on Goofish has revealed an engineering sample of a laptop motherboard housing the upcoming Nvidia N1 SoC. Laptops powered by Nvidia's N1 family of SoCs have been rumored for a long time, and are expected to arrive later this year.

The increased frequencies would be possible via the N2P fabrication from TSMC. Still, even with the more efficient nodes, the Dimensity 9600 Pro chips are apparently overheating and require more complex cooling.

Intel says its 14th‑gen Raptor Lake Refresh CPUs and the LGA 1700/700‑series motherboard platform will remain in production, ensuring continued availability for desktop builders even as the company transitions to Arrow Lake. The move also keeps DDR4 support alive amid volatile memory pricing, giving users a lower‑cost entry point and a clearer upgrade path to DDR5 later.

A hardware modder on Overclock.net reports successfully booting Windows 11 on Intel’s OEM-only Core 9 273PQE “Bartlett Lake” CPU using a standard Asus Z790 LGA1700 motherboard after crafting custom BIOS microcode and patches that spoof early initialization as Raptor Lake. The proof-of-concept highlights both the platform’s latent compatibility and the limits of accessibility, since Bartlett Lake chips remain unavailable to typical consumers despite interest in an all–performance-core desktop release.

AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 will be available in the market starting April 22, but it looks like pricing for the CPU has already leaked. The chip touts 13% performance uplift in some tasks compared to the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, but the leaked price tag seems a bit exorbitant.

A reliable leaker has compared the clock speed and IPC uplift of Intel Nova Lake and AMD Zen 6 CPU architectures. If the leaker's report is correct, Intel might finally be able to take the performance crown from AMD in all workloads, including gaming.

The Intel Core Ultra X9 378H is now official, and essentially, it's a comparable processor to the X9 388H, but with a slightly lowered Max Turbo Frequency. It even retains the capable Arc B390 iGPU but strips enterprise features.

A PC modder, “kryptonfly,” used Claude AI-assisted BIOS rewriting to inject missing microcode and get Intel’s OEM-only Core 9-273PQE Bartlett Lake CPU to reach POST on an Asus Z790 motherboard, with the BIOS correctly identifying the processor. The system still fails to boot past POST with a black screen and errors, underscoring that full Bartlett Lake support remains unofficial and could be closed off by future Intel or Asus firmware updates.

According to the latest CPU sales data out of Germany, overall CPU sales in week 13 of 2026 were the lowest ever. The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D was the top-selling CPU on Mindfactory, with Intel far behind.

Intel has confirmed it will not release the Core Ultra 9 290K Plus, abandoning the planned 24-core flagship as part of its Arrow Lake Refresh lineup. Instead, the company is focusing on the more broadly positioned Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and Core Ultra 5 250K Plus, which it considers sufficient in terms of performance and value.

Intel's new Core Ultra 5 250K Plus and Core Ultra 7 270K Plus "Arrow Lake Refresh" are here, and they are excellent. In fact, based on several reviews, including our own testing, the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus and the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus deliver some of the best price-to-performance on the market.

Intel Core Ultra 9 290K has reportedly been canceled. So, there will be, for the time being, only two CPUs in the Core Ultra 200S Plus Arrow Lake Refresh lineup. However, the Core Ultra 9 290K Plus has now popped up on Geekbench with impressive performance.

AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D just dropped to its lowest-ever price of $419.95 on Amazon, down from $479. The Zen 5 gaming CPU also includes a free copy of Crimson Desert, which adds even more value to one of the fastest gaming processors available.

Intel is reportedly set to raise PC CPU prices by 10% amid rising component costs, including a sharp surge in memory prices. This move will likely increase pressure on PC makers and could lead to higher consumer device prices.

Intel has revealed a new laptop CPU, featuring a 14-core setup. Belonging to the three-year-old Raptor Lake-HX family, the new Core i7-13645HX CPU will likely find itself in budget-oriented gaming laptops in the near future.

A new leak has hinted at two upcoming CPUs from AMD, the Ryzen 7 9750X and a Ryzen 5 9650X. These reportedly feature minor upgrades over the 9700X and 9600X, in line with a CPU refresh.

After we were able to prove that two Chuwi notebooks were sold with an older and weaker processor than advertised, Blackview was caught delivering a tablet with significantly less memory and storage than advertised. The software tries to disguise this fact.

A Reddit user reports scoring an AMD Ryzen 5 7600X, Gigabyte B850M Eagle motherboard, and Corsair 32GB DDR5-6000 kit, normally totaling about $1,013, for $86.98 after a brief pricing glitch in Newegg’s combo configurator. Newegg reportedly honored the orders and shipped the parts before patching the issue, leaving the buyer only needing a case, SSD, and GPU to complete the build.

If you are interested in the new M5 Max SoC, we recommend you get the larger MacBook Pro 16. The compact 14-inch model suffers from inconsistent performance. This is not only the case for the stress test, but also pure CPU or GPU performance.

The Ryzen 7 9800X3D is one of the best CPUs for gaming, and if you've been waiting for the right time to pick it up, now might be a great opportunity.

Intel is expanding its desktop portfolio with the new Intel Core Ultra 200S Plus processors for gamers and content creators. Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and Core Ultra 5 250K Plus offer more cores, higher clock speeds, and faster DDR5 memory support. In addition, new optimization features improve the performance of modern games and applications.

Highlights for one of the first mini PCs to be equipped with Intel's next gen desktop processors includes support for DDR5-8000 RAM, 2x PCIe 5.0 SSD slots, low-profile dGPU support via horizontal riser, plus a multitude of ports including Thunderbolt.

The Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus is expected to arrive soon, taking the place of the Core Ultra 5 245K. With four additional efficiency cores and higher turbo clocks, the 250K Plus appears ready to cement its position as a powerful productivity machine.

The Apple M5 Max’s Geekbench debut is nothing short of impressive. It punches above its weight class and even trades blows with the much more powerful M3 Ultra.

A recently leaked Geekbench 6 listing for Apple's latest and greatest M5 Max SoC has revealed that no other laptop chip on the planet stands a chance against the 18-core M5 Max, at least in Geekbench. Both the AMD Ryzen AI Max "Strix Halo" and Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPUs are left in the dust by a massive margin

Windows 12 could be another costly upgrade for supporters of Microsoft operating systems. A new report reveals that the AI-dominated OS will require AMD and Intel CPUs with a dedicated NPU. Possibly surfacing in late 2026, the follow-up to Windows 11 may also rely on subscriptions.

We now know that the upcoming Intel Bartlett Lake-S family will not witness a launch for consumers. However, the top-end Core 9 273PQE has somehow managed to find itself inside a Z790 board, despite not being able to boot.

Moore's Law Is Dead has, for the first time, revealed renders of AMD Zen 7 "Grimlock Ridge" desktop CPUs. The Zen 7 Grimlock Ridge desktop CPUs will allegedly bring up to 32 cores, courtesy of 16-core CCDs. AMD will reportedly also offer a mainstream 8-core Zen 7 CPU called "Grimlock Silverlake".

Intel is reportedly moving away from employing P and E/LP E-cores on different architectures with the development of the Unified Core design. Team Blue is reportedly following in AMD's footsteps by having both P and E-cores use the same CPU architecture.

Jim Keller's Royal Core project was reportedly dismantled by Intel into individual technologies that could be used in different CPU architectures. One of these technologies was a Unified Core design that would see Intel ditch separate P and E-cores. It has now come to light that Intel is indeed working on Unified Cores.

The AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D reportedly outperforms the Ryzen 7 9800X3D to become the best gaming CPU money can buy. This also means that Intel's Core i9-14900K and the flagship Core Ultra 9 285K also don't stand a chance against the Ryzen 7 9850X3D. However, the Ryzen 7 9850X3D consumes a lot of power.

The Ryzen 7 9850X3D was launched a few weeks ago, on January 29, and Newegg is already offering a big discount on it. While it normally costs $499, Newegg has knocked $100 off.

A complete table showing the PL1, PL2, PL3, and PL4 power limits of Intel Nova Lake has leaked online. The figures leaked show a PL2 of close to 500 W for the dual-compute-tile high-end/flagship Nova Lake CPUs.

We had the chance to test the performance of the new Intel Core Ultra 5 338H including the Arc B370 GPU with 10 Xe cores in some benchmarks. The results are very promising and the performance difference to the Arc B390 is small.

The latest Amazon US CPU sales data for January 2026 shows a concerning trend. Many consumers are not buying new CPUs, as CPU sales have seen an enormous 51% decline from January 2025 to January 2026. The relative position of AMD Ryzen and Intel Core processors has remained unchanged, as AMD CPUs remain at the top of the sales chart.

High-end Intel Nova Lake-S desktop CPUs are shaping up to be quite power hungry. According to recent reports, the flagship 52-core Intel Core Ultra 400 Nova Lake CPU could have power consumption in line with HEDT processors. However, even with an enforced PL2, Intel Nova Lake might still consume considerably more than Arrow Lake.

The long awaited and highly anticipated game, Crimson Desert, is nearing its release on March 19. The developers are working with AMD to provide a free copy of the game to those who are shopping for select AMD CPUs, GPUs, and AMD powered laptops.

Intel's next-generation Nova Lake desktop CPUs are expected to land by the end of 2026. When the Core Ultra 400 desktop processors do release, the flagship 52-core CPU is reported to consume an absurd amount of power under full load.

ASRock has responded to the community outcry regarding AMD Ryzen 9000 CPUs burning up in its motherboards, although no clear instructions were given to customers regarding how to prevent the same. The company had previously issued BIOS updates, but the problem continues to persist.

Rumors suggest Qualcomm’s next-generation Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 lineup will include a standard and a Pro variant. A new leak has surfaced online suggesting that the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro could see a significant jump in clock speeds, with a maximum of 6GHz mentioned.

While DDR5-6000 is regarded as the sweet spot for optimal gaming performance with X3D processors, AMD says that the Ryzen 7 9850X3D can perform similarly with cheaper DDR5-4800 RAM. The difference is said to be around 1%.

AMD’s new Ryzen 7 9850X3D, a Zen 5-based octa-core CPU with 3D V-Cache, launches at $499 on January 29, 2026, positioning itself as a higher-clocked, better-binned successor to the 9800X3D. While it delivers top-tier gaming performance with a 5.6 GHz boost clock and basic integrated Radeon graphics, its price premium over the 9700X and 9800X3D makes it a niche pick for enthusiasts chasing maximum FPS.

The price of Zen 3 CPUs has increased dramatically over the past few months. Despite being old, desktop processors like the Ryzen 7 5700X are now sitting quite a bit above their record-low prices. This means that customers are buying old AM4 CPUs with DDR4 support as a consequence of the ongoing DRAM supply crunch.

The Ryzen 7 5800X3D was the first-ever AMD CPU with the 3D V-Cache technology. Over the years, the 3D V-Cache-equipped Ryzen CPUs have proven to be the fastest gaming processors. Despite being nearly four years old, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, thanks to the 3D V-Cache, can still hang with the best gaming CPUs of today.