Intel

The Intel Lunar Lake CPUs which are said to debut sometime in 2024/H1 2025 will follow in the footsteps of the Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake chips and pack discreet CPU, GPU, and SoC tiles. Now, new leaks allege that the LNL’s GPU tile features Intel’s next-gen Battlemage graphics with Xe2 cores.

The 2023 Inspiron 16 2-in-1 is seemingly a good bargain for just $650 USD, but the next SKU up with 16 GB of RAM costs a hefty $250 more. 16 GB of RAM is widely considered to be the recommended bare minimum for modern Windows PCs.

The MSI Puls 17 is an extremely powerful gaming laptop while still being relatively quiet. A Sci-Fi case together with current chips in terms of the processor and graphics unit, but unfortunately also aged modules for the network. At the same time, MSI is still asking for a hefty price.

Although it has no name yet, Minisforum unveiled that the brand's upcoming ITX mini PC will use a stylish 6L case and will be powered by Intel and AMD processors. Both processor choices will feature PCIe 5.0 x16 and a discrete graphics card, as well as support for an SFX power supply. More details are expected to surface soon.

According to a report, Microsoft has settled on an early autumn release for the Surface Laptop Studio 2. Likely debuting alongside the Surface Go 4 and the Surface Pro 10, the Surface Laptop Studio 2 is said to retain its predecessor's design while adding Raptor Lake-H processors and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 series GPUs. Microsoft is said to have made other changes too, but there will be AMD APU or larger options.

Wesion will soon launch the Khadas Mind workstation mini PC powered by an Intel i7-1360P processor coupled with 32 Gb LPDDR5-5200 and up to 4 TB NVMe SSD storage. This is the main unit that can be docked with a suite of modules, including the Mind Graphics powered by an RTX 4060M dGPU plus the Mind xPlay portable display with detachable keyboard.

The Intel Arrow Lake CPUs could be the first products to use technologies proposed by Jim Keller’s Royal Core project if the latest leak from Moore’s Law Is Dead is accurate. The leaker also claims that Team Blue could eliminate Hyper-Threading from ARL chips completely. However, despite the removal of HT, the flagship ARL chip could still end up trouncing the top Raptor Lake SKU by 40%+.

Intel designed the NUC Extreme mini PCs to accommodate high-end desktop-grade processors, but this might not be the case anymore, as the Meteor Lake models equipping the rumored Asus NUC Extreme only include laptop-grade cores.

This model is 25% off its listing price of US$799 at B&H. Highlights include 16 GB of LPDDR5-5200 RAM, 512 GB PCIe 4.0 SSD storage, a microSD card reader, fingerprint sensor and good battery life with Rapid Charge Boost technology.

Key specs of Intel's upcoming Raptor Lake refresh lineup have been leaked online. Except for the Core i7-14700K, all SKUs bring marginal improvements over their 13th-gen counterparts.

The new Thunderobot MIX mini PCs will launch later this week with up to an i9 Raptor Lake-HX and an RTX 4060 GPU. Exact specs will be released on July 21, and the starting price is set to be around US$840.

Intel is reportedly releasing the refreshed Raptor Lake CPUs for desktops and mobile as 14th-gen chips in the coming months and the Arrow Lake chips in the second half of next year. According to Intel’s internal performance projections for the Arrow Lake and Raptor Lake Refresh chips, the desktop ARL-S processors could bring up to 21% performance gain vs the Core i9-13900K alongside an Xe-LPG iGPU that could be 2.4x as fast as the HD 770 inside the desktop Raptor Lake-S parts.

Apple tends to support its products for six or seven years. For the Apple silicon-based MacBook Air and Mac mini released in H2 2020, this means that almost half of their useful life is now behind them, and with no Windows compatibility, it remains to be seen if they will be of any use past H2 2026.

Intel may be abandoning the NUC business, but the NUC design and branding will most likely be licensed to mini PC OEMs. Among the first SFF makers to plan increased investments in the NUC line is Simply NUC, a company that has deep ties with Intel.

Intel has confirmed plans to end 'direct investment' in its Next Unit of Compute (NUC) business. While Intel will continue to support NUC 13 systems, it has no plans to offer any new NUC mini-PCs or white-label laptops directly.

The OneMix 5 is a forthcoming compact laptop from One-netbook, which may be better known now for its ONEXPLAYER gaming handheld series. The OneMix 5 will build on the ONEMIX 4S with the same Intel Alder Lake-U series processor but a tweaked design that is reminiscent of a smaller Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio.

The Raptor Lake HX-based Intel Core i7-14700K has been benchmarked online. Overall, it is up to 18% faster than the Core i7-13700K. Its actual performance uplift could be higher once the CPU launches in October.

The 14th gen Intel CPUs that are expected to be a refresh of the 13th gen Raptor Lake chips are allegedly just a few months away. According to the latest leak out of Enthusiastic Citizen over at Bilibili, the 14th gen K series RPL-R processors come to the market in mid-October.

Intel is expected to launch the Meteor Lake CPUs in the coming months. Per a new leak from Moore’s Law Is Dead, the mobile Meteor Lake lineup will range from low-power MTL-U to 45 W MTL-H chips with up to 14 cores. The leaker also claims that the Xe LPG iGPU featured inside the MTL processors could pack up to 33% more cores than the Iris Xe inside the Raptor Lake CPUs.

According to an anonymous Chinese source, Nvidia appears to use the same anti-competitive tactics that made the GeForce Partner Program so infamous. On top of reportedly getting delayed to sometime in 2024, Intel's Arc Battlemage GPUs might also face supply issues if Nvidia has its way.

MLID is back with a new report on Intel's Arc Battlemage status and it looks like there are fair chances to see this series launched sometime in 2024. However, the performance target of the top G10 die that was supposed to beat Nvidia's RTX 4080 has meanwhile been nerfed a few times and it might not even beat the RTX 4070 if it ever launches.

Intel’s 13th gen Raptor Lake CPUs are soon to be followed by the 14th gen Refreshed Raptor Lake parts if leaks are any indication. Serial leaker Tom from Moore’s Law Is Dead now alleges that the RPL-R chips could feature the current “Core i” branding and bring a mentionable performance increase over the 13th gen Raptor Lake parts.

The budget-oriented Victus model also features 16 GB of DDR5-4800 RAM, 512 GB PCIe 4.0 SSD storage, a 16.1-inch IPS screen with 1080p resolution and 144 Hz refresh, plus dual speakers designed by Bang & Olufsen.

Introduced for US$289 in early November 2021, the Intel Core i5-12600K has now a list price of US$342.50 on Amazon, but the ongoing 42% discount pushes it to a more wallet-friendly US$197.01. Although its 125 W TDP might keep away some potential buyers, this deal (about US$4 more than the all-time low) keeps it attractive.

Asus has upgraded its Studiobook 16 for 2023. The DialPad for creative users remains, but the processor is now much faster. However, the cooling has more work to do, which is noticeable through the loud fans.

The ExpertCenter PN42 is a new mini-PC available from US$220 as a barebones unit. Currently only orderable with an Intel Processor N100 processor, the ExpertCenter should eventually ship with the more powerful Processor N200 too.

While working on a recent review, we were somewhat puzzled by the marketing material we found. The product page of one notebook contained a thermal image of a supposed comparison device that, at 84°C, was twice as hot as our test device.

The new two-tier branding system initially implied that the Core Ultra and Core 3/5/7 series would only feature Meteor Lake CPUs, but a new set of slides released by Intel China clarifies that the Core 3/5/7 series will feature only Raptor Lake-U Refresh models. Moreover, the Raptor Lake-HX Refresh and the Raptor Lake-S Refresh CPUs will get the Core i3/i5/i7/i9 branding.

In addition to the Intel Alder-Lake U15, Lenovo also offers the Alder-Lake P28 in most 2022 ThinkPads. Not so in the Lenovo ThinkPad X13 Yoga Gen 3, where only less powerful chips are used. Nevertheless, the fan is louder and the battery life is shorter than in the predecessor.

Intel’s Xeon w9-3495X workstation processor has affirmed its position near the top of PassMark’s High End CPU chart, becoming only the second chip to have settled on an average score over 100,000 points. However, the Sapphire Rapids-WS part was not able to overtake AMD’s EPYC 9654 despite slightly breaking up Team Red’s chart domination.

This configuration also features 16 GB DDR5-4800 RAM, a 512 GB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD and a 15.6-inch IPS display with 1080p resolution and 144 Hz refresh rate. B&H is offering a 10% discount off the MSRP.

Honor is now selling the MagicBook X 16 2023, a 16-inch laptop based around an Intel Core i5-12450H processor. The laptop also comes with a number pad, a 16:10 display and a 60 Wh battery, among other features.

Intel's first quantum processor only has 12 qubits, almost a thousand times less than IBM's upcoming Flamingo chip. However, Team Blue is using a different design based on silicon spin qubits that are a million times smaller, allowing them to scale easier to coherent clusters of thousands and even millions.

The discounted configuration also comes with 16 GB of DDR5-4800 RAM, 512 GB NVMe SSD storage, 17.3-inch IPS screen with 1440p resolution and 165 Hz refresh rate, a Thunderbolt 4 connector and a full-size SD card reader.

Intel is not the only company courted for an anchor investment in Arm. Industry insiders claim that ten other industry giants are now in talks with SoftBank regarding sizable anchor investments before the IPO. None of these deals would grant control over Arm.

Intel has finally detailed its branding strategy for its consumer Core lineup of processors. Starting with Meteor Lake, Intel will be dropping the generation and the "i" moniker in the name. We will get to see a two-tier naming scheme — one of which includes the Core Ultra range, which Meteor Lake will be a part of.