The 58th annual edition of the TOP500 saw little change in the Top10. The Microsoft Azure system called Voyager-EUS2 was the only machine to shake up the top spots, claiming No. 10. Based on an AMD EPYC processor with 48 cores and 2.45GHz working together with an NVIDIA A100 GPU and 80 GB of memory, Voyager-EUS2 also utilizes a Mellanox HDR Infiniband for data transfer.

While there were no other changes to the positions of the systems in the Top10, Perlmutter at NERSC improved its performance to 70.9 Pflop/s. Housed at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Perlmutter's increased performance couldn't move it from its previously held No. 5 spot.

For more than 20 years, 3DMark has been gamers' first choice for benchmarking the latest graphics cards and processors. Today, we're taking 'The Gamer's Benchmark' into a new area with the 3DMark Storage Benchmark, a dedicated component test for measuring the gaming performance of SSDs, hybrid drives, and other storage devices.

With fast modern SSD storage, loading times are shorter, levels restart faster, and there are fewer interruptions to your gameplay. PC gamers can now choose from a wide range of high-performance storage options from the fastest PCI Express 4.0 and NVMe devices down to cheaper SATA SSDs and high-capacity hybrid drives.

BAPCo, a non-profit consortium of leading PC hardware manufacturers, today added support for the Android OS for CrossMark. Released in March, CrossMark has rapidly established itself as a cross-architecture performance benchmark that simplifies system performance and responsiveness measurement using common and relevant workloads for Windows, iOS, macOS and Android. CrossMark is based on widely used open-source applications to assess system performance scores in the areas of Productivity, Creativity and Responsiveness.

Adding Android support to the ecosystem allows CrossMark to accurately and objectively measure both system performance and responsiveness, which has traditionally been a time-consuming, difficult process to billions of new devices. CrossMark allows users to quickly install the software natively on their system and be up and running in a matter of minutes - with measurement runs as quick as 5 minutes to complete. At its conclusion, CrossMark reports an overall system performance and responsiveness score, as well as several key sub-scores indicative of typical day-to-day system performance. With over 2,200+ submitted and published results on BAPCo's online database users can compare their scores to a wide range of systems across multiple architectures.

Remember that Core i9-12900K CPU-Z leak from last week? It had the multi-threaded score blurred out and now we know why. A new CPU-Z screenshot has shown up on Twitter and although the single threaded score is still beating the AMD Ryzen 5950X baseline single core score by a comfortable margin, it's behind when we're switching to the multi-threaded score.

It shouldn't really come as a surprise that eight big and eight small CPU cores doesn't beat AMD's 16 big cores, but this was apparently expected by some. This is not saying that Intel doesn't get close as you can see, but it's also worth keeping in mind that Intel runs on 24 threads vs. AMD's 32 threads. The Core i9-12900K is said to be running on stock clocks, but no other information was provided. Once again, take this for what it is while we wait for the actual launch date and proper benchmarks.

We recently saw the Intel Core i7-12700 appear on Geekbench 5 where it traded blows with the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X, we have now discovered the flagship Core i9-12900K also making an appearance. The benchmarked Intel Core i9-12900K features a hybrid design with 8 high-performance cores, 8 high-efficiency cores, and 24 threads running at a base clock of 3.2 GHz. The test was performed on a Windows 11 Pro machine allowing for full use of the Intel Thread Director technology paired with 32 GB of DDR5 memory. The processor achieved a single-core score of 1834/1893 in the two tests which gives it the highest score on the official Benchmarks coming in 12% faster than the Ryzen 9 5950X. The processor also achieved an impressive multi-core score of 17299/17370 which places it 3% above the Ryzen 9 5950X and 57% above the previous generation flagship 8-core i9-11900K. These leaked benchmarks highlight the impressive potential of Intel's upcoming 12th Generation Core series which is expected to launch in November.

UL Benchmarks is expanding 3DMark today by adding a set of dedicated CPU benchmarks. The 3DMark CPU Profile introduces a new approach to CPU benchmarking that shows how CPU performance scales with the number of cores and threads used. The new CPU Profile benchmark tests are available now in 3DMark Advanced Edition and 3DMark Professional Edition.

The 3DMark CPU Profile introduces a new approach to CPU benchmarking. Instead of producing a single number, the 3DMark CPU Profile shows how CPU performance scales and changes with the number of cores and threads used. The CPU Profile has six tests, each of which uses a different number of threads. The benchmark starts by using all available threads. It then repeats using 16 threads, 8 threads, 4 threads, 2 threads, and ends with a single-threaded test. These six tests help you benchmark and compare CPU performance for a range of threading levels. They also provide a better way to compare different CPU models by looking at the results from thread levels they have in common.

The upcoming NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti has already been tested in the old, tried and true Ashes of the Singularity benchmark - the first game to ever support DirectX 12. Considering the proximity of this Ashes of the SIngularity bench run with the projected announcement date for the RTX 3080 Ti itself, on June 4th, it may mean that this is a reviewers' sample that's been tested.

As the industry is preparing for a shift to the new DDR standard, companies are trying to adopt the new technology and many companies are manufacturing the latest DDR5 memory modules. One of them is Shenzhen Longsys Electronics Co. Ltd, a Chinese manufacturer of memory chips, which has today demonstrated the power of DDR5 technology. Starting with this year, client platforms are expected to make a transition to the new standard, with the data center/server platform following. Using Intel's yet unreleased Alder Lake-S client platform, Longsys has been able to test its DDR5 DIMMs running at an amazing 6400 MHz speed and the company got some very interesting results.

Longsys has demoed a DDR5 module with 32 GB capacity, CAS Latency (CL) of 40 CL, operating voltage of 1.1 V, and memory modules clocked at 6400 MHz. With this being an impressive memory module, this is not the peak of DDR5. According to JEDEC specification, DDR5 will come with up to 8400 MHz speeds and capacities that are up to 128 GB per DIMM. Longsys has run some benchmarks, using an 8-core Alder Lake CPU, in AIDA64 and Ludashi. The company then proceeded to compare these results with DDR4-3200 MHz CL22 memory, which Longsys also manufactures. And the results? In AIDA64 tests, the new DDR5 module is faster anywhere from 12-36%, with the only regression seen in latency, where DDR5 is doubling it. In synthetic Ludashi Master Lu benchmark, the new DDR5 was spotted running 112% faster. Of course, these benchmarks, which you can check out here, are provided by the manufacturer, so you must take them with a grain of salt.

Blizzard, a popular game developer, has today implemented NVIDIA's latest technology for latency reduction into its first-person shooter—Overwatch. Called NVIDIA Reflex, the technology aims to reduce system latency by combining the NVIDIA GPUs with G-SYNC monitors, and specially certified peripherals, all of which can be found on the company website. NVIDIA Reflex dynamically reduces system latency by combining both GPU and game optimizations, which game developers implement, and the gamer is left with a much more responsive system that can edge out a competitive advantage. Today, we get to see just how much the new technology helps in the latest Overwatch update that brings NVIDIA's Reflex with it.

Blizzard has tested three NVIDIA GPUs: GeForce RTX 3080, RTX 2060 SUPER, and GTX 1660 SUPER. All three GPUs cover three different segments, so they are a good sign of what you can expect from your system. Starting from the GeForce GTX 1660 Super, the system latency, which was measured in milliseconds, was cut by over 50%. The middle-end RTX 2060 SUPER GPU experienced a similar gain, while the RTX 3080 was seen with the smallest gain, however, it did achieve the lowest latency out of all GPUs tested. You can check out the results for yourself below.

We have recently received some early gaming benchmarks for the upcoming Intel Core i7-11700K after German retailer MindFactory released the chip early. The creator of CapFrameX has managed to get their hands on one of these processors and has put it to the test comparing it with the Intel Core i9-10900K in some gaming benchmarks. Intel has promised double-digit IPC improvements with the new Rocket Lake generation of processors however if the results from this latest benchmark are representative of the wider picture those improvements might be a bit more modest then Intel claims.

The processors were paired with an RTX 3090 and 32 GB of 3200 MHz memory as this is the new stock maximum speed supported versus 2933 MHz on the Core i9-10900K. The two processors were put to the test in Crysis Remastered, Cyberpunk 2077, and Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order, with the i7-11700K coming ahead in all three tests by ~ 2% - 9%. These tests are unverified and might not be fully representative of performance but they give us a good indication of what Intel has to offer with these new 11th generation chips.

Unity, the world's leading platform for creating and operating real-time 3D (RT3D) content, today released the 2021 Gaming Report: Unity Insights from 2020 and Predicted Trends for 2021, which provides a comprehensive look at how gaming changed for both players and creators one year into the pandemic. With more than 2.8 billion monthly active consumers of content created or operated with Unity solutions, this report represents the largest dataset on COVID-19's impact on gaming. For a free copy of Unity's 2021 Gaming Report, please visit this page.

"It's still too early to tell if changed habits will become the new norm once the pandemic is over, but given our understanding of past player behavior changes, it would be surprising to see many players revert," said Ingrid Lestiyo, Senior VP and General Manager, Operate Solutions, Unity. "In a year where online entertainment content - more than ever - became the cornerstone of social connections for so many when seeking a semblance of normalcy, Unity Operate Solutions was there to provide reliable, scalable solutions that helped keep the experiences connected and players engaged. Our amazing creators are here for that reason, and our mission is to enable them to focus on, and produce more, content with the technology we provide. While the nature of work may have changed for many game studios over the last year, the tools that help to power their success continued to deliver results that kept players happy, and revenue for developers of all sizes growing."

When AMD announced its Ryzen 5000 series of processors based on the new Zen 3 architecture, the performance of these processors was the best on the market. Even in our own testing, we have found that AMD's Zen 3 core is the highest performing core on the market, even beating Intel's latest and greatest, the 10th generation of Core processors. However, Intel has been doing some silent work and the company has developed a new core to be used in the 11th generation "Rocket Lake" platform. Codenamed Cypress Cove, the design is representing a backport of the 10 nm Sunny Cove design, supposed to bring around 19% IPC improvement across the board.

If you were wondering if that was enough to catch up with AMD's Zen 3 IPC performance, look no further because we have Geekbench 5 performance results of Intel's 35 Watt Core i9-11900T processor. Having a base frequency of only 1.51 GHz, the CPU is capable of boosting one or two cores to the very high speed of 4.9 GHz, giving us a good example of the single-threaded performance we can expect from this CPU. In GB5 tests, the Core i9-11900T has managed to score 1717 points in the single-threaded test and 8349 points in multi-threaded results. Comparing that to something like AMD Ryzen 5800X, which scores 1674 points in single-threaded results, Rocket Lake's Cypress Cove core has managed to be 2.5% faster than Zen 3. However, in multi-threaded results, the AMD chip is unmatched as the low TDP of the Intel processor is stopping it from reaching full performance.

DirectX 12 Ultimate adds powerful new features and capabilities to DirectX 12 including DirectX Raytracing Tier 1.1, Mesh Shaders, Sampler Feedback, and Variable Rate Shading (VRS). After DirectX 12 Ultimate was announced, we started adding new tests to 3DMark to show how games can benefit from these new features. Our latest addition is the 3DMark Mesh Shader feature test, a new test that shows how game developers can boost frame rates by using mesh shaders in the graphics pipeline.

Intel is preparing to launch their latest generation Rocket Lake-S processors in the coming weeks. We recently saw some leaked Geekbench 5 scores for the eight-core Intel Core i7-11700K showing it beating the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X in single-core performance. We have recently received some new benchmarks for the i9-11900K and i7-11700K this time in CPU-Z showing them once again best AMD in single-core performance.

The Cypress Cove core design found in these upcoming processors is expected to bring double-digit IPC gains over Skylake and this is reflected in these scores. Take all these benchmarks with a healthy dose of skepticism as we have no way of confirming these numbers until we can test the chips ourselves. The Intel Core i9-11900K gets a single thread score of 695.4 and a multi-thread score of 6522.1 which puts it 19% ahead of the i9-10900K and 3% ahead of the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X in single-threaded performance. The processor still falls far behind the Ryzen 9 5950X in multi-threaded performance due to it having half the number of cores.

With the launch of AMD's next-generation mobile processors just around the corner, with an expected launch date in the beginning of 2021 at the CES virtual event. The Cezanne lineup, as it is called, is based on AMD's latest Zen 3 core, which brings many IPC improvements, along with better frequency scaling thanks to the refined architecture design. Today, we get to see just how much the new Cezanne generation brings to the table thanks to the GeekBench 5 submission. In the test system, a Ryzen 5 5600H mobile processor was used, found inside of a Xiaomi Mi Notebook, paired with 16 GB of RAM.

As a reminder, the AMD Ryzen 5 5600H is a six-core, twelve threaded processor. So you are wondering how the performance looks like. Well, in the single-core test, the Zen 3 enabled core has scored 1372 points, while the multi-threaded performance result equaled 5713 points. If we compare that to the last generation Zen 2 based "Renoir" design, the equivalent Ryzen 5 4600H processor, the new design is about 37% faster in single-threaded, and about 14% faster in multi-threaded workloads. We are waiting for the announcement to see the complete AMD Cezanne lineup and see the designs it will bring.

Intel is still in the work of testing and certification for their more complex graphics products based on their Xe microarchitectures, and that means that some tests are being done in well-known benchmarking platforms. Case in point, an Intel Xe GPU with a reported 128 EUs (1024 shading units), 3 GB of memory, and a clockspeed of 1.4 GHz ran through Geekbench, where it scored an... interesting 9,311 points in the OpenCL test.

This is more likely than not an engineering sample, considering that Intel's Iris Xe MAX wrapped in its Tiger Lake package can score up to 23,000 points. It is currently unclear if this particular Xe manifestation is running on Intel's Xe-LP or Xe-HPG architecture. This might be Intel's DG-2 product, which offers higher performance than their DG-1 discrete graphics card that is only available for system integrators.

AMD is preparing to launch its next-generation of EPYC processors codenamed Millan. Being based on the company's latest Zen 3 cores, the new EPYC generation is going to deliver a massive IPC boost, spread across many cores. Models are supposed to range anywhere from 16 to 64 cores, to satisfy all of the demanding server workloads. Today, thanks to the leak from ExecutableFix on Twitter, we have the first benchmark of a system containing two of the 64 core, 128 thread Zen 3 based EPYC Milan processors. Running in the 2P configuration the processors achieved a maximum boost clock of 3.7 GHz, which is very high for a server CPU with that many cores.

The system was able to produce a Cinebench R23 score of insane 87878 points. With that many cores, it is no wonder how it is done, however, we need to look at how does it fare against the competition. For comparison, the Intel Xeon Platinum 8280L processor with its 28 cores and 56 threads that boost to 4.0 GHz can score up to 49,876 points. Of course, the scaling to that many cores may not work very well in this example application, so we have to wait and see how it performs in other workloads before jumping to any conclusions. The launch date is unknown for these processors, so we have to wait and report as more information appears.

Over the last year, we've seen a lot of interest in a new category of PCs designed for content creators. With high-end specifications and serious styling, these new creator PCs are being marketed to animators, designers, photographers, videographers, musicians and other digital content creators. Today, to meet growing demand from our press and retail partners, we're releasing two new benchmarks for measuring the performance of creator PCs. These two benchmarks use popular Adobe applications to test PC performance for photo editing and video editing work.

Enthusiast creators now have easy access to many of the same software tools used by professionals. Add increasingly powerful, yet affordable PC hardware, and creators have everything they need to develop their talent and unlock their potential. For creators who make a living from their craft, focus and productivity are key. When the process gets in the way, creativity suffers. Even the smallest interruption can break the flow. Longer delays from loading images or exporting video files are even more frustrating. Creator PCs promise to smooth out the wrinkles in the production process. Many manufacturers are now offering dedicated systems for content creators. Benchmark scores offer an easy way for creators to compare the performance of these different systems.

When Apple announced that they are going to switch their Mac lineup from Intel-based x86 processors to the custom "Apple Silicon," everyone was wondering how the new processors will look and perform. To everyone's luck, Apple has just a few days ago announced its first Apple Silicon custom processor for MacBook. The M1, as the company calls it, is their first processor designed for higher-power and performance tasks The M1 features eight CPU cores (four high-performance and four-high efficiency) paired with eight cores dedicated to the graphics. On the die, there is also a 16-core neural engine made to accelerate machine learning tasks found in the new applications.

Today, we are getting the first GeekBench 5 CPU benchmarks that showcase just how far Apple has come with its custom design. What we have is the M1 processor found in MacBook Air. This Mac model features a passive cooling system, cooling a CPU with a base frequency of 3.2 GHz. The system scored 1719 points in the single-core result, and 6967 points in the multi-core result. The single-threaded results measure itself with some of the highest-end offerings from Intel and AMD, while the multi-threaded results are very good given the mix and match of small and big cores.

Maxon has recently released Cinebench R23 with an updated codebase to more closely reflect real-world Cinema 4D performance. Cinebench brings support for Apple silicon with the ARM-based M1 processor found in the latest generation Apple MacBooks. The benchmark now features a minimum runtime of 10 minutes to ensure the system reaches peak temperatures and measures a more realistic performance estimate. This change will reduce the scores for systems that throttle under sustained loads. The scores from Cinebench R23 are not comparable to scores from previous versions including Cinebench R20.

Cinebench R23 can now be downloaded for free from Maxon (250 MB).

Today, Chaos Group released V-Ray 5 Benchmark, a free standalone application that lets users quickly test their rendering speeds on any combination of CPUs and GPUs. V-Ray 5 Benchmark launches with three complex test scenes designed to assess V-Ray performance on CPU, GPU CUDA and GPU RTX cards.

Since launching, V-Ray Benchmark has become a standard for new hardware testing, helping countless users and journalists assess the rendering performance of new laptops, workstations, graphics cards and more. With V-Ray 5 Benchmark, these users can access its biggest update yet, making it easier to evaluate the latest technology against one of the most popular renderers in the world.

The launch of AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series graphics cards on November 18 will end NVIDIA's monopoly on real-time raytracing. For the first time, gamers will have a choice of GPU vendors when buying a raytracing-capable graphics card. Today, we're releasing a new 3DMark feature test that measures pure raytracing performance. You can use the 3DMark DirectX Raytracing feature test to compare the performance of the dedicated raytracing hardware in the latest graphics cards from AMD and NVIDIA.

Real-time raytracing is incredibly demanding. The latest graphics cards have dedicated hardware that's optimized for raytracing operations. Despite the advances in GPU performance, the demands are still too high for a game to rely on raytracing alone. That's why games use raytracing to complement traditional rendering techniques. The 3DMark DirectX Raytracing feature test is designed to make raytracing performance the limiting factor. Instead of relying on traditional rendering, the whole scene is ray-traced and drawn in one pass.DOWNLOAD: 3DMark v2.15.7078

Just a few days ago, Intel has decided to surprise us and give out information about its upcoming Rocket Lake-S platform designed for desktop users. Arriving early next year (Q1) the Rocket Lake-S platform is yet another iteration of the company's 14 nm node. However, this time we are getting some real system changes with a new architecture design. Backporting its Golden Cove core to 14 nm, Intel has named this new core type Cypress Cove. What used to be the heart of Ice Lake CPUs, is now powering the Rocket Lake-S platform. Besides the new core, there are other features of the platform like PCIe 4.0, new Xe graphics, and updated media codecs. You can check that out here.

Today, we have gotten the first benchmarks of the Intel Rocket Lake-S system. In the Userbenchmark bench, an unknown eight-core Rocket Lake CPU has been compared to Intel's 10th generation Comet Lake-S processors. The Rocket Lake engineering sample ran at 4.2 GHz while scoring a single-core score of 179. Compared to the Core i9-10900K that runs at 5.3 GHz, which scored 152 points, the Cypress Cove design is 18% faster. And if the new design is compared to the equivalent 8C/16T Compet Lake CPU like Core i7-10700K clocked at 5.1 GHz and scoring 148 points, the new CPU uarch is up to 22% faster. This represents massive single-threaded performance increases, however, please take the information with a grain of salt, as we wait for the official reviews.

Scores for AMD's upcoming Zen 3 Ryzen 7 5800X (8 core, 16 thread) and Ryzen 9 5950X (16 core, 32 thread) have surfaced on the CPU-Z benchmark. The results, which should - as always - be taken with appropriate salt, point towards the Ryzen 7 5800X scoring 650 single-core and 6593 points in the multi-threaded benchmark. The Ryzen 9 5950X is rated as scoring 690.2 points in the same single-threaded benchmark and 13306.5 points in the multi-threaded one. CPU-Z scores for the Intel Core i9-10900K (10 cores, 20 threads) are set at 584 and 7389 points respectively. This is further fuel to the fire on AMD's current technology and performance leadership.

AMD's "Big Navi" GPU is nearing the launch on October 28th, just a few days from now. This means that benchmarks of the card are already appearing across the internet, and we get to see how the card performs. Being divided into two different versions, Big Navi comes in Navi 21 XT and Navi 21 XTX silicon. While the former is available to AMD's AIBs, the latter is rumored to be exclusive to AMD and its reference design, meaning that at least in the beginning, you can only get Navi 21 XTX GPU if you purchase one from AMD directly.

Today, thanks to the Twitter account of CapFrameX, a frame time capturing tool, we have benchmark results of the Big Navi GPU in Firestrike Ultra. According to the people behind this account, the card scores about 11500 points in the benchmark. Compared to NVIDIA's offerings like GeForce RTX 3080, which scores about 10600, the AMD card is 8.5% faster. It is not known whatever this is Navi 21 XT or Navi 21 XTX silicon, however, we can assume that it is the former, and AMD is keeping the XTX revision to themselves for now. This result could be a leak from some of the AIBs, so it could not be the final Big Navi performance. All of this information should be taken with a grain of salt.