AMD's Madhu Rangarajan, corporate VP of Compute and Enterprise AI, says the company never set out to build its Zen 6 EPYC 9006 "Venice" chips around agentic AI, a not-so-subtle dig at NVIDIA and Arm, which both pitch their latest server CPUs as made for that exact job. Rangarajan still called EPYC 9006 the best CPU for agentic workloads during a media session covered by Tom's Hardware. Chief Zen architect Mike Clark said much the same in a separate talk, admitting AMD didn't see agentic computing coming, though he added that the company always expected the CPU to keep a role in AI software. Here's what Rangarajan said:

We think that the EPYC 9006 CPU is the best CPU for the agentic era, and spoiler alert, we didn't magically know four years ago that agentic was going to be a thing and purpose-built something for agentic. The reality is an agentic workflow is a diverse set of tasks… and in order to execute those tasks well, you need compute that is able to handle a diverse set of workloads with a full portfolio.

What's the News? AMD announced the AMD EPYC Embedded 9006 Series SP7 CPUs, expanding its x86 processor portfolio optimized for embedded customer requirements and deployments. Advanced by the high-performance "Zen 6" core architecture, AMD EPYC Embedded 9006 CPUs combine up to 256 cores, scalable PCIe Gen 6 and CXL 3.1 connectivity, and advanced security from secure boot through runtime. With a throughput increase of up to 1.8x compared with the previous generation 5th Gen AMD EPYC 9005 Series processors, they provide the leadership compute and high-speed connectivity needed to scale throughput and handle increasingly demanding workloads in semiconductor automated test equipment (ATE), enterprise storage and network firewall applications. Seven-year product longevity, support for post-quantum cryptography for firmware signing, and ongoing security updates simplify maintenance and long-term support for mission-critical embedded applications.

Why It Matters? As AI infrastructure expands and data volumes grow, semiconductor ATE needs to validate memory and I/O devices faster, firewalls need to process and secure more network traffic, and storage controllers need to move and process more data. AMD EPYC Embedded 9006 processors deliver the high throughput, memory bandwidth and I/O performance required to meet these growing application demands.

AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) today announced the general availability of the 6th Gen AMD EPYC server SP7 processors, based on the new "Zen 6" architecture, extending its historical server CPU performance leadership as AI creates new demands across the data center. Systems powered by the new CPUs are shipping from all leading server vendors, and cloud instances from Microsoft Azure and OCI are coming soon.

Across five generations, AMD EPYC processors have repeatedly raised the standard for server CPU performance, energy efficiency and platform choice, culminating in 5th Gen AMD EPYC processors becoming the fastest-ramping and highest-volume EPYC generation in AMD history. Now, 6th Gen AMD EPYC server CPUs extend AMD CPU leadership, running AI agents, accelerated infrastructure and critical enterprise applications, helping customers expand computing capacity that runs their businesses.

[Editor's note: You can read our AMD Zen 6 Technical Deep Dive here]

Gaming PCs sitting idle could one day earn their owners credits, or even cash, by training AI models, at least if a newly published Microsoft patent application ever becomes a product. Titled "Opportunistic Micro-training on Edge Devices Using Spare GPU Utilization," the filing US-20260349820-A1 from Microsoft Technology Licensing was submitted in April 2025 and made public on November 5. It describes chopping large training jobs into small micro-tasks sized to what each device can handle, then sending them to phones, laptops, and gaming PCs whenever they have spare capacity. Owners would have to explicitly opt in, after which the system could track the work done and apply credits to their account, redeemable for free software, access to the trained model, or money.

To stay out of the way, the system watches GPU and CPU load, memory use, temperature and power draw, and checks less often when the GPU is busy or hot. Apparently, tasks can be paused or stopped when limits are crossed, and results get cross-checked across devices to catch faulty or tampered work. The filing doesn't give a payout rate or list supported hardware, and Microsoft hasn't announced a Windows or Xbox service, so it's impossible to say whether the rewards would cover the extra electricity. Of course, this is only an application for now, and plenty of those never turn into products.

Intel's Razor Lake desktop processors, the generation that follows Nova Lake-S, are currently slated for 2028, according to well-known Intel leaker Jaykihn. When asked on X whether Razor Lake-S was planned for 2027, Jaykihn replied "not currently," then followed up saying Razor Lake is a 2028 product for now. A leaked partner slide placed the first Nova Lake-S SKUs in Q1 2027 and indicated Intel plans to keep LGA-1954 for multiple generations, so Razor Lake-S should drop into the same boards roughly a year later. Apparently, Razor Lake will use new Griffin Cove P-cores, which Jaykihn previously called "an entire tock" rather than a refinement. The same core will reportedly also power Intel's next-generation Coral Rapids Xeon processors, though simultaneous multithreading (SMT) stays exclusive to Xeon.

Jaykihn says the client and server versions are separate architectures built around a similar core, comparing it to how Coyote Cove relates to Panther Cove. Earlier leaks pointed to Intel using TSMC's N2X node for some Razor Lake production, and the 12 Xe3P core iGPU SKU originally meant for Nova Lake-S was reportedly pushed to Razor Lake. HWiNFO also added support for Razor Lake-H, HX, and S in a recent beta. If the plan holds, Nova Lake-S buyers would get a proper CPU upgrade path without swapping motherboards, which is a welcome change after Intel went through three sockets in the last five years. Of course, timelines this far out can move, and Intel hasn't confirmed any of this, so it's reasonable to treat 2028 as a target for now.

HWiNFO's newest beta, v8.55-6115, adds recognition for an AMD Radeon RX 7500, a graphics card AMD has not yet announced. The changelog entry is a single line with only the name, so the specs, the GPU underneath, and any launch plans are all unknown for now. The most likely candidate is probably the 6 nm "Navi 33" RDNA 3 chip, which already powers the 28 CU RX 7400 and the fully enabled 32 CU RX 7600. Of course, a card squeezed between those two would leave AMD very little room to work with, so the name is a bit puzzling. AMD hasn't said anything about the card so far, but we have heard the name before.

When the RX 7400 and RX 7300 first appeared in rumors back in 2024, there were rumblings of an RX 7500 XT desktop graphics card, though nothing concrete ever followed. Moving onto other additions to HWiNFO, the same build also adds enhanced support for Intel's Nova Lake-E and Razor Lake-H, HX, and S processors. Razor Lake is the platform expected to follow Nova Lake, and Intel has yet to officially announce it. CPUID added Razor Lake support to CPU-Z 3.02 earlier this week, while HWiNFO picked up preliminary Razor Lake-AX support back in August. With the first Nova Lake-S desktop chips not expected until Q1 2027, retail Razor Lake chips are probably still a long way out.

Intel's upcoming Core Ultra 4000 "Nova Lake-S" desktop processors will reportedly cap their maximum core frequency at 5.1 GHz whenever they run above 90°C, according to Intel leaker Jaykihn on X. He says the limit applies to the entire Nova Lake-S desktop lineup, works separately from regular TjMax throttling at 100°C, and can't be raised. He also notes that the information is still preliminary. In practice, it looks like a safety net that sits between normal boost behavior and full thermal throttling. Below 90°C, the chips should presumably boost as usual, and models that don't exceed 5.1 GHz in the first place wouldn't be affected at all.

Final Nova Lake clocks aren't official yet, though the current Core Ultra 9 285K already boosts up to 5.7 GHz, so a high-end Nova Lake chip that runs hot could lose a sizable chunk of its peak frequency. A 100°C TjMax would also be lower than Arrow Lake's 105°C, which can be manually raised to 115°C on the 285K. That puts more weight on cooling, since the 28-core Core Ultra 9 4970K BFC was reportedly set to pull up to 296 W at PL2 despite its 125 W rating, and staying under 90°C at that kind of power draw will probably take a really capable cooler. Nova Lake-S is currently expected to arrive in Q1 2027, and Intel hasn't confirmed any of this yet.

Microsoft today released a series of optimizations for Windows 11 PCs running on 8 GB of system RAM, promising significant improvements for those with smaller RAM capacities. Especially in the age of RAM shortages, Windows 11 is getting an update that might be most beneficial for those with lower PC specifications. With Windows 11, version 26H2, build 26300.9818 or later, users with systems equipped with 8 GB RAM can expect up to a 20% more responsive Windows operating system experience with day-to-day tasks, as well as up to 40% faster multitasking.

Microsoft's labs tested around 20,000 PCs to find solutions for lower hardware specifications and discovered that keeping more data in RAM significantly enhances the Windows experience. For systems with 8 GB of RAM, the OS will now retain up to 2 GB more of your active application data in memory, rather than moving it to slower SSD or HDD storage. This change directly results in a smoother experience. Additional benefits include reducing committed-memory growth by up to 900 MB in apps like Microsoft Edge and 365 apps, and decreasing the memory usage of Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook by 360 MB. Third-party apps can also take advantage of improved memory management, with Microsoft noting that WhatsApp is already utilizing these enhancements.

As spotted by Club386, two motherboards based on Intel's Z970 chipset have shown up in the NBD shipping database, which logs Vietnamese customs records. Going by the names, both appear to be from ASRock: the Z970 LiveMixer WiFi and the Z970 Pro-A WiFi. The entries refer to PCBs shipping at the end of September 2026. The Z970 chipset is rumored to support CPU multiplier overclocking, but not the base clock tweaking that Z990 is expected to offer. Leaker Jaykihn has also previously reported that it will replace most of the market the B860 covers today. If that ends up being the case, it would be a big change, since Intel has kept CPU overclocking on its most expensive chipset for years, while AMD allows it on most of its B-series boards.

Intel's Robert Hallock has previously said the goal is more unlocked SKUs over time, and that overclocking shouldn't be reserved for the people paying the most. It looks like that approach could extend to motherboards too. Of course, Intel hasn't announced Z970 or Z990 yet, so this is all unofficial, and we don't know what the prices of either would look like. Moreover, shipments this early don't necessarily mean retail boards are close. Intel has reportedly promised more details at CES in January 2027, which fits the rumored CES 2027 launch window. If Z970 does arrive at B860 prices, it could be the most interesting platform for most builders.

Valve's October 2026 Steam Hardware & Software Survey shows much of September's odd data snapping back. After 32 GB system RAM overtook 16 GB last month, the 16 GB tier is back in first place at 41.42% (up 3.60 points), while 32 GB dropped 5.16 points to 37.06%. The GeForce RTX 3060 is the most common GPU again at 3.62% across all platforms, a spot it held before September, while the RTX 5070 fell from 5.86% to 3.56%. It looks like the survey sample played a big part. Simplified Chinese fell 9.41 points to 21.98%, while English rose 4.84 points to 39.04%. The survey is voluntary, so a change in who responds can move the numbers without an actual hardware change behind it. We can't confirm that, but it would explain why so many categories shifted at once.

Windows 11 rose 1.17 points to 72.51%, and Linux climbed 0.90 points to 3.95%. The 1440p share dropped 5.22 points to 21.82%, while 1080p sits at 50.23%. On Windows, Intel gained 0.89 points to reach 53.48% CPU share, with AMD at 46.51%. Valve's Steam Frame, which launched in September, now holds 4.13% of surveyed VR headsets, up 3.72 points, while Meta Quest 3 continues to dominate with a 27.27% share. However, headset owners are only 1.75% of the survey, so it's a small group. The interesting bit is still the system RAM split, and while 32 GB RAM had been slowly gaining on 16 GB, it looks like September was the outlier. November's data should give us a better idea of the split.

Haswell owners finally have a way to get Resizable BAR running on Intel 8-series motherboards. As spotted by Haze on X, a developer going by roschank has released reBART, an open-source UEFI driver for Z87, H87, Q87, B85, Q85, and H81 boards. Back in 2020, it was reported that Intel CPUs since Haswell support Resizable BAR, pending firmware updates from motherboard makers that never came for 8-series. The developer went digging after failing to get Above 4G Decoding working on their own B85 board, and found that Intel's 8-series platform code skips mapping memory above 4 GB altogether, something both 7-series and 9-series firmware handle. Apparently, every board maker they checked inherited the same gap, so the 4G toggle some of these BIOSes expose likely does nothing.

reBART lets the board boot normally and only kicks in right before the OS loads. At that point, it shifts the GPU's memory window up past the 4 GB line and points the boot display at the new location too. Unlike ReBarUEFI, it doesn't need module patching, though a DSDT patch is still required. Newer builds added experimental support for Intel Arc cards and multi-GPU setups, which is important since Intel once told Arc buyers without ReBAR to stick with other vendors. One user reports an Arc A750 and an Arc B580 both working with an unlimited BAR size on a Gigabyte GA-Z87M-D3H under Ubuntu. Of course, going this route means flashing a modified BIOS, and at least one ASUS Z87-Plus owner couldn't get the board to boot after the DSDT patch. The developer hasn't shared any performance numbers yet either.

Linux Mint is one of the most widely recommended Linux distributions, especially for those looking to move from Windows to Linux, since it features a familiar layout and is very beginner-friendly. However, it is still based on Ubuntu and thus subject to many of Ubuntu's upstream decisions, like the prior removal of hibernation support in favor of suspend. In a recent Linux Mint blog post, previewing upcoming chanes to Mint, the development team behind the distribution argue that, while suspend is useful and widely supported, it results in phantom battery drain in most cases and can result in a dead laptop battery within 2-3 days.

With this justification in mind, the development team has confirmed that it has re-implemented support for hibernation in Linux Mint, with a new GUI page in the System Administration tool with toggles to enable specific sleep modes, including suspend, hibernate, suspend then hibernate, and hybrid sleep. There is also a dedicated drop-down to configure more specific hibernation and sleep modes, and there is a section that automatically detects problems with the configured sleep modes to make it easier for users to fix them.

A lot of information relating to Intel Nova Lake-S has emerged leading up to the official launch in early 2027, including official information from Intel detailing the Nova Lake architecture and a recent benchmark leak that promised significant single-thread performance improvements on a 28-core Nova Lake-S part. However, a recent leak out of @Haze2K1 on X, shared by VideoCardz, purports that the real-world performance improvements for Intel's Nova Lake desktop CPUs are in the double digit range.

While the leaker has been around for a while, there is no guarantee that this information is accurate, since the only cited source is "circulating chatter," however, the claim is that Intel's Nova Lake will outperform comparable last-generation Arrow Lake CPUs by 8-17% in raw single-thread performance, 15% in general-purpose workloads, and up to 20% in gaming. There is some nuance to these claims, with the 17% improvement figure exclusive to the higher-end CPUs that feature bLLC, while the 17% boost allegedly comes from the implementation of Intel's new Advanced Performance Extensions.

AMD is reportedly getting ready to raise prices on its Radeon GPU and GDDR6 memory kits again in November. According to a new post from Board Channels, the increase would follow an earlier adjustment in October, when AMD apparently started charging its board partners more for GDDR6 from October 1. The exact scope of the November hike isn't known yet. The main reason seems to be memory, since GDDR6 prices reportedly went up by around 8 to 10% in the third quarter. Board Channels also claims AMD now reviews its kit pricing every quarter to keep up with rising GPU and memory costs. AMD sells its GPUs to add-in board partners bundled with memory, so any increase there usually ends up in the price of the finished card.

This would add to a long list of reported increases this year. A 10% hike on Radeon GPU kits was reported for July, another 10% increase across GPUs, chipsets, and possibly CPUs followed in September, and AMD's suggested Radeon prices in China went up in early October. Retail prices are already moving, too. According to Hardware Unboxed's latest pricing survey, cited by Videocardz, the RX 9060 XT 16 GB costs 17% more than it did in September, while the RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT are up 12%. Of course, AMD hasn't officially confirmed any of this. How much the November change affects store prices will depend on board partner pricing and existing inventory, so buyers who were already planning on a Radeon RX 9000 card might want to buy sooner rather than later.

Intel's global foundry operations are crucial to the company's revenue generation, and impacting any part of the supply chain directly harms the business. When explosions occurred at Fab 28 in Kiryat Gat, Israel, Intel's operations there briefly halted 10 nm node production for two weeks. During this time, the assessment of both equipment and production output is estimated to result in about $300 million of lost revenue in the upcoming Q4 2026, as well as another $300 million in Q1 2027. Just two weeks of downtime has destroyed a massive amount of 10 nm wafers that Fab 28 has been manufacturing.

Intel CFO David ZinsnerWe have been shut down for about two weeks. We feel like we are going to be starting up production here by the end of this week. While we are doing that, we are trying to assess all the wafers that are in the line and what is usable and what is not usable from those materials. This is somewhat of an early assessment, both really of 4Q and of 1Q. But I think the current thinking is that we will have about a $300 million impact to the fourth quarter. That is likely to be similar in the first quarter.

Apple today introduced the all-new MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display, featuring breakthrough tandem OLED technology that delivers game-changing front-of-screen performance. Available in 14- and 16-inch models, MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display offers a visual experience unlike any other, transforming pro workflows with up to 2000 nits peak HDR and SDR brightness, an industry-leading 10,000,000:1 contrast ratio for exceptional detail, a 120 Hz variable refresh rate, and a wider color gamut covering both P3 and Adobe RGB for brilliant colors. The new MacBook Pro also introduces intuitive Touch capabilities on the Mac for the first time, opening up a whole new dimension for pros to interact with their content, from manipulating 3D models to playing musical instruments onscreen.

The Dynamic Island now comes to Mac, serving as the home for Spotlight, Live Activities, and Siri AI. And with up to 24 hours of battery life in thinner and much lighter 3- and 4-pound designs, MacBook Pro is more portable than ever, empowering pros to take their work wherever inspiration strikes. Featuring M5 Pro and M5 Max, Apple's most powerful chips ever built for a pro laptop, along with up to 128 GB of unified memory and now up to 16 TB of blazing-fast storage, the new MacBook Pro delivers speed and capability for the most demanding workflows. An enhanced six-speaker sound system now provides 50 percent deeper bass and remarkable sound clarity for even more immersive audio. And Thunderbolt 5 and a wide array of connectivity, a 12MP Center Stage camera, studio-quality mics, and the power of macOS 27 with Apple Intelligence and Siri AI complete the MacBook Pro experience. It is available to pre-order starting today, October 28, with availability beginning Friday, November 6.

Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan has spoken with AMD CEO Lisa Su about exploring potential areas of cooperation. Tan brought it up during an October 24 fireside chat with Jimmy Cheng, president of the Chinese American Semiconductor Professional Association (CASPA), though he didn't say what those areas are, and neither company has announced anything. AMD was earlier reported to be evaluating Intel's 14A node, so foundry work seems like an obvious guess. However, it could just as well be packaging, software, or something else entirely.

Most of the chat was about Intel's own turnaround. Tan reportedly said Intel has to "reclaim the leadership in CPU" and that it will now tailor chips like Xeon to customer needs, something he admitted the company was too proud to do before. He named ASICs, co-packaged optics, physical AI and advanced packaging as possible growth areas, and wants two or three of them to eventually bring in around 10% of Intel's revenue each. On the foundry side, 18A is in volume production, while 14A has its 0.5 PDK out, with 0.9 next and 1.0 for volume production early next year. Intel had targeted October for handing the 0.9 PDK to outside customers, and Tan's "stay tuned" suggests it hasn't happened just yet.

It looks as though the upcoming Intel Nova Lake-S CPU family will launch soon, headed-up by a 28-core Core Ultra 9 CPU. A new PassMark benchmark spotted by VideoCardz now purports to show expected performance of that 28-core Nova Lake-S CPU in two separate benchmark runs. The CPU, which is listed as "Nova Lake Client Platform," with the motherboard model giving it away as "NVL-S Embedded CRB 1 Fab2 Board," appears alongside an eight-core NVL-S CPU, and both CPUs achieve decent scores in the single-threaded performance benchmarks.

According to the PassMark database scores, the eight-core NVL-S scores up to 5,085 points, while the 24-core variant tops out at 5,210 points. Meanwhile, the 28-core—ostensibly the Core Ultra 9 4970K BFC—scores as high as 61,509 points in the multithreaded CPU test, and the eight-core variant, likely a Core Ultra 3 or 5 CPU, scores 23,478 points. If these PassMark scores are accurate, this puts the Core Ultra 9 4970K BFC at around 85% of the performance of an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D in multicore performance, while the CPU beats out the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K on single-threaded performance but misses out on matching the outgoing Intel chip by 5,721 points or around 8.5%.

It has long been rumored that Sony is working on a PlayStation 6 handheld with a powerful AMD APU codenamed Canis, which has been alleged to feature a combination of Zen 6 CPU cores—potentially with all-new Zen 6 LP cores—and RDNA 5 tech for the iGPU. Now, according to Richard Leadbetter on episode 287 of the Digital Foundry Direct Patreon-exclusive podcast, Sony may be the only gaming handheld to feature this RDNA 5 iGPU. However, it may not be an exclusivity agreement in the traditional sense of the word, since it appears to be as a result of AMD's requirements to build custom silicon for hardware OEMs.

Rumors, albeit disputed rumors, have mentioned that part of the reason Xbox cancelled its own in-house handheld console is because AMD wanted a minimum commitment of 10 million unit sales before it would engineer a custom APU for a console. This may also be why Valve's Steam Deck 2 will seemingly use an off-the-shelf component instead of another custom silicon design. This leaves questions about what CPU and GPU combo will be in the upcoming Steam Deck 2 and Xbox's previously leaked handheld, which now seems like it will be another third-party device, like the ROG Xbox Ally series.

Intel Arc cards have always leaned heavily on Resizable BAR, to the point where Intel once told Alchemist buyers without it to stick with other vendors, and TechPowerUp's B580 review listed it as required for good performance. As spotted by Videocardz, developer Rod Burlamaqui has now released arc-rebar, a Linux tool that turns it on for Arc GPUs on motherboards that never got a ReBAR option. It runs from the initramfs at every boot, before the GPU driver loads, and doesn't touch the BIOS, kernel, or Intel's drivers. That sets it apart from earlier workarounds like ReBarUEFI, which has to be added to the motherboard's firmware.

The fix targets the PCIe switch built into Arc cards, whose small upstream BAR blocks Linux from enlarging the GPU's memory window. arc-rebar writes the card's ReBAR register, then removes and rescans the root port. Intel engineers have proposed a kernel-level fix for this, though it hasn't been merged yet. On a Supermicro X9DRH-7TF with dual Xeon E5-2670 v2 CPUs and a 2015 BIOS, a B580 went from 256 MiB of CPU-visible VRAM to a 16 GiB window covering all 12 GB. Measured VRAM bandwidth jumped from 15 GB/s to 392 GB/s, and a 4K Vulkan blur that used to stall ran at 39 to 50 FPS.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has put a rough price on the software side of the company's AI business. During a Q&A session at GTC Berlin last week, Huang said software licensing will become a growing part of NVIDIA's business, and that it costs about $2,000 per GPU per year to run all the NVIDIA software that powers agents in AI factories. The Register was first to report it, and Huang seems to have offered it as an example rather than a formal price.

The number is a bit confusing, since NVIDIA already sells its AI Enterprise suite on a per-GPU basis. The company's own licensing guide lists it at $4,500 per GPU for a one-year subscription with support, or $18,000 per GPU for five years. NVIDIA hasn't said whether Huang's $2,000 figure covers the same software, a narrower agent-focused bundle, or a future licensing model, so it probably shouldn't be read as a price cut. There's also no word on timing.

The Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia) shared an update on AV2 this week, and the clearest date in it comes from YouTube. Des Keane, Engineering Director at YouTube, confirmed the platform will begin streaming in AV2, which is the royalty-free successor to AV1 that AOMedia says offers roughly 30% better compression. In practice, that means either sharper video at the same bitrate or the same quality using less bandwidth, and the codec also adds support for multi-stream and multi-view video, higher frame rates, and improved HDR. Keane put it plainly: "YouTube AV2 streams will be available for Web as soon as early 2027."

Chrome is the other half. Jim Bankoski, VP of Engineering for Google Chrome, said AV2 playback has been demonstrated in the browser, though Google hasn't said which Chrome version will get it or whether it will be on by default. That demo dates back to CES 2026, where Google streamed AV2 videos from YouTube to a gaming laptop at 1080p and 24 FPS using a custom Chrome build with the reference decoder. Netflix and Prime Video are also exploring the format, but neither has shared a timeline. Meta wants to repeat its AV1 rollout with AV2, and Intel is working on SVT-AV2.

AMD's Zen 6 just got one of its first rough per-clock comparisons against Zen 5, and the early numbers look good. Leaker HXL spotted a Geekbench 7.1.0 listing for the 256-core EPYC 9996, the flagship "Venice" chip AMD launched in July, scoring 2,847 points in single-core on a Dell PowerEdge R9815 server running Linux. User three twenty six on X then locked a Ryzen 7 9700X to 4.1 GHz, matching the EPYC 9996's maximum boost, and got 2,444 points on the same Geekbench version. That works out to roughly 16.5% higher single-core performance for Zen 6 at the same frequency. Apparently, Zen 6 came out ahead in all 15 single-core subtests, with gains ranging from 8.2% in File Compression to 25.7% in HTML5 Browser.

Of course, these scores only give us a general idea about the gains. The EPYC 9996 uses the dense Zen 6c cores, not the full Zen 6 cores expected in desktop Ryzen chips, so it's hard to say how closely these numbers will carry over. The two systems are also wildly different, with a server platform on one side and a 9700X running DDR5-6000 CL34 under CachyOS Linux on the other, and the EPYC listing has since been pulled from the Geekbench database. Still, a double-digit per-clock gain from the dense core variant is quite encouraging. AMD has already confirmed that "Olympic Ridge" desktop CPUs will stay on AM5, though they reportedly won't arrive until 2027, so we can expect more comprehensive performance leaks well before then.

Xiaomi has officially spilled the beans on the 2027 update to its Redmi Book laptop series, detailing both a launch date and what to expect from the laptops in terms of performance and battery life. The information comes courtesy of the Xiaomi Redmi account on Weibo, and the announcement reveals an October 27 release date for the Redmi Book 14 and likely the 16, alongside it. It's so far unclear if and when the new Redmi Book laptops will launch internationally or what the pricing will be, but the outgoing Redmi Book 14 starts at 6,499 CNY with 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage.

With the post, Xiaomi also confirms that the Redmi Book 14 and 16 will be using Intel's Wildcat Lake Core Series 3 processors, with previous leaks having tipped the Core 5 320 for the Redmi Book 16, and the fine print on the marketing images now confirming the Core 5 320 for the Redmi Book 14. The Redmi Book 14 2027 has also been confirmed to ship with a 72 Wh battery, which Xiaomi claims will deliver over 20 hours of office use, with a claimed 1.26 days of local video playback. It will also use LPDDR5X-7467 RAM, although capacities are unclear at the time of writing, aside from the confirmation that there will be a 16 GB version available. The fine print also confirms that the display will be 2.8K, however the panel tech isn't mentioned.

TrendForce's latest AI server industry research indicates that demand for server CPUs has grown steadily since the second half of 2025 as AI server providers actively introduce AI agent applications. Server CPU shipments are projected to increase 31% YoY in 2026.

In 2027, continued growth in AI inference demand and rising adoption of agentic AI services are expected to drive server CPU shipments up by more than 40% YoY, potentially reshaping a market landscape traditionally dominated by x86 processors.