Intel Corporation today reported third-quarter 2026 financial results.

Lip-Bu Tan, Intel CEO"Our Q3 results demonstrate improving execution, meaningful progress expanding supply and continued advancement of our process technology. Despite near-term headwinds across the PC industry, demand for our CPUs remains robust, reinforcing our confidence in the long-term growth opportunities for our business. Our immediate priority is to unlock additional supply to meet extraordinary demand for our Xeon family, while strengthening our product portfolio and roadmap. We are moving with urgency and focus to capitalize on these opportunities to deliver sustainable growth and long-term shareholder value."

Microsoft has released one of the most significant updates to its DirectX Raytracing (DXR) since its debut in 2018. This update officially introduces clustered geometry and partitioned top-level acceleration structure (PTLAS). With clustered geometry, Microsoft envisions scenes where all animated and generated geometry is broken down into simple, reusable clusters of triangles. Typically, scenes repeatedly build large bottom-level acceleration structures, which incur additional compute costs. By using clustered geometry, ray tracing can utilize full detailed geometry used for standard rasterization instead of proxies, ensuring that ray-traced shadows and reflections match the currently visible scene.

In open-world games, using a top-level acceleration structure (TLAS) can lead to massive VRAM and compute demands. To address this, DXR now introduces partitioned TLAS (PTLAS), allowing ray tracing to focus on changes in a specific region while retaining acceleration-structure data elsewhere. Clustered geometry and PTLAS can be used together or separately, with no limitations. Below image is NVIDIA's sample of clustered geometry in action, visualized in three stages: default, clusters, and triangles applied.Benchmarks follow.

BIOSTAR, a leading manufacturer of edge AI solution, IPC systems, motherboards, graphics cards, and storage devices, today introduced the EdgeComp MS-U320, a compact fanless edge AI system powered by the Intel Core 5 320 processor (Wildcat Lake). Designed for equipment manufacturers and system integrators, the MS-U320 combines on-site data processing, light AI computing, and industrial connectivity for applications in industrial automation, smart manufacturing, industrial IoT, smart retail, and smart infrastructure.

The MS-U320 features an onboard Intel Core 5 320 processor with six cores, clock speeds of up to 4.6 GHz, a 15 W TDP, and integrated Intel graphics. A single DDR5-6400 SO-DIMM slot supports up to 64 GB of memory, while the integrated CPU, GPU and NPU deliver up to 40 TOPS of AI performance. This combination supports local data processing and light AI workloads without requiring a separate accelerator.

GPD is no stranger to powerful gaming handhelds, having previously launched the very expensive GPD Win Max 3 in August 2026, and the company has recently confirmed via a Weibo post that it is working on an Intel Arc G3 Extreme-powered version of its Win Mini gaming handheld.

Prior versions of the GPD Win Mini were available with up to the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 with its Radeon 890M iGPU, which put the system more or less on the same level as other popular handhelds, like the Lenovo Legion Go 2, while a Win Mini Ultra with the Intel Arc G3 Extreme CPU could perform significantly faster—about as well as an entry-level dGPU, thanks to the onboard Intel Arc B390 iGPU with 12 full Xe3 cores.

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.

Intel recently announced its D-series "Crescent Island" inference graphics cards, based on the Xe3P GPU microarchitecture, with the D270 being the highest-end SKU. The company's website has added a GPU bare die shot, revealing that the card is not the massive chip one might expect, but rather something seemingly smaller. The D270 GPU SKU features 32 Xe3P cores, 256 XMX engines, and 32 MB of unified L2 cache. The XMX engines have been redesigned from the four-deep systolic design of the regular Xe3 to 16-deep processing on the Xe3P. This card is intended for AI inferencing rather than training, so silicon requirements are secondary, and the card is rated for up to 480 GB of LPDDR5X.

Additional details include support for the FP4 data format alongside FP8, as well as large register files of 1 MB per core and an L1 cache of 512 KB per core. In total, there are 256 Vector engines and 256 of the new XMX engines, each divided into groups of eight per Xe3P core. Furthermore, the Xe3P lacks graphics processing elements for outputting imagery, as the silicon is designed purely for AI inference workloads that require long context and agentic tasks. A media engine with four encoders and four decoders is also included, which could assist with multimodal workloads where video generation and understanding are essential.

Intel Corporation today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Classiq, a leading provider of quantum computing software. The combination of Classiq's synthesis platform with Intel's spin-qubit manufacturing and existing software would create a user-friendly full-stack quantum computing platform, enabling the promising technology to mature into a mainstream computing business.

More than forty years ago, the invention of Electronic Design Automation (EDA) and Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software transformed silicon chip design and classical computing by providing a common software platform that could abstract the ability to design chips from the complexity of the underlying hardware. Classiq plays a similar role in quantum computing, providing a unifying software platform that is agnostic to the underlying qubit modality and hardware. Providing this high-level abstraction enables quantum computing to scale beyond custom hand-crafted circuits and applications to become a mainstream computing platform.

Intel is actively planning the "Raptor Lake Next" chips as an update to its Socket LGA-1700 desktop processors. These chips are essential for PC buyers who are limited to the decade-old DDR4 memory standard due to the high prices of DDR5 memory, especially since the current Core Ultra "Arrow Lake" processors do not support DDR4. Today, two "Raptor Lake Next" chips have appeared in shipping manifests, which usually indicate that the CPUs are being shipped as samples to customers or as part of a production run returning to Intel, suggesting a nearby launch. Four SKUs have been identified, labeled 99DLMV, 99DLMT, 99DLMW, and 99DLMX.

However, we have details on only two models, 99DLMV and 99DLMT. The 99DLMV is a 16-core design with 8 P-Cores and 8 E-Cores, a clock speed of 3.5 GHz, 30 MB of CPU cache, and a TDP of up to 125 W. The 99DLMT is a 20-core SKU with 8 P-Cores and 12 E-Cores, running at 2.1 GHz, with a CPU cache capacity of 33 MB, and a TDP of 65 W. These leaked models align with previous rumors, such as the one suggesting that Intel plans to replace the Core i5-14600K with a new "Raptor Lake Next" chip featuring 8 P-Cores and 8 E-Cores. Therefore, the 99DLMV SKU might be the one previously speculated about.

Intel's Advanced Performance Extensions (APX) are officially supported on Windows 11 PCs. However, there are currently no consumer PCs capable of utilizing APX. Intel's APX is set to debut with the "Nova Lake" processors in early 2027, but software development has been ongoing to ensure new features are ready before the processors reach retailers. In Windows 11 build 29695 for insiders, there is a toggle that allows you to enable APX for better performance. This indicates that Microsoft has prepared the APX optimizations across Windows, which will enhance everyday tasks and handle workloads with more processing power.

Intel APX is an extension to the x86-64 ISA that adds more registers and introduces new features to boost workloads across various use cases. Intel has designed APX to double the number of general-purpose registers in a CPU from 16 to 32, along with specific optimization paths to ensure compiled code is optimized to take advantage of the additional CPU capacity, resulting in performance improvements. Although this is a minor tweak, the data paths that follow are much more efficient. Intel reports around 10% fewer instructions in compiled code for Intel APX, even though the new instruction lengths are larger. This means the overall efficiency of executed tasks will consume fewer CPU cycles, freeing up resources for more tasks and boosting system performance.

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.

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.

OptiScaler is a community-driven project that seeks to bring the benefits of upscaling and frame-generation across brands of GPUs, so gamers don't miss out on playability if the game doesn't feature the upscaler/frame-gen tech provided by their GPU vendor. The community successfully modded AMD FSR 4.1.2 to work on Intel Arc GPUs, leveraging the Intel XMX cores (Xe Math Extensions). Current implementations of FSR on Arc relies on a fallback DP4a path that offers significantly lower performance benefit.

DarkerThanLpDark on Reddit put FSR 4.1.2 Lite on Arc B580 to the test in "Clair Obscur: Expedition 33," comparing its performance with the game's native XeSS implementation, and FSR's standard DP4a implementation on Arc GPUs. The latest OptiScaler mod was found offering almost the same levels of performance as XeSS (SR). FSR 4.1.2 Lite logged an upscaling time of 0.59 ms compared to 0.58 ms of XeSS (SR).

Intel has begun installing equipment at Fab 62 within its Ocotillo campus in Chandler, Arizona. In a somewhat unusual move, Intel confirmed its current status and plans, a change from the company's typical practice of keeping such information deliberately vague. According to Intel officials, construction and equipment installation are currently underway, with production projected to begin by the end of 2028. Naga Chandrasekaran, Executive Vice President of Intel Foundry and Chief Technology and Operations Officer, stated: "Today, I am pleased to share that construction and tool installation at Fab 62 are now fully underway, and we expect operations to begin by the end of 2028. We're also making progress in Ohio, where the first major structural truss has been installed on the first fab in New Albany." Reaching this stage for Fab 62 comes more than a year after Intel had Fab 52 at full production capacity.

Fab 62 could support 18A, 18A-P, and 14A process nodes, however, the company has not confirmed which ones. The next-door Fab 52 already manufactures chips on the 18A node. We can presume that the new facility could either expand existing capacity or support the next-generation 14A process. Fab 52 currently manufactures Panther Lake processors and Clearwater Forest server CPUs using the 18A process.

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.

Durabook, the global rugged mobile solutions brand owned by Twinhead International Corporation, today announced its new R12 Rugged Tablet active edge AI platform. With the Intel Core Ultra Series 3 CPU, the R12 Rugged Tablet delivers exceptional computing power with enhanced AI performance, energy efficiency, and multitasking capability. It is well-suited to teams from defense, public safety, and industrial operations working from vehicles or outdoors where connectivity is unreliable.

With the potential for up to 412 TOPS of combined AI compute the platform is built for demanding edge AI workloads. 180 TOPS of integrated AI performance can process data from cameras, sensors, and connected systems locally, helping teams analyze information and use it to make decisions on the spot. The R12's integrated AI power can be boosted by an optional 232 TOPS of discrete GPU delivering up to 412 TOPS. This scalable architecture gives users the flexibility to run advanced AI inference, computer vision, and mission-critical software-enabled AI applications directly at the edge.

Intel's Core Ultra 9 4995HX looks set to be the fastest Nova Lake chip for laptops. Leaker Jaykihn on X has confirmed that the 4995HX uses an 8+16+4+2 layout, meaning 8 P-cores, 16 E-cores, 4 LPE cores, and 2 Xe3 GPU cores. That adds up to 28 CPU cores, four more than Intel's current Arrow Lake-HX chips, with the extra cores coming from the LPE cluster Arrow Lake-HX lacked. The overall layout matches the 8P+16E+4LP ceiling earlier reports pointed to, and the name itself fits the Core Ultra 4000 branding said to be extending to HX parts. Intel hasn't confirmed any of this, and clocks, cache, and power figures are still unknown.

The same post lists the Core Ultra 9 4970H as 4+8+4+12, so 16 CPU cores and a 12-core Xe3P iGPU. That is the same core count as Panther Lake's flagship Core Ultra X9 388H, so any gains here should come from the new Coyote Cove P-cores, Arctic Wolf E-cores, and Xe3P graphics rather than extra cores. The tiny iGPU on the 4995HX is less of a concern, since HX chips almost always end up paired with a discrete GPU anyway. Jaykihn also put the final 8+16 HX compute tile, built on TSMC N2P, at 14.8 x 6.6 mm, or roughly 98 mm², shortly after die shots of both chips surfaced. Current reports point to the first Nova Lake-H and HX laptops showing up around CES 2027, though that timing should be treated as tentative for now.

Axiomtek, a world-renowned leader relentlessly devoted to the research, development, and manufacture of innovative, highly efficient, and reliable industrial computer products, proudly introduces the MANO330, a compact Thin Mini-ITX motherboard powered by the Intel Processor N97 or N150 and DDR5 memory. Designed for space-constrained systems that require flexible connectivity and expansion, the MANO330 combines multi-display capability, dual LAN connectivity, versatile M.2 expansion, and industrial I/O in a compact platform. With a wide 12-24 VDC power input, the MANO330 provides system developers with a flexible foundation for smart manufacturing and industrial automation, digital signage, smart retail, and POS applications.

Compact Performance for Space-Constrained Systems
The MANO330 combines a compact Thin Mini-ITX design with Intel Processor N97 or N150 and DDR5-4800 memory support. The N97 supports up to 32 GB of memory, while the N150 supports up to 16 GB. Measuring just 170 x 170 mm, the MANO330 provides the essential computing performance and I/O capabilities needed for embedded systems, helping developers build space-efficient solutions for a wide range of industrial and commercial applications.

A Reddit user in the r/watercooling subreddit bought an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition from Amazon and noticed that something was off. This was his second 9950X3D2 chip, and both chips were sold and shipped by Amazon and arrived in sealed retail boxes, with identical markings on the heat spreader. Flip them over, however, and the newer one looks nothing like the first. It has a large empty area in the middle packed with tiny capacitors, while a genuine AM5 Ryzen chip has gold contact pads covering nearly its entire underside. The user initially assumed AMD had quietly revised the design. Commenters thought otherwise, and the top reply suggests that someone delidded a real 9950X3D2, attached its heat spreader to an old Intel processor, and sent the fake back to Amazon for a refund. That chip has now ended up in our Redditor's hands.

In this case, the layout is a big giveaway, since Intel desktop chips place many of their capacitors on the underside of the substrate, whereas AMD keeps them on top to leave room for contacts. The lettering on the fake also looks smudged, possibly from the delid or a reprint. It's still unclear which Intel CPU sits underneath, and there's no word from Amazon so far on the matter. That's a costly mistake too, considering the 9950X3D2 launched at $899. Amazon has been here before, apparently, with reports of a fake Ryzen 7 9800X3D that turned out to be a 2011-era FX-4100 with a sticker on top. Buyers are advised to record unboxings of expensive parts and, in the case of CPUs, closely inspect both sides of the chip.

Intel is preparing to add support for XeSS, accelerated by XMX cores in its graphics cards, to Valve's Proton compatibility layer. This is great news because the Valve Proton layer currently uses a slower version of the upscaler that is not very efficient. The XMX cores would significantly accelerate upscaling and bring substantial performance improvements. Intel is promoting XeSS and its latest version 3.0, which features multi-frame generation (MFG). This version integrates up to three generated frames between two rendered frames, resulting in up to a fourfold increase in frame rate using MFG, similar to NVIDIA's DLSS MFG technology. Intel is joining the trend of AI-generated frame insertion, which seems to be gradually expanding.

Looking at the latest "Panther Lake" SoC with Xe3 cores, each Xe3 core includes eight vector engines, eight matrix engines (XMX), and a dedicated ray tracing unit. These execution units now operate with higher utilization thanks to refined thread dispatch and load balancing. The vector and matrix engines double peak FP16 and INT8 throughput compared to Xe2, benefiting both traditional rendering and AI-assisted tasks such as denoising, upscaling, and frame generation. Hence, supporting XMX-accelerated XeSS will finally give Intel Xe gamers on Linux a much-needed performance bump.

Intel is preparing to launch its upcoming "Nova Lake" processors in multiple versions, and the latest leaks highlight a particularly interesting Xeon E lineup. According to well-known leaker Jaykihn, Intel will be releasing its Xeon E-series based on "Nova Lake" silicon in two versions: big P-Core only or efficiency E-Core only SKUs. Reportedly, the P-Core only lineup will include five configurations with 4, 6, 8, 12, and 16 P-Cores. Meanwhile, the E-Core lineup will be slightly smaller, featuring four SKUs with 4, 8, 16, and 32 E-Core versions. At the top of the range, Intel Xeon E-series buyers can choose between a 16 P-Core design or a 32 E-Core configuration. There will be no hybrid SKUs with both P-Cores and E-Cores, as those will be reserved for the regular "Nova Lake-S" desktop processors.

Intel's new Xeon E designs will be powered by the W980 chipset platform. Motherboards with the W980 chipset will support native DDR5 memory with ECC, up to 48 PCIe lanes, including 12 PCIe 5.0 lanes directly from the chipset alongside 12 PCIe 4.0 lanes, and Intel vPro technology, along with numerous other optimizations typical of workstation chipsets. The DMI chipset bus bandwidth is set to 128 Gbps per direction, thanks to the implementation of DMI 5.0 x4, which is another great platform addition. It also offers two 40 Gbps USB4 or Thunderbolt 4 ports from the CPU. The PCI-Express 5.0 x16 PEG slot from the processor can be segmented into x8/x8 or other combinations using lane switches. Both CPU-attached M.2 NVMe slots can be configured as Gen 5.

Overclocker Luumi has taken the top spot in HWBot's Cinebench R11.5 rankings for the Intel Core i5-4670K, beating a record that had stood for around 12 years. Running the 2013 Haswell quad-core at 6,301 MHz under liquid nitrogen, Luumi scored 10.8 cb, just edging out Strat's previous 10.76 cb at 6,249 MHz. That's roughly 66% above the chip's 3.8 GHz boost clock, which is quite a lot for a four-core, four-thread part built on Intel's 22 nm process. The top of the leaderboard is tight as well, with Moose83 sitting third at 10.74 cb out of 187 submissions. Of course, this is a record for the i5-4670K category, not an overall Cinebench R11.5 world record. Luumi also has a history with Cinebench, having set an 8-core world record on an EVGA Z390 Dark back in 2018.

The test bench was period-correct too. Luumi used an ASRock Z97 OC Formula, the same board that pushed a Core i7-4790K past 7 GHz back in 2014, along with 4 GB of XPG DDR3 running at 2,708 MT/s with 8-12-7-28 timings and a Corsair AXi 1600 power supply. The run was done on Windows 7, as HWBot's R11.5 rules apparently don't allow pre-Skylake Intel chips on newer versions of Windows without BenchMate. Haswell is no stranger to extreme clocks, as the Core i7-4770K was overclocked to 7 GHz before it even launched in 2013. A modern 12-core laptop reportedly scores around four times higher in R11.5 while running in quiet mode, so the achievement here is about squeezing every last megahertz out of 13-year-old silicon.

ASUS has listed the UGen Arc Pro B70 32 GB on its website, which makes it the company's first Intel Arc graphics card. ASUS sat out both the Alchemist and Battlemage consumer generations, and its last Intel discrete card was the passively cooled Iris Xe DG1-4G from 2021. Interestingly, ASUS files it under its UGen AI accelerator lineup rather than ProArt, putting it in the same family as the UGen300 USB AI accelerator the company showed at CES 2026. ASUS hasn't announced pricing or a release date yet. Intel launched the Arc Pro B70 at $949 back in March, though US retail listings now seem to sit closer to $1,300.

The ASUS card uses the full "Big Battlemage" BMG-G31 die with 32 Xe2 cores, 256 XMX engines, and 32 GB of GDDR6 ECC memory on a 256-bit bus for 608 GB/s of bandwidth. ASUS rates it at a 2,800 MHz boost clock, up to 367 INT8 TOPS, and a 290 W board power, which is the top of Intel's 160 to 290 W range for the B70 (the reference default is 230 W). Cooling comes from a dual-slot blower, and ASUS says four cards can be paired for 128 GB of combined VRAM, enough for models with up to 120 billion parameters according to the company. ASUS also joins ASRock, Sparkle, and Maxsun, which already have their own B70 models, so pricing will likely decide how well the UGen version does.

Update Oct 27th: ASUS has confirmed European pricing for its UGen Arc Pro B70 card. It is available in Germany and Austria at a recommended price of €1,799 including VAT.

Intel's "new" four-digit Core Ultra 4000 naming apparently isn't limited to desktop chips. Prominent leaker Jaykihn says on X that "Nova Lake-HX" laptop processors will use the same four-number format, while H-series and suffix-less mobile chips continue with the three-digit naming of the previous generation. The clarification follows a leaked list of seven "Nova Lake-S" desktop processors that showed names like Core Ultra 9 4970K BFC and Core Ultra 7 4870K BFC. In that list, the BFC suffix seems to mark the models with bLLC (big last-level cache). As for the mobile versions, HX chips have traditionally been BGA versions of Intel's desktop silicon, so it looks like Intel is grouping them with Nova Lake-S instead of the other laptop chips. Those would presumably fall under Core Ultra 400, although Jaykihn didn't name the series.

The HX claim isn't entirely new, either. When the Core Ultra 9 4950K surfaced in a CPU-Z leak in August, leaker Golden Pig Upgrade had already mentioned Core Ultra 4000HX naming for laptops. Jaykihn also seems to have cleared up one detail from the desktop list. Apparently, the non-BFC models keep their four LPE cores, even though the leaked table didn't show them for every SKU. We haven't seen any HX model names yet, and Intel hasn't confirmed the naming change. Nova Lake-S qualification samples are already showing up in HWiNFO, and reports point to an early 2027 launch. As if Nova Lake-S reusing Haswell's 4000-series numbering wasn't enough, laptop buyers will probably have to deal with two naming schemes in one generation.

Update Oct 17th: Leaker Jaykihn has now retracted part of that statement. Apparently, H-series and suffix-less Nova Lake Mobile CPUs also utilize the four-number "Ultra 4000" naming scheme.

Intel seems to be preparing a smaller chip for its Arc G-series handheld lineup, and the first trace of it has appeared in HWiNFO. The monitoring tool's list of upcoming changes now includes support for "Panter Lake-H 080," typo and all. Leaker Jaykihn spotted the entry on X and says the chip, PTL-080, is an Arc G-series part with a 0+8+0+4 configuration. If that follows the same P-core, E-core, LPE core and Xe3 order Jaykihn has used before, it works out to eight E-cores, no P-cores or LPE cores, and a four-core Xe3 GPU. For comparison, the Arc G3 and Arc G3 Extreme both use a 14-core 2+8+4 CPU, paired with 10 and 12 Xe3 cores respectively.

This isn't the first smaller Arc G chip to surface. Back in August, Jaykihn posted a "4+0+4+4" handheld layout, which pointed to an entry-level part with four P-cores, four LPE cores and the same four Xe3 cores, and a later report put its power target at 8 W to 25 W. The new listing keeps the GPU size but drops the P-cores entirely. Apparently, the two might not ship side by side either. In a follow-up post, Jaykihn said the 4+0+4+4 design may be wholly replaced by 0+8+0+4, and that he'll share an update if and when that's finalized. Intel hasn't announced anything officially yet, so clocks, power limits, naming and pricing are all unknown. A four-core Xe3 GPU will likely trail the G3 parts by a wide margin in games, so it's reasonable to expect this chip in lower-priced devices.

NVIDIA's new DLSS Frame Generation Preset C has only been out for a few days, and modders have already brought it to RTX 30 cards. The latest version of dashdogy's Universal MFG Unlocker (v1.5.0, formerly RTX 40 MFG Unlock) adds Preset C support on both RTX 40 and RTX 30 GPUs, including 3x to 6x multi-frame generation (MFG). Officially, Preset C is a beta "performance mode" for RTX 40, RTX 50, and RTX Spark systems, available through the NVIDIA app's experimental features. It swaps one of Frame Generation's two AI models, the one handling optical flow, for a lighter algorithm, and NVIDIA claims up to 35% higher performance in exchange for a small hit to image quality.

According to the release notes, RTX 30 support is now considered stable, with smoother frame pacing at 3x and above, though it only works in DirectX 12 games. However, the newest DLSS Frame Generation build that carries Preset C has only been validated offline on RTX 30, and the preset was confirmed in-game on an RTX 40 card in The Witcher 3. No RTX 30-series performance numbers have been shared yet, so the gains on Ampere are anyone's guess. The update also adds XeSS Multi Frame Generation from 2x to 6x on NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel GPUs through an OptiScaler plugin, and fixes a launch crash in Gears of War: E-Day. This effort follows recent mods that got DLSS Multi Frame Generation running on Ampere and also brought Smooth Motion to the same cards.