Intel has announced a multi-year strategic partnership with F1's legendary McLaren Racing team. The chipmaker is now the Official Compute Partner of the McLaren Mastercard Formula 1 Team, Arrow McLaren IndyCar Team, and McLaren F1 Sim Racing Team, according to a press release today. Interestingly, this announcement again pits Intel against its PC chip industry nemesis, AMD. The Red Team has already been working in partnership with the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team for six years.

Intel's PR blurb says F1 racing is "one of the world’s most technologically demanding sports." Thus, Intel engineers will be tasked with delivering advanced computing for AI and high-performance architectures that are required to keep McLaren competitive.

The new agreement means that systems using Intel Xeon and Core Ultra chips will be leveraged to support McLaren's quest for the ultimate performance on the track. Specific calculations that F1 engineers spend their days optimizing for include "performance-critical workloads, including computational fluid dynamics, aerodynamic analysis, vehicle-dynamics simulation, [and] race strategy analytics." As well as real-time data, F1 support computers are used to sift through massive volumes of post-race data. Computers used to optimize F1 racing cars are also increasingly using AI tools, plus low-latency edge computing solutions, and diverse software platforms.

"Formula 1 racing and IndyCar are some of the ultimate proving grounds for high-performance computing. Intel is proud to be McLaren Racing’s compute partner, and to be part of a team that thrives on precision, speed, and innovation," said Lip-Bu Tan, Intel CEO. "Together, Intel and McLaren will push the boundaries of what’s possible, transforming data into competitive advantage at every turn."

A statement by Zak Brown, CEO, McLaren Racing, confirmed Intel hardware had already been an important part of the F1 team's tech ecosystem. It will be interesting to see if the new, closer relationship will produce noticeable results on the circuits around the globe, burning rubber at speeds pushing beyond 230 mph.

As we mentioned in the intro, AMD has already been working closely with a major F1 team for years. The firm has a page dedicated to how AMD Epyc and Threadripper processors are a competitive edge for the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One team. Similar to Intel's announcement today, the AMD/Mercedes partnership uses advanced compute for "aerodynamic simulation and faster data analysis."

AMD's partnership with Mercedes-AMG was forged back in 2020, which might explain why there's no mention of artificial intelligence in the linked PR blurb, yet.

Whether you're a student submitting homework, at work typing away at documents, spreadsheets, or presentations, or you're just someone who wants to access resources online and connect with family and friends, you want a laptop with the components and features you'll need to get the job done. That means a great screen, a comfortable keyboard, and long battery life (and nice design doesn't hurt, either!).

The laptop space is more competitive than ever. Windows machines come from many companies using silicon from three major CPU vendors: Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm. Apple, meanwhile, has a range of powerful and portable systems based on its own Apple Silicon.

In 2026, Intel's most recent chips are its Intel Core Ultra (Series 3) chips, code-named Panther Lake, while AMD launched its "Gorgon Point" Ryzen AI processors at CES. At Computex, Nvidia announced that its RTX Spark chips will launch in laptops from Microsoft, Dell, Lenovo, HP, and more starting in the fall, taking on Qualcomm in the Windows on Arm space. Earlier this year, Qualcomm released its Snapdragon X2 Elite Xtreme, Elite, and Plus chips.

On Macs, Apple's top chips are the M5 series, including the M5 Pro and M5 Max, which can be found in the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air lineup.

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Best Laptops You Can Buy Today

The Best Laptop (and Mac) overall

The MacBook Air has been a go-to laptop recommendation for quite some time, thanks to strong performance, a fanless design, excellent built quality, and long-lasting battery life. With the version of the chip with M5, you get the benefits of years of hardware revisions since the Air's last redesign with M2, including a minimum 16GB of RAM and a 12-megapixel webcam.

The M5 chip in the MacBook Air showed off excellent single and multi-core performance. In fact, it;s closest rival was the same chip in the MacBook Pro, which gets a boost because of an active fan.

That being said, the system can throttle under heavy workloads like rendering. But for most people's typical tasks, including writing, editing, making spreadsheets, editing photos, listening to music, programming, and general multitasking, you'll have a very powerful machine.

Apple has boosted the base MacBook Air's price to $1,099, but it now starts with 512GB of memory. Given the price of components these days, the laptop is still a great value. If you want a Mac but don't want to spend that much for it, you could take a step down to the entry-level MacBook Neo, starting at $599, as long as you're willing to sacrifice on power, memory, ports, and a backlit keyboard.

Read: MacBook Air (M5) review

Best Windows laptop

The Dell XPS 14 is back, and while you might expect its performance or design to be the headlining feature, it's the battery life that wows. With its base 1920 x 1200 LCD display, which has a variable refresh rate that goes all the way down to 1 Hz, it lasted 20 hours and 41 minutes on our battery test.

That's not to say the battery life is all there is to like about this laptop. The 3-pound chassis is sleek, and Dell added a function row back to the keyboard, making it way easier to use over the touch bar of yesteryear.

If you're OK with 12 hours of charge, more expensive models with a tandem OLED display have way better colors and more powerful Arc B390 integrated graphics.

That being said, both of them have a low-travel keyboard without space between the keys, which definitely tripped up my fingers, so you'll need time to get your muscle memory going. And the starting price, at $1,600, is a lot to ask but is unfortunately common as the memory crisis rages on.

Read: Dell XPS 14 (2026) review

Best ultralight laptop

Some of the best laptops are barely noticeable in your bag. The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition, at 2.15 pounds is extremely light.

Still, despite the weight, you get plenty of other benefits. The speakers are surprisingly good for a laptop of this size. Perhaps most impressively, the system ran for 16 hours and 38 minutes on our battery test, outlasting many of the laptops we bit against it by multiple hours.

The system also offers a lovely display. The POLED touchscreen measured 476 nits of brightness while falling in similar gamut ranges as other OLED notebooks that weren't as luminous.

There are some downsides. There are limited ports outside of Thunderbolt 4/USB-C, including a lack of a headphone jack. And CPU performance fell behind some competitors, like Apple's M5 MacBook Air and a thicker AMD-based 2-in-1 from HP.Still, the laptop impressed for its airiness and multimedia strengths. And as tested with 32GB at $1,519, it's not a crazy price as the costs of many laptops skyrocket during an ongoing component shortage.

Read: Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition review

Another great Windows clamshell

We can argue about how much the AI PC is really any sort of revolution, but there are still some strong ultraportables coming out. The HP OmniBook Ultra puts the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 375 in a sleek chassis with strong productivity performance.

HP is offering up decent battery life here, running for 12 hours and 52 minutes on our battery test. That's not the best, but all things considered including the high-resolution display, it's not bad. It's also nice to see Thunderbolt 4 ports on an AMD system, which is exceedingly rare.

The experience is knocked down a bit by a significant amount of bloatware, but if you're looking for a strong AMD laptop, the HP OmniBook Ultra is a strong competitor if you don't mind doing some uninstalling.

Read: HP OmniBook Ultra review

The best budget laptop

If you're looking for an affordable laptop, Apple does it best these days. The MacBook Neo starts at $599 ($499 with an education discount), but you rarely feel like you're not getting enough – unlike most Windows laptops in this price range. The Neo has a premium, all-metal chassis, a bright, vivid screen, and a custom mechanical trackpad that lets you click anywhere. And yes, you get all of macOS running on what was formerly an iPhone chip.

The quality of the 13-inch chassis and screen are key here. You're not getting something plastic. You're not getting something low-resolution, and you're not getting something dim. You also get a great webcam for this price range, and the system stays remarkably cool. There are some niceties you sacrifice, however. Apple has gone without a backlit keyboard. And the two USB ports aren't labeled, so you'll have to remember which is the faster 10 Gbps USB 3 port (the back one) for backup drives and monitors, lest you end up with an error message.

I suspect that most people with light workloads — especially students and people using home computers doing a lot of work in the browser — won't have too much trouble with the 8GB of RAM. That being said, 16GB systems can be found in the Windows world for a bit more money, though you'll need to hunt for sales.

But if a premium laptop experience (including great build quality and a high-res screen) are important to you, Apple delivers that better than any Windows machine priced close to the Neo’s $599 starting price.

Read: MacBook Neo review

The Best Laptop for work

There are plenty of reasons why the ThinkPad X1 Carbon is a classic. It's thin design and strong build quality are beloved by ThinkPad diehards. The latest model, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon (Gen 11), offers long battery life and great speakers.

Perhaps most critically, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon offers an excellent keyboard. Lenovo's reputation was built on great typing experiences, so this is crucial. For those who love Lenovo's TrackPoint, it's still here, allowing you to move the mouse without ever taking your fingers away from the home row on the keyboard.

The latest version comes with Intel's 13th Gen Core processors. We reviewed it with a Core i7-1355U, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB PCIe Gen 4 SSD.

The one real issue we had is that the base screen could benefit from being a bit brighter. Those who want the most vivid experience can opt for an OLED panel, but at a higher price.

When shopping for the ThinkPad X1 Carbon (Gen 11), keep an eye out for Lenovo's frequent sales, as there's often a deal available.

Read: Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (Gen 11) Review

The Best Windows Tablet

Microsoft may push the Surface Pro as a do-it-all AI machine, but the truth is it's just a really nice, portable, slim PC that lasts a long time on a battery and includes a beautiful OLED display. It's definitively one of the best Surfaces to date.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processors offer enough performance to keep up with x86 competitors, making this one of the first Arm-based Surfaces that doesn't feel like it's lacking. Add on more Arm-compatible apps than ever, including the Chrome browser, and there's far less to miss from previous Intel models. That's not to say it's perfect — there are still some gaming issues, as well as drivers for specialized peripherals that may need to be rebuilt for the new platform.

The 45 TOPS NPU powers some of Windows 11's Copilot+ features, like Cocreator, Live Captions, and Windows Studio effects. None of these are showstoppers, but they're cool tricks.'

If you want a premium tablet running Windows 11, the Surface Pro is one of the only premium games in town. And that means paying a premium for a separate keyboard. But for those who love this form factor, the Surface Pro remains the best option out there.

Read: Microsoft Surface Pro review

A more powerful Mac laptop

The MacBook Air is a great starting point, but if you want an air-cooled processor and a few more features, the base MacBook Pro adds a few niceties. The 14-inch MacBook Pro starts with an M5 processor, has three Thunderbolt ports (including one on the right side), and a beautiful micro LED display.

For those willing to spend an extra $150, there's a nano-texture display option that is completely worth it if you ever use your laptop outside. The matte display looks excellent, and was great on desks near windows.

If you need the most power possible, we also reviewed the MacBook Pro with an M5 Max, including a 40-core GPU, a mix of Apple's latest performance and super cores, and a blazing fast SSD.

Both the 14-inch and 16-inch laptops offer great speakers and beautiful displays, but you will have to pay quite a bit for any storage or memory upgrades you want, and you won't be able to make changes later.

Read: MacBook Pro (14-inch, M5) review
Read: MacBook Pro (14-inch, M5 Max) review

The Best Gaming laptop

Razer Blade 18 offers some of the strongest gaming performance we've seen in a laptop, but also features excellent design, comfortable features, and the latest connection standards. At $5,199.99 as tested, it sure should be good. It tops our list of the best gaming laptops.

The major highlight is the dual-mode display, which has two options: 3840 x 2400 at 240 Hz or 1920 x 1200 at 440 Hz. Those two choices (which you can switch between in Razer Synapse) is enough to showcase both intensive, graphics-driven games at high settings and esports where frames are more important than resolution and detail.

The laptop, packed with an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX and Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop GPU in our review configuration, outperformed the field in our gaming tests, especially at the lower resolution.Razer is one of the few laptop makers using Thunderbolt 5 ports (we've also seen them from MSI and Apple), so this system is ready to go if you're using advanced peripherals or the fastest external storage drives.

Perhaps the biggest downside is that the Blade's dual 2TB storage drives use PCIe 4.0 rather than 5.0. You won’t notice this in games or mainstream productivity, but if you want PCIe 5.0 speed for future proofing or 8K video editing, the Titan may still be the way to go. The Blade 18 does support PCIe 5.0 drives, if you want to upgrade to speedier storage in the future.

Read: Razer Blade 18 review

Other Laptops We Tested

💻 Asus Zenbook A16

The Zenbook A16 has Qualcomm's powerful Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme processor, including 48GB of RAM on the package. While the chip is fast, the laptop, while lightweight, didn't meet our expectations. While light, it flexed and didn't feel premium; battery life was lesser than competitors; and while emulation is better than it used to be, there are still some compatibility issues with Windows on Arm for power users.

Read: Asus Zenbook A16 review

💻 Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra

Samsung's Galaxy Book6 Ultra is a powerful system for creatives, thanks in part to the RTX 5070 GPU in the version we tested. The OLED screen is beautiful and you get an nice design (albeit one that is quite similar to Macs), but this laptop is pricey, and you get a shallow keyboard.

Read: Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra review

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One of the most noticeable upgrades Intel made to its latest Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and 250K Plus CPUs was the introduction of its Binary Optimization Tool that manipulates instructions at the hardware level to boost IPC. The tool is highly beneficial for squeezing extra performance out of the Arrow Lake architecture, but it has led to concerns over benchmarking accuracy and consistency with these chips. John Poole from Geekbench posted a warning to its users that Intel's latest tool can't be trusted at this time, and there's no way to identify when the tool is enabled or disabled during a benchmark run.

Pool revealed that Intel does not have any public documentation on the techniques the Binary Optimization Tool (or iBOT) uses to optimize code, making it difficult to determine how effective iBOT's techniques are when applied to a variety of different applications. Furthermore, this problem makes it impossible for Primate Labs (the makers of Geekbench) and its userbase to understand how iBOT is boosting performance compared to benchmarks that run without it. According to Poole, Geekbench 6 workload scores on the chips increase by up to 40% with iBOT enabled, with overall scores improving by up to 8%. "Since the tool modifies the benchmark, and it is unclear to both Primate Labs and the general public how these changes occur," he warned.

To deal with this problem, Geekbench will provide a warning on all Geekbench benchmark listings featuring iBOT-supported chips with the following description: “This benchmark result may be invalid due to binary modification tools that can run on this system.”

Unfortunately, the Geekbench developers don't have any other choice but to treat iBOT in this manner. Benchmarking consistency from run to run is very important for both users and the teams that create benchmarking apps, such as Geekbench 6, and losing this capability removes a benchmarking application's usefulness and credibility.

Thankfully, Intel is aware of these discrepancies; Intel told Jake Roach, one of Tom's Hardware's editors and main CPU reviewer, that it is cautious about rolling out the feature and wants to avoid any claims of playing dirty tricks to look better on benchmarks. Currently, iBOT is supported only in a handful of PC games, with the exception being Geekbench 6.3. Intel is using iBOT in Geekbench 6.3 as a proof of concept for how iBOT could potentially perform in non-gaming workloads. For instance, in our review of the 270K Plus, we tested iBOT in Geekbench 6.3 and saw performance improve by around 10% compared to the 265K.

The Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and Core Ultra 5 250K Plus debuted this week as potentially Intel's last hurrah for the LGA 1851 platform before Nova Lake arrives later this year. In our reviews of both chips, we found both make significant improvements on the lackluster Core Ultra 200S series parts that preceded them. Pricing for both SKUs is substantially cheaper than their non-Plus counterparts, while providing noticeably superior multithreading performance thanks to the addition of four extra E cores.

A charming video from a Turkish wedding reveals a delighted bride and groom being showered with opulent gifts, as per tradition. However, this happy couple isn’t seen being weighed down in gold and jewelry, as if typically the case, instead they are collecting the ultimate riches of the PC tech world – GPUs, RAM, and processors.

The video clip embedded below (expand the tweet to see it) begins with the groom being presented with an MSI Suprim GeForce RTX 5090 in white. The multi-thousand-dollar GPU is hung around the groom's neck using red ribbons. Next up, the same wedding guest presents the bride with a quad-channel DDR5 memory kit, again lashed together using red ribbons. If the guy who presented these tech delights wasn’t the ‘best man’, he is now.

Another wedding guest steps to the fore and adds an Intel Core Ultra Unlocked processor to the groom’s gifts. The subtitles read “right now it’s a full computer set” (machine translation). So, we guess bulky items like the case, motherboard, and PSU weren’t suitable for hanging upon the newlyweds.

Something old
Something GPU
Something borrowed
And something from team Blue

My step-sister married into a Turkish family. It was probably nearly 20 years ago, but I don’t remember her getting any computer tech gifts. The wedding did involve a lot of gold and AK47s, though.

We’ve recently reported on the value of both DRAM and NAND ICs rising above gold, by weight. Such reports may have inspired the Turkish wedding guests in their lovely video clip.

However, we note that while gold never tarnishes, diamonds are forever, cash is king, and happiness is a warm AK47 - an RTX 5090 is probably only going to be serviceable for about a decade, if it doesn’t self-combust in the interim. Meanwhile, a large number of economists and tech watchers expect there to be a sharp correction in the AI-stoked RAM and NAND markets, in due course.

We don’t want to be Debbie Downers about this wedding, though, and wish the bride and groom a long, blissful, and lag-free marriage.

Minisforum let me go hands-on with its CES 2026 Innovation Award-winning Mini Workstation, so to get a grasp of what the diminutive new Minisforum MS-02 Ultra could offer, I decided to see if it could replace my aging but capable desktop PC.

This is a true David vs Goliath battle, at least in terms of physical presence. The sub-5-liter MS-02 Ultra battles with my much larger desktop system packed into a 55-liter Fractal Define S PC case. However, the result of the clash wasn’t as clear-cut as I expected, making me wonder what kind of PC I should be using daily in 2026.

Before we get into a specifications table, where you can see exactly how these two systems compare feature-by-feature, it is important to highlight the physical differences. The MS-02 Ultra is an incredible 11 times smaller than my Define S-desktop system. Obviously, such a small size means there are sacrifices to be made in terms of expandability, configurability, thermals, and noise. But those limitations are counterweighted by the benefits of the device being much physically smaller. Dare I say, the Minisforum is kind of portable, and even cute, which is not something I could say about the Define S PC.

The table below makes clear the specs of the Minisforum MS-02 Ultra workstation against those of the system it will have to battle on my desk.

CPU and GPU showdown

The Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX should be much more capable than the i5-14400F that I bought at Amazon for $115 last year. It tempts with the advantages of its modern Intel architecture, higher clock boost, and easily outguns my Raptor Lake Refresh chip on core count. Moreover, the new platform brings quite a lot of modern niceties. Particularly welcome, from my perspective, are the trio of really fast USB4 (including 2x USB4 v2) ports, all with DisplayPort capabilities.

A distinct advantage I expected in moving to the MS-02 Ultra was from the increased core count using Intel’s more modern architecture. Indeed, CPU-heavy benchmarks would show the new chip could convincingly eclipse the old mid-range Core i5-14400F in both single- and multicore workloads, given sufficient power supply and cooling capacity. But, we'll see how that translates to ‘Mark’s world’ of computing in the benchmarks section, below.

I’ll stress again that a brief check of the specs, ahead of any actual comparison testing, may suggest the little Minisforum would win hands-down in CPU-focused processing tasks, but the best consumer-grade GPU I could get to fit inside its sub-5-liter chassis would be crushed by the triple-fan behemoth in my ATX desktop. Indeed, that is sort of what happened. There are nuances, though, especially as I don’t really play any AAA or eSports PC games that launched in the 2020s, or dabble in local AI.

The MS-02 Ultra runs using the integrated graphics on the Core Ultra 9 285HX by. default. However, there’s a PCIe5.0 x16 slot, and incredibly, there’s room to install a two-slot low profile (LP) graphics card. This, plus the spare 8-pin connector from the built-in 350W PSU, allowed me to install a Gigabyte RTX 5060 OC LP GPU.

Nvidia’s RTX 5060 seemed to be the best graphics card choice for me, as a generalist/hobbyist PC user, though I’ve seen other early adopters of the MS-02 Ultra install cards like the Intel Arc Pro B50 (16GB), Nvidia RTX Pro 4000 Blackwell SFF (24GB), and the RTX 4000 SFF Ada (20GB). These offer far more VRAM but can cost a lot more, too. But thanks to this mini workstation allowing for GPU upgrades, perhaps the RTX 6060 or RTX 7060 will arrive one day with more than 8GB of VRAM on board, and in a low-profile form factor. Or maybe AMD will make a performant LP form factor card in the meantime.

More on specs

I chose my Fractal Define S-housed desktop's motherboard as it was one of the few B760 chipset boards with a USB-C 20 Gbps port as standard at the price point. So, getting three times more USB-C ports, with two of them supporting up to 80 Gbps as standard, on the compact MS-02 Ultra was a welcome platform boost. I’m sure there is potential here for some very useful docking or even eGPU use-cases.

I have a pair of Crucial X10 Pro 4TB devices for keeping games, TV, and movie libraries portable. My testing confirmed the USB4 v2 ports on the front work at full USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 (20 Gbps) speeds with the X10 Pro. Some USB4 controllers surprisingly don’t support Gen 2x2 and would fall back to 10 Gbps mode. My X10 Pros run about a third of the speed of the built-in M.2 SSD provided by Minisforum, but I feel they are good for external, highly portable units.

An extra two 25 GbE network ports and two of the available M.2 SSD slots are provided by a pre-installed low-profile card in the MS-02 Ultra’s PCIe 4.0 x16 slot. However, I chose to replace that with a cheap USB Type-A 3.0 card with four ports, as I really like to have lots of USB ports. My old desktop used a USB adaptor for Wi-Fi 6 and didn’t have Bluetooth. The MS-02 has built-in Intel BE200 Wi-Fi 7 and BT 5.4 card.

There are three PCIe slots in the MS-02 Ultra, but adding the GPU takes up the room where two single-slot add-in-cards would otherwise fit. That compares poorly with my Define S desktop, which has five slots. With a bulky GPU fitted in that ATX system, it was still possible to add another three single-slot PCIe cards. Again, I have one installed in there, bristling with extra USB ports.

Preparing for my personal benchmark battle

The most demanding things thrown at my PC are video editing and games like The Division 2 and Far Cry 5. The Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark is just there for an added reference point, (I bought it, but I’ve not actually got around to playing it yet.) The same goes for Shadow of the Tomb Raider. I also like playing in Borderlands GOTY Enhanced Edition, Command & Conquer Generals, and Amiga Forever – but those are so old and lightweight they weren’t worth testing for this performance comparison.

Most of the time, my computer will be used for little more than multiscreen word processing and browsing, communicating with work colleagues, and a touch of ancient Photoshop and Illustrator dabbling. These help me prepare artwork for here on Tom’s Hardware, some YouTube stuff, as well as laser cutting and engraving. Also, Photoshop has recently been replaced by the Affinity suite.

So, without further ado, let’s get into those benchmarks, which unashamedly revolve around my personal general-purpose computer use, with a few gaming classics thrown in. I’ve also included a ‘tweener’ system, where my large desktop was fitted with the incongruously tiny RTX 5060 LP card.

Minisforum MS-02 Ultra productivity performance

The comparison table above doesn’t offer much in the way of surprises. The MS-02 Ultra with Intel’s Core Ultra 9 285HX does exceedingly well in CPU-intensive tests, particularly those that take advantage of the abundance of available threads. We see the 285HX is a star performer in Cinebench R23, with single-thread scores similar to desktop processors like the Core i9-14900K and Ryzen 9 9950X. For multicore, you are also good to compare with the Ryzen 9 7950X3D and i9‑14900F, but the unlocked i9‑14900K starts to pull ahead convincingly.

I also think the 7-Zip (de)compression benchmark shows the MS-02 mini workstation in a good light. Handbrake 4K transcoding wasn’t much better compared with my old 14400F, though. Meanwhile, PassMark Performance Test, a mix of CPU, graphics, memory, and disk tests, showed some worthwhile performance benefits from the Minisforum – when the RTX 5060 was installed.

Minisforum MS-02 Ultra gaming performance

It is almost moot to highlight that the Define S desktop with Radeon RX 9070 would dominate in 3D games and 3D benchmarks. Nevertheless, there were some interesting results showing that the Ultra 9 285HX / RTX 5060 didn’t always beat the i5-14400F / RTX 5060 due to titles simply being ‘GPU-limited.’ An interesting outlier was the crazy-town USA-set Far Cry 5, where Ubisoft’s Dunia Engine 2 (a modified CryEngine) seemed to prefer the desktop Raptor Lake Refresh under the hood. All the games were tested in 1440p, with no upscaling or frame-gen tech applied.

Minisforum MS-02 Ultra power consumption and noise

Now we move into an area of both strength and weakness for the Minisforum MS-02 Ultra. In my benchmarks table, above, I also included power and noise readings. Starting with the good news, the MS-02 requires less power while idling and doing light tasks – like writing this. It also uses about 120W less when gaming, and all the titles I enjoy play smoothly enough on the RTX 5060 system at high to ultra settings at 1440p without the use of any scaling or frame gen tech.

Some bad news for the mini workstation is that it is more audible when idling and under load, in my experience. Initially, I measured both systems from about arm’s length distance. My Define S desktop uses large Noctua fans and sits under the desk, and in the comparison results, you see that even using the tiny RTX 5060 didn’t increase the noticeable system noise – it is hard to be 100% confident about the 1dBA difference observed.

Having the MS-02 Ultra at arm's length from my seated position, but on the desk top, the noise level was quite high at 48 dBA under load, as per the above chart. However, sitting it under the desk, where the big DIY desktop PC was previously located, reduced the max noise level to 41 dBA. But it's a far smaller system, and when positioned in the space vacated by the Define S, the Minisforum front panel moves beyond arm's reach under the desk. It is necessary to bend quite low from the chair to reach the power button and front I/O, which isn't convenient. That's why I decided to keep it on the desk.

I also note that the Minisforum BIOS has various fan modes (quiet, balanced, and performance) and manual tweaking of the trio of system fans. I ran it at ‘Balanced,’ so there’s probably some tuning that could be done for better noise performance.

Bottom line

In some many ways, the Minisforum MS-02 Ultra held its own against my old home-built Goliath.. The pint-sized challenger does everything I need, and some more. There are clear advantages to be had in CPU-heavy workloads. In GPU-heavy tasks and gaming, there’s clearly enough juice for my particular needs today. If you think about the future, then unlike many other mini PCs, this one can get upgraded with a faster next-generation low-profile graphics card (and other compact PCIe cards) if and when they arrive at an affordable price.

I’ll continue to work on configuring the fans, with an eye on processor and memory temperatures, as the louder fans are the one aspect of the MS-02 Ultra that pokes me in the ribs. It may also be repositioned further back on the desk or under it to scale back its audible presence. The fan noise isn’t high-pitched, and I sometimes forget it, but less is more.

We must also talk about the price of the Minisforum MS-02 Ultra mini workstation. As of the this writing, the Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX model with 2x 25 GbE PCIe SFP+ NIC, 32GB DDR5, plus a 1TB M.2 PCIe4x4 SSD, and Windows 11 Pro is priced at $1,583.90 from Amazon.com. You can also go barebone (no RAM, SSD, or OS) for $1,229.90 using a $300 discount coupon on the page, which could be a great option if you have a spare DDR5 SO-DIMM, M.2 SSD, and can source your own OS. As with all PCs at this time, prices are very volatile.

The Gigabyte GeForce RTX 5060 OC LP 8G I bought to go in this system's PCIe ​5.0 x16 slot is currently $359 at Newegg. This was a necessary extra to indulge in the type and quality of gaming fun that I am used to.

Thus, for the Minisforum MS-02 Ultra 32GB/1TB with RTX 5060 LP graphics card installed, as tested, today's total price would be $1,942.90. Things have gotten a little pricier since I began my tests in early January, but that's the way the PC market is going.

We could talk about the comparison between the MS-02 Ultra build/cost and a desktop, with the latter offering much better value and expandability or upgradeability. However, getting something this performant yet compact, with this level of I/O spec and expandability, is going to be impossible with off-the-shelf parts. In this way, and especially for those with a use for the 2x 25 GbE PCIe SFP+ NIC, this mini workstation is a uniquely attractive package.

According to the company, Intel is set to share details of its Panther Lake lineup of mobile processors next week. Now, leaks are starting to seep out ahead of the reportedly imminent announcements. A few weeks ago, the name "Core Ultra X" started popping up in the rumor mill with reliable tipsters reporting on a potential new branding that Intel would adopt for Panther Lake. Up until now, we didn't have any concrete info on this, but new leaks from one of the most trusted leakers in the business, the oddly-named Golden Pig Upgrade, have just filled us in on the purported details.

Intel's Xe3 graphics IP will debut on Panther Lake with every SKU featuring integrated graphics. The models with the highest-spec'd iGPUs are what will reportedly be referred to as Core Ultra X. The "X" designation allegedly represents 12 Xe3 GPU cores, a major uplift from the 8 maximum Xe2-based cores we had on Lunar Lake. But that's the thing — Panther Lake is not a Lunar Lake successor because that featured on-package memory; Panther Lake supports externally-mounted RAM. That's probably why the model numbering on Panther Lake is also shifted around.

Speaking of which, Golden Pig Upgrade lists four SKUs: three with the Core Ultra X designation and one without. Apparently, only Core Ultra X9 and X7 are getting the full-fat 12 Xe3 GPU cores, while the Core Ultra 5 midrange offering will have, at best, 10 Xe3 cores. So, overall, Core Ultra X means 12 Xe3 cores; Core Ultra 3x8 means at least 10 Xe3 cores; and Core Ultra 3x6 means less than 10 Xe3 cores. In general, Panther Lake will introduce more CPU cores across the board as well, alongside improved iGPUs, as explained below.

Now, all that being said, there's a slight twist in this narrative. A new leak that surfaced from Chiphell just a couple of hours later actually detailed the entire lineup, consisting of 12 SKUs that will launch this year. From that leak, it appears that there is, in fact, a Core Ultra 5 SKU as well, but it still has those 10 Xe3 Cores we mentioned earlier. This may mean that the "X" designation isn't strictly exclusive to the 12-core club, but this is a leak after all, so we'll have to wait and see. Given the discrepancy in core configs below, perhaps "X" just broadly refers to a high GPU core count.

What's more interesting, however, is how the SKUs are actually named. Instead of the Core Ultra X7 or X9, the "X" appears to precede the model number itself — Core Ultra 9 X388H, for instance. There's rumored information on a lot more models, so we'll leave you with a table (at the end) that goes over it all. It doesn't really matter how Intel names these chips; at the end of the day, we're in for a seemingly powerful upgrade regardless. Especially when it comes to integrated graphics performance, a big generational jump (Xe2-LGP to Xe3-LPG), combined with the increased core count, should give us exciting results.

Panther Lake is expected to be fabricated on the company's homegrown 18A process, and will feature an expanded LP-E island, alongside the typical P-Cores (Cougar Cove) and E-Cores (Darkmont). Intel is looking for a spiritual successor to Lunar Lake, hoping to achieve similar efficiency (battery life) but without the niche novelty tied to that generation. The fact that they're reportedly combining the naming schemes of Core Ultra 200V and Core Ultra 200H (Arrow Lake-H) could be evidence of that, and it should be enough to keep the crowd fed till the real upgrade, Nova Lake, shows up next year.

The Core Ultra 3 205 represents the lower end of Intel’s current generation of Arrow Lake desktop processors. While the CPU is not officially available for purchase yet, an early review by Korean reviewer Bulls Lab gives us an idea about its capabilities. The entry-level CPU features a hybrid architecture with four P-cores that can boost up to 4.9 GHz and four E-cores capable of going up to 4.4 GHz, giving the chip competitive clock speeds for an entry-level processor.

The reviewer tested the Core Ultra 3 205 by pairing it with a budget H810 motherboard along with 32GB of DDR5 memory. By the looks of it, the processor is capable of delivering good performance for everyday computing and can handle multiple browser tabs, as well as 8K YouTube videos at low CPU usage. In terms of power draw, the chip can draw up to 65W, and it is recommended to use a third-party CPU cooler instead of the stock Intel heatsink for better thermal performance.

Edge computing specialist Aaeon has rolled out the tiny new PICO-MTU4-SEMI, which it claims to be the “world’s smallest Intel Core Ultra-powered Mini PC.” This Intel Core Ultra 5 Processor 125U-packing PC measures just 108 x 95 x 43mm (about 0.44 liters, 14.9 fl oz). Searching our archives for smaller Core Ultra PCs seems to support the compactness claims, with the Aaeon being noticeably smaller than the MSI Cubi NUC 1M that we previously featured, for example.

The Aaeon PICO-MTU4-SEMI design gets bonus points for being entirely passive; however, it must lose some for looking like something you’d tether to the back of an Acorn Electron. Readers are also likely to be uneasy regarding the port selection. However, the limited internal expansion options seem like an understandable constraint here.

Knowing that this is a device targeting installation within “industrial robots and AGVs while still providing a broad selection of interfaces for peripheral devices such as cameras and sensors,” provides some background to the port selection. Thus, the PICO-MTU4-SEMI bristles with the familiar DB9 style ports, common on such devices. These are mostly intended for legacy-friendly COM ports, facilitating RS-232/422/485 serial communication with various industrial devices and machinery. We see on this new Aaeon that one is also a GPIO, for further I/O control flexibility. All these 9-pin ports are tagged as ‘optional’ in Aaeon’s spec sheets.

Sticking to the topic of ports, around the other side of the device, you will find a meager pair of USB 3.2 Type-A ports, 2.5GbE and 1GbE LAN ports, a single display output in the shape of an HDMI 1.4 connector, and a DC-in jack. That isn’t a lot, but one assumes Aaeon must know its business audience.

Intel demoed working Panther Lake Core Ultra 300 silicon for laptops, its first chips based on its crucial 18A process node, here at Computex 2025 in Taipei, Taiwan. Unlike the first public demoes at CES 2025 that merely showed the chips powered on, Intel put Panther Lake its paces in real-time rendering and AI applications, showing that the silicon is healthy and on-track for retail availability in early 2026. Intel also shared more information about its performance and power consumtpion expectations for the new chips. 

As you can see in the image above, Intel also had a Panther Lake chip on display, enabling us to see how the CPU, GPU, I/O tile, and SoC tile are arranged on the package. These chips are thought to come with Cougar Cove P-cores and Darkmont E-cores (you can see the unconfirmed leaked specifications of some of the chip models here). 

Intel says the Panther Lake chips blend the power efficiency of Lunar Lake with the performance of Arrow Lake-H, noting that while the chips will be in production in the second half of 2025, presumably launched at CES, full retail availability will not come until early 2026. Intel did tease that the chips will come with the next-gen integrated graphics with XMX graphics, but aside from saying the iGPU performance will be closer to Lunar Lake than Arrow Lake, the company didn't elaborate. These iGPUs are thought to be based on the Xe3 architecture.

Intel ran its Panther Lake benchmarks on two Reference Validation Platforms (RVP) that you can see in the above album. These platforms are used to validate the design and emulate real-world conditions. Both RVPs were equipped with a heatsink and fan, so they were presumably operating without thermal constraints. 

Intel demoed one system running the newly-resurrected Clippy as a large language model to demonstrate that the chips are running AI workloads. The presenter used the system to write game code in Python code. Intel didn't share performance metrics from the benchmark. 

Intel also demoed a system running Da Vinci to edit and manipulate video using local AI processing to process the video, enabling fast manipulation of the video clip, such as changing backgrounds, clothing colors, and adding flying text to the clip. 

Intel also displayed a running developer kit that 300+ developers with ISVs are using to enable software support for the coming chips. Intel demoed the system being used for image editing with auto-coloring and upscaling features, powered, of course, by AI. As you can see in the album, the developer system is quite compact. Intel also had a host of laptops on display from its OEM partners. 

Intel's Panther Lake appears to be on track for its launch schedule, which bodes well for the company's immensely important 18A process node. Intel teased that the next steps are to release concrete speeds and feeds along with more information about the various chip models. We expect those to come trickling our over the next several months. 

One of Intel's latest processors, the Intel Core Ultra 7 265K, is now available at Amazon for one of its lowest prices. It has a recommended price of $404 and has been going for around $340 lately. Today, however, the price has plummeted to $269—one of the lowest CPU offers since it first released.

Just a couple of weeks ago, we saw a price drop on not only the Intel Core 7 265K and other editions in the line, such as the Intel Core Ultra 5 245K. In that post, we point out a possible caveat with an investment into the Intel Core Ultra 7 265K, mainly concerning the LGA1851 socket it relies on. This standard may be replaced soon and would require an upgraded motherboard to get a new processor, which makes for a substantial investment.

Dropping thousands of dollars on one of the best gaming laptops might make you pause – and it should. But Lenovo goes a long way to be worthy of that money with its Legion Pro 7i Gen 10 ($3,204 as tested). This 16-inch beast packs an Intel Core Ultra 9 HX processor and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 graphics card, all topped off with a stunning OLED display. Add excellent build quality and eye-catching RGB lighting, and it has serious appeal. Naturally, no laptop is perfect, and there are a few drawbacks to weigh before forking over your next mortgage payment.

Design of the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10

Lenovo’s eclipse black chassis makes a bold statement – this Legion laptop is built to command attention. The rear shelf has a distinctly industrial, almost military-inspired vibe with massive hexagonal air vents lined with striking RGB lighting. If this machine is in the room, it’s impossible to ignore.

The lighting is divided into four zones – the front and rear edges, the keyboard, and the Legion lettering on the lid – and is all customizable through the Legion Space app. The front zone is comprised of 10 LEDs, the rear ups the ante with 18, and every key on the keyboard can be individually tweaked.

In the app, you can highlight specific LEDs within each zone to create custom sub-zones, then apply different lighting effects – spiral rainbow, rainbow wave, color change, color pulse, wave, smooth, raining, and solid – while adjusting their speed and direction. Brightness is the only setting that applies across all zones. I could have spent hours fine-tuning my setup and creating profiles for every situation.

Build quality is a real strength for this laptop. When many competitors opt for plastic on some of the chassis, Lenovo uses all aluminum, and it feels top-notch, especially when most gaming laptops use some plastic. The chassis is solid with no flex and the lid is impressively sturdy, showing only minimal give despite its size.

Measuring 14.33 x 10.86 x 1.04 inches and weighing 6 pounds, the Legion has a slightly larger footprint than the Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 (13.94 x 10.55 x 0.90 inches, 6.28 pounds) and the Gigabyte Aorus Master 16 (14.06 x 10.0 x 1.18 inches, 5.51 pounds). It’s particularly bulkier than the Razer Blade 16 (13.98 x 9.86 x 0.69 inches, 4.72 pounds).

The Legion offers a solid array of ports, including a Thunderbolt 4, a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C, three USB Type-A ports (one Gen 2, two Gen 1), a 3.5 mm audio jack, an HDMI 2.1 output, and a 2.5 Gbps Ethernet jack. On the wireless side, it supports Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. While it covers the essentials, the absence of Thunderbolt 5 is noticeable, especially since some competing flagship gaming laptops have started to include it.

Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10 Specifications

Gaming and Graphics on the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10

Our Legion review unit features an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX processor, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 GPU (175 W maximum graphics power), and 32GB of memory.

Playing Crysis Remastered at 2560 x 1600 with everything set to Very High or “Can it run Crysis?” settings, I saw framerates in the mid-90s in jungles and 100 to 125 frames per second in open scenes. The game was smooth and stutter-free.

We’re stacking the Legion up against three 16-inch gaming laptops: the Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 (Core Ultra 9 275HX, RTX 5080, 175 W, $3,299 as tested), the Gigabyte Aorus Master 16 (Core Ultra 9 275HX, RTX 5080 175 W, $3,099 as tested), and the Razer Blade 16 (AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, RTX 5090 160 W, $4,499.99 as tested). While the Razer commands a higher price with its RTX 5090, its GPU is actually rated for lower power than the RTX 5080s in the other models and Razer unusually pairs it with a 28 W CPU.

In Shadow of the Tomb Raider (Highest detail preset), the Legion hit 163 FPS at 1080p, landing in last place behind the Gigabyte (185 FPS) and Asus (177 FPS). While the Razer edged it out at 166 FPS, its RTX 5090 truly shined at 1440p, pulling ahead with 162 FPS. The Legion, on the other hand, managed only 101 FPS at 1440p, trailing the Asus (112 FPS) and Gigabyte (114 FPS).

The Legion fell behind in Cyberpunk 2077 (Ray Tracing Ultra preset), managing 30 FPS at 1080p and 50 FPS at 1440p. Among the RTX 5080 laptops, the Gigabyte was the top performer, hitting 62 FPS at 1080p and 38 FPS at 1440p. The Razer’s RTX 5090 led the pack with 66 FPS at 1080p and 43 FPS at 1440p.

The Legion did slightly better in Far Cry 6 (Ultra preset), achieving 117 FPS at 1080p and trailing only the Gigabyte (120 FPS), though its 1440p result of 98 FPS left something to be desired next to the Asus (103 FPS) and the Gigabyte (113 FPS). The Razer slipped behind since this game is more CPU-limited.

In Red Dead Redemption 2 (Medium preset), the Legion’s 109 FPS at 1080p easily trounced the Razer (94 FPS). Those were the only two laptops to complete the test at that resolution due to RTX 50-series driver issues at the time of review. At 1440p, its 67 FPS fell between the Asus (77 FPS) and the Gigabyte (54 FPS).

Last, the Legion trailed in Borderlands 3 (at the game’s “Badass” preset), its 136 FPS at 1080p not getting anywhere close to the Asus (156 FPS) or Gigabyte (172 FPS).

The Legion’s gaming performance slightly lagged behind the Asus and Gigabyte despite all three using the same CPU and GPU wattage. That said, even the Asus and Gigabyte showed variations, suggesting multiple factors – cooling efficiency, drivers, and software optimizations – play a role in final performance.

Since we test laptops in their default configurations, our results reflect what users can expect out of the box. However, since these numbers were lower than we'd hoped, we tried performance mode. Enabling performance mode in the Legion Space app led to noticeable gains. At 1080p, frame rates jumped from 163 to 205 FPS in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, from 109 to 126 FPS in Red Dead Redemption 2, and from 136 to 178 FPS in Borderlands 3, which would put it far ahead of the competition. Given the potential for such improvements, opting for performance mode might be worth the increased fan noise.

To stress-test gaming laptops, we run the Metro Exodus benchmark 15 times at RTX settings to simulate half an hour of gaming. The Legion achieved 113 FPS across all runs, with deviations of less than two FPS between runs indicating consistent thermal performance. During the test, the P-cores on the Legion’s Core Ultra 9 275HX processor ran at an average frequency of 4.46 GHz and temperature of 71 degrees C while the E-cores averaged 2.04 GHz and 64 degrees C. The GeForce RTX 5080 had an average boost clock of 1.6 GHz and temperature of 63 C.

Productivity Performance on the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10

We tested the Legion with a Core Ultra 9 275HX processor, 32GB of RAM, and two 1TB PCI Express 4.0 SSDs (non-RAID).

In the Geekbench 6 CPU test, the Legion led single-core scores with 3,103 points, edging out the Asus (3,017 points) and the Gigabyte (2,049 points). Its 19,597-point score in multi-core testing was also the highest, narrowly beating the Asus (19,597 points) and dominating the Razer (16,025 points).

The Legion also produced the highest score in our 25 GB file transfer test, averaging 2,030 MBps. The Asus was second-fastest, with 1,841 MBps, while the Gigabyte trailed with 665 MBps.

The Legion narrowly missed the top score in our Handbrake video transcoding test, completing it in 2 minutes and 21 seconds versus the Gigabyte’s 2 minutes and 17 seconds. The Razer’s 28 W AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 CPU wasn’t competitive here, taking 3 minutes and 5 seconds.

Display on the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10

The Legion’s OLED display is a true joy for gaming, streaming, and everything else. Its exceptionally vibrant color, sharp detail, and brilliant brightness evoke the same kind of longing you get eyeing high-end TVs in an electronics store. One look, and you’ll know it’s a screen you won’t want to go without.

I found Foundation on Apple TV breathtaking with its deep, inky black space scenes, warm, glowing desert landscapes, and intricately detailed character outfits. Gaming is just as immersive – the jungles in Crysis Remastered appear even more vibrant and alive than I recall.

The 2560 x 1600 resolution strikes a balance – it’s crisper than 1080p but more manageable than 4K for gaming performance. The screen also boasts a 240 Hz refresh rate and Nvidia G-Sync for the smoothest possible visuals. The only potential drawback? Its glossy finish, which can show dust and distracting reflections in bright environments.

The Legion and Razer stand out as the only two OLED-equipped contenders, offering comparable color reproduction – 138.9% of DCI-P3 for the Legion and 144.6% for the Razer. Where the Legion truly shines is in brightness, hitting an impressive 465 nits compared to the Razer’s 372 nits. It’s even brighter than the IPS panels on the Asus and Gigabyte.

Keyboard and Touchpad on the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10

The Legion’s keyboard is eminently usable for gaming and productivity, delivering a crisp, non-mushy feel. The tactile response tells my fingers exactly when a key is pressed or released. I typically make a few errors in typing tests, but on MonkeyType, I hit 116 words per minute without missing a stroke.

The number pad’s usability is somewhat inhibited by small keys, but the rest of the keyboard has a standard layout. The typeface looks the part of a gaming laptop without going overboard. I appreciate the “O” key being the Legion logo. Although our unit isn’t so equipped, Lenovo offers switchable WASD keycaps for a unique look. (It’s a $25 option.)

The per-key RGB backlighting is bright and laser sharp; numerous lighting patterns can be set in the Legion Space app.

The Legion’s touchpad also works well, offering a large surface and satisfying clicks. Touching the pad with my palm while gaming caused no unintended clicks or movement.

Audio on the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10

Although the Legion’s sound quality isn’t groundbreaking, it delivers an audio experience that should satisfy most users, particularly for gaming. Four strategically positioned speakers – two firing upwards near the display hinges and two beneath the palm rest – offer a surprisingly convincing sense of surround sound. Playing Crysis Remastered, I could tell when bullets were hitting to my left or right. The sound is short on bass, though, preventing explosions from sounding dangerous or exciting.

The sound is less well-adapted for music playback. While volume isn’t an issue – the laptop gets about as loud as a budget Bluetooth speaker – the speakers struggle with frequency separation. Vocals don’t stand out and the overall range feels constrained.

Tweaking settings in the Nahimic app can help. For music, disabling the Voices boost seemed to lift some of the midrange muddiness, and reducing the default bass boost from +4 dB to +2 dB opened the mix a little. Still, the changes weren’t drastic, and most users will likely get by just fine sticking to the default settings. My reference music included the album Atlas by Jason Ross and “To Love Again” by Blonde Maze.

Upgradeability of the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10

Accessing the Legion’s innards requires removing 10 Phillips-head screws. Carefully note their length, as the four along the front edge are shorter than the others. I used a plastic pry tool to pop the clips around the sides first, then the front.

The massive 99 WHr battery is replaceable. A large black heatsink must be removed to access the two M.2 drives, the M.2 wireless card, and the two SODIMM slots, a tedious process because of the many tiny Phillips-head screws securing it. Still, the Legion is about as upgradeable as gaming laptops get.

Battery Life on the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10

Our battery life test consists of simulated web browsing, streaming video over Wi-Fi, and running OpenGL tests, all with the screen brightness set to 150 nits. The Legion’s time of 4 hours and 37 minutes was dead last behind the Gigabyte (5 hours and 2 minutes) and well behind the Asus (6 hours and 30 minutes) and Razer (7 hours and 21 minutes). Given this Lenovo has the highest capacity battery available in a laptop (99 WHr), it’s not doing a particularly good job of power management.

Heat on the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10

The Legion’s cooling system consists of two large fans that vent directly out the back, plus a small auxiliary fan in the chassis center. The fan noise is impressively unobtrusive; I could still pick up subtle in-game audio with the speakers set to 30% volume. For lighter tasks, the laptop stays nearly silent and never gets more than mildly warm.

During the Metro Exodus stress test, we measured surface temperatures of 93 degrees Fahrenheit between the keyboard G and H keys, 63 F on the touchpad, and a maximum temperature of 96 F on the laptop’s underside.

Webcam on the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10

Lenovo deserves praise for its excellent 1440p webcam, which delivers a sharply detailed and well-lit picture. While there’s no sliding privacy shutter, there's a webcam kill switch on the laptop’s right edge. When this switch is activated, the webcam isn’t even recognized by the laptop.

The laptop has neither an infrared sensor nor a fingerprint reader for Windows Hello which is a huge miss when many apps (and Windows itself) can use biometric logins.

Software and Warranty on the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10

Lenovo includes plenty of software on the Legion – some good, some not so good. The Vantage app is the same one you’ll find on other Lenovo laptops, offering system updates, battery charge settings, a security advisor, and support access. Another app, Legion Space, serves as a central game library and offers settings for Nvidia Optimus, performance modes, and lighting settings. Lastly, the Nahmic app provides audio settings.

Unfortunately, ads are pervasive on this laptop. The Lenovo Subscription Marketplace app is one big ad, and the Lenovo Now app is even worse, essentially a wizard that walks you through different entertainment service offerings. Ads also exist in the Vantage app, with a tile on the main screen offering security subscriptions and several items on the side menu advertising Lenovo’s Smart Performance and Smart Lock services. Legion Space isn’t exempt either, offering different game deals on its main screen – and this one just happens to start automatically with Windows, so you see it right when you log in.

While some of the apps can be removed, you’ll miss out on many settings if you remove Vantage and Space, so there is no way to have a truly ad-free experience.

Lenovo backs the Legion with a one-year warranty. Three years would have been better at this price.

Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10 Configurations

The Legion Pro 7i was available as a configurable model on Lenovo’s website and from Best Buy at the time of this review. All models include a Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU and the 16-inch OLED display. For $2,619, the base model includes a GeForce RTX 5070 Ti (12GB) graphics card, 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD, while our model steps up to an RTX 5080 (16GB) and adds a second 1TB SSD for $3,204 (discounted from $3,559 at the time of this review).

Further available upgrades include an RTX 5090 (24GB), 64GB of RAM, and a PCI Express 5.0 SSD.

Bottom Line

The Legion Pro 7i Gen 10 is an outstanding 16-inch gaming laptop, meeting the demanding performance needs in this class while surpassing expectations with its stunning OLED screen and premium metal chassis. Its drawbacks – a lack of biometric features, middling battery life, and ads in the included software – are relatively minor in the grand scheme of things.

One note on the performance: Out of the box it's fine, but to really compete with the likes of other RTX 50-series laptops, you'll want to turn on Lenovo's performance mode.

What sets the Legion apart is its well-rounded appeal. Unlike the Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 and the Gigabyte Aorus Master 16, it features a metal build, while the Razer Blade 16, though all-metal, comes at a significantly higher price. Moreover, the Legion offers the most extensive RGB customization we’ve seen. Aside from battery life, it doubles as an excellent daily-use machine, thanks to its comfortable keyboard and quiet fans. It's a formidable contender.

One of the first laptops with Nvidia’s new top-of-the-line mobile GPU, the HP Omen Max 16 is designed to take on the best gaming laptops and beat them into submission with high performance and stunning visuals. We tested a fully decked out version of this 16-inch laptop, which came packed with an RTX 5090 GPU, Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU, 32GB of DDR5 RAM, a 2TB SSD and a 2560 x 1600, 240 Hz OLED display. That adds up to a pricey $4,329 price tag.

As you might expect from a decked out mobile gaming rig, our review config of the HP Omen Max 16 offered strong frame rates in both real-world play and in benchmark tests, though some competitors with the slightly-lesser RTX 5080 GPU often kept pace with or exceeded it. Its OLED panel offered vibrant colors and wide viewing angles while the speakers provided rich tin-free audio. But its keyboard felt mushy and lifeless.

At 6.1 pounds this mostly-aluminum laptop feels really heavy in the hand and, when you add in its 2-pound power brick, a huge weight in your laptop bag. You might expect that kind of weight out of a rig this powerful, but some competitors are slimmer and lighter while offering similar or better frame rates.

What is the design of the HP Omen Max 16 like?

The HP Omen Max 16 is an attractive — but heavy — laptop. Its black chassis, with an aluminum base and lid, give it a premium look and feel. The number "016" is emblazoned on the deck and above the lid, just in case you ever forget that it’s a 16-inch laptop. It also happens to be in a style very reminiscent of Alienware. The overall aesthetic is ok, neither exciting nor innovative, but certainly premium.

At 6.1, this is a hefty machine At 0.98-inches thick, it’s chunky too. It weighed so much that adding it and its chunky charger to my laptop bag made the whole contraption a real burden. By comparison, the Razer Blade 16, equipped with the same RTX 5090 GPU as our Omen (albeit with a weaker processor), weighs 4.7 pounds and is just 0.69 inches thick. The Gigabyte Aorus Master 16 with RTX 5080 is 5.5 pounds and a thicker, 1.18 inches. The Asus ROG Strix Scar 16, also with an RTX 5080, is actually heavier at 6.3 pounds, but not as thick at 0.90 inches.

The Omen Max 16 has plenty of ports, including two USB Type-A 10 Gbps ports, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, an HDMI 2.1 out port, and a 3.5 mm audio jack. There’s also a round barrel connector for the 2-pound, 330-watt power supply.

There’s plenty of RGB lighting for those who like that kind of look. The full-size keyboard with a numeric keypad, has pudding-style keycaps where the light can shine through the legends. There’s also a lightbar on the front lip of the laptop, where it can reflect off of a glossy tabletop.

What are the specs of the HP Omen Max 16 we tested?

What are the gaming and graphics performance on the HP Omen Max 16?

With its RTX 5090 graphics and Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU, our configuration of the Omen Max 16 provided powerful gaming performance in both synthetic and real-world play. This is definitely a top-of-the-line configuration that’s about on par with other RTX 5090-powered laptops we’ve tested.

I spent some time playing Cyberpunk 2077 on it at both Ultra Ray Tracing and Ultra (non-Ray Tracing) settings. With ray tracing on, running at the screen’s native 2560 x 1600 resolution, my frame rate hovered between 65 and 70 frames per second. But with it off, I saw a smoother, 95 to 105 FPS range.

The numbers were not quite as good on a synthetic Cyberpunk 2077 test we ran where the Omen output 72 FPS at 1920 x 1080 and 47 FPS at 2560 x 1600, with Ray Tracing Ultra settings. These numbers were better than competitors like the Razer Blade 16 (66 / 43 FPS) and Gigabyte Aorus Master 16 (62 / 38 FPS).

On Shadow of the Tomb Raider at the highest settings, the Omen Max 16 produced a smooth 175 FPS at its native resolution and 116 FPS at 1080p. Surprisingly, the Gigabyte Aorus Master 16 and its RTX 5080 card performed a little bit better at 1080p and about the same at 2560 x 1600.

Again, in Far Cry 6 at Ultra settings, the HP Omen Max 16 hung with its competitors but was not at the top of the pack. At 1080p, the Aorus Master 16 beat it by 11 FPS and the RTX 5080-powered Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 was also a few FPS ahead.

In Borderlands 3, the Omen trailed the Aorus Master 16 by a few FPS. It was still strong at 156 FPS at 1080p and 109 FPS at 2560 x 1600, however. The Razer Blade 16 crashed during the test.

On Red Dead Redemption 2, at medium settings, the Omen 16 managed a strong 128 FPS at 1080p and 77 FPS at 2560 x 1600. The 1080p number led the field while the Razer Blade 16 (121 / 94 FPS) won at 2560 x 1600. On this test, the Aorus Master 16 trailed the field.

To see how the system performs over time, we run the Metro Exodus benchmark 15 times with RTX enabled. During this test, the HP Omen Max 16 averaged 121.24 FPS, a little bit less than the Razer Blade 16 which got 125.77 FPS. The FPS ranged from 135.59 FPS on the first run to 114.35 FPS on the last run, showing that performance dropped slightly as the system heated up.

During that time, the GPU clock speed averaged 1,582.37 MHz and its temperature averaged 83.15 degrees Celsius. The CPU’s P-cores ran at an average clock speed of 4.03 GHz and its E-cores ran at an average clock speed of 2,397 MHz. The CPU temperature averaged 99.68 degrees Celsius.

What productivity performance can you expect on the HP Omen Max 16?

WIth its Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU, RTX 5090 graphics, 32GB of DDR5 RAM and 2TB PCIe 4 SSD, our configuration of the HP Omen Max 16 handled every productivity task we threw at it admirably. Whether we were surfing the web, copying a large group of files or transcoding a video, the results were speedy.

The Omen pulled ahead of its competitors on Geekbench 6, scoring 3,097 in single-core testing and 19,822 in multi-core. That barely beat the Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 and Gigabyte Aorus Master 16, both of which have the same Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU and handily pounded the Razer Blade 16 and its AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor.

It took 2 minutes and 54 seconds for the Omen to transcode a 4K video into 1080p. That time is ahead of the Razer Blade 14 but still more than 30 seconds behind the RTX 5080-powered Strix Scar 16 and Aorus Master 16.

The HP Omen Max 16’s PCIe 4 SSD copied 25GB of files at a rate of 1,395.4 MBps. That’s a little behind the Razer Blade 16 and Strix Scar 16. However, it’s comfortably ahead of the Gigabyte Aorus Master 16.

What is the display on the HP Omen Max 16 and how does it perform?

The HP Omen Max 16 is available with both IPS and OLED display options. Our review unit came with the more-expensive OLED option, which was extremely sharp and colorful. The 2560 x 1600, 240 Hz panel looked great whether I was playing Cyberpunk 2077 or watching videos on YouTube.

When I watched a video of scenes from a Costa Rican jungle, fine details like the scales in a snake’s skin were sharp and easy to make out. Colors like the green of a frog or the red of a parrot were especially vibrant. The colors didn’t fade even at 90 degrees to the left or right.

The Omen’s screen hit an impressive 141.4% of the DCI-P3 color gamut by volume on our light meter. That beats the Razer Blade 16 (114.6%), Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 and Gigabyte Aorus Master 16. The panel was also really bright at 362.8 nits in SDR mode. That’s about on par with competitors except for the Strix Scar which hit 457.2 nits.

What is it like to use the keyboard and touchpad on the HP Omen Max 16?

The Omen Max 16’s keyboard is definitely not my favorite for typing, but it’s not terrible for gaming. The pudding-style keys feel mushy, lacking the kind of tactile feedback I like to get when writing and editing. The keyboard has a full numeric keypad, along with a column for - / + and second Enter keys. This makes things feel a little cramped but you do get a lot of keys for a 16-inch laptop.

Another thing I really don’t like: the arrow keys are not in an inverted T shape like they are on so many other laptops. Instead, the up and down arrows are smaller than the right and left keys and are shoved in-between the right and left. This makes moving the cursor around unpleasant. However, despite the shortcomings of the keyboard, I was able to hit a strong 106 wpm in 10fastfingers.com test, with just a 3.5 percent error rate. Both of those numbers are on the high end of my typical score.

While I was playing Cyberpunk 2077, the feel of the keys was less distracting for moving around than it was for typing. I had no problem turning quickly with WASD keys.

The 4.95 x 3.1-inch clickpad offers smooth, accurate navigation. The pad responded well to multitouch gestures such as pinch-to-zoom and two-finger scroll.

What do the speakers on the HP Omen Max 16 sound like?

The Omen Max 16’s speakers provide audio that’s rich and layered if not overly loud. When I listened to "AC/DC’s Back in Black," the guitar and drums appeared to come from different sides of the machine. Better still, there was not a hint of tininess, even at maximum volume. However, it wasn’t the loudest laptop I’ve heard with volume that was enough to fill a medium-sized but not a large room.

The output during gaming was also excellent. When I played Cyberpunk 2077, the spatial audio was really noticeable with gunshots that sounded like they were coming from a different direction than the voice of Jackie, a helpful NPC, who was behind me.

What is upgradable on the HP Omen Max 16?

The HP Omen Max 16 is relatively easy to upgrade. The bottom surface of the laptop has six Philip's head screws, only one of which is captive. Once you pry the cover off, there are markings showing where each major component – the GPU, CPU, DDR5 RAM and SSDs are located.

If you want to upgrade the RAM, you can remove the panel above the two DIMM slots. There are also two M.2 2280 SSD slots, one of which is filled with the boot drive. The second SSD slot is readily accessible, but the first one, which is used for the boot drive, is partly covered by the heat pipe from one of the two fans. That's a notable issue.

To replace the boot drive, you’d probably have to remove the fan or you’d have to slide the SSD out from under it. We didn’t want to risk removing the fan to find out so we’d suggest only adding a second drive rather than attempting to upgrade the boot drive.

What is the battery Life on the HP Omen Max 16?

Despite its 83 Whr battery, the HP Omen Max 16 doesn't offer strong battery life, which is sadly still somewhat common in gaming laptops.

In our tests, it lasted a mere 3 hours and 20 minutes on our endurance test. It’s important to note that this is not a gaming test; it’s a web surfing test that visits a variety of web pages, including some that stream video or show 3D animations. The Razer Blade 16, which was similarly equipped, lasted 7 hours and 21 minutes, which is more than twice as long.

We also ran HP’s computer through PCMark 10’s Gaming battery test, during which it lasted a mere one hour and 25 minutes. The RTX 5090-powered Razer Blade 16 lasted an hour longer on the same test.

How warm does the HP Omen Max 16 get when working or gaming?

The HP Omen Max 16 stays pretty cool when you’re not gaming but it gets warm during intense play. During web surfing, the keyboard hit just 93.2 degrees Fahrenheit, the bottom was a modest 93.3 F and the touchpad was just 85.3 F.

However, when we ran Metro Exodus, the keyboard was a toasty 113.8 F, the bottom measured 105.2 Fand the area above the Del key on the keyboard hit a full 125.8 degrees. That being said, these types of temperatures are consistent with what we see on most high-powered gaming laptops. In general, you should use them on a desk or table.

Webcam on the HP Omen Max 16

The 1080p webcam captured high-quality images in my testing. Colors like the blue in my shirt or the brown wood on a door behind me were accurate and vibrant. Fine details like the stubble on my face were clearly visible, even when I took a photo with the sun shining through a window behind me. There’s also a physical shutter to protect your privacy.

Software and Warranty on the HP Omen Max 16

The HP Omen Max 16 has just one major first-party utility: Omen Gaming Hub. Omen Gaming Hub has all the features you need for controlling a high-end gaming laptop, including overlays and charts for your CPU, GPU and RAM, performance tuning and overclocking controls, and settings for the RGB keyboard and front light bar.

Using Omen Gaming Hub, you can exert fine control over the fan speed, boost performance and clean out unnecessary files. You can also remap the keys on the keyboard so they perform macros or serve as different keys, A beta feature called Omen AI uses artificial intelligence to adjust your settings to get the best performance for certain games; however, it currently works with only three games – Counter-Strike 2, League of Legends and Apex Legends.

HP backs the Omen Max 16 with a standard one-year warranty. You can pay up to $385 to extend that to three years and include accidental damage and theft protection.

What configurations are available for the HP Omen Max 16?

The HP Omen Max 16 is available in four main configurations, available either via HP.com or Best Buy depending on which you choose. There’s also the option to custom configure your Omen Max 16 on the HP website.

The base model goes for $2,499 and comes equipped with a Core Ultra 7 255HX CPU, RTX 5070 Ti graphics, 16GB of DDR5-5600 RAM, a 512GB SSD, a 2K IPS screen and WiFI 6E. Our decked out $4,339 configuration ups the specs to a Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU, an RTX 5090 GPU, 32GB of RAM, an OLED 2K screen and a Wi-Fi 7 card.

When you configure your laptop to order you can choose among Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti, 5080 and 5090 GPUs, Core Ultra 7 or Ultra 9 CPUs, up to 64GB of RAM, 1080p or 2K displays with an OLED option and up to 2TB of storage.

Bottom Line

There’s a lot to like about the HP Omen Max 16, particularly in the expensive, high-end configuration we reviewed. You get graphics performance that’s good enough to play your favorite games at high frame rates, even with the settings turned up and ray tracing turned on. You get one of the most vibrant displays on the market and speakerss that are great for listening to music or hearing footsteps creeping up behind you in a first-person shooter, even without a headset.

However, at more than 8 pounds of heft in your bag if you include the charger, this is a heavy laptop and one that can’t be used unplugged for very long, even if you’re doing productivity work. The Razer Blade 16, which we tested with an RTX 5090, offered similar or better performance and weighs just 4.72 pounds for the laptop with a 1.75 pound power brick while enduring more than 7 hours on a charge.

If you’re looking to save money, going for a competitor with an RTX 5080 chip inside might be a better choice. The Gigabyte Aorus Master 16 with RTX 5080 goes for about $1,200 less than the HP Omen Max 16 we tested and yet it sometimes bested HP’s laptop by registering slightly higher frame rates. Gigabyte’s keyboard, though lacking a numpad, had a better tactile feel than HP’s, though the unit we tested did not come with an OLED panel.

However, if you want top of the line performance, you can afford to pay a premium and you don’t plan to carry your laptop around much (or you don’t mind the weight), the HP Omen Max 16 has a lot to offer.

Today, we'll put the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D vs the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K in a heated contest to see which chip comes out on top. The best processor is not necessarily the one with the most number of cores or the highest clock speeds; rather, it is the one that fulfills your specific requirements and fits within your budget. Gamers do not necessarily require the highest-end chip to enjoy the latest AAA games, although having one wouldn't hurt. However, numerous compelling reasons exist for a consumer to seek to acquire a flagship processor.

You may be part of a small, elite crowd of enthusiastic gamers with the financial capacity to acquire the latest and greatest mainstream processor. Alternatively, you could be among the type of users who use their systems for more than just casual gaming, thereby warranting a more substantial investment in a processor that provides considerable processing power alongside exceptional gaming performance. The million-dollar question remains whether to choose between Intel or AMD, as both chipmakers have released highly compelling flagship processors in the current market.

AMD currently has two coexisting mainstream processor lineups in the retail market. The vanilla Ryzen 9000 (codename Granite Ridge) series was the inaugural launch, later followed by the Ryzen 9000X3D series, which incorporates AMD's 3D V-Cache technology, significantly enhancing gaming performance. Consequently, AMD has two flagship products: the Ryzen 9 9950X3D from the 3D V-Cache branch and the Ryzen 9 9950X from the main family. In contrast, Intel only has the Core Ultra 200S (codenamed Arrow Lake) series to compete against AMD, with the Core Ultra 9 285K as the singular leader of Intel's army.

Features and Specifications: AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D vs Intel Core Ultra 9 285K

The Ryzen 9 9950X3D features Zen 5 execution cores and adheres to a conventional 16-core, 32-thread configuration. On the contrary, the Core Ultra 9 285K employs a hybrid design, integrating P-cores (Lion Cove) and E-cores (Skymont). Consequently, the Core Ultra 9 285K showcases a 24-core, 24-thread design. With Arrow Lake, Intel went with an approach without Hyper-Threading, so the Core Ultra 9 285K has fewer threads than the Ryzen 9 9950X3D.

Concerning clock speeds, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D exhibits a 16% greater base clock speed than the Core Ultra 9 285K. However, both processors possess identical boost clocks. For cache capacity, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D is equipped with AMD's 3D V-Cache, providing a total cache of 144MB (16MB L2 + 128MB L3). On the other hand, the Core Ultra 9 285K is accompanied by a cache capacity of 76MB (36MB L2 + 40MB L3). Consequently, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D has 3.2X more L3 cache, which is advantageous for gaming and specific workloads.

The Ryzen 9 9950X3D has a 36% greater TDP (Thermal Design Power) or, in Intel's case, PBP (Processor Base Power), than the Core Ultra 9 285K. Nevertheless, the latter features a 9% higher MTP (Maximum Turbo Power). Therefore, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D has superior power efficiency to the Core Ultra 9 285K.

The Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Core Ultra 9 285K support PCIe 5.0 connectivity and DDR5 memory. Both provide 24 high-speed PCIe 5.0 lanes to support the latest graphics cards and PCIe 5.0 SSDs. Regarding memory support, only the Core Ultra 9 285K has embraced CUDIMMs (Clocked Unbuffered Dual In-line Memory Modules), bumping the native supported frequency up to DDR5-6400. As far as conventional DIMMs are concerned, both support DDR5-5600.

Platform longevity favors the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, as the chip resides on the AM5 platform, which was launched in 2022 with AMD's commitment to providing support until 2027. On the other hand, the Core Ultra 9 285K uses the LGA1851 platform, which was released in 2024, but its life span is likely to be limited. There are indications that Intel may refresh Arrow Lake for LGA1851 before transitioning to the LGA1954 platform for forthcoming processors.

⭐ Winner: Tie

Specification-wise, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D has a big L3 cache thanks to AMD's 3D V-Cache technology and lower power consumption overall than the Core Ultra 9 285K. Another of AMD's strengths is the life expectancy of the AM5 platform, which is substantially higher than LGA1851. Investing in the platform now offers a ticket for future processor upgrades.

The LGA1851, in contrast, represents a fading platform. Arrow Lake may be the sole chip to utilize the LGA1851 platform, or possibly Arrow Lake Refresh, assuming the latest rumors are true. This is not particularly surprising, as the typical cadence for Intel sockets has consistently been two or three generations of chips, unlike AMD.

In LGA1851's defense, it is presently the sole platform that completely supports CUDIMMs. One advantage the Core Ultra 9 285K holds over the Ryzen 9 9950X3D is the possibility of leveraging CUDIMMs, such as high-speed memory DDR5-9200 and beyond. Nevertheless, considering the long life span of AM5, it is likely that full CUDIMM support will be introduced for AMD's platform in due course.

Gaming Benchmarks and Performance: AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D vs Intel Core Ultra 9 285K

This article provides an overview of the Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Core Ultra 9 285K's performance metrics. We have also published in-depth individual reviews of these two CPUs, which you can refer to for more details. These graphs show the geometric mean of our gaming test results with these two CPUs at 1080p (1920x1080) resolution.

We paired both CPUs with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card to minimize potential bottlenecks. Testing at 1080p might seem irrelevant for such a powerful setup, but this resolution allows us to see the full potential of our CPUs in gaming.

The Ryzen 9 9950X3D outperformed the Core Ultra 9 285K in gaming performance. This outcome was anticipated, as gaming performance is the former's most notable strength, attributable to the substantial L3 cache enabled by AMD's 3D V-Cache technology.

Cumulatively, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D yielded average frame rates that were 34% higher than those of the Core Ultra 9 285K throughout our testing suite of 16 games, utilizing a combination of High and Ultra graphical settings at 1080p. Furthermore, the AMD flagship demonstrated a 27% higher result in 1% Lows.

The Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Core Ultra 9 285K hit the market at $699 and $620, respectively. The former presents 0.28 FPS per dollar, while the latter offers 0.23. Despite costing 13% more, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D has more gaming value for your money. While the Ryzen 9 9950X3D has maintained its pricing, the Core Ultra 9 285K has dropped to $589, reaching 0.25.

⭐ Winner: AMD

The Ryzen 9 9950X3D is undoubtedly the better choice for gaming enthusiasts. While the Core Ultra 9 285K is a capable gaming processor, it falls short compared to the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, which is almost 35% faster in average frame rates and close to 30% faster in 1% Lows.

The Ryzen 9 9950X3D has consistently maintained a higher price point than the Core Ultra 9 285K. Notwithstanding the recent price reductions of the Core Ultra 9 285K, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D continues to provide better value in gaming.

Productivity Performance: AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D vs Intel Core Ultra 9 285K

The Ryzen 9 9950X3D flaunts superior multi-threaded performance, but the contest is heated. The Zen 5 processor delivers a mere 3% higher multi-threaded performance than the Core Ultra 9 285K.

Looking at benchmarks individually, there are times when the Core Ultra 9 285K is substantially faster. For example, the Intel chip boasted 18% higher results in POV-Ray or 11% higher in HandBrake x265. The Ryzen 9 9950X3D also has its moments, such as in V-Ray 6, where it outperformed the Core Ultra 9 285K by 17%.

Intel continues to be the leader in single-threaded performance; however, the disparity has been narrowing, as evidenced by the current generation. The Core Ultra 9 285K achieved a 9% better single-threaded overall than the Ryzen 9 9950X3D.

The POV-Ray benchmark clearly favors the Core Ultra 9 285K, which significantly surpassed the Ryzen 9 9950X3D by an impressive 31%. Conversely, the performance delta between the two processors wasn't as big in other workloads.

⭐ Winner: Tie

There is no definitive victor in this comparison. The Ryzen 9 9950X3D has higher multi-threaded performance relative to the Core Ultra 9 285K. Nevertheless, the disparity stands at merely 3%, a difference that may not be noteworthy across all workloads.

Meanwhile, the Core Ultra 9 285K is better at single-thread performance than the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, where the former exhibits a speed increase of 9% over the latter. It can be argued that a loss of 3% is more tolerable than a loss of 9%; this perspective holds validity when one prioritizes a chip for productivity purposes while overlooking gaming considerations.

Overclocking: AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D vs Intel Core Ultra 9 285K

The Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Intel Core Ultra 9 285K have unlocked multipliers and are ready for your manual overclocking endeavors. The quality of overclocking can vary significantly between processors, and currently, we do not possess a substantial number of samples from which to derive definitive conclusions. Our results are primarily based on our overclocking experiences with the single sample available in our lab.

In the context of the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, we activated AMD's Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) functionality. For the PBO configuration, we utilized the 'advanced' and 'motherboard' power settings, accompanied by a 10X scalar adjustment and an increase of 200 MHz in the clock speed. Furthermore, we implemented a -15 all-core Curve Optimizer offset.

We've also experimented with Intel's latest '200S Boost' feature combined with some manual overclocking. But the long story short is that there isn't much practical headroom for performance gains with fabric overclocking. Intel also offers manual tuning for the P-cores and E-cores, though the actual performance gains are heavily weighted towards the latter.

⭐ Winner: Tie

Unlike the old Pentium, modern processors arrive with little headroom for serious overclocking with conventional cooling. It's a two-way street. On a positive note, you can rest easy at night knowing their chips are at or near their potential. However, on the downside, the art of extracting additional performance at no cost is slowly fading away.

Power Consumption, Efficiency, and Cooling: AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D vs Intel Core Ultra 9 285K

On the contrary, the Core Ultra 9 285K reveals a higher power consumption during various workload scenarios. The Intel chip operates within a power range of 219W to 325W, whereas its AMD counterpart operates between 178W and 228W. Notably, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D has a peak power consumption that is 30% lower than that of the Core Ultra 9 285K.

Most PCs rarely truly idle; users might leave various applications open on the desktop. There's also an 'active idle' use case wherein the user does a low-load activity, such as browsing the web or watching a YouTube video. To model this behavior, we created an active idle test (second slide) with two browser windows open (one with two tabs idling on a website and another window with a 4K YouTube video stream playing). We measure this level of activity across a 15-minute timespan.

The Core Ultra 9 285K has 30% lower idle power consumption than the Ryzen 9 9950X3D. Furthermore, the Core Ultra 9 285 K's active idle power consumption during YouTube playback is particularly notable, as it consumes 39% less power.

The Core Ultra 9 285K was more power efficient in the Linpack workload, displaying a 5% lower watt-hour. The Ryzen 9 9950X3D excelled in the Cinebench 2024 workload, landing a 10% higher watts per point and a 13% lower watts per FPS in the HandBrake x265 test.

The ideal balance is performance at a reduced power consumption. To elaborate, the processor at the bottom right corner of the power efficiency charts represents the best chip in terms of efficiency. The Ryzen 9 9950X3D outperforms the Core Ultra 9 285K in multiple benchmarks.

⭐ Winner: AMD

The Core Ultra 9 285K wins at idle power consumption, but the Ryzen 9 9950X3D consumes less power under load. While both idle and average power consumption should be considered, the latter is ultimately more important since we typically use our systems under heavier use or in 'active idle' conditions rather than letting them truly idle for prolonged periods.

Furthermore, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D has better power efficiency than the Core Ultra 9 285K. A power-efficient processor helps reduce system costs, including processor cooling and power supply capacity expenses. It also positively contributes to electricity savings.

Pricing: AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D vs Intel Core Ultra 9 285K

The Ryzen 9 9950X3D launched last month at $699. Since this processor recently came out of the oven, it's unrealistic to expect any price adjustments. Meanwhile, the Core Ultra 9 285K debuted at $620 in October 2024. Nowadays, you can find the flagship Arrow Lake chip at U.S. retailers for $589, 5% below the launch price.

Intel processors usually maintain their value until the next generation arrives. Therefore, it's unlikely that the Core Ultra 9 285K will officially get any cheaper. You may still find a retailer deal here or there.

To put things in perspective, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D's gaming performance is 34% higher than the Core Ultra 9 285K while being 19% more expensive. The Zen 5 part has a 3% multi-threaded advantage over the Core Ultra 9 285K, but the Intel chip does have up to 9% higher single-threaded performance, though.

⭐ Winner: AMD

At $699, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D may look like a scary investment. However, our results show that even with that hefty price tag, the 3D V-Cache flagship gives you more value for your money in gaming. The multi-threaded performance isn't shabby, but it does lose out to the Core Ultra 9 285K in single-threaded performance.

The Ryzen 9 9950X3D already looks good. However, its appeal will grow further when the pricing starts to decline, whether through official price reductions or retailer promotions during special events such as Black Friday.

Bottom Line: AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D vs Intel Core Ultra 9 285K

The gaming performance of the Ryzen 9 9950X3D was never in doubt, particularly given that lower-tier Zen 5 components equipped with 3D V-Cache have already surpassed the Core Ultra 9 285K by massive margins. However, the more important question is whether the Ryzen 9 9950X3D possesses any appeal outside the gaming realm. The answer to this inquiry is yes.

In addition to being a great gaming processor, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D can double as a productivity monster, similar to the vanilla Ryzen 9 9950X. Thanks to the Zen 5 architecture and the 16-core, 32-thread configuration, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D has no issues tackling demanding workloads, as long as they benefit from multi-threading. Unfortunately, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D's single-threaded performance lags behind the Core Ultra 9 285K.

However, if you can overlook the Ryzen 9 9950X3D's single-threaded weakness, the Zen 5 chip is a fantastic all-around performer that's power efficient and offers support for the latest technology. And unlike the Core Ultra 9 285K, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D doesn't leave you feeling like you just bought an obsolete processor—at least for a couple of years.

As one of the biggest PC builders in the US, Dell offers some great deals now and then as they put certain PC, laptop, and monitor models on short sales cycles. Having recently released the Alienware Area-51 machine with 50-series GPUs from Nvidia, the older Aurora models were left behind. Now we're seeing these slightly older case designs get an injection of more recent hardware to bring them up a level. There are some niggles, in that this machine uses some proprietary parts which can cause upgrade headaches in the future, but if that's not a concern for you, then this deal is spot on.

Save $400 on the Dell Alienware Aurora gaming PC (RTX 5080), going for $2,470 after the discount. The previously listed price was $2,870 for this machine. There are also ways to bring this sale price down even lower, with coupon offers and a 10% discount code when you register on the Dell website or sign up for emails. But these can sometimes be a little temperamental, so give them a try before you buy, and you could get this machine for as low as $2,223.

The upgraded components list for this Alienware Aurora gaming PC includes the powerful Nvidia RTX 5080 GPU with 16GB of superfast GDDR7 VRAM, an Intel Core Ultra 285 CPU with 24 cores, 32GB of DDR5 RAM, and 1TB of PCIe NVMe SSD storage for your operating system and games. Keeping the CPU cool is a 240mm AIO liquid cooler, and handling power requirements is a beefy 1000W Platinum-rated power supply.

I would like to see Dell incorporate some of their more powerful gaming PC's with AMD's Ryzen X3D processors, such as the 9800X3D, but the Intel Core Ultra 285 is still a very capable CPU, and also functions very well in multi-threaded applications outside of gaming.

In a bid to improve Arrow Lake sales, Intel has significantly discounted its mainstream 20-core Core Ultra 7 265K, which is readily selling at or below $300 at various retailers, including Amazon. That's a massive 25% cut over its original $400 recommended customer price set by Intel at launch. While the slightly more affordable 14-core Core Ultra 5 245K is also selling below its MSRP at $269, the Core Ultra 7 265K is arguably the better buy.

This is likely part of a small promotional sale, which is why we're using the term discount instead of permanent price cuts. Even so, they don't appear to be regional, as reports from ComputerBase indicate similar pricing trends in Germany. Intel's candidate is a great choice for promoting Arrow Lake sales, since the Core Ultra 7 265K wields an impressive 20 (8P+12E) core / 20 thread configuration, rivaling the i7-14700K from the previous generation, while offering better efficiency.

The CPU carries 66MB of total cache (36MB L2 + 30MB L3). Sticking to JEDEC-compliant speeds, Arrow Lake at stock can handle 6400 MT/s DDR5 kits (CUDIMM), going as fast as 8000 MT/s with Intel's warrantied boost profiles. As of writing, the Core Ultra 7 265K (and its KF variant) can be purchased for $294 at Amazon. The model with the integrated GPU is a no-brainer, given that its built-in Xe-LPG (Alchemist) iGPU offers QuickSync functionality with AV1 encoding.

For a laptop to stand out among the best ultrabooks, it usually needs a fun color, a wacky new feature, or a great price. With the Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition ($1,499.99 as tested), there's a fun color, but also something that's pretty rare: just being a really solid laptop in most respects.

Yes, it's blue, and it looks pretty cool. But once you get past that, you find strong build quality, an excellent OLED display, a high-end webcam, and pretty decent battery life. It even comes with a color-matched stylus.

If you're looking for a convertible 2-in-1, Lenovo's high-end option is well worth a look. There are improvements to be made, including streamlining the software offerings and making it easier to upgrade, but all in all, this system is strong.

Design of the Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1

The Yoga 9i 2-in-1 is solidly built, but definitely a little funky looking. There are some ideas that clash, which might make this system a bit divisive.

The system comes in a very cool "cosmic" blue color, which doesn't quite look the same under any two lights. Think if Apple's "midnight" colorway was having a bit more fun.

The lid is a matte navy with a shiny Lenovo logo and flat edges. The bottom of the chassis is the same shade of blue, but it's shiny and has rounded edges. When it's closed, it kind of looks like someone stacked two different tablets on top of each other. It makes more sense open, when the rounded corners sit comfortably against your wrists while you type.

Lenovo's laptop rotates around its hinge, which doubles as a soundbar. This allows you to use it as a standard clamshell, fold it back to a tablet, or place it on your desk like a tent and focus on just the screen.

There are two Thunderbolt 4 USB Type-C ports and a single USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 2 port on the left side, while the laptop's right flank houses a headphone jack, a USB-C port, and the power button.

Lenovo's 2-in-1 measures 12.44 x 8.66 x 0.65 inches and weighs 2.91 pounds. That's slightly larger and heavier than Lenovo's clamshell, the Yoga Slim 9i, at 12.32 x 8.01 x 0.57 inches and 2.76 pounds. But it's lighter than the competing HP OmniBook Ultra Flip 14, which is 2.98 pounds, even though it's slightly smaller and slimmer. Apple's 14-inch MacBook Pro is heavier (3.4 pounds) but is slimmer than the Yoga as well.

Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition Specifications

Productivity Performance on the Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1

Our Yoga 9i 2-in-1 review unit came packed with an Intel Core Ultra 7 258V, a generous 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. For most people, that's plenty for browsing the web, sending emails, writing up documents, and even doing some photo editing.

On Geekbench 6, a synthetic benchmark that measures overall performance, the 9i 2-in-1 achieved a single-core score of 2,751 and a multi-core score of 11,059, putting it just ahead of — but largely on par with — the Yoga Slim 9i with the same CPU. It's also ahead of the HP OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 with the same processor.

But Apple's M4 in the MacBook Pro blew the Yoga 9i away, with a single-core score of 3,807 and a multi-core score of 15,114.

On our file transfer test, the Yoga 9i copied 25GB of files at a rate of 1,447.57 MBps, beating out the clamshell Yoga Slim and the MacBook Pro. Only the OmniBook Ultra Flip was faster at 1,702.45 MBps.

The convertible Yoga lost its advantage in Handbrake, converting a 4K video to 1080p in 6 minutes and 36 seconds, similar to the OmniBook. But the MacBook Pro was far speedier at 4:27.

To stress test laptops, we run Cinebench 2024 ten times, using the stressful rendering test to push the systems to their limits. The Yoga 9i achieved an average score of 599.63, starting slow but peaking at 601.51 and staying largely steady.

During the stress test, the CPU's performance cores ran at an average of 3.24 GHz while the efficiency cores ran at 3.65 GHz. The processor measured 69.65 degrees Celsius.

Display on the Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1

Lenovo put a beautiful display on the Yoga 9i 2-in-1. The 14-inch, 2880 x 1800, OLED touch screen is bright and extremely colorful. It offers 120 Hz adaptive refresh, too, which makes writing with the stylus feel snappy in apps that support it.

The trailer for Marvel's Thunderbolts* looked great, with blue misty skies standing out behind the new Black Widow as she falls off a building, and red lasers popping in an otherwise dark scene.

The screen covers 210.6% of the sRGB color gamut by volume, and 149.2% of the more challenging DCI-P3 space. That's a significant margin over the MacBook Pro and the HP OmniBook Flip Ultra.

At 421 nits, the Yoga 9i 2-in-1's panel is also quite bright, but the MacBook Pro's Mini-LED screen was more luminous at an astounding 556.6 nits.

Keyboard, Touchpad, and Stylus on the Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1

The keyboard on the Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 is surprisingly clicky. It's not a mechanical keyboard, but the feedback is satisfying if you like a little bit of spring in your typing.

What I don't like about the keyboard is the extra column on the right side of the layout, with dedicated keys for adjusting the power mode, switching between different audio presets, and toggling blue light protection on the display. The fourth key in that column is user-programmable, designed to open an application or file, a website, run a shortcut, or type a text macro. Below all of those is the fingerprint reader, which looks like a key, but is not.

My problem with these keys is that having them there shifted my expectation of where the keyboard ends, even though I'm a touch typist who doesn't look down much. It took me a surprisingly long time to get used to it, and I accidentally changed settings several times throughout my review process.

The touchpad is nice, large, and responsive. It still has a physical click, but I think a premium "Aura Edition" PC should move to haptic feedback for a more high-end feel.

I appreciate that the stylus, the Yoga Pen, is color-matched to the laptop. It charges over USB Type-C, so you can use the same adapter that came with the laptop to plug it in. With a flat magnetic side, you can stick it to the laptop's lid when you aren't using it. Lenovo claims up to 4,096 degrees of pressure sensitivity.

The stylus is comfortable enough and sized like a pen. There are two barrel buttons that you can customize in the Lenovo Pen Settings app. I'd like to see an eraser at the end similar to Microsoft's Surface Slim Pen.

Audio on the Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1

The Yoga 9i 2-in-1 has four speakers: a pair of 2W tweeters and twin 2W woofers that fire through a rotating sound bar and the bottom of the notebook.

Linkin Park's "Up From the Bottom" sounded pretty good on the system, with the speakers pushing clear vocals and snappy drums. The guitars were a bit lost in the mix, but going into the Dolby Access software and switching the intelligent equalizer to "Detailed" helped a lot there. There's basically no bass, though.

I noticed a little bit of the wrist rest pulsing when I had music loud, but not enough to distract me from work. I've felt far worse.

Upgradeability of the Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1

At first glance, it looks like there are four Torx T5 screws holding the bottom of the laptop in place. But if you try to remove those, you won't get very far. That's because an additional two tiny Phillips-head screws are beneath the laptop's rear rubber foot. Because you could break this foot by peeling it off, we consider this unrepairable for most people, though we were able to peel it up enough to get to the screws. You can buy a replacement rubber foot directly from Lenovo, but at $20.87, it’s a pretty expensive strip of rubber.

The battery and SSD are the main user-replaceable parts. The SSD is an M.2 2242 component. While they aren't as common as a standard M.2 2280, there are more options than there were just a few years ago.

Perhaps the biggest issue here is getting the laptop back together. It took a significant amount of time to get this computer's base back on with the screw holes aligned, and I've disassembled an awful lot of laptops. Avoid opening it if you can.

Battery Life on the Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1

If you're looking for a long-lasting PC, the Yoga 9i 2-in-1 should last far more than a workday. On our battery test, which has the screen set to 150 nits, laptops browse the web, run light OpenGL tests, and stream video. The Yoga 9i 2-in-1 ran for 12 hours and 47 minutes.

That's an increase of an hour and 44 minutes over the clamshell Yoga Slim 9i (with the same size battery but a higher resolution display), and 45 minutes longer than the HP OmniBook Ultra Flip 14. The MacBook Pro blew the rest of the group out of the water at 18:31.

Heat on the Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1

We took skin temperatures on the Yoga 9i 2-in-1 while running our Cinebench R24 stress test to get an idea of how hot to the touch the system could get under a heavy load.

The center of the keyboard reached 95 degrees Fahrenheit, while the touchpad was a cooler 84.5 F. The hottest point on the bottom of the system measured 100 F flat.

Webcam on the Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1

Lenovo's 5MP webcam performed admirably in my testing. In a challenging situation at my desk with a bright foreground near an open window and a dark background behind me, the camera found balance, accurately capturing my green shirt, blue eyes, and details like a small scratch on my face and the seams in my shirt.

I'd have no problem using this webcam both for work meetings and chatting with family or friends.

There's a privacy shutter to cover the webcam. You can also use Windows Hello for facial recognition in addition to the fingerprint scanner on the keyboard. Using the camera makes more sense for this, in case you pick up the system in tablet mode.

Software and Warranty on the Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1

Lenovo puts a fair amount of software on the Yoga 9i, some of which provides useful features and others that detract from its premium nature.

Vantage is still the most useful application here, serving as a single stop for serial numbers, warranty information, device and power settings, and the ability to contact customer service. There are some pushes in here for third-party services, like Norton Antivirus.

Intel Unison is still here, despite the fact that Intel is shutting it down. The app, which provides some of the "Aura Edition" features, like sharing photos from either an Android smartphone or iPhone, will "retain service" on Lenovo's Aura laptops while it stops working for others in June.

A new app, Smart Connect, requires installation, but it feels like a backup to Unison designed to "effortlessly pair all your devices within your ecosystem" and "connect Motorola and Lenovo phones, tablets, and PCs." Lenovo owns Motorola.

There's also an app to control stylus settings, and Lenovo Now, which pushes subscriptions and partner apps. There's also a link to a "subscription marketplace" in the Start menu.

Lenovo sells the Yoga 9i 2-in-1 with a 1-year warranty.

Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Configurations

We tested a $1,499.99 version of the Yoga 9i 2-in-1 with an Intel Core Ultra 7 258V, 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, and a 2880 x 1800 OLED touchscreen. At the moment, this configuration is only at Best Buy. When we started testing, this laptop was ($1,749.99), but Lenovo reps suggested the lower price should be the standard going forward.

Lenovo's website isn't yet selling the laptop, but its spec sheet options include a 4K display and a lesser Core Ultra 7 256V processor.

Bottom Line

The Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 is a well-built 2-in-1 with a gorgeous display, a great webcam, and (for a Windows ultrabook) pretty solid battery life. If you're looking for a convertible notebook that includes a pen, you should seriously consider it.

Lenovo's aesthetics here might be divisive, but I think most people will be able to see past the mishmash of design choices. (Those who can't should take a look at the HP OmniBook Flip 14). My other biggest complaint — how difficult this system is to open and close — won't apply to most people, but those who tinker and repair should be aware.

A $1,499 price tag puts the Yoga 9i firmly in premium territory, but I appreciate that it comes with 32GB of RAM, which should keep this system relevant for a while. The 14-inch MacBook Pro, a great laptop that is not convertible, starts at $1,599 with 16GB of RAM, so this is a bargain, assuming it stays at this price. The Yoga 9i 2-in-1 debuted at $1,749.99.

If you're looking for a premium 2-in-1 that's thin, light, and has a beautiful OLED screen, the Yoga 9i 2-in-1 checks those boxes and then some.

Intel has recently introduced two performance-boosting features for its Core Ultra 200S (codenamed Arrow Lake) processors, which rank among the best CPUs. While IPO (Intel Performance Optimizations) and 200S Boost share the same objective, one BiliBili user's tests (via Uniko's Hardware) seemingly show that IPO delivers a higher gaming performance uplift.

The user performed the tests with a Core Ultra 7 265K, DDR5-8000 memory, and a GeForce RTX 5090D. They benchmarked IPO and 200S Boost across seven games with different quality settings at 2160p (3840 x 2160) and DLSS activated when applicable.

The Core Ultra 7 265K was a part of three configurations. The XMP configuration enables XMP to get the memory up to DDR5-8000 with no changes to the processor. The 200S Boost configuration increases the Die-to-Die (D2D) communication fabric from the default 2.1 GHz to 3.2 GHz and the Next Generation Uncore (NGU) fabric from 2.6 GHz to 3.2 GHz.

On the other hand, the IPO configuration makes several changes to the processor. For starters, it increases the P-core and E-core clocks to 5.4 GHz and 4.9 GHz, respectively, from the default 5.2 GHz and 4.9 GHz. While the 200S Boost doesn't touch the Ring (3.8 GHz), IPO overclocks it to 4 GHz. These adjustments limit IPO from pushing the D2D and NGU as hard as 200S Boost. As a result, the IPO only dials in at 3.1 GHz for the D2D and NGU. The memory, however, is tuned to DDR5-8400 with optimized timings.

Intel IPO vs. Intel 200S Boost Gaming Performance

It can be a challenge sometimes, upgrading to a new CPU if you don't know what to look for. It helps to be familiar with specs, but if you're not sure where to start, you can't go wrong with understanding the core/thread count and speed. In the case of today's deal, the Intel Core Ultra 5 Processor 245K offers specs at more of an upper mid-range with a good deal of compatibility with modern technologies (like PCIe 5.0 support). It usually goes for around $319 but right now it's been discounted to just $269 which is its lowest price to date.

This processor's physical core count is 14 with six of them being performance cores and eight of them efficiency cores. Under optimal conditions, the Intel Core Ultra 5 Processor 245K can reach speeds as high as 5.2 GHz. This might not be the fastest on the market, but is plenty of power to handle most modern computing needs. That said, we always recommend checking out our detailed CPU hierarchy list to see what's leading the market and how the processors compare.

As revealed by Phoronix, Intel's new '200S Boost' feature for its Arrow Lake chips results in little to no performance improvements on Linux. This parallels our 200S Boost testing in Windows, where memory overclocking from DDR5-6400 to DDR5-8000 accounted for most of the performance increases across gaming and productivity.

In the six months following Arrow Lake's debut, Intel has issued several fixes to extract every last bit of performance from these chips. The first wave was delivered via Windows Updates and updated BIOS versions in December, addressing several major issues. Following that, board partners released the long-awaited 0x114 microcode in January through BIOS updates carrying the ME19.0.0.1854v2.2 firmware.

Earlier this month, Intel debuted its IPO program in China, allowing System Integrators to offer enhanced power ratings and clock speeds under warranty. Similar to IPO, Intel's '200S Boost' profiles are opt-in BIOS presets available globally, enabling higher fabric, die-to-die, and memory-transfer speeds than stock.

Phoronix's test suite features the Core Ultra 9 285K, the Asus ROG Maximus Z890 Hero (1801 BIOS), the RX 7900 XTX, and 32GB of DDR5-6400 memory. The tests were conducted in Ubuntu 25.04 with the Linux kernel version 6.14. Gaming remained largely similar to stock, with small improvements in Counter-Strike 2 and Batman: Arkham Knight, while Dirt Rally 2.0 saw a significant drop in FPS (456 FPS vs 406 FPS) when switching to the boost profile.

According to documents shared with Tom's Hardware by a source, Intel will announce a new "Intel 200S Boost" feature for its Arrow Lake processors tomorrow that's designed to boost gaming performance by providing official warranty coverage for a subset of overclocking features, including memory overclocking. As you can see below, we have put the new feature through a battery of tests before its official launch and found the gains generally match our expectations for memory overclocking, with an average improvement of 7.5% over the officially supported memory speeds.

It's no secret that Intel's Arrow Lake chips delivered disappointing gaming performance at launch — in fact, they are significantly slower than even Intel's own previous-gen models. The company has since corrected multiple launch-day issues, but that has not improved overall performance. The new approach aims to leverage several existing features and package them under the warranty protection umbrella, much like AMD introduced a 105W mode to boost performance for its underperforming 65W Ryzen 9000 models. However, Intel hasn't issued any official performance projections for the new feature yet.

The Intel 200S Boost feature enhances the performance of Arrow Lake K-series processors by enabling a few overclocking features in an easy-to-use one-click BIOS profile, but the new settings don't impact CPU clock speeds or power settings above current warranty limitations. Instead, the tweaks optimize specific memory and fabric speeds, marking the first time Intel has offered official warranty coverage for potential chip damage resulting from XMP memory overclocking profiles or adjusting fabric speeds.

There are, however, several caveats, and the tweaks are already well known to the enthusiast and overclocking community. Firstly, Intel now covers "up to" DDR5-8000 memory speeds within its warranty; however, not all chips will be able to reach that speed, and because the approach is still considered overclocking, Intel does not guarantee system stability with XMP profiles. As we demonstrate below, more affordable and easily supported DDR5-7200 kits offer nearly the same performance in most games and applications we tested.

The 200S Boost feature will be integrated into BIOS revisions from major motherboard vendors, with BIOS updates expected to arrive tomorrow from at least a few OEMs. The feature will only be implemented on Z-Series motherboards, which is a curious limitation given that Intel now supports memory overclocking on B-Series boards. It's also only available on K- and KF-series SKUs.

The 200S Boost profile also increases the speed of the Next Generation Uncore (NGU/SA Fabric), which enables communication between various chip elements, such as the CPU cores, memory controllers, and other components. This interface is upgraded from its standard 2.6 GHz speed to 3.2 GHz. Additionally, the Die-to-Die (D2D) communication fabric, which serves as a bridge between the Compute and SOC tiles or dies present inside the Arrow Lake chip, is increased from its stock 2.1 GHz to 3.2 GHz.

Intel is also obviously wary of motherboard vendors pushing the limits with their BIOS settings (which they have been known to do) and thus creating another potential chip reliability issue. As such, the company has also instituted several guardrails around the feature, with strict limitations that prevent motherboard makers from altering any other features, such as CPU clock speeds or power thresholds, as part of the 200S Boost settings. Intel also has voltage ceilings for the System Agent and memory that cannot be exceeded. You cannot use XMP kits that exceed the DIMM voltage ratings. The limits are listed in the table above.

The OEMs are allowed to tailor their voltage and speed settings within those constraints to optimize performance with their product. Any manual manipulation by the end user of clocks or other settings will automatically disable the 200S Boost profile, reverting you to manual overclocking. This feature also locks the overclocking mailbox to prevent OS-based overclocking. Finally, 200S Boost is entirely opt-in; it can't be enabled by default in the BIOS and requires users to turn it on.

Intel 200S Boost is separate from the Intel Performance Optimization (IPO) program, a China-specific collaboration between Intel and System Integrators (SIs) that facilitates more robust overclocking, including clock speeds and power settings. However, the SIs carry the warranty for that program, and Intel has no current plans to bring the IPO program to other regions.

Now on to the benchmarks.

Intel 200S Boost Gaming Performance

The 200S Boost feature is built on firmware with an MR1 or newer revision. We tested with the Core Ultra 9 285K on the MSI MEG Z890 ACE motherboard with a .1A53 BIOS revision that supports adding the feature, although it is not explicitly enabled yet. We merely recreated the correct settings for the feature in this BIOS, and sources close to the matter have confirmed that our results align with general expectations.

We tested six configurations and three memory speeds across 16 games at 1080p. The tested memory speeds include the stock DDR5-6400 with JEDEC timings, which was the previous limit for Intel's warranty, as well as the cost- and compatibility-friendly DDR5-7200 speed we use for our CPU reviews (32GB G.Skill Trident Z5 RGB DDR5-7200 kit for both). We also tested with a 32GB Patriot Extreme 5 DDR5-8000 kit to measure the peak supported XMP speeds.

The first slide displays the geometric mean of our gaming tests, which we conducted using an RTX 5090 Founders Edition. We tested the different memory speeds with the fabrics at stock settings and the listed memory speed (marked as stock in the chart), and then retested after increasing the fabric speeds to the higher 3.2 GHz threshold (marked as '200S Boost').

The largest increase in performance undoubtedly comes from memory overclocking. Moving from the stock DDR5-6400 configuration to the peak DDR5-8000 with fabric overclocking (200S Boost) yielded a 7.5% performance increase in our overall measurement. Naturally, performance increases vary by title, from as low as a 3.7% increase in A Plague Tale: Requiem to an 11.6% increase in Baldur's Gate 3. The per-game results generally hover in the 7% to 9% range. The titles that benefit most are simply the memory-sensitive titles, so there are no surprises here.

We, like many other outlets, test with a DDR5-7200 XMP profile as our default memory configuration. We chose this speed because it is widely supported by most chips (you may encounter issues with DDR5-8000 UDIMMs on some chips or motherboards) and it is more affordable — 32GB DDR5-8000 kits typically carry a $45 to $60 (43 to 57%) premium, yet deliver precious little extra performance.

We see that trend hold strong in our results, with the DDR5-8000 200S Boost configuration only being a mostly imperceptible 1.2% faster performance overall in 1080p gaming. Our advice for most enthusiasts remains the same — DDR5-7200 is the sweet spot for price and performance.

We have experimented with overclocking the fabric speeds in the past, but we found the increased performance to be largely unremarkable unless you are engaging in heavy overclocking of the CPU cores, which is not allowed in tandem with the 200S Boost feature.

To determine the impact of fabric speeds on the overall performance improvement, we toggled the fabrics between 200S Boost and Stock fabric settings for each memory speed. As you can see, it did give at least some boost in performance, but the gains undoubtedly fall into the imperceptible range. For instance, we measured a sub-1% increase in performance when using higher fabric clocks with the DDR5-6400 and DDR5-7200 configurations, and a 1.4% increase with the DDR5-8000 configuration.

It's possible that you could eke out higher gains from the fabric tweaks with lesser chips, like the Core Ultra 7 265K and the Core Ultra 5 245K, but you should keep your expectations in check.

We'll see how the fully-boosted Intel chips stack up against the competition further below.

In the interest of due diligence, we ran the chips through several productivity application benchmarks to assess the impact, but the results were entirely predictable — applications that benefit from memory overclocking saw small gains, while others saw none at all. In fact, the variations mostly fall within our expected run-to-run variance, so you shouldn't expect significant uplift in productivity applications.

The competitive landscape is basically unchanged

Here we've added the primary competitors for the Core Ultra 9 285K to the test results, and as you can see, the landscape remains largely unchanged from our most recent testing. Notably, we don't see as significant a gain because we test all processors with reasonable XMP settings applied as our stock configuration in reviews.

The fact that Arrow Lake couldn't match the gaming performance of Intel's own prior-gen Raptor Lake Refresh chips was one of the most disappointing aspects for enthusiasts. That still remains the case; the Core i9-14900K is now 6.5% faster than the 285K, whereas it was 9% faster in our prior testing (with both at DDR5-7200). That change isn't enough to drastically change the value equation between the Intel chips.

The situation also remains rough in comparison to AMD's competing models — the 285K is now about 3% slower than the Ryzen 9 9950X, roughly halving the distance between the two and bringing it closer to a draw, but the gaming-optimized X3D chips continue to dominate by almost absurd amounts. Here, the much less expensive Ryzen 7 9800X3D and its premium counterpart, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, still hold a 30%+ lead in gaming, so it remains a no-contest if you're strictly focused on gaming performance.

Despite the addition of new fabric tweaks and support for up to DDR5-8000, we still recommend that most users stick with DDR5-7200 — stepping up to DDR5-8000 incurs a significant cost for only about 1% more performance.

Overall, the new 200S Boost feature doesn't alter the competitive landscape, but it does provide an easy-to-use option for less-advanced users to gain a few extra percentage points of performance. The addition of warranty coverage for damage associated with the limited XMP memory or fabric overclocking is nice, but moderate memory overclocking is typically fairly safe in either case.

Intel is expected to officially announce the 200S Boost feature tomorrow, we'll follow up with further details as warranted.

Arrow Lake might have some fuel left in the tank, as Intel's latest IPO (Intel Performance Optimizations) tech is reportedly hitting pre-builts in China, per UNIKO's Hardware at X.

Intel recently unveiled the IPO program in China. It is supposedly a suite of tuned settings or profiles that balance overclocking and stock settings. It is important to note that Intel has not detailed or announced an IPO for the global market. In addition, for the time being, it appears these profiles are aimed at system integrators and OEMs, not individual customers.

Enthusiast and gamers can use many techniques to get the most out of their CPU. This includes manual CPU overclocking when you exceed your CPU's rated specifications, followed by XMP/EXPO for RAM. AMD offers a PBO that auto-tunes your CPU to extract maximum performance with minimal manual intervention. The catch is that all these utilities can technically void your warranty if things go south.

IPO is designed to serve as a middle ground between stock profiles and overclocking, with proper warranty coverage. These profiles promise a stable experience, eliminating the need for constant adjustments and the fear of crashing as seen with manual overclocking. IPO targets the CPU (P-cores, E-cores, Ring-bus, NGU, D2D interconnects, PL1 and PL2) and the RAM (Transfer speeds and timings).

In an example profile shared by UNIKO's Hardware, a pre-built from Maxsun with IPO lands a sweet 200 MHz uplift in core clock speeds while pushing RAM speeds to DDR5-8400 from DDR5-8000, resulting in a purported 10% FPS increase (on the pre-built's marketing material).

That's not all. Another leaker claims that Intel will offer "opt-in" BIOS presets to its Arrow Lake chips in the future, a premise similar to IPO. Maybe IPO serves as a pilot program for this feature. The exact specifics have not been detailed. This might make Arrow Lake a compelling choice against Ryzen offerings, particularly for system integrators.

Despite the substantial buildup to Arrow Lake, performance on launch day was subpar, with these chips failing to beat even their last-generation counterparts in some scenarios. Arrow Lake's MCM (Multi Chip Module) design eats away a chunk of the performance, with the memory controller designated to a separate tile, incurring unwanted latency penalties. Another aspect was the slower ring-bus clock speeds, almost 20% slower than Raptor Lake.

Additional firmware/software-related issues pushed Intel to release several fixes by December. The final update, microcode version 0x114 and CSME firmware kit 19.0.0.1854v2.2, launched in January, but our testing proved contrary to Intel's claimed performance improvements. IPO is Intel's latest attempt to wring every last bit of performance from Arrow Lake, but we are still light on details regarding availability.

The $600 12-core Ryzen 9 9900X3D slots into AMD's 9000 X3D product stack as a midrange alternative between the current best CPU for gaming, the eight-core $480 Ryzen 7 9800X3D, and the company's flagship 16-core $700 Ryzen 9 9950X3D. The Ryzen 9 9900X3D leverages the same game-boosting 3D V-Cache technology as its X3D counterparts to deliver impressive Intel-beating gaming performance while still maintaining most of its performance potential in productivity applications, thus reducing the trade-offs of selecting one of AMD's gaming-specific processors. But not all of the news is good.

AMD has been curiously reluctant for the press to test the Ryzen 9 9900X3D — it didn't sample the chip to press, so we had to purchase it at retail. Sure, the prior-gen Ryzen 7 7900X3D wasn't received well, but AMD claimed that some of the issues with the prior-gen model have been resolved with this generation, such as reducing the performance chasm between the Ryzen 9 X3D models, and saying that the 99000X3D beats the prior-gen 16-core 32-thread flagship 7950X3D in gaming. We've put those claims to the test.

Intel isn't much of a contender, as it faces a vexing issue with its latest lineup of chips — it has no single chip that can compete with the Ryzen 9000X3D processors in both gaming and productivity work. The new Core Ultra chips aren't as fast as their prior-gen counterparts in gaming, but they serve up impressive performance in productivity applications. As a result, the $620 Intel Core Ultra 9 285K is 23% faster in multi-threaded productivity tasks than the 9900X3D, but the 9900X3D is 28% faster in gaming. Meanwhile, the prior-gen $445 Core i9-14900K shaves away some of the deficit, but the 9900X3D is still 18% faster in gaming.

AMD's goal is to master both disciplines — gaming and productivity — with its dual-chiplet X3D processors, but that's a challenge. To build on the success of the first-gen models, the company altered its underlying 3D V-Cache design and refined its chipset drivers to deliver more accurate thread scheduling. AMD also added full overclocking support this time around, which we’ve tested, allowing you to eke out more performance in gaming and productivity work.

If you're looking for a quick take on performance, see the image album below, which breaks down performance in gaming and productivity applications. These overall measurements are backed up by our benchmarks and power testing on the following pages, so be sure to check those out. As you can see, the Ryzen 9 9900X3D is compelling, but its counterparts retain distinct advantages.

That makes the 9900X3D a better all-rounder than any competing Intel chips, but its real competition comes from within AMD's own lineup. Just as we saw with the last-gen model, the Ryzen 9 9900X3D faces a conundrum due to its price point. Let's quickly look at the 900X3D's specs, then move on to the benchmarks.

AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D Pricing and Specifications

As with the prior-gen Ryzen 9 7000X3D chips, the new 9900X3D uses two compute dies, with one die featuring a 3D-stacked V-Cache chiplet that increases L3 cache capacity to 128 MB. The 9900X3D's standard chiplet boosts to higher frequencies to deliver more performance in both single- and multi-threaded tasks. Overall, the Ryzen 9 9900X3D is built on the same foundation as the Ryzen 9 9900X; it just has a single L3 SRAM chiplet placed under one of the compute dies.

The Zen 5-powered Ryzen 9 9900X3D has 12 active cores and 24 threads spread evenly across the two compute chiplets (six active cores and two deactivated cores per chiplet). AMD's newly-revamped chipset drivers, which we covered in depth here, do a better job of pinning the gaming code to the single compute die with the cache.

While gaming, this technique essentially creates a six-core 12-thread processor with 3D V-Cache. Meanwhile, both the 9950X3D and 9800X3D operate as eight-core 16-thread chips while gaming, so they obviously have an inherent advantage in gaming performance, which is reflected in our benchmarks.

The 9900X3D's other cores kick in during productivity work, giving you 12 cores and 24 threads to chew through more computationally demanding work faster than you can with the eight-core 9800X3D. That said, the 9950X3D remains the king of the X3D hill for productivity work with its 16-core 32-thread design.

The 9900X3D has 140 MB of total cache and a peak boost clock rate of 5.5 GHz, a 100 MHz decline compared to the prior-gen Ryzen 9 7900X3D. Both chips have the same 5.5 GHz base clock. Like its predecessor, the 9900X3D has a 120W TDP and a 162W PPT (maximum power draw). We have extensive power testing on the following pages as well.

Let's move on to the gaming, productivity, and workstation benchmarks on the following pages.

• MORE: Best CPU for gaming
• MORE: CPU Benchmark Hierarchy
• MORE: Intel vs AMD
• MORE: How to Overclock a CPU

AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D Gaming Benchmarks — The TLDR

We'll start with the high-level view of gaming performance, using the geometric mean of our 16 gaming benchmarks at 1080p, which is then followed by our individual benchmarks further down the page. We're testing with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 FE to reduce GPU-imposed bottlenecks as much as possible, and differences between test subjects will shrink with lesser cards or higher resolutions and fidelity.

As expected, the Ryzen 9 9900X3D beats Intel's competing chips easily. The 9900X3D is 28% faster on average in 1080p gaming than Intel's current-gen Core Ultra 9 285K and 18% faster than Intel's fastest gaming chip, the previous-gen Core i9-14900K. That cements the entire Ryzen 9000X3D lineup as comfortably in the gaming performance lead over Intel's competing chips. However, the Core i9-14900K costs $155 (26%) less for roughly 15% less performance in gaming, giving it some room as a value alternative — albeit with higher power use that can eat into the pricing difference over time.

For those interested solely in gaming, the Ryzen 9 9800X3D remains the best value in the X3D lineup — this chip costs $120 less than the 9900X3D but is roughly 8% faster. It's also the fastest gaming chip on the market, by the slimmest of margins against the 9950X3D. If you don't need more heavy lifting in productivity apps or don't commonly do heavy multitasking during gaming (e.g. recording, encoding on the CPU, etc.), the 9800X3D remains the best overall choice.

If you need more grunt power, the Ryzen 9 models come into focus. If you look solely at the fps-per-dollar metrics, the Ryzen 9 9900X3D has a slight lead over the 16-core 9950X3D; the 9950X3D is 7.3% faster but costs 17% more, skewing the calculation in the 9900X3D's favor. However, the 9950X3D does hold the performance lead over the 9900X3D.

The Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Ryzen 7 9800X3D are both faster in gaming because AMD's thread-targeting mechanisms make them operate as eight-core processors during gaming, whereas the 9900X3D operates as a six-core chip. That means the 9900X3D isn't as future-proof for gaming in titles that effectively utilize heavier core/thread counts, calling into question the wisdom of spending $600 for what's essentially a six-core chip for gaming.

The difference between the two Ryzen 9 X3D processors is more important in productivity applications, especially given the target market and the slim pricing difference. As you'll see on the following page, there's a much larger difference in heavily-threaded applications that makes it hard to select the 9900X3D over the 9950X3D — the latter is 27% faster in threaded applications, but only costs 17% more. If you're already willing to spend $600 for a gaming-optimized chip that's also great at productivity work, earmarking an extra $100 for the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, which is faster in both gaming and applications, is a no-brainer.

The 9900X3D is 20% faster than the comparable previous-gen Ryzen 9 7900X3D, an impressive gen-on-gen gain. It's also 12% faster than the previous-gen flagship, the Ryzen 9 7950X3D, backing up AMD's claims.

AMD has finally brought full overclockability to its X3D series, but we tested with AMD's simple auto-overclocking Precision Boost Overdrive feature (marked with 'PBO' in the chart). It delivered an imperceptible sub-1% gain in gaming, so we left that entry out of the individual game tests below. However, PBO is more impressive in the heavily threaded workloads in our productivity benchmarks, as you'll see on the following page. More targeted tuning might yield better results in gaming, but as always, your mileage will vary.

Our gaming suite is heavily skewed toward CPU-limited titles, and our selection is also very 3D V-Cache-friendly, though not all games will benefit equally. The competition between AMD and Intel chips can vary based on the title (particularly with X3D models) and the GPU you use. It's best to make an informed decision based on the types of games you frequently play, so be sure to check out our individual game tests below. (Our lab isn't as temperature-controlled as we would like, so consider the gaming temperature measurements a rough guide.)

The results below are very repetitive, so we'll skip most commentary on the individual titles. We've also included AMD's benchmarks with a broader range of 40 titles at the end of this page to provide a more balanced view of the impact of 3D V-Cache in some titles that don't benefit from the extra L3 capacity.

A Plague Tale: Requiem Benchmarks

This is one of the bigger deltas in favor of AMD's other chips. The 9900X3D places third, but it's only barely faster than the prior gen 7800X3D.

Baldur's Gate 3 Benchmarks

Cyberpunk 2077 Benchmarks

Cyberpunk 2077 can be an incredibly GPU-heavy game with ray tracing, so we're opting for the more CPU-constrained ultra (non-RT) settings without upscaling. Note that none of our CPU gaming tests have upscaling of any form enabled.

F1 2024 Benchmarks

We tested F1 24 with the ultra preset, which does enable some RT effects. The game is relatively lightweight compared to other games, and we're still hitting 200+ FPS on most CPUs.

Far Cry 6 Benchmarks

Far Cry 6 is an AMD-promoted game that responds incredibly well to 3D V-Cache.

Final Fantasy XIV Benchmarks

Hitman 3 Benchmarks

Hitman 3 leverages Intel's E-cores for certain game functions, but it also likes Ryzen X3D's voluminous L3 cache. We enabled ray tracing effects for this title to further tax the CPUs, but as you can see, the RTX 5090 still chews through this title easily if the CPU keeps it fed.

Hogwarts Legacy Benchmarks

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 Benchmarks

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 obviously benefits from L3 cache — the Ryzen X3D chips are incredible in this title. We've added the newer version of this game to our benchmark suite, too, but we'll keep this one around as well due to its popularity.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 Benchmarks

We've also begun testing Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. This title relies heavily on data streaming and has a unique game engine, so it's time to start poking at it. As you can see, it inherits Flight Simulator 2020's love for 3D V-Cache (perhaps even more so).

Minecraft — AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D

Monster Hunter Wilds

Spider-Man 2 Benchmarks

Starfield Benchmarks

The Last of Us, Part 1

Watch Dogs Legion Benchmarks

Watch Dogs Legion closes out our testing with mundane scaling instead of the typical large deltas we see with the X3D chips.

AMD's Ryzen 9 9900X3D Gaming Benchmarks

As mentioned, performance can vary based on the title. AMD shared its own benchmarks to highlight what you should expect in various titles, so this is useful information — especially given that our test suite is 3D V-Cache-friendly. As with all vendor-provided performance data, view it with the appropriate skepticism. AMD's test notes are on the final slide.

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AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D Productivity Benchmarks — The TLDR

This page covers a broad range of 'standard' desktop PC productivity applications, while the following page dives deeper into workstation-class workloads with SPECworkstation 4 benchmarks.

We boil down productivity application performance into two broad categories: single-threaded and multi-threaded. These slides show the geometric mean of performance in several of our most important tests in each of these categories, but be sure to look at the expanded results below for a more granular analysis.

The $620 Core Ultra 9 285K is the $600 Ryzen 9 9900X3D's real competitor in productivity workloads; it delivers far more performance in threaded workloads than the Core i9-14900K. In our overall measurement, the Core Ultra 9 285K is 23% faster than the 9900X3D in threaded workloads, but the $445 Core i9-14900K is still an impressive 10% faster than the Ryzen 9 9900X3D.

In our cumulative single-thread performance measurement, the Core Ultra 9 285K is 7% faster than the 9900X3D, and the 14900K is 3.5% faster.

The $700 Ryzen 9 9950X3D remains the king of the productivity hill, delivering 27% more performance than the $600 Ryzen 9 9900X3D in heavily threaded apps, an advantage borne of the higher core count and 170W TDP. It also offers 3% more performance in lightly threaded applications due to its higher boost clock. This generally mirrors the performance deltas we saw between the last-gen Ryzen 9 models, too.

The 9950X3D's impressive amount of extra performance over the 9900X3D costs $100 more (17%). Again, spending an extra $100 when you're already considering the already expensive $600 Ryzen 9 9900X3D isn't much of a lift, and it delivers a tangible benefit. That's not to mention that the 9950X3D is much faster in gaming, too.

The Ryzen 9 9900X3D takes a slight lead in multi-threaded workloads over its counterpart, the Ryzen 9 9900X, which has the same number of cores but lacks 3D V-Cache tech, but the two chips jockey back and forth for the lead across our multi-threaded workloads, so the competition is close enough to call a tie. That makes the less expensive $380 Ryzen 9 9900X the obvious choice if you're only interested in productivity performance. Notably, the 9900X is ~2% faster in single-threaded work, perhaps due to better core residency in a few single-threaded workloads (the two chips have the same boost clock rates).

The Ryzen 9 9900X3D delivers a strong gen-on-gen improvement of 19% in heavily threaded applications and a 7% gain in lightly threaded workloads over the prior-gen Ryzen 9 7900X3D.

The 9900X3D can't quite keep pace with the 16-core Ryzen 9 7950X3D in threaded work, but it comes close — the 7950X3D is surprisingly only 7% faster in threaded workloads despite having 33% more cores. The 9900X3D is about 6% faster in single-threaded work than the 7950X3D, though, showing the benefits of the Zen 5 architecture's higher instruction per cycle (IPC) throughput.

Our simple PBO overclock yielded a 7% boost for the 9900X3D in threaded workloads with minimal fuss, and we also included those results in the albums below. We gained 5% when overclocking the Ryzen 9 9950X3D. Remember, the Intel processors would also benefit from overclocking, but this would require far more manual intervention.

As a side note, we have long included the y-cruncher benchmark in our cumulative measurement of threaded performance. However, this heavily-threaded AVX-512 benchmark recently received tuned optimizations that deliver explosive gains for the Ryzen 9000 processors, but the massive deltas don't generally align with what we see in actual AVX-512-enabled applications. As such, we've removed the benchmark from our overall calculation, but you can still see the individual results below.

Rendering Benchmarks

The Core i9-14900K matches or beats the 9900X3D in nearly all rendering workloads but at a much lower price point. Meanwhile, the Arrow Lake Core 9 285K dominates the Ryzen 9 9900X3D by much larger margins.

The Ryzen 9 900X3D delivers strong gains in some workloads from the PBO feature, and we also notice there's often only a slim difference between the 9900X and 9900X3D.

Encoding Benchmarks

Most encoders tend to be either heavily threaded or almost exclusively single-threaded — and it takes an agile chip to master both disciplines. Handbrake, SVT-HEVC, and SVT-AV1 serve as our threaded encoders, while LAME and FLAC are indicative of how the chips handle lightly-threaded engines.

Adobe Photoshop, Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve

The PugetBench for Creators suite is a wonderful tool for benchmarking multiple types of Adobe applications, not to mention DaVinci Resolve. We used the benchmark for Photoshop, Premiere Pro, and DaVinci workloads.

The Ryzen 9000X3D chips lead Intel across the board in Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, but Adobe Premier Pro finds a much more contested picture, with the 285K taking the lead over the 9900X3D while the 14900K challenges. The 14900K claws out a slim lead over the 9900X3D in DaVinci Resolve Studio, while the 285K leads once again.

Web Browser, Office Benchmarks

The Core Ultra 9 285K has a 4% lead over the 9900X3D in the WebXPRT4 overall score, while the Core i9-14900K trails slightly. In contrast, the 9000X3D leads convincingly in the Edge browser benchmark.

Compilation, AVX, Scientific Workloads, Chess Engines, Others

This selection of tests runs the gamut from massively parallel molecular dynamics simulation code in NAMD to compression/decompression performance.

Y-cruncher computes Pi with the AVX instruction set, making for an exceedingly demanding benchmark. This benchmark was recently updated with specific tuning for AMD's AVX-512 implementation. The new code delivers a big boost to Ryzen, but it isn't as representative of performance in real-world applications as the older, unoptimized version. Most code simply isn't as well tuned, or doesn't utilize AVX-512 to such a heavy extent. Intel's new chips make big strides in this benchmark over the prior generation, but they only support AVX-256 natively, so AMD gets an easy win — the Ryzen 9 chips are incredibly impressive in the BPP benchmark.

The 285K takes a strong lead in the NAMD simulation code benchmark, while the AMD processors excel at most Chess engine benchmarks.

Compression, Encryption

We've added several more compression, decompression, and encryption benchmarks to better capture the performance deltas in different algorithms. The Intel chips generally take the lead, but that isn't always the case. Some workloads, like Google's Brotli compression engine, favor AMD's chips.

AI Workloads, Geekbench 6

The Core Ultra 9 285K easily leads in the Procyon Computer Vision Benchmark with the larger float32 data type. However, the AMD processors are more competitive with float16 and ultimately take the lead in the integer benchmark.

The GeekBench AI results in the slide deck above show performance with the workload running on the CPU cores via OpenVino and ONNX. Only two CPUs in this group have in-built NPUs — the Core Ultra 9 285K and Ultra 7 265K — making them the only processors capable of running the workload on a dedicated NPU. Given that the NPU is focused on low-power inference tasks, the results are impressive relative to the performance when the workload executes on the CPU cores.

Java, PHP Workloads

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The new SPECworkstation 4 benchmark suite is designed to measure workstation performance in professional applications. The full suite consists of 23 workloads with 80 subtests that target four hardware subsystems.

This industry-standard benchmark measures performance across seven industry verticals, but we've winnowed down the list to tests that largely focus on CPU performance. We haven't submitted these benchmarks to the SPEC organization, so be aware that these are not official benchmarks.

Financial Services and Energy

The Energy category of tests pertains to workloads commonly executed in energy-related industries, such as seismic data processing, reservoir simulations, and computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The Intel processors excel in the SRMP seismic data processing benchmark and the Poisson Jacobi Square Grid equation (used to simulate electrostatics, heat conduction, and fluid flow). The Ryzen 9 9900X3D is more competitive in the Convolution and Poisson Rectangular Square Grid benchmarks.

The Financial Services category measures performance in various financial applications and options pricing tasks, such as Monte Carlo probability simulations and Black Scholes pricing models. Here we can see that the Ryzen 9 9900X3D, and all of the X3D chips for that matter, perform well in these applications. This is most likely due to the additional L3 cache capacity. The Core Ultra 9 285K takes a convincing lead in the Binomial workload.

Product Design

The Product Design vertical addresses workstation performance in common tasks for product designers and engineers, such as CAD and related applications used for 3D modeling, product visualizations, and design.

The Intel chips take a pronounced lead in most of these benchmarks, including AutoDesk Inventor, Finite Element Analysis (FEM), OpenFOAM CFD, Rodinia CFD, and the hidden line removal workload.

Productivity and Development

The Productivity and Development vertical addresses software development, code compilation, general office productivity, and related activities. The CPU-sensitive tests in this lineup include extensive Python 3 benchmarks using the NumPy library and the LLVM code compilation benchmark. Intel wins those benchmarks across the board. AMD is more competitive in the Octave benchmarks, taking the lead.

AI and Machine Learning

The AI and Machine Learning vertical is one of the most important of the new benchmarks in SPECworkstation 4, as unleashing the power of AI on workstation-class workloads can deliver groundbreaking capabilities. AMD generally leads the ONNX throughput benchmarks in both SuperResolution and RestNet50 flavors, though it's more competitive in the int8 benchmarks.

The Intel chips also excel in the AI and ML benchmarks using the Pandas, Scikit-learn, and XGBoost Python-based data libraries.

Life Sciences

The Life Sciences vertical measures performance in medical imaging, genomics, molecular modeling, and pharmaceutical research workloads. For instance, the Rodinia Heart Wall test tracks the motion of the heart wall in a medical ultrasound image. The LAMMPS and NAMD benchmarks quantify performance in various molecular dynamics simulations.

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AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D Power Consumption and Efficiency

We measure CPU power consumption metrics directly at the EPS12V connector because software-based measurements can be 'cheated' by motherboard vendors. This approach gives us the best visibility into accurate power consumption metrics but differs from results gathered from the wall plug (which include full system power) and software-based measurements. Our measurements represent the power the CPU power delivery subsystem consumes directly from the PSU, but it doesn't account for VRM efficiencies (roughly 10% on high-end motherboards).

The Ryzen 9 9900X3D isn't as power hungry as its larger sibling, the 9950X3D. The chip peaked at 181W but hovered in the 160–170 Watts range during many of the workloads.

As expected, the Core i9-14900K is an egregious power guzzler, sucking down up to 383W during the Blender workload, but it does deliver more overall performance in our suite. The Core Ultra 9 285K is more miserly than the 14900K, but it peaks at 325W, showing it can also have a voracious appetite.

As expected, we see a disproportionately large increase in power consumption for slim performance gains when we kick on the 9900X3D’s Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) feature. PBO isn’t worth the extra power consumption for gaming, where it delivers imperceptible benefits, but it's far more useful for those focused on productivity work or heavy multi-tasking.

We measure our standard idle power metrics after a lengthy time of inactivity with all background tasks terminated. The Ryzen processors consume more idle power than comparable Intel models, largely due to the need to keep the large I/O Die powered despite low-load conditions. Here, the Core Ultra processors bring idle power consumption to new lows, with the 285K consuming only 8W. In contrast, the Ryzen 9 9900X3D pulls 22W at idle, a notable disadvantage.

Most PCs rarely truly idle; users might leave various applications open on the desktop. There's also an 'active idle' use case wherein the user does a low-load activity, such as browsing the web or watching a YouTube video. To model this behavior, we created an active idle test (second slide) with two browser windows open (one with two tabs idling on a website and another window with a 4K YouTube video stream playing). We measure this level of activity across a 15-minute timespan.

We measured the Core Ultra 9 285K at 20W under these conditions, but the Ryzen 9 9900X3D consumed 37W. While we can see that the 9900X3D has improved compared to the previous-gen Ryzen 7000X3D models, this is still a significantly higher amount of active idle power draw than the Intel chips.

The watts-per-FPS chart quantifies power efficiency during an x265 HandBrake workload. The 9900X3D is near the top of the list with strong power efficiency metrics. We see a similar trend in the other efficiency metrics.

The last three slides take a slightly different look at power consumption by plotting the cumulative energy required for an x265 HandBrake, Linpack, and Blender workload. We plot this 'task energy' value in Kilojoules on the left side of the chart, with performance charted on the x-axis.

These workloads consist of a fixed amount of work, so we can plot the task energy against the performance during the job (bottom axis), thus generating a useful power chart. Faster compute performance and lower task energy are ideal. That means processors closest to the bottom right corner of the chart are the best.

The Ryzen 9 9900X3D falls into the sweet spot of performance and power efficiency in these charts, with a particularly strong showing in Blender. Meanwhile, the 285K and other Arrow Lake chips greatly improve over their 14th-Gen predecessors.

AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D Test Setup

We tested with the latest version of Microsoft Windows 24H2 (22631) and have updated all drivers, BIOSes, and applications to the latest versions. To speed up the testing process, we use XMP/EXPO as the default memory profile for all tested configurations. The memory speeds used for each chip are shown in the table below.

We tested the Ryzen 9 9900X3D in standard stock trim and with the auto-overclocking Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) feature enabled. We used the 'advanced' and 'motherboard' power settings for the PBO configuration with a 10X scalar and 200 MHz clock adjustment. We also dialed in a -15 all-core Curve Optimizer offset.

We used lifted power limits for the Intel processors, which results in higher power consumption and heat, but you get faster performance in exchange.

We use the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition for our game testing. For the sake of expediency, our power measurements in the gaming section are gathered by polling the motherboard sensor loop, while the metrics in the dedicated power testing section use more precise direct measurements at the EPS12V connector.

Microsoft has advised gamers to turn off several security features to boost gaming performance. For maximum performance, we disabled Virtualization Based Security (VBS) on all systems. Be aware that, due to hardware acceleration, some processor architectures handle virtualization better than others. This can provide a performance advantage when gaming with VBS enabled, but we haven't observed meaningful differences in our testing.

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The $600 Ryzen 9 9900X3D is the middle child in AMD's gaming-optimized X3D lineup, and those willing to pay the extra $200 premium over the standard Ryzen 9 9900X for the game-boosting tech are going to be primarily interested in gaming performance with a side of additional performance in productivity and heavy multitasking workloads. However, while the 9900X3D is now the fastest 12-core gaming chip on the market, it faces stiff competition from AMD's own lower- and higher-priced chips, making its $600 price tag hard to justify, just like the previous-gen model.

Unfortunately for Intel, neither of its competing chips can make a compelling case in gaming against the Ryzen 9 9900X3D, unless you're looking for a lower-priced value alternative in the $445 Core i9-14900K (which may not be a great value after factoring in power use over time). The Intel chips are strong alternatives for those interested solely in productivity work, but they aren't strong contenders against the 9900X3D's niche target market.

Below, we have the geometric mean of our gaming test suite at 1080p and a cumulative performance measurement in single- and multi-threaded applications. We conducted our gaming tests with an Nvidia RTX 5090, so performance deltas will shrink with lesser cards and higher resolution and fidelity settings.

In 1080p gaming, the 9900X3D is 28% faster on average than Intel's current-gen Core Ultra 9 285K and 18% faster than Intel's fastest gaming chip, the previous-gen Core i9-14900K. As such, the similarly priced 285K isn't competitive. However, the Core i9-14900K costs $155 (26%) less for roughly 15% less performance in gaming, giving it some room as a value alternative, especially in light of its faster performance in productivity applications.

Speaking of which, the $445 Core i9-14900K is 10% faster in multi-threaded work than the Ryzen 9 9900X3D and 3% faster in single-threaded. Meanwhile, the Core Ultra 9 285K is 23% faster than the 9900X3D in threaded workloads and 7% faster in single-threaded. Still, its woefully slower gaming performance and similar pricing make it unattractive compared to the Ryzen 9 9900X3D.

The 9900X3D's real competitors come from AMD's own stable and bracket it on both sides of the pricing equation. If you're solely interested in gaming, the Ryzen 9 9800X3D costs $120 (25%) less than the 9900X3D but is roughly 8% faster in gaming. Conversely, the 9900X3D is 36% faster in multi-threaded applications, but if you don't need more heavy lifting in productivity apps or don't commonly do heavy multitasking while gaming, the 9800X3D is the chip for you.

The $700 Ryzen 9 9950X3D is better still. For $100 (20%) more than the 9900X3D, you get 7% more gaming performance, matching the fastest gaming chip on the market, 27% more performance in heavily-threaded work, and 3% more performance in single-threaded applications. If you're already willing to spend $600 for a gaming-optimized chip that's also great at productivity work, earmarking an extra $100 for the Ryzen 9 9950X3D is clearly the better choice.

The Ryzen 9 9950X3D and the Ryzen 7 9800X3D are more future-proof gaming chips, too. Both chips essentially operate as an eight-core processor during gaming, while the Ryzen 9 9900X3D operates as a six-core processor. Games are inevitably making better use of higher core and thread counts as the years go on, and spending $600 for what is essentially a six-core gaming chip, albeit with a large L3 cache, doesn't feel like a wise investment for longevity.

Overall, the best CPU for most gamers remains the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, while the Ryzen 9 9950X3D is the best option for higher performance in gaming and more demanding productivity tasks. The Ryzen 9 9900X3D will need a significant price adjustment to earn our recommendation.

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Microsoft has announced that several Windows 11 Copilot+ AI features are graduating from Snapdragon X exclusivity to AMD Ryzen AI 300 series and Intel Core Ultra 200V PCs. On Monday it began its expanded roll-out of features like Live Captions, Cocreator, Restyle Image, and Image Creator – so they will be available on modern AMD and Intel systems, as well as PCs packing Qualcomm Snapdragon X (SDX) series processors.

One of the most welcome additions to Windows 11 for those embraced by the expanded Copilot+ feature compatibility is probably Live Captions. Microsoft says that this feature “offers real-time translations in English for audio and video content during virtual meetings, podcasts, or video playback.” This feature, which Microsoft claims can live translate from 40 languages to English, has been around a while for SDX PCs, and is “coming soon” for those with a Ryzen AI 300 or Ultra 200V PC.

Another new Copilot+ addition which Microsoft characterizes as an accessibility feature is rolling out to Qualcomm SDX machines soon. Voice Access delivers better descriptive and flexible language interaction with Windows. AMD and Intel system owners with NPUs will have to wait until “later this year” for this one, though.

Cocreator in Paint is now ready for modern AMD and Intel processor owners. Here, Microsoft’s AI can help you create imagery from prompts or analyzing and improving on your badly drawn scrawl.

With Copilot+ smarts introduced to Microsoft’s Photos app, Windows 11 users with the requisite AMD and Intel chips get two ‘AI’ features to play with. Restyle Image is an AI-driven photo-filter style feature which can make existing works look something like an oil painting, sketch, or so on. Image Creator does what it says from your simple, or complex, text prompts.

March non-security preview release update is required, for now

Microsoft says to make sure you switch on ‘Get the latest updates as soon as they’re available’ in your updates control panel. If you are eager to try some of the features outlined above, that unfortunately means opting to install the March non-security preview release. You must also ensure the host apps (Paint, Photos etc) are up-to-date via the Microsoft Store. Remember, the expanded feature rollout availability will also vary based on your location and language selection.

Considering x86 PCs with NPU-packing processors have been available for months, Microsoft has been rather tardy in breaking its most attractive Copilot+ features out from their Qualcomm-only rut. According to our editor-in-chief, you all haven’t been missing much, though. Not long after launch, the Copilot+ features were judged to be “a bad joke.” Moreover, the much heralded Recall feature remains in (re)development after all the security and privacy concerns that were raised.

This article covers our picks for the best graphics cards for gaming in 2026. Amid the AI gold rush and consequent supply crunch for consumer silicon, no truly new gaming GPUs have been introduced in almost a year. If you haven't already upgraded your graphics card after the GeForce RTX 50-series and Radeon RX 9000-series launches in 2025, well, you're still looking at the exact same products now.

AMD did make its formerly China-only Radeon RX 9070 GRE available globally after Computex 2026, but in our review, we found that $549 product to be too expensive given the level of performance it delivers and the compromises made to hit its price point, so it isn't joining the list here. Check out that coverage for all the details.

Most of the products we recommend remain at elevated prices compared to their MSRPs, but this is just life in mid-2026.

It's admittedly cold comfort, but unless you're shopping for an RTX 5090, graphics card prices haven't risen much more than they already did earlier this year. Compared to the doubling or tripling of prices we've seen for RAM kits and SSDs in 2026 versus last year, a GPU upgrade remains a relatively affordable (and self-contained) option, either as a boost for an existing PC or part of an all-new parts list.

Prime Day exceptional graphics card deals

These are a few of the standout deals from Amazon's 2026 Prime Day event, which is currently taking place. Be sure to check out our full list of the best Prime Day graphics card deals, too. Our list of best overall picks continues below.

Even if you can’t build an all-new system, you can just put a new graphics card in an older PC and still enjoy boosts to gaming performance, image quality, or both—especially if you can upgrade your monitor at the same time.

As we discuss in further depth below, the arrival of DLSS 4.5 upscaling (for RTX 40-series and 50-series cards, at least) and expanded multipliers for Multi-Frame Generation, which now can boost frame rates by up to 5x or 6x, means that driving a high-resolution, high-refresh-rate monitor is now easier than ever if you're considering a GeForce RTX 50-series graphics card.

Read on to see our picks in today's gaming graphics card market.

Best graphics cards for gaming, at a glance

The above list shows all the latest-gen graphics cards we feel stand out in their segments. If you want to see how all of the current and prior generation GPUs stack up, check our GPU benchmarks hierarchy. We also have performance benchmarks further below.

When accounting for pricing, we perform our own research to find the midpoint of current prices for a given graphics card, rather than taking a vendor's MSRP at face value. We feel this method tends to be most representative of the price you're likely to see for products in stock.

If you can find a card for less than this midpoint, it's likely closer to (or even less than) a vendor's MSRP and a better value. Conversely, if you find one for more than this midpoint, it could be a worse value (or too close in price to a more powerful card that's a step up). Tread carefully.

The overall performance ranking incorporates 19 games from our 2026 test suite, which takes the geometric mean (i.e., equal weighting) for both rasterization and ray tracing games. Note that we are not including any upscaling or frame generation results in the table.

Raw performance may be the most important consideration for most gamers, but it's not the only metric that matters. Our subjective rankings below factor in price, power usage, and power efficiency, and features colored by our own years of experience. Others may offer a slightly different take, but all of the cards on this list are worthy of your consideration.

Upscaling and frame generation mean GPUs are more than just a chip

GPU performance goes beyond the hardware these days. Choosing a particular GPU vendor means you're buying into a complex software stack that includes upscaling, frame generation, and (more rarely) AI-powered RT denoising technologies.

In Nvidia's corner, the DLSS 4.5 upscaling model and its second-generation transformer architecture offer superior image quality to other upscaling tech (and with lower input resolutions, meaning higher potential performance), but it's more computationally expensive than past DLSS models and works best on RTX 50-series and 40-series cards.

The DLSS 4 model and its first-gen transformer architecture still work with cards going all the way back to the RTX 20-series family. Not all games implement DLSS 4 natively, but Nvidia allows you to force the usage of that model in many older titles through the Nvidia App utility, so you can practically always get the latest and greatest.

Between native support and driver overrides, DLSS is available in virtually any modern game you might want to play. Nvidia recently marked DLSS feature availability in over 1000 titles.

RTX 50-series GPUs are Nvidia's first with support for multi-frame generation (MFG), which allows Blackwell GPUs to insert anywhere from one to five AI-generated intermediate frames between each native one (for a 2x, 3x, 4x, or even 5x or 6x frame rate boost). RTX 40-series GPUs also support framegen, but only with a 2x boost.

Meanwhile, AMD's FSR 4 offers AI-enhanced upscaling with superior image quality to other FSR versions, but official support for it is limited to RX 9000-series Radeons for now. AMD will bring FSR 4 upscaling to RX 7000-series cards in July 2026 and RX 6000-series cards in early 2027.

In the meantime, AMD's FSR 3.1 and earlier upscalers still work on any GPU, but the image quality tends to be noticeably lower than both DLSS and FSR 4.

AI-enhanced FSR framegen (aka ML Frame Generation) arrived on AMD cards as part of the FSR Redstone update late last year. Like FSR 4 upscaling, ML Frame Generation is limited to Radeon RX 9000 cards, and it can be enabled in compatible games using a control panel override for titles that don't natively have it.

Legacy FSR frame gen remains available, too. Its framerate-doubling boost remains cross-compatible with GPUs from all vendors, but its image quality can't keep up with the AI-powered frame gen tech of the latest AMD and Nvidia models.

Intel XeSS upscaling can be superior to FSR 3.x, but it isn't available in as many games as FSR or DLSS. It works best on Arc GPUs, but like FSR, it's cross-compatible with a wide range of graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia if you need it.

XeSS 2 with AI-enhanced frame generation is now available in 95 games as of this writing and requires an Arc GPU. XeSS 3 brings multi frame generation to the party through both native support and a driver override in compatible titles.

All that said, we don't think you should go out of your way to buy an Intel Arc card for gaming in 2026 for reasons we'll get into later.

1. Best high-end graphics card: GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, $1099.99

If you want the best blend of high performance and cutting-edge graphics tech out there for 1440p or 4K gaming, the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti is it. This card comes with full support for Nvidia’s latest DLSS 4.5 upscaling and Multi Frame Generation tech, and its 16GB of VRAM gives you full freedom to enable every DLSS 4 feature.

AMD’s closest competitor, the Radeon RX 9070 XT, is way cheaper than the RTX 5070 Ti right now, but the AMD card obviously doesn’t support DLSS 4 or MFG. For the privilege of those capabilities, you'll generally need to spend a whopping 45% more cash right now for just 5% more baseline performance than AMD’s best before you start enabling all the DLSS 4 features Blackwell supports.

Is that worth it? Yes, if you can swing it. Here's why: getting the best gaming performance on modern graphics cards is as much a software problem as a hardware one. Tuning your gaming experience to taste requires access to high-quality upscaling, frame generation, and (more infrequently) an AI-powered RT denoiser like DLSS Ray Reconstruction.

Even amid its shift to AI and data center products, Nvidia ensures that its full suite of DLSS tech is adopted in virtually every new game, whereas AMD's support of FSR 4 adoption has become rather hit-or-miss.

The RTX 5070 Ti also offers superior RT performance versus the RX 9070 XT across our 2026 test suite. Beyond that baseline, Nvidia is working with developers to enable impressive path-traced effects in many of the latest AAA releases.

In our recent experience, path-traced games play best with DLSS 4.5 upscaling and MFG at your disposal, and being able to consistently rely on the availability of those features makes the extra cash for the 5070 Ti worth it.

Our recent GPU Hierarchy retesting has shown that high-end graphics cards are becoming five- to eight-year investments, and Nvidia's ongoing commitment to developer relations and new software features means that you'll enjoy a first-class gaming experience throughout the life of your 5070 Ti no matter what games you want to play on it.

Spread out over that time span, the extra cost of the RTX 5070 Ti versus the RX 9070 XT is worth it for the better experience.

What about the RTX 5080? Nvidia's second-fastest Blackwell card is anywhere from 8% to 16% faster than the 5070 Ti, with the biggest gap at 4K. Prices for the 5080 in June 2026 remain insane, however, and at the midpoint of current prices, the 5080 is 33% more expensive than the 5070 Ti.

There's no way the RTX 5080 offers anywhere close to enough value for the money to justify the step up right now unless you're looking for the fastest thing this side of a 5090 for 4K gaming.

Read: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti review

2. Best enthusiast value graphics card: Radeon RX 9070 XT, $759.99

The Radeon RX 9070 XT is AMD's most well-rounded graphics card in years. It delivers raw gaming performance within spitting distance of the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti for far less money, making it a strong value at first glance. But that appealing price tag comes with a number of asterisks in mid-2026 that mean it's no longer our first pick for high-end PC gaming.

AMD shored up two of its greatest weaknesses against Nvidia with the RX 9070 XT's RDNA 4 architecture: RT performance and AI acceleration, both of which are closer to Nvidia's latest and greatest. And AMD did all that while keeping power efficiency right there with Nvidia, too.

The FSR 4 upscaler is a big jump in image quality over FSR 3, and FSR ML Frame Generation now offers higher-quality framegen on the RX 9070 XT than FSR 3's approach, although it's still limited to a simple doubling of frame rates versus DLSS Multi Frame Generation's versatility.

The problem for the RX 9070 XT in mid-2026 is that FSR 4.x upscaling still trails Nvidia's flagship DLSS 4.5 in image quality, and AMD isn't driving the adoption of FSR 4 features nearly as aggressively as Nvidia is for DLSS. Driver-level overrides for those features can't entirely close the gap.

Worse, you might find the RX 9070 XT entirely shut out of features that you might want to enable in certain games. For just a couple of examples, Radeon gamers can't enable path-traced effects at all in recent titles like Pragmata and Resident Evil Requiem, and 007 First Light sticks you with FSR 3 upscaling that can't be overriden through a driver toggle due to the way it's implemented.

And in our latest GPU Hierarchy retesting with the RX 9070 XT, we saw major performance issues in Grand Theft Auto V Enhanced and minor visual corruptions in Stalker 2 that weren't present on GeForces or on RX 7000- or RX 6000-series cards. We don't think these issues should have slipped past any QA program, especially for such popular and high-profile games, but they sting especially hard on a current-gen product.

All that means the overall ownership experience of an RTX 5070 Ti and an RX 9070 XT is significantly different in mid-2026. We think that gamers shopping in this price class should be able to expect a consistently high level of software feature support and quality across all the games they might want to play, and Nvidia provides that assurance better than AMD does right now.

If you're willing to gamble with the availability of FSR 4 features, for RT or path-traced effects, and don't care to tune the smoothness of your gaming experience with frame generation, the RX 9070 XT's shortcomings versus the RTX 5070 Ti may be easier to overlook given the large amount of cash that will remain in your pocket.

But we also think that you should look closely at what you're giving up before reflexively choosing an RX 9070 XT over an RTX 5070 Ti, despite its strong value at a glance.

Read: AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT review

3. Best midrange graphics card: GeForce RTX 5070, $659.99

Until 2026 rolled around, the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB had been our entry-to-midrange Blackwell gaming favorite. But the $579 midpoint of current pricing puts the 5060 Ti 16GB's on-shelf price above that of the RTX 5070's $549 MSRP, and the 5070 is one of the least marked-up graphics cards out there at the moment.

As a result, it's possible to find RTX 5070s for about $670, and that makes it an easy call to step up for less than $100 more than 5060 Ti 16GBs.

The RTX 5070 is about 30% faster than the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB across our 2026 test suite, and that's a huge leap that you'll easily see on the right monitor for just 15% more money.

The advent of DLSS 4.5 upscaling, which makes it possible to achieve superior delivered image quality at lower input resolutions than older DLSS versions, also takes some VRAM pressure off the RTX 5070's 12GB of GDDR7, making the deployment of RT and DLSS MFG more practical on this card than it has been in the past.

And as with the RTX 5070 Ti, the universal availability of DLSS 4.5 (both natively and through app overrides) plus MFG makes this card a fast and flexible performer across all of the games you might want to play in 2026.

Given the image quality of DLSS 4.5 and the smoothness boost of MFG, along with the higher baseline RT performance of this card versus the 9070 in our 2026 testing, we think the 5070 should be your first pick for a midrange gaming card right now.

In an ideal world, the RTX 5070 would have more VRAM to allow for unhindered exploration of everything DLSS 4 and MFG have to offer, especially at a native 4K resolution. If you're pushing those limits, we'd still recommend the Radeon RX 9070 thanks to its 16GB of VRAM.

But if you're on a 1440p monitor where VRAM is less of an issue and want DLSS 4.5 over FSR 4, as most gamers do, the RTX 5070 is still a strong performer, and you're less likely to run into its limits.

Read: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 review

4. An AMD midrange alternative: Radeon RX 9070, $629.99

If you primarily play raster titles at native resolution and aren't on board with upscaling or framegen, the Radeon RX 9070 remains a strong midrange alternative to the RTX 5070. It's one of the least marked-up 16GB graphics cards available even with today's AI headwinds, and in a world where MSRPs have largely been forgotten, that makes the RX 9070 a strong value.

The GeForce RTX 5070 and RX 9070 go neck-and-neck in our test suite, but the RX 9070 has 16GB of VRAM and the RTX 5070 has just 12GB. Especially if you're trying to push 4K games at native resolution, that extra VRAM matters.

But the advent of DLSS 4.5 upscaling, which provides image quality that's practically indistinguishable from native rendering even at relatively low input resolutions, means that the RTX 5070 is a more potent midrange graphics card in 2026 than it was at launch.

On top of their inherent technical superiority, you can find DLSS 4 and MFG in most every game released today, which can't be said for FSR 4.x upscaling or ML framegen. AMD's driver overrides make up some of the gap, to be sure, but not all of it.

And as with the RX 9070 XT, AMD gamers may find themselves locked out of certain features like path tracing (in major releases like Pragmata and Resident Evil Requiem) or FSR overrides (in 007 First Light) entirely.

The RX 9070 is subject to the same minor image quality issues and performance hitches we saw with the RX 9070 XT, and those issues could certainly be overcome with future software updates. But we think that if you're looking for the best midrange graphics card, it should be free of those issues entirely, and so the RTX 5070 is our first pick for this price point right now.

Read: AMD Radeon RX 9070 review

5. Best enthusiast value graphics card: Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB, $469.99

AMD's Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB can handle basically anything the mainstream gamer can throw at it at 1920x1080 and 2560x1440, all at a price that comes in way under the sky-high markups on the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB as of this writing.

At a midpoint of $459.99 in mid-2026, prices for the RX 9060 XT 16GB are the highest we've ever seen, dulling the 9060 XT 16GB's reputation as the value-minded builder's GPU of choice. But with no cheaper Radeons worth recommending in the lineup, what can you do?

In any case, the RX 9060 XT enjoys the much-improved ray-tracing and AI performance of the RDNA 4 architecture, both of which bring Radeons a lot closer to the latest Nvidia competition. And its 16GB of VRAM gives mainstream gamers the assurance they'll basically never find VRAM a bottleneck in modern games at 1080p and 1440p resolutions.

Like the RX 9070 XT, the 9060 XT 16GB gives you access to AMD's much-improved FSR 4 upscaling tech, allowing you to boost performance with a small hit to image quality in the small but growing list of titles that support it.

Even with its new ML-powered model, FSR Frame Generation remains limited to a doubling of output frame rate at best, so it’s not a direct competitor to Nvidia’s DLSS 4 with MFG.

If you want more frames, AMD just launched the RX 9070 GRE globally for $549, and it provides a decent step up in performance for less than $100 more, especially if you're only gaming at 1080p or 1440p. But the more powerful RX 9070 can be found for just $50 more than the GRE, and then you're contemplating the even more powerful and versatile RTX 5070, too.

The RTX 5060 Ti 8GB is the RX 9060 XT 16GB's closest Nvidia competition, dollar for dollar, but we can’t recommend it at all. If you're spending over $350 on a GPU, we don't think you should have to fine-tune every setting to avoid running out of VRAM. The RX 9060 XT is easy to live with for a wide range of gamers in a wide range of titles, and that’s why it won our Editor’s Choice award.

Read: AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB review

6. The best graphics card for 1080p gaming: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060, $369.99

If you want to get your game on at 1080p, we think the RTX 5060 is still your best bet in mid-2026. The midpoint of RTX 5060 prices is around $370 right now thanks to the AI crunch, but you can still find them for as little as $350 if you're willing to shop around.

The RTX 5060 has impressive baseline performance for 1080p gaming in wildly popular titles like Fortnite, Counter-Strike 2, Marvel Rivals, and Apex Legends that aren't hungry for giant pools of VRAM. And if you are trying to push higher output resolutions in demanding AAA games, the universal availability of DLSS 4.5 upscaling means that it's easy to achieve near-native image quality at lower input resolutions than before, making the RTX 5060 a more flexible performer than ever.

If you can tune your settings right, enabling DLSS 4 Multi-Frame Generation could make for an even smoother ride on this card, but we find that 8GB of VRAM isn't enough to consistently enable framegen in the titles where you'd really want it. The feature often doesn't work if you're already at the limits of the RTX 5060's memory pool (or that of any 8GB Blackwell card), since the MFG AI model needs some VRAM of its own to run.

AMD's toughest competition for the RTX 5060 is the RX 9060 XT 8GB, which also lists for $299 but is now selling for about the same $350 as you'll see RTX 5060s going for. Supply of those cards has largely dried up in mid-2026, however, and you're likely to see only a couple options for them from any e-tailer.

Despite its much-maligned 8GB of VRAM, the 9060 XT 8GB put in a strong showing in our 2026 GPU Hierarchy testing, but not consistently enough to beat out the RTX 5060 and take home our general recommendation.

When the RX 9060 XT can bring its full compute horsepower to bear in certain games, it can handily outpace the RTX 5060, so it's worth checking out results like those from our RX 9070 GRE review and seeing whether a game you love benefits from the Radeon's raw muscle.

But if you want a more consistently solid gaming experience, we'd still recommend the RTX 5060.

Read: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti review

7. The best graphics card, period: GeForce RTX 5090, $4299

There's nothing else like the GeForce RTX 5090. If you want to turn on every bell and whistle in modern games at 4K (or beyond), the RTX 5090's sheer shader and Tensor Core horsepower, along with support for Nvidia's DLSS 4 upscaling and multi-frame generation, lets you tune your gaming experience to perfection even on high-refresh-rate 4K displays.

If you're a hardcore PC gamer who demands only the best, the hair will stand up on the back of your neck when you watch the RTX 5090 breeze through workloads that other graphics cards leak out all their thermal gel about.

Prices for the RTX 5090 have always been elevated, but they're stratospheric in early 2026. Major e-tailers only have a few different models listed, and prices start at $3500 or so and only go up from there. Nvidia's $1999 MSRP is pure imagination in current market conditions.

At those prices, an RTX 5090 is an indulgence of the highest order, but then again, it always has been. Without a compelling AMD alternative even on the horizon, considerations of value don't really apply here. If you truly need (or want) this class of gaming or AI performance, you're going to have to pay up.

This card needs a system with a massive power supply, one of our best gaming CPUs, and a top-shelf monitor to take full advantage of its astounding capabilities, and all those spendy components add up quick. But if you have a big enough bankroll to consider shopping for a graphics card of this caliber, you probably don't need us to tell you all that.

If Nvidia and its industry partners fixed the meltdown-prone ATX12V-2x6 connector, the RTX 5090 would be as close to gaming perfection as any graphics card that's ever been made. Guess that's something to improve on the RTX 6090, if it ever arrives.

Read: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition review

8. The cheapest graphics card worth buying: GeForce RTX 5050

If you have to save every penny on a new graphics card in 2026, you're hard up for good budget options. We previously recommended Intel's Arc B570 here, but after completing our 2026 GPU Hierarchy retesting, we're bumping it in favor of the RTX 5050, which is currently selling for about $300, or about $50 more than the B570.

Here's why: we think if you're spending any amount of money on a graphics card, it should just work. You should expect consistent feature support over time in games, universal support for upscaling and (optionally) frame generation when you need them, and consistently high performance in games.

The RTX 5050 unreservedly checks all those boxes, while we couldn't even complete our testing of the Arc B570 (or B580) for our 2026 GPU Hierarchy until the literal day before this guide update goes live, due to a months-long settings lockout with UE5's Nanite and Lumen in a little title you may have heard of called Fortnite.

We can't say when a similarly major issue might occur again with the Arc B570 in any game, and so we're no longer recommending it. Unless you're willing to gamble and need to save every possible dollar on a graphics card, we think you should just save up a bit more cash and buy an RTX 5050.

The RTX 5050 isn't the fastest GPU around, to be sure, and its 8GB of VRAM is a constraint for anything beyond 1080p gaming in mid-2026. But it delivers solid enough native raster performance at 1080p, and it beats out the Arc B570 even before you enable DLSS 4.5 upscaling. And if you do want the performance boost of DLSS, you're getting access to the best and most widely adopted upscaler on the market.

On top of that, the extra $50 over the Arc B570 means that you have the full strength of Nvidia's developer relations team and software support behind you when you go to play the latest games, and we think that reliable software support makes all the difference between a GPU that's fun and affordable and one that's merely cheap.

Read: GeForce RTX 5050 review

How we test the best graphics cards

Determining pure graphics card performance is best done by eliminating all other bottlenecks — as much as possible, at least. To that end, we've selected components for our test rig , most notably AMD's Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU, one of the best CPUs for gaming.

We test across the three most common gaming resolutions, 1080p, 1440p, and 4K, using a mix of high and ultra settings, depending on the title. Where possible, we use 'reference' cards for all of these tests, like Nvidia's Founders Edition models and AMD's reference designs. Most midrange and lower GPUs don't get reference models, however, and in some cases we only have factory-overclocked cards for testing. We do our best to select cards that are close to the reference specs in such cases.

For each graphics card, we follow the same testing procedure. We run one pass of each benchmark to "warm up" the GPU after launching the game, then perform our actual test runs across each resolution.

We carefully review our test data and check for anomalies. For example, we always expect the RTX 5080 to be faster than the RTX 5070 Ti. If it's not, and we're not in a CPU limited situation, we'll recheck both cards to ensure that our standings our accurate. We also check and retest in cases of subtler issues, as when a transient hitch or frame-time spike causes a large dip in 1% low FPS.

Due to the length of time required for testing each GPU, updated drivers and game patches inevitably come out that can impact performance. We periodically retest a few sample cards to verify our results are still valid, and if not, we go through and retest the affected game(s) and GPU(s). We may also add games to our test suite over time, if one comes out that is popular and conducive to testing. See what makes a good game benchmark for our selection criteria.

Best graphics cards performance results

Our updated test suite of games consists of 19 games at present, eight of which have ray tracing enabled (or require RT to run at all).

We test without any upscaling or frame generation technologies enabled. We expect that most gamers will want to enable these features, but they complicate apples-to-apples comparisons between GPU vendors due to inherent differences in output image quality. To keep it simple, we present native resolution performance as a baseline.

The data in the following charts is from testing conducted during the past several months. We've tested all of the latest GPUs at every resolution and setting, even where it generally doesn't make sense (e.g. 4K with ray tracing at single digit framerates).

For each resolution and setting, the first chart shows the geometric mean (i.e. equal weighting) for all tested games. The second chart shows performance in the 11 pure raster games, and the third chart focuses in on ray tracing performance in eight games.

The charts below contain all the current Nvidia RTX 50-series and AMD RX 9000-series graphics cards. We're leaving Intel Arc cards out of the standings for now due to software compatibility issues with our test suite, and we'll include those results when those issues are corrected and we have the opportunity to retest them.

Our GPU benchmarks hierarchy contains additional data for every GPU spanning multiple generations of hardware. The charts are color coded with AMD in red, Nvidia in blue, and Intel in gray to make it easier to see what's going on.

The following charts are up to date as of June 2026.

Best Graphics Cards — 1080p

Best Graphics Cards — 1440p

Best Graphics Cards — 4K

Additional Shopping Tips

When buying a graphics card, consider the following:

• Monitor Resolution: The more pixels you're pushing, the more performance you need. You don't need a top-of-the-line GPU to game at 1080p, but you will certainly want more power at 1440p or 4K.
• PSU: Make sure that your power supply has enough juice and the right 6-, 8- and/or 16-pin connector(s). Nvidia, AMD, and Intel board partners will all make PSU recommendations alongside their products that you can use as a baseline, so if you're unsure whether your PC can provide enough power, be sure to check those spec sheets first. If you have an older PSU, be mindful that power supplies do lose capacity with time, so if you're contemplating a high-end GPU, it might be time to upgrade your GPU, too.
• Video Memory: In 2026, 8GB of VRAM is the bare minimum you'll want to play the latest games at 1080p, and it's the smallest amount of memory you'll find on a new card. Midrange cards tend to feature 12GB of VRAM, which is generally enough for raster gaming all the way out to 4K but may present limitations for RT even at 1440p. If you're planning to push a 4K display without upscaling or want to explore RT gaming without restriction, we recommend a 16GB card.
• FreeSync or G-Sync? Either variable refresh rate (VRR) technology will synchronize your GPU's frame delivery with your screen's refresh rate. Nvidia supports G-Sync and G-Sync Compatible displays (for recommendations, see our Best Gaming Monitors list). And most every G-Sync Compatible display also supports AMD FreeSync these days, so this vendor war is largely over.
• Upscaling and Frame Generation technologies: Nvidia's DLSS is in practically every game, and the latest DLSS 4.5 tech provides high-quality upscaling and frame generation (on RTX 40-series to boost performance to taste with practically no loss of image quality. AMD FSR 4 provides AI-enhanced upscaling on RX 9000-series cards, and a version compatible with RX 7000-series cards arrives in July 2026. Intel XeSS can deliver better image quality than older versions of FSR, but the core upscaler hasn't been updated in some time, and it's not as widely adopted as either DLSS or FSR, so it shouldn't influence your buying decision either way.

Finding Discounts on the Best Graphics Cards

While deep discounts are rare on graphics cards in 2026, you might find some particularly tasty deals on occasion. Check out the latest Newegg promo codes, Best Buy promo codes and Micro Center coupon codes for potential savings.

Want to comment on our best graphics picks for gaming? Let us know what you think in the Tom's Hardware Forums.

MORE: HDMI vs. DisplayPort: Which Is Better For Gaming?

MORE: GPU Benchmarks and Hierarchy

You might not be able to get your hands on a new Nvidia 50-series graphics card separately, but there are still a few floating about in prebuilt gaming PCs from various builders. Today's deal focuses on a top-spec build from Dell's Alienware lineup that features an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 at its heart. Now I do use the term "deal" here a little loosely, as yes, there is a deal whereby you get $400 off of the list price of this gaming rig, but, the cost of the whole PC is pretty expensive, and not a good deal if you're only after the GPU.

If you like this PC deal, check out Dell.com where the Alienware Area-51 (RTX 5080) gaming PC is listed for $4,649, a markdown of $400 on the list price of $5,049. This is a very beefy and competent gaming PC spec list with components that will be able to help push the most out of the latest game titles.

Dell has listened to customer feedback, done away with proprietary parts, and constructed a gaming PC that can be easily upgraded when more powerful components become available. The new case design features a glass side panel and a subdued yet modern design, and the hardware inside is up-to-date and powerful. The list of hardware inside this Alienware Area-51 includes the aforementioned Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 GPU with 16GB of GDDR7 VRAM, Intel's 24-core Core Ultra 9 285K processor, 64GB of DDR5 RAM, and 4TB of SSD storage.

For cooling the CPU, the Alienware Area-51 uses a 360mm All-in-One liquid cooler, and to ensure the power-hungry GPU gets enough power and covers transient spikes, the PC comes with a 1500W Platinum-rated ATX12VO power supply.

Don't forget to look at our Dell coupon codes for March 2025 and see if you can save on today's deal or other products at Dell.

HP is refreshing its premium consumer laptop lineup, the OmniBook X, with a swath of new convertibles and a large clamshell design. The updates, shown at HP's Amplify partner conference, include new lattice-free keyboards and feature chips from both Intel and AMD.

The new machines are 14-inch and 16-inch convertible 2-in-1s and a 17.3-inch standard laptop.

The 14-incher, the HP OmniBook X Flip 14 2-in-1, starts with an Intel Core Ultra 5 226V and goes up to a Core Ultra 7 258V, or on the AMD side, a Ryzen AI 5 340 up to a Ryzen AI 7 350. Those Ryzen chips all have 50 TOPS NPUs, while the Intel chips range from 40 to 47 TOPS. All of them hit the minimum NPU requirement to be Copilot+ PCs.

The Intel models will have 16 or 32GB LPDDR5x-8533 RAM options, while the AMD models also feature a 24GB version and run at a slower LPDDR5x-7500. Intel's storage goes higher, too, at 2TB, while the AMD version tops out at 1TB.

Either way, you get a 14-inch, OLED touch display with resolutions up to 2880 x 1800, as well as either Wi-Fi 6E or 7 support.

The 16-inch 2-in-1 laptop has the same chip options as the 14-incher, but with a larger OLED screen. In addition, though, there's one extra configuration — the only one not labeled as an AI PC — with an AMD Ryzen 5 220, which doesn't feature an NPU. That one has other basic specifications including just 8GB of RAM and a 1920 x 1200 display. It's likely to be an affordable option in this high-end chassis, but HP hasn't announced any pricing for any of these systems.

If you're looking for more of a workstation, the HP OmniBook X 17.3 pairs either an Intel Core Ultra 7 256V or 258V with either integrated Arc graphics or an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU. This system has either 16 or 32GB of RAM and up to 2TB of storage. HP is listing a standard, 1920 x 1080 display.

Across the board with these new models, HP has adopted a lattice-free keyboard, without any space between the keys; It's a design similar to what Dell was using on its XPS line – perhaps the Dell Premium line now? This allows for larger keys and, an HP rep suggested, softer typing. The standard chiclet keys will remain on the OmniBook 7 lineup and below. It seems that the blue highlights on the function keys on last year's OmniBooks have gone, which is a shame because that slight pop of color was fun.

Each of these laptops has a solid selection of ports, including HDMI 2.1, USB Type-C (Thunderbolt 4 on most Intel systems), USB-A (2 ports on the 14 or 16-inch Flip, 3 ports on the 17.3-inch clamshell), and a headphone jack. They all also feature a 5MP camera with infrared for Windows Hello facial recognition.

While HP is pushing these laptops as being AI-focused, demos shown to press relied primarily on image generation and other tasks that are table stakes at this point. Local AI still has a ways to go to become extremely useful on mainstream PCs.

Beyond the OmniBook X series, HP is also updating its OmniBook ,. 5, and 3 series in a swathe of sizes and Intel and AMD chip options. No pricing has been announced, but HP expects to also launch these devices in the spring.

Tom’s Hardware has tested dozens of processors to find the best CPU for gaming. Our list of 2026 CPU gaming benchmarks currently comprises 17 of the most demanding titles available on the market, which we run each gaming processor through to see the chips that come out on top. We select our picks based on the data in our CPU benchmark hierarchy, so all of the CPUs below are backed by hundreds of hours of real-world, hands-on testing where we gather extensive data on how a CPU performs and behaves while gaming. If you want a broader look at the CPU market, our AMD vs. Intel article shows you where the current CPU duopoly stands, while our CPU buying guide can help you narrow down the best processor for you.

Now in the back half of the year, we don’t expect major new releases from AMD or Intel. AMD has been on a tear with refreshes, particularly among X3D CPUs. We recently reviewed the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition, AMD’s first CPU with 3D V-Cache on both CCDs, and it’s the most powerful chip from Team Red currently available. It’s earned a spot on this list, though the (much cheaper) Ryzen 9 9950X3D isn’t far behind in overall performance.

We’ve also seen the Ryzen 7 9850X3D, which is technically the fastest gaming processor on the market, as you can see in our Ryzen 7 9850X3D review. However, we’ve kept the base Ryzen 7 9800X3D as our top recommendation for the best CPU for gaming due to its price. It’s only marginally behind the refreshed model (about 3% on average), and much cheaper. For most gamers, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D makes more sense.

Intel has seen a recent boost in gaming performance with Arrow Lake Refresh, and both the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus and Core Ultra 7 270K Plus have earned spots on our list. AMD dominates in gaming at the moment, however. Our sights are set on Intel’s next-gen Nova Lake chips for a big gaming boost from Team Blue, as well as the rumored ‘Raptor Lake Next’ lineup that’s supposedly arriving early next year.

For the rest of the year, we have the Ryzen 7 7700X3D and Ryzen 7 5800X3D 10th Anniversary Edition to look forward to, which are arriving in July and June, respectively. We don’t anticipate they’ll make a major impact on our rankings here, but we plan on reviewing both CPUs as soon as they’re available.

In addition to the fastest CPUs from AMD and Intel, we’ve included a few DDR4 options on this list. The price of DRAM and NAND flash has made building even a budget PC prohibitively expensive, so DDR4 platforms are a great way to save money. Vendors are signaling a shift back toward DDR4 platforms at the moment, so we may reconsider some older CPUs for our rankings as pricing and availability allows.

Here are the gaming CPUs we recommend buying. We have a shortlist of the top options and some alternatives below, but you can click the ‘More’ links to read our thoughts about a particular CPU and where it stands in the current market.

Prime Day Exceptional CPU deal

Here is a standout budget CPU deal from the Prime Day event, which is currently taking place. See our best overall picks below.

Best CPU for Gaming in 2026 at a glance (more info below):

The list below is for the best CPUs for gaming, while the best budget CPUs can help you find a cheap chip. Processors benefit from the best thermal paste, so check out our guide if you're shopping for a new processor. But if you're after the best CPU for gaming, you're in the right place.

Best CPU for Gaming Benchmarks

We rank all the Intel and AMD processors based on our in-depth CPU benchmarks hierarchy. You can see some of those numbers in the charts above, including CPU overclock performance results (marked as PBO for AMD processors). We're currently retesting all of these processors with the Nvidia RTX 5090, but only the first four slides have that testing. The remainder are historical testing results with the RTX 4090, which we'll remove once we have fully retested all of the gaming CPUs with the RTX 5090 for our benchmarks. This group of results comprises only the chips that have passed through our newest test suite. Additionally, the tables in our CPU benchmark hierarchy include rankings based on past CPU benchmarks and breakdowns of single- and multi-threaded performance in productivity applications across a broad spate of processors. Finally, be aware that the pricing in the charts above can fluctuate.

Quick Shopping Tips

When choosing the best CPU for gaming in 2026, consider the following:

• You can't lose with AMD or Intel: As noted in our AMD vs. Intel feature, AMD tends to make the best all-around CPU for gaming for mainstream PCs lately, but both offer compelling performance options at any given price point.
• Eight cores is sufficient for gaming: If you’re looking at a pricey flagship, you’re likely wasting some money if gaming is your primary focus. You can game on as little as a quad-core CPU, but performance scaling really falls off past eight cores.
• Budget platform costs: You never want to pair a strong CPU with a weak GPU, RAM, and storage. Right now, it’s especially important to consider platform costs, however. DDR5 prices are peaking, and you’ll need to factor in the cost of DDR5 and a new motherboard if you’re coming from an older socket like AM4.
• Overclocking isn’t for everyone, but if you follow our How to Overclock a CPU guide, you can scrape out extra performance gains.

Best CPU for Gaming 2026 - $300 to $400

The Ryzen 7 9800X3D technically isn’t the fastest gaming chip on the market any more. That title goes to the new Ryzen 7 9850X3D, though the victory is marginal. As you can read in our Ryzen 7 9850X3D review, AMD’s latest X3D offering pushes ahead by 3.3% on average. Despite a minor uplift, we’re still recommending the Ryzen 7 9800X3D. With prices as they currently are, the Ryzen 7 9850X3D is only 3.3% faster despite costing around 6% more than the Ryzen 7 9800X3D.

This chip really has no peer in the market outside of the Ryzen 7 9850X3D — the Ryzen 7 9800X3D delivers outstanding gaming performance, beating Intel's fastest gaming chip, the $469 Core i9-14900K, by 30% in our test suite. The 9800X3D is also almost unbelievably 35% faster than the current-gen Intel flagship, the $560 Core Ultra 9 285K. The stock Ryzen 7 9800X3D's 1% low frame rates (a good smoothness indicator) also deliver an exceptionally smooth gaming experience, benefiting gamers even in GPU-limited scenarios.

The Ryzen 7 9800X3D has eight cores and 16 threads that operate at a 4.7 GHz base and 5.2 GHz boost clock rate. The chip employs AMD's 3D V-Cache tech with a new spin, which places a 3D-stacked SRAM chiplet underneath the die to deliver an incredible 96MB of L3 cache to great effect. AMD moved the L3 cache chiplet from the top to the bottom of the compute die this generation. That gives the integrated heat spreader (IHS) direct access to the compute die, allowing for more thermal headroom, and in turn, higher clock speeds. The end result is a comparatively low-power chip that delivers incredible gaming performance and comparable productivity performance to other eight-core models on the market.

3D V-Cache previously came with trade-offs in the productivity department, but that’s not the case with the Ryzen 7 9800X3D. Still, 3D V-Cache doesn’t provide a performance benefit in every game, and the performance benefit is less pronounced as your display resolution climbs.

The Ryzen 7 9800X3D has much lower power consumption than the Intel competition, making it a far cooler processor that won't require as expensive accommodations, like a beefy cooler, motherboard, and power supply. It also takes particularly well to undervolting, which is easy to accomplish with AMD’s Curve Optimizer. That means the 9800X3D delivers top-notch gaming performance and a cooler, quieter, and less expensive system than you'll get with an Ultra 9 or Core i9.

Read: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D Review

The $305 Ryzen 7 9700X had a rough initial product launch, but AMD's targeted firmware and operating system improvements have changed the picture tremendously, allowing the chip to place much higher on our CPU benchmark hierarchy (head there for the most up-to-date gaming benchmarks). Combined with lower-than-launch pricing, the Ryzen 7 9700X is a strong contender, tying Intel's Core i9-14900K in gaming and beating the Core i7-14700K. That's not to mention that it beats Intel's entire lineup of Arrow Lake processors as well. Now, all of those processors offer faster performance in heavily-threaded productivity applications than the 9700X, but when it comes to a pure gaming experience, the 9700X either ties or beats all current Intel competitors.

The Ryzen 7 9700X has eight Zen 5 cores with 16 threads that operate at a 3.8 GHz base and 5.5 GHz boost clock. The chip has a 65W TDP, though AMD retroactively added a 105W TDP option you can select in the BIOS that helps boost performance in productivity applications. It's covered by the warranty, as well. With either setting, the 9700X has comparatively tame power consumption, so it is an easy chip to cool. You'll have to buy your own cooler for the processor, though.

The Ryzen 7 9700X drops into socket AM5 motherboards, and B-series motherboards make the most sense for this class of chip. B850 and B840 motherboards get AMD's latest chipset with features like mandatory PCIe 5.0 support on the top M.2 slot and better availability for features like Wi-Fi 7. However, the Ryzen 7 9700X will still work with the older B650 chipset if you can find a board on sale.

Read: Ryzen 5 9700X Review

The $350 Core Ultra 7 270K Plus performs like a flagship CPU, but it costs about half as much. In games, it narrowly outclasses the Core i7-14700K and offers a 2.4% boost over the competing Ryzen 7 9700X. AMD’s last-gen Ryzen 7 7800X3D still offers around a 10% boost over the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, but it’s also around $50 to $80 more expensive depending on sales.

It’s a solid gaming CPU, and certainly a better recommendation than the Core i7-14700K given prices right now. Compared to the Ryzen 7 9700X, things are tighter. The Core Ultra 7 270K Plus gains an edge with productivity performance. Short of the 9950X, it’s at the top of our multithreaded performance rankings, more than doubling the performance of the Ryzen 7 9700X.

On the gaming front, it supports Intel’s new Binary Optimization Tool, which offers an average of an 8% improvement in gaming performance based on our testing. It’s only available in a limited number of games at the moment, but Intel says it plans to support the feature with updates in the future.

For specs, the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus is close to the 285K. It comes with 24 cores and threads, split across eight Lion Cove P-cores and 16 Darkmont E-cores. The P-cores boost up to 5.4 GHz and the E-cores can climb to 4.7 GHz. Across the CPU, you get a total of 76 MB of combined L2 and L3 cache. It comes with a 125W TDP and 250W MTP. Critically, the Core Ultra 270K Plus also comes with a 900 MHz boost in die-to-die frequency and 400 MHz boost in fabric frequency compared to stock Arrow Lake chips.

The Core Ultra 7 270K Plus slots into existing 800-series motherboards with the LGA 1851 socket. This is an unlocked chip, so if you want to get the full benefits of overclocking, you’ll need a Z890 board. However, it’ll still work with H- and B-series motherboards, just without CPU overclocking support.

Read: Core Ultra 7 270K Plus Review

Mid-Range Best CPU for Gaming - $200 to $300

Intel has returned to gaming prominence with its Arrow Lake Refresh CPUs, and nowhere is that clearer than with the $220 Core Ultra 5 250K Plus. It’s priced like a budget CPU at $220, but it can perform as well (and sometimes even better) than chips that cost twice as much. It doesn’t dominate the gaming charts in the same way as AMD’s X3D offerings, but at this price, it doesn’t need to. It offers marginally better performance than AMD’s competing six-core Ryzen 5 9600X in games while running the tables with application performance.

On average, the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus is 1% faster than the Ryzen 5 9600X at 1080p, and 9% faster than the 245K. It’s functionally identical, but Intel’s new iBOT feature allows the chip to hold some solid leads in certain titles. For instance, it’s 10% ahead of the 9600X in Cyberpunk 2077. Even in a non-iBOT title like Doom: The Dark Ages, the 250K Plus leads by 12%. There are still some games that struggle with the unique Arrow Lake architecture like F1 2024, but the losses are less pronounced with the souped-up Arrow Lake Refresh chips compared to the stock offerings.

The application performance is what really stands out with the 250K Plus, however. With 18 cores, it outpaces the Core i7-13700K, nearly matches the Core i7-14700K, and more than doubles the performance of the Ryzen 5 9600X in multithreaded applications. In single-threaded applications, it beats the Ryzen 5 9600X by 6%.

Although you get 18 cores, they’re split between six Lion Cove performance cores and 12 Darkmont efficient cores. The P-cores climb up to 5.3 GHz, while the E-cores top out at 4.6 GHz. The CPU comes with a combined 60 MB of L2 and L3 cache, along with a TDP of 125W and a MTP of 159W. Like all Arrow Lake chips, it doesn’t support Hyper-Threading, so you get 18 total threads.

The Core Ultra 5 250K Plus slots into existing motherboards with the LGA 1851 socket. It’s unlocked for overclocking, so a Z-series motherboard is an ideal pairing. However, Intel increased the die-to-die frequency and the fabric frequency out of the box, and you’ll see those improvements in action on B- and H-series motherboards, as well. It’s locked to DDR5 memory, unlike Raptor Lake and Alder Lake platforms, and it officially supports speeds up to 7200MT/s.

Read: Core Ultra 5 250K Plus Review

The $230 Ryzen 5 7600X3D is currently the best value gaming CPU you can get right now, though it trades performance in other areas to reach that status. It's just 4.5% slower than the Ryzen 7 7800X3D based on our testing, giving you most of the performance of AMD's coveted 3D V-Cache in games without the extra cost.

In games, it outclasses more expensive CPUs with ease, including the Ryzen 7 9700X, and averaged just 65W of power draw during our gaming tests. Outside of games, however, the Ryzen 5 7600 X3D struggles. The Core Ultra 5 250K Plus is more than twice as fast in multithreaded performance, and in single-threaded performance, even the base Ryzen 5 7600X is around 13% faster.

The lagging productivity performance makes sense. The Ryzen 5 7600X3D is a six-core / 12-thread chip, so it has limited multithreaded potential, and it only clocks up to 4.7 GHz. The limited specs give AMD room to cram 102 MB of combined L2/L3 cache on the die, however, which comes with a sizeable boost in gaming performance. Compared to the base Ryzen 5 7600X, the X3D version is 22% faster despite coming in at lower peak clocks and power draw.

You can slot the Ryzen 5 7600X3D into socket AM5, which is available on 600- and 800-series motherboards, though the latter may require a BIOS update. Memory and CPU overclocking is available on both B- and X-series chipsets; however, the Ryzen 5 7600X3D has a locked multiplier, so the only overclocking you can access is through AMD's Precision Boost Overdrive, or PBO.

Read: Ryzen 5 7600X3D review

Highest Performance Best CPU for Gaming - $400+

How do you improve upon a CPU that already claims a dominating position in gaming and productivity workloads? You add more cache, of course. The Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 is powerful, expensive, and hungry for wattage, but it’s the best of the best if you want top-shelf gaming and application performance. It throws value out the window, and it’s only marginally better than the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, but it is still better.

Based on our testing, it’s about 3.9% ahead of the Ryzen 9 9950X3D in multithreaded applications, and in lockstep in gaming at 1080p. Compared to Intel’s Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 is 9% ahead in multithreaded performance and 23% ahead in average gaming performance. The Ryzen 7 9800X3D delivers a better value on the gaming front, and the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus is a monster productivity chip at a third of the price of the 9950X3D2. But the magic trick of this chip is that it can do both without breaking a sweat.

Under the hood, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 is similar to the Ryzen 9 9950X3D. It’s a 16-core / 32-thread chip packing AMD’s Zen 5 architecture, and it tops out with a 5.6 GHz boost clock; just 100MHz behind the 9950X3D. As the name suggests, this processor is unique because it uses AMD’s 3D V-Cache on both CCDs. Both eight-core CCDs have 32 MB of onboard cache, plus an additional 64 MB chunk placed under the cores, giving you a total of 192 MB of L3 cache.

The extra cache slightly accelerates multithreaded performance overall, though only by around 4%. There are specific workloads where the advantage is more present, with some data science workloads showing performance gains in the realm of 26% over the Ryzen 9 9950X3D. Those specific workstation-class workloads are where the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 earns its stripes.

Otherwise, it’s the chip to buy because you simply want the best, no matter what the cost or how marginal the improvements are. It slots into existing AM5 motherboards, and it’s best suited for newer 800-series chipsets. AMD officially supports memory speeds up to DDR5-5600, though we find that DDR5-6000 is the sweet spot for Zen 5 CPUs.

Prices have dropped since release, though the 9950X3D2 is still expensive. It launched at $1,000, but you can find the chip for around $900 now.

Read: AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Review

The prior-gen $469 Core i9-14900K is now selling for all-time low pricing, primarily because the newer $560 Core Ultra 9 285K has arrived to take its place. However, the Core Ultra 9 285K is actually slower than the 14900K in gaming, so it isn't a suitable replacement. The new Core Ultra 7 270K Plus is marginally slower based on our testing, as well. Even in the face of Intel’s 200S Boost update, which was meant improve gaming performance, the competitive landscape remains unchanged. In our testing, the Core Ultra 9 285K gained an average of 7% from the update, which means it’s still slower than the Core i9-14900K.

You should be aware that the much more economically-priced 14700K (listed above) is only 2% slower than the 14900K in gaming but costs over $100 less. The Ryzen 7 9700X, also listed above, is also less expensive and effectively ties the 14900K in gaming.

However, there are Intel fans willing to pay extra for the absolute most gaming performance they can get from an Intel platform. Also, the 14900K does offer more multi-threaded horsepower than the 14700K and 9700X, which could be useful if you game, stream, and record simultaneously or do other heavy multi-tasking while gaming. Just make sure that your use case justifies the extra cost.

The 14900K sports leading-edge connectivity, supporting DDR4-3200 or up to DDR5-5600 memory, along with 16 lanes of PCIe 5.0 and an additional four lanes of PCIe 4.0 from the chip for M.2 SSDs.

The chip comes with eight P-cores that support Hyper-Threading and 16 single-threaded E-cores for a total of 32 threads. The P-cores have a 3.2 GHz base, and peak frequencies reach an amazing 6.0 GHz with Turbo Boost Max 3.0 (this feature is only active on P-cores). Meanwhile, the E-cores have a 2.4 GHz base and stretch up to 4.4 GHz via the standard Turbo Boost 2.0 algorithms. The chip also has 36MB of L3 cache and 32MB of L2.

This 14900K has a 125W PBP (base) and 253W MTP (peak) power rating, but we recorded considerably lower power consumption than its prior-gen counterpart. You'll need to buy a capable cooler for the chip, and you'll also need either a 700-series or 600-series motherboard. Like other Raptor Lake Refresh chips, you can find DDR4 and DDR5 motherboards, though you’ll need to go with a DDR5 board for the highest performance.

The lower price of DDR4 might entice some gamers, but you'll lose anywhere from 5-8% of gaming performance with higher-end Intel chips. You can step up to the much more expensive DDR5 if you need access to more memory throughput and, thus, every bit of performance possible.

Beyond specs, the Core i9-14900K was at the center of a years-long controversy concerning instability. An error in the microcode (CPU firmware) meant the Core i9-14900K would degrade faster than expected, starting with instability in games. Intel has rectified the issue with microcode 0x12F, so make sure you update your BIOS immediately if you pick up Intel’s last-gen flagship

Read: Intel Core i9-14900K Review

Best Budget CPU Pick - $100 to $150

The $164 Ryzen 5 7600X is an attractive budget CPU at its new price, forced down by Intel's new Arrow Lake Refresh chips. It’s marginally slower than the Ryzen 5 9600X, but also marginally cheaper – the Ryzen 5 7600X offers about 90% of the performance of the Ryzen 5 9600X for 94% of the price. It’s a slightly worse value, but it’s still a good option to keep in mind, especially if you find it on sale. The Ryzen 5 7600, sans X, is available at around the same price. We’ve yet to see it drop below the Ryzen 5 7600X, however.

With the 7600X, you get six cores and 12 threads based on the Zen 4 architecture, clocked at 4.7GHz with boost speeds up to 5.3GHz. Unlike the Ryzen 5 9600X, the Zen 4-based version comes with a TDP of 105W. Cooling it shouldn’t be an issue, and you’re free to run in AMD’s 65W Eco mode through the Ryzen Master software.

The Ryzen 5 7600X slots into AM5 motherboards, including 600- and 800-series chipsets, and it supports PCIe 5.0. DDR5 is required, which is a tough pill to swallow at this bang-for-your-buck price point, but it’s hard to avoid soaring RAM prices.

Read: Ryzen 5 7600X review

The $135 AMD Ryzen 5 5600 delivers a solid blend of performance in both gaming and productivity applications, bringing a new level of value to the Zen 3 lineup. If you're fine sticking with a previous-gen AM4 motherboard, the Ryzen 5 5600 makes a great base for a budget build. The primary trade-off for the AM4 platform is that you're limited to DDR4, and you don't have access to PCIe 5.0. You also have a limited runway for upgrades, as the fastest gaming CPUs on AM4 – the Ryzen 7 5700X3D and Ryzen 7 5800X3D – have reached end of life.

The Ryzen 5 5600 also makes an absolutely unbeatable budget chip if you're updating a first-gen Ryzen system. The 5600 unseats the Ryzen 5 5600X, a long-time favorite. The 5600X is only a mostly imperceptible ~1% faster in gaming and multi-threaded PC work than the non-X model, but provides a 4% advantage in single-threaded work.

Our testing shows that the Ryzen 5 5600 generally matches the gaming performance of its more expensive sibling, the ~$230 Ryzen 7 5800X. That makes the 5600 an incredibly well-rounded chip that can handle gaming well, from competitive-class performance with high refresh rate monitors to multi-tasking gaming workloads like streaming, while also serving up more than enough performance for day-to-day productivity apps. As with all AMD CPUs for gaming, you can fully overclock the chip.

The Ryzen 5 5600 has a 3.7 GHz base and 4.6 GHz boost clock. The chip also has a 65W TDP rating, so it runs cool and quiet. Existing AMD owners with a 500-series motherboard will be happy, as the 5600X drops right into existing 500-, 400-, and 300-series motherboards. If you need a new motherboard to support the chip, AMD's AM4 motherboards are plentiful and relatively affordable, with the B-series lineup offering the best overall value for this class of chip.

Prices for the Ryzen 5 5600 have drifted upward as stock depletes, but that’s offset by platform costs. In addition to low prices on AM4 motherboards, the Ryzen 5 5600 is limited to DDR4. High DDR5 prices are a significant roadblock to opting for a newer chip, as prices continue to surge. So it’s hard to recommend a newer budget CPU, even if it’ll net you higher performance. In the event you already have a kit of DDR5, the $189 Ryzen 5 7600 is a compelling option, and it includes AMD’s Wraith Stealth cooler.

Read: AMD Ryzen 5 5600 Review

Entry-Level Best CPU for Gaming - For gaming on integrated GPUs

The $268 Ryzen 7 8700G, AMD's flagship desktop APU, delivers the fastest socketed performance on the market from integrated graphics, bringing passable 1080p gaming to the desktop PC without a discrete graphics card, but its high price point relegates it to a niche audience.

In contrast, the $191 Ryzen 5 8600G delivers 90% of the 8700G's performance but for ~$80 less, making it a solid alternative for gaming systems that don't use a discrete GPU.

Naturally, you'll have to accept lower fidelity settings and be realistic about which titles can play at 1080p resolution. Still, AMD's Hyper-RX suite of features, which includes in-driver Radeon Super Resolution upscaling tech, frame generation with AMD Fluid Motion Frames (AFMF), Anti-Lag+, and Radeon Boost, helps boost performance at a slight cost to image quality. This new feature set, a first for AMD's iGPUs, is a boon for budget gamers.

The Ryzen 5 8600G has six Zen 4 CPU cores and the RDNA 3 GPU engine with eight CUs. The Ryzen 5 8600G drops into the AM5 platform, with value-focused B650 and A620 motherboards being the obvious best combination. These systems offer a new level of connectivity for AMD's APU processors, which were previously on the aging AM4 platform but require DDR5 memory. That adds some cost, so do a value analysis before selecting this processor. If you're looking for the lowest entry price possible with an APU, the Ryzen 5 5600G listed below slots in as the value alternative.

The Ryzen 7 8600G only supports 16 usable lanes of PCIe 4.0 connectivity, while other processors on the AM5 platform support PCIe 5.0. However, we don't feel this will impact this class of system.

More: AMD Ryzen 7 8700G and Ryzen 5 8600G Review

The Ryzen 5 5600G steps into the arena as the value champ for APUs, which are chips with strong enough integrated graphics that they don't require a discrete GPU for light gaming—just be sure you're willing to accept lowered quality settings.

The Ryzen 5 5600G gives you 96% of the gaming performance on integrated graphics than its more expensive sibling, the Ryzen 7 5700G, but for 25% less cash. Our testing shows that its level of performance makes it the best value APU on the market. As long as you're willing to sacrifice fidelity and resolution and keep your expectations in check, the Ryzen 5 5600G's Vega graphics have surprisingly good performance in gaming.

The 5600G's Vega graphics served up comparatively great 1280x720 gaming across numerous titles in our tests, but options become more restricted at 1080p. Of course, you can get away with 1080p gaming, but you'll need to severely limit the fidelity settings with most titles.

With eight cores and 16 threads that operate at a 3.9 GHz base and boost up to 4.4 GHz, the Ryzen 5 5600G also offers solid performance for its price point in standard desktop PC applications. The chip also comes with a bundled Wraith Stealth cooler, sweetening the value prop, and drops into existing 500-series and some 400-series motherboards, though support on the latter will vary by vendor.

The Ryzen 5 5600G is nearly five years old, and as a result, it’s hard to find it in stock at a reasonable price. AMD updated this model with the Ryzen 5 5600GT in early 2024, which features identical silicon and a slight boost to clock speed, and you’ll generally find it for less at around $150.

If your budget is tight and you're looking to build a system for modest gaming, you should check out our Best Cheap CPU feature. Some of those chips can deliver passable gaming performance without a graphics card, and their prices start at just $55 (£40).

Read: AMD Ryzen 5 5600G Review

• MORE: CPU Benchmark Hierarchy
• MORE: AMD vs Intel
• MORE: Best Cheap CPUs
• MORE: Best CPUs for Workstations

AMD's 3D V-Cache technology has proven to be the killer tech that delivers dominating performance over Intel in gaming, and the second-gen revision propels the 16-core, 32-thread $699 Ryzen 9 9950X3D to a whole new level of gaming performance — all while preserving the lion's share of performance in productivity applications. Our CPU benchmarks show the 9950X3D is an incredible 37% faster than Intel's flagship Core 9 285K on average in 1080p gaming. It also beats Intel’s fastest competing gaming chip, the Core i9-14900K, by 26% on average in our test suite. In fact, on average, the 9950X3D even ties the hands-down best CPU for gaming on the market, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D.

Naturally, performance will vary by title due to the vagaries of the 3D V-Cache tech, but the 9950X3D is impressive in a wide range of workloads, and its higher 170W TDP also unlocks exceptional Intel-beating performance in many of our productivity benchmarks.

AMD's game-boosting 3D V-Cache tech is now in its third generation, and this time around, AMD moved the vertically-stacked 64MB L3 cache chiplet from the top to the bottom of the compute chiplet to enable higher thermal headroom (details here). As a result, the 9950X3D has the same 170W/230W TDP threshold as the standard Ryzen 9 9950X model instead of the 50W lower rating the company used with the previous-gen 7950X3D model, which ultimately hampered performance.

AMD's goal is to master both disciplines — gaming and productivity — with its dual-chiplet X3D processors, but that's a tricky technical challenge. To build on the success of the first-gen models, the company also refined its chipset drivers to deliver more accurate thread scheduling in some corner cases. This helps reduce the performance delta between its single- and dual-chiplet X3D models. AMD also whipped in full overclocking support for the 9950X3D, which we’ve tested, allowing you to eke out more performance in gaming and productivity work.

AMD also launched the lower-tier $599 Ryzen 9 9900X3D today, saying its new drivers help reduce the vast differences between the two last-generation models. We don't yet have the 9900X3D for testing, but we're working to obtain a sample.

If you're looking for a quick take on performance, see the image album below, which breaks down performance in gaming and productivity applications. These overall measurements are backed up by our benchmarks on the following pages, so be sure to check those out. As you can see, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D is a tremendous chip in nearly every single category.

For now, all eyes are on the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, and from what we've seen, it's another grand slam against Intel. Team Blue still hasn't developed a counter to AMD's 3D V-Cache technology, effectively ceding the gaming crown to its rival in the desktop PC market. AMD's new optimizations serve widen the gap even further. Let's take a quick look at the new tech, then move on to the benchmarks.

AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D Pricing and Specifications

As with the prior-gen 7000X3D chips, the two new 9000X3D chips use two compute dies, with one die featuring a 3D-stacked V-Cache chiplet that increases L3 cache capacity to 128MB. This keeps game data close to the execution cores, boosting performance in many types of titles (but not all). Meanwhile, the other standard chiplet can boost to higher frequencies to deliver more performance in both single- and multi-threaded tasks. Overall, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D is built on the same foundation as the Ryzen 9 9950X; it just has a single L3 SRAM chiplet placed under one of the compute dies.

The Zen 5-powered Ryzen 9 9950X3D comes armed with 16 cores, 32 threads, 144 MB of total cache, and a peak boost clock rate of 5.7 GHz. This chip has a 170W TDP, 50W higher than the prior-gen model. That's because AMD’s previous-gen 3D V-Cache chips employed a 3D-stacked chiplet on top of the compute die, which trapped heat and constrained the operating temps/voltages, ultimately forcing AMD to lower the TDP.

The new models now have the L3 SRAM die on the bottom of the chip, removing a barrier between the hotter compute die and the chip cooler. That unlocks higher thermal headroom. AMD extracts the additional headroom with the higher 170/230W TDP, allowing higher clocks and longer sustained boost activity.

The Ryzen 9 9900X3D sports 12 cores, 24 threads,140 MB of total cache, and a 5.5 GHz boost. This chip has the same 120/162W TDP as its predecessor and its non-X3D counterpart, the Ryzen 9 9900X, so we expect significantly less performance than the 9950X3D across the board. AMD hasn't sampled this chip but says it has dramatically reduced the performance gulf between the two Ryzen 9 X3D models. We included the company's 9900X3D benchmarks at the bottom of the following page.

AMD's Updated Chipset Drivers 

We've covered AMD's chipset drivers in-depth in the past. The drivers have a suite of components that enable its dual-chiplet processors to operate as close as possible to the single-chiplet comparables, despite having only a single L3 cache die under one of the compute chiplets.

AMD's first dual-chiplet X3D processors employed a new version of thread targeting that works in tandem with putting unneeded cores to sleep, thus forcing game code to run on the single chiplet that houses the performance-boosting L3 cache. However, this implementation made an irreversible change to the operating system that could hamper performance if the chip were later swapped out for a single-CCD processor, with the only remedy being a complete reinstallation of the operating system.

As you can see in the slides above, AMD has now fixed that issue with an updated Provisioning Packages Service (the engine that manages core parking and thread targeting). After roughly 15 minutes of idle time, this driver now automatically detects when a new processor has been installed in the system and adjusts the provisioning accordingly, so there's no need for an operating system reinstall. Things are essentially plug-and-play now, as they should be. AMD also addressed a shortcoming with its 3D V-Cache Performance Optimizer, so it now works when Virtulization-Based Security (VBS) is enabled on Windows 10.

Despite multiple components working in concert to ensure that games run smoothly on the dual-CCD models, some game titles remain problematic. To fix this, AMD revived its Application Compatibility Database (ACD), a technology that debuted with the first Threadripper CPUs. The ACD is a list-based feature that detects when certain games are launched (listed in the image above). It then triggers a mechanism that reduces the number of threads, thus hiding them from the operating system and fully preventing the game code from running on the unoptimized chiplet.

Internally, AMD has affectionately nicknamed this 'Core Lie' because the feature lies with the operating system about the number of cores available. This mechanism assures optimal performance with several of the more stubborn titles, helping to once again reduce the difference between the single- and dual-chiplet X3D models.

Let's see what all of this looks like in our gaming benchmarks on the next page.

AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D Gaming Benchmarks — The TLDR

Nearly every title in our 16-game test suite benefits tremendously from 3D V-Cache acceleration, but this isn't the case with all games in the wild. Some games simply don't benefit as much, or at all, from the 3D V-Cache. This can be due to either the game code or a GPU limitation. We have also included AMD's benchmarks with a very broad range of 40 titles at the end of this page to provide a more balanced view of the impact of 3D V-Cache in some titles that don't benefit.

Here is the high-level view of gaming performance, using the geometric mean of our 16 gaming benchmarks at 1080p, which is then followed by our individual benchmarks further down the page. We're testing with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 FE to reduce GPU-imposed bottlenecks as much as possible, and differences between test subjects will shrink with lesser cards or higher resolutions and fidelity.

Once again, AMD's 3D V-Cache technology impresses us with stunningly good performance across our gaming benchmarks, with the Ryzen 9 9950X3D matching AMD's claims of being within roughly one percent of the current fastest CPU for gaming, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D. The 9800X3D was 0.4% faster than the 9950X3D across our full 1080p gaming suite, which is a tie. However, this removes much of the underlying nuance — the dual-CCD Ryzen X3D models are faster than the single-CCD models in some titles, while roles are reversed in others. You can see which titles favor which below, but the big takeaway is that the 9950X3D is wicked fast in gaming.

AMD only claims a 20% lead over the 285K, but the Ryzen 9 9950X3D leads the Core Ultra 9 285K by a whopping 37% in our benchmarks, mirroring the delta we saw with the 9800X3D launch. Intel's previous-gen Core i9-14900K is actually the best contender against the AMD lineup in gaming, but the 9950X3D is still an insurmountable 26% faster.

Surprisingly, during our tests, we regularly saw the 9950X3D's V-Cache CCD boost to ~5.5 GHz, while the 9800X3D was often in the 5.2 to 5.3 GHz range. In the albums below, you can see the average clockspeeds of each processor during each game.

Intel's troubled Arrow Lake continues to suffer. Intel originally said the Core Ultra chips would match the previous-gen Core i9-14900K, but a chaotic launch found the chips severely trailing even the prior-gen parts. Intel promised fixes to bring Arrow Lake up to the original claims of performance parity with its 14th-Gen chips, but our testing found that those fixes didn't help. In our testing, the latest Windows updates benefited the 14th-Gen chips more than Arrow Lake, worsening the situation.

We retested again for this review. Even with the latest version of Windows and the RTX 5090, things haven't improved for our Arrow Lake test platform.

The 9950X3D is also a respectable 15% faster than the prior-gen Ryzen 7 7800X3D and 20% faster than the Ryzen 9 7950X3D. As you can see above, there isn't as much of a gap between the new 9000X3D series models as with the prior-gen 7900X3D and 7950X3D.

AMD has finally brought full overclockability to its X3D series, but we haven't done much fine-grained tuning. Instead, we tested with AMD's simple auto-overclocking Precision Boost Overdrive feature (marked with 'PBO' in the chart), and it delivered less than a 1% gain in gaming. As such, we left that entry out of the individual game tests below. However, PBO was very impressive in the heavily threaded workloads in our productivity benchmarks, which you can see on the following page. More targeted tuning might yield better results in gaming, but as always, your mileage will vary.

Our gaming suite is very heavily skewed toward CPU-limited titles, and our selection is also very 3D V-Cache-friendly. Again, not all games will benefit equally. The competition between AMD and Intel chips can vary based on the title (particularly with X3D models) and the GPU you use. It's best to make an informed decision based on the types of titles you frequently play, so be sure to check out our individual game tests below. (Our lab isn't as temperature-controlled as we would like, so consider the gaming temperature measurements a rough guide.)

A Plague Tale: Requiem Benchmarks — AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D

The Ryzen 9 98000X3D starts out the gaming results with what will become a familiar trend throughout the rest of the results — it resides comfortably above the competing Intel processors.

Baldur's Gate 3 Benchmarks — AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D

As you can see, the dual-CCD 9950X3D beats the single-CCD 9800X3D in this title, and the previous-gen dual-CCD Ryzen 9 7950X3D also beats its single-CCD comparable, the 7800X3D.

There are several more examples of this trend throughout the albums below; some titles respond better to the dual-CCD design, while others favor the single-CCD design. Given that most games are locked to a single CCD regardless, we think this is largely the result of the 9950X3D's higher effective clock rates on its cache-equipped CCD.

Cyberpunk 2077 Benchmarks — AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D

Cyberpunk 2077 can be an incredibly GPU heavy game with ray tracing, and we're opting for the more CPU constrained ultra (non-RT) settings, without upscaling — and note that none of our CPU gaming tests have upscaling of any form enabled.

F1 2024 Benchmarks — AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D

We test F1 24 with the ultra preset, which does enable some RT effects. They're relatively lightweight compared to other games, and of course we're still hitting 200+ FPS on most of the CPUs.

Far Cry 6 Benchmarks — AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D

Far Cry 6 is an AMD-promoted game that responds incredibly well to 3D V-Cache.

Final Fantasy XIV Benchmarks — AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D

Hitman 3 Benchmarks — AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D

Hitman 3 leverages Intel's E-cores for certain game functions, but it also likes Ryzen X3D's voluminous L3 cache. We enabled ray tracing effects for this title to further tax the CPUs, but as you can see, the RTX 5090 still chews through this title easily if the CPU keeps it fed.

Hogwarts Legacy Benchmarks — AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D

Hogwarts Legacy is yet another game that slightly favors the Ryzen 9 9950X3D's dual-CCD design.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 Benchmarks — AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 obviously benefits from L3 cache — the Ryzen X3D chips are incredible in this title. We've added the newer version of this game to our benchmark suite, too, but we'll keep this one around as well due to its popularity.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 Benchmarks — AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D

We've also begun testing Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. This title relies heavily on data streaming and has a unique game engine, so it's time to start poking at it. As you can see, it inherits Flight Simulator 2020's love for 3D V-Cache (perhaps even more so).

Minecraft — AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D

Monster Hunter Wilds — AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D

Spider-Man 2 Benchmarks — AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D

Starfield Benchmarks — AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

The Last of Us, Part 1 — AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D

Watch Dogs Legion Benchmarks — AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D

Watch Dogs Legion closes out our testing with mundane scaling instead of the typical large deltas we see with the X3D chips.

AMD's Ryzen 9 9950X3D Gaming Benchmarks

As mentioned, performance can vary based on the title. AMD shared its own benchmarks to highlight what you should expect in various titles, so this is useful information — especially given that our test suite is 3D V-Cache-friendly. As with all vendor-provided performance data, view it with the appropriate skepticism. AMD's test notes are on the final slide.

AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D Productivity Benchmarks — The TLDR

We boil down productivity application performance into two broad categories: single-threaded and multi-threaded. These slides show the geometric mean of performance in several of our most important tests in each of these categories, but be sure to look at the expanded results below for more granular analysis.

Selling a 16-core chip for $699 means it has to deliver the goods in productivity workloads, too. The Ryzen 9 9950X3D lives up to that billing, delivering a solid 20% gain over the prior-gen Ryzen 7 7950X3D. Unlike the trends we saw with the previous-gen models, the 9950X3D matches the vanilla Ryzen 9 9950X in our overall measure of performance in multi-threaded workloads. Notably, there are plenty of examples of the 9950X taking the lead in the heavily threaded workloads in the albums below, but the difference in many of the real-world workloads is surprisingly slim.

The $620 Core Ultra 9 285K is the 9950X3D's real competitor in productivity workloads; it delivers far more performance in threaded workloads than the Core i9-14900K. Regardless, the 9950X3D is 11% faster in threaded workloads than the 285K. However, our overall measurement is heavily influenced by performance in AVX-512 workloads. The 9950X3D has an easy leg up due to its support for AVX-512, while the 285K can't leverage the performance-boosting instructions. The results below also have plenty of examples where the 285K takes the lead over the 9950X3D in threaded workloads.

Our simple PBO overclock yielded a 6% boost for the 9950X3D with no real effort, and we also included those results in the albums below. Remember, the Intel processors would also benefit from overclocking, but this would require far more manual intervention.

What the Intel chips lack in sheer threaded horsepower, they make up for in single-threaded performance. In our cumulative single-thread performance measurement, the Core Ultra 9 285K is 7% faster than the 9950X3D, and the 14900K is 3% faster.

Rendering Benchmarks — AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D

Intel's Arrow Lake excels in many of the heavily threaded rendering workloads, like its huge leads in POV-Ray, C-Ray, and LuxMark C++. It also delivers leading performance in the single-threaded Cinebench R23 and 2024 benchmarks.

The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D also has its advantages, easily leading in Blender, Embree, and both Cinebench multi-core benchmarks, among others. Again, we see strong gains in some workloads from the PBO feature and a surprisingly slim difference between the 9950X and 9950X3D.

Encoding Benchmarks — AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D

Most encoders tend to be either heavily threaded or almost exclusively single-threaded — and it takes an agile chip to master both disciplines. Handbrake, SVT-HEVC, and SVT-AV1 serve as our threaded encoders, while LAME and FLAC are indicative of how the chips handle lightly-threaded engines.

Adobe Photoshop, Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve — AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D

The PugetBench for Creators suite is a wonderful tool for benchmarking multiple types of Adobe applications, not to mention DaVinci Resolve. We used the benchmark for Photoshop, Premiere Pro, and DaVinci workloads.

Web Browser, Office Benchmarks — AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D

Compilation, Compression, AVX, Chess Engines, Others — AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D

This selection of tests runs the gamut from massively parallel molecular dynamics simulation code in NAMD to compression/decompression performance.

Y-cruncher computes Pi with the AVX instruction set, making for an exceedingly demanding benchmark. This benchmark was recently updated with specific tuning for AMD's AVX-512 implementation. The new code delivers a big boost to Ryzen. Intel's new chips make big strides in this benchmark over the prior generation, but they only support AVX-256 natively, so AMD gets an easy win — the Ryzen 9 chips are incredibly impressive in the BPP benchmark.

Intel has historically performed well in compilation tasks, but the 9950X/3D clawed back the leadership spot in the LLVM benchmark, but by a slim margin. The 285K takes a strong lead in the NAMD simulation code benchmark, while the AMD processors excel at most Chess engine benchmarks and the John the Ripper password cracker.

Geekbench 6, Geekbench AI — AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D

The GeekBench AI results in the slide deck above show performance with the workload running on the CPU cores via OpenVino and ONNX. Only two CPUs in this group have in-built NPUs — the Core Ultra 9 285K and Ultra 7 265K — making them the only processors capable of running the workload on a dedicated NPU. Given that the NPU is focused on low-power inference tasks, the results are impressive relative to the performance when the workload executes on the CPU cores.

AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D Power Consumption and Efficiency

We are now measuring CPU power consumption metrics at the EPS12V connector, so our new results are not comparable to the data in our prior reviews. We previously used software monitoring tools like AIDA64 and HWinfo for our power measurements. These tools scrape power consumption measurements directly from the motherboard's sensor loop, thus removing VRM inefficiencies from the values and presumably showing us exactly how much power the processor consumes.

However, motherboard OEMs can game these measurements, so we always did spot checks with various hardware-based measurement tools (Powenetics hardware or Passmark's In-Line PSU), and we've avoided using certain motherboards with unreliable power metrics in the past. We ultimately chose software monitoring because we can integrate it into our scripted tests, thus simplifying and speeding up the process, and it allows us to catch more granular workload data.

Intercepting power at the EPS12V connectors (the eight-pin connectors on the motherboard) is great for measuring power consumption. However, the main drawbacks are that it doesn't measure the true amount of power flowing into the processor due to VRM inefficiencies, typically in the range of 10 to 15% on high-end motherboards, and it wasn't easy to script a software trigger.

We finally have hardware-based power monitoring with Benchlab equipment that can be integrated and scripted into our test suite. You can see those results below. As a reminder, these values are measured before VRM inefficiencies are taken into account.

The Ryzen 9 9950X3D is a comparatively miserly chip, given the level of performance it delivers throughout our test suite. The chip peaked at 233W but hovered in the low 200s during most workloads.

In comparison, the Core i9-14900K is an egregious power guzzler, sucking down up to 383W during a Blender workload, and bear in mind this chip doesn’t match the 9950X3D in productivity workloads.

The Core Ultra 9 285K is more miserly than the 14900K, but it peaks at 325W, showing it can also have a voracious appetite. In most workloads, the 285K draws as much or more power than the 9950X3D in its overclocked PBO configuration.

As expected, we see a disproportionately large increase in power consumption for slim performance gains when we kick on the 9950X3D’s PBO feature. Given the small gains in gaming, PBO certainly isn’t worth it for gaming, but it is far more useful for those focused on productivity work.

The watts-per-FPS chart quantifies power efficiency during an x265 HandBrake workload. As you can see, the 9950X3D is near the top of the list with exceptional power efficiency, particularly given its 16-core design.

The last two slides take a slightly different look at power consumption by plotting the cumulative energy required for an x265 HandBrake and Blender workload. We plot this 'task energy' value in Kilojoules on the left side of the chart, with performance charted on the x-axis.

These workloads consist of a fixed amount of work, so we can plot the task energy against the performance during the job (bottom axis), thus generating a useful power chart. Faster compute performance and lower task energy are ideal. That means processors closest to the bottom right corner of the chart are the best.

As you can see, the newest AMD chips gather in that area during the HandBrake workload but migrate to the upper right corner in the Blender plot. Meanwhile, the 285K and other Arrow Lake chips greatly improve over their 14th-Gen predecessors.

AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D Test Setup

We have moved from the RTX 4090 to the RTX 5090 FE for our game testing, which spurred an update to our gaming and application suites. We tested with the latest version of Microsoft Windows 24H2 (22631) and updated all drivers, BIOSes, and applications to the latest versions (sans y-cruncher). To speed up the testing process, we use XMP/EXPO as the default memory profiles for all tested configurations. The memory speeds used for each chip are shown in the table below.

We tested the Ryzen 9 9950X3D in standard stock trim and with the auto-overclocking Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) feature enabled. We used the 'advanced' and 'motherboard' power settings for the PBO configuration with a 10X scalar and 200 MHz clock adjustment. We also dialed in a -15 all-core Curve Optimizer offset.

We used lifted power limits for the Intel processors, which results in higher power consumption and heat, but you get faster performance in exchange.

Microsoft has advised gamers to turn off several security features to boost gaming performance. For maximum performance, we disabled Virtualization Based Security (VBS) on all systems. Be aware that, due to hardware acceleration, some processor architectures handle virtualization better than others. This can provide a performance advantage when gaming with VBS enabled, but we haven't observed meaningful differences in our testing.

The $699 Ryzen 9 9950X3D sets a new bar for the company’s potent lineup of gaming-optimized X3D processors, sharing the top spot with the Ryzen 9 9800X3D as the fastest gaming CPUs in the world. AMD’s continued evolution of its ground-breaking 3D V-Cache tech has dramatically reduced the tradeoffs of lower productivity performance that used to be associated with its X3D chips, leaving little reason not to buy the chip if you prize both leading-edge gaming performance and real grunt power in productivity workloads.

Intel doesn't have a chip that can deliver a comparable blend of performance in both gaming and productivity. For gamers interested in Intel chips, the 14th-Gen processors remain the fastest for gaming, but they can’t compete with AMD’s X3D processors, and their aging design isn’t as powerful in productivity workloads as Intel’s newer Arrow Lake Core Ultra 9 285K.

Unfortunately for the Core Ultra 9 285K, while it maintains a lead over the 9950X3D in single-threaded work, it doesn’t establish itself firmly enough in multi-threaded applications to give it a complete win over Ryzen 9 in productivity work, and it is obviously a painfully inadequate competitor in gaming. That leaves Intel without a meaningful competitor for the Ryzen 9 9950X3D.

Below, we have the geometric mean of our gaming test suite at 1080p and a cumulative measure of performance in single- and multi-threaded applications. We conducted our gaming tests with an Nvidia RTX 5090, so performance deltas will shrink with lesser cards and higher resolution and fidelity settings.

It’s a dead heat in 1080p gaming at the top of the chart, with the Ryzen 9 9950X3D matching the 9800X3D. More impressively, the 9950X3D dispatches Intel’s chips easily, beating the 285K by 37% and the Core i9-14900K by 26%. Gaming is simply a no-contest.

The Ryzen 9 9950X3D is impressive in productivity work, too, matching the standard Ryzen 9 9950X in our overall measure of both single- and multi-threaded workloads, an impressive accomplishment. It’s also 11% faster than the 285K in threaded workloads, though Intel fires back by taking a 7% lead in single-threaded work.

It isn’t often that a generational increase in TDP and power consumption is considered a good thing, but that’s exactly what we get with the Ryzen 9 9950X3D. The previous-gen 7950X3D had to step back 50W behind its standard counterpart due to its top-mounted L3 cache chiplet, but AMD's decision to move the chiplet to the bottom has drastically improved its ability to dissipate heat effectively. While we saw strong gains from this new technique with the single-chiplet 9800X3D, it is perhaps most important with the dual-CCD models. In the case of the 9950X3D, the extra 50W of headroom unleashes more horsepower for gaming and productivity work, making it the most powerful all-arounder that money can buy.

AMD will also release the 9900X3D tomorrow, but this chip doesn't look as promising. AMD's previous-gen 7900X3D suffered from a sizeable performance gap with its more powerful counterpart, scuttling the value proposition. The company says it has reduced that disparity this time around; however, the price delta is still slim between the two chips, especially given what will be substantial differences between the chips in productivity workloads. Don't pull the trigger on that chip until you see third-party testing.

Meanwhile, Arrow Lake remains a disappointment for us, and pretty much everyone else, too. Despite a string of BIOS, driver, Management Engine, and Windows updates, the Arrow Lake processors remain underwhelming on the multiple platforms we've tested.

The Ryzen 9 9950X3D scores another walk-in touchdown for AMD, easily earning its $699 price tag. Given the intense demand for the Ryzen 9 9800X3D and the resulting rolling shortages, we expect it might be hard to get your hands on the Ryzen 9 9950X3D at first, especially at MSRP. For those on the hunt for the highest-end performance money can buy, it will be worth the effort. If you can afford it, you won't find a mainstream desktop PC chip that offers a stronger blend of gaming and productivity performance.

Every once in a while, we come across a laptop that makes us reconsider what luxury looks like. Lenovo’s 14-inch Yoga Slim 9i ($1,834.99 as tested) is the apex of class and style when it comes to Windows laptops, with a sleek glass lid and an ultra-thin profile that even smaller-screen laptops struggle to match. It also has one of the finest displays we’ve ever laid eyes on. That said, this beauty isn’t without its flaws, so be sure to weigh your options among the best ultrabooks carefully before maxing out your credit card.

Design of the Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i

If I were to call any laptop a true luxury item, the Yoga Slim 9i would fit the bill. Its glass lid is the real showstopper, featuring a stunning blue finish that shimmers and changes hues when it catches the light. It's absolutely beautiful.

As you open the lid – easily done with one hand – you’ll see the sleek metal chassis. It’s rock solid, with no trace of flex, even when I (inadvisably) tested its strength by picking it up from one corner. The lid isn’t quite as rigid, but it’s still reassuringly stiff. The rounded, reflective chassis edges are yet another luxurious touch.

The design does have its drawbacks. The lid and chassis edges are prone to smudges and fingerprints, so keeping a microfiber cloth handy is a good idea. And while it has passed MIL-STD-810H tests for durability in extreme conditions, you’ll want to handle this with extra care to avoid any unsightly scratches.

The Yoga Slim 9i is one of the most portable 14-inch laptops, at 12.32 x 8.01 x 0.57 inches and weighing 2.76 pounds. Its exceptionally thin display bezels are partly thanks to a special webcam design that is based under the screen. You can see more on that in the webcam section, below.

The Dell XPS 13 (9350) is a bit more compact, thanks to its 13.4-inch display, measuring 11.62 x 7.84 x 0.58 inches and weighing nearly the same at 2.7 pounds. Despite having an even smaller 13-inch display, the HP Omnibook Ultra is actually larger than the Yoga, coming in at 12.41 x 8.96 x 0.65 inches and 3.47 pounds. The Apple MacBook Pro (M4, 14-inch), sits somewhere in between, with dimensions of 12.31 x 8.71 x 0.61 inches and a weight of 3.4 pounds.

One trade-off for being this slim is the limited selection of physical connections – just two Thunderbolt 4 (USB Type-C) ports. The Dell XPS 13 (9350) has the same problem. On the bright side, Lenovo positioned one on each edge, giving you some flexibility when plugging in the power adapter. That said, there’s no USB Type-A port, dedicated video output, or even a headphone jack. If you depend on physical connections, you’ll probably need to carry adapters or transition to Bluetooth devices.

Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i Specifications

Productivity Performance on the Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i

We tested the Yoga Slim 9i with an Intel Core Ultra 7 258V processor, 32GB of RAM, Intel Arc Graphics 140V, and a 1TB SSD. The CPU is a “Lunar Lake” chip featuring four performance and four efficient cores.

The laptops we’re using in the comparison charts include the 14-inch Apple MacBook Pro (10-core M4, $1,949 as tested), the Dell XPS 13 (9350) (Core Ultra 7 258V, $1,599 as tested), and the HP Omnibook Ultra (AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 375, $1,748 as tested). Both the Apple and HP laptops have considerably stronger processors for the price.

The Yoga Slim 9i was competitive with the XPS in the synthetic Geekbench 6 test, achieving 2,733 points in single-core and 11,038 points in multi-core, compared to the XPS’s 2,660 and 10,486 points, respectively. However, it trailed the HP, which scored 2,847 and 14,838 points. The MacBook bested them all, especially in single-core performance, with an impressive score of 3,807 points in single-core and 15,114 points in multi-core.

In our 25GB file transfer test, the Yoga Slim 9i finished last, copying at an average speed of 1,032.87 MBps. The MacBook performed slightly better at 1,167.29 MBps. The XPS showed a marked improvement with 1,533.86 MBps, while the HP led the pack with an impressive 1,708.23 MBps.

The Yoga Slim 9i continued its average performance in our Handbrake test, which transcodes a 4K video file to 1080p. It completed the task in 6 minutes and 7 seconds, outperforming the XPS, which took 8 minutes and 35 seconds. However, it fell short compared to the MacBook’s 4 minutes and 27 seconds and the HP’s 4 minutes and 18 seconds.

We stress-test ultrabooks with 10 loops of Cinebench 2024. The Yoga 9i scored 582 points on the first run and maintained consistency within five points across subsequent runs, demonstrating stable thermal performance. During the test, the P-cores operated at an average of 3.1 GHz, while the E-cores averaged 3.6 GHz. The average temperature of the processor was 60 degrees Celsius (140 Fahrenheit).

Display on the Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i

The Yoga Slim 9i’s OLED touch display is its hallmark feature. With a 3840 x 2400 resolution (16:10 aspect ratio), it shows remarkable detail, making individual pixels indistinguishable to the human eye. Its picture quality is simply spectacular and the best I’ve seen on a laptop. Colors were incredibly vibrant in Despicable Me 2, and I was glued to BBC’s Planet Earth III for hours. The brightness is also very good; I didn’t use the laptop at maximum brightness most of the time.

The wide color space will appear to creators; the Lenovo Vantage app lets you switch between sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color spaces. Additionally, the refresh rate can be toggled between 60 Hz and 120 Hz using the Fn + R keyboard shortcut.

The display does have a couple of drawbacks, the most noticeable being its reflective surface, which can produce distracting glare from ambient light. While this wasn’t a major issue for me, I did find myself using higher screen brightness than I would have preferred to counteract the reflections.

Another issue, which I initially didn’t notice, is that the top corners of the display are rounded, like some of Microsoft's Surface devices, resulting in a small portion of the pixels being cut off. For example, the Close (X) button in application windows appears slightly trimmed at the top right. Although this doesn’t impact the laptop's overall usability, it seems to be a trade-off for achieving such a slim top display bezel.

The Yoga's brightness and color performance were on par with the OLED-equipped XPS 13, delivering 146.5% DCI-P3 color coverage and an average peak brightness of 356 nits — impressive for an OLED display. In comparison, the non-OLED models fell far behind in color reproduction. Among them, the MacBook Pro's mini-LED screen was the most vibrant, achieving 80.2% DCI-P3 coverage. While the Mac also led in brightness at 556.6 nits, it’s not directly comparable to the OLED displays.

Webcam on the Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i

The Yoga Slim 9i introduces what Lenovo calls the CUD (Camera Under Display). When enabled, you’ll notice a circular black mark appear at the top of the screen – that’s the webcam. It’s essentially like a notch on a smartphone. This is ingenious in the sense the webcam is invisible except when it’s on; no bezel on top of the screen is needed to accommodate it.

That said, I found the webcam quality disappointing, particularly for a laptop this expensive. It displays significant grain and color distortion even under good lighting conditions. Despite a 1080p video resolution, it lacks sharpness, too. The camera also boasts a 32-megapixel photo resolution, but this felt more like a marketing gimmick; the photos showed little improvement over the video quality, and the extra resolution doesn’t do anything to help that.

One upside with the webcam is that it does have a physical kill switch on the laptop’s right edge. However, it lacks an infrared sensor, leaving the fingerprint reader as the sole biometric option.

Keyboard and Touchpad on the Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i

Although many ultraportable laptops often have shallow keyboards, the Yoga Slim 9i surprises with a healthy 1.5 mm key travel. The keys provide satisfying tactile feedback for long typing sessions. I quickly got used to it, managing 112 words per minute with perfect accuracy on my first try in the MonkeyType online typing test and 119 wpm the second time, which is my maximum speed on any laptop. I also appreciate the keys’ soft-touch coating and the two-level white backlighting that makes working in the dark no problem.

The main keyboard is laid out as expected and includes a Function Lock feature (Fn + Esc) to prioritize the F1 through F12 keys. The star key beside F12 is a customizable shortcut key, configurable through the Lenovo Vantage app. One downside, however, is the mismatched sizes of the arrow keys, which I find makes me prone to typos.

Only the right column of the keyboard is nonstandard, but in a good way. Arrayed from the top are shortcuts for performance mode (performance, balanced, or quiet), Dolby Atmos equalizer settings (e.g., movie, music, etc.), the display’s blue light filter, and one to launch the Lenovo Vantage app (described later in this review). There’s also a fingerprint reader at the bottom. The fingerprint reader isn’t the power button, which is located on the right edge.

The Yoga’s touchpad is also excellent. While it looks slightly small at 4.1 inches x 2.7 inches, it maximizes the available vertical space. My fingers glided across its surface, and the physical clicks provide direct tactile feedback without making too much noise.

Audio on the Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i

The Yoga’s speakers sound full-bodied and are plenty loud for personal listening. The bass notes and vocals in Aurosonic’s “Moving Mountains” were engaging, and I noted the crisp sound effects and satisfying bass depth while watching Blade Runner: 2049.

The Dolby Atmos settings in the Dolby Access app aid the sound quality. Music mode is good for everything, adding extra detail, while Movie mode noticeably expands the soundstage.

As I noted, the Yoga lacks a headphone jack, so you’ll need a Bluetooth or USB Type-C device for alternative sound output, such as the best PC speakers.

Upgradeability of the Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i

Upgrade prospects for the Yoga Slim 9i are, well, slim. The only replaceable parts are the battery and the SSD, which uses the compact M.2 2230 format, restricting compatible drives. Upgrading the memory is not possible since it is integrated into the Core Ultra 7 “Lunar Lake” processor. The Wi-Fi 7 wireless card is also soldered and not replaceable, though it shouldn’t need replacement anytime soon.

Removing the bottom panel of the Yoga Slim 9i is no simple task. In addition to four visible T5 screws, there are two hidden Philips-head screws concealed beneath the rear rubber foot. I used a plastic trim tool to carefully pry the foot loose. Lenovo used some adhesive to hold it down, but it seems unnecessary as the foot has hooks that go into the chassis. Once reattached, it felt just as stable. However, for those unfamiliar with this design, overlooking these hidden screws could lead to damage when attempting to remove the bottom panel.

When reassembling the laptop, that foot fits back in with hooks. I'm not sure it would survive a bunch of openings, but once or twice should be OK.

Battery Life on the Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i

Our battery life test involves simulated web browsing, streaming video over Wi-Fi, and running OpenGL tests, all with the screen brightness set to 150 nits. The Yoga Slim 9i trailed the group, lasting 11 hours and 3 minutes. The only device with a shorter runtime was the OLED-equipped XPS 13, at 8 hours and 40 minutes, but the normal LCD version lasted 17 hours and 29 minutes. Meanwhile, the Omnibook Ultra (with an IPS screen) lasted 12 hours and 52 minutes, while the MacBook Pro (with a mini-LED Liquid Retina XDR screen) led with 18 hours and 31 minutes. While the Yoga’s battery life is far from unusable, it wouldn't be our top pick for maximum endurance off the plug.

Heat on the Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i

We measure laptop surface temperatures during our Cinebench 2024 stress test. The Yoga’s touchpad registered 69 degrees F, the center of the keyboard (between the G and H keys) was 86 degrees, and the maximum temperature on the underside was 82 degrees. The laptop felt only lukewarm. Additionally, the fans operated quietly and remained unobtrusive, even in my nearly silent testing room.

Software and Warranty on the Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i

The familiar Lenovo Vantage app is the most important pre-installed software on the Yoga Slim 9i. Its user-friendly interface offers many useful features, such as a battery conservation mode, an overnight charging feature that adapts your habits to fully charge the battery before you need it, and a blue light filter for the display. Additionally, the app provides Dolby Atmos audio customization, system diagnostics, a security advisor, a network utility to identify secure wireless networks, system updates, and access to customer support.

A McAfee antivirus license is included, though we removed it for testing. There is also the mentioned Dolby Access app for setting Atmos equalizer settings.

Lenovo backs the Yoga Slim 9i with a one-year warranty.

Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i Configurations

Lenovo offers the Yoga Slim 9i in two configurations: one features a Core Ultra 7 256V processor paired with 16GB of RAM, while the other includes a Core Ultra 7 258V processor and 32GB of RAM. The two processors are identical apart from the embedded memory capacity. Both models come equipped with a 1TB SSD.

At $1,834.99, Lenovo’s Yoga Slim 9i is undeniably expensive, but it’s not unreasonable compared to similar premium laptops. For instance, the Dell XPS 9350, featuring an OLED screen, 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD, is listed at $1,999.99 on Dell.com as of this writing. The Apple MacBook Pro offers a comparable price point at $1,799.99, equipped with an M4 processor, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. On the other hand, the HP Omnibook Ultra is a more budget-friendly option, priced at $1,499.99 at Best Buy, with an OLED display, 32GB of RAM, and a 2TB SSD.

Bottom Line

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i is a dazzler, blending luxurious design with a spectacular OLED display. It stands out as one of the most stylish and portable 14-inch laptops on the market. Beyond aesthetic allure, it also features a comfortable keyboard, responsive touchpad, and solid audio performance.

That said, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i has its share of limitations. Its connectivity options are minimal, offering only two USB-C ports with no additional features – not even a headphone jack. The under-display webcam, while an impressive technological achievement, delivers disappointing video quality.

Moreover, though its battery life can cover a workday, competitors like the non-OLED Dell XPS 13 (9350) and the Apple MacBook Pro (14-inch, M4) offer even longer durations away from the plug, a trade-off for the Yoga’s gorgeous OLED display. Last, while its performance is more than sufficient for everyday tasks, the Core Ultra 7 “Lunar Lake” processor falls short when compared to more robust options like the AMD Ryzen AI-powered HP Omnibook Ultra or the M4-equipped MacBook Pro.

In the realm of premium ultrabooks, the Omnibook Ultra and the MacBook Pro remain stronger all-around choices at a comparable price, albeit with added weight and (in the case of the MacBook) the absence of an OLED display. But for those prioritizing elegance, display quality, and portability above all else, the Yoga Slim 9i is an enticing option.

Intel's budget Core Ultra 5 230F, depicted by the black packaging and exclusive to the Chinese market, has been tested in detail by Expreview. Within the limited 65W envelope, it lands impressive wins against its predecessor, occasionally toppling the Core i5-14600K in productivity. However, it still suffers from issues plaguing Intel's high-end Arrow Lake offerings, with introductory prices extremely close to those of the unlocked K-series.

The Core Ultra 5 230F offers 10 cores (6P + 4E) and 10 cores based on the Arrow Lake architecture with Lion Cove performance and Skymont efficient cores. The max turbo frequency on the P-cores sees a nice 100 MHz bump versus the Core i5-14490F at 5 GHz, while the efficient cores can boost 700 MHz higher than last-gen. The Core Ultra 5 230F seemingly uses A0 silicon (the 6P + 8E die), which is different from other budget models based on the B0 stepping (the 8P + 16E die).

Nonetheless, Intel has packaged this CPU with 22MB of L2 cache and 24MB of L3 cache (46MB total), a 37% improvement over the 14490F with 33.5MB total cache. The reviewer says that the Core Ultra 5 230F is retailing in China for around 2,000 Yuan ($275), just $25 shy of the 245K and much more expensive than the i5-14600K, which readily goes for 1,499 Yuan ($200). This combination of a price increase, so-so performance gains, and high platform entry costs will likely deter many potential customers.

The test bench features the MSI MAG B860M Mortar WiFi for the LGA 1851 platform and the Asus ROG Strix B760-G Gaming WiFi for the LGA1700 platform. Both systems use the RTX 4090 Founders Edition and 32GB of DDR5-6000 CL36 memory from Corsair. The benchmarks contain two Core Ultra 5 230F test runs and Core i5-14490F, one at stock settings and the other with elevated power limits.

In benchmarks like Y-Cruncher, 7-Zip, and 3DMark, encoding, Blender, V-Ray, and Cinebench, the Core Ultra 5 230F easily leads its predecessor by 7.9% in single-threaded performance and 20.9% in multi-threaded workloads, at stock. Interestingly, with unlocked power limits, the Core Ultra 5 230F improves by just 3.2% versus default settings, which isn't that impressive. When stressed in AIDA64, the Core Ultra 5 230F (4.3 GHz) draws 73.6W at stock, while Core i5-14490F (3.4 GHz) sips 81.2W of power. Increasing the power budget means the 230F (4.8 GHz) consumes 108.5W, and the 14490F (4.4 GHz) uses 139.4W of power.

In games, the Core Ultra 5 230F is neck and neck against the unlocked Core Ultra 5 245K. This isn't as impressive as you'd think since the bar is set relatively low, occasionally losing to the Core i5-14490F. AMD's Ryzen 7000 non-X processors can be tuned to match their X-equivalents through PBO. The same cannot be said for budget Arrow Lake, which might be a dealbreaker for many, especially considering that LGA1851 is rumored to support only one CPU generation.

Hardware leaker Jaykihn has shared what's believed to be the preliminary power specifications for Intel's upcoming Panther Lake-H CPUs, which are set to be used later this year in a new slate of laptops and mobile devices, which were previously shown off at CES 2025.

The alleged preliminary spec details three variants of chips within the series, denoting performance, efficiency, and Xe3 cores. These chips are set to be based on Intel's upcoming Celestial architecture. They will likely materialize as Intel's Core Ultra 300H series, and the alleged preliminary power specifications allow some speculation about the kinds of devices the company will target.

The first variant shows off a 16-core chip with a 4+8+4 configuration. Assuming this means four performance cores, eight efficiency cores, and four GPU cores. This specific configuration will likely reside in systems alongside a dedicated GPU. PL1 (Performance Base Power - PBP) and PL2 (Maximum Turbo Power - MTP) in both baseline and performance power modes will pull 25W and 64W- respectively.

The 4+8+4 configuration has notably fewer efficiency cores than its previous-gen counterparts. The same can be said for the second variant listed, featuring a 24-core configuration split into 4+8+12. This may indicate its suitability for a higher-end device with four performance cores, eight efficiency cores, and 12 GPU cores. The PBP is listed at a baseline of 25W, with an MTP of 55W. In the 'performance' mode, this changes to 25W and 64W, respectively.

The cTDP Max headroom on both chip configurations lists higher wattages, up to 80W MTP. This might imply that both chips have some headroom built for burst-heavy tasks like rendering. However, they are also set to be more efficient than the Core Ultra 200H series, which could boost into 100W+ territory.

The final listing is for a seemingly lower-end eight-core chip with a configuration of 4+0+4. This will likely be the Core Ultra 300U chip, set to be used in entry-level devices or gaming handhelds. This configuration can run with a PBP of just 15W and an MTP of 44W under the 'baseline' power mode, while it boosts up to a similar 25W PBP and 55W MTP under the 'performance' mode.

This tells us that Intel is starting to get serious about efficiency in its mobile chips. While AMD has long held the efficiency crown for x86 mobile devices, this initial power spec may be a step in the right direction for Intel. AMD has gained ground on Intel in both the desktop and laptop CPU market, with competition fiercer than ever. Intel's Panther Lake H CPUs will be produced in volume on the company's 18A (1.8nm-class) process in 2H 2025. The products are expected to be on shelves in early 2026.

Preliminary benchmarks at PassMark put Intel's new Arrow Lake-based Core Ultra 9 275HX 7% ahead of AMD's Ryzen 9 7945HX3D processor in CPU Mark. Moreover, despite a 400 MHz clock deficit, the 275HX manages to land 34% faster than last generation's i9-14900HX, with a solid 9% lead when looking at single-threaded performance. Because this test is based on only one sample of the processor, it is suggested to wait for in-depth, independent reviews before jumping to conclusions. Gaming laptops equipped with Intel's Arrow Lake-HX family are expected to launch soon, most likely hitting shelves next month with the launch of Nvidia's RTX 50 mobile series.

Arrow Lake-HX CPUs act as desktop replacements, employing an architecture similar to Core Ultra 200S chips on desktop, but in a BGA package. There are some minor differences between these CPUs and Arrow Lake-H, including the elevated TDPs and the lack of LPE cores on the SoC tile. These are Intel's highest-performing laptop chips this year, designed to be paired with a dedicated GPU, with a PBP (Processor Base Power) of 55W, going as high as 160W depending on the use case.

The Core Ultra 9 275HX in question is only second to the flagship 285HX, both offering 24 cores (8P + 16E) and 24 threads. The 275HX clocks at a maximum of 5.5 GHz on the performance cores, a 400 MHz deficit versus the last generation, and 100 MHz slower than the 285HX. Nonetheless, Intel has managed to extract somewhat decent efficiency and performance gains thanks to the newer TSMC N3B process and updated Lion Cove and Skymont architectures.

In the single-threaded benchmark at PassMark, the 275HX leads the pack; up to 16% faster than the Ryzen 9 7945HX3D. This is not an exact apples-to-apples comparison as AMD's new Zen 5-based Fire Range chips are just around the corner, so we aren't sure if Intel can maintain its performance throne for long. In any case, this lead extends to 34% against the i9-14900HX in CPU Mark; PassMark's proprietary tool for estimating a CPU's performance. Despite a near 7% reduction in boost clocks, the Arrow Lake chip still lands roughly 9% ahead in terms of single-core performance.

The Core Ultra 9 285H (Arrow Lake-H based) delivered lackluster efficiency numbers in a recent user review. While this could simply boil down to the dated Meteor Lake SoC tile, which shouldn't carry over to Arrow Lake-HX, it's best to hold off until detailed reviews are available to get a clearer picture.

Given the TDP of these chips, performance will largely depend on the laptop's thermals and power delivery capability. The integrated GPU has been updated to Alchemist+ with support for XMX supporting DPAS instructions. None of Intel's Arrow Lake chips are compliant with Microsoft's CoPilot+ requirements, except for Lunar Lake. Laptops packed with Intel's Arrow Lake-HX chips are slated for a late Q3 launch, so you'll probably see a handful of these on shelves next month.

Intel's Arrow Lake-based Core Ultra 7 255H appears to have been tested in PassMark, where it outperformed its Meteor Lake equivalent by 32% in single-threaded tests (via x86deadandback at X). Across a wide variety of metrics, the 255H is roughly 15% faster in CPU Mark, which is PassMark's proprietary metric for gauging a CPU's performance.

Intel revealed its Arrow Lake-H family of processors at CES, shortly followed by a user review at Bilibili, which left much to be desired from these CPUs. Dubbed Core Ultra 200H, these processors employ Intel's Arrow Lake architecture featuring Lion Cove P-cores and Skymont E-cores. What separates them from desktop chips, apart from the power envelope, is that these CPUs feature an LPE (Low Power Efficient) core cluster on the SoC Tile, a feature reused from Meteor Lake.

Unlike Lunar Lake which uses Battlemage (Xe2) graphics, Arrow Lake-H is armed with up to eight Xe-LPG+ (Alchemist+) cores with support for XMX. As the SoC Tile remains unchanged, Arrow Lake-H's NPU is capable of dishing out just 13 TOPS of INT8 performance, versus 45 TOPS on Lunar Lake. What is similar to Lunar Lake is the process node: TSMC's N3B, a step-up from Intel 4 used with Meteor Lake.

The Core Ultra 7 255H in question packs 16 cores, divided into six P-cores, eight E-cores, and two LPE-cores with 16 threads in total, as Arrow Lake lacks hyperthreading support. The Core Ultra 7 155H on the contrary is equipped with a similar layout but 22 threads. In PassMark's single-core benchmark, the 255H blazes past its predecessor, scoring 4,631 points compared to the 155H's 3,500 points for a 32% lead. This is a direct result of the updated Lion Cove P-cores and N3B process, allowing a 300 MHz bump in boost clocks. When aggregated, the CPU Mark rating puts Arrow Lake ahead by around 15%.

Relatively speaking, efficiency remains the Achilles' heel of these chips, as the 16-core Core Ultra 9 285H failed to beat the 10-core Ryzen AI 9 365 when limited to 50W of power. While Arrow Lake-H offers an updated Compute Tile and a slightly modified Graphics Tile, the SoC, and IOE Tiles are largely carried over from Meteor Lake.

It all comes down to how these laptops are priced since Strix Point devices still have an entry price of around $1,000. On that note, it is important to mention that the 15W variant of these Intel chips, Core Ultra 200U, is reported to be based on Meteor Lake with Redwood Cove+ P-cores and Crestmont+ E-cores fabbed on Intel 3, a node once reserved for Intel's server counterparts. This will allow Intel to extract higher margins with possibly lower prices for us, though we haven't exactly found affordable Arrow Lake laptops to be abundant, at least not yet.

Intel recently announced that publisher 2K would partner with it to launch its Intel Builder Bundle. This bundle now includes a copy of Firaxis-developed Sid Meier's Civilization VII alongside the previously bundled Assassin's Creed Shadows for purchasers of qualifying Intel desktop CPUs, namely 14th Generation Raptor Lake or Core Ultra 200S (Arrow Lake) CPUs.

Both bundled games are upcoming releases, with Civilization VII slated for a February 11 release and Civilization VII to release on March 20. The bundle itself will be redeemable on qualifying purchases made before March 31 until May 15, with games being provided as download codes on or after the release date, depending on the date of purchase.

As emphasized by Intel, Civilization VII will launch with day-one support for Intel XeSS upscaling and scheduling optimizations in collaboration with developer Firaxis Games for Intel Core and Intel Core Ultra CPUs. That and Intel's generally good gaming CPU performance (although AMD's Ryzen 9000X3D CPUs seem to take the gaming crown lately) should make Intel systems with this promo a pretty good choice for Civilization VII, especially for those whose much higher system requirements may push into upgrading.

Suppose you focus solely on gaming as a PC builder and hope to use this Civilization VII and Civilization VII bundle. We recommend opting for a 14th-generation CPU over an Intel Core 200S CPU. The Arrow Lake-based Intel Core Ultra 9 285K indicates a generational drop in gaming performance, which could make a 14th Generation Core i7 or Core i9 a much better choice for gaming-centric PC builders. At this point, chips like Core Ultra 9 285K only make sense for productivity-centric users despite being the newest from Intel.

In any case, those opting for a competitive Intel CPU covered with this bundle (14th Gen recommended) and with a mid-range modern GPU should have a pretty good gaming experience with these two bundled games upon release. If you were planning your next PC build around Intel and wanted these games anyway, acting before March 31 should be a nice way to save the additional $140 before taxes you'd be paying for both of those games standalone.

Intel’s Core Ultra 5 230F has finally made its public debut, and the midrange CPU has been confirmed as exclusive to China by the publication MyDrivers.

When the CPU first leaked out last year, it was rumored to be exclusive to China, which MyDrivers has confirmed in an article showcasing the 230F and its packaging. On the surface, it’s almost identical to other Core Ultra 200S (Arrow Lake) chips except for having a different heatspreader like other budget Arrow Lake CPUs. Its black box packaging is similar to that used for the higher-end unlocked models and other Intel China-exclusive chips that came before it.

The Core Ultra 5 230F has a ten-core configuration: six P-cores and four E-cores. The P-cores start at 3.4 GHz and can boost up to 5 GHz, while the E-cores have a base frequency of 2.9 GHz and cap out at 4.4 GHz. Compared to the Core Ultra 5 225(F), the Core Ultra 5 230F notably has generally higher frequencies and slightly more cache, a specification that’s usually identical among same-generation CPUs with the same amount of cores. There’s no regular Core Ultra 5 230 with integrated graphics, just the Core Ultra 5 230F.

The different cache size compared to the international version isn’t all that unusual for Intel CPUs. The Core i7-14790F was also exclusive to China, came in a black box, and offered slightly more cache than the regular 14700(F). The Core i5-14490F was even more like the Core Ultra 5 230F, featuring higher clock speeds and more cache than the Core i5-14400F. These 14th Gen China exclusives also did not have a non-F model.

After the Core Ultra 5 230F was revealed before its official release, speculation arose over what specific die the China-exclusive CPU would use. According to the Arrow Lake documentation, Intel has a midrange Arrow Lake-S die with six P-cores and eight E-cores on the A0 stepping and an Arrow Lake-H die with the exact core count but on the A1 stepping. Hardware sleuth Jaykihn claimed the Core Ultra 5 230F would use the A0 chip, while HXL, another prominent leaker, speculated it was based on the A1 variant.

However, the official product page of the Core Ultra 5 230F seems to state that it uses the A0 die conclusively. That means the two have no real hardware difference, as both chips use the same die. The different specifications are due to Intel’s manual alteration of clock speeds and cache sizes.

It is unclear whether that will affect performance. Geekbench 6 results for the Core i7-14790F indicated that the Chinese model wasn’t any faster than the regular Core i7-14700(F) in either multi-threaded or single-threaded performance. However, it might be a different story in gaming, especially as games love cache, and even just a few megabytes extra could make a difference.

Today's deal looks at the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 gaming laptop, with soon-to-be last-gen specifications such as the Nvidia RTX 4070 laptop GPU. This is more than likely the reason for the $500 discount on this gaming laptop, lowering stock levels to make way for the incoming Nvidia 50-series of gaming laptops. The Zephyrus G16 has a 16-inch screen with a high 165 Hz refresh rate for smooth gameplay visuals and uses a 1920 x 1080 pixel full HD resolution panel. Using a lower resolution panel will mean better laptop battery life and higher settings and framerates in your games, while still keeping a reasonable pixel density on the small screen.

Available at Best Buy, the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 is lowered to $1,099, marked down $500 from its previous $1,599 price tag. It's not the cheapest this laptop has ever been, that was $960 - an all-time low that was available briefly at the start of this year.

Inside the laptop is an Intel 13th Gen Core i7 13620H CPU with a base clock frequency of 2.4 GHz., 10 cores, and a boost frequency of 4.9 GHz. Accompanying the Intel CPU is the Nvidia RTX 4070 GPU, 16GB of DDR4 memory, and a 512GB SSD for storage.

Some other features of this laptop are an RGB backlit keyboard and a portfolio of ports that include a 3.5mm combo audio jack for a headset/mic, 1x HDMI 2.1, 2x USB 3.2 Type-A, 1x Thunderbolt 4, 2 x USB 3.2 Type-C, and a card reader—ample connectivity options for hooking up all your extra peripherals and screens.

Our testing shows that Intel’s fix for its Arrow Lake chips isn’t effective in addressing the chips’ lackluster gaming performance, at least on the motherboards we tested with. And we found that the Core Ultra 9 285K’s updated gaming performance with one motherboard is now slightly slower than before. Additionally, the required operating system update has improved gaming performance for the prior-gen Raptor Lake Refresh even more than the Arrow Lake chips, so the flagship Core Ultra 9 285K falls even further behind its predecessor. As you'll see in our benchmarks below, the Core Ultra 9 285K still does not meet Intel’s initial gaming performance marketing claims and will not make our list of the best CPUs for gaming.

The Intel ‘Arrow Lake’ Core Ultra 200S launch was marred with lower gaming performance than the company promised, failing to match the prior-gen Core i9-14900K flagship in gaming despite the company’s already-uninspiring claims of parity. Intel pointed to numerous issues as the source of the low gaming performance and issued fixes via both Windows and BIOS patches.

At CES 2025, Intel issued its own benchmarks with claims of up to 25% more gaming performance with the 'fix,' a claim we’ve unfortunately seen parroted by the press. But those gains only apply to certain very specific issues that not all reviewers and users will have encountered. As we'll cover in-depth below, there’s a copious amount of wiggle room in Intel’s dubious claims of performance gains, but our tests show the patches don’t have a tangible impact on the competitive positioning against AMD, and even worse, Arrow Lake now fares worse in gaming against its predecessor.

Testing Details

Intel’s ‘fix’ requires two basic components: Windows 11 build 26100.2314 (or newer) and microcode version 0x114 with CSME firmware kit 19.0.0.1854v2.2 (or newer). For our original review, we tested the then-current Windows version 26100.2033. We moved to version 26100.2605 for the configurations that represent patched performance. Intel says the newer version has an improved Power Performance Management (PPM) package that ensures good performance when using the balanced power profile. However, as with all reviewers who follow the most basic of best practices, we originally tested with the High Performance power profile for Intel systems, so we expect minimal to no impact on our testing from this change. You can read about the rest of the fixes here.

Cyberpunk 2077 had a rather large performance increase from a fix issued for the game code. However, Intel says this was an issue of the game dev’s own making, and the dev fixed the issue itself. Intel says we shouldn’t expect further game code updates that will boost Arrow Lake's performance in the future.

Multiple game titles have also received updates since our original review, thus making it impossible to replicate those results with the newer test configs. To keep things apples-to-apples, we took our original test setup with the launch version of the BIOS and Windows for a spin back through our test suite to ensure that we don’t attribute performance gains from game code updates to a ‘fix’ from Intel. Then, we tested the impact after updating to the latest BIOS/Windows versions.

As such, the entries below marked with 'Original' represent the original launch BIOS and firmware, but have new updated testing to reflect the current state of the game code. The entries marked with 'New FW-OS' represent testing with the cumulative impacts of all updates. For the sake of expediency, we only tested with standard DDR5 memory (no CUDIMMS) and two motherboard platforms.

Core Ultra 9 285K gaming performance