China's next-gen CPUs and GPUs prepare to challenge last-gen Intel and AMD in 2027 — Loongson 3B6600 and 9A1000 aim to match Intel's 12th Gen and AMD's RX 550

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Loongson’s bold bet to rival top-tier U.S. silicon

Loongson CPUs
(Image credit: Loongson)

According to a report from ITHome, Loongson Technology, one of China’s most prominent fabless chipmakers, has officially announced during its 2025 annual and 2026 Q1 earnings calls that the company’s highly anticipated next-generation 3B6600 processor and 9A1000 graphics chip are on track for the retail market in 2027. Although the 3B6600 and 9A1000 cannot hold a candle next to the best CPUs for gaming or best graphics cards, they reportedly achieve performance parity with Intel’s 12th Generation Alder Lake processors and AMD’s Radeon RX 550 graphics card, respectively.

Loongson began development of the 3B6600, the successor to the 3A6000, in 2024. Hu Weiwu, Chairman and General Manager of Loongson, recently confirmed that the 3B6600 has completed its design phase and is now ready for tape-out. The company anticipates that the 3B6600 will be delivered in the second half of the year, with plans to report the tape-out results at the Q3 earnings conference scheduled for October.

The 3B6600 represents a significant evolution over the previous 3A6000 series, not only in core architecture but also in performance and power efficiency. The 3B6600, which is still based on the LoongArch ISA but leveraging Loongson's latest LA864 execution cores, reportedly flaunts a 30% IPC improvement over the LA664 execution cores found inside the 3A6000.

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The 3B6600 will max out at eight cores and 16 threads, with base and boost clock speeds of up to 2.5 GHz and 3 GHz, respectively. The Loongson chip will support DDR5 memory, PCIe 4.0, and HDMI 2.1. According to the manufacturer's early single-core SPEC CINT2006 benchmarks, the 3B6600 seemingly rivals Intel's Alder Lake Core i5 and Core i7 chips.

Meanwhile, the 9A1000 is an entry-level graphics card that reportedly achieves performance comparable to the aging Radeon RX 550. The development of the 9A1000 began in 2023, with the initial goal of bringing the product to market by 2025. However, the project appears to have encountered a series of challenges as Loongson taped out the 9A1000 chip in September 2025. During the recent earnings call, Weiwu stated that the 9A1000 is now in the final stages for delivery, and the company plans to share tape-out results at the upcoming 1H earnings call in August.

The 9A1000 is just a stepping stone for Loongson as the company has further plans for other segments of the graphics card market. Weiwu confirmed that the high-performance 9A2000 and 9A3000 graphics cards are already in the design stages.

According to the earnings call report, the 3B6600 processor and 9A1000 graphics card reportedly rely on a proprietary manufacturing process, which is why design, integration, and tape-out cycles are longer. The 3B6600 and 9A1000 leverage a mature 12nm process node, which is the magic number because you can still produce 12nm with DUV (Deep Ultraviolet) litography tools. Remember that China is cut off from EUV (Extreme Ultraviolet) tools required for 7nm and below process nodes. Furthermore, 12nm is a very mature node, so production yields are high and sufficient to supply the large-scale Chinese market.

In addition to developing processors and graphics cards, Loongson is actively exploring new and ambitious ventures. During recent announcements, the company hinted at a potential strategic entry into the memory chip market, probably to ride the AI wave. To accelerate its progress, Loongson has seemingly established partnerships with other companies to co-develop logic silicon wafers for High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) chips.

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Zhiye Liu
Zhiye Liu
News Editor, RAM Reviewer & SSD Technician

Zhiye Liu is a news editor, memory reviewer, and SSD tester at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.

7 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Zaranthos
    China is still very far behind and even this article sounds more like Chinese propaganda than an actual news article.

    Intel Alder Lake (12th Gen): Launched on November 4, 2021.
    Loongson 3B6600: Currently expected to launch in 2027, with engineering samples planned for the second half of 2026. The boost clock of Loongson is still 2GHz behind the old Intel chip and inferior in other ways as well.

    You read the headlines and the article and you'd think something far different than reality if you weren't well informed. China is very good at marketing, and even better at outright lies.
    Reply
  • warezme
    Zaranthos said:
    China is still very far behind and even this article sounds more like Chinese propaganda than an actual news article.

    Intel Alder Lake (12th Gen): Launched on November 4, 2021.
    Loongson 3B6600: Currently expected to launch in 2027, with engineering samples planned for the second half of 2026. The boost clock of Loongson is still 2GHz behind the old Intel chip and inferior in other ways as well.

    You read the headlines and the article and you'd think something far different than reality if you weren't well informed. China is very good at marketing, and even better at outright lies.
    Perhaps but China is relentless and focused on developing their own ecosystem and have the financial backing to push it forward. Current policy to withhold technology from them is only going to server to accelerate their programs and commitment.
    Reply
  • usertests
    Zaranthos said:
    China is still very far behind and even this article sounds more like Chinese propaganda than an actual news article.

    Intel Alder Lake (12th Gen): Launched on November 4, 2021.
    Loongson 3B6600: Currently expected to launch in 2027, with engineering samples planned for the second half of 2026. The boost clock of Loongson is still 2GHz behind the old Intel chip and inferior in other ways as well.
    Intel isn't very far ahead of Alder Lake, so that isn't so much of a problem by itself.

    The 3B6600 will max out at eight cores and 16 threads, with base and boost clock speeds of up to 2.5 GHz and 3 GHz, respectively. The Loongson chip will support DDR5 memory, PCIe 4.0, and HDMI 2.1. According to the manufacturer's early single-core SPEC CINT2006 benchmarks, the 3B6600 seemingly rivals Intel's Alder Lake Core i5 and Core i7 chips.
    What is it actually rivaling from Intel 12th gen? Possibly MT performance somewhere between the 4-core i3-12100T and 6-core i5-12400T, with clearly slower single-threaded performance. And you may lose around 30% of performance when translating x86 instructions to LoongArch.

    Even if it ends up feeling like an i5-6400T instead of "Alder Lake Core i5 and Core i7", it's not a bad level of CPU performance for something that will probably end up in office PCs.

    The GPU hitting RX 550 performance is not impressive. It better be using under 75 Watts to do that, too. If it's intended primarily as a display adapter to be paired with the 3B6600, from what I'm reading, the 3B6600 has an "LG200" iGPU that may support up to 3 displays.

    Budget Builds Official just did a video on the RX 550 4GB. Of course, for all we know, the 9A1000 could be worse, not to mention driver issues:

    lCgM6b5ZzuI
    Reply
  • ivan_vy
    usertests said:
    Intel isn't very far ahead of Alder Lake, so that isn't so much of a problem by itself.


    What is it actually rivaling from Intel 12th gen? Possibly MT performance somewhere between the 4-core i3-12100T and 6-core i5-12400T, with clearly slower single-threaded performance. And you may lose around 30% of performance when translating x86 instructions to LoongArch.

    Even if it ends up feeling like an i5-6400T instead of "Alder Lake Core i5 and Core i7", it's not a bad level of CPU performance for something that will probably end up in office PCs.

    The GPU hitting RX 550 performance is not impressive. It better be using under 75 Watts to do that, too. If it's intended primarily as a display adapter to be paired with the 3B6600, from what I'm reading, the 3B6600 has an "LG200" iGPU that may support up to 3 displays.

    Budget Builds Official just did a video on the RX 550 4GB. Of course, for all we know, the 9A1000 could be worse, not to mention driver issues:

    lCgM6b5ZzuI
    the key point is if this CPU and GPU can ( and will) be used in office environments at good price-performance ratio, that means 0 (zero) dollar to Intel/AMD duopoly. you don't need an i7 to update spreadsheets.
    Reply
  • cyrusfox
    ivan_vy said:
    the key point is if this CPU and GPU can ( and will) be used in office environments at good price-performance ratio, that means 0 (zero) dollar to Intel/AMD duopoly. you don't need an i7 to update spreadsheets.
    That depends on the spreadsheet/database being built. Or perhaps its more of a reflection of the awful state excel is in, making any edits a pain (pause after every cell entry_ regardless if you are rocking an i7 with 64gb of ram or not. I blame office 365, Would gladly go back to Office 2010, that was the last time I remember it being snappy.
    Reply
  • usertests
    ivan_vy said:
    the key point is if this CPU and GPU can ( and will) be used in office environments at good price-performance ratio, that means 0 (zero) dollar to Intel/AMD duopoly. you don't need an i7 to update spreadsheets.
    Yeah, and the CPU looks fine for that. But I question the point of the (first generation) dGPU. It's not going to be winning over any gamers, and the government/office PCs could probably use the iGPU in the 3B6600.
    Reply
  • nookoool
    usertests said:
    Yeah, and the CPU looks fine for that. But I question the point of the (first generation) dGPU. It's not going to be winning over any gamers, and the government/office PCs could probably use the iGPU in the 3B6600.

    I remember watching a 5 year old review of loongson with igpu vs a amd card and there was significant difference in handling of hd video streams. Possible there igpu hasn't have that much improvement and having any cheap dgpu is better than not having one. Seems every hobbyist on bilibili are running a amd 550 , 580 or 6700 etc so we will likely see that comparison going forward for each release.
    Reply