Articles by Jake Roach, Senior Analyst, CPUs

Jake Roach has been bending pins and busting solder joints since the mid-2000s. From trying to run scratched CDs of Delta Force and Unreal Tournament to spitting out virtual machines on a Threadripper, Jake has been on the hunt for the latest hardware and highest performance for decades. That eventually spun up a career, with Jake serving as Lead Reporter at Digital Trends, as well as contributing to outlets like XDA, PC Invasion, Business Insider, and WIRED. At Tom’s Hardware, Jake is focused on consumer and workstation CPUs. Outside working hours, you’ll find him knee-deep in the latest roguelite taking over Steam, spending way too much money on Magic: The Gathering, or forcing his lazy corgi onto walks.

Articles by: Jake Roach

Deals post feature image for the MSI MAG 275UPD E14

Get a 4K upgrade for $200 with MSI's 144Hz gaming monitor — save $80 on dual-mode display in Newegg's Valentine's Day sale

By Jake Roach Published 14 February 26

Deals The MSI MAG 275UPD E14 is one of the cheapest 4K gaming monitors around, and you can score it for $200 ($80 off) for Newegg's Love For Tech sale.

The Ryzen 7 9850X3D CPU leaning against a graphics card.

Our testing shows the Ryzen 7 9800X3D can match the pricier Ryzen 7 9850X3D with simple PBO settings — AMD's latest CPU can't leverage extra clock speed in games

By Jake Roach Published 11 February 26

Turn your Ryzen 7 9800X3D into a Ryzen 7 9850X3D with a two-minute BIOS detour.

CPU scaling with DLSS — investigating CPU performance in the age of upscaling

By Jake Roach Published 6 February 26

Premium In a time of ubiquitous upscaling, your CPU can quickly become a performance bottleneck.

Lisa Su, chair and chief executive officer of Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD), speaks during an AMD news conference ahead of the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, on January 5, 2026. (Photo by Caroline Brehman / AFP)

AMD CEO downplays PC memory crunch, saying 'our focus areas are enterprise' — company wants to focus on growing 'higher-end of the market'

By Jake Roach Published 3 February 26

AMD's CEO doesn't seem concerned with current memory prices, suggesting the company is focusing its efforts on the enterprise.

AMD reveals next-gen Xbox could launch in 2027 — CEO says semi-custom SoC ready to 'support launch in 2027'

By Jake Roach Published 3 February 26

AMD's CEO Dr. Lisa Su let out a hint about the next-gen Xbox, which will sport a semi-custom SoC that should be ready next year.

Intel returns to boxed workstation CPUs with Xeon 600 — Granite Rapids WS delivers up to 86 cores, 4TB of memory, and 128 PCIe 5 lanes

By Jake Roach Published 2 February 26

Intel is returning to desktop workstations with Xeon 600. Granite Rapids WS CPUs deliver up to 61% better multi-threaded performance, according to Intel, sporting up to 86 cores and 4TB of memory.

AMD CES 2026 gaming trends press Q&A roundtable transcript — 'we see a little bit of an uptick in the percentage of AM4 versus AM5 platforms'

By Zak Killian Published 29 January 26

Premium We sat down with AMD at CES 2026 for a roundtable Q&A all about consumer products for gaming. We cover the full transcript of the press-only session right here.

Here are the tools I use as Tom’s Hardware resident CPU reviewer — a cheap aluminum open bench, thermal paste wipes, platform-labeled external power buttons, and more

By Jake Roach Published 29 January 26

Benchmarking CPUs for Tom’s Hardware requires more than just running a few tests. Here’s how I get through our 10-hour benchmarking gauntlet for each chip efficiently.

AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D review: The world's fastest gaming processor, again

By Jake Roach Published 28 January 26

The Ryzen 7 9850X3D was never set up for success, but our testing reveals the ugly side of AMD’s latest X3D CPU: higher power consumption for minuscule performance gains.

'We can't completely vacate the client market' says Intel amid wafer supply shortages — Nova Lake still on-track for late 2026 release, 14A in 2028

By Jake Roach Published 22 January 26

Intel says it is facing wafer supply shortages, but it's not going to "completely vacate the client market" as a result.

AMD ROCm CES 2026 press Q&A roundtable transcript — 'ROCm from 2023 is completely unrecognizable to ROCm today' company details, as it seeks to break down barriers to AI development

By Zak Killian Published 22 January 26

Premium We had the opportunity to sit down with AMD at CES 2026 for a press roundtable discussion, where we discussed ROCm and other AMD software, as captured in this transcript of AMD's Q&A session.

AMD FSR Redstone press roundtable CES 2026 transcript — company speaks out on why AI 400 lacks RDNA 4 GPU

By Zak Killian Published 16 January 26

Premium We attend a roundtable interview with AMD to discuss their graphics technologies like FSR Redstone, and more at CES 2026.

Examining DDR4 PC build options in 2026 — With high DDR5 prices, a PC build with DDR4 is worth considering, especially if you have RAM you can carry over from a previous build

By Joe Shields, Jake Roach Published 15 January 26

Just because they aren’t cutting edge, doesn’t mean you can’t get great gaming and productivity performance with one of these builds.

Intel showed up for consumers at the 'Consumer Electronics Show;' AMD didn’t

By Jake Roach Published 9 January 26

AI everywhere is starting to feel like it comes at a cost.

Intel Panther Lake press Q&A transcript — EVO is still alive, and the company ditches prior-generation naming scheme

By Sayem Ahmed Published 9 January 26

Premium We sat down at CES 2026 with a panel of Intel staff to ask questions about Core Ultra Series 3.

AMD teases heavily-rumored Ryzen 9 9950X3D2, continues to leak despite CES no-show — Alienware Area 51 may not be a beneficiary after all (Updated)

By Hassam Nasir Last updated 8 January 26

Along with a British system integrator who's putting it inside a workstation.

AMD is unfazed by Panther Lake's big integrated GPU — 'It's not even a fair fight' to compare the Arc B390 to Strix Halo, AMD exec claims

By Aaron Klotz Published 8 January 26

AMD's Rahul Tikoo claims that the company has a better selection of products compared to Panther Lake that are better suited to the needs of graphics-intensive customers and mainstream consumers.

AMD Ryzen 5 3400G in socket AM4 motherboard

Senior AMD executive suggests consumers buy cheap CPUs to combat memory pricing squeeze — says ‘consumers have a wide assortment of choice available for all kinds of price points’

By Jowi Morales Published 7 January 26

An AMD executive says that they're not too concerned about the memory shortage, points out that AMD has a wide range of CPUs available "for all kinds of price points."

Intel Panther Lake pre-release testing delivers over 80 fps in Cyberpunk, 100 fps in F1 — Arc B390 offers playable 1080p frame rates with XeSS quirks in our hands-on tests

By Jake Roach Published 7 January 26

Panther Lake’s 12 Xe3 cores can deliver some serious gaming horsepower, but the software still needs work

Lenovo brings handheld-favorite SteamOS to the flagship Legion Go 2 — the AMD Z2 Extreme gets official SteamOS support for the first time

By Jake Roach Published 7 January 26

Lenovo is bringing official SteamOS support to AMD’s Ryzen Z2 Extreme processor for the first time with an updated Legion Go 2.

AMD hints at officially open-sourcing FSR 4 upscaling and frame generation technology in the wake of accidental release — accidental release may have forced the company's hand

By Bruno Ferreira Published 6 January 26

AMD hints at officially open-sourcing FSR 4

AMD Ryzen chief teases return of older Zen 3 chips to fight soaring RAM prices — 'That's something we're actively working on right now'

By Bruno Ferreira Published 6 January 26

AMD interview suggests it might restart production of DDR4-based AM4 Ryzen desktop processors

Asus unveils the ROG Cronox, its first panoramic PC case with a 9.2" screen and rotating fan bracket — chassis supports up to 14x 120mm fans & dual 360mm radiators

By Hassam Nasir Published 6 January 26

The company's most ambitious case yet.

Asus launches two new ROG Zephyrus laptops at CES — 14 and 16-inch models come with latest AMD and Intel CPUs, and up to RTX 5090 GPU

By Jowi Morales Published 6 January 26

Two new ROG Zephyrus laptops, available with a 14-inch or 16-inch display, come with either an Intel Core Ultra 300 or AMD Ryzen AI CPU, plus up to an RTX 5090 GPU.

The Asus ROG NeoCore Wi-Fi 8 concept router showcased at CES 2026

Asus debuts ROG NeoCore Wi-Fi 8 router concept at CES — promising better range and lower latency for gamers and smart homes

By Kunal Khullar Published 6 January 26

The Wi-Fi 8 concept router emphasizes stable performance, smarter bandwidth use, and improved mesh networking all wrapped up in a D20 looking 'dice'.

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