Central processing unit

Want to know what CPU is inside your PC without taking it apart? That's no problem. Whether you have an Intel or AMD processor, a new PC or a decade old machine, finding out what your CPU is takes no time at all. In just a few clicks, you'll know everything you need to know about your PC's CPU. Jon Martindale / DigitalTrends How to check your CPU through Task Manager Step 1: Right-click the taskbar and select Task Manager to open the task manager. Jon Martindale…

The Core i9-13900KS was a milestone product for Intel, as it was the first consumer processor capable of reaching an impressive 6GHz straight out of the box. This year, Team Blue is expected to take it up a notch. A recent leak reported by Tom’s Hardware has unveiled crucial details about Intel’s upcoming flagship CPU, the Core i9-14900KS. If these leaked benchmarks are to be believed, this beast of a processor will boast eight powerful P-cores alongside 16 efficient E-cores, offering a total of 32 threads and a…

Microsoft Microsoft appears to finally be putting its foot down on how far back it’s willing to go when it comes to supporting older hardware. As of the upcoming Windows 11 24H2 build, Microsoft will require that your processor supports the POPCNT instruction. If you’re wondering what that is and whether this will affect you, you’re not alone. This new addition was spotted by Bob Pony on X (formerly Twitter). According to the user, if the CPU doesn’t support the POPCNT instruction or it’s disabled, Windows won’t work…

Hardware Unboxed AMD makes some of the best processors, but this one is most likely not one of them. According to a video review of the recently released Ryzen 7 5700, the CPU is not only a letdown — it’s downright misleading. Compared to previous non-X Ryzen processors, the 5700 appears to be significantly cutdown, which affects its performance in a big way. Historically, AMD’s non-X Ryzen CPUs were pretty much the same as their X counterparts, but with slightly lower clock speeds. Take the Ryzen 5 5600 and the…

Jacob Roach / Digital Trends During the pandemic, processors sold like hotcakes — but the demand came to an abrupt halt in late 2022 and early 2023. However, according to the latest report from Jon Peddie Research, CPUs are once again doing better, with a notable increase in shipments. Still, these gains aren’t consistent across the board, which reveals a trend that’s most likely going to stick around. The improvements are substantial. Jon Peddie Research reports a 7% quarter-to-quarter increase in CPU shipments, but…

Jacob Roach / Digital Trends AMD Zen 5 is the next-generation Ryzen CPU architecture for Team Red and is slated for a launch sometime in 2024. We’ve been hearing tantalizing rumors for a while now and promises of big leaps in performance. In short, Zen 5 could be very exciting indeed. We don’t have all the details, but what we’re hearing is very promising. Here’s what we know about Zen 5 so far. Zen 5 release date and availability AMD confirmed in January 2024 that it was on track to launch Zen 5 sometime in the…

Intel Intel’s next-generation Arrow Lake chips are said to be coming out later this year, but we don’t know much about them just yet. However, a new leak shows us that two crucial features may be missing from the next-gen CPU lineup: hyperthreading and support for the AVX-512 extension. If Intel is ditching hyperthreading, it’s not entirely unexpected, but it might make it trickier for even its best processors to beat AMD. Hyperthreading allows physical cores in Intel processors to perform two tasks simultaneously,…

Jacob Roach / Digital Trends I could barely contain my excitement when AMD announced its Ryzen 8000G APUs. It was a return to form, offering the latest in AMD’s CPU and GPU architectures in a single package for a low price. More than that, there was hope that these would be the first APUs to allow for some serious PC gaming without the need to spend loads of cash on one of the best graphics cards. But after testing them and looking at the other options, I’m not convinced this is the best starting point for aspiring…

Jacob Roach / Digital Trends For a while, AMD’s highly anticipated new CPUs seemed like they had slipped to 2025. That would have been bad news for AMD, but according to some new reporting on the topic, Zen 5 chips may be getting announced sooner than we thought. As reported by Paul Alcorn of Tom’s Hardware, an AMD rep confirmed that the Zen 5 lineup is on track for a 2024 release, likely in the second half of the year. The information was shared during an AMD earnings call for the final quarter of 2023. While we now…

AMD AMD’s big CES 2024 reveals left some fans wanting more. The company announced the expansion of its existing Ryzen 7000X3D desktop CPUs, Ryzen 7000 mobile CPUs, and new RX 7000 mobile GPUs. Team Red also revealed the Ryzen 8000G series lineup of desktop APUs with built-in graphics. It sounds like a lot, but the anticipated Zen 5 architecture was missing. The good news is that the first wave of AMD’s new Zen 5 CPUs sounds like it’s being prepared for a possible launch later this year. The rumor was posted by…