AMD is making its new Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X faster, and you don’t need to do anything special to see a performance boost. Although relatively disappointing out of the gate, AMD’s budget CPUs could rank among the best processors thanks to a string of new BIOS updates that should allow the chips to hit higher peak performance.
All of the major motherboard vendors have now released a 105-watt mode for these two CPUs. MSI first released this update, but now Asus and Gigabyte have followed suit. The new power mode comes from AGESA 1.2.0.1a, and it’s available for most 600-series motherboards now. If your motherboard doesn’t have an update yet, you should see it sometime in September.
Gigabyte claims that the new power mode can result in a 13% performance jump in Cinebench R23, which shouldn’t come as a surprise. Both the Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X come with a default Thermal Design Power (TDP) of 65W. Prior to releasing, some speculated AMD would increase the power of the Ryzen 7 9700X to keep it competitive with AMD’s own Ryzen 7 7800X3D. The default value isn’t changing, but this new power mode lends some credibility to those claims.
The higher power mode should result in a performance increase, but it’s worth pointing out that it doesn’t fall within AMD’s official specifications. Pushing a higher power limit is a bad idea if you don’t have adequate cooling, so make sure to check out our list of the best CPU coolers if you want to enable the new power mode.
In addition, some applications may see less of a performance boost. In games, for example, the Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X aren’t always pushed to their limits, and that’s particularly true in graphically demanding games like the recent Black Myth: Wukong. Games that stress the CPU more should see a performance bump, however, such as Hitman 3 and Cyberpunk 2077.
We haven’t seen BIOS updates from smaller motherboard vendors, but they should roll out with the new AGESA version soon. Although it can be intimidating to update your BIOS for newcomers, the process is fairly straightforward these days. Our guide on what a BIOS is has everything you need to get started, from navigating the BIOS menu to upgrading to a new version.
The BIOS update should help performance, but AMD has boosted the performance of its new Zen 5 CPUs in other areas, too. The latest Windows 11 update, for example, can increase performance by a further 10% due to a better branch prediction implementation.
Did you think hitting delete on your AI chatbot conversation actually makes it disappear? Georgia Tech researchers just proved that's not entirely true. They have built a forensic tool called ORISA that can dig deleted conversations from your phone and even rebuild them into a working chatbot session you can keep talking to.
How can ORISA bring deleted AI conversations back?
Touchscreen laptops have been around for years. You can get them in all sizes and shapes. Just not from Apple. For years, the Cupertino giant has treated the idea of a touchscreen MacBook the way I treat a meeting that could have been an email: with open contempt. However, Wednesday looks like the day the company could finally change its mind.
The latest Apple invite puts the “Pro and Tell” showcase in Los Angeles at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) on October 28, 2026. Instead of a regular live-streamed keynote, it is an invitation-only, hands-on event for a handful of press and creators (similar to what the company did for the MacBook Neo earlier this year).
Two residents of Chicago have filed a lawsuit in the US over claims that robots run by Coco Robotics and Serve Robotics captured their facial and hand measurements without consent, bringing renewed attention to the food delivery robots. The cases raise a troubling question: If a robot delivers food to your door, can it also be gathering sensitive information about you?
According to a report by The Associated Press, the proposed class-action lawsuits were filed in Cook County on Oct. 9 and allege violations of Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act. The complaints claim that the robots’ cameras and LiDAR sensors captured information on customers’ faces and hands as they approached the machines to pick up their orders. Both have denied the allegations.