XDA - CPU

Your CPU predicts the future to speed things up, but its wrong guesses open the door for hackers

Tanveer Singh — Sun, 01 Nov 2026 12:00:20 GMT

Modern CPUs can process hundreds of billions of instructions per second, which is one of the major factors behind their blazing-fast speed. We take these speeds for granted, but rarely think about a fascinating feature called "speculative execution" that makes it all possible. Speculative execution is essentially the CPU guessing the result of a program and executing it ahead of time, boosting performance significantly.

Your CPU has less than 4.2ms to keep up at 240FPS, and that's harder than it sounds

Hamlin Rozario — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 20:30:21 GMT

I've spent enough time tweaking settings in competitive shooters to know that simply turning everything down to Low doesn't automatically guarantee the frame rates I'm trying to hit. I used to blame my GPU whenever my FPS fell short, and while that logic makes sense when you're playing demanding AAA titles at 1440p or 4K, it doesn't necessarily hold up when you're chasing 200+FPS in esports titles. At some point, the CPU becomes the limiting factor, and even a faster GPU isn't going to move the needle.

The N100 may be outdated in 2026, but it’s more than enough to power Docker home servers

Ayush Pande — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 11:00:22 GMT

If you’re planning to grab a cheap mini-PC, NAS, or even an x86 single-board computer, chances are you’ll come across models bearing the Intel N100 sooner or later. On paper, this 3-year-old embedded processor has become a bit outdated in this day and age, with the N150 being its direct upgrade and the N350 and N355 providing superior computational capabilities in almost every possible way.

Your “high performance” power plan might be hurting your CPU's gaming performance

Ty Sherback — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 20:30:21 GMT

After a fresh Windows install, PC gamers will immediately rush to the power settings to switch on the "high performance" power plan, which, if nothing else, is harmless. It does what it says on the tin, favoring the highest performance possible in exchange for higher energy usage. The advice has circulated on forums for over a decade, and while for most systems it definitely doesn't hurt to turn on, Ryzen dual-CCD CPUs specifically can actually have their performance hampered by doing so.

Your CPU power cable is still split into 4+4 pins due to a Pentium 4-era leftover

Tanveer Singh — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 16:01:18 GMT

If you look at the 8-pin cable running to the top-left corner of your motherboard, it's most likely two 4-pin cables joined together. You might even remember plugging it that way when you first assembled your PC. Almost nobody needs that split anymore, but power supplies still ship with this 4+4 split, and the reason has a lot to do with the CPU industry of the early 2000s.

Nvidia RTX Spark and Surface Laptop Ultra: Your questions answered

Rich Woods — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 13:30:19 GMT

I've been testing out the Surface Laptop Ultra for the last week or so, and it's a pretty exciting product. It's a brand-new laptop from Microsoft, and it runs on Nvidia RTX Spark, a brand-new Windows on Arm platform that's meant to be way more powerful than what Qualcomm is offering.

The RISC vs CISC debate is dead because both sides stole each other's best ideas

Adam Conway — Sun, 18 Oct 2026 16:00:19 GMT

Processors typically split into two camps, with the x86 processor in your PC classified as CISC and the (typically) Arm processor in your phone classified as RISC. CISC, standing for Complex Instruction Set Computer, and RISC, standing for Reduced Instruction Set Computer, are still labels that indicate something about the instruction set your software sees, but much less about the hardware actually running them. And for more than 30 years, high-performance x86 cores have actually been using techniques associated with RISC, while big Arm cores are now using techniques associated with CISC.

Intel's 12th Gen CPUs have become the Windows 10 of PC hardware, and nobody is in a hurry to leave

Tanveer Singh — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 20:31:20 GMT

Are you still using Windows 10? There's a 27% chance that you are, which is surprising, considering Windows 11 has been out for over five years. In fact, it's been over a year since Microsoft ended support for Windows 10. Despite that, people refuse to abandon the beloved OS in favor of Windows 11 for a variety of reasons. Similarly, Intel's 12th Gen (Alder Lake) owners aren't motivated to upgrade to something else.

I stopped buying F-series CPUs, because integrated graphics has saved me far more than the $20 discount

Abhinav Raj — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 11:00:18 GMT

When it comes to budget builds, there are some compromises most users are willing to make more than others. One argument I've heard more often than others is that, if a GPU is going in the PC anyway, it's a reasonable call to buy a processor that lacks integrated graphics and spend the change elsewhere. After all, both major manufacturers of desktop processors, AMD and Intel, have F-series processors that can be bought for $15-$40 less.

Your CPU still boots up pretending to be a 1978 Intel chip, and Intel gave up on removing it

Adam Conway — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 11:00:19 GMT

Regardless of whether you're on Intel or AMD, the first instruction your CPU executes runs in a mode designed for the 16-bit Intel 8086, released in June 1978. This is called "real mode," and despite everything that has changed about processors since then, this part of the startup process has remained remarkably similar.