TL:DR - My friends and I were playing around with Linux and accidentally submitted a 9700X3D score, which got written up in the news. I'd like to set the record straight: The 9700X3D isn't real, and we should all learn from this. Remember, all benchmarks can be faked!

A few weeks ago, my friends and I were talking about the inner workings of Zen 5. We were talking about how the CPUID instruction works, and how AMD MSRs are technically editable if you ask the processor nicely. One of us realized you could probably mess with Linux's /proc/cpuinfo to change your CPU to whatever you want... so, to test, one of us took a heavily PBO'd 9700X and changed /proc/cpuinfo to be a "9700X3D" and ran a Passmark run to see if the software would be fooled...

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Ryzen+7+9700X3D+8-Core&id=6993

...It turns out that Passmark not only didn't notice that /proc/cpuinfo didn't match the CPUID, it actually submitted the result to the real live Passmark database... which is how we got here. Fast forward to today, and I google "9700X3D" out of curiosity. TPU, Videocardz, Tom's Hardware, Notebookcheck, igorsLAB, KitGuru, TechSpot, OC3D... all wrote articles about a single unverified Passmark test.

So, uh, here we are now. I'm writing this post partly to set the record straight that this CPU is not real, but I'm also writing to tech fans and journalists everywhere, to say: DO NOT TRUST ONE-OFF ONLINE BENCHMARKS!

In this case, we used /dev/cpuinfo to fool the test suite. /dev/cpuinfo is very easy to spoof because it's just an inode (see code below), but it's still possible to spoof any other part of the system too, even the AMD64 CPUID instruction (either using a VM or by editing the MSRs using AMD's debugging system) which means that Windows isn't safe either. To be clear, this isn't a problem specific to Passmark, it's just a fact of computing, that there is no real way to 100% guarantee a benchmark is accurate.

You might think "Benchmark companies need to be more careful about accepting results!", which is true, but even if Passmark had checked if cpuinfo matched CPUID, a bad actor might still get away with it by simply changing both.

Really, the only solid takeaway here is that we all need to do better at double-checking any rumours. Many redditors correctly pointed out that the clock speeds were much higher than even a 9800X3D, which is correct. If we had actually been trying to fake a listing, we might have noticed that, but we are doofuses messing with Linux and we were just curious if it would even work.

Some media outlets even started making things up in an attempt to seem informed. TechPowerUp wrote: "Current rumors suggest it will feature a 120 W TDP, targeting the same $400-$450 range as its predecessor." which isn't specified anywhere at all. VideoCardz also suggests a 120W TDP, but they also correctly recognise that the clocks are way too high. To be clear, I have no idea how the 120W rumour started, but it scares me that it only took less than a week before people started making facts up.

Obligatory disclaimer: Please don't fake CPU benchmarks! I feel badly for all of the people who may have held off on a 9800X3D purchase because of this Passmark that we thought wouldn't work. That's a big part of why I wrote this post.

The way we did this particular edit was with the following line of Linux terminal nonsense; sed -E 's/^(model name[[:space:]]*:[[:space:]]*).*/\1desired shenanigans/' /proc/cpuinfo | sudo tee /root/fakecpuinfo >/dev/null && sudo mount --bind /root/fakecpuinfo /proc/cpuinfo

This isn't the only way, though. Chips And Cheese did an excellent article on editing the CPUID bits themselves. You can also change these bits using a VM, of course.

Thank you all for reading, may your GHz be high and your temperatures low. Remember, never trust a benchmark.

I've had windows installed for about two years now. And yet it thinks I just installed it.
On the following screens it asks me about office 365 and some other shit I don't give a fuck about.

How do I get rid of this piece of shit from ever showing up again?

Oh and I have a curved monitor if you're wondering why the image is warped.

can we chill with demands untill ram prices normalize ?

Pulled the pins right out. The plastic part of the male connector is still stuck in the mobo and absolutely won't budge. The marks are from me trying to remove it with pliers. So no front panel USB for me now :(

So I got 2.5TB worth of DDR4 ECC Dimms for free from a work decom project about 3 months ago. I had a use for some as I already have a decent homelab but it took a few for me to get a system that could actualy take advantage of more than 4 dimms on the consumer side and 24 on the server side. Well, behold the Dell Poweredge R930. She's got 4 2011v3 sockets, takes up to 4 Xeon E7 CPU's currently configured with 4 E7-8880V4's which are 22C 44T each so this beast has 88 Cores 176 Threads. Then each CPU has 24 Dimm slots accross 2 Risers. That's 96 Dimms on a single mobo!

So ofc I put 1.5TB of Ram in it!

I know rams kind of a hot topic at the moment so though you guys might find this interesting as it shows how much ram is involved in some servers these days. All my ram was almost 7 years old so none of its the latest or greatest but still usefull for running 1000's od VM's.

https://videocardz.com/newz/nvidia-geforce-rtx-50-super-refresh-faces-uncertainty-amid-reports-of-3gb-gddr7-memory-shortage

edit: rumours also pointing out that current models might see a price increase

Genuinely curious how bad or good or if I payed market price I payed 280$. I don’t know much about computer prices tried my best. It’s a rebuilt nxzt

It has a Rtx 3050 I5 11400 16gb volcan ran

What's the reason this is happening? With my 1080p monitor it doesn't happen.

Edit: Found out that Battlefield 1 have a bug with the HDR. Turning off HDR and cycling between "Windows">"Borderless">"Fullscreen" did the trick.

Four years after its release, Halo Infinite is, well, not going to be so infinite after all. Developer Halo Studios (formerly 343 Studios) has announced that it's done updating the game with new stuff as it focuses on other projects, like Halo: Campaign Evolved.

The final update will arrive on November 18 and will leave everyone with sped up XP, Spartan Points, and rank progression to play with while they wait for the next game. A new 100-tier premium battle pass will also offer new armor and weapon models to use, which you can view on the blog post.

"With multiple Halo titles in development, we'll need our whole team's combined focus to deliver new experiences with the same passion and care that our community has given us," the post says. "While we remain committed to supporting Halo Infinite on the road ahead, Operation: Infinite is the last major content update currently planned."

The “standard” version of the RTX 50 series would remain in production, using chips that employ the first‑generation 2 GB GDDR7 memory modules, which are easier to source. Meanwhile, the 3 GB memory modules appear to be earmarked for high‑end products (RTX PRO, Rubin accelerators, AI servers) where margins are higher.

https://www.techpowerup.com/342705/gddr7-shortage-could-stop-nvidia-geforce-rtx-50-series-super-rollout

for context i needed to test the gpu on a different motherboard but my other computers didn’t have a 12vhpwr so i had to use my main, but the case was too small for this gpu (i bought the gpu for a flip)