In addition to developing processors and graphics cards, Loongson is actively exploring new and ambitious ventures. During recent announcements, the company hinted at a potential strategic entry into the memory chip market, probably to ride the AI wave. To accelerate its progress, Loongson has seemingly established partnerships with other companies to co-develop logic silicon wafers for High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) chips.
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Zhiye Liu is a news editor, memory reviewer, and SSD tester at Tom\u2019s Hardware. Although he loves everything that\u2019s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM. ","collapsible":{"enabled":true,"maxHeight":250,"readMoreText":"Read more","readLessText":"Read less"}}), "https://slice.vanilla.futurecdn.net/13-4-23/js/authorBio.js"); } else { console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); } Zhiye Liu News Editor, RAM Reviewer & SSD Technician Zhiye Liu is a news editor, memory reviewer, and SSD tester at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.
Zaranthos China is still very far behind and even this article sounds more like Chinese propaganda than an actual news article. Intel Alder Lake (12th Gen): Launched on November 4, 2021. Loongson 3B6600: Currently expected to launch in 2027, with engineering samples planned for the second half of 2026. The boost clock of Loongson is still 2GHz behind the old Intel chip and inferior in other ways as well. You read the headlines and the article and you'd think something far different than reality if you weren't well informed. China is very good at marketing, and even better at outright lies. Reply
warezme Zaranthos said: China is still very far behind and even this article sounds more like Chinese propaganda than an actual news article. Intel Alder Lake (12th Gen): Launched on November 4, 2021. Loongson 3B6600: Currently expected to launch in 2027, with engineering samples planned for the second half of 2026. The boost clock of Loongson is still 2GHz behind the old Intel chip and inferior in other ways as well. You read the headlines and the article and you'd think something far different than reality if you weren't well informed. China is very good at marketing, and even better at outright lies. Perhaps but China is relentless and focused on developing their own ecosystem and have the financial backing to push it forward. Current policy to withhold technology from them is only going to server to accelerate their programs and commitment. Reply
usertests Zaranthos said: China is still very far behind and even this article sounds more like Chinese propaganda than an actual news article. Intel Alder Lake (12th Gen): Launched on November 4, 2021. Loongson 3B6600: Currently expected to launch in 2027, with engineering samples planned for the second half of 2026. The boost clock of Loongson is still 2GHz behind the old Intel chip and inferior in other ways as well. Intel isn't very far ahead of Alder Lake, so that isn't so much of a problem by itself. The 3B6600 will max out at eight cores and 16 threads, with base and boost clock speeds of up to 2.5 GHz and 3 GHz, respectively. The Loongson chip will support DDR5 memory, PCIe 4.0, and HDMI 2.1. According to the manufacturer's early single-core SPEC CINT2006 benchmarks, the 3B6600 seemingly rivals Intel's Alder Lake Core i5 and Core i7 chips. What is it actually rivaling from Intel 12th gen? Possibly MT performance somewhere between the 4-core i3-12100T and 6-core i5-12400T, with clearly slower single-threaded performance. And you may lose around 30% of performance when translating x86 instructions to LoongArch. Even if it ends up feeling like an i5-6400T instead of "Alder Lake Core i5 and Core i7", it's not a bad level of CPU performance for something that will probably end up in office PCs. The GPU hitting RX 550 performance is not impressive. It better be using under 75 Watts to do that, too. If it's intended primarily as a display adapter to be paired with the 3B6600, from what I'm reading, the 3B6600 has an "LG200" iGPU that may support up to 3 displays. Budget Builds Official just did a video on the RX 550 4GB. Of course, for all we know, the 9A1000 could be worse, not to mention driver issues: lCgM6b5ZzuI Reply
ivan_vy usertests said: Intel isn't very far ahead of Alder Lake, so that isn't so much of a problem by itself. What is it actually rivaling from Intel 12th gen? Possibly MT performance somewhere between the 4-core i3-12100T and 6-core i5-12400T, with clearly slower single-threaded performance. And you may lose around 30% of performance when translating x86 instructions to LoongArch. Even if it ends up feeling like an i5-6400T instead of "Alder Lake Core i5 and Core i7", it's not a bad level of CPU performance for something that will probably end up in office PCs. The GPU hitting RX 550 performance is not impressive. It better be using under 75 Watts to do that, too. If it's intended primarily as a display adapter to be paired with the 3B6600, from what I'm reading, the 3B6600 has an "LG200" iGPU that may support up to 3 displays. Budget Builds Official just did a video on the RX 550 4GB. Of course, for all we know, the 9A1000 could be worse, not to mention driver issues: lCgM6b5ZzuI the key point is if this CPU and GPU can ( and will) be used in office environments at good price-performance ratio, that means 0 (zero) dollar to Intel/AMD duopoly. you don't need an i7 to update spreadsheets. Reply
cyrusfox ivan_vy said: the key point is if this CPU and GPU can ( and will) be used in office environments at good price-performance ratio, that means 0 (zero) dollar to Intel/AMD duopoly. you don't need an i7 to update spreadsheets. That depends on the spreadsheet/database being built. Or perhaps its more of a reflection of the awful state excel is in, making any edits a pain (pause after every cell entry_ regardless if you are rocking an i7 with 64gb of ram or not. I blame office 365, Would gladly go back to Office 2010, that was the last time I remember it being snappy. Reply
usertests ivan_vy said: the key point is if this CPU and GPU can ( and will) be used in office environments at good price-performance ratio, that means 0 (zero) dollar to Intel/AMD duopoly. you don't need an i7 to update spreadsheets. Yeah, and the CPU looks fine for that. But I question the point of the (first generation) dGPU. It's not going to be winning over any gamers, and the government/office PCs could probably use the iGPU in the 3B6600. Reply
nookoool usertests said: Yeah, and the CPU looks fine for that. But I question the point of the (first generation) dGPU. It's not going to be winning over any gamers, and the government/office PCs could probably use the iGPU in the 3B6600. I remember watching a 5 year old review of loongson with igpu vs a amd card and there was significant difference in handling of hd video streams. Possible there igpu hasn't have that much improvement and having any cheap dgpu is better than not having one. Seems every hobbyist on bilibili are running a amd 550 , 580 or 6700 etc so we will likely see that comparison going forward for each release. Reply
Key considerations
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Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/chinas-next-gen-cpus-and-gpus-prepare-to-challenge-last-gen-intel-and-amd-in-2027-loongson-3b6600-and-9a1000-aim-to-match-intels-12th-gen-and-amds-rx-550#main
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