Learn more about AMD

The latest AGESA 1.0.0.4 microcode update for AMD Ryzen 3000 processors seems to enhance all-core boost clocks and improve boot times, according to preliminary test results. This update is in beta and will soon be seeded for all compatible Ryzen motherboards, but it does not yet contain all the improvements that are touted to be available in this microcode release.

Intel might think it can get away with an optimistic Q3 2019 earnings report, but AMD's rising market shares paint a different picture. Intel's ongoing CPU shortages and the difficulties encountered with the 10 nm jump are allowing AMD to relentlessly accrue market shares in the desktop, laptop and server markets.

A new report has claimed that Intel could be preparing to heavily discount its 9th Gen Skylake-X series of high-end desktop (HEDT) CPUs. The 8-core i7-9800X could end up being priced at around €360 (~US$400) while the top-end SKU, the 18-core i9-9980XE, has been predicted to be discounted to around €950 (~US$1,058).

The Hygon C86 is essentially an AMD EPYC Zen 1 chip with an additional cryptographic layer added by the Chinese joint venture company collaborating with AMD. The chip was manufactured by GlobalFoundries as a proof-of-concept, and future Hygon CPUs will most likely be manufactured through other foundries like TSMC.

Microsoft's latest Surface Laptop only started shipping last week and we're already seeing some issues with our review unit. If you're sensitive to onscreen flickering or are planning to use the Microsoft notebook for audio streaming or editing, then you may want to skip this model.

New benchmark scores of the AMD Ryzen 9 3950X seem to indicate that AMD's upcoming flagship CPU can offer performance equivalent to Intel's HEDT chips such as the Core i9-9980XE and the Core i9-10980XE while beating them in terms of performance per dollar. The Ryzen 9 3950X was benchmarked using Cinebench R20 at stock settings.

September’s Steam Hardware and Software Survey has seemingly delivered more good news for AMD. The survey has measured data in regard to PC processor usage by manufacturer, which yet again has been thoroughly dominated by Intel. However, the red team has enjoyed another month of considerable growth, which could be down to its Ryzen 3000 generation of chips.

The Steam Hardware and Software Survey for September 2019 has shown some interesting changes in terms of PC video card usage. Although Nvidia still dominates the overall percentage share with the GeForce RTX 2060 going strong and the GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER making an appearance, AMD’s Radeon RX 590 Series leads an upsurge in GPUs from the red team.

The Intel Cascade Lake-X series launched earlier this month to the tune of price cuts and offering great value for money. However, not all looks rosy for the blue team, as its premier High-End Desktop (HEDT) chip has been resoundingly beaten by the AMD Ryzen 9 3950X in leaked 3DMark results. Intel may have even more competition on its hands with Zen 2-based Threadripper HEDT processors launching next month too.

Microsoft had the cojones to put both AMD and Intel on its flagship Surface series. In contrast, other OEMs offer AMD options only for their lower-end to mid-range product families. The Ryzen 5 3500U and Ryzen 7 3700U are comparable enough to the Core i7-8565U and even Core i7-1065G7 to be treated on equal ground on flagship laptops.

Some new Geekbench scores for AMD’s Ryzen 9 3950X have been unearthed and unsurprisingly the 16-core chip has performed admirably in the multi-core tests. Two separate benchmarks have been discovered, with AMD’s Zen 2 processor appearing on a Prime X570-P motherboard from Asus and a B450 Aorus Pro Wi-Fi board from Gigabyte.

With some Zen 2-based processors still in the pipeline, AMD confirmed that the design of the Zen 3 architecture is complete and the testing/manufacturing stages should soon follow. Even more, Zen 4 and Zen 5 are both being designed already and — if everything goes according to plan — the latter is set to arrive in 2022.

Xiaomi has announced the existence of the Mi Surface via its Weibo channel. It is a 34-inch 1500R-curved monitor with a 21:9 aspect ratio. This new panel is also rated for AMD FreeSync and 121% of the sRGB color space. The Mi Surface is to be released on October 21, 2019.

We have just released our review of the Lenovo ThinkPad X395, an AMD Ryzen 3 PRO 3300U powered 13.3-inch subnotebook. The Ryzen 3 PRO 3300U integrates a Radeon RX Vega 6 GPU too, which is known to have better graphics performance than its Intel counterparts. But how does the ThinkPad X395 compare against the ThinkPad X390, its Intel equivalent, and which is the better overall device?

Since the 3700X and 3800X 8-core CPUs are already available, the launch of the 3750X for retail channels might not happen at all. The specs would have to be too similar to the 3800X and a price point between US$330 and US$400 would not really be that justified. AMD may consider launching the 3750X model for OEMs, however.

The industrial-grade rugged enclosure made of aluminum featured with the Mini Multi Display PC does not come with any active cooling in order to protect against dust, debris and moisture. The system is powered by AMD's Ryzen Embedded V1605B APU with integrated Vega 8 GPU that supports four 4K video connections, and can be equipped with up to 32 GB of DDR4-3200 RAM and up to 2 TB M.2 SSD storage.

The upcoming ARCHER2 supercomputer will be housed by the University of Edinburgh and will be 11X times faster than the current ARCHER system. When it goes online by May 2020, it will become the fastest CPU-only supercomputer and be among the five fastest supercomputers in the world.

It seems that AMD has listened to its customers, having added support for its Radeon Image Sharpening algorithm to Radeon Vega GPUs. Last month the company claimed it had no immediate plans to do so, but it would bring RIS to the Vega series if there was enough interest. Good news then, Radeon RX Vega 56, RX Vega 64, Vega Frontier Edition and Radeon VII owners?

A leaked internal Intel slide courtesy of AdoredTV talks about Intel's plans to counter AMD's increasing marketshare via price cuts that would cost the company around US$3 billion. Intel hopes that these price cuts would help its Core and Xeon offerings remain competitive, but AMD still has the advantage when it comes to leveraging TSMC's increased yields and margins for the Ryzen chips.

References to DirectX ray tracing were found in the latest AMD drivers indicating that AMD could be enabling ray tracing support for the RX 5000-series Navi GPUs with the release of the December update for Radeon Adrenalin Software. Although just a software fix for now, this could pave the way for hardware-accelerated ray tracing in the upcoming Navi GPUs based on RDNA 2.0.

The AMD Zen 3 microarchitecture is expected to debut sometime in 2020 and going by recent rumors, it could offer IPC gains up to 8% (possibly, more) and up to 200 MHz faster clocks. Zen 3 will also offer 8 cores per chiplet with 32 MB or more of L3 cache. These improvements can further reduce latency and could turn out to be enticing for gamers.

Intel announced its new Xeon W-2200 HEDT CPUs earlier this week. The Cascade Lake-X chips offer some upgrades over the current Xeon silicon, including clock speeds up to 4.8 GHz and 18-core/36 thread CPUs. Most interestingly, Intel is pricing the Xeon W-2200 family of processors significantly lower than previous Xeon CPUs.

Intel may be axing its AMD-powered chipset for good, but that doesn't mean it won't be stopping driver support for any existing Kaby Lake-G PCs already in the market. The blue chipmaker plans to support the platform for another few years even after all shipments have stopped.

Both CPUs feature a 65 W TDP and support 24/16 PCIe 4 lanes. The Ryzen 9 3900 comes with 12 cores and 24 threads clocked at 3.1 GHz (4.3 GHz boost) and integrates 70 MB total cache memory, while the Ryzen 5 3500X gets only 6 cores and 6 threads clocked at 3.6 GHz (4.1 GHz boost) plus 35 MB total cache memory.

Lenovo updates its affordable ThinkPad E series with Intel Comet Lake. The new models ThinkPad E14 and ThinkPad E15 are more than simple CPU updates though, as Lenovo has redesigned them compared with their predecessors ThinkPad E490 and ThinkPad E590 as well.

Rob Wyatt, the lead architect behind the Atari VCS console, officially resigned from the project on Friday, October 4th. Citing non-payment from Atari for six months, Wyatt's company Tin Giant, which was contracted to help design the console, has left the project. Additionally, sources familiar with the Atari VCS have claimed the console is little more than a generic Linux PC, which does not jive with Atari's marketing.

The HP ZBook 15u G6 continues to offer the usual quality in terms of exteriors. However, some weaknesses that ought not to occur persist on the inside. Let's just hope the new AMD GPU can save the day.

Hewlett Packard's mobile workstation features good input devices and a great display. This is joined by a docking port, good battery life and a Thunderbolt 3 port. There are problems with performance.

AMD recently unveiled a roadmap for its EPYC line of server-grade CPUs. The Zen 3 ("Milan") and Zen 4 ("Genoa") EPYC CPUs look like they will continue to pressure Intel's enterprise business. While Milan looks more like a refinement of the current Rome EPYC CPUs, Genoa may bring support for DDR5 RAM and PCIe 5.0.

AMD announced two new GPUs today. The Radeon RX 5500 and its mobile equivalent, the Radeon RX 5500M, will make their debuts in various machines before the end of the year. The RX 5500M, in particular, will appear in the MSI Alpha 15, which we should get in our lab later this month. The RX 5500M should offer performance somewhere between the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q and the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, which would make it suitable for gaming at FHD/High settings.

AMD and Microsoft have since confirmed that the Ryzen Surface Edition processors are custom versions of the Ryzen 5 3500U and Ryzen 7 3700U, and now examples of the former have appeared on UserBenchmark. While the Ryzen 5 3580U fares well compared with the Core i5-8265U, it appears to fall short of the Core i5-1035G7 in multi-core workloads.

Nvidia’s successor to the Turing architecture powering its current line of Turing based RTX 20 series GPUs isn’t far away. According to the latest rumors, the graphics powerhouse will be releasing its new chips based on Samsung’s 7nm EUV process in the first half of 2020.

Dell is currently offering two Inspiron laptops for less than US$200. Shoppers can pick up an AMD-powered Inspiron 11 3000 for US$179.99 or plump for the larger Intel-based Inspiron 14 3000 for just US$199.99. There’s also a terrific deal to be had on the Inspiron 11 3000 2-in-1 laptop, which has seen its price reduced by 37%.

Walmart has partnered with THX to offer an inexpensive laptop powered by the latest mid-range AMD Ryzen CPUs. The model sports both narrow bezels and an aluminum chassis which are uncommon features at this price range.

Expected to be released in early November via BIOS updates from all mobo manufacturers, the new CPU microcode is said to bring needed fixes, stability improvements and even new features to all Ryzen 3000 processors, as well as to the older 1000 / 2000-series.

Lenovo’s Ideapad Flex 14API is equipped with a Ryzen 5 APU, dual-channel RAM, and an NVMe SSD. Its IPS touchscreen supports the Lenovo Active Pen 2. Unfortunately, the display turned out to be one of the Flex 14’s major weaknesses.

The first generations of the Surface Laptops were good laptops, but they had some drawbacks. One of them was that it was nearly impossible to repair these devices, as Microsoft used to glue the chassis shut. With the new Surface Laptop 3, Microsoft will now improve the repairability of its laptops to make them more attractive for enterprise customers.

AMD and Microsoft have collaborated to create the AMD Ryzen Microsoft Surface Edition processor — a Zen+ APU custom-built for the new 15-inch Surface Laptop 3. The Ryzen Microsoft Surface Edition constitutes two SKUs — Ryzen 5 3580U and Ryzen 7 3780U with Vega 9 and Vega 11 graphics respectively. The integrated Vega GPU also comes with an extra CU for enhanced compute performance.

The Surface Laptop 3 is here, and it is arriving in two variants. As per previous leaks, Microsoft has announced 13.5-inch and 15-inch variants of its next laptop. The 13.5-inch version comes with an Intel Ice Lake quad-core processor, while Microsoft has partnered with AMD to create a custom Ryzen chip for the 15-inch version. Both models come with USB Type-C, fast charging and better serviceability than the Surface Laptop 2 too. The Surface Laptop 3 will start at US$999 and will be available to order from October 22.

Preliminary reports position the upcoming Navi-14-based Radeon RX 5500 GPu as a direct competitor for Nvidia's GTX 1660 solutions. Even though the memory bus is not as wide compared to the Nvidia GPUs, the RX 5500 compensates with up to 8 GB of GDDR6 VRAM plus higher core and memory clocks.

TSMC strikes back with a "retaliatory litigation", claiming that GlobalFoundries infringed on 25 of its patents that include FinFET designs for the 40 through 12 nm nodes. Unlike GlobalFoundries who sued TSMC's fab-less companies like Apple and Nvidia, TSMC is looking to halt all GlobalFoundries production and sale processes for the infringed nodes.

Atari and Antstream Arcade for an exclusive app that will deliver over 2,000 officially licensed retro video game titles to the forthcoming console. The Antstream Arcade app for the Atari VCS will also include 50 original Atari titles in original or enhanced versions.

Intel has not only confirmed the product stack of its Cascade Lake-X series but has also priced it unbelievably competitively. The series starts at just US$590 for the 10 core Core i9-10900X, before rising to US$979 for the 18 core Core i9-10980XE. Your move, AMD.

The x86 architecture has been hitting something of a wall lately but AMD looks like it could be set to inject it with a fresh breath of life. According to the rumor mill, the company has finalized the Zen 3 design and it introduces a new SMT4 feature that will allow each core to execute four threads simultaneously.