Learn more about AMD

The first reviews for the 7 nm AMD Radeon VII GPU are out and they all seem to give an impression that AMD has managed to take the fight to the RTX 2080's pavilion. With a whopping 16 GB of HBM2 VRAM and a 1 TB/s memory bandwidth, the Radeon VII seems to focus more on raw power and compute performance versus niceties such as ray tracing or AI supersampling. Is the added power enough to move past the RTX 2080? The initial reviews seem to say, not just yet.

Previous rumors about launch supplies of 5,000 units might not be too far off, as new sources cite very limited Radeon VII availability at least for Europe. Overclockers UK cite 100 units available for Great Britain, while France and Spain would be getting only 20 units each. The reasons for reduced allocations seem to be the Lunar Year celebration in China and AIB partners not having enough time to come up with custom cards.

An image of an AMD Radeon VII graphics card being tested has been uploaded to TweakTown’s Twitter account. Clearly the photo is being used as a teaser for the site’s upcoming benchmarks for the much-anticipated GPU from the red team. LegitReviews has also announced that tests are underway on the world’s first 7nm gaming graphics card.

Although it cannot match the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 in Final Fantasy 15 — a title that features some technologies exclusive to the RTX series — the AMD Radeon VII appears to be a much better choice for 4K gaming, scoring higher than its competitor in the Fire Strike Ultra benchmark. The Radeon VII will hit the market on February 7.

TSMC confirmed that around 10,000 wafers were compromised, but the Taiwanese company has yet to make an official statement about the full extent of the damages and the exact circumstances of the incident. The unfortunate event could create AMD / Nvidia GPU shortages and artificial MSRP increases in the coming months.

PUBG Lite has been announced, and it is currently in beta testing but for players in Thailand only. The concept behind the battle royale title is to bring the PUBG experience to gamers who may not have the hardware requirements to play the full game. The developer team has also revealed that the game will be free to play.

A WCCFTech correspondent claims to have exclusive news from various sources confirming that some laptop manufacturers are prepared to pick up AMD's new 7nm mobility line-up when it comes out - and that others are not. According to this report, ASUS, HP and Acer are open to adopting these new chipsets.

The engineering sample spotted by Tum Apisak in the UserBenchmark database has a designation that is consistent with previously leaked codenames. As far as specs go, the early sample can boost to 3.7 GHz on a 105 W TDP, and also features 32 MB of L3 cache. In single-core tests, the 12-core CPU is 13% faster than the Ryzen 7 2700X.

The ProBook 445 G6 and 455 G6 are the AMD versions of the Intel-powered ProBook 440 G6 and 450 G6. Aside from the swap in processors, these AMD SKUs will also sport less RAM with no LTE, discrete graphics, or touchscreen options to keep prices at more affordable levels.

Navi is the currently-accepted name for the generation of AMD processors to succeed the Radeon VII GPU. Cards based on this upcoming 7nm platform may be released later this year. A new leak points to new chipset variants for the series that may differ from those mentioned in previous rumors.

Acer has announced the AMD-powered TravelMate B114-21 laptop at the 2019 British Educational Training and Technology Show (BETT). The 14-inch device, which is aimed at students and educators alike, can be fitted with either an A4-9120C APU with AMD’s Radeon R4 graphics or the slightly faster A6-9220C APU with Radeon R5 graphics.

A new leak has named the rumored AMD APU that will power the next generation consoles as Gonzalo. Many speculate that the Gonzalo APU will be used in both the PlayStation 5 (PS5) and next-generation Xbox (Xbox Scarlett). The APU will be built on a 7 nm Zen 2 CPU and a Navi-based GPU. These rumors fortify the belief that AMD will once again be the sole CPU and GPU manufacturer for the major players of the next console generation. As such, AMD stands to enjoy continued financial success from the console market.

The CR400 is a cheap Mid-Tower case with a large side window and a ventilated mesh front panel. The case has mounts for two 240 mm radiators to keep components cool and is big enough to handle full-size GPUs and PSUs.

A derivative octa-core Zen+ processor and Navi GPU for the next generation Playstation look increasingly likely. The leaked product code implies that AMD and Sony may have already finalized the core specifications for the PS5 - if not very close.

Consumer PCs will finally benefit from PCIe 4.0 devices this year thanks to AMD's support via the Ryzen 3000 CPUs, but the high-end sector will also be getting a taste of the PCIe 5.0 some later in 2019, and the two standards are expected to coexist for a few years. PCIe 5.0 will push the theoretical bandwidth to 128 GB/s on x16 duplex lanes running at 32 GHz.

AMD has issued a statement in regard to the recent rumor that only 5,000 Radeon VII GPUs were going to be made available for sale at release time. However, the statement has not explicitly confirmed or refuted the claim of a limited run of units. It simply mentions that the company expects to be able to meet initial demand for the much-heralded chip.

Laptop OEMs like Emdoor are looking to get around the Intel 14 nm CPU shortage by adding AMD-powered lineups. Thus, for 2019, Emdoor will first release some entry-level SR218 models powered by the older Stoney Ridge CPUs. Later on, when the Zen 2 CPUs get released, Emdoor will also launch a more advance AP618 lineup powered by Athlon, Raven Ridge and the new Picasso CPUs.

Although most DPC latency-related complaints we heard so far from Dell XPS users involved the XPS 15 9570, it looks like the XPS 15 9575 convertible is also plagued by such problems. Frank Azor has recently confirmed that Dell is working on a fix for this problem and that he will keep everyone updated on the progress.

AMD could make 5000 - or less - Radeon VII GPUs for sale for their February release, according to sources cited in a new TweakTown report. This may be because the new 7nm cards are Radeon Instinct cut-downs. In addition, this report indicates that there will be a dearth of Radeon VII custom cards.

The Honor MagicBook pairs the AMD Ryzen 5 2500U CPU with the same RAM and storage options as the Intel counterpart. In contrast, other OEMs often handicap their AMD SKUs with slow HDDs, cheap displays, and limited RAM. The result is an AMD laptop that performs almost as well as the Intel equivalent for about $150 less.

The outspoken CEO of Nvidia, Jensen Huang, has been offering some choice comments about AMD’s exciting new GPU, the Radeon VII. It seems Huang isn’t too worried about competition from the revolutionary new release, labeling it “underwhelming” whilst claiming that Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 2080 will “crush it.” The AMD Radeon VII is based on a 7 nm manufacturing process.

The AMD keynote for this year mainly revolved around the announcement of the Radeon VII GPUs. However, the company's CEO also revealed that the third generation of Ryzen desktop processors would become available soon. There was not much additional detail given on this new CPU line, besides that it is definitely of a 7-nanometer architecture.

The CEO of AMD, Dr. Lisa Su, devoted much of the company’s CES 2019 keynote to unveiling and detailing the Radeon VII GPU. However, the presentation also turned to CPUs thereafter, whereupon the second-generation EPYC chipset for servers was discussed. AMD is clearly upbeat about the capabilities of these new processors.

As a direct competitor to Nvidia's RTX 2080 GPU, the Radeon VII will target gamers as well as content creators. AMD is citing more than 30% average performance gains for content creators and more than 25% improved performance in games over the Vega 64 GPUs. Also, it looks like the Radeon VII can beat the RTX 2080 in certain scenarios, but costs US$50 less.

On the heels of AMD unveiling CPUs for Chromebooks, Acer has announced the Chromebook 315 powered by the 7th generation AMD A-Series CPUs with integrated Radeon graphics. The Acer Chromebook 315 is built for all-day work and can run both Chrome OS and Android apps with equal ease.

Asus has announced the TUF Gaming FX505DY and FX705DY laptops featuring AMD’s Ryzen 5 3550H APU and Radeon RX 560X GPU. If that isn’t enough to tempt prospective buyers, the Taiwanese manufacturer has also incorporated IPS-level FHD NanoEdge displays into the two laptops that utilize AMD’s FreeSync dynamic refresh rate technology for enhancing gaming sessions.

AMD has confirmed that it will be directly providing driver updates for its Ryzen Mobile APUs via Radeon Software updates. This is a welcome move from AMD as it had previously put the onus of providing APU driver updates on laptop OEMs. Hopefully, this will bring APU users on par with desktop GPU owners in getting access to timely day-zero game support, feature updates. and bug fixes.

Popular hardware review channel Hardware Unboxed is "fairly confident" that AMD's upcoming Ryzen 3000 series for the desktop will not be using AMD's chiplet design. Instead, AMD has allegedly opted for another traditional monolithic design, similar to last generation's Ryzen 2000 and 1000 series.

The new 3000 series of Ryzen APUs (codename Picasso) is now manufactured in an slightly improved process (called 12nm) and uses the slightly reworked Zen+ microarchitecture for the CPU cores. Therefore, AMD states an 8% increased performance compared to the first generation.

Mad Dog studios has caused a stir in the console gaming world with the announcement of what it claims will be the most powerful console ever made. Now, the CEO Ian Bell has tweeted some photos of what it will look like when it ships in the next two to three years.

Twitter user APISAK, a prolific leaker and data miner, has leaked an alleged codename for a Ryzen 3000 series engineering sample. According to speculation, this CPU will have 12 cores and a TDP of 105 watts, meaning the previously rumored 12 core 3700X could be real.

Despite the steep losses in the GPU sector suffered by both AMD and Nvidia, the red team managed to see stock appreciation thanks to the CPU division. Nvidia was not that fortunate and took a hard dive in Q3 and Q4, but things should get better once the RTX 2000 GPUs see more adoption in 2019. Last, but not least, Intel virtually flat-lined throughout the entire 2018 because of the 14 nm CPU shortages.

E-Katalog, a Russian retailer, has put the entire line of Ryzen 3000 desktop CPUs (the 'Matisse' series) on its website. These listings may indeed just be placeholders; on the other hand, they contain detailed information on processors such as the Ryzen 9 3800X. It suggests that the new generation has seriously outpaced its predecessor, especially at the higher end.

Listings on Newegg, Data-Systems.fi, and Synnex (now taken down) detailed new Coffee Lake Refresh CPUs. Intel has yet to officially announce any new 9th-gen CPUs, but these listings give a good idea of what to expect from the Core i9-9900KF, Core i7-9700KF, Core i5-9600KF, and Core i5-9400F.

A new variant of the AMD Radeon RX 590 has been spotted by HEXUS. The Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 590 8GD5 OC has been listed on the Sapphire Technologies website. However, it seems the only difference between the latest addition and the Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 590 8GD5 Special Edition is the color. The new version of the GPU comes in a black shroud.

The RTX 2070 with Max-Q design is NVIDIA's upcoming mid-range laptop card. It has been spotted in leaked Final Fantasy XV benchmarks. The results (assuming they are genuine) put the new mobile GPU at the top of a list that also includes the GTX 1080 (desktop and Max-Q versions) and the Radeon RX Vega.

AMD has launched two more entries to its Athlon range: the 220GE and the 240GE. Both processors come with Radeon Vega 3 graphics and offer base clocks of 3.4 GHz (220GE) and 3.5 GHz (240GE), respectively. The 220GE has been priced at US$65 and the 240GE has a price of US$75. The California-based company already announced the 200GE CPU back in September.

Lenovo ThinkPads are usually made for company buyers first and foremost, but there are some exceptions. The less expensive ThinkPad E series does target consumers more. A new leak reveals that the upcoming 14 inch model of this series will be released in a thinner variant.

The latest JEDEC standards for high-bandwidth memory (HBM2) allows for 24GB rather than 8GB of memory, as well as speeds of up to 307GB per second, per stack. This effectively increases the amount of memory NVIDIA or AMD can put on a single HMB2 card to as much as 96GB, with bandwidths of 1.2 TB per second.

We know very little about the upcoming iterations of the Xbox console apart from the fact that there will be a traditional as well as a cloud streaming-only version. A rumor is now doing the rounds that the streaming-only SKU will be powered by a semi-custom AMD Picasso APU. The exact specifications are still not available but this APU is expected to provide hardware accelerated deep learning for Project xCloud that allows for real-time AI predictions of player actions and thereby, helps in reducing latency while streaming.

While there has been controversy over Intel's soon to launch 28 core CPU, many have been eager to see it in action at least out of sheer curiosity. For anyone that was thinking about buying it, Threadripper might look like a more appealing option since the Xeon W-3175X is over $4000.

It has been reported that Samsung is working on a new tablet, which could end up being the latest addition to the Galaxy A series. The SM-P205 slate is expected to feature 32 GB of storage and will come in either black or gray. The South Korean manufacturer only recently introduced the Galaxy Tab A 10.5-inch device and the flagship Galaxy Tab S4.

Previous Ryzen mobility solutions were not that great compared to the desktop counterparts, and it looks like the upcoming Ryzen 3000 Picasso mobility chips are still a bit slow compared to Intel's processors. The leaked Geekbench results show that AMD's Ryzen 3000 mobility CPUs are almost on par with Intel's similar chips from 2-3 years ago.

As one could expect, leaks and rumors, whether they're true or not, often times inspire people to manufacture leaks of their own for fun. This seems to be such a case where a Ryzen 3 3300X has surfaced on Userbenchmark; the circumstances surrounding this CPU are very peculiar and seem to indicate that this is nothing but a forgery.

The current mobility GPUs from AMD are not really a match for Nvidia's lineup, but htat could change in a few months. Data mined from the latest macOS Mojave mentions a total of twelve unannounced Vega 20 and Vega 10 GPUs. Some of these could end up in Apple's upcoming MacBook models, so it looks like AMD might attempt a comeback in the mobility sector.

News and rumor website VideoCardz has reported the existence of the RTX 2060, some of its specifications, and that it will launch soon. With 1920 CUDA cores, the new midrange card could be up to 50% faster than the previous 1060 6 GB. Whether or not the RTX 2060 will support ray tracing and, if so, how fast ray tracing performance will be are both unknown.