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Instead of paying budget prices for budget laptops, users might want to consider paying just a bit more for higher quality and longer-lasting models. One of Lenovo's flagship AMD ThinkPad business laptops is down to affordable levels without needing to sacrifice processor performance.

We have taken a look at the 13.3-inch subnotebook Lenovo IdeaPad S540. We were once again surprised by the currently outstanding performance of the Ryzen processors. Thanks to this, the laptop received a very good rating despite the manufacturer having cut a few cut corners.

Select X470 and B450 motherboards from ASRock and Gigabyte are already getting beta BIOS versions supporting the Ryzen 5000 CPUs with SAM function. MSI and Asus are also offering unofficial BIOS updates for testers. However, these are not stable versions by any means, so users are advised to wait for the official AGESA V2 1.1.0.0 BIOS releasing in January.

Until Intel can offer an octa-core U-series vPro CPU with Iris Xe graphics, the AMD Ryzen 5 Pro 4650U or Ryzen 7 Pro 4750U will be the fastest options available on any ultra-thin business laptop without question.

ASRock has released a new set of mini-PCs, and ones that it claims to be the thinnest of its kind. The Mars 4000U will be available with up to the AMD Ryzen 7 4800U and will support dual-channel DDR4-3200 RAM, along with Wi-Fi 6 and multiple storage types.

Intel has gone after AMD and its Ryzen 4000 APUs, but its tale of throttling and unrepresentative laptop reviews has not won us over. Instead, it muddies the waters of which benchmarks we should trust and AMD's decision to allow OEMs to configure the performance of its APUs on battery power.

The subnotebook should feel right at home for multimedia playback, classrooms, browsing, emailing, and the occasional travel especially since it doesn't rely on slower Intel Atom or Celeron solutions.

The XFX Speedster MERC319 AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT BLACK features a dual-BIOS design with overclocked speeds of up to 1925 MHz (base clock), 2110 MHz (game clock), and 2360 MHz (boost speed), all alongside 16 Gbps GDDR6 memory. Sadly, this new graphics card is not in stock yet, but it should become available soon.

We have not yet seen any mini-ITX platforms with Threadripper support, but ASRock is now doing us one better with its proprietary Deep mini-iTX form-factor motherboards supporting server-grade AMD EPYC Rome CPUs with up to 64 cores and 128 threads.

The first Radeon RX 6900 XT from a board partner is here and is by ASRock. The card is merely a reference AMD design by another name though, with no ASRock branding or customisations to speak of. Custom RX 6900 XT cards should arrive after December 8, if there are any.

Apple is rumoured to be gearing to release a new 16-inch MacBook Pro 16, and the machine may have some special AMD hardware up its sleeve. Supposedly, the laptop will be the first to feature the Radeon RX 6700 and RX 6700 XT, albeit mobile versions of the rumoured desktop GPUs.

The new Zen3 cores from the upcoming Ryzen 5000 mobile APUs seem to be more proficient at single-core tasks, as the Ryzen 7 5800U shows 20% higher single-core scores compared to the Ryzen 7 5700U model that integrates Zen2 cores. However, the Zen3 cores do not offer any significant benefits in multi-core tests, with only 2.6% performance uplift.

Down from its original launch price of $630 USD, the Inspiron 15 5505 is our next Holiday highlight sale because of its fast processor performance relative to the low asking price. This is Dell's latest budget laptop that should easily outperform any other in its sub $500 range.

AMD may have an answer to the RTX 3060 Ti, along with other budget cards from NVIDIA. Apparently, AMD is gearing to release the RX 6700 and RX 6700 XT, which will both use its Navi 22 GPUs. The cards will have 12 GB of GDDR6 VRAM too and may arrive as early as January 2021.

ASUS has registered multiple Radeon RX 6900 SKUs with the EEC in Russia, raising the possibility of AMD announcing a cheaper alternative to the RX 6900 XT. The RX 6900 has been listed seven times, all with 16 GB of VRAM. If it is an error, then the listing should mean that ASUS is planning to release plenty of RX 6900 XT SKUs, at the very least.

Instead of using the potentially more harmful method involving raised voltages, the latest Ryzen 5000 desktop CPUs make it easier for users to obtain impressive overclocking results through undervolting. This way, users do not need sophisticated cooling solutions, and can just utilize regular AIOs. However, there is greater variance between samples, as well, so it all is more dependent on the luck of the draw.

The EliteMini UM700 from MINISFORUM offers an AMD Ryzen 7 3750H APU, up to 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage and a plethora of I/O. The EliteMini UM700 can be ordered now for US$539.

AMD's 7nm Big Navi architecture continues to impress with strong overclock scaling. Overclocker Takukuo managed to push the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT to a remarkable 2.8 GHz under LN2, just 10 percent short of the world record for GPU clock speeds.

HP's latest mid-range convertible laptop comes with one of the fastest U-series CPUs available for a fair price without needing to cut RAM or storage in the process.

Business laptops are known for their good keyboards, numerous connections, and high reliability - but unfortunately, also for their often below-average LCDs, a stereotype that HP regrettably reinforces with the AMD Ryzen 4000 EliteBook 835 G7.

AMD's Scott Herkelman hinted that the company is working to offer an open implementation of super-sampling in partnership with Intel and NVIDIA that works across PCs and consoles unlike NVIDIA's proprietary DLSS. He also said that ray tracing performance of current Radeon RX 6000 cards will improve with time. Further, Frank Azor added that AMD will look into the possibility of enabling Smart Memory Access with non-500-series chipsets as well.

According to the final system requirements for the PC version of the game, Cyberpunk 2077 will only launch with ray tracing support for NVIDIA GeForce RTX video cards. Although the AMD Radeon RX 6000 lineup also comes with this capability, it looks like Cyberpunk 2077 will add support for it in a future update.

The AMD models of Lenovo's current ThinkPad lineup are often the better choice, because in addition to a significant performance advantage they are usually less expensive. This is also true for the ThinkPad T14, one of the best 14-inch business laptops you can get.

AMD now holds the 3DMark Fire Strike world record, and with its second-fastest graphics card to boot. Impressively, the Radeon RX 6800 XT took the crown from the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 with a reference cooler.

The RX 6800 GPU particularly efficient when it comes to undervolting, as its TGP can be reduced by 45 W down to 183 W. These figures are already laptop-friendly if we look at Nvidia's RTX 2080 Super mobility GPUs, so we can expect to see an RX 6800M GPU with 150-180W TGPs that matches the performance of a desktop-grade RTX 2080 Ti soon.

AMD is back in the game with the latest RX 6800 / XT cards. Does it steal the performance crown? Not quite, but we still haven't seen what the RX 6900 XT has to offer. Nevertheless, the new AMD cards appear to be priced correctly, and we reckon the RX 6800 could end up as the preferred solution for the majority of gamers.

AMD's Ryzen 5 5500U has appeared on Geekbench, confirming several aspects of the upcoming mid-range APU. The Ryzen 5 5500U is effectively a Ryzen 5 4500U with SMT enabled, or a rebranded Ryzen 5 4600U. The Ryzen 5 5500U has six cores, 8 MB of L3 cache and 3 MB of L2 cache.

Just as expected, the Red Devil video card takes it way above and beyond the reference Radeon RX 6800 XT design. PowerColor's custom card features a triple-fan design, dual-BIOS, a 14+2 phase VRM with DrMOS, high polymer capacitors, and two 8-pin PCI-E connectors. It should hit the market in a week or two.

It has been almost a year since Google unveiled the Pixelbook Go, and the Google Play Console suggests that a successor may be on the cards. The machine is powered by an AMD Ryzen 3 3250C, 4 GB of RAM and would appear to be the long-awaited Google Zork.

AMD's been very tight-lipped about ray-tracing capabilities on its Big Navi cards. However, AMD announced it'll be releasing the Hangar 21 demo video on November 19th, showcasing a whole range of DX 12 Ultimate effects. While benchmarks have indicated relatively modest ray-tracing capabilities on Big Navi, the demo will be a good indicator of what we could expect from upcoming console releases.

Most of the previous rumors regarding the ray tracing performance of the Navi 21 GPUs are now confirmed directly via an official slide leaked ahead of the review NDAs. Yes, the RX 6800 XT appears to be slower than the RTX 3080 in select 1440p titles with DXR effects on Ultra, but it also appears to beat the RTX 2080 Ti. However, the situation should get better once AMD launches its own version of DLSS.

The 16-core, 32-thread AMD Ryzen 9 5950X has appeared in a couple of startling benchmark results involving the Vulkan graphics API. The Zen 3 Vermeer processor was teamed up with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 and an AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT in two separate Geekbench tests, with both benchmarks producing impressive compute scores.

AMD is already preparing to launch the Ryzen 5000 APU series, yet Gigabyte is a bit late to the party with some Ryzen 4000 PCs. Better late than never, as they say. The recent teaser from Gigabyte does not specify the exact processors, but we can expect up to a Ryzen 7 4800U. There will also be support for Wi-Fi 6 and 2.5 Gbps LAN connections.

AMD has announced what it calls the world's fastest HPC GPU, the Instinct MI100 based on the CDNA architecture. The Instinct MI100 offers up to 11.5 TFLOPs of FP64 compute performance when paired with 2nd gen EPYC processors. The MI100 is slated to offer better performance per dollar compared to the NVIDIA A100 GPU along with support for the new ROCm 4.0 software platform.

A few days ahead of the official launch, several retailers in Australia stated that the stock for both the Radeon RX 6800 and Radeon RX 6800 XT is "pretty terrible" but at least it is also expected for the launch availability of these cards to differ depending on the region. Sadly, the overall situation does not look great.

Some Ashes of the Singularity benchmark comparison results for the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080, and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 have been posted online. While both the RX 6800 XT and RTX 3080 performed capably, the results for the pricey RTX 3090 once again demonstrate that this card is not aimed at the mainstream market for gaming.

Three video cards that were unveiled by Sapphire Tech last week are now up for pre-order on Multitronic's website. The Finnish retailer has the Radeon RX 6800 listed for roughly US$870, while the two RX 6800 XT variants have price tags of US$990 and US$1,020. Sadly, there is no delivery date available yet.

GamersNexus recently confirmed that NVIDIA is working on a platform-agnostic alternative to AMD's Smart Access Cache technology. According to NVIDIA, their Resizable BAR solution delivers a similar performance uplift as Smart Access Cache (up to 10 percent, depending on the title).

Shortly after the RX 6800 XT surfaced in some leaked benchmarks, the upcoming AMD Radeon RX 6800 does the same. According to a Basemark listing (that seems to have been removed in the meantime), the RX 6800 will feature no less than 16 GB of memory and will be much faster than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070.

We can already imagine the overclocking potential of the upcoming custom RX 6900 XT cards planned for early 2021. If the RX 6800 XT can match the RTX 3090 that easily, Nvidia's rumored RTX 3080 Ti might still not be enough to secure the crown.

The top single-core score chart for Geekbench 5 is currently headed by a couple of entries that were purportedly produced by a potent combination of an AMD Ryzen 9 5900X and Apple iMac Pro. While the results are breathtaking, the information raises a red flag in regard to how accurate these particular Geekbench listings are.

The iBOX-V2000V and iBOX-V2000M mini PCs are powered by low-power Ryzen Embedded V2516 6-core and the Ryzen Embedded V2516 6-core processors, respectively. These 10 W TDP models do not require active cooling, but still provide decent performance as they are said to be faster than Intel's Comet Lake ULV chips.