Ryzen (Zen)

Updated | Buried deep within the footnotes of AMD's announcement of Rome, it seems AMD is claiming an IPC improvement of about 29% when comparing Zen 2 to Zen 1. AMD did not disclose exactly how much more IPC Zen 2 had over Zen 1, but it seems 20% or more for at least some workloads can be expected.

AMD's Radeon Instinct series consists of high-performance GPUs for applications such as deep learning, science, financial services and other extremely high-performance areas. As promised, its latest variants (the MI50 and MI60) come with 7-nanometer Vega architecture. This pushes their memory bandwidth up to 1024Gbps and their FP64 performance into the teraflops.

While TSMC's new 7nm is already quite popular, being the basis for several processors from companies AMD, Apple, and Huawei, even more are announcing that they too will be fabricating their products at TSMC using their new process. Nvidia, Qualcomm, and more will be ordering chips from TSMC in 2019.

AMD hinted during its recently concluded Next Horizon Event that the Zen 4 microarchitecture is in the design phase. No further details were revealed but chances are that it will be using an advanced node for this architecture that could debut in 2021 or later.

AMD's Next Horizon event held yesterday was important for not only AMD's datacenter business but also for the company as a whole. AMD finally has revealed key information on Zen 2, Rome, the 7nm, new Vega GPUs, and what it means for AMD's business.

Intel may look like it is doing well right now, but the production problems will hit it hard in 2019. AMD ill not cut it any slack and will hit hard with the new 7 nm CPUs, but Intel has some retaliation plans, at least on the server side of things. The upcoming Xeon Scalable CPUs slated for late 2019 will integrate Multi-Chip Packaging technology that allows to fit 48 cores on a single chip, plus 12-channel DDR4 support.

The Threadripper 2970X and 2990WX flagship processors for this year have already been released. Now, their more 'mid-range' counterparts are available. They have been shown to compete well with some Intel HEDT and workstation CPUs in inital reviews.

AMD is now feeling the full hit of the GPU-based crypto mining decline that started back in Q1. Instead of a projected US$50 million downturn in GPU sales, the red team reported losses of US$150 million, thus triggering a share drop of 24%. On the other hand, CPU sales are stronger than ever.

The 10 nm process gave Intel quite a bit of a headache in the past few years. It was supposed to arrive in 2017 initially, but the fabrication process had to be delayed because of design problems, and it looks like Intel may not be able to launch the 10 nm CPUs come 2H 2019 in large amounts either.

The Ryzen 2000 series still delivered decent performance gains over the original Ryzen models, even if the shrinking process was minimal. With the jump from 12 nm to 7 nm, the IPC boost is expected to be almost 5 times greater, at least in "scientific tasks." If multimedia and gaming loads get the same boost, this could be huge for AMD.

A BIOS update is now available for Acer Swift 3 SF315-41 series laptops powered by mobile AMD Ryzen APUs that updates the AMD SMU version to 2.11. This removes the 256 MB VRAM limitation for the integrated Vega GPU and allows it access use 1 GB of system RAM as the video buffer. While the new option is indeed welcome, it hardly makes any difference when it comes to practical usage.

Following severe backlash over what has been described as "incompetent" benchmarking, Principled Technologies retested their AMD CPUs with creator mode. In their new results, the 2700X narrowed the gap between the 9900k down to about 15-20% on average, whereas previously the 9900k was sometimes 60% faster than the 2700X. Intel stated that these new results prove that the 9900k is still the "world's best gaming processor."

The industry is one month into a shortage of 14nm CPUs from Intel, and according to HP CEO Dion Weisler and Lenovo COO Gianfranco Lanci this will continue for another 6 months. They have recommended AMD as an alternative thanks to their "good performance" and "fantastic portfolio."

After scathing criticism coming from GamersNexus's Steve Burke and Hardware Unboxed's Steve Walton, Principled Technologies has made statements and defended its i9 9900k performance study. The company said "we are confident in our test methodology and results" following an interview conducted by GamersNexus.

When Intel commissioned Principled Technologies to benchmark its as of yet unreleased i9 9900k CPU, many voices in the tech press spoke out against such a practice, such as Steve Walton, saying it "undermines what we do." Now, more reliable figures have come out, and it seems like Principled Technologies did not run an unbiased test.

About a month ago, Chiphell user Gtx9 leaked what he alleged was a Cinebench score of AMD's "Rome" server architecture. As Cinebench scores are easily manipulated, the weight behind Chiphell's leak was very weak. However, Gtx9 has returned with more convincing proof.

AMD has announced that its 12- and 24-core Ryzen 2 Threadripper chips will be available on October 29. The new chips are counterparts to the more expensive 16- and 32-core chips in the Threadripper lineup and will appeal to enthusiasts looking for a balance between performance and price.

AMD has a very favorable position on the CPU market, especially now that Intel is going through rougher times caused by shortages. The red team should be able to increase the market share with the release of its 7 nm Ryzen 3000, Threadripper 3000 and EPYC "Rome" CPUs, plus the Instinct GPUs in early 2019.

Sources claim that a few Ryzen 3000-series CPU samples have arrived at Radeon Technologies Group in order to tune the GPU drivers for the new interconnects. Tests have revealed that the upcoming CPUs are faster than the i7-8700K from Intel, but are very unstable and crash very often at the moment.

While the 14nm CPU shortage did not initially affect US retailers, it has become clear that it finally has. Intel's flagship 8700k CPU has gone from $350 to $399 in under a month, which is nearly a 15% increase in price.

Aside from a couple of Samsung smartphones catching fire, the week has been slow in terms of rumors and releases. Just a couple of noteworthy new laptops are launching while everyone else is left wondering what new smartphones Google and Huawei may be brewing up for Christmas

The official Gigabyte AORUS Twitter published a 10 second long teaser video advertising a new motherboard. The implication seems to be that the Z390 chipset (and perhaps 9th generation Intel CPUs) are coming in early October.

AMD has listed a couple new CPUs, the Ryzen 5 2600H and Ryzen 7 2800H. Both chips are definite upgrades over the Ryzen 5 2500U and Ryzen 7 2700U, respectively, but their 45 W nominal TDP suggests that they will be used in gaming laptops upon release. This is curious, as the onboard Vega GPUs are far outpaced by even entry-level gaming laptops.

The 2300X and 2500X are AMD's newest Ryzen 3 and Ryzen 5 CPUs, respectively. They boost to 4.0GHz support all-core overclocking. Therefore, they may be seen as promising for starter or modest builds. However, both processors have been announced as exclusive to OEMs and SIs.

Sporting a custom Ryzen SoC with integrated Vega graphics up to 24 CUs clocked at 1300 MHz, the Zhongshan Subor Z+ is a small form factor PC that tries to offer a console-like experience along with the flexibility of using a traditional Windows PC. The most intriguing aspect of the Subor Z+ is, no doubt, its custom SoC that offers up to 3.99 TF of GPU Compute compared to the 3.65 TF power of the Intel 'Kaby Lake-G' Core i7-8809G. The Subor Z+ also manages a much more consistent performance at 60 fps in 1080p Ultra settings in Battlefield 1 and Destiny 2.

Chiphell, a Chinese website well known for its tech rumors and speculation, has taken a screenshot of what is apparently the Cinebench score of AMD's upcoming "Rome" 64 core server CPU, which is based on the yet unreleased Zen 2 architecture. Take this with a grain of salt.

Intel will not have enough chips to satisfy demand during the upcoming holiday season. This is part of a recent prediction by a JP Morgan analyst. The analysis may take factors such as the long-awaited switch to 10nm chipsets by the premier processing manufacturer into account.

The Ryzen 5 2500X and Ryzen 3 2300X were spoiled a few months ago and were known to have the frequency multiplier unlocked for overclocking. On the other hand, the Ryzen 7 2700E and Ryzen 5 2600E are totally new additions designed for silent desktops and mini PCs, thus having lower TDPs and no overclocking support.

The Geekbench scores place Intel's gen 9 CPUs ahead of the AMD competition, but the success of these chips will also depend on the launch prices. AMD's Ryzen 2 CPUs are selling like hot cakes due to a very good price/performance ratio, and Intel needs to adjust the gen 9 prices accordingly if it wants to rebalance the market share.

AMD looks prepared to update each of its mainstream and HEDT CPU lineups annually, and the third gen processors coming next year will most likely need a new chipset, since the red team is making the jump to 10 nm and even 7 nm. The upcoming Threadrippers are rumored to be accompanied by a new X499 chipset, which should bring support for PCIe 4.0 and DDR5.

El Chapuzas Informatico has leaked what they claim is the Cinebench score of a Ryzen 7 2800X. However, several inconsistencies within the screenshot of the score and the idea of a 10 core Ryzen CPU reveal that this leak is almost certainly a fake.

AMD has announced the new entry-level Athlon 200GE series CPUs to take on Intel's Pentium Gold offerings. AMD is pegging the Athlon 200GE series as a CPU for everyday PCs and comes with integrated Radeon Vega graphics with 3 CUs and can fit easily into any Socket AM4 motherboard. Pricing starts from US$55 for the Athlon 200GE with details for the Athlon 220GE and 240GE to be announced soon.

According to AMD, third-party analytical tools may not be giving correct information on Raven Ridge SoCs like the Ryzen 5 2500U or Ryzen 7 2700U. It's unknown if popular tools like HWInfo or AIDA64 would ever be updated to fully support Raven Ridge SoCs. For now, AMD μProf is the only reliable method.

The new TS-x77XU lineup targets enterprise customers with no less than 8 rackmount NAS models. Most of these models come with redundant power supply units and use AMD Ryzen processors. Depending on the model chosen, the processor used can be the quad-core Ryzen 3 1200, the hexa-core Ryzen 5 2600, or the octa-core Ryzen 7 2700.

The Intel Core i7-9700K may seem comparable to the i7-8700K in many ways. However, it can be boosted up to 4.9GHz (albeit on one core only). The i7-9700K has also recently exhibited the ability to OC up to 5.3GHz on air and beat the i7-8700K on Geekbench.

Having stayed at the company for over 3 years, Jim Anderson has left AMD and will be replaced by Saeid Moshkelani. Anderson entered AMD before the Ryzen launch in order to help with client sales, and since opportunities to advance in AMD were scant, has decided to depart and become CEO at Lattice Semiconductor.

After almost twoo weeks from the official launch of the Threadripper 2000-series, AMD finally decided to slash the prices for the first generation Threadrippers. The best deal of all three processors seems to be the 1920X, which got a 50% reduction, while the 1920X gets a ~40% lower MSRP, with the high-end 1950X getting only a 25% price drop.

Today GlobalFoundries, one of the world's most important silicon foundries, announced that it would no longer be working towards its 7nm process which was rumored to be used by AMD for some of its 7nm products. AMD will now be using TSMC exclusively for all products based on the 7nm process.

At Hot Chips 2018 Intel discussed its upcoming Cascade Lake architecture. During its short presentation, Intel went over hardware improvements made on Cascade Lake that will mitigate Spectre, Meltdown, and other exploits. In addition to mitigations, the company gave details on other architectural improvements.

While the mini PC market is clearly dominated by Intel, AMD is now trying to steal some market share, at least in the ULV sector. The embedded version of AMD's Ryzen CPUs come with up to 4 cores / 8-threads and can integrate up to 32 GB of RAM plus up to 1 TB SSD storage. The mini PC cases are fanless and also resistant to dust and shocks.

All eyes will continue to be on Nvidia as the inevitable announcement looms. AMD launches its 32-core Threadripper 2990WX CPU to both excellent and mixed results and Asus unveils its thinnest second generation Zephyrus GX laptop just in time for Gamescom 2018. New workstation from MSI and Lenovo add even more power to increasingly thin chassis designs.

The Threadripper 2990WX was already pushed to 5.4 GHz last week, but it looks like there is room for more overclocking when enough liquid nitrogen is used. Overclocker Ivan Cupa managed to get all 32 cores of the 2990WX model running at an outstanding 6 GHz, but there is no way of telling how much better it performs, as no benchmarks were provided.

Phoronix has done a performance comparison of the AMD Threadripper 2990WX in Windows 10 Pro and Linux and the results show Threadripper numbers significantly lower under Windows 10 Pro than in Linux. In some tests such as 7-Zip Compression, the Threadripper 2990WX posted almost 58% higher scores in Linux compared to Windows 10 Pro implying that Linux is a better OS of choice when testing high core count CPUs.