Ryzen (Zen)

When AMD announced their second generation Ryzen processors a few days ago the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X was positioned at the top, rather than something like a 2800 or 2800X to match the Ryzen 7 1800X. However, AMD’s Senior Vice President, Jim Anderson, has hinted that we might see a 2800X at a later date.

The AMD Ryzen 5 2400GE and Ryzen 3 2200GE are available with the same number of cores and threads as the 2400G and 2200G, but with a lower TDP of just 35 W. Other than the lowered frequencies and TDP, the new chips feature the same Vega 11 (2400GE) and Vega 8 (2200GE) iGPUs as their predecessors.

Famed overclocker 'der8auer' has managed to overclock the new AMD Ryzen 7 2700X to cross the 6 GHz on all cores. He managed to achieve this by first selecting the best CPUs for the task and then subjecting them to LN2 cooling. Consumer use isn't anywhere going to get close to that figure but it is still good to know that Ryzen are really as overclocker-friendly as AMD claims.

The E485 model will feature a 14-inch 1366 x 768 IPS screen, while the E585 will come with a 15.6-inch FHD display. Hardware configurations for both variants are identical and include AMD Ryzen Mobile CPUs all the way up to Ryzen 7 2700U coupled with up to 32 GB of DDR4 RAM and up to 1 TB HDDs, plus up to 512 GB NVMe SSDs on select SKUs.

AMD has finally taken wraps off its 2nd generation Ryzen chips. The 2700X and the 2600X are at the helm of the Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 5 series respectively and are made to offer great multi-core and gaming performance in comparison with equivalent processors from Intel. AMD touts great and consistent overclocking potential and advanced capabilities of the AM4 socket and the X470 chipset to offer great performance for the buck.

Initial benchmarks of the AMD Ryzen 5 2600 are out and the Zen+-based 'Pinnacle Ridge' chip trades blows with the similarly priced Intel Core i5-8600K in most benchmarks. The Ryzen 5 2600 shows very good performance in synthetic benchmarks. However, Intel still has the edge when it comes to gaming even if its only by a few frames per second.

In the wake of AMD making its Ryzen 2 platform official, MSI has released new motherboards based on the new X470 chipset. Features common to all these boards include support for two M.2 slots with support for PCIe 3.0 x4 SSDs, four DIMM slots, MSI Mystic Light RGB LED control software, and proprietary hardware utilities.

Dell has launched the new Inspiron 13 7000 convertible and Inspiron 15 5000 notebooks powered by AMD Ryzen APUs without much fanfare. Both notebooks come with options of either the Ryzen 5 2500U or the Ryzen 7 2700U APU and are available in a range of price options. However, initial user reviews on Reddit have criticized Dell for reusing a 2016 Inspiron 13 7368 chassis.

Chris Hook had been with ATI and then AMD for almost 20 years. The former AMD Senior Director of Marketing could be joining Intel in order to help the company launch its latest discrete GPU, first one in 20 years. AMD promptly found a suitable replacement, announcing that Hook's position will be occupied by Sasa Marinkovic.

HP has announced a revamp to its Pavilion Power Desktop lineup. The new generation is christened Pavilion Gaming and comes in two chassis options with options of the latest Intel 8th generation hexa-core 'Coffee Lake-H- series or AMD 2nd generation Ryzen CPUs along with options of a GeForce GTX 1060/GTX 1080 or a Radeon RX 580 GPU. These PCs are aimed at those who value both content creation and gaming on a budget and feature a stand-out design language.

AMD’s eagerly anticipated second-generation Ryzen 7 2700X octa-core has been given the overclocking treatment ahead of its official launch this month. Two early testers were independently able to achieve overclocking speeds of 4.3 GHz across all eight cores.

Pictures of Asus' X470 portfolio have surfaced online. The X470 chipset brings support for the upcoming Ryzen 2 CPUs, which are based on the Zen+ microarchitecture. While they look similar to the last generation X370 offerings, all of them now sport two M.2 slots and support for AMD's XFR 2.0 and Precision Boost 2.0 technologies. The new X470 boards also have support for the faster DDR4 3466 MHz RAM and are fully backward compatible with the first generation Ryzen CPUs.

AMD looks to have sewn up a deal with Sony to power its next-generation PlayStation 5. Currently in the hands of developers, details about the PlayStation 5 dev kits indicate it is powered by an AMD APU featuring Zen CPU cores and a Navi-based GPU.

The AMD RX-412ND-powered QNAP TS-x73 lineup targets small businesses and power users, featuring 4, 6, and 8 drive bays. In addition to the aforementioned processor and 4 GB or 8 GB of memory, its list of features also includes 2 PCIe Gen3 x4 slots for increased flexibility, 4 USB 3.0 ports, and 4 Gigabit LAN ports.

It took AMD more than one week to fully assess the CTS Labs report regarding 13 vulnerabilities found in all Ryzen and EPYC processors, but at least AMD's official position dismisses any claims that these vulnerabilities are critical and need immediate action. According to AMD, these exploits are to be fixed with simple firmware updates released through new BIOS versions in the coming weeks.

Researchers at a cyber-security consulting company in Israel have claimed that they have found 13 serious vulnerabilities in AMD processors. CTS-Labs has published details about the flaws after only giving AMD 24 hours to comply. More oddities regarding the previously unhead-of company are elaborated below and in the attached video.

Leaked slides pertaining to AMD's Next-Gen High-End Desktop (NG HEDT) platform reveal that AMD is bullish with regards to continuing and refining its Threadripper lineage. The slides reveal three Ryzen Threadripper families starting with the Threadripper 2000 set to launch in 2018, the Threadripper 3000 set for 2019, and culminating in the Threadripper 4000 set for 2020.

There are two new mid-range and two high-end CPUs. The Ryzen 5 2600/2600X models are set to compete with Intel's i5-8600/8600K processors for a slightly lower price, while the Ryzen 7 2700/2700K CPUs should offer similar performance and pricing to Intel's i7-8700/8700K models.

The unnamed 8-core/16-thread CPU is part of the Zen+ 12nm wave of new processors that should launch this April. Boost clocks can reach up to an impressive 4.35 GHz, but the performance is marginally better when compared to last year's Ryzen 7 1700X/1800X or Intel's Core I7-8700K models.

HP has reportedly has plans for a slew of Ryzen and Vega powered Elitebooks going by a listing on its Care Pack Central support page. References to the new Elitebooks appear to have since been removed but we can expect the official unveil to be not too far away.

Dell joins the AMD mobile APU bandwagon with two Ryzen 5 2500U and two Ryzen 3 2200U notebook models. These come with 17-inch FHD screens, pre-installed Windows 10, fingerprint sensor and sub-US$1,000 prices.

A second generation Ryzen chip has leaked in the wild and it looks like it will continue the Zen architecture's success story. The new Ryzen chip is seen listed as Ryzen 7 2700X and sports the same 8C/16T configuration as the Ryzen 7 1700X but has a higher turbo clock at 4.2 GHz — 300 MHz more than what the 1700X can offer.

Those who plan on purchasing a PC powered by AMD Radeon get to claim a free copy of Far Cry 5 from a participating retailer. This offer only applies to pre-built systems sporting the RX 580, RX Vega 56, and RX Vega 64 GPUs and not to standalone Radeon GPUs.

The ThinkPad A series is a line of Lenovo ThinkPad laptops created solely for the use of AMD CPUs. According to a leaked roadmap that Notebookcheck attained, this series could be refreshed in the third quarter of 2018. It seems likely that these refreshed models will be the ThinkPad A285 and ThinkPad A485 and that they will feature Ryzen Mobile.

Thanks to the powerful Ryzen processors, AMD has experienced a renaissance. Despite this positive trend, most PCs continue to be based on Intel-CPUs. In an interview, a manager of the big PC manufacturer Dell has now explained why he believes that Intel will continue to dominate the PC sector.

The PC manufacturer Lenovo has two new affordable ThinkPad laptops in their release schedule. ThinkPad E485 and E585 are affordable business laptops based on the Intel models ThinkPad E480 and E580.

There are 8 new models, of which 3 are part of the Core family, 3 are Pentium Gold chips and 2 are Celerons. The Core i5-8600 and i5-8500 will surely go head to head with AMD's Ryzen 1600/1600X processors in the US$200 price range, while the other models are more budget-oriented, with prices between US$50 and US$135.

The unannounced i3-8130U will come as an answer to AMD's entry-level Ryzen 2000U series and is said to feature impressive 3.4 GHz turbo frequencies.

Results place the Ryzen 5 2400G somewhere in between the average Intel UHD Graphics notebook and a GTX 1050 gaming notebook.

Intel managed to steal the lead in CPU sales in the last few months. AMD's Ryzen and Threadripper sales lead the hostilities from August up until November last year, but the sudden interest for the i7-8700K CPUs combined with greater availability of the gen 8 Coffee Lake CPUs reversed the positions in December and January.

AMD claims in its latest financial report that the design of the Zen 2 platform has been finalized and the sampling for the Ryzen 2 desktop/mobility CPUs, as well as the EPYC Rome server cores will begin in late 2018, with worldwide availability scheduled for early 2019.

The new appointments come after the former head of the Radeon Technologies Group, Raja Koduri, was sniped by Intel last November. Both Mike Rayfield and David Wang are multi-decade veterans of the technology industry and have had their hands on several projects and GPU developments.

Ubisoft released their recommended specs for Far Cry, which is due to launch at the end of March. While the game will run on older hardware at the lowest settings, gamers will need a fairly beefy system (Core i7 and GTX 970 / R9 290X) to enjoy the game at Full HD 60 fps.

AMD has revealed that its chips are also vulnerable to the Spectre exploit. Although not as vulnerable as Intel's chips, it is working with operating system vendors and developers to patch affected systems.

Lenovo has announced a new ThinkPad generation a few days ago, but not all models were updated. Now an internal Lenovo document has been leaked, which mentions some new ThinkPad models for the remainder of 2018.

Microsoft has halted some security updates for AMD-powered computers due to said updates apparently bricking people's machines. Microsoft blames inaccurate documentation provided by AMD.

Both models, Ryzen 3 2300U and 2200U, are significantly cut-down versions of the new AMD CPUs that are meant to be used as an alternative solution to Intel’s Core i3 processors in entry-level notebooks.

AMD equips mobile Ryzen Pro CPUs with additional security features while keeping performance and technical specifications identical to the consumer class CPUs.

One day before CES, AMD has announced two Raven Ridge APUs for the well-known AM4 desktop platform. The Ryzen 5 2400G and Ryzen 3 2200G are entry-level offerings, however we still expect them to deliver great performance.

Strangely enough, the notebook will be sticking with the older Polaris architecture instead of utilizing AMD's newer and more efficient integrated Vega solutions.

Windows promptly released security updates for all the Windows 10 builds in ordered to fix the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities discovered by the Google Project Zero team earlier this week. Although there have not been reports of exploited systems, Windows 10 users had better install the patch.