AMD is reportedly planning to launch the Ryzen 7 8700F and Ryzen 5 8400F Socket AM5 desktop processors for a global launch, in the retail channel, as boxed processors. The two chips had launched earlier this month in the Chinese retail market. The 8700F reportedly comes with an OPN of 100-100001590BOX, while the 8400F is marked 100-100001591BOX. The "F" in both SKUs denotes a lack of integrated graphics. The Ryzen 7 8700F is an 8-core/16-thread processor based on the 4 nm "Hawk Point" silicon, while the 8400F is a 6-core/12-thread processor based on "Phoenix 2," which offers two "Zen 4" cores that run at higher clock speeds, and four "Zen 4c" cores that run at lower speeds.

The lack of an iGPU isn't the only thing differentiating the 8700F from the 8700G, the new chip even comes with slightly lower CPU clock speeds—100 MHz lower base and maximum boost frequencies. The 8700F CPU runs at a base frequency of 4.10 GHz, with 5.00 GHz maximum boost, when compared to the 4.20/5.10 GHz speeds of the 8700G. The 8400F, on the other hand, runs at 4.20 GHz base frequency, and a 4.70 GHz maximum boost frequency that applies to at least its two "Zen 4" cores; its four "Zen 4c" cores run at lower frequencies. There is no word on pricing. One reason you could want an 8700F over something like a 7700 would be its appetite for memory overclocking, if you can overlook the lack of integrated graphics, a smaller L3 cache, and most importantly, the lack of PCIe Gen 5, and four fewer PCIe lanes.

AMD's Beijing AI PC Innovation Summit served as introduction point for a Chinese market launch of "Hawk Point" Ryzen 8040 mobile series and 8000G desktop processors—news coverage has, so far, focused on that rollout as well as a teasing of next-gen "Strix Point" processors. HXL/9550pro has put a spotlight on an easy-to-miss presentation slide—their social media post revealed the existence of new budget-friendly Ryzen 8000F CPUs. Team Red seems to be preparing two China-exclusive SKUs: Ryzen 7 8700F and Ryzen 5 8400F—not many details were revealed on-stage, so reporters have played a guessing game with speculated technical information. Industry experts believe that the 8700F is an iGPU-less version of AMD's "Hawk Point" Ryzen 7 8700G APU—utilizing the same 8 core and 16 thread configuration, but missing the Radeon 780M integrated graphics solution.

The lower-end SKU is a more perplexing product, since AMD did not elaborate much during "budget" product unveilings—VideoCardz put its thinking hat on for this one: "meanwhile, the 8400F might be harder to guess, as the name sits between 8500G and 8300G, both featuring vastly different configurations. An educated guess would be 6 cores and 12 threads, possibly with two Zen 4 and four Zen 4c cores." The "F" model suffix gained attention last year—courtesy of Team Red's Ryzen 5 7500F CPU. This iGPU-less "Raphael" Zen 4 SKU was initially released as a Chinese market exclusive, but eventually headed West as an option for system integrators.

AMD has revealed the full specs of its upcoming Ryzen 8000G APUs and it turns out that the Zen 4c cores aren't clocking as high as the Zen 4 cores in the Ryzen 5 8500G and Ryzen 3 8300G. We should point out that the 8300G has a singular Zen 4 core and three Zen 4c Cores here, so there's no confusion. The Zen 4 cores in the 8500G have a base clock of 4.1 GHz, while the 8300G comes in at 4.0 GHz, with both of the APU's Zen 4c cores having a base clock of 3.2 GHz. Oddly enough, AMD lists the overall base clock of the 8500G as 3.5 GHz and the 8300G as 3.4 GHz with a notice that reads "Represents the average effective base frequency of all cores." AMD is in other words averaging the clock speeds of the two different cores to come up with an approximate base clock.

The Zen 4 cores in the 8500G boost up to 5 GHz, with the 8300G boosting to 4.9 GHz, whereas the Zen 4c cores in the 8500G boost up to 3.7 GHz and in the 8300G to 3.6 GHz. Here AMD doesn't provide an estimated frequency equivalent. Despite being budget models in the Ryzen 8000G-series of APUs, both SKUs get two USB4 ports with full 40 Gbps capabilities, plus a pair of USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) ports. Furthermore the Radeon 740M GPU will be clocked at 2.8 GHz in both APUs, but both SKUs are limited to a mere four graphics cores, whereas the Ryzen 5 8600G gets eight at the same clock speed and the Ryzen 7 8700G gets 12 at 2.9 GHz. All four APUs also support DisplayPort 2.1.

At CES, AMD didn't give away too many technical details of its upcoming Ryzen 8000G-series APUs, but details are starting to trickle out and it's not all good news. As has been known for some time, AMD is using two different chips to make the Ryzen 8000G APUs and they're known as the Phoenix 1 and Phoenix 2, where the Phoenix 2 parts feature Zen 4c cores, which are not present in the Phoenix 1 APUs. This in and of itself shouldn't be a huge issue, although the Zen 4c CPU cores can be slightly slower in some tasks based on testing of AMD's EPYC server parts.

However, PCGamesN noticed that Gigabyte has posted the full specs for the B650E Aorus Elite X AX Ice motherboard and it looks like there's a much bigger difference between the Phoenix 1 and Phoenix 2 based APUs. Namely, the Phoenix 2 APUs have fewer PCIe lanes and as such are limited to two PCIe 4.0 lanes for the secondary NVMe slot. As if this wasn't bad enough, the Phoenix 2 APUs only have four PCIe 4.0 lanes for add-in GPUs, whereas the Phoenix 1 APUs have eight. This is very likely to lead to reduced performance if a higher-end GPU is used with such an APU. Note that this will vary depending on the motherboard design, but many B650/B650E boards feature a similar design with regards to the PCIe lanes coming from the CPU socket. Luckily, it's easy to avoid this issue, as the Ryzen 5 8600G and the Ryzen 7 8700G are both Phoenix 1 designs, whereas the Ryzen 5 8500G is the only Phoenix 2 design available in retail, as the Ryzen 3 8300G is an OEM only part.

The AMD Socket AM4 platform is still alive and kicking, with AMD releasing new processor models in its 7th year. Many of these chips started selling online in Europe. The Ryzen 7 5700X3D is a slightly lower clocked version of the 5800X3D, which for many of those still on AM4 is the final upgrade to their platform. The 5800X3D may be based on the older "Zen 3" microarchitecture, but thanks to its 3D Vertical Cache technology, offers gaming performance comparable to the Core i9-12900K "Alder Lake," making even 7-year old AM4 gaming desktops contemporary. To cash in on this exact market, AMD released a more cost-effective option, the Ryzen 7 5700X3D.

The 5700X3D is an 8-core/16-thread Socket AM4 processor that features 96 MB of L3 cache thanks to the 3D V-cache technology, just like the 5800X3D, but comes with a maximum boost frequency of 4.10 GHz, compared to the 4.50 GHz of the 5800X3D. Store listings do not mention its TDP or base frequency. The 5700X3D is being listed at 271€ including taxes, or about 15-20% cheaper than the 5800X3D. A word of caution when choosing the 5700X3D would be its close to non-existent overclocking headroom, so this probably isn't a chip that you can manually overclock to performance levels of a 5800X3D while saving some 40€ on the side.

Courtesy of serial leaker @momomo_us we now have an indication on potential pricing for AMD's upcoming 8000G-series of APUs for the AM5 socket. The Ryzen 8000G-series APUs are expected to use the same CPU cores as AMD's Zen 4 based Ryzen 7000-series CPUs, but paired with a new I/O design in a monolithic die. The leaker has provided pricing from what is said to be three different shops and for three different SKUs, with the Ryzen 5 7600 as the reference point in all three cases. All three shops list the Ryzen 5 7600 at a higher price than Amazon, so it's unlikely that we're looking at MSRP pricing here.

The Ryzen 5 8500G has a price range of US$190-240, followed by the Ryzen 5 8600G which comes in at US$240-310 and finally the Ryzen 7 8700G which is listed at US$340-440. The price span is rather large, which makes it impossible to draw any conclusions of what the MSRP will be. Tom's hardware managed to dig up a pair of retailers, including what appears to be the one with the lowest pricing in the leak, which is DirectDial. The other retailer that Tom's Hardware located was Zones, but that pricing doesn't match any of the initial leaks, but are somewhat towards the higher numbers. AMD is expected to announce the new series of APUs at CES early next year.

QNAP Systems, Inc., a leading computing, and storage solutions innovator, today unveiled the new high-capacity TS-hx77AXU-RP ZFS NAS series, including 12-bay TS-h1277AXU-RP and 16-bay TS-h1677AXU-RP rackmount models powered by AMD Ryzen 7000 Series processors based on the cutting-edge AMD Socket AM5 platform. By integrating robust hardware and diverse I/O including DDR5 RAM, M.2 PCIe Gen 5, PCIe Gen 4 slots, and redundant power supplies, the TS-hx77AXU-RP series unleashes enterprise-level performance and delivers ultra-high bandwidth, futureproof expandability, and trusted reliability for performance-demanding Tier 2 storage, virtualization, 4K video editing, and PB-level storage applications.

"The whole new TS-hx77AXU-RP series ZFS NAS provides enterprises with superb performance and large storage capacity to tackle business-critical workloads and storage-demanding applications. The AMD Ryzen 7000 Series multi-core processors further unlocks the key performance of DDR5 and M.2 PCIe Gen 5," said Alex Shih, Product Manager of QNAP, adding "Paired with the ZFS file system that's most suited for business applications, the TS-hx77AXU-RP series stands out as the top choice for storage solutions that require uncompromising data integrity."

AMD today announced the new Ryzen 8040 mobile processor series codenamed "Hawk Point." These chips are shipping to notebook manufacturers now, and the first notebooks powered by these should be available to consumers in Q1-2024. At the heart of this processor is a significantly faster neural processing unit (NPU), designed to accelerate AI applications that will become relevant next year, as Microsoft prepares to launch Windows 12, and software vendors make greater use of generative AI in consumer applications.

The Ryzen 8040 "Hawk Point" processor is almost identical in design and features to the Ryzen 7040 "Phoenix," except for a faster Ryzen AI NPU. While this is based on the same first-generation XDNA architecture, its NPU performance has been increased to 16 TOPS, compared to 10 TOPS of the NPU on the "Phoenix" silicon. AMD is taking a whole-of-silicon approach to AI acceleration, which includes not just the NPU, but also the "Zen 4" CPU cores that support the AVX-512 VNNI instruction set that's relevant to AI; and the iGPU based on the RDNA 3 graphics architecture, with each of its compute unit featuring two AI accelerators, components that make the SIMD cores crunch matrix math. The whole-of-silicon performance figures for "Phoenix" is 33 TOPS; while "Hawk Point" boasts of 39 TOPS. In benchmarks by AMD, "Hawk Point" is shown delivering a 40% improvement in vision models, and Llama 2, over the Ryzen 7040 "Phoenix" series.

BIOSTAR, a leading manufacturer of motherboards, graphics cards, and storage devices today showcases the B650MT motherboard, featuring the AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 7645 processor, the best workstation setup ideal for office users and businesses. The BIOSTAR B650MT motherboard delivers exceptional performance, efficiency, and security to meet the demands of the modern workplace; with support for up to 96 GB of DDR5 memory, it ensures seamless multitasking and exceptional system responsiveness. Offering a versatile storage solution with an M.2 slot and four SATA III ports, this motherboard provides lightning-fast data access and ample storage capacity. BIOSTAR's signature features, including Super Durable Solid Caps, Super Durable Inductor, and Super Hyper PWM, guarantee a dependable and long-lasting system.

With the latest AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 7645 processor, BIOSTAR's B650MT motherboard sets up an ideal platform for business and casual use. The AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 7645 processor offers a compelling blend of top-notch performance, cutting-edge security features, and energy efficiency, making it an excellent fit for the modern-day business sector. Powered by the groundbreaking AMD Zen 4 architecture, this desktop processor comes equipped with integrated AMD Radeon Graphics, simplifying integration, management, and administration tasks. With six cores and twelve threads, fast clock speeds reach up to 5.10 GHz, making it ideal for multitasking and demanding tasks.

AMD Socket AM4 users are in for a treat, as the company plans two more processor models in the Ryzen 5000X3D series, according to chi11eddog, a reliable source with AMD leaks. Although based on the older "Zen 3" microarchitecture, these chips feature 3D Vertical Cache technology, which helps shore up their gaming performance to levels comparable at least to 12th Gen Intel Core "Alder Lake," giving Socket AM4 platform users a cost-effective upgrade path to prolong their gaming PC builds that could be as old as 5 years now. If you recall, AMD has formally extended "Zen 3" and 3D V-cache support to all Socket AM4 chipset generations, including AMD 300-series.

Among the two new processor models are the Ryzen 7 5700X3D, and the Ryzen 5 5500X3D. The 5700X3D is an 8-core/16-thread processor with 100 MB of total cache (that's 512 KB of L2 cache per core, plus 96 MB of L3 cache); while the Ryzen 5 5500X3D is a 6-core/12-thread chip with 99 MB of total cache. What sets the 5700X3D and 5500X3D apart from the 5800X3D and 5600X3D are lower clock speeds, and possibly, lower TDP. Both chips come with a base frequency of 3.00 GHz, compared to the 3.30 GHz of the 5600X3D and 3.40 GHz of the 5800X3D. The 5700X3D boosts up to 4.10 GHz compared to the 4.50 GHz of the 5800X3D; while the 5500X3D boosts up to 4.00 GHz when compared to 4.40 GHz of the 5600X3D. Both the 5800X3D and 5600X3D have their TDP rated at 105 W, so it's possible that AMD is using lower TDP and PPT values for the 5700X3D and 5500X3D. There's no word on when the two new chips are coming out, although AMD continues to release updates to the Socket AM4 AGESA microcode, with the latest version ComboAM4v2 1.2.0.B being released as recently as September 2023.

Acer today launched the company's first Chromebook Plus laptops, the Acer Chromebook Plus 515 and Acer Chromebook Plus 514, debuting with Google's Chromebook Plus initiative that offers a new tier of Chromebook performance, emphasizing better hardware designs with upgraded displays and cameras, and paired with new productivity, creativity, and multimedia capabilities.

The Acer Chromebook Plus 515 and Acer Chromebook Plus 514 both have the hardware and technology features customers need to stay productive, entertained and connected. These new models are powered by modern high-performance processors, and high-resolution IPS displays and 1080p crystal clear cameras flanked by narrow bezels to keep the focus on the vibrant visuals.

A die-shot of AMD's 4 nm "Phoenix 2" monolithic APU emerged over the weekend—possibly the first example of a Team Red hybrid core processor, utilizing a combination of bog standard Zen 4 cores as well as "compacted" Zen 4c units. Phoenix 2 has been hiding in plain sight it seems, within Ryzen Z1 series APUs—that have much in common with mobile/laptop-oriented 7040U products. David Huang has posted an analysis of a Ryzen Z1 APU via his review as posted on Zhuanlan, where he investigates the intriguing combination of Zen 4 and Zen 4c cores.

As interpreted/translated by Tom's Hardware: "HWiNFO, a system information, monitoring, and diagnostics utility, confirms that the Ryzen Z1, codenamed Phoenix 2, is on the PHX2-A0 stepping. It differs from AMD's Ryzen 7040U series (Phoenix) with the PHX-A1 stepping. The Ryzen Z1 has been rumored to be a clone of the Ryzen 5 7540U for a long time now." Laptops housing the latter APU are reported to have reached retail markets in certain territories, while the Ryzen Z1 (non-Extreme) SoC has not debuted in any new devices. A cheaper ASUS ROG Ally is expected to arrive in the near future with the lesser chip.

AMD's recently added Ryzen 5 7500F for the AM5 socket was initially said to only be available in the PRC, but according to AMD, it will apparently be available globally. That said, AMD apparently only seeded review units to select Asian media, among them Quasar Zone in Korea, who put the six core, 12 thread CPU through its paces. Overall performance is very close to the Ryzen 5 7600, which isn't really all that strange, considering the two only differ by 100 MHz in both base and boost clock. In most of the benchmarks, the Ryzen 5 7500F is around two to three percent slower than the Ryzen 5 7600 on average.

When compared to the slightly more pricey Intel Core i5-13400, AMD falls behind multithreaded apps but comes out on top in most of the games tested, with the usual odd exception as would be expected. On average, the Ryzen 5 7500F is some 13 percent faster in the game benchmarks at 1080p, although this is using an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card. It even beats the overall much faster Intel Core i5-13500 in gaming by around nine percent on average. However, the Ryzen 5 7500F system loses out to the two Intel systems when it comes to power efficiency, drawing around 20 Watts more on average when gaming. At US$179.99 it seems like AMD finally has a budget friendly CPU for the AM5 platform, if you're willing to lose the integrated GPU. It's unknown when the CPU will be available outside of Asia at this point in time.

The Puget Systems benchmark database outed AMD's Ryzen 5 7500F 6-core/12-thread processor last week—industry experts proposed that it was the first example of a Ryzen 7000 SKU with a disabled iGPU. A South Korean retailer indicated unit pricing of around $170-180, with a possible local launch date on July 7. It seems that retail units have not hit the market (at the time of writing), but Geekbench 6.1 results have since appeared online. According to an entry on the Geekbench database—that was spotted by Olrak29 earlier today—the Ryzen 5 7500F has a base clock of 3.7 GHz. It can boost up to 5.0 GHz on a single core, while all cores can reach a maximum of 4.8 GHz. The listing confirms that this new SKU sits firmly in the AMD "Raphael" CPU family.

The processor was tested on a system running Microsoft Windows 11—partial specifications of the evaluation build include an ASUS TUF Gaming A620M-PLUS WIFI motherboard and 32 GB of DDR5-6000 RAM. The tested Ryzen 5 7500F CPU achieved scores of 2782 points (single-core) and 13323 points (multi-threaded), which places it slightly ahead of the Ryzen 5 7600X in multi-thread performance. It trails slightly behind with its single-core result, but these figures are impressive considering that the Ryzen 5 7500F will likely be offered at a more budget friendly price when compared to its closest iGPU-enabled siblings.

US Computer component retailer Micro Center has announced that the store has struck an exclusive deal with AMD to be the sole retailer for the Ryzen 5 5600X3D processor. The CPU is apparently a limited edition release, although it's not clear how limited it'll be in terms of available quantities. The new CPU will launch on the 7th of July and has a base clock of 3.3 GHz and a boost clock of 4.4 GHz, each 100 MHz slower than the Ryzen 7 5800X3D. The CPU obviously has six CPU cores, which results in a total cache of 99 MB due to the missing two cores.

The TDP remains at 105 W and it appears that the Ryzen 5 5600X3D might just consist of failed Ryzen 7 5800X3D chips sold with two cores disabled. From what TPU understands, there should be some OEM availability of the Ryzen 5 5600X3D as well, based on what our sources have told us, but we don't have any details on which system integrators might be offering the CPU. Micro Center will be charging US$229.99, which is US$220 less than what the Ryzen 7 5800X3D launched at, although Micro Center is currently selling it at US$279.99. The Ryzen 5 5600X3D will also be offered at a discounted price when bought with eligible motherboard and memory bundles from Micro Center.

YEYIAN Gaming, a leading global designer and manufacturer of innovative pre-built gaming PCs, peripherals, and computer components, is thrilled to announce the launch of four new RTX 4060 Ti GPU gaming desktop PC models: YARI II 27F0B-46T1N, YARI II 24F0B-46T1N, SHOGE 560XB-46T1U, and SHOGE 240FOB-46T1U. These models are part of the YARI II and SHOGE series, designed to deliver unparalleled gaming performance and reliability for content creators and pro gamers.

Four gaming desktops are powered by the latest NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti graphics cards, which are based on the ultra-efficient NVIDIA Ada Lovelace architecture and offer an immersive, AI-accelerated gaming experience, including upgraded ray tracing and DLSS 3 technologies. The gaming desktops also feature the best-in-class components for both Intel and AMD platforms, as well as Core i7 and AMD Ryzen 5 processors, the NVMe M.2 SSDs, the DDR5/DDR4 memory modules, and come with Windows 11 Home pre-installed. Cooling performance is enhanced by RGB illuminated system fans and CPU AIO water-cooling for excellent system thermal performance under the most demanding of system loads.

ASUS today announced the all-new 14-inch, 16:10 Chromebook CM34 Flip, delivering an exquisite blend of powerful performance and versatility to empower both work and study. This stylish laptop features up to an AMD Ryzen 5 7520C processor, and WiFi 6 and a long-lasting battery, so it's well-equipped to breeze through everyday tasks anywhere.

The versatile 360° ErgoLift hinge means Chromebook CM34 Flip has the flexibility to function in a diverse array of modes, while the optional garaged stylus enables intuitive input to jot down notes or capture ideas. To top it all off, military-grade durability, one-touch fingerprint unlock and a physical webcam shutter for instant privacy offer peace of mind—at home, in the office or classroom, or exploring the world.

ASUS today announced the 15.6-inch Vivobook Go 15 OLED (E1504F) and 14-inch Vivobook Go 14 (E1404F), two exciting and affordable lifestyle laptops that help make users productive or keep them entertained, wherever they go. These light and compact laptops feature superior OLED (E1504F) or IPS (E1404F) displays and powerful ASUS SonicMaster sound systems with DTS Audio Processing for immersive entertainment. The design is stylish and practical, with thoughtful touches that make the user's life easier, such as a 180° lay-flat hinge. Built to survive any lifestyle, these tough laptops are US military-grade tested for durability using the world's strictest test regime.

Speedy performance for any task is assured by up to AMD Ryzen 5 7000-series processors, 16 GB of LPDDR5 RAM and a 512 GB PCIe SSD. Other user-friendly features include an ASUS ErgoSense keyboard; smart conferencing via the HD webcam with ASUS 3D Noise Reduction (3DNR), AI noise cancelation, and a physical privacy shield; and a useful suite of ASUS apps including MyASUS, GlideX and ScreenXpert 3.

A few months ago, AMD has launched its highly anticipated Ryzen 7000 series of processors based on Zen 4 architecture. However, the company only launched the "X" SKUs (example being 7900X) for now, while the remaining ones are awaiting a launch date. Today, we have information from VideoCardz that confirm AMD's new launch on January 10th, when team red plans to update its remaining processor family with Ryzen 7000 series non-X SKUs. There will be three initial models to choose from Ryzen 9 7900 (12C/24T), Ryzen 7 7700 (8C/16T), and Ryzen 5 7600 (6C/12T). These SKUs follow the traditional Zen 4 path; however, the only distinction from their "X" counterparts is the reduced TDP to 65 Watts, down from up to 170 Watt TDP in some of those models.

A leaked slide from AMD's product presentation regarding these SKUs is a comparison between AMD's own Ryzen 9 5900X and Ryzen 9 7900, where the Zen 4 variant successfully beat the older SKU by a significant percentage. Pricing and further details are listed on the slides below.

Ahead of their market debut early January, we got confirmation of the specifications of the three upcoming AMD Ryzen 7000 series non-X processor SKUs. There will indeed only be three new SKUs, the 6-core/12-thread Ryzen 5 7600, the 8-core/16-thread Ryzen 7 7700, and the 12-core/24-thread Ryzen 9 7900; and no 16-core part. All three SKUs have their TDP rated at 65 W, which means that their PIB (processor in box) retail packages will include a stock cooling solution. The 7600 comes with a Wraith Stealth cooler that's capable of handling thermal loads of 65 W TDP processors at stock speeds; while the 7700 and 7900 will include a feature-packed Wraith Prism RGB cooler that's designed for 140 W TDP processors. Since Socket AM5 has cooler compatibility with AM4, AMD could simply be reusing the same coolers it packed with past-generation Ryzen processors.

The Ryzen 5 7600 comes with an MSRP of USD $229, clock speeds of up to 5.10 GHz boost, and targets the likes of the Intel Core i5-13600 or i5-12600. The $329 MSRP Ryzen 7 7700 ticks at speeds of up to 5.30 GHz boost, and is designed to compete with the Core i7-13700 or i7-12700. The Ryzen 9 7900 has an interesting price tag of $429 (MSRP), ticks at speeds of up to 5.40 GHz boost, and purportedly competes against the Core i9-13900 (non-K) and i9-12900. The three chips should be drop-in compatible with Socket AM5 motherboards being sold right now, likely with no need for a BIOS update. Although launch of these three SKUs in January is certain, the company might use the 2023 International CES keynote address by its CEO Dr Lisa Su to either tease or announce the Ryzen 7000X3D processors featuring 3D Vertical Cache memory, which is known to boost gaming performance.

LG's Intel based gram-series of notebooks have proven quite popular in the Ultrabook segment. However, its Ultra PC models are built around AMD hardware and although there have been a 13.3-inch model in the past, the company has announced its new 14- and 16-inch models. Both models are based around either a Ryzen 5 5625U or a Ryzen 7 5825U processor, which is built on AMD's Barcelo chips. This sadly means that features like USB4, DDR5/LPDDR5 and PCIe 4.0 support are out the window. This is because Barcelo is a refresh of Cezanne, which means both CPU families based on the Zen 3 architecture. On the plus side, this means the pricing will be quite competitive, but more on that in a second.

The 14-inch model measures 313.9 x 220.45 x 16.3 mm and weighs in at 1.29 kg, whereas the 16-inch model is slightly larger—for obvious reasons—and measures 356.3 x 248.6 x 16.3 mm, but remains fairly portable at 1.6 kg. The display on both the 14- and 16-inch models features 1920x1200 resolution, with the 14-inch model having a brighter display at 300 vs 250 nits for the 16-inch model. Neither display is what you'd call impressive though. Other features include up to 16 GB of dual-channel LPDDR4X memory, up to 1 TB of storage, HDMI out, a USB-C port with DP Alt mode and USB PD support, two USB-A ports, a microSD card slot, an audio jack and a power connector for the charger. WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1, as well as a fingerprint reader are also part of the package. Battery life is said to be up 21 and 20 hours respectively when it comes to video playback, with the 14-inch model managing 16.5 hours in MobileMark 2018, whereas the 16-inch model only manages 15 hours flat. LG will offer a range of SKUs that start at €1,199 for the 14-inchers and €1,399 for the 16-inchers, all of which should be available at some point this month.

For those of you that are eagerly awaiting the Ryzen 7000-series CPUs, details of the potential pricing has appeared over at Canadian e-tailer DirectDial. @momomo_us was first to post the details on Twitter, but didn't provide any details of who the e-tailer was, but some sleuthing using the AMD ordering codes soon brought us to DirectDial. The company has listed the all four expected CPU models with pricing and it appears that AMD has decided to stop providing coolers entirely, as none of the four upcoming CPUs appear to be available with a cooler in the box. All the model names ending WOF are retail packaged CPUs and the ones missing WOF at the end of the product number are tray CPUs from what we can tell.

As for the pricing, the Ryzen 5 7600X is listed at CA$435 or about US$340, with the Ryzen 7 7700X coming in at CA$631 or US$494. The Ryzen 9 7900X is CA$798/US$625 and finally the Ryzen 9 7950X is a steep CA$1158/US$907. @momomo_us also found some tray pricing from a different retailer and these CPUs are priced a few bucks cheaper, but we were unable to locate who the retailer is. Note that electronics and computer parts appear to be priced a fair bit higher in Canada than the US on average. As such, these prices should only be taken as an indication of what the retail price in Canada might end up being and not what the actual MSRP will land at, when AMD decides to launch these CPUs. Currently the retail date is expected to be on the 15th of September.

Update 10:49 UTC: The tray CPU retailer is PC-Canada.

It's pretty clear that we're getting very close to the launch of AMD's AM5 platform and the Ryzen 7000-series CPUs, with spec details and even pricing brackets tipping up online. Wccftech has posted what the publication believes will be the lineup we can expect to launch in just over a month's time, if rumours are to be believed. The base model is said to be the Ryzen 5 7600X, which the site claims will have a base clock of 4.7 GHz and a boost clock of 5.3 GHz. There's no change in processor core or thread count compared to the current Ryzen 5 5600X, but the L2 cache appears to have doubled, for a total of 38 MB of cache. This is followed by the Ryzen 7 7700X, which starts out a tad slower with a base clock of 4.5 GHz, but it has a slightly higher boost clock of 5.4 GHz. Likewise here, the core and thread count remains unchanged, while the L2 cache also gets a bump here for a total of 40 MB cache. Both these models are said to have a 105 W TDP.

The Ryzen 9 7900X is said to have a 4.7 GHz base clock and a 5.6 GHz boost clock, so a 200 MHz jump up from the Ryzen 7 7700X. This CPU has a total of 76 MB of cache. Finally the Ryzen 9 7950X is said to have the same base clock of 4.5 GHz as the Ryzen 7 7700X, but it has the highest boost clock of all the expected models at 5.7 GHz, while having a total of 80 MB cache. These two SKUs are both said to have a 170 W TDP. Price wise, from top to bottom, we might be looking at somewhere around US$700, US$600, US$300 and US$200, so it seems like AMD has adjusted its pricing downwards by around $100 on the low-end, with the Ryzen 7 part fitting the same price bracket as the Ryzen 7 5700X. The Ryzen 9 7900X seems to have had its price adjusted upwards slightly, while the Ryzen 9 7950X seems to be expected to be priced lower than its predecessors. Take these things with the right helping of scepticism for now, as things can still change before the launch.

AMD is preparing to update its mobile sector with the latest IP in the form of Zen4 CPU cores and RDNA3 graphics. According to Red Gaming Tech, we have specifications of upcoming processor families. First, we have AMD Dragon Range mobile processors representing a downsized Raphael design for laptops. Carrying Zen4 CPU cores and RDNA2 integrated graphics, these processors are meant to power high-performance laptops with up to 16 cores and 32 threads. Being a direct competitor to Intel's Alder Lake-HX, these processors also carry an interesting naming convention. The available SKUs include AMD Ryzen 5 7600HX, Ryzen 7 7800HX, Ryzen 9 7900HX, and Ryzen 9 7980HX design with a massive 16-core configuration. These CPUs are envisioned to run along with more powerful dedicated graphics, with clock speeds of 4.8-5.0+ GHz.

Next, we have AMD Phoenix processors, which take Dragon Range's design to a higher level thanks to the newer graphics IP. Having Zen4 cores, Phoenix processors carry upgraded RDNA3 graphics chips to provide a performance level similar to NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3060 Max-Q SKU, all in one package. These APUs will come in four initial configurations: Ryzen 5 7600HS, Ryzen 7 7800HS, Ryzen 9 7900HS, and Ryzen 9 7980HS. While maxing out at eight cores, these APUs will compensate with additional GPU compute units with a modular chiplet design. AMD Phoenix is set to become AMD's first chiplet design launching for the laptop market, and we can expect more details as we approach the launch date.

Acer today debuted its new high-performance Acer Chromebook Spin 514 convertible and durable Chromebook, powered by new AMD Ryzen 5000 C-series processors based on AMD "Zen 3" architecture and AMD Radeon graphics, also launched today. "Acer's continued partnership with AMD has resulted in award-winning Chromebooks that deliver the latest in powerful performance in thin-and-light designs," said James Lin, General Manager, Notebooks, IT Products Business, Acer Inc. "Acer Chromebook customers have pushed the boundaries for what they do with their Chromebook, and can do even more with the new Ryzen-powered Acer Chromebook Spin 514."

"We're proud to partner with Acer to introduce the new AMD processor-powered Acer Chromebook Spin 514," said Saeid Moshkelani, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Client Business Unit, AMD. "With the leadership performance of Ryzen 5000 C-Series processors, Acer's latest Chromebook is equipping consumers with technology that is putting collaboration and efficiency at the forefront of every classroom, office and creative space."