An online tipster, posting on the Chinese blog site Weibo, has let slip that Qualcomm's upcoming Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 mobile chipset is touted to pack some hefty graphical capabilities. The suggested Adreno "750" smartphone and tablet GPU is touted to offer a 50% increase over the present generation Adreno 740 - as featured on the recently released and cutting-edge Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset. The current generation top-of-the-range Snapdragon is no slouch when it comes to graphics benchmarks, where it outperforms Apple's prime contender - the Bionic A16 SoC.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC is expected to launch in the last quarter of 2023, but details of the flagship devices that it will power are non-existent at the time of writing. The tipster suggests that Qualcomm has decided to remain on TSMC's 4 nm process for its next generation mobile chipset - perhaps an all too safe decision when you consider that Apple has upped the stakes with the approach of its Bionic A17 SoC. It has been reported that the Cupertino, California-based company has chosen to fabricate via TSMC's 3 nm process, although the Taiwanese foundry is said to be struggling with its N3 production line. The engineers at Qualcomm's San Diego headquarters are alleged to be experimenting with increased clock speeds running on the next gen Adreno GPU - as high as 1.0 GHz - in order to eke out as much performance as possible, in anticipation of besting the Bionic A17 in graphics benchmarks. The tipster theorizes that Qualcomm will still have a hard time matching Apple in terms of pure CPU throughput, so the consolation prize will lie with a superior GPU getting rigged onto the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.

For whatever reason, all of the AMD A620 chipset based motherboards that were announced on Friday, are not showing off the capabilities of the chipset and are in fact making it look worse than it is. AMD has no doubt limited the A620 platform, with some limitations that seem arbitrary, but the motherboards makers clearly haven't helped, as they've made the platform look very unattractive, when in fact it could be entirely acceptable, for a budget build. As you can see from AMD's feature matrix below, the company has removed a fair share of features compared to the B650 chipset, but for example, two 10 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports can be implemented. Despite this, only Biostar and Gigabyte have implemented one such port each, with ASUS, ASRock and MSI implementing zero.

Yes, the platform is limited to 65 W CPUs—assuming you want your CPUs boost behaviour to work as intended—which is likely to cause some issues, as it might not be clear to potential buyers that are looking for a cheap motherboard for their system and it's something AMD and its board partners need to communicate a lot better. However, the A620 platform has enough PCIe lanes for two M.2 drives and enough left for all the peripheral connectivity and some PCIe slots, yet most of the boards appear to shun a second M.2 slot for no apparent reason beyond the cost of the physical interface. It looks as if AMD's board partners have decided to try and cut back as much as they can in terms of features that we've ended up with boards that no sensible person should be buying, as the boards are barely fit for purpose. Time will tell if we'll see some better boards down the road, but it would appear that AMD's board partner would rather sell its potential customers a more expensive B650 board, based on the weak line-up of boards that launched on Friday.

Benchmark results for Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4 SoC appeared on Geekbench Browser early yesterday morning, under the designation Snapdragon 8cx Next Gen. This chipset is tipped to be a successor to the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3, which was launched at the end of 2021 as the world's first 5 nm Arm-based SoC for Windows laptops. A tipster on Twitter has highlighted the very underwhelming results posted by the next gen chipset, and these figures would indicate that an engineering sample was the test subject, not final silicon. The 8-core Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 is shown to outperform its supposed successor, and the clock frequencies for the latter appear to be lower than anticipated.

The Geekbench 5 database entry for Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4 also reveals details about its specifications - a 12-core configuration that is split into eight performance cores and four power-efficiency ones. The base core frequency is listed as being 2.38 GHz, and the benchmark was completed under a Balanced Power plan in Windows 11 Home Insider Preview. 16 GB of RAM was used in the test kit, although earlier leaks have indicated that the chipset can support up to a maximum of 64 GB LPDDR5 RAM.

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. today announced the world's first integrated 5G IoT processors that are designed to support four major operating systems, in addition to two new robotics platforms, and an accelerator program for IoT ecosystem partners. These new innovations will empower manufacturers participating in the rapidly expanding world of devices at the connected intelligent edge.

The need for connected, intelligent, and autonomous devices is growing rapidly, and it is expected to hit $116 billion by 2030 according to Precedence Research. Businesses attempting to compete in this fast-moving economy need a reliable source of control and connectivity technology for their IoT and robotic devices. Qualcomm Technologies, which has shipped over 350 million dedicated IoT chipsets, is uniquely capable of providing manufacturers with the platforms needed to address this expanding segment.

In a Samsung Electronics business report released on March 12, it was revealed that the giant electronics manufacturer will begin mass production of new chips through a 4 nm 2.3-generation process. The newly established manufacturing process is set to start by the end of H1 2023, which means that mid-June would be the expected commencement date. Samsung Semiconductor has managed to produce a satisfactory yield of wafers with the new generation chipsets.

Samsung Electronics has experienced significant problems with the production of previous generation 4 nm chips, and industry insiders have been surprised by the sudden announcement of the third generation version, given rumors pointing to the Hwaseong factory struggling to reach yields at the 60% mark. Qualcomm famously dropped Samsung in favor of TSMC as a source of 4 nm chipsets in 2022, due to disappointing yield figures.

AMD is preparing to release the latest version of its Chipset software. Version 5.01.29.2026 WHQL should be of particular interest for users planning to buy an upcoming Ryzen 7000X3D series processor. The chipset driver includes the "3D V-Cache Performance Optimizer driver" component, version 1.0.0.7. This gives Windows a degree of awareness of the asymmetric nature of 3DV cache on the 16-core 7950X3D and 12-core 7900X3D, where only one of the two CCDs (chiplets) has the 3DV cache memory, while the other is a regular "Zen 4" CCD with 32 MB on-die L3 cache. This awareness should in theory improve performance in less-parallelized workloads (such as games). The AMD website doesn't yet list this driver, but it should appear as we head closer to the market-availability date of the 7950X3D and 7900X3D (February 28). From the looks of it, the optimization works for both Windows 11 and Windows 10, so those on the older operating system for reasons, can keep rocking it.

Kontron, a leading global provider of IoT/Embedded Computer Technology (ECT), announces that all ATX, µATX and Mini-ITX motherboards supporting the 12th generation Intel Core i processor series will soon receive a comprehensive BIOS update to 13th generation. Equipped with Intel's Performance Hybrid Architecture, they offer a significant increase in performance with lower energy consumption. All boards belong to a product family with synergetic BIOS, uniform drivers and comprehensive tool set for customer-specific settings (default settings, thermal management, boot logo, etc.) and are "designed and made in Germany". They are suitable for IoT applications in the fields of industry, medicine, kiosk, digital signage, POS/POI, video surveillance and casino gaming. They will be available from Q2/2023.

The compact Mini-ITX motherboards K3833-Q and K3832-Q are equipped with the powerful Intel Q670E chipset, which offers extensive features such as vPro Manageability, Stable Image (SIPP) or RAID. They have Dual Intel LAN interfaces incl. teaming as well as TSN and real-time support (TCC), a PCIe x16 Gen 5 expansion slot, USB 3.2 Gen 2 interfaces, an M.2 Key-M and Key-E slot as well as two DIMM sockets for DDR5 memory.

AMD's high-end X670E motherboard chipset combines two Promontory 21 chips working together to deliver a single solution. With regularly-sized ATX motherboards, having two chips to form a chipset is fine, as there is much room on the PCB. However, with Mini-ITX motherboards, packing two Promontory 21 chips is difficult as the PCB area is limited. To combat this, ASUS introduced an interesting solution to solve the problem and allowed the company to ship the high-end X670E chipset inside a Mini-ITX form factor. Thanks to UNIKO's Hardware's findings, we look at the exciting solution ASUS used to solve this problem.

Instead of two Promontory 21 chips side by side, one is placed on the motherboard directly, while the other stands vertically attached by M.2 PCIe slot. Below, the chipset's pictures and the highlight show how it looks disassembled.

Although we haven't been able to confirm these specs, full specifications of AMD's upcoming A620 chipset was posted on Twitter by @g01d3nm4ng0, who has proven to have solid details in the past. This is supposedly the cut-down version of the B650 chipset, due to the rumored delays of the actual A620 chipset. The A620 chipset will be identical to the B650 chipset when it comes to PCIe lane counts, but rather than PCIe 4.0 lanes, the chipset will only offer PCIe 3.0 lanes. What is unclear is if the PCIe 3.0 of the B650 chipset will remain or not, as they're not included in the leaked specs.

If not, then the A620 chipset will only have a total of eight usable PCIe lanes, but four lanes that are connected to the CPU, which will apparently also be limited to PCIe 3.0 speeds. There's also no mention of SATA port configurations. AMD has trimmed the amount of USB 3.x ports significantly, with the A620 chipset only getting two 10 Gbps and two 5 Gbps ports. USB 2.0 ports remain the same at a total of six. A620 motherboards will apparently also be limited to PCIe 4.0 for the lanes from the CPU, but this should be less of an issue for most consumers. As rumored, CPU overclocking is also said to be missing, but RAM overclocking will still be present.

According to HKEPC, AMD is set to introduce two versions of the A620 chipset for its lower-end motherboards, providing a lower barrier of AM5 entry for users on a smaller budget. As the new source notes, AMD is going to use its Promontory 21 (PROM21) module for A620 motherboards, the same one used on B650 and X670 models. However, for the first time, we are hearing about Promontory 22 (PROM22), a module that will allow A620-based motherboards to start at 125 US dollars—a promise made by AMD in its marketing slides (which you can see below). Two A620 chipsets will enable users to choose basic functionality or some additional features on a reasonable budget.

With PROM21 going inside all chipset SKUs, it carries silicon functionality disabled by AMD to create different categories. However, the PROM22 is a new silicon that doesn't need bells and whistles of the high-end boards inside a feature-deprived chipset like A620. This drives down AMD's costs, making it easier for vendors to adjust pricing. We have to wait for the launch and see how much of this will be fulfilled, so stay tuned for further updates.

For those that don't remember the early days of ASRock, the company started out making some rather unusual motherboards, often with some wild and wacky upgrade paths, such as both a slot and a socket for a CPU or both AGP and PCIe graphics card slots. Since then, ASRock has become a much more mainstream motherboard maker, but the company appears to have gone back to its roots with what the company calls the X670 Xpansion Kit. Right now, the expansion card appears to be working with the B650 LiveMixer motherboard and it's unknown if it's compatible with other models from ASRock. It seems to be limited to ASRock motherboards only, due to the fact that the add-in card requires not only a x4 PCIe slot with all lanes attached, on the motherboard, but also a custom cable that is most likely for "low-speed" I/O's such as I2C, SPI and so on.

As the name suggests, the X670 Xpansion Kit allows B650 motherboards to be turned into X670 motherboards, more or less. The card is home to a second chipset, which enables not only two additional M.2 slots for PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs, but it also features two SATA ports, a 10 Gbps USB-C port, three USB-A ports and—maybe most interestingly—a 10 Gbps Ethernet interface. It's unclear if this will be a retail product, but the card provided to Level1Techs doesn't appear to be an engineer unit, but a full retail ready product. It's definitely an interesting upgrade path for those that have invested in a B650 motherboard and there's no real reason why this shouldn't work as well as having the second chipset on the motherboard, especially as ASRock appears to have fitted a signal re-driver on the add-in card to make sure the PCIe signals are handled properly.

Intel is expected to launch the B760 chipset alongside a slew of more 13th gen Core CPUs at CES in January, but already details of upcoming motherboards are starting to appear. We've already seen some details about Gigabyte's B760 Aorus Elite and now some very detailed pictures of MSI's upcoming B760 MAG Tomahawk have made an appearance on VideoCardz. The board is a spitting image of its B660 predecessor in terms of layout, but there appear to be some minor changes in terms of header placement.

MSI has also changed the colour scheme for all black to black with some white highlights. The rear I/O cover appears to have changed marginally, but even the heatsinks appear to be nigh on identical to the previous model. The pictures are of the DDR4 version, but there will apparently be a DDR5 version as well of this SKU from MSI. According to the rumour mill, prices of B760 boards will be up about 10 percent over the current B660 models, but nothing has been confirmed as yet.

Not entirely unexpected, pictures of the first B760 motherboard, or at least its packaging and the board inside the packaging, has made an appearance online. We're around a month or so from the expected announcement of Intel's more cost effective 700-series chipset, which will likely follow the Z790 chipset by adding more PCIe 4.0 lanes, but otherwise differ very little from the current B660 chipset.

No actual details were provided when it comes to the specs of the Gigabyte B760 Aorus Elite AX DDR4, but it's likely that this will be the last generation of DDR4 motherboards. This is because it's unlikely that Intel will support DDR4 memory on future desktop PC platforms. What we can spot through the antistatic bag, is a board design that is very similar to Gigabyte's current B660 Aorus Elite AX DDR4, but with a new motif on the chipset and NVMe drive heatsinks. In fact, the board layout appears to be near identical from what little we can see, but there are some clearly visible component placement that can be seen and compared to the current model. Hopefully we'll get some better pictures of this board in the near future from the leaker.

MediaTek today announced its new Kompanio chipsets for Chromebooks: the Kompanio 520 and Kompanio 528. With upgraded computing performance and battery life for entry level Chromebooks, the newest Kompanio chipsets provide a seamless experience so consumers can browse, cloud game, stream and use Google Play apps while enjoying all-day battery life.

"Enhanced power efficiency, speedy performance and reliable connectivity are at the core of a great user experience, and that's exactly what MediaTek's new Kompanio chipsets deliver," said Adam King, Vice President and General Manager, Client Computing Business Unit at MediaTek. "As the No. 1 provider of Arm-based Chromebooks, MediaTek makes the latest AI, connectivity, display and imaging features accessible at every price point."

MediaTek today launched the Pentonic 1000, its latest flagship smart TV system-on-chip (SoC) designed for 4K 120 Hz displays. Pentonic 1000 integrates Wi-Fi 6/6E support, MEMC for smoother video, a powerful AI processor, Dolby Vision IQ with Precision Detail, and 8-screen Intelligent View so users can watch or preview multiple streams of content at once. The chipset also supports the most advanced video codecs and global TV broadcast standards in a single platform.

The MediaTek Pentonic 1000 combines a powerful multi-core CPU, dual-core GPU, dedicated AI processing unit (APU) and video decoding engines into a single chip. The chipset provides resolution support up to 4K at 120 Hz and is capable of VRR up to 4K at 144 Hz for gaming applications. In addition to supporting super-fast frame rates for smoother gaming, it provides a lag-free experience with Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM).

Over the past few weeks, the legal dispute between Arm Ltd. and Qualcomm Inc. has been warming up the eyes of the entire tech community. However, as per the latest court filing, Arm could change its licensing strategy and shift its whole business model into a new direction that would benefit the company directly. Currently, the company provides the intellectual property (IP) that chip makers can use and add to designs mixed with other IPs and custom in-house solutions. That is how the world of electronics design (EDA) works and how many companies operate. However, in the Qualcomm-Arm legal battle, Qualcomm's counterclaim has brought new light about Arm's plans for licensing its hardware designs past 2024.

According to Dylan Patel of SemiAnalysis, who examined court documents, Arm will reportedly change terms to use its IP where the use of other IP mixed with Arm IP is prohibited. If a chip maker plans to use Arm CPU IP, they must also use Arm's GPU/NPU/ISP/DSP IPs. This would result in devices that utilize every design the UK-based designer has to offer, and other IP makers will have to exclude their designs from the SoC. By doing this, Arm directly stands against deals like the Samsung-AMD deal, where AMD provides RDNA GPU IP and would force Samsung to use Arm's Mali GPU IP instead. This change should take effect in 2025 when every new license agreement has to comply with new rules.

US retailer B&H has kindly provided the first B650 motherboard pricing and it's something of a mixed bag. The company has listed no less than seven different models from MSI, ranging in price from US$199.99 to US$329.99. It doesn't appear as if any of these boards are based on the B650E chipset, but based on information TPU were given at Computex, we know that some higher-end B650 boards will cost around the same as some lower-end B650E boards.

As B&H has only listed key features of the boards, it's hard to tell what features some of the boards offer, but the base model is the mATX Pro B650M-A WiFi, which at the very least has one PCIe 4.0 x16 slot, one PCIe 4.0 x4 slot, one PCIe 3.0 x1 slot and two M.2 slots. The board obviously also has WiFi 6E and somewhat surprisingly has 2.5 Gbps Ethernet. On the other hand, it only has a front header for a USB-C port and none around the back. This type of board was supposed to start at or below the US$150 mark and we'll hopefully see a transition to there in due time.

GIGABYTE Technology, (TWSE: 2376), an industry leader in high-performance servers and workstations, today announced supporting products for the new AMD AM5 platform starting with two GIGABYTE motherboards, MC13-LE0 & MC13-LE1, that pair a consumer CPU with IPMI management functionalities via BMC. Additionally, a new desktop workstation, W332-Z00, was released using the same motherboard series platform that supports remote management, but the W332 does so with a Realtek NIC that enables DASH.

The new GIGABYTE products designed to support host systems are deceivingly powerful with a small micro-ATX form factor motherboard and enterprise rich out-of-band management features on top of PCIe Gen 5 and DDR5 technologies. These new client friendly products will be found in office settings under a desk rather than a rack in a data center, as they be managed from anywhere, provided there is a network connection. Furthermore, these new products are purpose built for the mainstream AMD B650E chipset with AMD Zen 4 architecture for AMD Ryzen 7000 Series desktop processors.

ASRock will announce no fewer than thirteen motherboard models based on the upcoming Intel Z790 chipset, the top chipset option for the 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" desktop processors. "Raptor Lake" is backwards-compatible with Intel 600-series chipset motherboards; and the Z790 is expected to support 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" processors, since both generations share Socket LGA1700. ASRock's lineup is led by the Z790 Taichi, and its variant that features a white-marble finish, the Z790 Taichi Carrara, several models in the Phantom Gaming (PG) series, including the PG Riptide, PG-ITX/TB4, and new extensions including the PG Sonic, and PG Lightning. The Sonic Mixer brand that's making a debut with the AMD X670 chipset is also to be seen here. There's just the one Steel Legend SKU, and a couple of PRO series. The list also mentions one model based on the mid-tier B760 chipset.

AMD's upcoming launch of Ryzen 7000 series processors will bring an entirely new AM5 platform that will enable newer technologies and protocols. We have DDR5 memory and PCIe 5.0 connection with everything at level five. However, the upcoming chipsets AMD has designed to work alongside the new processors will be available in several variants. There will be regular X670 and B650 versions that support either a PCIe 5.0 GPU or a PCIe 5.0 M.2 NVIMe SSD. Today, we got a confirmation that not only the big X670 chipset has an "E" or "Extreme" version, but its smaller brother B650 as well. With X670E and B650E, users get both PCIe 5.0 connectivity for their GPU and M.2 NVIMe SSD. For more information, we have to wait for AMD's official launch information later today.

A post on Chinese forum Bilibili has revealed more exact details with regards to when Intel's Raptor Lake series of processors will launch and if nothing changes between now and then, the K and KF SKU's should be announced as previously thought, at the Intel Innovation '22 event that kicks off on the 27th of September. Retail availability, alongside Z790 motherboards should be about a month later, starting the week of the 17th of October. We've confirmed these dates with our own sources, but as always with early information, these things can change.

The rest of the Raptor Lake family of CPUs, as well as the H770 and B760 chipsets are expected to launch at CES 2023 in January and the poster on Bilibili claims that retail sales should be sometime in the second half of January. We've not been able to confirm the latter information here. As per older rumours, Intel is expected to change the PCIe lane allocation for the Z790 chipset compared to Z690 and based on the information posted, Z790 will have 20 PCIe 4.0 and eight PCIe 3.0 lanes, vs. 12 PCIe 4.0 and 16 PCIe 3.0 for the Z690 chipset. Raptor Lake is also said to get native support for faster DDR5 5600 memory, rather than just 4800 MHz DDR5 for Alder Lake. There are apparently no changes to the CPU PCIe lanes and DDR4 support is still here, but once again, no changes have been made to the DDR4 memory controller.

Although AMD has not as yet announced its B650E chipset, rumour about such a chipset started before Computex. To date, no specific motherboard models have been mentioned by model name, but courtesy of Videocardz, we now have a list of several upcoming models from ASRock. The company has already announced its X670E range of motherboards, which consists of five models, of which four can already be seen on the ASRock website. ASRock appears to be planning five B650E boards, plus another six B650 SKU's. The company also appears to be the OEM for NZXT's second AMD motherboard, which appears to be called the N7-B65XT, which might also be a B650E based board.

Unfortunately we don't know any of the technical details about the upcoming B650/B650E boards from ASRock, but the model names give away that two of the five B650E boards will be Mini-ITX boards. It doesn't look like ASRock will be offering a high-end B650E model, but at least there will be an upper mid-range Steel Legend board. ASRock will also have a couple of mATX B650 boards, one should be a more gaming focused mid-range model, with the other being what appears to be a fairly basic model. One peculiar addition is a B650 SKU with the prefix LiveMixer, which is a new series from ASRock as far as we're aware. ASRock doesn't appear to be offering any X670 motherboards at all, at least not based on the current information.

AMD has recently released new chipset drivers for Ryzen processors on a wide range of platforms including A320, B350, X370, B450, X470, X399, A520, B550, X570, TRX40, and WRX80 that are running Windows 10 & 11. The new drivers include additional program support, display & airplane mode notifications, Ryzen 9 Mobile improvements, and various bug fixes. This latest release also sees the introduction of six new drivers including official USB 4.0 support, the complete changelog and download link can be found below.

Download: AMD Ryzen Chipset Drivers (4.06.10.651)

Although Intel's 13th generation of Core CPUs—codenamed Raptor Lake—aren't expected to launch until sometime in September or October this year, details of some of ASRock's motherboards for the new CPUs have leaked. ASRock is preparing to launch at least nine Z790 and three H770 motherboards, of which at least four will have support for DDR4 memory, according to VideoCardz. The list is missing a flagship Aqua model, but contains Taichi, Pro RS, Phantom Gaming Lightning and Riptide models, as well as a Steel Legend H770 boards and a couple of -C models, which are likely budget boards, despite being based on the Z790 chipset.

There will be a microATX Phantom Gaming Lighting board with DDR4 and a Phantom Gaming Riptide model with DDR5 support. So far no other features have been reported and from our understanding, the Z790 won't differ hugely from the Z690 chipset. The extra PCIe lanes from the 13th gen Core CPUs are expected to support PCIe 5.0 this time around, which will allow for faster NVMe based M.2 drives to be used. Intel is not planning on integrating Thunderbolt 4 support in these CPUs based on available information.

Intel's high-end desktop (HEDT), usually reserved for workstation and enterprise applications, is due for an update, and the company is readying an entire family of updated products. Today, we found a leak of what appears to be an Intel Sapphire Rapids design made for desktops. Called Xeon W5-3433, the CPU appears in the SiSoftware Sandra benchmark database. It carries a configuration of 16 cores and 32 threads and is equipped with 32 MB of L2 cache and 45 MB of L3 cache. Having 2 MB of L2 cache per core suggests that the design is not an Alder Lake variation. This specific SKU is clocked at 1.99 GHz, meaning an early engineering sample.

The Sapphire Rapids HEDT platform is codenamed FishHawk Falls. Intel is supposed to offer Alder Lake-X processors with higher core counts and the FishHawk Falls. Both will be running on the same W790 chipset; however, the Sapphire Rapids implementation will carry more cores in a Xeon package designed for professionals. There was an Ice Lake-X Xeon processor called Xeon W-3335 with 16 cores and 32 threads, meaning that the leaked Xeon W5-3433 is its direct successor.