MSI, a world-leading gaming motherboard manufacturer, proudly announces the new flagship AMD B550 motherboards - MEG B550 UNIFY and MEG B550 UNIFY-X. The spirit of the UNIFY series consists of modest and pure black design, emphasizing the real value of the motherboard that can be brought to the demanding gamers and power users instead of fancy LED decorations. By eliminating all the redundant RGB LEDs and adopting the UV black printing, the heatsink shows the gleam and the shining reflection of the dragon that symbolizes a mysterious and high-quality image. For the UNIFY series motherboard, MSI put great efforts into those essential parts concerned by those enthusiast gamers, enhancing not only the thermal but also power solution to run with the AMD Ryzen processors.

Emphasizing the ultimate performance, MEG B550 UNIFY brings astonishing overclocking records to enthusiast gamers. With AMD Ryzen 5 3600XT processor, it is an incredible result to push CPU frequency to 6155.35 MHz, becoming the world's record breaker once again.

AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) today announced record revenue for the third quarter of 2020 of $2.80 billion, operating income of $449 million, net income of $390 million and diluted earnings per share of $0.32. On a non-GAAP* basis, operating income was $525 million, net income was $501 million and diluted earnings per share was $0.41.

"Our business accelerated in the third quarter as strong demand for our PC, gaming and data center products drove record quarterly revenue," said Dr. Lisa Su, AMD president and CEO. "We reported our fourth straight quarter with greater than 25 percent year-over-year revenue growth, highlighting our significant customer momentum. We are well positioned to continue delivering best-in-class growth as we further extend our leadership product portfolio with the launches of our next generation Ryzen, Radeon and EPYC processors."

Scores for AMD's upcoming Zen 3 Ryzen 7 5800X (8 core, 16 thread) and Ryzen 9 5950X (16 core, 32 thread) have surfaced on the CPU-Z benchmark. The results, which should - as always - be taken with appropriate salt, point towards the Ryzen 7 5800X scoring 650 single-core and 6593 points in the multi-threaded benchmark. The Ryzen 9 5950X is rated as scoring 690.2 points in the same single-threaded benchmark and 13306.5 points in the multi-threaded one. CPU-Z scores for the Intel Core i9-10900K (10 cores, 20 threads) are set at 584 and 7389 points respectively. This is further fuel to the fire on AMD's current technology and performance leadership.

AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) and Xilinx (NASDAQ: XLNX) today announced they have entered into a definitive agreement for AMD to acquire Xilinx in an all-stock transaction valued at $35 billion. The combination will create the industry's leading high performance computing company, significantly expanding the breadth of AMD's product portfolio and customer set across diverse growth markets where Xilinx is an established leader. The transaction is expected to be immediately accretive to AMD margins, EPS and free cash flow generation and deliver industry-leading growth.

The acquisition brings together two industry leaders with complementary product portfolios and customers. AMD will offer the industry's strongest portfolio of high performance processor technologies, combining CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, Adaptive SoCs and deep software expertise to enable leadership computing platforms for cloud, edge and end devices. Together, the combined company will capitalize on opportunities spanning some of the industry's most important growth segments from the data center to gaming, PCs, communications, automotive, industrial, aerospace and defense.

FinalWire Ltd. today announced the immediate availability of AIDA64 Extreme 6.30 software, a streamlined diagnostic and benchmarking tool for home users; the immediate availability of AIDA64 Engineer 6.30 software, a professional diagnostic and benchmarking solution for corporate IT technicians and engineers; the immediate availability of AIDA64 Business 6.30 software, an essential network management solution for small and medium scale enterprises; and the immediate availability of AIDA64 Network Audit 6.30 software, a dedicated network audit toolset to collect and manage corporate network inventories.

The latest AIDA64 update introduces optimized benchmarks for Intel "Tiger Lake" and "Rocket Lake" processors, monitoring of sensor values on SteelSeries Apex TKL OLED displays, and supports the latest AMD and Intel CPU platforms as well as the new graphics and GPGPU computing technologies by both AMD and NVIDIA.

DOWNLOAD: AIDA64 Extreme v6.30

AMD has won a contract to empower the LUMI supercomputer, designed for the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) in conjunction with 10 European countries. The contract will see AMD provide both the CPU and GPU innards of the LUMI, set to be populated with next-generation AMD Epyc CPUs and AMD Instinct GPUs. The supercomputer, which is set to enter operation come next year, will deliver an estimated 552 petaflop/s - higher than the world's current fastest supercomputer, Fugaku in Japan, which reaches peak performance of 513 petaflop/s - and is an Arm-powered affair.

The contract for LUMI's construction has been won by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), which will be providing an HPE Cray EX supercomputer powered by the aforementioned AMD hardware. LUMI has an investment cost set at 200 million euros, for both hardware, installation, and the foreseeable lifetime of its operation. This design win by AMD marks another big contract for the company, which was all but absent from the supercomputing space until launch, and subsequent iterations, of its Zen architecture and latest generations of Instinct HPC accelerators.

Possibly unsure of the GeForce RTX 3070 tackling AMD's Radeon RX 6000 series parts, NVIDIA is designing a new RTX 30-series SKU positioned between the RTX 3070 and RTX 3080. This is not a 16 GB variant of the RTX 3070, but rather a new SKU based on the 8 nm "GA102" silicon, according to a reliable source with NVIDIA leaks, kopite7kimi. The SKU is based on the GA102 with the ASIC code "GA102-150-KD-A1." The silicon is configured with 7,424 CUDA cores across 58 streaming multiprocessors (29 TPCs), 232 tensor cores, 232 TMUs, 58 RT cores, and an unknown number of ROPs. According to kopite7kimi, the card is configured with a 320-bit wide memory interface, although it's not known if this is conventional GDDR6, like the RTX 3070 has, or faster GDDR6X, like that on the RTX 3080.

NVIDIA recently "cancelled" a future 16 GB variant of the RTX 3070, and 20 GB variant of the RTX 3080, which is possibly the company calibrating its response to the Radeon RX 6000 series. We theorize that doubling in memory amounts may not have hit the desired cost-performance targets; and the company probably believes the competitive outlook of the RTX 3080 10 GB is secure. This explains the need for a SKU with performance halfway between that of the RTX 3070 and RTX 3080. As for pricing, with the RTX 3070 positioned at $500 and the RTX 3080 at $700, the new SKU could be priced somewhere in between. AMD's RDNA2-based Radeon RX 6000 series GPUs are expected to feature DirectX 12 Ultimate logo compliance, meaning that there is a level playing ground between AMD and NVIDIA in the performance segment.

AMD has been improving its Zen core design, and with the latest Zen 3 IP found in Ryzen 5000 series CPUs, it seems like the company struck gold. Thanks to the reporting of VideoCardz, we come to know that AMD's upcoming Ryzen 5 5600X CPU has been benchmarked and compared to other competing offerings. In the CPU benchmark called PassMark, which rates all of the CPUs by multi-threaded and single-threaded performance, AMD's Ryzen 5 5600X CPU has taken the crown of the fastest CPU in the single-threaded results chart. Scoring an amazing 3495 points, it is now the fastest CPU for 1T workloads. That puts the CPU above Intel's current best—Core i9-10900K—which scores 3177 points. This puts the Zen 3 core about 10% ahead of the competition.

As a reminder, the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X CPU is a six-core, twelve threaded design that has a base clock of 3.7 GHz and boosts the frequency of the cores to 4.6 GHz, all within the TDP of 65 Watts. The CPU has 32 MB of level-3 (L3) cache and 3 MB of L2 cache.

Here's what is possibly the first picture of an AMD Radeon RX 6000 "Navi 21" reference PCB, which the company could use across its RX 6900 XT and RX 6800 series graphics cards. The partially built PCB has a possibly large ASIC at the center (masked out), surrounded by eight GDDR6 memory pads, confirming a 256-bit wide memory interface. There are two 8-pin PCIe power connectors, and a 16-phase VRM solution powering the card's 320 W typical board power. Display connectors on the board appear to include two DisplayPorts, one HDMI, and a USB type-C. There are also a handful headers handling the fans and possible ARGB LED illumination of the card. We also spy a 2-way switch, which could indicate dual-BIOS.

AMD's "Big Navi" GPU is nearing the launch on October 28th, just a few days from now. This means that benchmarks of the card are already appearing across the internet, and we get to see how the card performs. Being divided into two different versions, Big Navi comes in Navi 21 XT and Navi 21 XTX silicon. While the former is available to AMD's AIBs, the latter is rumored to be exclusive to AMD and its reference design, meaning that at least in the beginning, you can only get Navi 21 XTX GPU if you purchase one from AMD directly.

Today, thanks to the Twitter account of CapFrameX, a frame time capturing tool, we have benchmark results of the Big Navi GPU in Firestrike Ultra. According to the people behind this account, the card scores about 11500 points in the benchmark. Compared to NVIDIA's offerings like GeForce RTX 3080, which scores about 10600, the AMD card is 8.5% faster. It is not known whatever this is Navi 21 XT or Navi 21 XTX silicon, however, we can assume that it is the former, and AMD is keeping the XTX revision to themselves for now. This result could be a leak from some of the AIBs, so it could not be the final Big Navi performance. All of this information should be taken with a grain of salt.

New Linux patches seem to point towards a cryptocurrency-focused graphics card from AMD. First spotted by Phoronix, the patches add descriptions for a "navi10 blockchain SKU" - it's a pretty self-describing, well, description. The device ID is reported as 0x731E, and Phoronix says that the major difference between this graphics card and the other Navi 10 offerings in the market (namely RX 5700XT and RX 5700) is the absence of Display Core Next (DCN) and Video Core Next (VCN) engines. Whether these are absent from the silicon, or simply disabled by other means is currently unclear. Their absence, however points towards cards with no graphical outputs, a lapalissian practicality for cryptocurrency-focused graphics mining products.

Phoronix estimates a release of no sooner than early 2021, considering the timing of the patch information on Linux. While the market for GPU-accelerated cryptocurrency mining isn't what it used to be (luckily), there is still a market opportunity to be taken advantage of here - while ASICs have become more commonplace, there are still many GPU-mining alternatives within the realm of crypto. A crypto-focused product might steer users away from gaming-oriented consumer products, thus easing strain on supply for AMD's upcoming RX 6000 series - especially if this Navi 10-based GPU (or should we call it a CHU - Cryptocurrency Hashing Unit?) features some voltage and power adjustments to increase power efficiency on these workloads.

Los Alamos National Laboratory has completed the installation of a next-generation high performance computing platform, with aim to enhance its ongoing R&D efforts in support of the nation's response to COVID-19. Named Chicoma, the new platform is poised to demonstrate Hewlett Packard Enterprise's new HPE Cray EX supercomputer architecture for solving complex scientific problems.

"As extensive social and economic impacts from COVID-19 continue to grip the nation, Los Alamos scientists are actively engaged in a number of critical research efforts ranging from therapeutics design to epidemiological modeling," said Irene Qualters, Associate Laboratory Director for Simulation and Computing at Los Alamos. "High Performance Computing is playing a critical role by allowing scientists to model the complex phenomena involved in viral evolution and propagation."

ASUS today announced the Republic of Gamers (ROG) Crosshair VIII Dark Hero, TUF Gaming X570 Pro (WiFi) and ROG Strix B550-XE Gaming WiFi—three gaming motherboards designed for gaming builds featuring the latest-generation AMD Ryzen Zen 3 architecture processors. In addition to the latest X570 and B550 motherboards, all ASUS 500 series motherboards (X570, B550 and A520) are ready for AMD Ryzen Zen 3 architecture processors.

ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero
The AMD X570 platform features extensive PCI Express 4.0 connectivity ripe for the latest graphics cards and SSDs. The chipset's copious bandwidth necessitates a robust cooling solution to deliver sustained performance, and that challenge is typically tackled by neatly pairing a heatsink with an embedded fan that spins up on demand. ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero is the first ASUS X570 board to implement a completely passive cooling design, featuring a sizeable heatsink that extends from the chipset zone to the space between the PCIe slots. The additional surface area helps keep thermals under control even when the motherboard is loaded with a full complement of hardware, laying a compelling foundation for enthusiast PC builds.

AMD's Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards, based on the RDNA2 graphics architecture, will see the introduction of the company's first DirectX 12 Ultimate graphics cards (featuring features such as real-time raytracing). A VideoCardz report sheds light on the specifications. The 7 nm "Navi 21" and "Navi 22" chips will power the top-end of the lineup. The flagship part is the Radeon RX 6900 XT, followed by the RX 6800 XT and RX 6800; which are all based on the "Navi 21." These are followed by the RX 6700 XT and RX 6700, which are based on the "Navi 22" silicon.

The "Navi 21" silicon physically features 80 RDNA2 compute units, working out to 5,120 stream processors. The RX 6900 XT maxes the chip out, enabling all 80 CUs, and is internally referred to as the "Navi 21 XTX." Besides these, the RX 6900 XT features 16 GB of GDDR6 memory across a 256-bit wide memory interface, and engine clocks boosting beyond 2.30 GHz. The next SKU in AMD's product stack is the RX 6800 XT (Navi 21 XT), featuring 72 out of 80 CUs, working out to 4,608 stream processors, the same 16 GB 256-bit GDDR6 memory configuration as the flagship, while its engine clocks go up to 2.25 GHz.

AMD in a letter to its retail partners issued guidelines to prevent scalping of the kind that affected the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30-series "Ampere" launch. The letter, leaked to the web by RedGamingTech, calls for measures such as real-time bot detection, complex CAPTCHA implementations (such as math, pictures, etc), a queue-based reservation system; manual processing of online orders, minimizing B2B re-selling to ensure sales to private individuals (end-users), and dynamic inventory. The Ryzen 5000 "Zen 3" series desktop processors will start being available from November 5, while AMD will detail Radeon RX 6000 RDNA2 availability in its October 28 public presentation dedicated to the graphics card series.

It would seem that a number of players have received their Zen 3 samples, considering the amount of performance leaks that have surfaced just in the past two days. The new AMD Zen 3 processors carry a huge weight on their shoulders - demonstrating AMD's touted leadership in CPU performance in all metrics, whilst justifying their increased pricing against Zen 2 offerings. Many rivers of ink (and some tears) have flown in regards to pricing of the new AMD processors, so it all pertains to performance considerations on whether that pricing is justified or not.

Leaker extraordinaire TUM_APISAK has leaked some benchmarks on AMD's upcoming Ryzen 9 5900X and 5950X CPUs - namely, in Geekbench 5. In this round of leaks - which are, admittedly, originating from two different systems), the 12-core, 24-thread AMD Ryzen 9 5900X scores 1605 points in single-core and 12869 in the Multi-core benchmarks. The 16-core, 32-thread Ryzen 9 5950X, on the other hand, scores 1575 points in single and 13605 points in Multi-core workloads. The Ryzen 9 5900X's higher base clocks may be responsible for the higher single-core score; however, the Ryzen 9 5959X pulls ahead - expectedly - in the Multi-core portion of the benchmark. Comparing scores between the Zen 3 5950X and the Zen-based 3950X (via AnandTech), which carry the same amount of cores, the 5950X offers a 18% and 12% advantage, respectively, in the single and multi-threaded tests - not a far cry from AMD's touted 19% IPC uplift.

Intel's Xe HPG discrete GPU made its debut in a game's system requirements list. Frictional Games, developers of "Amnesia Rebirth," put out system requirements lists for the game. Easy on graphics hardware, the first-person survival horror can make do with Intel UHD 630 integrated graphics, which features in the minimum system requirements list next to the HD 5750 from AMD and GTX 460 from NVIDIA. Things get interesting, however, with the recommended system requirements list, where we see what is possibly the first mention by a game dev of the Intel Xe HPG discrete GPU. What's even more interesting is that the Xe HPG is pitted next to the AMD Radeon RX 580 and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 (which compare to the RX 5500 XT and GTX 1660 Super from the current-gen). We don't know if game devs have access to Xe HPG engineering samples, but this listing gives us a peek at what the devs expect out of the Xe HPG.

AMD is preparing to launch its Radeon RX 6000 series of graphics cards codenamed "Big Navi", and it seems like we are getting more and more leaks about the upcoming cards. Set for October 28th launch, the Big Navi GPU is based on Navi 21 revision, which comes in two variants. Thanks to the sources over at Igor's Lab, Igor Wallossek has published a handful of information regarding the upcoming graphics cards release. More specifically, there are more details about the Total Graphics Power (TGP) of the cards and how it is used across the board (pun intended). To clarify, TDP (Thermal Design Power) is a measurement only used to the chip, or die of the GPU and how much thermal headroom it has, it doesn't measure the whole GPU power as there are more heat-producing components.

So the break down of the Navi 21 XT graphics card goes as follows: 235 Watts for the GPU alone, 20 Watts for Samsung's 16 Gbps GDDR6 memory, 35 Watts for voltage regulation (MOSFETs, Inductors, Caps), 15 Watts for Fans and other stuff, and 15 Watts that are used up by PCB and the losses found there. This puts the combined TGP to 320 Watts, showing just how much power is used by the non-GPU element. For custom OC AIB cards, the TGP is boosted to 355 Watts, as the GPU alone is using 270 Watts. When it comes to the Navi 21 XL GPU variant, the cards based on it are using 290 Watts of TGP, as the GPU sees a reduction to 203 Watts, and GDDR6 memory uses 17 Watts. The non-GPU components found on the board use the same amount of power.

AMD released the latest version of the Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition drivers. Version 20.10.1 beta comes with optimization for "DOOM Eternal: The Ancient Gods, Part One;" "Watch_Dogs: Legion," "DiRT 5 early access," and "World of Warcraft : Shadowlands Pre-Patch." Among the bugs fixed with this release are audio instability issues for AV receivers pulling digital audio from HDMI ports on Radeon RX 5000 series graphics cards; Windows Desktop experiencing flickering in multi-display setups with one of the displays running a Vulkan API game full-screen; uploading or streaming to YouTube using Radeon Software not working correctly; "Genshin Impact" not displaying correctly in the gaming tab of Radeon Software; some legacy Windows screensavers causing a crash on RX 5000 series graphics cards; and graphics corruption noticed on high refresh-rate multi-display setups. Grab the drivers from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 20.10.1 betaThe change-log follows.

BIOSTAR, a leading brand of motherboards, graphics cards, and storage devices, today announces that their AM4 400 series motherboards will support the latest generation AMD Ryzen 5000 Vermeer series Zen 3 processors. BIOS updates supporting the AMD Ryzen 5000 Vermeer series processors on BIOSTAR AM4 400 series motherboards will be available starting January 2021. The details will be subject to BIOSTAR official website announcement.

Here's the first picture showing AMD's Ryzen 5000 series "Zen 3" desktop processors in the flesh. The first wave of Ryzen 5000 series for the retail channel include the Ryzen 5 5600X, the Ryzen 7 5800X, the Ryzen 9 5900X and the 5950X. All four chips are shown sitting on a tray. All four chips are compatible with existing Socket AM4 motherboards based on the AMD 500 series chipset motherboard with a BIOS update; and with the 400-series using a special beta BIOS which will be released in January 2021. The four should be available for purchase in the retail channel by November 5, 2020, with the 6-core/12-thread 5600X priced at USD $300, the 8-core/16-thread 5800X at $450, the 12-core/24-thread 5900X at $550, and the flagship 16-core/32-thread 5950X at $800.

In the anticipation of the AMD Ryzen 5000 series of CPUs launch based on Zen 3 architecture, AMD has just released the updated drivers for its chipsets. Covering a wide selection ranging from B350, A320, X370, X399, B450, X470, X570, B550, and TRX40 Chipset, the updated chipset drivers include some bug fixes and new features. Now there is an updated power plan for AMD Ryzen CPUs that coordinate with chipsets, which means that AMD engineers have developed a new plan for Windows 10 OS which provides the best performance and power usage. You can check out the fixes listed below and you can go to the download link to install the new drivers.Download: AMD Ryzen Chipset Driver 2.10.13.408.

Since AMD announced its next-generation Ryzen 5000 series desktop processors based on Zen 3 core, everyone has been wondering how the new processors perform. For a detailed review and performance numbers, you should wait for official reviews. However, today we have the scores of Ryzen 5 5600X CPU. Thanks to the popular hardware leaker @TUM_APISAK, the Ryzen 5 5600X performance numbers in the SiSoftware Sandra benchmark suite have been leaked. When digging under the hood, the new Ryzen CPU contains six of Zen 3 cores with 12 threads, paired with as much as 32 MB of level three (L3) cache. These cores are running at 3.7 GHz base frequency, while the boost speeds are reaching 4.6 GHz.

In the test results, the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X CPU has scored Processor Arithmetic and Processor Multi-Media scores of 255.22 GOPS and 904.38 Mpix/s. These scores are not much on their own until we compare them to some of the Intel offerings. When compared to the Intel Core i5-10600K CPU, which is likely its targeted competing category, it scores 224.07 GOPS and 662.33 Mpix/s for Processor Arithmetic and Processor Multi-Media tests respectively. This puts the AMD CPU ahead 13.9% and 36.5% in these tests, indicating the possibility of Zen 3. Another important note here is the thermal headroom both of these CPUs run. While the Intel model is constrained withing 125 W TDP, the AMD model runs at just 65 W TDP. This could be an indication of the efficiency that these new processors harness.

AMD has attempted to fix their mobile processor naming situation with the launch of Ryzen 5000 desktop processors, by skipping Ryzen 4000 on desktop AMD has brought their mobile and desktop processor generations under the one naming scheme. However, it seems this naming scheme simplification hasn't gone as well as expected with leaked specifications for the upcoming Ryzen 5000 mobile series showing a mix of Zen 2 and Zen 3 processors. The leaked processors include the AMD Ryzen 3 5300U (Zen 2), Ryzen 3 5400U (Zen 3), Ryzen 5 5500U (Zen 2), Ryzen 5 5600U (Zen 3), Ryzen 7 5700U (Zen 2), and the Ryzen 7 5800U (Zen 3).

These new processors will maintain the core counts of their Ryzen 4000 predecessors while gaining a modest bump to base and boost speeds. These clock speed improvements will be accompanied by the claimed 19% IPC uplift on the Zen 3 based processors. The processors will also benefit from increased Vega iGPU cores and iGPU clock speed boosts. This combination should offer significantly improved performance over previous generation Ryzen 4000 mobile processors which already offered strong performance against Intel's offerings. AMD is expected to officially announce these processors at an event in January with prices slightly above previous generations.

AMD's RDNA2-based cards are just around the corner, with the company's full debut of the secrecy-shrouded cards being set for October 28th. Rumors of high clocks on AMD's new architecture - which were nothing more than unsubstantiated rumors up to now - have seemingly been confirmed, with Patrick Schur posting on Twitter some specifications for upcoming RNDA2-based Navi 21 XT. Navi 21 XT falls under the big Navi chip, but likely isn't the top performer from AMD - the company is allegedly working on a Navi 21 XTX solution, which ought to be exclusive to their reference designs, with higher clocks and possibly more CUs.

The specs outed by Patrick are promising, to say the least; that AMD's Big Navi can reach clocks in excess of 2.4 GHz with a 250 W+ TGP (quoted at around 255 W) is certainly good news. The 2.4 GHz (game clock) speeds are being associated with AIB cards; AMD's own reference designs should be running at a more conservative 2.3 GHz. A memory pool of 16 GB GDDR6 has also been confirmed. AMD's assault on the NVIDIA 30-series lineup should embody three models carved from the Navi 21 chip - the higher performance, AMD-exclusive XTX, XT, and the lower performance Navi 21 XL. All of these are expected to ship with the same 256 bit bus and 16 GB GDDR6 memory, whilst taking advantage of AMD's (rumored, for now) Infinity Cache to make up for the lower memory speeds and bus. Hold on to your hats; the hype train is going full speed ahead, luckily stopping in a smooth manner come October 28th.