BIOSTAR today announced its Extreme Gaming line of custom-design AMD Radeon RX 5000 series graphics cards. These are the company's first custom-design AMD Radeon products, as the company in the past only sold reference-design RX Vega-series products. The lineup currently includes two products, the VA57T6XM82, based on the Radeon RX 5700 XT, and the VA55T6XF81, based on the RX 5500 XT (4 GB). Both cards appear to use AMD reference-design PCBs paired with custom-design cooling solutions. The RX 5700 XT card uses a large triple-fan aluminium fin-stack cooling solution that's slightly thicker than 2 slots. The RX 5500 XT card uses a more compact twin-fan, double-slot cooling solution. The BIOSTAR Extreme Gaming RX 5700 XT sticks to AMD reference clock speeds of 1755 MHz boost, while the RX 5500 XT does 1717 MHz MHz. The company didn't reveal pricing.

AMD's 3rd generation EPYC line of enterprise processors that leverage the "Zen 3" microarchitecture, could innovate in two directions - towards increasing performance by doing away with the CCX (compute complex) multi-core topology; and taking advantage of a newer/refined 7 nm-class node to increase clock-speeds. Igor's Lab decoded as many as three OPNs of the upcoming 3rd gen EPYC series, including a 64-core/128-thread part that ships with frequency of 3.00 GHz. The top 2nd gen EPYC 64-core part, the 7662, ships with 2.00 GHz base frequency and 3.30 GHz boost; and 225 W TDP. AMD is expected to unveil its "Zen 3" microarchitecture within 2020.

HKEPC's retail market scouts discovered that some AMD Ryzen 5 3600 desktop processors are shipping in paperboard boxes meant for the company's Ryzen 3000G series "Picasso" desktop APUs. Depending on factors such as iGPU, or the size of the included cooling solution, AMD uses common box sizes among various processor models. The largest cube-shaped boxes hold SKUs with the largest Wraith Prism RGB coolers, a slightly smaller, through still cube-shaped box is meant for SKUs with the Wraith Spire. Smaller cuboid boxes are meant for SKUs that either have the smaller Wraith Stealth coolers, or completely exclude a cooling solution.

Much of the SKU differentiation comes from a prominent brand extension (3/5/7/9) motif on the front-face, besides the top label that lists out the model name, OPN, serial number, and doubles up as a security seal. Boxes for the company's APUs (processors with integrated graphics), however, have a prominent "processor with AMD Radeon graphics" chrome insert on the front- and top faces. The 3600 shipping in such a box could confuse some buyers, particularly those shopping in brick-and-mortar stores, as they'd expect an iGPU where none exists. It's only the SKU sticker on the top-face that has the cautionary note "discrete graphics required." Other retail boxes (meant for non-APU products) have this note prominently printed on the box.

Overclocking feats and benchmarks of the upcoming Ryzen 7 4700G "Renoir" desktop APU are getting more frequent, which is an indication that we're moving closer to its launch. Chinese language publication ITCooker put their 4700G engineering sample through a bit of manual overclocking to 4.65 GHz, up from the processor's alleged 3.60 GHz base frequency, resulting in a Cinebench R15 score of 217 points in the single-threaded test, and 2306 points in the multi-threaded test. At 4.54 GHz, the same setup goes on to score 5336 points in Cinebench R20. The processor is paired with 16 GB of dual-channel DDR4-4266 MHz memory, and a 240 mm AIO CLC.

Videocardz seems to have snagged some official AMD slides detailing their upcoming Threadripper PRO lineup. AMD is tiering its Threadripper CPU offerings between the Threadripper and Threadripper PRO via added functionality that AMD considers is better suited to the prospective buyers of a PRO-branded Threadripper: professional studios, designers, engineers and data scientists. AMD's positioning for these creatives or scientists is to offer a much improved platform throughput compared to Threadripper: the PRO version supports up to 128 PCIe 4.0 lanes (64 in non-PRO); up to 2 TB of ECC memory support (either in UDIMM (Unbuffered DIMM), RDIMM (Registered DIMM), LRDIMM (Load-Reduced DIMM) and 3DS (three-dimensional stacking) RDIMM vi an 8-channel configuration (4-channel in non-PRO); as well as professional-oriented tools and features such as Pro Security, Pro manageability, and PRO business ready support.

Four different CPUs will reportedly be offered in the Threadripper PRO lineup: the 64-core 3995WX is a relatively known quantity by now; likewise, the 3975WX will mirror consumer parts core counts (32 cores), both with reduced clocks by 100-200 MHz compared to their non-PRO counterparts. AMD seems to also be launching 12 and 16-core PRO Threadrippers in the form of the 3955WX (16-core) and 3945WX (12-core), both with boost clocks being set to 4.3 GHz.

AMD's 64-core HEDT processor with an 8-channel memory interface, the Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3995WX, could debut in a Lenovo-branded workstation. Lenovo's Workstations division recently tweeted a big workstation announcement for 14th July, 2020, the same day AMD is expected to announce the 3995WX. "A new Lenovo workstation is coming soon, and we aren't going to just change the game. We plan to change the rules," the tweet reads. This is also a major hint as to the availability of the 3995WX. It won't surprise us if the processor will be an OEM-exclusive (if not a Lenovo-exclusive). The Threadripper PRO 3995WX, in addition to the Ryzen PRO feature-set, reportedly features an 8-channel DDR4 memory interface, doubling the memory bandwidth over that of the current retail-channel flagship 3990X.

AMD late Thursday released the latest version of Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 graphics drivers. Version 20.7.1 beta adds optimization for "Disintegration." The software also introduces an improved AMD Bug Report Tool. A number of bugs were fixed with this release including stuttering observed on machines running RX 5000 series GPUs with Radeon Replay enabled; "Vega" based graphics cards experiencing performance loss with Performance Metrics enabled; an error switching between apps while previewing your stream; custom fan- and clock- tuning settings not applying in Radeon Performance tuning tab or retaining after reboot; and display resolution failing to stretch with display scaling enabled in CS:GO. Bugs related to Valorant, DOTA2, and DOOM Eternal were also fixed. Grab the drivers from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 20.7.1 Beta

ASUS today announced that the new BIOS with AMD AGESA 1.0.0.2 update for X570 and B550 series motherboards are now available for download. While the existing BIOS support Ryzen 3000XT processors, the new BIOS optimize the performance of the latest AMD Ryzen 3000XT series processors (Ryzen 9 3900XT, Ryzen 7 3800XT, and Ryzen 5 3600XT). The UEFI BIOS updates are available from the respective motherboard support pages, and can be accessed via the ASUS Support website.

BIOSTAR, a leading brand of motherboards, graphics cards, and storage devices, today announces the B550MH motherboard that runs the 3rd gen Ryzen processors. Geared towards the business and casual users, the new BIOSTAR B550MH motherboard is designed to be efficient and reliable with bleeding edge technology built to be the best in the market with a new stylish PCB design.

The B550MH motherboard supports up to 64Gb of RAM across 2 DIMMs with the capability of reaching 4400+OC speeds and technologies like PCIe 4.0 that supports 16GT/s bit data transfer rates which is 2 times faster than PCIe 3.0 with backward compatibility, as well as PCIe M.2 4.0 which delivers lower latency on a higher bandwidth of 64 Gb/s which is 2x faster than the old PCIe M.2 3.0 making the new BIOSTAR B550MH motherboard a great choice for many applications.

NEC has just announced a new laptop sporting an AMD Ryzen 7 Extreme Edition CPU. The NEC Lavie N15 is only available in a single color on its AMD configuration, but there's also an Intel Core i7-10510U option available in three different color options. The interesting part about this Ryzen 7 Extreme Edition is that there's nothing even remotely extreme about it, as far as can be told: it's shipping with the exact same specifications and frequencies as the non-Extreme Ryzen 7 4800U: 8 cores, 16 threads, 1.8 GHz base and 4.2 GHz boost.

The first hints towards the existence of such a CPU surfaced back in May. At the time, the leaked Futuremark database entry which identified the CPU as a mobile Ryzen 7 Extreme Edition painted the base clock at 1.8 GHz with a 4.3 GHz Boost. Apparently, that meagre 100 MHz top frequency increase has since been scaled back. It's extremely unclear if there is any performance or power efficiency benefit to this Extreme Edition CPU (it could be a cherry-picked version with better thermal and electric characteristics than the average 4800U), or if there are some increased allowances in the TDP compared to the 15 W 4800U (typically set with TDPs of 15 W, though the cTDP supports a 10-25 W range). Or it could be just a NEC-specific version of an AMD CPU to improve market perception and reception - a rebadged 4800U, if you will.

Here is the first picture of the Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3995WX processor, designed to be part of AMD's HEDT/workstation processor launch for this year. The picture surfaced briefly on the ChipHell forums, before being picked up by HXL (@9550pro) This processor is designed to compete with Intel Xeon W series processors, such as the W-3175X, and is hence located a segment above even the "normal" Threadripper series led by the 64-core/128-thread Threadripper 3990X. Besides certain features exclusive to Ryzen PRO series processors, the killer feature with the 3995WX is a menacing 8-channel DDR4 memory interface, that can handle up to 2 TB of memory with ECC.

The Threadripper PRO 3995X is expected to have a mostly identical I/O to the most expensive EPYC 7662 processor. As a Ryzen-branded chip, it could feature higher clock speeds than its EPYC counterpart. To enable its 8-channel memory, the processor could come with a new socket, likely the sWRX8, and AMD WRX80 chipset, although it wouldn't surprise us if these processors have some form of inter-compatibility with sTRX4 and TRX40 (at limited memory bandwidth and PCIe capabilities, of course). Sources tell VideoCardz that AMD could announce the Ryzen Threadripper PRO series as early as July 14, 2020.

AMD has today released a new "Equipped to Win" bundle to coincide with the launch of their new Ryzen 3000XT series, all eligible purchases of Ryzen 7 3000 series and above AM4 chips will receive a free copy of Assassin's Creed Valhalla. The bundle is available for AMD Ryzen 7 2700X, Ryzen 7 3800X, Ryzen 7 3800XT, Ryzen 9 3900X, Ryzen 9 3900XT, and Ryzen 9 3950X processors at selected retailers and will run until October 3rd or until supply runs out.

Laptop users may also be eligible for the promotion as it applies to AMD Ryzen 7 4800HS, Ryzen 7 4800H, Ryzen 9 4900HS, and Ryzen 9 4900H based systems. Make sure to check with your chosen retailer beforehand to confirm if they are part of the promotion.

In a video message posted on her Twitter timeline, AMD CEO Dr Lisa Su confirmed that the company's next-generation "Zen 3" microarchitecture is coming out "later this year." Speaking in context of 7/7 (a year since AMD debuted high-performance CPU- and GPU- architectures on the same day, leveraging 7 nm), and the Ryzen 3000XT series processor announcement, Dr Su stated "As you know with Ryzen, we're always on a journey, a journey to push the highest performance that we can for our users and our fans. So Zen 3 is exactly that. Zen 3 is looking great in the labs, we're on track to launch later this year, and I can't wait to tell you more about it." Watch the video in the source link below.

MAINGEAR - an award-winning PC system integrator of custom gaming desktops, notebooks, and workstations - today launched their all-new compact desktop that's powered exclusively by 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen processors: the MAINGEAR TURBO. Engineered in collaboration with AMD, the MAINGEAR TURBO subverts expectations and delivers the high-end performance and cooling efficiency of a full-sized desktop in a system no larger than a shoebox. TURBO power - zero compromises.

"With higher clock speeds and better power efficiency, the 3000XT series processors are optimized for high performance gaming," said Chris Kilburn, corporate vice president and general manager, client component business unit, AMD. "AMD is thrilled to be partnering with MAINGEAR on the exclusive AMD powered TURBO gaming desktops. With its ultra-compact size and whisper quiet water-cooling, the MAINGEAR TURBO is tailor made for the new AMD Ryzen 3000XT series desktop processors."

In the next big step toward complete silicon independence, Apple is planning to dump AMD as a supplier of discrete GPUs in the near future, closely following its decision to dump Intel and the x86 machine architecture in favor of its own SoCs based on the Arm machine architecture. The company is developing its own line of discrete GPUs under the "Metal GPU Family," a name borrowed from its own Metal graphics API.

This explosive bit of information comes from a WWDC 2020 presentation slide posted by Longhorn (@never_released) on Twitter. The slide suggests that along with the processor, Apple is making a clean break with its graphics hardware. The SoCs powering client-segment Macs, such as future iMacs or MacBooks, could feature iGPUs based on this graphics architecture, while larger platforms such as MacBook Pros, Mac Pros, and iMac Pros of the future could feature Apple's own discrete GPUs.

After Sony has showcased Unreal Engine 5 capabilities on the new PlayStation 5 console, there was a counterpart event missing from Microsoft. However, Microsoft has announced today that the company will host a live stream event on July 23rd. That is the date when Microsoft will host the event on YouTube and Twitch. Starting at 9 am PT time, the company will showcase the capabilities of the new Xbox Series X console. Possibly, Microsoft will show ray tracing and all the latest technology advancements with AMD's RDNA2 graphics card found inside the new console. What we can expect in terms of games is Halo Infinite and maybe new Forza and Gears of War games. Either way, we have to wait and find out on July 23rd.

MSI today rolled out the Optix G32CQ4, a 31.5-inch, 16:9 curved gaming monitor. Featuring a 1500R curvature, this monitor uses a VA panel with WQHD (2560 x 1440 pixels) native resolution, 1 ms (MPRT) response time, 165 Hz refresh rate, 178°/178° viewing angles, and support for AMD FreeSync Premium technology. Other vital panel specs include 3000:1 static contrast ratio with dynamic mega-contrast, 250 cd/m² maximum brightness, and 91.43% coverage of DCI-P3. The panel features a matte finish and anti-glare treatment. Inputs include one DisplayPort 1.2a (needed for FreeSync), and two HDMI 2.0 ports. The company didn't reveal pricing.

Sapphire introduced a price-optimized variant of its Radeon RX 5600 XT Pulse, with the new RX 5600 XT Pulse BE (model: 11296-05-20G). This card is visibly smaller than the original RX 5600 XT Pulse that is largely based on the board design of the RX 5700 series Pulse cards. The newer card is 23.05 cm long and 12.25 cm tall, compared to the original Pulse, that's 25.4 cm long and 13.5 cm tall. The new card is also slightly thinner, at exactly 4 cm (slightly less than 2 slots thick), while the original Pulse is 4.65 cm thick (slightly more than 2 slots thick).

There are a handful areas of cost-cutting by Sapphire. To begin with, while the diameter of the two fans of the Dual-X cooling solution is unchanged at 100 mm, the underlying heatsink is visibly slimmer, and of a different design than that used in the original Pulse card. Secondly, the PCB is shorter in length than the cooler itself, and is of a completely different design than the original Pulse. Thirdly, the card lacks dual-BIOS. Lastly, the fans of the card lack the Quick-Connect feature that lets you pop them out to clean the heatsink underneath. Luckily, the new Pulse BE card sticks to AMD's revised OC specs for the RX 5600 XT out of the box, so you don't have to bother with BIOS updates. It ticks at 1560 MHz game clocks, up to 1620 MHz boost clocks, and 14 Gbps (GDDR6-effective) memory. The company didn't reveal pricing, although we expect this card to be priced very close to the USD $279 baseline for the RX 5600 XT.

Colorful today rolled out the CVN B550M Gaming Frozen V14, a socket AM4 motherboard in the Micro-ATX form-factor, based on the AMD B550 chipset. The board gets its "Frozen" name from its mostly-white PCB. The chipset heatsink that extends into an M.2 SSD heatsink features fan ventilation (something not found on most other B550 motherboards). The board draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX and single 8-pin EPS power connectors, conditioning it for the CPU with a 10-phase VRM.

Expansion slots on the Colorful CVN B550M Gaming Frozen V14 include one PCI-Express 4.0 x16, a PCI-Express 3.0 x16 (electrical gen 3.0 x4) that's wired to the chipset, and a gen 3.0 x1 slot. Storage connectivity includes an M.2-22110 slot with PCI-Express 4.0 x4 wiring from the AM4 socket, and six SATA 6 Gbps ports. USB connectivity includes a pair of 10 Gbps USB 3.x gen 2 ports wired to the CPU that include a type-C port, and a number of 5 Gbps ports. Networking is care of a 1 GbE connection from a Realtek RTL8111H controller, and the onboard audio solution uses a Realtek ALC1200 codec. Don't like the white color scheme? Colorful has you covered with the CVN B550M Gaming Pro V14, which is an almost identical board that uses a black PCB and a chipset heatsink that makes do without a fan. The company didn't reveal pricing.

Hot on the heels of reports of AMD bundling "Assassin's Creed Valhalla" with its 3rd gen Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 9 desktop processors, we're hearing of AMD preparing another game bundle, this time for its Radeon RX 5000 series desktop graphics cards. The "Raise the Game" bundle sees AMD include coupons for "Godfall" and "World of Warcraft: Shadowlands" with Radeon RX 5700 XT, RX 5700, and RX 5600 XT graphics cards in the retail channel. The RX 5500 XT will come with just "Godfall." The bundle is slated for sometime in Q3-2020, although it's likely to go live on July 7, when AMD releases its Ryzen 3000XT processors. As with every AMD game bundle before, "Raise the Game" will only be available in select markets, and through participating retailers.

Microsoft posted a technical brief of the new Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling feature introduced with Windows 10 May 2020 Update, and its latest Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) version. In a blog post by Steve Pronovost, a tech lead with Microsoft DirectX, Microsoft finally set out to explain what WDDM GPU Scheduling is. Introduced with Windows Vista, WDDM 1.0 introduced GPU scheduling, a software component that allocates workload from multiple sources onto a GPU, prior to which all applications that needed GPU-acceleration would send as much traffic as they could to the GPU driver. With growing complexity in the modern 3D rendering pipeline, the need for a scheduler, not unlike the OS thread scheduler, was needed.

In the following section (which matters), Microsoft went on to detail what Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling is. Apparently, some of the newer generations of GPUs (by NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel), have a hardware component in-built to perform scheduling. When this component is combined with Windows 10 May 2020 Update and a WDDM 2.7-compliant graphics driver, Windows offloads GPU scheduling onto it, freeing up some CPU resources and potentially reducing latencies at various stages of the graphics rendering pipeline. Windows continues to exhibit control over scheduling, but by talking to this scheduling component instead of a CPU-executed software stack.

Louqe and Noctua today presented the new NH-L12 Ghost S1 edition CPU cooler. Coming with a single 92 mm fan and Noctua's second-generation NT-H2 thermal compound, as well as the latest SecuFirm2 multi-socket mounting system, the NH-L12 Ghost S1 edition has been customised to be an ideal companion for quiet high-end builds in Louqe's award-winning Ghost S1 enclosure.

"We've tested pretty much every low-profile cooler on the market in the Ghost S1 and even tried to create a complete custom solution in collaboration with Noctua, but nothing worked as well as our long-term favourite, the NH-L12," explains Patrik Michalski (Louqe CEO). "That's why we've ended up creating a customised special edition of this cooler that will be the ideal choice for all Ghost S1 users who are looking for the best possible air cooling solution."

MMD, the leading display specialist and brand license partner for Philips Monitors are releasing two new Momentum monitors, one of which includes a product collaboration with Bowers & Wilkins. The first is the 558M1RY which at 55 inches (139.7 cm) is the largest console gaming optimized monitor on the market, the second being the 278M1R, a 27-inch (68.6 cm) monitor designed for esports. The 558M1RY will bring a whole new dimension to gaming, boasting a 4K UHD resolution, up to 120Hz refresh rate, a specially designed speaker by Bowers & Wilkins, and Ambiglow which extends around the screen. The 278M1R is the first Philips monitor designed exclusively with esports players in mind, it's 27 inches and is HDR Ready. The 55" will be available end of June 2020 and the 27" as of July 2020.

The 558M1RY is a truly one box solution to immersive gaming and entertainment. Players will be completely engrossed in their games with a 55-inch screen and 3 sided Ambiglow. The monitor dazzles with its UltraClear 4K UHD resolution, featuring 3840 x 2160 pixels and DisplayHDR 1000. Users can adjust the HDR to their preferences with HDR Game, HDR Movie, HDR Photo and an HDR personal modes; HDR can also be completely turned off.

AMD's 7 nm "Renoir" APU silicon, which features eight "Zen 2" CPU cores, has only a quarter of the L3 cache of the 8-core "Zen 2" CCD used in "Matisse," "Rome," and "Castle Peak" processors, with each of its two quad-core compute complexes (CCXs) featuring just 4 MB of it (compared to 16 MB per CCX on the 8-core "Zen 2" CCD). Chinese-language tech publication TecLab pubished a quick review of an alleged Ryzen 7 4700GE socket AM4 processor based on the "Renoir" silicon, and discovered that the chip offers significantly lower memory latencies than "Matisse," posting just 47.6 ns latency when paired with DDR4-4233 dual-channel memory.

In comparison, a Ryzen 9 3900X with these kinds of memory clocks typically posts 60-70 ns latencies, owing to the MCM design of "Matisse," where the CPU cores and memory controllers sit on separate dies, which is one of the key reasons AMD is believed to have doubled the L3 cache amount per CCX compared to previous-generation "Zeppelin" dies. TecLab tested the alleged 4700GE engineering sample on a ROG Crosshair VIII Impact X570 motherboard that has 1 DIMM per channel (the best possible memory topology).

ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) today announced a new collaboration with acclaimed DJ and music producer Alan Walker to create gaming content, tech and other experiences that will help elevate and bring gaming to a wider audience.

Over the years, the gaming audience has expanded to include not only esports athletes and enthusiasts, but also a diverse audience of creators. ASUS ROG is committed to staying at the forefront of gaming technology by innovating products that empower these next-gen gamers in fulfilling their creative vision. As a self-made entrepreneur, gamer and music producer, Alan Walker stood out as a quintessential creator with valuable insights into what the next generation needs. His background, skills, and interest in gaming make him an ideal partner for ROG. "I can't wait to begin this journey with Republic of Gamers. Since the beginning of my career, I've wanted to combine and merge the worlds of music, tech and gaming in everything I do. And this is a great opportunity to continue that mission. A big thanks to everyone at ROG for giving me this opportunity!" said Alan Walker.