ASUS released a beta BIOS updates for its top AMD 400-series chipset motherboard that includes the AGESA ComboAM4 1.0.0.6 microcode. A HardwareLuxx.de community member tracking AGESA updates posted screenshot of a Crosshair VII Hero (X470) motherboard with a AGESA ComboAM4 1.0.0.6 version (not to be confused with AGESA PinnaclePI 1.0.0.6). The beta BIOS version for the motherboard bears version number 3101. The BIOS file was originally released to web by Shamino on the OCN forums, earlier today.

While not much is known about ComboAM4 1.0.0.6, the Beta BIOS 3101 for Crosshair VII Hero enables per-CCX overclocking, meaning that you can set different manual OC multiplier values per CCX on your processor. We're not sure if both "Pinnacle Ridge" and "Matisse" support it, or just the latter. We also don't know at this point if per-CCX overclocking is an ASUS innovation or a feature of ComboAM4 1.0.0.6. Find the BIOS ROM file here.

AMD today announced the NVIDIA DGX A100, the third generation of the world's most advanced AI system, is the latest high-performance computing system featuring 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors. Delivering 5 petaflops of AI performance, the elastic architecture of the NVIDIA DGX A100 enables enterprises to accelerate diverse AI workloads such as data analytics, training, and inference.

NVIDIA DGX A100 leverages the high-performance capabilities, 128 cores, DDR4-3200 MHz and PCIe 4 support from two AMD EPYC 7742 processors running at speeds up to 3.4 GHz¹. The 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processor is the first and only current x86-architecture server processor that supports PCIe 4, providing leadership high-bandwidth I/O that's critical for high performance computing and connections between the CPU and other devices like GPUs.

ASRock is working on a variant of its DeskMini SFF desktop PC powered by an AMD Ryzen 4000G series "Renoir" desktop APU. We know this is a desktop "Renoir" since ASRock uses socket AM4 SFF boards based on the A300 or X300 platform, that the clock speeds are higher than mobile "Renoir" chips launched so far, and since the performance numbers for both the CPU- and graphics put out by HardwareLeaks (_rogame) are higher than those of the mobile Ryzen 7 4800HS. The X300 is a barebones platform, as all the connectivity on the platform is handled by the AM4 SoC. AMD is expected to debut desktop Ryzen 4000G "Renoir" APUs within 2020.

Now, take that title with the customary grain of salt, and remember: most mobile configurations aren't directly comparable due to different components, speed of the memory subsystem, and so on. Putting that salt aside, though, one thing remains: Intel beats AMD in the latest purported 3DMark benchmarks - and on the red team's home-field, so to speak: graphics performance. A benchmark posted by renowned leaker and benchmark scavenger rogame on twitter has turned up an Intel Tiger Lake-U (i7-1165G7) scoring 11879 (99.68%) in the Physics and 6912 (112.92%) in the Graphics score compared to AMD's R7 4800U 11917 Physics score and 6121 Graphics score.

For context, this pits a 4-core, 8-thread Intel Willow Cove design paired with Gen12 Xe graphics tech (2.8 GHz base, 4.4 GHz boost) against 8 of AMD's Zen 2 cores and Vega graphics. Also for context, it's expected that Intel's i7-1165G7 runs with a 28 W TDP, compared to AMD's R7 4800U 15 W envelope. Also of note is that 3D Mark isn't exactly the poster-child for CPU parallelization performance, as the benchmark scales up rather poorly as more cores are added. Perhaps more interesting as a comparison, these scores from Intel's Tiger Lake are comparable to the company's current i5-10300H (4C/8T 2.5 GHz base 4.5 GHz boost), which scores 10817 on the Physics side (making the i7-1165G7 9.8% faster with a 200 MHz slower base clock, 100 MHz higher boost & 17 W less TDP (28 W for the Tier Lake and 45 W for the i5-10300H).

AMD's upcoming Ryzen 7 3800XT 8-core/16-thread processor was put through "Ashes of the Singularity" (AotS) benchmark, as uncovered by HardwareLeaks (_rogame). Paired with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 graphics card, the processor is able to put out CPU frame-rates of 113.2 FPS (averaging all batches); 135.9 FPS in the normal batch, 115.31 FPS in the medium batch, and 95.49 FPS in the heavy batch, with preset level set to "Crazy_1080p." An older article points to the 3800XT ticking at 4.20 GHz base with 4.70 GHz maximum boost (compared to 3.90 GHz base and 4.50 GHz boost of the 3800X), which means AMD aims to shore up gaming performance of its 3rd gen Ryzen processors with the XT series.

At CES 2020, AMD detailed a new technology called SmartShift. With the launch of the Ryzen 4000 Series "Renoir" processors, AMD has brought this technology to the processors powering the next generation of laptops. Designed to bring better performance to the overall system, the technology uses TDP balancing to boost the performance of processors. What that means is that the technology dynamically relocates the TDP budget to where it is most needed. For example, if the application is CPU intensive, the CPU will get a bigger TDP budget and will get better performance. And it goes the same way for GPU. Of course, the technology works only on AMD CPU and GPU combinations.

To use the SmartShift technology, the platform designer needs to implement it. For example, if a notebook manufacturer decides not to do it in its system, then it will not work. So far, we have only seen one model with SmartShift technology launching this year. The model in question is Dell's G5 15 SE. And it is going to stay like that. Frank Azore of AMD, has come out on Twitter and said that the reason for the lack of other laptops using this technology is because it is brand new and Dell jumped on it first. "No more SmartShift laptops are coming this year but the team is working hard on having more options ASAP for 2021." - he added. Hopefully, we will see more models being powered by this technology as the 2021 starts.

The AMD Ryzen Threadripper HEDT processors support up to 2 TB of quad-channel ECC memory, which means some companies can choose to cut costs by opting for 3rd gen Ryzen Threadrippers over EPYC "Rome" processors, if they're okay with a narrower memory bus. There weren't any server-grade AMD TRX40 chipset motherboards, until ASRock Rack picked up the challenge, with the new TRX40D8-2N2T. This motherboard is designed for high-uptime use, featuring server-grade VRM, networking interfaces, and an ASPEED IPMI+display+iKVM chip.

Built in the ATX form-factor, the TRX40D8-2N2T features one sTRX4 socket supporting 3rd gen Ryzen Threadripper processors (including the 3990X), eight DDR4 DIMM slots supporting up to 256 GB (32 GB per DIMM) of quad-channel DDR4 memory, with or without ECC. Memory speeds of up to DDR4-3200 are supported. The sTRX4 socket is wired to three PCI-Express 4.0 x16 slots and one open-ended PCI-Express 4.0 x8. Storage connectivity includes six SATA 6 Gbps ports, and two M.2-22110 slots with PCI-Express 4.0 x4 wiring. Networking includes two 10 GbE ports driven by an Intel X710-AT2 controller, and two 2.5 GbE ports put out by a pair of Intel i225-LM controllers. The ASPEED AST2500 chip puts out a GbE port and D-Sub (basic display) connector of its own. There's no onboard audio. The company didn't reveal pricing.

AMD has declared that the era of 4 GB graphics cards is over and that users should "Game Beyond 4 GB". AMD has conducted testing of its 4 GB RX 5500XT & 8 GB RX 5500XT to see how much of a difference VRAM can make on gaming performance. AMD tested the cards on a variety of games at 1080p high/ultra settings with a 3600X & 16 GB 3200 MHz ram, on average the 8 GB model performed ~19% better than its 4 GB counterpart. With next-gen consoles featuring 16 GB of combined memory and developers showing no sign of slowing down, it will be interesting to see what happens.

AMD today announced that 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processor powered Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) C5a instances are now generally available in the AWS U.S. East, AWS U.S. West, AWS Europe and AWS Asia Pacific regions.

Powered by a 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processor running at frequencies up to 3.3Ghz, the Amazon EC2 C5a instances are the sixth instance family at AWS powered by AMD EPYC processors. By using the 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processor, the C5a instance delivers leadership x86 price-performance for a broad set of compute-intensive workloads including batch processing, distributed analytics, data transformations, log analytics and web applications.

ASRock sought regulatory approval for as many as ten new motherboard models based on the upcoming entry-level AMD A520 desktop chipset. The A520 has a slightly cut down feature-set from the B550, such as the lack of CPU overclocking, fewer downstream PCIe lanes, etc. Among the new motherboards registered are the A520M Pro4, A520M Pro4 R2.0, A520M Pro4 R3.0, A520M-HDVP, A520M-HDV, A520M-HDV R2.0, A520M-HDV R3.0, A520M-HVS, A520M-HVS R2.0, and A520M-HVS R3.0, which cover a wide range of SKUs differentiated by board size, display connectivity layout, legacy connectivity, etc. AMD is expected to launch its entry-level A520 desktop chipset in Q3-2020, replacing the aging A320 chipset. The regulatory filing also points out some yet-unannounced B550-based models, such as the B550M DASH, B550M DASH R2.0, which could be released in the future.

Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS) has recently unveiled the budget B450AM4-M motherboard. The B450AM4-M is a microATX board using the AMD B450 chipset with a low end 4+2 phase power system fed with a single 4 pin power connector. This limited power system will constrict the board to CPUs with a TDP of 95 W or lower and according to the board specifications, the 2600X is the highest-end chip supported. The motherboard comes with 4 DDR4 2666 MHz DIMM slots which support a maximum of 64 GB of memory, x1 PCIe 3.0 x16 slot, x1 PCIe 2.0 x16 slot wired at x4, x1 PCIe 2.0 x1 slot, and x1 PCI slot.

The motherboard includes a Realtek RTL8111GN controller for gigabit Ethernet, along with a Realtek ALC662 for audio. Storage options include four SATA connectors which support software RAID and an M.2 connector. I/O on the board is extensive given its market positioning including x2 USB 3.2 Gen 2, x4 USB 3.2 Gen1, x2 USB 2.0, HDMI, DisplayPort, DVI-D, D-Sub, and audio. ECS hasn't announced the pricing or availability for the B450AM4-M motherboard.

BIOSTAR, a leading brand of motherboards, graphics cards, and storage devices, today introduces the new RACING B450GT motherboard, designed to run the latest and the future AMD Ryzen processors. Built-in the Micro ATX form factor, the BIOSTAR RACING B450GT motherboard is engineered to be sleek and efficient. Focused to deliver reliable and stable performance under heavy workloads, it is ideal for gaming, HTPC rigs with a smaller footprint but still, maintains the beefy performance of a 16-core AMD Ryzen 3000 series processor.

Designed in the signature RACING style from BIOSTAR, the RACING B450GT motherboard shares premium build quality and features that the racing family motherboards are famous for like the LED ROCK ZONE RGB lighting system, which supports both 5 V ARGB LED and 12 V RGB LED headers, easily controlled by the VIVID LED DJ software.

Intel's 11th generation Core i7-1165G7 "Tiger Lake-U" processor armed with 4 "Willow Cove" cores and Gen12 Xe graphics fights a pitched battle against AMD Ryzen 7 4800U "Renoir" (8 "Zen 2" cores and Radeon Vega 8 graphics), courtesy of some digging by Thai PC enthusiast TUM_APISAK. The 4800U beats the i7-1165G7 by a wafer-thin margin of 1.9% despite double the CPU core-count and a supposedly advanced iGPU, with 6331 points as against 6211 points of the Intel chip, in 3DMark 11. A breakdown of the score reveals fascinating details of the battle.

The Core i7-1165G7 beats the Ryzen 7 4800U in graphics tests, with a graphics score of 6218 points, against 6104 points of the 4800U, resulting in a 1.9% lead. In graphics tests 1, 2, and 3, the Gen12 Xe iGPU is 7.3-8.9% faster than the Radeon Vega 8, through translating to 2-4 FPS. The Intel iGPU crosses the 30 FPS mark in these three tests. With graphics test 4, the AMD iGPU ends up 8.8% faster. Much of AMD's performance gains come from its massive 55.6% physics score lead thanks to its 8-core/16-thread CPU, which ends up beating the 4-core/8-thread "Willow Cove," with the 4800U scoring 12494 points compared to 8028 points for the i7-1165G7. This CPU muscle also plays a big role in graphics test 4. This battle provides sufficient basis to speculate that "Tiger Lake-U" will have a very uphill task matching "Renoir-U" chips such as the Ryzen 7 4800U, and the upcoming Ryzen 9 4900U (designed to compete with the i7-1185G7).

AMD has a lot riding on RDNA2, its first graphics architecture that meets the DirectX 12 Ultimate logo requirements, introducing real-time ray-tracing to the lineup. RDNA2 is confirmed to be part of the SoC that powers next-gen consoles PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. The company is simultaneously readying its own Radeon RX discrete graphics cards based on the Navi 2# silicon, based on RDNA2, with a leading part unofficially called the "Big Navi" given its alleged lofty specs increase over the "Navi 10." Turns out, that this GPU, and not next-gen consoles, will debut RDNA2.

AMD is planning a big gamer-specific event in late-Q3/early-Q4, likely September, where it plans to announce its 4th generation Ryzen desktop processors based on the "Zen 3" microarchitecture, and Radeon RX graphics cards based on RDNA2, including the "Big Navi." Speaking at the Bank of America Securities Global Technology Conference, AMD CFO Devinder Kumar confirmed that "Big Navi" will be a halo product and not merely a lofty performance increase over the RX 5700 XT to make AMD competitive against GeForce "Ampere." He states "there's a lot of excitement for Navi 2, or what our fans have dubbed as the Big Navi," adding "Big Navi is a halo product." He goes on to state that "enthusiasts love to buy the best, and we are certainly working on giving them the best." AMD's product stack so far is application-specific, rather than competition-specific. The RX 5700 XT was designed for 1440p gaming, and ended up competitive to the RTX 2070. "Big Navi" could hence have a lofty design goal: 4K gaming with ray-tracing.

Lisa Su of Advanced Micro Devices has become the world's highest-paid CEO, according to a recent survey from The Associated Press on CEO compensation. Lisa Su's pay package was valued at $58.5 million after some extremely impressive company performance over her last five years as CEO on the back of the wild success of EPYC, Ryzen, and Radeon. This pay package comprised a base salary of $1 million, a performance bonus of $1.2 million, $56 million in stocks. This makes Lisa Su the first woman to become the highest-paid CEO and one of only 20 women on the list, versus 309 men.

When AMD scored a double hit by winning the Xbox and the PlayStation console projects the number of GPUs the company shipped from 2013 on took a jump. As their APU sales increased (partially due to the console wins) their overall sales increased even more. Likewise, as AMD introduced the Zen CPU, associated GPU sales also increased. The net result is since 2013 AMD has shipped over a half-billion GPUs either integrated or discrete.

When compared to Intel (integrated only) or NVIDIA (discrete only) both companies beat AMD in their respective classes, but overall AMD beats them both. Fun with numbers. The cumulative distribution of GPUs by platform is shown in the following chart. Next year AMD will be able to add Samsung smartphones to its list of platforms, and those numbers are going to huge.

AMD and technology partner Penguin Computing Inc., a division of SMART Global Holdings, Inc, today announced that New York University (NYU), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Rice University are the first universities named to receive complete AMD-powered, high-performance computing systems from the AMD HPC Fund for COVID-19 research. AMD also announced it will contribute a cloud-based system powered by AMD EPYC and AMD Radeon Instinct processors located on-site at Penguin Computing, providing remote supercomputing capabilities for selected researchers around the world. Combined, the donated systems will collectively provide researchers with more than seven petaflops of compute power that can be applied to fight COVID-19.

"High performance computing technology plays a critical role in modern viral research, deepening our understanding of how specific viruses work and ultimately accelerating the development of potential therapeutics and vaccines," said Lisa Su, president and CEO, AMD. "AMD and our technology partners are proud to provide researchers around the world with these new systems that will increase the computing capability available to fight COVID-19 and support future medical research."

Linux kernel patches reference an AMD "Sienna Cichlid" GPU, which Phoronix believes could be the fabled "Big Navi" GPU. We know this is a GPU and not a headless CDNA scalar processor as the patches include code for VCN 3.0 video encoding capabilities (RDNA2's media engine), and DCN3 (RDNA2's display engine), which constitute bulk that AMD could get rid of on CDNA chips. The unusual internal codename could reference AMD's next generation RDNA2 architecture based flagship GPU, armed with 80 compute units (5,120 stream processors), Radeon Intersection Engines (accelerate real-time ray-tracing). The codename comes across as unusual, but AMD does tend to use wacky internal codenames to detect sources of leaks.

Last year Samsung and AMD announced their collaboration which promises to deliver smartphone chips with AMD RDNA 2 graphics at its heart. This collaboration is set to deliver first products sometime at the beginning of 2021 when Samsung will likely utilize new SoCs in their smartphones. In previous leaks, we have found that the GPU inside this processor is reportedly beating the competition form Qualcomm, where the AMD GPU was compared to Adreno 650. However, today we have obtained more information about the new SoC which is reportedly called "Ryzen C7" smartphone SoC. A new submission to a mobile phone leaks website called Slash Leaks has revealed a lot of new details to us.

The SoC looks like a beast. Manufactured on TSMC 5 nm process, it features two Gaugin Pro cores based on recently announced Arm Cortex-X1, two Gaugin cores based on Arm Cortex-A78, and four cores based on Arm Cortex-A55. This configuration represents a standard big.LITTLE CPU typical for smartphones. Two of the Cortex-X1 cores run at 3 GHz, two of Cortex-A78 run at 2.6 GHz, while four little cores are clocked at 2 GHz frequency. The GPU inside this piece of silicon is what is amazing. It features four cores of custom RDNA 2 based designs that are clocked at 700 MHz. These are reported to beat the Adreno 650 by 45% in performance measurements.

French retailer Materiel.net listed the upcoming AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT, Ryzen 7 3800XT, and Ryzen 5 3600XT desktop processors. The 3900XT is listed at 499€, the 3800XT at 459€, and the 3600XT at 319€, inclusive of VAT. These prices could be opportunistic, and set entirely by the retailer to win some attention toward pre-orders. A VideoCardz report points to the possibility of the XT series SKUs being nominally pricier than the current prices of the 3900X, 3800X, and 3600X. The 3600XT is reported as being exactly $28 pricier than the 3600X, which would put its price back at $250, given the $220-ish running rate for a 3600X. Unless AMD is beating Intel at gaming performance, the company could price the 3900XT and 3800XT competitively against the i9-10900K and i7-10700K, respectively (and not exactly match them). AMD is expected to announce its 3rd generation Ryzen "Matisse Refresh" Ryzen XT desktop processors in mid-June, with availability expected in early-July, 2020.

To support its efforts to build a competitive consumer GPU lineup under the Xe brand, which Intel likes to call its "Odyssey," the company scored another higher-up from AMD, this time Ali Ibrahim. He joined Intel this month as a vice-president within the Architecture, Graphics and Software group, although the company didn't specify his responsibilities. "We are thrilled that Ali has joined Intel as Vice President, Platform Architecture and Engineering - dGPUs to be part of the exciting Intel Xe graphics journey," said an Intel spokesperson in a comment to CRN.

During his 13-year tenure at AMD, Ali Ibrahim was the chief-architect of the company's cloud gaming and console SoC businesses, which provides valuable insight into Intel's breakneck efforts to build high-end discrete GPUs (something it lacked for the past two decades). Intel is the only other company that is capable of building semi-custom chips for someone like Microsoft or Sony as the inventor of x86, provided it has a GPU that can match AMD's in the console space. Likewise, with gaming taking baby steps to the cloud as big players such as Google betting on it, Intel sees an opportunity for cloud gaming GPUs that aren't too different from its "Ponte Vecchio" scalar processors. The transfer of talent isn't one-way, as AMD recently bagged Intel's server processor lead Dan McNamara to head the EPYC brand.

Earlier this week, we brought you a report about codenames of AMD processors that won't launch before 2022. It referenced "Raphael" being distant 5 nm "Zen 4" based successor to today's "Matisse." At the time, the codename for the 2021 release of AMD's mainstream desktop processor wasn't known. We're now getting a pointer as to what it is - "Warhol."

Named after American artist and filmmaker Andy Warhol, this processor combines CPU chiplets based on the "Zen 3" with a cIOD that retains PCI-Express gen 4.0, just like "Vermeer," but still qualifies as a new generation (and not a refresh). What's more, "Warhol" apparently sticks to a 7 nm-class silicon fabrication process. This means that "Warhol" could see AMD innovate on other fronts, such as leveraging an even more advanced version of TSMC's 7 nm node (such as N7+), to increase core counts over the chiplet that makes it to "Vermeer, "Genesis Peak," and "Milan."

Renowned leaker APISAK has digged up benchmarks for AMD's upcoming Ryzen 4700G, 4400G and 4200G Renoir APUs in 3D Mark. These are actually for the PRO versions of the APUs, but these tend to be directly comparable with AMD's non-PRO offerings, so we can look at them to get an idea of where AMD's 4000G series' performance lies. AMD's 4000G will be increasing core-counts almost across the board - the midrange 4400G now sports 6 cores and 12 threads, which is more than the previous generation Ryzen 5 3400G offered (4 cores / 8 threads), while the top-of-the-line 4700G doubles the 3400G's core-cpount to 8 physical and 16 logical threads.

This increase in CPU cores, of course, has implied a reduction in the area of the chip that's dedicated to the integrated Vega graphics GPU - compute units have been reduced from the 3400G's 11 down to 8 compute units on the Ryzen 7 4700G and 7 compute units on the 4400G - while the 4200G now makes do with just 6 Vega compute units. Clocks have been severely increased across the board to compensate the CU reduction, though - the aim is to achieve similar GPU performance using a smaller amount of semiconductor real-estate.

A GIGABYTE Community Manager on Reddit updated the "cheat sheet" of the company's AMD B550 motherboard lineup with MSRP Pricing. While prices of these boards start at USD $99, they go all the way up to $279. The top model, the B550 AORUS Master, leads the pack with a USD $279 price that puts it firmly in the premium segment where it matches features with boards based on the X570 and Intel's Z490 chipset. The B550 AORUS Pro AC is the next best model in the lineup, priced at $189. Its sans-WLAN twin, the B550 AORUS Pro, goes for $10 less at $179. The B550 AORUS Elite is priced at $159. The B550 Gaming X is part of the company's mainline brand, and goes for $139. The micro-ATX B550M AORUS Pro goes for $129, and the B550M AORUS Elite goes for $109. There's a token "sub $100" product, the B550M Gaming, at $99.

These prices indicate that B550 motherboards are on average 20% higher than B450 motherboards. For example, a reasonably well-endowed board like the B450 Gaming Pro Carbon AC could be had for $150, as could the ASUS ROG Strix B450-E, and a decent board like the ROG Strix B450-F Gaming could be had at $130 even before "Zen 2" hit the market. Plenty of B450 boards could be had under the $100-mark. It looks like $99 will be a token value at best, with board vendors releasing only their most stripped down products at that that price. Find the GIGABYTE B550 motherboard cheat sheet in the source link below.

AMD today released the latest version of Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition. Version 20.5.1 beta is released exclusively for Windows 10, and comes with two new feature additions and several fixes. To begin with, version 20.5.1 introduces support for Windows 10 May 2020 Update (2004), including its new WDDM. An update to AMD Link sees a new Xinput emulation driver to improve compatibility with current- and future games. Several issues were fixed, beginning with a crash or hang on hybrid graphics system configurations, especially during a driver installation; a black screen issue on a limited number displays, requiring a reboot to resolve; a "Destiny 2" crash/hang when task-switching; an "Overwatrch" crash or black screen when joining a match; and incorrect clocks reported on performance metrics overlay for RX 5700 series graphics cards.

Also fixed were high memory usage on Instant Replay or Desktop Recording on a machine that's entered sleep; a black screen with the Vulkan test on GeekBench 5; glitching observed in "League of Legends" after a task-switch, Radeon Overlay unintentionally minimizing "Sniper Elite 4" when invoked; lighting corruption in GTA V with Radeon Boost enabled; a texture corruption issue with "Shadow of the Tomb Raider," RDR2 failing to launch in certain hybrid graphics systems; memory OC failing to apply on Radeon VII, and "Star Wars Jedi: The Fallen Order" and "Control" experiencing hangs with Radeon Anti-Lag enabled. Grab the driver from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 20.5.1 beta