A DigiTimes premium report, interpreted by Chiakokhua, aka Retired Engineer, chronicling NVIDIA's move to contract TSMC for 7 nm and 5 nm EUV nodes for GPU manufacturing, made a startling revelation about NVIDIA's recent foundry diversification moves. Back in July 2019, a leading Korean publication confirmed NVIDIA's decision to contract Samsung for its next-generation GPU manufacturing. This was a week before AMD announced its first new-generation 7 nm products built for the TSMC N7 node, "Navi" and "Zen 2." The DigiTimes report reveals that NVIDIA underestimated the efficiency gains AMD would yield from TSMC N7.

With NVIDIA's bonhomie with Samsung underway, and Apple transitioning to TSMC N5, AMD moved in to quickly grab 7 nm-class foundry allocation and gained prominence with the Taiwanese foundry. The report also calls out a possible strategic error on NVIDIA's part. Upon realizing the efficiency gains AMD managed, NVIDIA decided to bet on TSMC again (apparently without withdrawing from its partnership with Samsung), only to find that AMD had secured a big chunk of its nodal allocation needed to support its growth in the x86 processor and discrete GPU markets. NVIDIA has hence decided to leapfrog AMD by adapting its next-generation graphics architectures to TSMC's EUV nodes, namely the N7+ and N5. The report also speaks of NVIDIA using its Samsung foundry allocation as a bargaining chip in price negotiations with TSMC, but with limited success as TSMC established its 7 nm-class industry leadership. As it stands now, NVIDIA may manufacture its 7 nm-class and 5 nm-class GPUs on both TSMC and Samsung.

The National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), the mission high-performance computing facility for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science, has moved another step closer to making Perlmutter - its next-generation GPU-accelerated supercomputer - available to the science community in 2020.

In mid-April, NERSC finalized its contract with Cray - which was acquired by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) in September 2019 - for the new system, a Cray Shasta supercomputer that will feature 24 cabinets and provide 3-4 times the capability of NERSC's current supercomputer, Cori. Perlmutter will be deployed at NERSC in two phases: the first set of 12 cabinets, featuring GPU-accelerated nodes, will arrive in late 2020; the second set, featuring CPU-only nodes, will arrive in mid-2021. A 35-petabyte all-flash Lustre-based file system using HPE's ClusterStor E1000 hardware will also be deployed in late 2020.

Much of the fanfare surrounding AMD's high-end Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 9 "Renoir" mobile processors were captured by the 14-inch ROG Zephyrus G14 notebook, and now ASUS got around to shipping its bigger (albeit lesser endowed) sibling, the Zephyrus G15 (variant: GA502IU). This gaming notebook features a 15.6-inch 144 Hz Full HD IPS display. Under the hood are an AMD Ryzen 7 4800HS (35 W) 8-core/16-thread processors, 16 GB of memory, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti graphics, and a 1 TB NVMe SSD. Connectivity includes 802.11ax WLAN, Bluetooth 5, 1 GbE wired Ethernet, and a USB 3.2 gen 2 type-C with power-delivery compliance. It is now selling for USD $1,299.

AMD finally got around to officially talking about its sneaky last-minute specs update of the Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics card, which saw its memory frequency increased to 14 Gbps from its original 12 Gbps, in a bid to make it competitive against the price-cut GeForce RTX 2060. In a blog post subheaded "Unlock the full potential of your Radeon RX 5600 XT today," AMD tabulated all the graphics cards eligible for a video BIOS update that increases memory- and GPU clock speeds; along with links to support pages on their manufacturer website. We already made such a list. The AMD table also lists out certain custom-design cards that come with 14 Gbps memory out of the box, for which a BIOS update isn't needed. Find the table in the AMD blog post here.

Both Sony and Microsoft are expected to soon launch their next-generation consoles, which are highly anticipated among console gamers as they will bring some of the latest advancements in graphics, like ray tracing. The current situation in the world is that everything is slowed down due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Companies across the world have mostly slowed down their production lines due to the less demand, however, AMD has done exactly the opposite for their custom SoC customers. In wake of expected high demand, AMD has ramped up its production lines so it can supply Sony and Microsoft for their next-generation consoles—PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. This is an encouraging sign that the demand is going to be strong - and that AMD is up to the task of delivering.

Samsung and AMD announced last year their strategic partnership to bring AMD RDNA GPUs to the Samsung mobile chips and use that as the only GPU going forward. And now, some performance numbers are going around about the new RDNA smartphone GPU that is compared to Qualcomm Adreno 650 GPU. Thanks to the South Korean technology forum "Clien", they have obtained some alleged performance results of new GPU in the GFXBench benchmark. The baseline in these tests is the Qualcomm Adreno 650 GPU, which scored 123 FPS in Manhattan 3.1 test, 53 FPS in Aztec Normal, and 20 FPS in Aztec High.

The welcome surprise here is the new RDNA GPU Samsung is pursuing. It has scored an amazing 181 FPS in Manhattan 3.1 test (up 47% from Adreno 650), 138 FPS in Aztec Normal (up almost 200% from Adreno 650), and 58 FPS in Aztec High which is 190% higher compared to Adreno 650. This performance results could be very true, as the Samsung and AMD collaboration should give first results in 2021 when the competition will be better, and they need to prepare for that. You always start designing a processor for next-generation workloads and performance if you want to be competitive by the time you release a product.

AMD's timely announcement of the Ryzen 3 "Matisse" processor series could stir things up in the entry-level as Intel kitted its 10th generation Core i3 processors as 4-core/8-thread. Last week, a head-to-head Cinebench comparison between the i3-10300 and 3300X ensued, and today we have a 3DMark Firestrike and Time Spy comparison between their smaller siblings, the i3-10100 and the 3100, courtesy of Thai PC enthusiast TUM_APISAK. The two were benchmarked on Time Spy and Fire Strike on otherwise constant hardware: an RTX 2060 graphics card, 16 GB of memory, and a 1 TB Samsung 970 EVO SSD.

With Fire Strike, the 3100-powered machine leads in overall 3DMark score (by 0.31%), CPU-dependent Physics score (by 13.7%), and the Physics test. The i3-10100 is ahead by 1.4% in the Graphics score thanks to a 1.6% lead in graphics test 1, and 1.4% lead in graphics test 2. Over to the more advanced Time Spy test, which uses the DirectX 12 API that better leverages multi-core CPUs, we see the Ryzen 3 3100 post a 0.63% higher overall score, 1.5% higher CPU score; while the i3-10100 powered machines post within 1% higher graphics score. These numbers may suggest that the i3-10100 and the 3100 are within striking distance of each other and that either is a good pick for gamers, until you look at pricing. Intel's official pricing for the i3-10100 is $122 (per chip in 1,000-unit tray), whereas AMD lists the SEP price of the Ryzen 3 3100 at $99 (the Intel chip is at least 22% pricier), giving AMD a vast price-performance advantage that's hard to ignore, more so when you take into account value additions such as an unlocked multiplier and PCIe gen 4.0.

AMD's upcoming B550 desktop chipset, which plays second-fiddle to the premium X570, could bring relief to gaming PC builders wanting to put together 3rd gen Ryzen desktops with PCI-Express gen 4.0 graphics and M.2 SSD connectivity on the cheap. Pricing of a handful ASUS B550 motherboards was leaked to the web by Australian retailer ICIT.net.au, who listed the somewhat premium ASUS ROG Strix B550-F Gaming for AUD $262.90, including GST (converts to USD $167 including all taxes). The retailer also lists TUF B550-Plus Gaming and Prime B550M-A at the same exact price, which could be pre-launch inflation (so we're going by the price of what could be the best-endowed SKUs among the three).

If this pricing holds up, B550 based boards could launch at prices close to those of B450 boards at launch. The B550 is AMD's mid-range desktop chipset that is expected to enable PCI-Express gen 4.0, at least where it matters the most (the main x16 slot and the M.2 slot that's wired to the AM4 SoC). Much like its predecessors, the B450 and B350, it could enable CPU- and memory overclocking. Reports dating back to Q3-2019 point to the B550 being ASMedia-sourced, and having a far lower chipset TDP than the X570 (making do with passive heatsinks like the AMD 400-series).

AMD and Oxide Games today announced a multi-year partnership to co-develop graphics technologies for the growing cloud gaming market. By combining leadership gaming hardware and graphics expertise from AMD with Oxide's proven development capabilities and innovative Nitrous game engine, the companies plan to create a robust set of tools and technologies for cloud rendering designed from the ground up to embrace the real-time demands of cloud-based gaming.

"At AMD, we pride ourselves on our ability to push the boundaries of what technology can do so it elevates the gaming experience," said Scott Herkelman, corporate vice president and general manager, Graphics Business Unit, AMD. "Oxide shares this passion and is an ideal partner for us as we expand the way gamers play, while delivering the quality experience they demand."

One of the perks of AMD's Ryzen processor line is unlocked base-clock multiplier across the board, even with its upcoming $99 Ryzen 3 3100 quad-core processor. _rogame unearthed a Futuremark SystemInfo database submission confirming a 4.50 GHz all-core overclock, achieved on an inexpensive ASUS TUF Gaming B450M-Pro motherboard, with 16 GB of dual-channel DDR4-3200 memory. Also, SMT is left untouched, as the processor has all 8 logical processors (threads) enabled. Just to show this isn't a one-off, another FM database submission shows a 4.40 GHz all-core OC on the Ryzen 3 3100, with a similarly inexpensive MSI B450M Bazooka Plus motherboard, and 16 GB of dual-channel DDR4-3000 memory. The unlocked multiplier appears to add tremendous value to this two-figure chip.

AMD formally announced its AGESA ComboAM4 1.0.0.5 microcode. The new microcode is intended to be encapsulated into motherboard UEFI firmware updates and distributed by motherboard- and OEM desktop manufacturers, at their discretion. AGESA 1.0.0.5 improves POST (time) with select Micron Technology DDR4-3200 memory chips. An intermittent virtual memory error with certain Realtek onboard Ethernet PHY chips has been fixed. The microcode also improves PCI-Express bus stability and interoperability, in general. A PCIe lane configuration issue with Ryzen 3 Pro 2100GE has been fixed. Besides these, all other performance- and stability-improvements part of older 1.0.0.4 a/ab/abb/abba microcodes are incorporated into 1.0.0.5. Keep an eye on the BIOS updates section of your socket AM4 motherboard's product page on its company website.

Today, AMD announced that 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors are powering the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Compute E3 platform, bringing a new level of high-performance computing to Oracle Cloud. Using the AMD EPYC 7742 processor, the Oracle Cloud "E3 standard" and the bare metal compute instances are available today and leverage key features of the Gen AMD EPYC processors including class-leading memory bandwidth and the highest core count for an x86 data center processor. These features enable the Oracle Cloud E3 platform to be well suited for both general purpose and high bandwidth workloads such as big data analytics, memory intense workloads and Oracle business applications.

A refresh of HP's OMEN 15 seems to be about to hit the market, as HP UK has already put up a page for the revised laptop. The most appealing changes are, as usual, under the hood: the updated model now features AMD's Ryzen 7 4800H CPU, an 8-core, 16-thread solution that features a 45 W TDP and basically beats anything Intel has on the market against it. However, it seems that the scarcity of high-end mobile GPUs for any AMD-based platform continues, as the most powerful graphics solution available for this particular version of the OMEN is an NVIDIA RTX 2060 graphics card. Perhaps OEMs don't want to spoil us with both the best CPU and GPU solutions available on the mobile market? Go figure.

The OMEN 15 has seen a redesign from its previous version, now featuring thinner bezels, a different hinge system, no number pad, and the panel supports Adaptive Sync, though the refresh rate hasn't been detailed. It also features a Bang & Olufsen sound system, as well as RGB-backlit keys. The product page for the product has since been taken down and can now only be accessed via a cached version, so there's that. But the laptop was priced at 1,199 GBP (1,370 EUR).

AMD in its post Q1-2020 earnings release disclosures stated that the company is "on track" to launching its next-generation "Zen 3" CPU microarchitecture and RDNA2 graphics architecture in late-2020. The company did not reveal in what shape or form the two will debut. AMD is readying "Zen 3" based EPYC "Milan" enterprise processors, "Vermeer" Ryzen desktop processors, and "Cezanne" Ryzen mobile APUs based on "Zen 3," although there's no word on which product line the microarchitecture will debut with. "Zen 3" compute dies (CCDs) are expected to do away with the quad-core compute complex (CCX) arrangement of cores, and are expected to be built on a refined 7 nm-class silicon fabrication process, either TSMC N7P or N7+.

The only confirmed RDNA2 based products we have as of now are the semi-custom SoCs that drive the Sony PlayStation 5 and Microsoft Xbox Series X next-generation consoles, which are expected to debut by late-2020. The AMD tweet, however, specifies "GPUs" (possibly referring to discrete GPUs). Also, with AMD forking its graphics IP to RDNA (for graphics processors) and CDNA (for headless compute accelerators), we're fairly sure AMD is referring to a Radeon RX or Radeon Pro launch in the tweet. Microsoft's announcement of the DirectX 12 Ultimate logo is expected to expedite launch of Radeon RX discrete GPUs based on RDNA2, as the current RDNA architecture doesn't meet the logo requirements.

AMD today announced revenue for the first quarter of 2020 of $1.79 billion, operating income of $177 million, net income of $162 million and diluted earnings per share of $0.14. On a non-GAAP* basis, operating income was $236 million, net income was $222 million and diluted earnings per share was $0.18.

"We executed well in the first quarter, navigating the challenging environment to deliver 40 percent year-over-year revenue growth and significant gross margin expansion driven by our Ryzen and EPYC processors," said Dr. Lisa Su, AMD president and CEO. "While we expect some uncertainty in the near-term demand environment, our financial foundation is solid and our strong product portfolio positions us well across a diverse set of resilient end markets. We remain focused on strong business execution while ensuring the safety of our employees and supporting our customers, partners and communities. Our strategy and long-term growth plans are unchanged."

MSI, a world-leading motherboard manufacturer, proudly introduces the all new X570 motherboard, MAG X570 TOMAHAWK WIFI. For the 3rd Gen Ryzen processors, the new MAG X570 TOMAHAWK WIFI motherboard is optimized with best performance in every aspects. Military totem style coupled with a rugged and powerful heat dissipation design, the MAG X570 TOMAHAWK WIFI successfully subverts all other key players in the mainstream market. The 12X60A SPS Power Stages design, can stably supply the performance needs of multi-core CPUs, supports up to AMD Ryzen 9 3950X 16-core processors.

Coupled with MSI's exclusive heat dissipation technology, Extended Heatsink design, MAG X570 TOMAHAWK WIFI can maintain a stable processing frequency under severe conditions with high loads. The exclusive Frozr Heatsink design has Zero Frozr Technology that stops the fan when the temperature of the chip is at low power, reducing the generated system fan.

ORIGIN PC is proud to announce the availability of a custom ORIGIN PC desktop powered by AMD Ryzen inside a Tesla Model S for kids called the LUDICROUS PC. Originally built for Marques Brownlee, also known as MKBHD, and inspired by his Tesla Model S, the LUDICROUS PC is a powerful gaming desktop featuring liquid cooling and is capable of being driven just like a normal Radio Flyer Tesla Model S. The LUDICROUS PC is available now on ORIGINPC.com with options to select the color and rims for the vehicle.

Designed by the ORIGIN PC team, the LUDICROUS PC is a special build that required some challenges to overcome such as airflow, fitting the PC parts inside the Tesla Model S for kids, and still maintaining the drivability of the car. The first LUDICROUS PC was engineered, built, and shipped to MKBHD late 2019 for the opening of his new studio in 2020. The LUDICROUS PC features working headlights, a horn, the capability of being driven forwards and backwards, and a remote that can turn the PC on.

AMD is expected to support the next-generation DDR5 memory standard by 2022, according to a MyDrivers report citing industry sources. We are close to a change in memory standards, with the 5-year old DDR4 memory standard beginning a gradual phase out over the next 3 years. Leading DRAM manufacturers such as SK Hynix have already hinted mass-production of the next-generation DDR5 memory to commence within 2020. Much like with DDR4, Intel could be the first to market with processors that support it, likely with its "Sapphire Rapids" Xeon processors. AMD, on the other hand, could debut support for the standard only with its "Zen 4" microarchitecture slated for 2021 technology announcements, with 2022 availability.

AMD "Zen 4" will see a transition to a new silicon fabrication process, likely TSMC 5 nm-class. It will be an inflection point for the company from an I/O standpoint, as it sees the introduction of DDR5 memory support across enterprise and desktop platforms, LPDDR5 on the mobile platform, and PCI-Express gen 5.0 across the board. Besides a generational bandwidth doubling, PCIe gen 5.0 is expected to introduce several industry-standard features that help with hyper-scalability in the enterprise segment, benefiting compute clusters with multiple scalar processors, such as AMD's CDNA2. Intel introduced many of these features with its proprietary CXL interconnect. AMD's upcoming "Zen 3" microarchitecture, scheduled for within 2020 with market presence in 2021, is expected to stick with DDR4, LPDDR4x, and PCI-Express gen 4.0 standards. DDR5 will enable data-rates ranging between 3200 to 8400 MHz, densities such as single-rank 32 GB UDIMMs, and a few new physical-layer features such as same-bank refresh.

Intel is giving finishing touches to its 10th generation Core i3 desktop processors based on the "Comet Lake" microarchitecture. These upcoming socket LGA1200 processors are 4-core/8-thread, and see the debut of HyperThreading and Turbo Boost technologies to the Core i3 desktop processor brand extension. The i3-10100 is an entry-level part clocked at 3.60 GHz with 4.30 GHz boost; while the i3-10300 is clocked higher with 3.70 GHz nominal and 4.40 GHz boost frequency. The TDP of both parts is rated at 65 W. Besides clock speeds, the two parts are differentiated with L3 cache amount, with the i3-10100 featuring 6 MB, and the i3-10300 featuring 8 MB. Cinebench R20 scores of the two chips were leaked to the web by CPU-Monkey.

The i3-10100 reportedly scores 448 points in the single-thread, and 2284 points in the multi-threaded test. The i3-10300, on the other hand, scores 457 points in the single-threaded test, and 2330 points in the multi-threaded test. The same source also claims to have tested the upcoming 3rd generation AMD Ryzen 3 "Matisse" 4-core/8-thread processor series, with the Ryzen 3 3100 scoring 444 points single-thread and 2154 points multi-threaded; and the Ryzen 3 3300X scoring 491 points single-thread, and 2341 points multi-threaded. If these scores hold true, it's game on between the two companies' entry-level chips.

Here are the first detailed die maps of the I/O controller dies of AMD's "Matisse" and "Rome" multi-chip modules that make up the company's 3rd generation Ryzen and 2nd generation EPYC processor families, respectively, by PC enthusiast and VLSI engineer "Nemez" aka @GPUsAreMagic on Twitter, with underlying die-shots by Fitzchens Fitz. The die maps of the "Matisse" cIOD in particular give us fascinating insights to how AMD designed the die to serve both as a cIOD and as an external FCH (AMD X570 and TRX40 chipsets). At the heart of both these chips' design effort is using highly configurable SerDes (serializer/deserializers) that can work as PCIe, SATA, USB 3, or other high-bandwidth serial interfaces, using a network of fabric switches and PHYs. This is how motherboard designers are able to configure the chipsets for the I/O they want for their specific board designs.

The "Matisse" cIOD has two x16 SerDes controllers and an I/O root hub, along with two configurable x16 SerDes PHYs, while the "Rome" sIOD has four times as many SerDes controllers, along with eight times as many PHYs. The "Castle Peak" cIOD (3rd gen Ryzen Threadripper) disables half the SerDes resources on the "Rome" sIOD, along with half as many memory controllers and PHYs, limiting it to 4-channel DDR4. The "Matisse" cIOD features two IFOP (Infinity Fabric over Package) links, wiring out to the two "Zen 2" CCDs (chiplets) on the MCM, while the "Rome" sIOD features eight such IFOP interfaces for up to eight CCDs, along with IFIS (Infinity Fabric Inter-Socket) links for 2P motherboards. Infinity Fabric internally connects all components on both IOD dies. Both dies are built on the 12 nm FinFET (12LP) silicon fabrication node at GlobalFoundries.

AMD has announced its Ryzen 3 "Matisse" quad-core desktop processors, with two SKUs in the pipe, the $99 Ryzen 3 3100 and the $120 Ryzen 3 3300X. Both are 4-core/8-thread parts spaced apart by clock-speeds, or so we thought. According to an alleged AMD presentation slide leaked to the web, the differentiation between the two runs deeper than that. Both chips are based on the "Matisse" multi-chip module, with a single 8-core "Zen 2" chiplet that has four disabled cores. How AMD goes about disabling these cores appears to be the secret sauce behind the "X" on the 3300X.

Inside each "Zen 2" chiplet, the 8 cores are spread between two 4-core CCX (compute complexes). On the 3100, AMD disabled two cores per CCX, and halved the 16 MB L3 cache per CCX. So it ends up with a 2+2 core CCX configuration, 8+8 MB of L3 cache adding up to 16 MB. The 3300X takes the more scenic route. An entire CCX is disabled, all four cores are part of the same CCX. This design lowers inter-core latency among the cores, and more importantly. gives each of the four cores access to 16 MB of shared L3 cache. And then there's the speed-bump. This goes a long way in explaining how the 3300X is shown within striking distance of the Core i7-7700K in leaked Cinebench scores, and could provide a formidable gaming processor in the lower end.

AMD's 7 nm "Renoir" silicon breathed life into the notebook processor market, by bringing 8-core/16-thread CPU performance into segments Intel reserved for 4-core/8-thread; and beat Intel in the iGPU performance front. 7 nm brought performance-Watt uplifts that spell serious competition for Intel across all notebook form factors, be it 15 W or 45 W. According to _rogame, who has a knack of getting far-out hardware rumors right, AMD has its successor on the drawing-board, and it's codenamed "Cézanne," after the French post-impressionist painter Paul Cézanne.

"Cézanne" could prove vital for AMD's foothold in the premium mobile computing segments as Intel is preparing to launch its 10 nm+ "Tiger Lake" processor soon, with advanced "Willow Cove" CPU cores, and Xe based integrated graphics. AMD plans to tap into its very latest IP. Although its core-count is not known, "Cézanne" will feature CPU cores based on the latest "Zen 3" microarchitecture. The iGPU will receive its biggest performance uplift in 3 generations, with an iGPU based on the cutting-edge RDNA2 graphics architecture that meets DirectX 12 Ultimate logo requirements.

Thursday we brought you a story of an improbable but ingenious cybersecurity attack vector called Air-ViBER, which uses fan vibrations to transmit data to a nearby listening device in an air-gapped environment. Another team of researchers, led by Mikhail Davidov and Baron Oldenburg, developed an equally ingenious but more insidious attack vector - rapid manipulation of clock speeds of an AMD Radeon Pro WX3100 GPU to turn it into a tunable radio transmitter; and ferrying data off as inaudible and invisible RF transmissions. The graphics card itself works as a radio transmitter, the computer needn't have a WLAN device.

What's worse, the signal has an impressive 50-foot (15.2 m) range, can pass through walls, and can have a far higher data-rate than the fan vibration hack. Even worse, the attack doesn't require any special hacks of the GPU driver or physical modification of the graphics card in any way - only a tool that can manipulate its clock speeds (any overclocking software can do that). Luckily, overclocking tools are privileged applications (requiring ring-0 access), and in most machines it springs up a UAC gate unless the overclocking software installs a driver and service that runs in the background (this installation requires a UAC authorization in the first place). If someone managed to install privileged software on your computer, you have bigger problems than a graphics card that likes to sing. Find technical details of the hack here, and a video presentation here.

AMD has today released an update to its Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020, in the so-called edition 20.4.2. The new driver revision brings a heap of features and improvements that fix a lot of issues that users have experienced. AMD now brings support for titles like Gears Tactics and Predator: Hunting Grounds. Some of the fixes are big ones for RX Vega cards like the resolvent of system hang or black screen when running Folding@Home while also running an application using hardware acceleration of video content. Others include a fix for a system crash or hang that may be experienced when using the Edge browser to play Netflix content. For a full list of features and improvements please check out the list below.

DOWNLOAD: Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition 20.4.2

AMD's Bulldozer architecture is a well-known quantity by now, and seemingly straddles a line between loathing and love between tech enthusiasts. Slow and power hungry compared to Intel's options, it harkens back to a time where the roles were reversed, and AMD were looking to compensate for architectural deficiencies (and architectural design decisions that can either be claimed as erroneous or ahead of their time) via increased clockspeeds. However you look at these Bulldozer CPUs, the fact is that they remain some of the best overclockers of all time - at least when it comes to maximum operating frequencies, especially at absolutely scorching vCore values.

To achieve that operating frequency, Der8auer used an Elmor EVC2 controller and diagnostics chip, which, connected to a usually unpopulated pin area in the ASUS 970 PRO GAMING/AURA motherboard, allowed him to read-out everything that was running through the motherboard's VRM circuitry, and perform manual adjustments. Corsair Vengeance 2,666 MHz DDR3 memory was also used in the system. An accident happened along the way, though: when pulling AMD's stock cooler from the motherboard, the CPU remained attached to the cooler, which resulted in some bent pins (screams in horror). Luckily, things were fixed with a screwdriver - let that serve as a warning, alert, and tip, should this happen to you.