CORSAIR, a world leader in PC gaming peripherals and enthusiast components, today announced a range of products including liquid CPU coolers, high-frequency DRAM, and efficient power supplies fully tested and validated for compatibility with the new 3rd Generation AMD Ryzen Threadripper high-end desktop processors. With the highest core and thread count on the HEDT market, combined with the lightning-fast PCI-Express 4.0 platform, AMD's most powerful desktop processor can create, composite, render, encode, and deliver with unprecedented multitasking power - and CORSAIR is ready with the widest range of guaranteed-compatible products to help get the best performance out of a new Ryzen Threadripper-based PC.

The HEDT or high-end desktop platform occupies the gray area between desktops and workstations. It has been originally meant for power-users, enthusiasts, and creative professionals. Over the years, with ballooning core-counts, memory bandwidth, and I/O connectivity, the target-audience of the HEDT evolved. Now these processors are useful for people who need a lot of multi-threaded CPU performance with more I/O connectivity than what traditional desktop platforms offer; and who have not use for "workstation" features such as ECC memory, or simply don't want to spend the money.

AMD doubled CPU core counts for its traditional Ryzen desktop platform this year with the introduction of 12-core and 16-core parts; forcing its 3rd gen Threadripper family to begin with even higher core-counts, starting with the 3960X 24-core part at $1,399. Intel, on the other hand, is in a bit of a pickle. Intel's 10 nm silicon fabrication node development isn't benefiting its desktop or HEDT platforms. Allocations of its 10 nm node are mopped up by its high-volume mobile processor and high-margin enterprise processor businesses, leaving too little allocation to roll out desktop or HEDT 10 nm chips at scale.

AMD is hours away from market-availability and reviews of its 3rd generation Ryzen Threadripper HEDT processors, which includes two models at launch, the 24-core 3960X, and the 32-core 3970X, with prices starting at USD $1,399. The two are closely related to the 2nd generation EPYC "Rome" server processor family, which we know includes core-counts going all the way up to 64. It was hence obvious that a 64-core Threadripper will launch at some point, and that point is 2020, and the part goes by the name 3990X.

The slide detailing the 3990X mentions its core count of 64-core/128-thread, total cache (L2 + L3), which is a staggering 288 MB, and TDP of "just" 280 W. There is no mention of the chip's clock-speeds, and with the 3970X already priced close to $2,000, one can expect even higher prices for a chip with double the core count. At some point these products stop being HEDT and enter the realm of workstations. Intel's short-term response to even the 3970X could be limited to somehow sell the 28-core "Cascade Lake-SP" with quasi-HEDT branding the way it sells the Xeon W-3175X, and on a different platform than the X299.

At its recent SC19 talk, AMD touched upon its upcoming "Zen 3" CPU microarchitecture. Designed for the 7 nm EUV silicon fabrication process that significantly increases transistor densities, "Zen 3" could post performance gains "right in line with what you would expect from an entirely new architecture," states AMD, referring to the roughly 15 percent IPC gains that were expected of "Zen 2" prior to its launch. "Zen 2" IPC ended up slightly over 15 percent higher than that of the original "Zen" microarchitecture. AMD's SC19 comments need not be a guidance on the IPC itself, but rather performance gains of end-products versus their predecessors.

The 7 nm EUV process, with its 20 percent transistor-density increase could give AMD designers significant headroom to increase clock speeds to meet the company's generational performance improvement targets. Another direction in which "Zen 3" could go is utilizing the additional transistor density to bolster its core components to support demanding instruction-sets such as AVX-512. The company's microarchitecture is also missing something analogous to Intel's DLBoost, an instruction-set that leverages fixed-function hardware to accelerate AI-DNN building and training. Even VIA announced an x86 microarchitecture with AI hardware and AVX-512 support. In either case, the design of "Zen 3" is complete. We'll have to wait until 2020 to find out how fast "Zen 3" is, and the route taken to get there.

AMD in a blog post earlier today explained that there is no 1:1 correlation between the "best core" grading system displayed in Ryzen Master, and the "preferred cores" addressed by the Windows 10 Scheduler using CPPC2 (Collaborative Power and Performance Control 2). Deployed through BIOS and AMD chipset drivers, CPPC2 forms a middleware between OS and processor, communicating the system's performance demands at a high frequency of 1 ms (Microsoft's default speed for reporting performance states to processors is 15 ms). Ryzen Master, on the other hand, has had the ability to reveal the "best" cores in a Ryzen processor by ranking them across the package, on a CCD (die), and within a CCX. The best core in a CCX is typically marked with a "star" symbol on the software's UI. The fastest core on the package gets a gold star. Dots denote second fastest cores in a CCX.

Over the past couple of months we've posted several investigative reports by our Ryzen memory overclocking guru Yuri "1usmus" Bubly, and a recurring theme with our articles has been to highlight the discrepancy between the highest performing cores as tested by us not corresponding to those highlighted in Ryzen Master. Our definition of "highest performing cores" has been one that's able to reach and sustain the highest boost states, and has the best electrical properties. AMD elaborates that the CPPC2 works independently from the SMU API Ryzen Master uses, and the best cores mapped by Ryzen Master shouldn't correspond with preferred cores reported by CPPC2 to the OS scheduler, so it could send more workload to these cores, benefiting from their higher boosting headroom.

German publication Heise.de got its hands on a Radeon RX 5500 (OEM) graphics card and put it through their test bench. The numbers yielded show exactly what caused NVIDIA to refresh its entry-level with the GeForce GTX 1650 Super and the GTX 1660 Super. The RX 5500, in Heise's testing was found matching the previous-generation RX 580, and NVIDIA's current-gen GTX 1660 (non-Super). When compared to factory-overclocked RX 580 NITRO+ and GTX 1660 OC, the RX 5500 yielded similar 3DMark Firestrike performance, with 12,111 points, compared to 12,744 points of the RX 580 NITRO+, and 12,525 points of the GTX 1660 OC.

The card was put through two other game tests at 1080p, "Shadow of the Tomb Raider," and "Far Cry 5." In SoTR, the RX 5500 put out 59 fps, which was slightly behind the 65 fps of the RX 580 NITRO+, and 69 fps of the GTX 1660 OC. In "Far Cry 5," it scored 72 fps, which again is within reach of the 75 fps of the RX 580 NITRO+, and 85 fps of the GTX 1660 OC. It's important to once again note that the RX 580 and GTX 1660 in this comparison are factory-overclocked cards, while the RX 5500 is ticking a stock speeds. Heise also did some power testing, and found the RX 5500 to have a lower idle power-draw than the GTX 1660 OC, at 7 W compared to 10 W of the NVIDIA card; and 12 W of the RX 580 NITRO+. Gaming power-draw is also similar to the GTX 1660, with the RX 5500 pulling 133 W compared to 128 W of the GTX 1660. This short test shows that the RX 5500 is in the same league as the RX 580 and GTX 1660, and explains how NVIDIA had to make its recent product-stack changes.

Colorful Technology Company Limited, professional manufacturer of graphics cards, motherboards and high-performance storage solutions is thrilled to announce the latest product to join its CVN class of high-performance motherboards with the new CVN X570M GAMING Pro microATX motherboard. Building on the foundation of the first X570 Gaming Pro V14 motherboard, COLORFUL is offering the same level of quality and feature for those looking for a more compact build and the CVN X570M GAMING Pro makes that possible.

The CVN X570M GAMING Pro is ready for the future with support for AMD's new 7 nm processor based on their Zen 2 architecture while still supporting both 2nd-gen and 3rd-gen Ryzen products. This allows upgraders an easy path to step into modern hardware without spending more. Making its debut is PCIe 4.0 on this motherboard giving it extra bandwidth for high-speed connections with devices. The motherboard also comes rich with USB connectivity including USB 3.1 Gen 2.

According to the findings of a Chiphell user called "wjm47196", AMD is supposedly going to host an event at CES 2020 to showcase its next generation of Radeon graphics cards. Having seen huge success with its first-generation "RDNA" GPUs, AMD is expected to showcase improved lineup utilizing new and improved RDNA 2 graphics card architecture.

Judging by the previous information, second generation of RDNA graphics cards will get much-needed features like ray tracing, to remain competitive with existing offers from NVIDIA and soon Intel. Supposed to be built using the 7 nm+ manufacturing process, the new GPU architecture will get around 10-15% performance improvement due to the new manufacturing process alone, with possibly higher numbers if there are changes to the GPU core.

AMD today announced the AMD Radeon Pro W5700, the world's first 7 nm professional PC workstation graphics card. It delivers new levels of performance and advanced features that enable 3D designers, architects and engineers to visualize, review and interact with their designs in real time, dramatically accelerating decision-making processes and product development cycles.

The AMD Radeon Pro W5700 workstation graphics card features the high-performance, energy-efficient AMD RDNA architecture and state-of-the-art GDDR6 memory to handle large models and datasets, and is the first PC workstation graphics card to support high-bandwidth PCIe 4.0 technology. It is ideal for professionals who push performance beyond traditional 3D design by generating photorealistic renders of their concepts and reviewing virtual prototypes of their designs in virtual reality (VR) environments.

AMD today released its Athlon 3000G low-cost desktop processor to cap off its entry-level. Based on the 14 nm "Raven Ridge" silicon, the chip combines a 2-core/4-thread CPU based on the original "Zen" microarchitecture, with Radeon Vega 3 integrated graphics based on the "Vega" architecture, and featuring 3 NGCUs (192 stream processors). AMD dialed up the CPU clock speeds to 3.50 GHz, a 300 MHz increase over that of the "previous gen" 200GE, and iGPU engine clock speed by 100 MHz to 1.10 GHz. A unique feature this time around is unlocked base-clock multiplier, enabling CPU overclocking. AMD is pricing the Athlon 3000GE at just $49 (MSRP), it competes with Intel's Pentium Gold G5000 series processors.

Read the TechPowerUp review of the AMD Athlon 3000G here.

TUL Corporation, a leading manufacturer of AMD graphic cards since 1997, brings out a Navi first with a water cooled RX 5700 XT, the Liquid Devil. A long term AMD partner, PowerColor was one of the original adopters of factory overclocked graphics cards and was the first AMD partner to manufacture a graphics cards with premium performance water blocks. PowerColor once again partner with the liquid cooling industry leader EK to customize a uniquely designed water block for its custom RX 5700 XT for unmatched thermals and performance.

Featuring a nickel plated copper base, the Liquid Devil provides the better heat transfer capabilities of copper with the corrosion protection of the nickel, with the added bonus of making for a clean and sleek aesthetic. In order to maximize the potential of the PowerColor Liquid Devil, only the best 5700 XT GPUs which have been binned specifically for lower temperature and higher clock speeds have been selected for use, making sure that all Liquid Devil cards are the able to hit the highest performance points.

AMD late Monday posted Radeon Software Adrenalin 19.11.3 beta graphics drivers. The drivers add optimization for "Fortnite" in DirectX 12 mode introduced through patch v11.20, which is the only item in the change-log. Besides this, the company has acknowledged just like in the 19.11.2 changelog, that it's firefighting the issue of intermittent display signal loss when gaming with Radeon RX 5700-series graphics cards. Grab the driver from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 19.11.3

MATLAB is a popular math computing environment in use by engineering firms, universities, and other research institutes. Some of its operations can be made to leverage Intel MKL (Math Kernel Library), which is poorly optimized for, and notoriously slow on AMD Ryzen processors. Reddit user Nedflanders1976 devised a way to restore anywhere between 20 to 300 percent performance on Ryzen and Ryzen Threadripper processors, by forcing MATLAB to use advanced instruction-sets such as AVX2. By default, MKL queries your processor's vendor ID string, and if it sees anything other than "GenuineIntel...," it falls back to SSE, posing a significant performance disadvantage to "AuthenticAMD" Ryzen processors that have a full IA SSE4, AVX, and AVX2 implementation.

The tweak, meant to be manually applied by AMD Ryzen users, forces MKL to use AVX2 regardless of the CPU Vendor ID query result. The tweak is as simple as it is powerful. A simple 4-line Windows batch file with a set of arguments starts MKL in AVX2 mode. You can also make the tweak "permanent" by creating a system environment variable. The environment variable will apply to all instances of MATLAB, and not just those spawned by the batch file. Nedflanders1976 also posted a benchmark script that highlights the performance impact of AVX2, however you can use your own scripts and post results.

A desktop variant of the AMD Radeon RX 5300 XT graphics card surfaced in a specs sheet of an upcoming HP Pavilion desktop model (TP01-0004ng). The listing describes the RX 5300 XT as featuring 4 GB of GDDR5 memory. This is the first instance of an RX 5300 XT in the wild. An older report citing driver files pointed to there being only two RX 5300-series products, the RX 5300 (desktop), and the mobile RX 5300M. The "XT" brand extension could denote a higher CU count than the RX 5300, although the series is still differentiated from the RX 5500-series with cheaper GDDR5 memory.

The RX 5300 series and RX 5500 series are based on a common silicon, the 7 nm "Navi 14," featuring up to 24 RDNA compute units (up to 1,536 stream processors), and a 128-bit wide memory interface that supports up to 8 GB of GDDR6 or GDDR5 memory. AMD hopes to phase out its 14 nm and 12 nm "Polaris 10" and "Polaris 30" chips with "Navi 14." It's possible that the RX 5300 XT is OEM-only, just like the other key component in this HP desktop, the Ryzen 5 3500 6-core/6-thread processor.

While AMD is giving all signs of being preparing to release their latest entries into the midrange graphics card market in the form of theRX 5500 and RX 5300 series of graphics cards based on Navi, AMD's AIB partners are giving the slow burn on existing inventories of AMD's Polaris graphics chips. MSI, in this case, seems to have bet on a slight redesign of their previously-released RX 580 Armor and Armor MK2.

Changed is the color scheme - MSI went full black on this one. There's also a redesigned PCB, a redesigned I/O bracket (which keeps four display connectors), and a new cooler shroud. The heatsink's surface area also seems to have been increased, which should provide lower operating temperatures (anything beyond that, such as higher overclockability and longer lifespan, are speculations). The redesigned Armor keeps the single 8-pin PCIe power connector. No other details are available at time of writing.

A Geekbench database submission from an HP "17-ca2xxx" laptop (likely a prototype), spilled the beans on an upcoming AMD Athlon Gold 3150U processor, with nomenclature that looks inspired from the Pentium Gold. Intel uses the "Gold" and "Silver" brand extensions to distinguish processors based on its performance microarchitectures from those based on its low-power microarchitectures (eg: a "Skylake" based Pentium Gold, and a "Goldmont" based Pentium Silver). The addition of "Gold" to the Athlon brand could denote performance rivaling mobile versions of Pentium Gold found in entry-level full-size notebooks.

Moving on to the test itself, and we see the Athlon Gold 3150U being listed as a "Raven Ridge" derivative featuring a 2-core/4-thread CPU and Radeon graphics (likely "Vega 3" as with its desktop counterpart). The CPU is shown having a 2.40 GHz base frequency, and 3.30 GHz boost, 512 KB L2 cache per core, and 4 MB shared L3 cache. The chip scores 3,559 single-core points, and 7,336 points multi-core, comparable to entry-level dual-core processors from this generation. This makes us wonder what the Athlon "Silver" could be, and whether AMD is working on a new low-power microarchitecture in the near future.

In September, Sapphire unveiled its most powerful graphics card to date - the SAPPHIRE NITRO+ RX 5700 XT - which delivers amazing 4K and 1440p performance, but also features very advanced RGB customization options. We even created a set of SAPPHIRE ARGB Fans specifically for this card (sold separately), so you could illuminate your system even more. Since then, many of you have asked if we could include the ARGB Fans with the card itself. oday we are ready and excited to announce the SAPPHIRE NITRO+ RX 5700 XT SPECIAL EDITION! Not only does it include the SAPPHIRE ARGB Fans out of the box, but we've increased the card's performance even more.

AMD Thursday released its latest version of Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition. Version 19.11.2 beta is the second release for the month of November 2019, and comes with optimization for "Star Wars Jedi: The Fallen Order." The driver also addresses a bug with certain map areas or cities in "Player Unknown's Battlegrounds" (PUBG) intermittently experiencing stuttering or performance loss. Grab the drivers from the link below.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 19.11.2

AMD today announced that the latest Apple MacBook Pro features the new AMD Radeon Pro 5500M and 5300M mobile GPUs. AMD Radeon Pro 5000M series are the first 7 nm discrete mobile GPUs for professional users, leveraging industry-leading process technology and powerful AMD RDNA architecture to provide groundbreaking levels of graphics performance for video editing, 3D content creation and macOS-based game development.

AMD Radeon Pro 5000M series mobile GPUs are built upon the all-new AMD RDNA architecture, designed from the ground up for superior performance, scalability and power efficiency. The new GPUs include up to 8 GB of high-speed GDDR6 memory with up to 192 GB/s memory bandwidth - double the bandwidth of GDDR5 - and also deliver up to 4.0 TFLOPS of single-precision floating-point (FP32) performance. The GPUs are optimized for today's top professional content creation applications and compute-intensive image rendering workloads, delivering breathtaking, ultra-smooth, high-framerate visuals on the MacBook Pro Retina display.

All Intel CPU microarchitectures since 2013 are vulnerable to a new class of "Zombieload," attacks, chronicled under "Zombieload v2" (CVE-2019-11135). This is the fifth kind of microarchitectural data sampling (MDS) vulnerability, besides the four already disclosed and patched against in Q2-2019. The vulnerability was kept secret by the people who discovered it, as Intel was yet to develop a mitigation against it. There is no silicon-level hardening against it, and Intel has released a firmware-level mitigation that will be distributed by motherboard manufacturers as BIOS updates, or perhaps even OS vendors. While Intel's latest enterprise and HEDT microarchitecture, "Cascade Lake" was thought to be immune to "Zombieload," it's being reported that "Zombieload v2" attacks can still compromise a "Cascade Lake" based server or HEDT that isn't patched.

"Zombieload v2" is an exploitation of the Asynchronous Abort operation of Transactional Synchronization Extensions (TSX), which occurs when malware creates read operation conflicts within the CPU. This reportedly leaks data about what else is being processed. "The main advantage of this approach is that it also works on machines with hardware fixes for Meltdown, which we verified on an i9-9900K and Xeon Gold 5218," reads the latest version of the Zombieload whitepaper that's been updated with "Zombieload v2" information. TSX is a requisite for "Zombieload v2," and all Intel microarchitectures since "Haswell" feature it. AMD processors are inherently immune to "Zombieload v2" as they lack TSX. Intel downplayed the severity or prevalence of "Zombieload v2," but dispatched microcode updates flagged "critical" nevertheless.

No, that's not a typo. AsRock has actually launched an AMD Radeon 550 graphics card this late into the game. There is some sense behind the business decision, though; AMD's Radeon 550 is the company's entry-line offering, which aims only to improve upon the performance of integrated graphics solutions, and no more. In that sense, the Radeon 550 certainly delivers, though it does so in an underwhelming way for any tech enthusiasts. The Radeon 550 2G features 2 GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 1,750 MHz (7,000 MHz effective) across a 64-bit bus, which feeds a die powered by 512 Stream Processors.

There are three operating modes on offer: Silent, for HTPC environments, which clocks the graphics card at 1,183 MHz boost clock and 7,000 MHz memory clocks. Default mode runs the card at AMD's defaults (1,183 MHz boost, 7,000 MHz memory). The OC mode overclocks the graphics card's boost clock to 1,230 MHz and the memory to 7,038 MHz. I/O stands at 1x dual-link DVI-D connector, 1x HDMI 2.0b port and 1x DisplayPort 1.4. A 50 W TDP should make it easy to cool in cramped spaces, and the graphics card doesn't require any power pins. No pricing was available at time of writing.

"Shadow of the Tomb Raider" received support for AMD FidelityFX through a patch. The latest Patch 18 update adds the FidelityFX toggle, letting you improve frame-rates by slightly reducing resolution-scale, resulting in higher frame-rates, and compensating for the image quality loss with the image-sharpening feature. NVIDIA GeForce users still have the option to use the Image Sharpening toggle in NVIDIA Control Panel introduced with GeForce R440 drivers. The patch also removes the restriction on character outfits when exploring the Hidden City location in game.

EK Water Blocks, the leading premium computer liquid cooling gear manufacturer, is releasing EK-Quantum Vector Radeon RX 5700 +XT D-RGB water blocks that are compatible with reference design AMD Radeon RX 5700 and 5700 XT graphics cards. These water blocks are an evolution of the EK-Vector Radeon RX 5700 +XT RGB blocks which featured regular RGB. The new Quantum blocks feature 5 V D-RGB addressable LEDs for even more lighting customization and control of every LED diode separately.

As with its predecessor, this water block directly cools the GPU, 8 GB of GDDR6 memory, and VRM (voltage regulation module) as cooling liquid is channeled directly over these critical areas. The base of the block is made of high-grade copper or nickel-plated electrolytic copper while the top is made of high-quality acrylic material or black POM Acetal material (depending on the variant). The entire plexi covered block is lit up with D-RGB while the acetal version is implementing D-RGB in the aesthetic white corner piece. The top material does not affect the block performance in any way. The block also features a special plastic cover over the block Terminal which is also lit with addressable D-RGB. This add-on is designed to reveal the graphics card model, visible from the side. Sealing is ensured by high-quality EPDM O-Rings.

With NVIDIA and Intel already entrenched in the integer scaling field, which brings improved image quality to upscaled, pixel-art games, AMD was sure to follow. Vacuums in terms of feature set between different manufacturers of the same products aren't well looked at by consumers, and so AMD really has no choice but to advance into the integer scaling game as well. Recent Linux driver patches have been analyzed and found to contain multiple references to an integer scaling feature, which means that AMD is readying it for deployment and already on their way to work on its driver-level implementation.

Integer scaling works by looking at the base image and multiplying each pixel up to your monitor resolution, which brings in added sharpness without a single pixel's color being stretched over others. This way, a base 1080p presentation can easily be upscaled to a 4K resolution simply by syncing a given pixel's color information through 4 pixels - now you have a 4K screen that's rendering the same number of pixels as a 1080p one, with a block of four pixels acting as a single one. With integer scaling being the most requested feature on AMD's Adrenalin feedback page, so it seems pretty guaranteed we'll see the feature adopted eventually - perhaps even in AMD's own yearly big Adrenalin driver release, which could be dropping by this December, should history repeat itself.

The leading global motherboard, graphics card and mini PC manufacturer, ASRock, announces their latest Phantom Gaming series graphics cards - the Radeon RX 5700 XT Phantom Gaming D 8G OC, and Radeon RX 5700 Phantom Gaming D 8G OC, which are equipped with AMD's latest generation of 7 nm Radeon RX 5700 series GPUs, with 8 GB GDDR6 video memory, and the latest PCI Express 4.0 support, coupled with outstanding heat dissipation triple-fan design, brilliant ARGB lighting effects, and the stylish metal backplate. With all these advanced specifications and rich features, they are undoubtedly designed for gamers, providing an outstanding 1440p gaming experience.