AMD today announced the appointment of Mike Rayfield as senior vice president and general manager of AMD Radeon Technologies Group (RTG), and David Wang as senior vice president of engineering for RTG. Both will report to President and CEO Dr. Lisa Su. Rayfield will be responsible for all aspects of strategy and business management for AMD's graphics business including consumer graphics, professional graphics, and semi-custom products. Wang will be responsible for all aspects of graphics engineering, including the technical strategy, architecture, hardware, and software for AMD graphics products and technologies.

"Mike and David are industry leaders who bring proven track records of delivering profitable business growth and leadership product roadmaps," said AMD President and CEO Dr. Lisa Su. "We enter 2018 with incredible momentum for our graphics business based on the full set of GPU products we introduced last year for the consumer, professional, and machine learning markets. Under Mike and David's leadership, I am confident we will continue to grow the footprint of Radeon across the gaming, immersive, and GPU compute markets."

MSI is apparently working on a revised version of its dual-fan Armor design for AMD's cards, dropping the white and black color scheme and opting for a more AMD-basic black and red one. The new versions, tentatively dubbed the Armor MK2 graphics cards, are expected to trickle through MSI's AMD graphics card lineup slowly, starting with the RX 570 and RX 560 graphics cards in their OC versions. The new color scheme, even if used to exhaustion already, does a little more than the previous Armor iteration in conveying the image of an AMD graphics card (black and red, anyone?), and the Armor MK2 models should feature an additional color and design upgrade to the existing backplate.

Primitive shaders are lightweight shaders that break the separation of vertex and geometry shaders, promising a performance gain in supporting games. Initially announced during the Radeon RX Vega launch, the feature has been delayed again and again. At one of its 2018 International CES interactions with the press, AMD reportedly announced that it had cancelled the implicit driver path for primitive shaders. Game developers will still be able to implement primitive shaders on AMD hardware, using a (yet to be released) explicit API path. The implicit driver path was the more interesting technology though, since it could have provided meaningful performance gains to existing games and help cut down a lot of developer effort for games in development. AMD didn't state the reasons behind the move.

To explain the delay, some people were speculating that the Primitive Shader feature was broken unfixable in hardware, which doesn't seem to be the case, now that we are hearing about upcoming API support for it, so this can also be interpreted as good news for Vega owners.

TechPowerUp today released the latest version of GPU-Z, the popular graphics subsystem information and diagnostic utility. Version 2.7.0 comes with a handful of important bug fixes and updates to its internal modules. To begin with, we've updated the NVFlash module that lets GPU-Z extract video BIOS from graphics cards, the newer NVFlash supports BIOS extraction from some of the newer NVIDIA graphics cards such as the GTX 1070 Ti. We've also fixed incorrect video memory amount reading on AMD Radeon RX Vega graphics cards. TMU and ROP counts, and OpenCL status on AMD "Polaris 21" GPUs is fixed, as is incorrect labeling of a memory clock sensor on NVIDIA GPUs. GPU-Z will no longer prevent system shutdowns and reboots on Windows 10 Fall Creators Update.DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z 2.7.0

The change-log follows.

Here are the first pictures of AMD Ryzen 3 2200G and Ryzen 5 2400G "Raven Ridge" desktop APU retail PIB (processor in box) packages. The PIB package includes the APU itself, an AMD Wraith Stealth cooling solution, a case-badge, and some documentation. These packages are visually distinguishable from Ryzen 3 and Ryzen 5 "Summit Ridge" CPU PIB packages, with a chrome silver band heading the front face, which has prominent AMD Radeon Vega Graphics branding. It keeps up with the APUs' full retail names: "AMD Ryzen 3 2200G with Radeon Vega 8 graphics" and "AMD Ryzen 5 2400G with Radeon Vega 11 graphics." The Ryzen 3 2200G is expected to be priced (MSRP) at USD $99.99, and the Ryzen 5 2400G at $169.99; both parts launch in the retail channel on the 12th of February. The two have been extensively detailed in our older article.

AMD today revealed specifications of its first desktop socket AM4 APUs based on the "Zen" CPU micro-architecture, the Ryzen 2000G "Raven Ridge" series. The chips combine a quad-core "Zen" CPU with an integrated graphics core based on the "Vega" graphics architecture, with up to 11 NGCUs, amounting to 704 stream processors. The company is initially launching two SKUs, the Ryzen 3 2200G, and the Ryzen 5 2400G. Besides clock speeds, the two are differentiated with the Ryzen 5 featuring CPU SMT, and more iGPU stream processsors. The Ryzen 5 2400G is priced at USD $169, while the Ryzen 3 2200G goes for $99. Both parts will be available on the 12th of February, 2018.

The Ryzen 5 2400 features an 4-core/8-thread CPU clocked at 3.60 GHz, with a boost frequency of 3.90 GHz; 2 MB of L2 cache (512 KB per core), and 4 MB of shared L3 cache; and Radeon Vega 11 graphics (with the 11 denoting NGCU count), featuring 704 stream processors. The iGPU engine clock is set at 1250 MHz. The dual-channel DDR4 integrated memory controller supports up to 64 GB of dual-channel DDR4-2933 MHz memory. The Ryzen 3 2200G is a slightly cut down part. Lacking SMT, its 4-core/4-thread CPU ticks at 3.50 GHz, with 3.70 GHz boost. Its CPU cache hierarchy is unchanged; the iGPU features only 8 out of 11 NGCUs, which translate to 512 stream processors. The iGPU engine clock is set at 1100 MHz. Both parts feature unlocked CPU base-clock multipliers; and have their TDP rated at 65W, and include AMD Wraith Stealth cooling solutions.

AMD late Thursday released Radeon Software Adrenalin 18.1.1 Beta drivers to the public. Bearing the same version numbering as the early-January 18.1.1 Alpha release, these drivers have a more detailed change-log, which includes the game crash fix for DirectX 9 games; freezing experienced in DRM-protected video playback, a stability issue affecting Windows 10 "Movies & TV" app, color corruption on Radeon Overlay when running multiple game and 3D applications, PUBG menu flickering in multi-GPU systems, and more. Grab the drivers from the link below.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 18.1.1 Beta

The complete change-log follows.

Despite the grunt of the media's attention and overall customer rage having been thrown largely at Intel, AMD hasn't moved past the Spectre/Meltdown well, meltdown, unscathed. News has surfaced that at least two law firms have announced their intention of filing a class action lawsuit against AMD, accusing the company of not having disclosed their products' Spectre vulnerability, despite knowledge of said vulnerabilities.

AMD stated loud and clear that their processors weren't affected by the Meltdown flaw. However, regarding Spectre, AMD's terms weren't as clear cut. The company stated that its CPUs were vulnerable to the Spectre 1 flaw (patchable at a OS level), but said that vulnerability to Spectre 2's variant had "near-zero risk of exploitation". At the same time, the company also said that "GPZ Variant 2 (Branch Target Injection or Spectre) is applicable to AMD processors", adding that "While we believe that AMD's processor architectures make it difficult to exploit Variant 2, we continue to work closely with the industry on this threat.

SiSoft's hardware database is a fountain of information for soon-to-be-released hardware if you have the patience to go through all the entries. On this occasion, we get a glimpse of AMD's future Ryzen 5 2600 processor. Similar to its predecessor, the Ryzen 5 2600 is a 65W six-core processor with twelve threads. However, this new model features a 3.4 GHz base clock which is 200 MHz faster than the Ryzen 5 1600 that we reviewed last year. It will also come with 6 x 512 kB of L2 cache and 2 x 8 MB of L3 cache. Being an engineer sample and all, take these specifications with a pinch of salt. According to the entry, the processor was tested on an ASUS ROG Crosshair VII Hero motherboard that sports AMD's X470 chipset. Unfortunately, we don't have any more details at this time.

It looks like Intel has achieved the design goals of its new Core i7-8705G multi-chip module, built in collaboration with AMD. Combining a 4-core/8-thread "Kaby Lake" CPU die with an AMD "Vega" GPU die that has its own 4 GB HBM2 memory stack, the ruthless duo put similarly-priced discrete GPU setups to rest, such as the combination of an 8th generation Core processor + NVIDIA GeForce MX 150. More importantly, entry-level discrete GPU combinations with high-end mobile CPUs have a similar power/thermal envelope as the i7-8705G MCM, but at significantly higher PCB footprint.

Dell implemented the Core i7-8705G on one of its latest XPS 15 2-in-1 models. The device was compared to an Acer Swift 3 (SF314-51), which combines a Core i5-8250U processor with GeForce MX 150 discrete graphics; and a Dell XPS 13 9370, which implements an 8th generation Core processor that has Intel's workhorse graphics core, the HD 620. The three devices squared off against each other at "Rise of the Tomb Raider" game benchmark. The i7-8705G averaged 35 frames per second (fps), while the MX 150 barely managed 24 fps. The HD 620 ran a bored intern's PowerPoint slideshow at 9 fps.

AMD today in a blog post announced the fruits of its partnership with Enmotus, a mainly enterprise-focused company that has made its name in creating performance-optimizing software solutions. The new solution, the FuzeDrive, is an ingenius (paid) software stack that will aggregate all of a users' system memory (be it RAM, HDDs, SSDs, NVMe drives, all of that) and expose it as a single drive via software. The goal is to allow the software to optimize data placement on the fly according to its read/write needs, creating caching solutions at will, learning from users' usage patterns, and basically creating a "set it and forget it" experience for users that critically also improves performance (and by AMD's estimates, it really does do so by a significant margin).

All of these features were pretty hard-set from the start; in the AMD blog post by Don Woligroski, he states that "AMD started with a list of goals, like improving storage performance and lowering loading times." AMD's love for open standards still hasn't gone and went away; he said that "because AMD believes in open hardware standards, it prefers to work with off-the-shelf, non-proprietary NVMe, SSD, and hard disk drives." Convenience was also a very important item to check; according to AMD, "any superior storage acceleration solution needs to be easy to set up, and simple to use." And the company believes they've achieved all of that with their new solution.

The public disclosure on January 3rd that multiple research teams had discovered security issues related to how modern microprocessors handle speculative execution has brought to the forefront the constant vigilance needed to protect and secure data. These threats seek to circumvent the microprocessor architecture controls that preserve secure data.

At AMD, security is our top priority and we are continually working to ensure the safety of our users as new risks arise. As a part of that vigilance, I wanted to update the community on our actions to address the situation.

ASUS today announced XG Station Pro, an external graphics card enclosure with a stylish aluminum chassis and advanced cooling that provides PC and Mac laptop users with high-end graphics performance, suitable for demanding professional applications, such as video rendering, 3D design and scientific modeling. With support for the latest NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards and featuring fast and convenient Thunderbolt 3 connectivity, XG Station Pro enables a workstation-class experience when connected to a laptop and an external monitor without sacrificing mobility.

Premium, all-aluminum design
Designed in collaboration with In Win - the well-known maker of premium computer chassis - XG Station Pro has a highly functional and stylish design with an elegant, grey aluminum chassis that perfectly complements premium laptops. XG Station Pro fits a full-length, 2.5-slot graphics card, yet has a compact size that takes up minimal space on a desk or workspace. An external, 330W power supply drives even the most demanding graphics cards, reduces heat within the chassis, and enables XG Station Pro to have a smaller overall size.

QNAP Systems, Inc. today announced the release of the high-performance TVS-x73e series - an SMB NAS lineup featuring an AMD RX-421BD quad-core APU, up to 64GB DDR4 RAM, two M.2 SATA 6Gb/s SSD slots (for SSD cache acceleration with Qtier auto-tiering), the unique USB QuickAccess port, dual 4K HDMI output, and hardware-assisted 4K video transcoding acceleration. Designed for versatile business needs, the secure and scalable TVS-x73e series provides a pair of PCIe slots for flexibly installing 10GbE NICs, QM2 cards or USB 3.1 10 Gbps cards, presenting small and medium businesses with the perfect NAS solution to build a private cloud for applications including high-speed data transfer, backup/recovery, virtualization, media playback and graphics display.

"The TVS-x73e NAS series is powered by an AMD quad-core APU with up to 3.4 GHz clock speed and also provides dual PCIe slots that add more value to maximize NAS potential for a wider range of applications, making the TVS-x73e ideal for organizations and professionals who ask for performance and expandability," said Jason Hsu, Product Manager of QNAP.

We headed to the GIGABYTE Aorus booth at the 2018 International CES to check out the only motherboard based on AMD's upcoming 400-series chipset visible in the entire show, the Aorus X470 Gaming 7. We snapped a lot of pictures. The first thing that caught our attention is the board's updated styling, which resembles the one GIGABYTE introduced with its Intel Z370-series motherboards. The second thing of course, was two 32 Gb/s M.2 slots, confirming that AMD has indeed addressed 300-series chipset's greatest shortcoming - lack of PCIe gen 3.0 general purpose lanes. Since the AM4 SoC puts out 4 gen 3.0 general purpose lanes of its own, which wired to one 32 Gb/s M.2 slot on 300-series motherboards, the new 400-series boards will have at least two of these slots, one wired to the AM4 SoC, and another to the chipset.

The Aorus X470 Gaming 7 could become the company's flagship socket AM4 product based on AMD X470 chipset. It's been designed as such. Built in the ATX form-factor, the board draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX, 8-pin EPS, and 4-pin ATX power connectors. A 12-phase VRM supplies power to the AM4 SoC. It's interesting to note that GIGABYTE chose some very high-current chokes for the chip's main voltage domains. The VRM heatsinks, too, are elaborate aluminium fin-stack types, with the two heatsinks spreading heat over a heat pipe. Is this a telltale sign that certain Ryzen 2 parts could have >95W TDP? The CPU socket is wired to four DDR4 DIMM slots, two PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots (x8/x8 when both are populated), and one of the two M.2 slots (we're guessing the top M.2-22110 slot). Both it, and the bottom M.2-2280 slots have included heatsinks. Other expansion slots include an x16 (electrical x4) slot wired to the chipset, and two x1 slots, which are all gen 3.0.

AMD took to CES 2018 with a smattering of partner products and designs that take advantage of the company's mobile implementation of its Ryzen CPUs (and ZEN architecture). At its CES 2018 booth, AMD showcased products from HP and Lenovo, and our lucky coverage agents even managed to catch AMD CEO, Lisa Su, in her visit/inspection to her company's CES 2018 presence (extra Easter-egg after the break).

The products on display included one HP AIO, one Dell AIO, one HP and one Lenovo laptop, as well as pre-built systems from the likes of Dell (under its own brand and the Alienware brand) and Lenovo. The HP Pavilion AIO 24 makes use of AMD's Ryzen Mobile 2500U with Radeon Vega 8 graphics, 16 GB of DDR4 RAM, and a 2 TB HDD. The other AIO in the house, a Dell Inspiron 7775, packs a desktop-class Ryzen 7 1700, discrete Radeon RX 580 graphics, 16 GB of DDR4 memory, a 256 GB SSD, and a 1 TB HDD for all your storage needs.

Microsoft late-Monday halted Meltdown and Spectre security patches to machines running AMD processors, as complaints of machines turning unbootable piled up. Apparently the latest KB4056892 (2018-01) Cumulative Update causes machines with AMD processors (well, chipsets) to refuse to boot. Microsoft has halted distributing patches to PCs running AMD processors, and issued a statement on the matter. In this statement, Microsoft blames AMD for not supplying its engineers with the right documentation to develop their patches (while absolving itself of any blame for not testing its patches on actual AMD-powered machines before releasing them).

"Microsoft has reports of customers with some AMD devices getting into an unbootable state after installing recent Windows operating system security updates," said Microsoft in its statement. "After investigating, Microsoft has determined that some AMD chipsets do not conform to the documentation previously provided to Microsoft to develop the Windows operating system mitigations to protect against the chipset vulnerabilities known as Spectre and Meltdown," it added. Microsoft is working with AMD to re-develop, test, and release security updates, on the double.Update (09/01): AMD responded to this story, its statement posted verbatim is as follows.

Acer today announced its new Acer Nitro 5 gaming laptop, designed for casual gamers seeking great performance in an attractive laser-textured design. Powered by Windows 10, the new 15-inch laptop is targeted towards mainstream users who enjoy the thrill of gaming with friends, and building their own network of like-minded players.

"With performance to effortlessly power mainstream titles, the Acer Nitro 5 houses essential technologies that casual gamers value most," said Jerry Hou, General Manager, Consumer Notebooks, IT Products Business, Acer Inc. "We've developed the Nitro 5 knowing that gamers want powerful specs to enable great experiences on the go. The new Nitro 5 is designed to tackle these needs and features a striking exterior for added uniqueness."

Here are some of the first pictures of GIGABYTE Aorus X470 Gaming 7 WiFi, one of the first socket AM4 motherboards based on the upcoming AMD X470 chipset, which will launch with out of the box support for 2nd generation Ryzen "Pinnacle Ridge" and Ryzen "Raven Ridge" APUs, in addition to current-gen Ryzen chips, when it launches early-Q2 (April). The presence of more than one 32 Gbps M.2 slot bodes well, as it confirms that the chipset features PCI-Express gen 3.0 general purpose lanes (current AMD 300-series chipset have gen 2.0). One can also spy three x16 slots, from which two will be wired to the CPU, with SLI support; and the board's overall design scheme matching that of the company's Intel 300-series chipset motherboards.

MSI, a world leader in gaming hardware, launches three brand-new gaming products at CES 2018, and will display two other CES Innovation Award Honorees. The CES 2018 Innovation Award Honorees include the Trident 3 Arctic, the new Z370 GODLIKE GAMING motherboard, new GTX 1080TI Lightning Graphics Card, Infinite X gaming desktop and new Optix MPG27CQ gaming monitor. The Trident 3 Arctic was also awarded a "Best of Innovation at Gaming" award. With these products, MSI affirms its position at the head of the high-end gaming market, bringing gamers all over the world the latest and greatest technologies.

"MSI has been dedicated to the field of gaming and is highly acclaimed by gamers and eSports teams worldwide," said Eric Kuo, MSI Vice President of Global Sales & Marketing. "We are honored to receive award recognition for these products and are excited to share them with gamers everywhere."

AMD at CES shed some light on its 2018 roadmap, while taking the opportunity to further shed some light on its graphics and CPU projects up to 2020. Part of their 2018 roadmap was the company's already announced, across the board price-cuts for their first generation Ryzen processors. This move aims to increase competitiveness of its CPU offerings against rival Intel - thus taking advantage of the blue giant's currently weakened position due to the exploit saga we've been covering. This move should also enable inventory clearings of first-gen Ryzen processors - soon to be supplanted by the new Zen+ 12 nm offerings, which are expected to receive a 10% boost to power efficiency from the process shrink alone, while also including some specific improvements in optimizing their performance per watt profile. These are further bound to see their market introduction in March, and are already in the process of sampling.

On the CPU side, AMD's 2018 roadmap further points towards a Threadripper and Ryzen Pro refresh in the 2H 2018, likely in the same vein as their consumer CPUs that we just talked about. On the graphics side of their 2018 roadmap, AMD focused user's attention in the introduction of premium Vega offerings in the mobile space (with HBM2 memory integration on interposer, as well), which should enable the company to compete against NVIDIA in the discrete graphics space for mobile computers. Another very interesting tidbit announced by AMD is that they would be skipping the 12 nm process for their graphics products entirely; the company announced that it will begin sampling of 7 nm Vega products to its partners, but only on the Instinct product line of machine learning accelerators. We consumers will likely have to wait a little while longer until we see some 7 nm graphics cards from AMD.

Following its Ryzen 5 2400G and Ryzen 3 2200G socket AM4 APU announcement, AMD announced price cuts for its Ryzen family of processors, across the board. These are official price cuts, and not seasonal retailer discounts. The price cuts have been made in a bid to make its existing socket AM4 Ryzen processors more competitive against 8th generation Intel Core "Coffee Lake" processors.

Among the notable changes, are bringing the entire Ryzen 7-series lineup under the $350-mark, with the 1800X being priced at $349, the 1700X at $309, and the 1700 non-X at $299. These changes make the three competitive against the Core i7-8700K (which is scraping the $400-mark in many places), and the i7-8700 non-K (around $330). The Ryzen 5-series six-core parts also receive much-needed price-cuts to make them competitive against the Core i5 six-core SKUs, such as the i5-8600K and i5-8400. There are marginal changes in the Ryzen 3 series and Ryzen Threadripper series. All price cuts are tabled below.

Building on the global enthusiasm generated in 2017 by Ryzen processors and Radeon graphics technology, AMD today detailed its forthcoming roll-out plan for its new and next generation of high-performance computing and graphics products during an event in Las Vegas just prior to the opening of CES 2018. Alongside announcing the first desktop Ryzen processors with built-in Radeon Vega Graphics, AMD also detailed the full line up of Ryzen mobile APUs including the new Ryzen PRO and Ryzen 3 models, and provided a first look at the performance of its upcoming 12nm 2nd generation Ryzen desktop CPU expected to launch in April. In graphics, AMD announced the expansion of the "Vega" family with Radeon Vega Mobile and that its first 7nm product is planned to be a Radeon "Vega" GPU specifically built for machine learning applications.

"We successfully accomplished the ambitious goals we set for ourselves in 2017, reestablishing AMD as a high-performance computing leader with the introduction and ramp of 10 different product families," said AMD President and CEO Dr. Lisa Su. "We are building on this momentum in 2018 as we make our strongest product portfolio of the last decade even stronger with new CPUs and GPUs that bring more features and more performance to a broad set of markets."

ASRock today unveiled the industry's first micro-ATX form-factor motherboard for AMD Ryzen Threadripper processors, the X399M Taichi. The board supports a full-featured Threadripper HEDT build. Drawing power from a combination of 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS power connectors, it uses an 8-phase VRM to power the CPU. MOSFETs of this VRM vent heat onto both a smaller primary heatsink, and a larger secondary heatsink, via a heat-pipe. The TR4 socket is wired to four DDR4 DIMM slots, supporting quad-channel DDR4 memory; and three PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots (from which at least two run at full x16 bandwidth at all times).

Storage connectivity on the ASRock X399M Taichi includes three 32 Gb/s M.2 slots, one 32 Gb/s U.2 port, and eight SATA 6 Gb/s ports. Networking connectivity includes 802.11ac + Bluetooth 4.x WLAN, and two 1 GbE interfaces. USB connectivity includes eight USB 3.0 and two USB 3.1 (including a type-C) ports on the rear panel, and four USB 3.0 ports via headers. ASRock deployed its highest-grade onboard audio solution, which takes advantage of a 120 dBA SNR CODEC, audio-grade capacitors, and ground-layer isolation. The company will showcase this board at the 2018 International CES.

Making good on its post-New Year promise, AMD late Thursday released its first Radeon Software Adrenalin iteration for the year, version 18.1.1 Alpha. Being flagged "Alpha," these are very early drivers, the use of which are not backed by any warranties. They're not fully tested to work by AMD.

Version 18.1.1 Alpha addresses critical bugs that caused some of the older games to break following Adrenalin 17.12 release. The games, which are nearly a decade old, are AAA blockbusters which are based on the older DirectX 9 API. A number of older DirectX 9 games, such as EA's "Command & Conquer 3," "Command & Conquer 4" series, "Battle for Middle Earth 1-2," and "The Witcher Enhanced Edition" had simply refused to start following the 17.12 driver update. Grab the drivers from the link below.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 18.1.1 Alpha