BIOSTAR introduced its first custom-design Radeon RX 580 graphics card, the RX 580 8 GB Dual Cooling (model: VA5805RV82). The company had announced its foray into AMD Radeon graphics cards with a reference-design RX 580, in April. The new RX 580 Dual Cooling combines an AMD-reference design PCB with a custom-design cooling solution. This cooler features an aluminium heatsink with a copper core over the GPU; ventilated by a pair of 80 mm fans, which stay off when the GPU is idling.

The card sticks to AMD reference clock speeds of 1257 MHz core, 1340 MHz boost, and 8.00 GHz (GDDR5-effective) memory. It features 8 GB of memory over a 256-bit wide memory interface. Based on the 14 nm "Lexa" (Polaris 20) silicon, the Radeon RX 580 features 2,304 stream processors, 144 TMUs, and 32 ROPs. The card draws power from a single 8-pin PCIe power connector. Display outputs include three DisplayPort 1.4, one HDMI 2.0, and a dual-link DVI. The company didn't reveal pricing.

AMD today has confirmed a highly-awaited, long-time-coming, almost too-late-to-be-true press conference on Computex 2017. Via email, the company announced their intention to share a save-the-date announcement for AMD's press conference, scheduled for May 31st from 10 a.m. - 11 a.m.

The conference will be hosted by AMD's CEO Lisa Su and other key executives, and will serve as a venue to "hear more about the latest products and leading-edge technologies coming from AMD in 2017." AMD is apparently "looking forward to providing new details on 2017 products and the ecosystems, both OEM and channel, that will support them." So yeah, this is probably it. A shame about that May 25th Easter Egg with Vega's location on the star charts, but maybe we shouldn't really be complaining, or else AMD might cancel this announcement altogether. And we've waited for Vega long enough, haven't we?

Linux patches have already given us a "lot" of information (using "lot" generously there) on AMD's upcoming Vega graphics cards. I'd wager few enthusiasts would be looking towards a dual-GPU solution anymore - not with the mostly absent support from most recent games, of which Prey is a notable exception. Not unless there was some sort of hardware feature that exposed both dies as a single GPU for games and software to handle, but I'm entering the realm of joyous, hopeful thinking here.

Back to the facts, a May 10th Linux patch has added two more device ID's to a Vega family of products: 0x6864 and 0x6868. These additions bring the total number of Vega device ID's to a healthy 9, which is still less than Polaris' 12. This is in-line with the expected number of SKUs for Vega, which should be less than those available for Polaris.

NVIDIA has been posting tremendous financial results, beating analysts' expectations on an almost quarterly basis. This stems from NVIDIA's privileged position in the graphics and computing market, with their GeForce series of consumer graphics cards having reigned almost virtually unchallenged by AMD's offerings. This happens even more distinctively on the high end of the market, where NVIDIA's halo products systematically wow consumers on a pure performance basis, and improve the company's image and market awareness absent of any competition from AMD. At the same time, the company's strong position on the AI, Deep Learning, and general computing markets ensure a strong footing should something go awry in a single market.

All of this seems to have grounded NVIDIA CEO's Jensen Huang confident posture on the company's outlook for 2017. At yesterday's earnings call, Jensen Huang was questioned whether NVIDIA's competitor's "new platform" elicited some thoughts on NVIDIA's competitiveness outlook in the second half of 2017. To this, Jensen Huang replied, in no uncertain terms, that "the competitive position is not going to change." Now naturally, a company CEO wouldn't be saying on his own company's earnings call something along the lines of "AMD's Vega platform is going to totally invert the competitive landscape and we at NVIDIA are scrambling and screaming internally at the disaster." Still, NVIDIA is probably the company that knows more about AMD's second-half 2017 efforts in the graphics space in 2017 other than AMD themselves, so this answer could also include some of Jensen's thoughts regarding that - and Volta. What do you think? Bullish posturing, or deserved confidence?

Fresh from the rumor-mill comes a report that low HBM2 availability may cripple the Vega launch that is expected to happen in the next few weeks, if a report from TweakTown is to be believed. As far as sources, there isn't much other than TweakTown's news report and their article claiming they had been told this by an "exclusive industry source." Apply your usual grain of salt here vigilant reader, but its certainly interesting speculation, if nothing else. It may turn out to be FUD, or it may turn out to be truth. Only the coming weeks will reveal the truth.

Another day, another set of Vega results see the light of it. It would seem like this saga has been going on for ages, ever since we've seen AMD showcase its prototype Vega cards running Star Wars Battlefront (4K, Ultra settings at over 60 FPS) and Doom (4K, Vulcan render path at over 60 FPS on pre-production hardware). But with the lack of official information coming from AMD (let's hope this changes on May 16th), it would seem the company is content to see us hardware news sites jumping at every detail and offering free publicity.

This is known to be Vega because the device ID, 687F:C1, was spotted on AMD's own hands while running that Doom demo in 4K. The device clocks seem to be in line with previous leaks: a 1200 MHz core clock and 8GB of video memory running at 700 MHz memory clocks. With these clocks (which are expected to be extremely conservative when we take into account what we know of Vega), the Vega video card manages to deliver a 17,801 points graphics score, approximately 1,400 points more than your average Fury X, but some hundreds less than your average, current-generation GTX 1070. Remember: AMD's MI25 is expected to come in at 1,500 MHz core clocks, and this is a professional, passively-cooled graphics card. This means that unless AMD greatly overestimated the clock capability of its Vega cards, the consumer version of Vega will have necessarily higher clocks. But we'll stay here, waiting for some more details to pour our way, as always.

Reports are circling around the web regarding an AMD meeting featuring some of its higher ups - namely, CEO Lisa Su, head of Radeon Technologies Group Raja Koduri, and AMD's CTO Mark Papermaster happening on the 16th of May. The purpose of this meeting seems to be to discuss AMD's inflexion point, and lay out a vision for the company's future, supported on its upcoming products: the too-long-awaited Vega, its successor Navi, and the natural evolution of the company's current Zen processors, tentatively identified as Zen+.

Naturally, a company such as AMD has its roadmap planned well in advance, with work on next-generation products and technologies sometimes even running in parallel with current-generation product development. It's just a result of the kind of care, consideration, time and money that goes into making new architectures that makes this so. And while some would say Vega is now approaching a state akin to grapes that have been hanging for far too long, AMD's next graphics architecture, Navi, and its iterations on Zen cores, which the company expect to see refreshes in a 3-to-5-year period, are other matters entirely. Maybe we'll have some more details regarding the specific time of Vega's launch (for now expected on Computex), as well as on when AMD is looking to release a Zen+ refresh. I wouldn't expect much with regards to Navi - perhaps just an outline on how work is currently underway with some comments on the expectations surrounding Global Foundries' 7 nm process, on which Navi is expected to be built. And no, folks, this isn't a Vega launch. Not yet.

AMD is giving final touches to the latest update of AGESA micro-code of its Ryzen processors, which will improve DDR4 memory support, enabling higher memory clocks and tighter timings. The new AGESA 1.0.0.6 micro-code will be deployed through motherboard vendors as motherboard BIOS updates. It will add over 20 new registers for the "Summit Ridge" integrated memory controllers, to improve compatibility with "Intel-friendly" DDR4 memory brands.

Until now, AMD recommended PC builders to opt for only certain brands of DDR4 memory for best performance. These included memory modules with Samsung "B die" DRAM chips, such as the G.Skill Flare X series. The new AGESA update will let AMD Ryzen processor users to manually dial up DRAM clocks and tighten timings of a broader range of DDR4 memory kits, more reliably, and hopefully iron out a lot of stability issues associated with memory overclocking.

Not to let itself be outshined by arch-rival NVIDIA, AMD today released a new driver suite that introduces support for the impending release of Arkane Studios' Prey. A totally new IP in an era of sequels and re-releases, which has been paired - even if only so slightly - with AMD's own Vega teaser campaign, Prey promises to offer a mix of Bioshock and System Shock, with Arkane's own peculiar blend of game mechanics and art direction. Go on ahead fighting the invasion - I'll be joining you shortly.

These drivers promise an up to 4.7% performance improvement measured on Radeon RX 580 8GB graphics when compared to Radeon Software Crimson ReLive edition 17.4.4, as well as multi GPU profile support. As always, you can grab these right here on your favorite hardware site on the universe. Just follow the link below, and catch some more details like fixed and current issues after the break.Download: AMD Radeon Crimson Relive 17.5.1 Beta Drivers

AMD could be working on at least three SKUs based on its upcoming "Vega 10" silicon to make up its Radeon RX Vega series. Leaked 3DMark validations point to a device ID that's third in a series of possible device IDs of graphics cards based on the "Vega 10" silicon, the 687F:C1, 687F:C2, and 687F:C3. All three SKUs feature 8 GB of HBM2 memory, and according to leaked 3DMark TimeSpy scores, the "slowest" SKU is faster than NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070. The fastest SKU is in the same league as the GTX 1080 Ti.

The three SKUs could differ with core-configuration and clock speeds. AMD carved four SKUs out of its "Fiji" silicon, the liquid-cooled R9 Fury X, the air-cooled R9 Fury (with 12.5% fewer shaders), the SFF-friendly R9 Nano (full core-config, but aggressive power-management), and the halo dual-GPU Radeon Pro Duo (1st gen). AMD could take a similar approach with "Vega 10." AMD is expected to launch its Radeon RX Vega series within Q2-2017.

A Linux patch for AMD's GPU drivers reveals that its upcoming "Vega 10" graphics processor bears numeric core-configuration similarities to the "Fiji" silicon which drives the enthusiast-segment Radeon R9 Fury series graphics cards. The patch bears configuration values which tell the software how to utilize the resources on the GPU, by spelling them out. The entry "gfx.config.max_shader_engines = 4," for example, indicates that "Vega 10" features four shader engines, like "Fiji." Another entry "Adev-> gfx.config.max_cu_per_sh = 16" signifies the number of GCN compute units (CUs) per shader engine. Assuming the number of stream processors per CU hasn't changed from 64 in the "Vega" architecture, we're looking at a total stream processor count of 4,096. This could also put the TMU count at 256.

At earlier reveals of the "Vega 10" package, you notice a large, somewhat square GPU die neighboring two smaller rectangular memory stack dies, which together sit on a shiny structure, which is the silicon interposer. The presence of just two memory stack dies sparked speculation that "Vega 10" features a narrower 2048-bit memory interface compared to the 4096-bit of "Fiji," but since the memory itself is newer-generation HBM2, which ticks at higher clocks, AMD could run them at double the memory clock as "Fiji" to arrive at the same 512 GB/s bandwidth. The 4,096 stream processors of "Vega 10" are two generations ahead of the ones on "Fiji," which together with 14 nm process-level improvements, could run at much higher GPU clocks, making AMD get back into the high-end graphics segment.

In the wake of its Q1-2017 financial results, AMD stock on NASDAQ went belly-up, posting its biggest single-day crash in 12 years. At the time of writing, the stock fell 24.22 percent, down to $10.30 per share, which is rivaled only by the 26.2 percent plummet of 11th Jan, 2005. According to Analyst Christopher Rolland at Susquehanna Financial, only a "near-perfect" Q1 results by AMD could have prevented this crash from happening. In a letter to his clients, Rolland writes that "AMD's new products are beginning to accelerate growth, but perhaps without all the gross margin benefits [they] had hoped for."

Susquehanna Financial is keeping its rating of AMD neutral, hoping that the upheaval will settle down at $12 (a recovery from its current $10.3). UBS analyst Stephen Chin is a little more grim, after posting a sell rating, with a price target of $9 (a further 13 percent selloff). "We keep our sell rating on the stock as we see limited EPS growth near term to support its high multiple as it need to invest heavily to keep pace with Intel and NVIDIA," Chin wrote. "We also estimate limited operating margin expansion in the near term," he added. To dig itself out of this, AMD needs to successfully sell a quantitative amount of products with high margins, and post good results over the next quarters.

ASUS today introduced the Prime B350M-E, an entry-level socket AM4 motherboard in the micro-ATX form-factor, based on the AMD B350 chipset. Built in the narrow micro-ATX form-factor, this board draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS power connectors, conditioning it for the AM4 SoC with a simple 6-phase VRM. The SoC is wired to two DDR4 DIMM slots, supporting up to 32 GB of dual-channel DDR4 memory. Expansion slots include one reinforced PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slot, and two PCI-Express x1 slots.

Storage connectivity on the Prime B350M-E includes one 32 Gb/s M.2 slot with NVMe booting support, and four SATA 6 Gb/s ports. USB connectivity includes two 10 Gb/s USB 3.1 ports (both type-A), and six 5 Gb/s USB 3.0 ports (four on the rear panel, two by headers). Display outputs include one each of DVI, D-Sub, and HDMI. Gigabit Ethernet and 6-channel HD audio make for the rest of it. The board features red LEDs, and RGB headers that let you plug in third-part RGB LED lighting, and control it using the ASUS Aura Sync software. The company didn't reveal pricing.

During its Q1 reports for fiscal year 2017 (which saw AMD's stock tumbling about, even if this Q1 only considers a single Ryzen sales-month on its accounts), AMD CEO Lisa Su referred that AMD's high-performance Vega architecture is still on track for a Q2 2017 release. The words, specifically, are these: "AMD's "Vega" GPU architecture is on track to launch in Q2, and has been designed from scratch to address the most data- and visually-intensive next-generation workloads with key architecture advancements including: a differentiated memory subsystem, next-generation geometry pipeline, new compute engine, and a new pixel engine."

So yes, AMD confirms what we suspected. This leaves a launch time-frame for Vega products until, at most, the end of June. Confirmation after confirmation, it's still a long time to wait, if you'll ask me, with little to no information in the last few months. But it's better than nothing, and I'd much prefer a real launch with retail availability than a glorified paper launch. Here's hoping Vega answers our questions and our needs. It's been a long time coming already.

There have been some reports that Intel's CPU division has gotten a sales decline of about $150 million, and that AMD has, conversely, seen its processor sales increase by around the same amount. This would seem to beget a straight, logic leap - that AMD was calling to itself sales that would have belonged to Intel. With Ryzen, AMD did make a great product that consumers are looking to buy, and if recent Passmark statistics are anything to go by, it would seem that yes, AMD achieved its sales increase on the back of Intel sales.

AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) today announced revenue for the first quarter of 2017 of $984 million, operating loss of $29 million, and net loss of $73 million, or $0.08 per share. On a non-GAAP basis, operating loss was $6 million, net loss was $38 million, and loss per share was $0.04. "We achieved 18 percent year-over-year revenue growth driven by strong demand for our high performance Ryzen CPUs as well as graphics processors," said Dr. Lisa Su, AMD president and CEO. "We are positioned for solid revenue growth and margin expansion opportunities across the business in the year ahead as we bring innovation, performance, and choice to an expanding set of markets."

BIOSTAR expanded its niche line of motherboards for Bitcoin-mining rigs, with two boards for the socket AM4 platform, the TA320-BTC, and the TB350-BTC. These boards feature a minimalist layout so you can drop in as many PCI-Express GPU or ASIC Bitcoin-mining cards as possible. As their names suggest, the TA320-BTC is based on the entry-level AMD A320 chipset, and the TB350-BTC the mid-range AMD B350. Both boards share an identical PCB, and barring for some chipset-level features, their feature-sets are largely identical.

The boards are built in the narrow ATX form-factor, and draw power from a combination of 24-pin ATX, 4-pin Molex (optional), and 8-pin EPS power connectors. A 6-phase VRM conditions power to the SoC, which is wired to two DDR4 DIMM slots, besides a PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slot, and six other PCI-Express 3.0 x1 slots. Storage options are limited to four SATA 6 Gb/s ports. Connectivity includes 6-channel HD audio, gigabit Ethernet, DVI and D-Sub display outputs, six 5 Gbps USB 3.0 ports, and two USB 2.0 high-power ports (1.5 A current). Both boards support Ryzen processors (up to 95W TDP), and 7th gen A-Series "Bristol Ridge" APUs. Available now, the TB350-BTC is priced at USD $84.99.

The long term strategic partnership between AMD and Bethesda seems to be on full swing, with branding and marketing for both companies appearing in increasingly intertwined states (did you see that shortcut article we posted earlier in the week?) First, with Arkane Studios' Prey and Vega marketing, which gave us the first glimpse towards a release window for AMD's new high-performance graphics architecture. Now, it's another Bethesda IP, in the form of Quake Champions, that makes such an appearance.

Case in point: a leaked image from Informatica Cero, which shows packaging for what seems like a bundle of Quake Champions and AMD's RX Vega, which "brings gaming to life". The joint marketing does go hand in hand with AMD and Bethesda's partnership, so there's that, though if this was to be the packaging for a RX Vega graphics card, I have to say it seems a little too heavy-handed on the Quake side of it.

AMD made headlines yesterday (27th April), when AMD Radeon users discovered that their GPU driver update places a promotional link to a "Quake Champions" beta signup on their desktops. The Radeon Software Crimson ReLive 17.4.4 drivers leave a shortcut on your desktop which reads "Quake Champions," and has the official icon. The shortcut, however, points to a URL, which leads to a "Quake Champions" beta signup on publisher Bethesda's website. You can't opt not to see this icon during the driver setup's "custom setup" component selection page. The URL contains a referral extension, which made some people accuse AMD of trying to make money off it, a charge the company denies.

This caused major uproar in social media, with some comments calling it "adware" and AMD losing the moral high ground over NVIDIA, which marketed games through its GeForce Experience app. Sensing a PR fumble on its hands, AMD updated Radeon Software 17.4.4 drivers on its downloads page, which no longer plants the "Quake Champions" shortcut on your desktop. AMD could be testing the waters with how it could monetize its driver updates further. The company, like NVIDIA, already has game banner advertisements in the driver installer. AMD denied that it is making any money off the referral link, and that it is only using referral data to gauge activity.

AMD today released its latest platform core-logic (chipset) drivers for Windows 10, 8.1, and 7. The new version 17.10 WHQL chipset drivers are particularly important for AMD Ryzen platform users, as it installs a new Windows power-management plan called "Ryzen Balanced Power." This plan is better than the "Balanced" power plan Windows ships with, in that it hands over more power-management from the OS over to the silicon-level SenseMI power-management logic of Ryzen processors, which has more fine-grained voltage and clock-gating over cores, and which would otherwise cause latency issues with OS-level power-management using P-state triggers. The power plan is detailed at length in our older article. The power-plan is installed on machines with AMD A320, B350, and X370 chipsets. Grab the drivers from the link below.DOWNLOAD: AMD Chipset Drivers 17.10

AMD today released Radeon Software Crimson ReLive 17.4.4, its fourth release for April. These drivers come with optimization for "Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III," with up to 7 percent performance improvement seen on a machine powered by a Radeon RX 580. It also fixes display corruption seen on some machines with HDMI scaling, incorrect HDR colors on "Mass Effect: Andromeda," DirectX 11 mode stuttering on CrossFire machines in "Battlefield 1," a hang noted on Radeon RX 550 machines that haven't been rebooted for a long time, and some UI improvements with Radeon Settings. The drivers also add a curious looking shortcut to your desktop (check out the image below). Grab the driver from the link below.

Edit: In case you are wondering where that Quake Champions Beta shortcut on your desktop comes from, AMD's 17.4.4 driver installation stealth-adds that to your desktop, with a bit.ly tracking link, instead of directly to the official page. Looks like AMD is making some $$ from it, a referral id is included in the final URL destination, too.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Crimson ReLive 17.4.4

A new feature we are planning here on TPU is a post every so often with the latest Ryzen related bios updates. This will happen more or less as significant updates happen, starting today. This is a starting post and will list all bios updates as of today. Future posts will include only the latest releases and reference this post.

This post will include the latest bios updates, which ones are "hot off the press" (new as of the past 2 days) and links to where to get them. As for the rest, I assume you know how to flash a motherboard.

AMD has given its flagship Ryzen processor, the Ryzen 7 1800X, a small price cut. The chip is now priced at USD $469 on leading online retailers in the US, down from its launch price of $499. This $30 cut, however, isn't spread over to AMD's other Ryzen 7 series parts. The Ryzen 7 1700X continues to go for $399, and the Ryzen 7 1700 (non-X) around $329. Prices of the Ryzen 5 series six-core and quad-core parts seem unaffected, too.

AMD's flagship processor, the Ryzen 7 1800X features eight cores, SMT enabling 16 logical CPUs for the software to deal with, 512 KB of L2 cache per core, and 16 MB of shared L3 cache. It is clocked at 3.60 GHz, with 4.00 GHz TurboCore frequency, and XFR (extended frequency range) unlocking higher automated overclocks depending on the effectiveness of your cooler. The socket AM4 chip is built on the 14 nm process, and has a 95W TDP rating.

In an AMA (ask me anything) session with Tom's Hardware community, AMD desktop processor marketing exec Don Woligrosky answered a variety of AMD Ryzen platform related questions. He did not shy away from making a key comment about the company's upcoming high-end graphics card, Radeon Vega, either. "Vega performance compared to the Geforce GTX 1080 Ti and the Titan Xp looks really nice," Woligrosky stated. This implies that Radeon Vega is in the same league of performance as NVIDIA's two top consumer graphics SKUs, the $650 GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, and the $1,200 TITAN Xp.

It is conceivable that AMD's desktop processor marketing execs will have access to some privileged information from other product divisions, and so if true, this makes NVIDIA's recent memory speed bump for the GTX 1080 a failed gambit. NVIDIA similarly bumped memory speeds of the GTX 1060 6 GB to make it more competitive against the Radeon RX 580. Woligrosky also commented on a more plausible topic, of the royalty-free AMD FreeSync becoming the dominant adaptive v-sync technology, far outselling NVIDIA G-Sync.

id Software, the pioneering game studio behind "Doom" and "Quake," in a marketing video about how its developers and gamers are benefiting from AMD Ryzen processors, hinted that it is working on a new next-generation game engine that succeeds idTech 6, which is heavily optimized for AMD Ryzen processors. id CTO Robert Duffy spoke at length about how Ryzen is putting more CPU capabilities in the hands of gamers at attractive price-points, which is letting game developers add that much more content and production design that benefits from this level of parallelism and performance.

The most interesting part about Duffy's comment comes later in the video, where he talks about a new game engine that id is working on, which will be "far more parallel than idTech 6" (far more multi-core and multi-thread friendly), and that it will be able to consume "all of the CPU [compute power] that Ryzen can offer." Duffy also confirmed that "Quake Champions," the studio's upcoming online hero-based FPS, will be optimized for both Ryzen and Radeon Vega.The video follows.