The folks at Techgage have already put out some unboxing pictures on AMD's RX Vega 64 review sample. There's not much more new information here - however, it's an opportunity to see how lavish AMD has become with their review sampling. Gone are the times of cardboard boxes, it seems. AMD may be spending more on packaging and presentation for the review samples than for actual R&D on the graphics cards (I kid, obviously.)

AMD revealed that the pair of 8-core "Summit Ridge" dies that make up the Ryzen Threadripper multi-chip module are heavily binned. AMD hand-selects the top-5% highest performing "Summit Ridge" dies for Ryzen Threadripper manufacturing, which makes these chips of a higher grade than even what AMD sets aside for Ryzen 7-series socket AM4 chips.

AMD requires the highest grade "Summit Ridge" dies to use in Threadripper chips, to keep electrical leakage to the minimum, so the chips can run as cool as possible, with the least power-draw. Choosing the best dies could also ensure that Threadripper chips have the highest overclocking-headroom taking into account other electrical and thermal constraints. A 7-series chip such as the 1800X could still achieve higher clocks than a Threadripper chip, in that sense.

AMD built its Ryzen Threadripper HEDT (high-end desktop) processor as a multi-chip module (MCM) of two 8-core "Summit Ridge" dies, each with its own dual-channel memory controller, and PCI-Express interface. This is unlike the competing Core "Skylake-X" from Intel, which is a monolithic 18-core die with a quad-channel DDR4 interface and 44-lane PCIe on one die. AMD has devised some innovative methods of overcoming the latency issues inherent to an MCM arrangement like the Ryzen Threadripper, by tapping into its nUMA technology innovation.

To the hardware, four 8 GB DDR4 memory modules populating the four memory channels of a Ryzen Threadripper chip is seen as 16 GB controlled by each of the two "Summit Ridge" dies. To the software, it is a seamless block of 32 GB. Blindly interleaving the four 8 GB memory modules for four times the bandwidth of a single module isn't as straightforward as it is on the Core X, and is fraught with latency issues. A thread being processed by a core on die-A, having half of its memory allocation on memory controlled by a different die, is hit with latency. AMD is overcoming this by treating memory on a Ryzen Threadripper machine like a 2-socket machine, in which each socket has its own memory.

Update: Corrected socket compatibility. This is a specially-designed cooler by Arctic for AMD's HEDT platform, As such, it offers limited compatibility with CPUs of lower die sizes, which means it's only compatible with TR4, AM4, LLGA2011(v3) and LGA2066 sockets.

Arctic announced the Freezer 33 TR, a tower-type CPU air cooler, designed for AMD Ryzen Threadripper processors, with out of the box support for AMD socket TR4/SP3r2. The cooler comes in two variants based on color - black with red accents, and black with silver accents. The cooler features a conventional tower-type design, in which four 6 mm-thick copper heat-pipes, which make direct contact with the CPU at the base, pass through an aluminium fin-stack, which is ventilated by an included fan.

Compared to other Freezer 33 variants, the TR variant features an elongated base, for higher coverage of the Threadripper integrated heatspreader (IHS). The aluminium fins and heat-pipes feature matte-black nickel-plating. The included fan takes in 4-pin (PWM) input, spinning between 200 to 1,800 RPM. The cooler can cope with thermal loads of up to 320W, which makes it good for CPU TDP rating up to 200W, according to Arctic. Besides socket TR4, the cooler also supports AMD's AM4 socket, while Intel support stands at their LGA2011(v3), LGA2066. Available now, and backed by a generous 10-year warranty, the Freezer 33 TR is priced at 47.99€.

Thermaltake is thrilled today to launch the next generation of all-in-one liquid cooling solution - the Floe Riing RGB TT Premium Edition Series. Available in 240mm, 280mm and 360mm, the Floe Riing RGB is the world's first 16.8 million colors liquid CPU cooler series with extraordinary performance, superior quality and addressable LEDs design. The large surface radiator plus high-performance waterblock and pump delivers the ultimate CPU cooling for gaming or other GPU intense tasks.

The waterblock and fans are manufactured with multiple addressable LEDs that can be controlled by the Riing Plus RGB Software. Functions within the software also allow users to monitor fan performance and track CPU temperature. Most importantly, this brand-new cooler series supports all the latest Intel and AMD CPU socket, including Intel LGA2066 and AMD AM4. Thermaltake Floe Riing Plus RGB TT Premium Edition Series is now available for purchase on the TT Premium online shop.

Redditor "callingthewolf" has posted what is an awe-inspiring result for AMD's Ryzen Threadripper 1950X (that's an interesting username for sure; let's hope that's the only similarity to the boy who cried wolf.) The 16-core, 32-thread processor stands as the likely taker for the HEDT performance crown (at least until Intel's 14-core plus HEDT CPUs make their debut on the X299 platform.) With that many cores, highly thread-aware applications naturally look to see tremendous increases in performance from any frequency increase. In this case, the 1950X's base 3.4 GHz were upped to a whopping 4.0 GHz (@ 1.25 V core) and 4.1 GHz (at 1.4 V core; personally, I'd stick with the 4.0 GHz and call it a day.)

The feat was achieved under a Thermaltake Water 3.0 liquid cooler, on a non-specified ASRock motherboard with all DIMM channels populated with 8 x 8 GB 3066 MHz DIMMs. At 4.0 GHz, the Threadripper 1950X achieves a 3337 points score on Cinebench R15. And at 4.1GHz, the big chip that can (we can't really call it small now can we?) manages to score 58391 points in Geekbench 3. While those scores are certainly impressive, I would just like to point out the fact that this is a 16-core CPU that overclocks as well as (and in some cases, even better than) AMD's 8-core Ryzen 7 CPUs. The frequency potential of this Threadripper part is in the same ballpark of AMD's 8-core dies, which speaks to either an architecture limit or a manufacturing one at around 4 GHz. The Threadripper 1950X is, by all measurements, an impressively "glued together" piece of silicon.

ENERMAX, the designer and manufacturer of high-end PSU and CPU coolers, announces the launch of LIQTECH TR4, the closed-loop liquid coolers that are custom-designed especially for the top-end enthusiast Threadripper CPUs. The LIQTECH TR4's base plate can cover the entire Threadripper's IHS (integrated heat spreader) to deliver greater heat transfer efficiency and faster dissipation. Furthermore, with the innovative high-flow-rate pump and patented Shunt-Channel-Technology (SCT) coldplate design, LIQTECH TR4 can deliver extremely high cooling capacity of 500W+TDP for heavily overclocked CPUs and demanding HEDT systems.

Update 10/8: ENERMAX Updated the MSRP. The LIQTECH TR4 240 is priced at USD $129.99, and the LIQTECH TR4 360 at $149.99.

An issue on AMD's Ryzen performance under certain Linux workloads, which caused segmentation faults in very heavy, continuous workloads on the Ryzen silicon (parallel compilation workloads in particular) has been confirmed by AMD. Tests like Phoronix's Test Suite's stress run quickly bring the Ryzen processors to their knees with multiple segmentation faults. While this problem is easy to cause under very heavy workloads, the issue is virtually absent under normal Linux desktop workloads and benchmarking,

AMD also confirmed this issue is not present in EPYC or Threadripper processors, but are isolated to early Ryzen samples under Linux (AMD's testing under Windows has found no such behavior.) AMD's analysis has also found that these Ryzen segmentation faults aren't isolated to a particular motherboard vendor, but are problems with the processors themselves. AMD encourages Ryzen customers who believe to be affected by the problem to contact AMD Customer Care. Some of those who have contacted customer care about the segmentation faults have in turn been affected by thermal, power, or other problems, but AMD says they are committed to working with those encountering this performance marginality issue under Linux. AMD will also be stepping up their Linux testing/QA for future consumer products.

Like many other manufacturers, Fractal Design isn't sleeping under the proverbial palm tree with their products. They too have sought to keep after the most promising high performance platforms for their Celsius AIOs, and have announced compatibility with Intel's latest X299 platform and AMD's X399. The S24 is one of the best 240 mm AIO coolers out there, apparently; models of this lineup feature a 12 V ceramic bearing water pump equipped with a copper cold plate. The Celsius line of coolers also come equipped with an integrated fan hub that allows end users to plug the cooler fans directly into the radiator instead of the motherboard - leaving those fan headers free for other pieces of hardware.

The compatibility will be achieved, as usual, through a separate bracket. AMD Threadripper users will be able to rest assured, since their purchase of a Threadripper CPU will already come with a Asetek retention kit inside the box (compatible with Fractal Design's coolers, naturally.) Intel X299 users will find full compatibility for the socket via the included 2011-v3 kit inside the Fractal Design Celsius AIO packaging.

An unnanounced AMD HEDT Ryzen Threadripper processor has cropped up on some of the most well known motherboard vendors' support lists. Following AMD's product stacking for the Ryzen line of processors, the Threadripper 1920 comes with the same 12 cores and 24 threads as the 1920X, although it runs at lower frequencies (3.2 GHz base, 3.8 GHz Boost on the 1920, against 3.5 GHz and 4.0 GHz on the 1920X). The lower frequency threshold means the 1920 also comes with a lower, 140 W TDP rating (the 1920X has a higher value at 180 W).

These news come courtesy of CPU support lists for the ASUS ROG Zenith Extreme, ASRock X399 Professional Gaming/X399 Taichi as well as GIGABYTE X399-Gaming 7. Expect the new Threadripper to become the sweet spot for the 12-core, 24-thread CPUs of our time, since its performance and pricing will situate it below the 1920X's $799, but above the already announced 8-core Threadripper 1900X, which will come in at $549. Remember that all AMD Zen-based processors come unlocked out of the box for your frequency-increase-through-overclocking pleasure, so it should be relatively simple to extract as much performance from the 1920 as the 1920X can deliver.

LinusTechTips has received an Alienware Area 51, the boutique system which Alienware has developed through its exclusive partnership with AMD for the 16-core, 32-thread Threadripper CPUs.

The system was tested using a proprietary Dell/Alienware motherboard, as well as 32 GB (4x 8 GB) of 2666 MHz DDR4 RAM. Graphics were handled by a Founders Edition GTX 1080 Ti, and storage was etched on a SanDisk A400 256 GB NVME drive (Up to 2050/700 MB/s Sequential Read/Write). The nature of the benchmarked systems, with their myriad of hardware parts, means that the benchmarks are not 100% representative of CPU performance deltas between the tested processors; however, they do put out some interesting numbers. The other HEDT system to be tested was an Intel-based X299 system with a stock Intel Core i9-7900X (10 cores, 20 threads) on an ASUS Prime X299 Deluxe, 4x 8 GB of 3200 MHz DDR4 memory, the same GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition, and a 512 GB Samsung 950 Pro NVME SSD.

Disclaimer: take this post with a bucket of salt. However, the information here, if true, could heavily impact AMD's RX Vega cards' stock at launch and in the subsequent days, so, we're sharing this so our readers can decide on whether they want to pull the trigger for a Vega card at launch, as soon as possible, or risk what would seem like the equivalent of a mining Black Friday crowd gobbling up AMD's RX Vega models' stock. Remember that AMD has already justified delays for increased stock so as to limit the impact of miners on the available supply.

The information has been put out by two different sources already. The first source we encountered (and which has been covered by some media outlets solo) has been one post from one of OC UK's staff, Gibbo, who in a forum post, said "Seems the hash rate on VEGA is 70-100 per card, which is insanely good. Trying to devise some kind of plan so gamers can get them at MSRP without the miners wiping all the stock out within 5 minutes of product going live."

EK Water Blocks, the Slovenia-based premium computer liquid cooling gear manufacturer has proven its market leadership once again by presenting Full Cover water blocks for the long awaited AMD Radeon Vega architecture based high-end graphics cards. Customers will be able to transform their GPU into a stunningly beautiful single slot graphics card and the water cooling block will allow it to reach higher frequencies, thus providing more performance during gaming or other GPU intense tasks.

EK-FC Radeon Vega
This water block directly cools the GPU, HBM2 memory, and VRM (voltage regulation module) as water flows directly over these critical areas thus allowing the graphics card and it's VRM to remain stable under high overclocks. EK-FC Radeon Vega water block features a central inlet split-flow cooling engine design for best possible cooling performance, which also works flawlessly with reversed water flow without adversely affecting the cooling performance. This kind of efficient cooling will allow your high-end graphics card to reach higher boost clocks, thus providing more performance during gaming or other GPU intense tasks. Moreover, such design offers great hydraulic performance allowing this product to be used in liquid cooling systems using weaker water pumps.

The team at Sweclockers have already received their Threadripper review kit. We know this because there was a short-lived video uploaded by the team, unboxing and perusing the contents of one of AMD's delicious Threadripper review kits. Videocardz, however, managed to snag some screenshots of the act, and that content is what we are bringing to you now. Also, kudos for that Dinklebot shirt - that wizzard might have come from the moon, but ours certainly hasn't.

AMD has published a list of coolers that are officially compatible with their upcoming Threadripper CPUs. It's no surprise there needs to be a compatibility list - the new CPUs top out at 16-core, 32-thread monsters which have never before graced the HEDT space, with an accompanying large CPU die size and heatsink. The socket being an entirely new affair, a new retention kit must also be made available by cooler manufacturers.

AMD itself will be offering an Asetek retention kit for AIO cooling solutions on their Threadripper retail packaging, which should make most Asetek-built AIOs to be compatible with the TR4 socket. These coolers are automatically added to the list. However, there may be some other coolers that are compatible with the newest socket that are not listed on AMD's site as of yet. For those cases, AMD reminds us all that we should check with our cooling solution manufacturer whether an adapter is available or not, and whether our current cooling solution is sufficient for the task at hand. Other coolers are now receiving mid-production updates after a certain date to include the compatible mounting hardware. Check the source link for the AMD compatibility page, and the below image for the current state of affairs.

TweakTown has put forth an article wherein they claim to have received info from industry insiders regarding the upcoming Vega 56's performance. Remember that Vega 56 is the slightly cut-down version of the flagship Vega 64, counting with 56 next-generation compute units (NGCUs) instead of Vega 64's, well, 64. This means that while the Vega 64 has the full complement of 4,096 Stream processors, 256 TMUs, 64 ROPs, and a 2048-bit wide 8 GB HBM2 memory pool offering 484 GB/s of bandwidth, Vega 56 makes do with 3,548 Stream processors,192 TMUs, 64 ROPs, the same 8 GB of HBM2 memory and a slightly lower memory bandwidth at 410 GB/s.

The Vega 56 has been announced to retail for about $399, or $499 with one of AMD's new (famous or infamous, depends on your mileage) Radeon Packs. The RX Vega 56 card was running on a system configured with an Intel Core i7-7700K @ 4.2GHz, 16 GB of DDR4-3000 MHz RAM, and Windows 10 at 2560 x 1440 resolution.

Noctua today presented three high-end heatsinks for the TR4 and SP3 sockets of AMD's latest Ryzen Threadripper (X399) and Epyc platforms. The new TR4-SP3 versions of the award-winning NH-U14S, NH-U12S and NH-U9 coolers are tailored custom models that feature a larger contact surface as well as a SecuFirm2 mounting system for TR4/SP3. Supplied with Noctua's renowned NF-A15, NF-F12 and NF-A9 premium fans, the new coolers combine outstanding cooling performance with exceptional quietness of operation.

"A high-end platform usually calls for high-end cooling solutions and that's precisely the case with AMD's new Epyc and upcoming Ryzen Threadripper ecosystems", explains Roland Mossig (Noctua CEO). "We have therefore customized our award-winning NH-U14S, NH-U12S and NH-U9 coolers so that users can enjoy the performance and quietness of these proven premium heatsinks on the new AMD platforms."

AMD maybe have shaken up the HEDT (high-end desktop) processor market with three Ryzen Threadripper SKU announcements early this week; but the two specifications that eluded us were their rated TDP and cache amounts. The first Ryzen Threadripper models will be available in the market from the 10th of August, and will include the 12-core/24-thread 1920X and the flagship 16-core/32-thread 1950X. Both models will feature the full 32 MB of L3 cache available from a pair of 14 nm "Summit Ridge" dies, which work out to "total cache" (L2+L3) amounts of 38 MB for the 1920X and 40 MB for the 1950X. The TDP of the 1920X and 1950X is rated at 180W. The TDP and cache configuration of the 8-core/16-thread 1900X remains unknown, for now.

In an interview, AMD's Chris Hook justified Vega's delayed release due to a wish to increase available stock for gamers who want to purchase the new high-performance architecture by AMD. In an interview with HardOCP, Chris Hook had this to say:

"Part of the reason it's taken us a little longer to launch Vega - and I'll be honest about that - is that we wanted to make sure we were launching with good volume. (...) Obviously we've got to compensate for things like coin-miners, they're going to want to get their hands on these. We believe we're launching with a volume that will ensure that gamers can get their hands on them, and that's what's important to us."

It appears that AMD tried their best to increase production and stock volumes so as to mitigate price fluctuations upon Vega's entry to the market due to above normal demand from cryptocurrency miners. The jury is still out on whether Vega will be an option for mining due to its exquisite architecture, however. Still, this sounds as good a reason as any to delay Vega for as long as it has been already. Just a few more days until we see what AMD managed with this one, folks. Check the video after the break.

Ethereum is a strange little thing. When you open up your Blockfolio to look at how much you're valued right now, it can be as a fine bit of coffee in the morning, perking you up for the entire day, or a wrecking ball to your capitalist, speculative heart. However, even if you don't believe in the technology, there are many people who do believe: at least, in the future value of it. They believe it so much, really, that they're willing to rent entire airplanes to transport mining equipment (read graphics cards). And we're talking Boeing 747 here, not your average private jet (handy infographic on the pictures below, by the way.)

Ethereum's price fluctuations notwithstanding, which saw the currency soar from $10 at the beginning of the year to a historical high of $400 in mid-June, seems to have somehow settled around a $200 support level. At that value, it's still profitable to mine - even with the increased difficulty of the myriad of miners, dedicated or not, who have flooded towards the GPU-based workloads that support the cryptocurrency's POW (Proof of Work) design. And faith - or expectation of future value is so high, that mining conglomerates (the ones with the greatest running costs, but also pretty scalable profits - aren't willing to waste more idle time than they possibly can. Marco Streng, chief executive of Genesis Mining, told Quartz that "Time is critical, very critical. For example, we are renting entire airplanes, Boeing 747s, to ship on time. Anything else, like shipping by sea, loses so much opportunity."

AMD is reportedly scaling down efforts on its end to support and promote multi-GPU technologies such as CrossFire, and not in favor of open-standards such as DirectX 12 native multi-GPU, either. Speaking to GamersNexus, an AMD representative confirmed that while the new Radeon RX Vega family of graphics cards support CrossFire, the company may not allocate as many resources as it used to with older GPU launches, in promoting or supporting it.

This is keeping up with trends in the industry moving away from multi-GPU configurations, and aligns with NVIDIA's decision to dial-down investment in SLI. This also more or less confirms that AMD won't build a Radeon RX series consumer graphics product based on two "Vega 10" ASICs. At best, one can expect dual-GPU cards for the professional or GPU-compute markets, such as the Radeon Pro or Radeon Instinct brands.

NZXT in a statement today confirmed that its Kraken X61, Kraken X52, and Kraken X62 all-in-one closed-loop liquid CPU coolers support AMD Ryzen Threadripper processors in the TR4 package. The company announced that compatible retention brackets for socket TR4, which work on most Asetek-sourced liquid CPU coolers, will be included in the PIB (processor in a box) package of Ryzen Threadripper processors, by AMD. The company reckons that its Kraken X61, Kraken X52, and Kraken X62 coolers provide sufficient cooling to tame the HEDT beasts by AMD.

The Khronos Group, an open consortium of leading hardware and software companies, announces from the SIGGRAPH 2017 Conference the immediate public availability of the OpenGL 4.6 specification. OpenGL 4.6 integrates the functionality of numerous ARB and EXT extensions created by Khronos members AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA into core, including the capability to ingest SPIR-V shaders.

SPIR-V is a Khronos-defined standard intermediate language for parallel compute and graphics, which enables content creators to simplify their shader authoring and management pipelines while providing significant source shading language flexibility. OpenGL 4.6 adds support for ingesting SPIR-V shaders to the core specification, guaranteeing that SPIR-V shaders will be widely supported by OpenGL implementations.

GIGABYTE today formally launched its only socket TR4 motherboard for AMD Ryzen Threadripper processors, the Aorus X399 Gaming 7. Packed to the brim with features, the board is built in the ATX form-factor, and is halfway between the ATX and E-ATX form-factors in width. It draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX, 8-pin EPS, and 4-pin ATX power connectors, conditioning it for the CPU with a 14-phase VRM. The CPU socket is wired to eight DDR4 DIMM slots, and five PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots.

Storage connectivity on the Aorus X399 Gaming 7 includes three 32 Gb/s M.2 slots covered by aluminium heatsinks; and eight SATA 6 Gb/s ports. USB connectivity includes two USB 3.1 gen 2 ports (both on the rear panel, including a type-C port, two by headers), and ten USB 3.0 ports. Networking is care of a WLAN card with 802.11ac MU-MIMO Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 4.2; and a gigabit Ethernet interface driven by a Killer E2500 gigabit Ethernet controller. The board is peppered with RGB LEDs controlled by GIGABYTE RGB Fusion software. Available from 10th August, the board is expected to be priced around $300.

ASRock's Fatal1ty X399 Professional Gaming board is ideal for high end gamers and other power users. This board gets the utmost from the modern high-speed networking environment with features like AQUANTIA 10Gb/s LAN - ideal for ultra-responsive lag-free online gaming, and for SOHO systems as well. The board's 1 x U.2 connector and 3 x Ultra M.2 sockets easily support high-end SSDs for lightning fast startup and game level loading. This board features IR3555M DrMOS and premium 60A power chokes, it is optimized for monitoring current and temperature to maintain stable power and flawless performance, even at peak loads and during overclocking.

Producing some of the smoothest and most lifelike graphics ever seen from the most powerful cards the industry has to offer, ASRock's X399 motherboards supports 4-Way operation for both NVIDIA SLI and AMD CrossFireX. All the PCIe lanes are supported directly from the CPU without using an additional bridge controller, to ensure unhindered graphics performance.