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.

BIOSTAR is thrilled to announce its latest lineup of graphics card for gamers featuring the 2nd-generation Polaris architecture from AMD coupled with excellent gaming performance and higher clock speeds. Introducing the new BIOSTAR RADEON RX 500 series GPUs designed to be the perfect graphics upgrade for those looking to play modern games and experience VR at compelling prices and the prodcuts will be exclusively for Asia Pacific and China region.

The new BIOSTAR RADEON RX 500 series GPUs include the latest flagship RX 580, together with the mainstream RX 570 and RX 550. The new GPUs feature support for DX12 and Vulkan API. Combined with technologies to help improve visual performance and display technologies to improve the overall gaming experience, gamers will fully enjoy their gaming experience with the new RADEON RX 500 series.

Via Facebook, AMD has confirmed that Vega is nearly here - at least, as nearly here as a "this quarter" can be. This means Vega will launch in two-months time (Q2 extends through the months of April, May and June, after all.) Through a post on its Facebook page, AMD replied that Vega will be coming "when it's ready... And it will be this quarter."

According to previous leaks (and our own deep dive on Vega's architecture), Vega should go a long way towards bridging the power/performance gap between AMD and NVIDIA's GeForce series. It will be the first time since Fury that AMD will have a competitive, high-performance graphics design (expectedly, and hopefully, since no-one likes to buy over-priced graphics cards.) The fact that AMD has teased Vega in two different pieces of media that come out in May (Arkane Studios' Prey, which comes out on May 5th, and Alien: Covenant, which also comes out during the month of May.) I've previously posited that AMD wouldn't tease Vega's launch alongside one of the most promising games of the year without giving us the chance to power it through Vega come launch day, but as Prey's release date approaches and there is no more information on Vega (much less an announcement), it's looking increasingly likely that we'll have to wait until we can see that universe in all of its Vega-rendered glory.

Today AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) announced the world's first dual-GPU graphics card designed for professionals: the Polaris-architecture-based Radeon Pro Duo. Built on the capabilities of the Radeon Pro WX 7100, the Radeon Pro Duo professional graphics card is designed to excel at media and entertainment, broadcast, and design and manufacturing workflows, delivering outstanding performance and superior flexibility that today's creative professionals demand.

The Radeon Pro Duo is equipped with 32GB of ultra-fast GDDR5 memory to handle larger data sets, more intricate 3D models, higher resolution videos, and complex assemblies with ease. Operating at a max power of 250W, the Radeon Pro Duo harnesses a total of 72 compute units (4608 stream processors) for a combined performance of up to 11.45 TFLOPS of single-precision compute performance on one board, and twice the geometry throughput of the Radeon Pro WX 7100. The Radeon Pro Duo enables professionals to work up to four 4K monitors at 60Hz, drive the latest 8K single monitor display at 30Hz using a single cable, or drive an 8K display at 60Hz using a dual cable solution.

Yeston, the Chinese manufacturer of graphics cards from both NVIDIA and AMD alike, has announced what is one of the (as of yet) few triple-fan takes on the recently-released RX 580 graphics card. Yeston increased the graphics card's footprint by adding that third fan, which partially settles against a protrusion added by the card's backplate.

The center fan is 10 cm wide, while the outer fans are 9 cm - all temperature-level controlled, which means they remain idle until a certain temperature threshold is reached. There is a LED-backlit RX 580 logo on the side of the card, as well as Radeon RX branding on the backplate. The RX 580 GameAce is clocked at 1340 MHz, which probably means a Polaris 20 XTX chip. This model will not be sold outside China, which is a downer, since its cooling system seems interesting enough, and the card is pleasing in aesthetics. However, some of you might find a way to get them shipped to your doorstep if you so wish.

HP Inc. today announced its most secure and manageable HP ZBook Mobile Workstations to-date. The new solutions-packed devices include award-winning display technology, 3D graphics and server-grade processing power -- all in a compact, mobile design. With its new workstation line up, HP continues to offer world-class innovation to power filmmakers, designers, artists, explorers and other visionary thinkers.

"As a longtime partner to the creative industry, Z Workstations have earned their position as the ultimate innovative and reliable technology for creators," said Josh Peterson, vice president of product management for Z Workstations. "Our fourth generation ZBook Mobile Workstations are the most secure and manageable mobile workstations in the industry. By protecting the intellectual property of digital creators everywhere, HP enables the creative industry to focus on bringing their best work to-life without the worry of IP theft or breaches."

VisionTek, a company whose last graphics card announcement we've posted here was on June 2015 with its Fury X and R9 300 line of graphics cards, has announced its vision for the RX 500 series graphics cards. This one seems a throwback to the RX 400 series, though, with Visiontek's "Overclocked Edition" GPUs carrying clockspeeds more in line with the prevous AMD series: 1,366 MHz for the RX 580, and 1264 MHz for the RX 570, respectively.

The VisionTek Radeon RX 580 8 GB comes with a slightly unoriginal take on the AIB partner design, sporting custom dual-fan cooler with a black-nickel aluminum shroud with 2x 8 mm and 2x 6 mm heatpipes for increased cooling capacity. The Radeon 570 4GB makes use of what is basically AMD's RX 480 reference design cooler, with a blower-style fan that ensures the GPU's heated air output exits the back of your case instead of lingering inside your system. VisionTek's Radeon RX 500 Series cards are now available through the company's website, with retailer availability to follow.

Intel's X299 HEDT platform, whose launch we recently covered as having been pushed forward by the company so as to better compete against AMD's upcoming X399 HEDT platform, has some new, juicy rumors floating about it. Namely, Bench.Life has reported that Intel's upcoming Kaby Lake-X and Skylake-X lines of high performance CPUs will also feature 12-core offerings on its Skylake-X materialization, instead of just the previously reported 6, 8, and 10-core designs.

This really looks like an Intel that's stretching its manufacturing and chip design prowess so as to prevent itself from being buried in higher-performing, higher core and thread count offerings from its rival AMD, which has turned Intel's line-up in the mainstream consumer market head-over-heels already. Latest reports peg the new series as being presented on Computex 2017 (specifically, on may 30th), with availability being expected on June 26th. Which platform are most interested in, and what do you think of this move from Intel?

TUL Corporation, a leading and innovative manufacturer of AMD graphic cards since 1997, has released a new PowerColor Red Dragon RX 550 2GB GDDR5 added in the line of RX 500 series. It is based on AMD's latest GCN 4 architecture designed for GloFo 14nm FinFET that delivers premium VR capability, increased level of performance, smooth VR, seamless support for next-gen gaming monitors and CPU-free game streaming or recording.

Furthermore, the model also supports AMD's optimized DirectX 12,Vulkan Gaming, Radeon FreeSync, and Liquid VR. It has the features of AMD's newest technology called Radeon ReLive which supports 4K, 30 & 60FPS, HEVC & H.264 providing you smooth recording on lower power systems, and Radeon Chill which is an intelligent power-saving feature that regulates dynamically frame rate based on your movement's in-game.

XFX has launched three variants of the RX 550 graphics cards, the tiny GPU that could, which AMD launched so as to bridge the enormous gap between IGP and its previous entry-line RX 460 (now RX 560) series of graphics cards. There are two low-profile versions of the RX 550, packing either 2GB or 4 GB of memory (whose amounts can be justified or not,) both with boost clocks set at 1203 MHz and 7000 MHz GDDR5 memory over a 128-bit bus. There is also a full-profile, dual slot RX 550, dubbed the Core Edition, and another Core Edition, though this one is a full-profile, single-slot solution.

All of these pack the same 1203 MHz boost clocks, so XFX is basically telling you to pick and choose the size of the graphics cards that best fits your use case, with improvements on cooling and sound profile that come with the larger, beefier cooling solutions. Display outputs stand the same among all the different cards, with 1x DVI-I Dual-Link, 1x DisplayPort, and 1x HDMI 2.0.

Microsoft, in a bid to ensure users of 7th generation Intel Core "Kaby Lake," AMD A-series "Bristol Ridge," and AMD Ryzen "Summit Ridge" processors stick to Windows 10, ensured that the three platforms don't receive software updates when running older Windows 8.1 or Windows 7 operating systems. A new user-made patch removes this draconian restriction, letting you install Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 on your new-generation CPU powered machine, and receive regular software updates through Windows Update.

The patch is open-source, so you can inspect its code, and available on GitHub. The author of the patch, Zeffy, discovered two new functions to system file wuaueng.dll after the March 2017 update for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, labeled "IsCPUSupported(void)" and "IsDeviceServiceable(void)." This library is patched to toggle those two functions "1," telling Windows Update that the CPU is "supported" and that the platform is "serviceable," making it eligible to receive updates.

DOWNLOAD: New-gen CPU Windows Update Unlocking Patch for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 by Zeffy

ASUS is excited to launch the RX 500 Series, an all-new line-up of gaming graphics cards powered by the latest AMD Radeon RX 580 and RX 570 GPUs. These new graphics cards are capable of delivering HD+ resolution gaming with ultra-settings, bringing new levels of performance to the market at an affordable cost. The ROG Strix RX 580 and Strix RX 570 are engineered with advanced cooling and reliability features to deliver superb gaming performance, plus Aura Sync illumination for the best in PC personalization.

The new models include the high-performance ROG Strix RX 580 series with higher clock speeds, MaxContact cooling, and FanConnect II technologies along with Aura Sync illumination for building a personalized high-performance gaming PC. The ASUS Dual RX 580 Series provides "sweet spot" graphics performance that is ideal for both VR and eSports gaming. Both RX 580 series cards feature 0dB wing-blade fans that spin down completely when the cards are idling or under lighter loads for blissful silence when you're surfing the web, watching movies, and even playing less-demanding games. You also get dual HDMI 2.0 ports, which is perfect for connecting a VR headset and monitor simultaneously.

User TonybonJoby in our own forums has successfully flashed his XFX RX 480 graphics card with the BIOS from a Sapphire RX 580 Limited Edition (the one that runs at 1411 MHz Boost clocks, yes.) Having obtained the Sapphire's BIOS right here on TPU, he then flashed it onto his graphics card (which possesses a dual-BIOS setup; this is an important point which you should consider, as it gives you an extra safety net should anything go wrong) through ATIFlash. The newly-christened RX 580 thus smiles for the screenshot, with a stock clock of 1411 MHz, higher than most overclocks possible with the RX 480 cards, probably due to increased voltages on the BIOS level. The user then tested the card on The Witcher 3 and Furmark, with no problems having been reported. Just remember to back-up your BIOS with GPU-Z and make sure to peruse our forums for some details on this flashing process before you get the proverbial grease on your elbows.

Essentially, this may allow you to bypass some artificial overclocking limitation with your graphics card, probably by increased voltages on different power states of the card. You should do this at your own risk, and remember, the only guaranteed way of getting an RX 580 is... you guessed it, buying an RX 580. However, this might also give you an extra performance boost, and free performance is always good, right?

It isn't unusual for AMD or NVIDIA to launch OEM-specific graphics chips, and it would seem that AMD is doing just so with its rebranded yet improved RX 500 series. Now, it's time for the RX 540 to surface, which, like the name implies, flies right below the RX 550 in terms of specs, though you wouldn't know it without a closer look.

The chip packs the same 8 CUs as the RX 550 (512 stream processors), but its memory bandwidth (in 2 GB or 4 GB flavors) peaks at 96 GB/s (lower than the RX 550's 112 GB/s.) However, its core clocks see an interesting boost from the RX 550's 1183 MHz boost clocks to a "up to 1219 MHz" value, which should alleviate the performance impact from the stunted memory bandwidth. This is a GPU that's likely to be used by OEMs and system integrators, whether on desktop computers or in laptops, though I do have to wonder regarding this configuration. I'd expect higher clocks on the core to increase power consumption more than the offset allowed by the reduced memory clocks, but then again, I'm not an AMD engineer.

According to DigiTimes, sources among Taiwan-based PC vendors have indicated that Intel's upcoming Basin Falls platform, which includes Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X processors on a new X299 chipset, will be unveiled at Computex 2017 (May 30th, June 3rd), in Taipei - two months earlier than expected. This move comes accompanied by an accelerated launch of the Coffee Lake microarchitecture, which still uses the 14 nm process, to August 2017 from an initial January 2018 launch. If true, this is big in a number of ways - that Intel would bring forward a product launch 4 months has some interesting implications - or at least, confirmations.

Remember that Coffee Lake is supposed to carry an increased number of cores in its mainstream designs. And we all know how Intel's line-up has almost been torn apart by Ryzen's aggressive core and thread-count, with AMD offering more cores and threads than Intel at virtually all price-points. And even if an argument is made regarding Intel's better gaming performance, that's one scenario out of many. Future proofing, professional work, multimedia, all of these assert AMD's dominance in a pure price-performance ratio. I, for one, would gladly give up some FPS in some games and accept an increased number of cores than go the other way around (especially with AMD's platform support and the number of patches that have increased game performance on Ryzen CPUs.)

AMD today released the latest version of Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition. The new Radeon Software Crimson ReLive 17.4.3 WHQL drivers add official support for the newly launched Radeon RX 500 series GPUs, such as the RX 580, RX 570, RX 560, and RX 550; besides support for Windows 10 Creators Update (v17.4.2 already added WDDM 2.2 support). Grab the drivers from the links below.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Crimson ReLive 17.4.3 WHQL

The floodgates have opened on AMD's recently-launched RX 500 series, which features a more polished, revised, 3rd-gen 14 nm FinFet process. Graphics cards based on the new GPUs will, as such, feature higher clocks than their RX 400 series counterparts, even if the number of graphics processing resources remains relatively unchanged. PowerColor (with its Red Devil and Red Dragon RX 580 and RX 570 graphics cards), ASUS, Sapphire, Gigabyte, and MSI have all announced their take on the new GPUs, with distinct enterprise identity, cooling solutions and audio profiles - as well as VRM and power delivery subsystems - competing for your money.

TUL Corporation, a leading and innovative manufacturer of AMD graphic cards since 1997, has released a new PowerColor Red Devil RX 570 4GB GDDR5 in Devil series. It is powered by AMD's 4th generation GCN 4 architecture featuring asynchronous shaders. The PowerColor RX 570 is designed for more smooth game playing and video performace in the latest DirectX 12 and Vulkan, and e-Sports game titles.

PowerColor Red Devil RX 570 4 GB GDDR5 utilizes 4GB of GDDR5 memory with 2,048 stream processors, ships with 1320 MHz core clock speed, and has 1750 MHz memory clock speed which is connected via a new high speed 256-bit memory interface. It has the capability to switch from Ultra Overclocking to Silent Overclocking or vice versa for choosing the BIOS fitting your need, faster clocks or more balanced overclock with quiet operation. Therefore, on Silent BIOS, it ships with 1270 MHz. PowerColor Red Devil RX 570 4GB GDDR5 equips an 8 pin power connector with superior 6+1 multi-phases board design enhances the power efficiency and also stabilizes the voltage precisely.