MSI today announced the X370 Krait Gaming socket AM4 motherboard. Based on AMD's highest-grade X370 chipset, and ready for its Ryzen processor family, this ATX form-factor motherboard appears to be based on the same exact PCB as the X370 SLI Plus, with a few added features, such as higher grade capacitors, VR Boost specialized USB ports, a higher SNR audio CODEC with Nahmic 2 and EM shielding, white LED lighting, and of course the signature white+black color scheme of the Krait series.

Like the X370 SLI Plus, the X370 Krait Gaming draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS power connectors, conditioning it for the processor with an 8+2 phase VRM. The AM4 socket is wired to four DDR4 DIMM slots, and two PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots (x8/x8 with both populated), besides two each of the board's USB 3.0 and SATA 6 Gb/s ports. In all, storage connectivity includes six SATA 6 Gb/s ports, one 32 Gb/s M.2 slot with NVMe booting support, while the USB connectivity includes two USB 3.1 ports (one each type-A and type-C), and six USB 3.0 ports (four on the rear panel, two by headers). 8-channel HD audio and gigabit Ethernet make for the rest of it. We expect this board to be priced at a $20-30 premium over the X370 SLI Plus.

Reports are going around that AMD's smallest-ever Polaris chip has been seen on the OpenCL pages of CompuBench. Based on a new Polaris 12 GPU (or should it be Polaris 22?), this is a chip which is likely to power an even lower-end of the spectrum than what AMD's RX 460 (and upcoming RX 560 rebrands) already does.

Polaris 12 apparently features 10 Compute Units, which amounts to 640 Stream Processors. Remember that AMD's Polaris 11 chip which powers the RX 460 actually has 1024 stream processors, though only 896 are available for access on retail versions of the card (though some magickery can unlock those latent stream processors.) This means that Polaris 12 essentially packs half as many shaders as Polaris 11 does. The 640 Stream Processors are expected to be clocked at 1302 MHz, and the cards will reportedly ship with up to 4 GB of GDDR5 memory. Expect cards based on this GPU to sell below the RX 460's $99.

AMD's upcoming RX 500 series of graphics cards is not going to set the world on fire with its feature-set. Essentially rebrands of AMD's mainstream Polaris GPUs used in current-generation RX 400 series, these have recently seen a slight delay on its time to market - now set at April 18th.

While architecture-level adjustments to this new series of cards so as to improve performance seem to be off the table, AMD is apparently looking to take advantage of manufacturing maturing and process improvements. The original Polaris 11 and Polaris 10 chips were manufactured using the Low Power Early (LPE) process, which looks to balance availability, yields, and time-to-market with performance and power. New reports peg the new dies to carry the Polaris 21 and Polaris 20 monikers, and will feature higher clocks on account of the new Low Power Performance (LPP) process.

It would seem that AMD has been making internal, top-secret demonstrations of its upcoming RX Vega GPUs. The company was in Beijing, China yesterday, sowing some thoughts and knowledge on its upcoming Ryzen 5 line of processors. Yet AMD apparently also found the time to tease its upcoming high-performance GPU (which apparently, and unlike it's competitors GPUs, also carries a soul.)

From what can be gleaned from the pictures, this physical manifestation of Vega does away with AMD's Fury X small size (achieved through water cooling). Instead, the coolers seems to be a monolithic piece which totally encloses the card, in an attractive, white and red color scheme with AMD's Vega branding etched on for good measure. We can also glean from the pics that AMD's RX Vega doesn't drop the tachometer feature that allows you to look at the operating LED's to glean the amount of workload on the GPU, with switches that are likely to allow for "OFF/ON" positions for the LED's and for "RED/BLUE" coloring.

AMD's Radeon branded memory business appears to be at a standstill, with no new product launches since 2015, and Radeon memory products out of stock (or nearly out of stock) at key retailers across North America.

When AMD was asked if it was planning to exit the memory business altogether, a company spokesperson replied that the memory is still being sold but is "mostly distributed in Eastern Europe, only small quantities are diverted to North America."

Memory clock speeds will go a long way in improving the performance of an AMD Ryzen processor, according to new information by the company, which reveals that Infinity Fabric, the high-bandwidth interconnect used to connect the two quad-core complexes (CCXs) on 6-core and 8-core Ryzen processors with other uncore components, such as the PCIe root-complex, and the integrated southbridge; is synced with the memory clock. AMD made this revelation in a response to a question posed by Reddit user CataclysmZA.

Infinity Fabric, a successor to HyperTransport, is AMD's latest interconnect technology that connects the various components on the Ryzen "Summit Ridge" processor, and on the upcoming "Vega" GPU family. According to AMD, it is a 256-bit wide bi-directional crossbar. Think of it as town-square for the chip, where tagged data and instructions change hands between the various components. Within the CCX, the L3 cache performs some inter-core connectivity. The speed of the Infinity Fabric crossbar on a "Summit Ridge" Ryzen processor is determined by the memory clock. When paired with DDR4-2133 memory, for example, the crossbar ticks at 1066 MHz (SDR, actual clock). Using faster memory, according to AMD, hence has a direct impact on the bandwidth of this interconnect.

It would seem Microsoft is ever looking for more creative ways of pushing its Windows 10 operating system towards the masses. Some Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users have apparently encountered one of these: a lock on system updates. The error message, which reads "Your PC uses a processor that isn't supported on this version of Windows", points towards a hardware lock-in in exchange for added security and updates.

A Microsoft Support page sheds some light on this issue: that Windows 10 is the only Microsoft operating system to support particular hardware configurations. Namely, systems based on Intel's "seventh (7th)-generation processors or a later generation" (Kaby Lake); "AMD seventh (7th)-generation ("Bristol Ridge") processor or a later generation"; and "Qualcomm "8996" processor or a later generation". This move on Windows 7 might make some sense; however, Windows 8.1 is still in its lease of life (and Microsoft support) until at least 2018.

An AMD Ryzen 7-1800X powered machine was found to be crashing upon execution of a very specific set of FMA3 instructions by Flops version 2, a simple open-source CPU benchmark by Alexander "Mystical" Yee. An important point to note here is that this little known benchmark has been tailored by its developer to be highly specific to the CPU micro-architecture, with separate binaries for each major x64 architecture (eg: Bulldozer, Sandy Bridge, Haswell, Skylake, etc.), and as such the GitHub repository does not have a "Zen" specific binary.

Members of the HWBot forums found that Ryzen powered machines crash on running the Haswell-specific binary, at "Single-Precision - 128-bit FMA3 - Fused Multiply Add." The Haswell-specific binary (along with, we imagine, Skylake), adds support for the FMA3 instruction-set, which Ryzen supports, and which lends some importance to the discovery of this bug. What also makes this important is because a simple application, running at user privileges (i.e. lacking special super-user/admin privileges), has the ability to crash the machine. Such a code could even be executed through virtual machines, and poses a security issue, with implications for AMD's upcoming "Naples" enterprise processor launch.

Following the successful introduction of AMD Ryzen 7 desktop processors including record pre-orders and award-winning performance, AMD today announced Ryzen 5 desktop processors will launch worldwide on April 11, 2017, offering disruptive price-to-performance for gamers and creators. With end users at the heart of everything AMD does, the new Ryzen 5 processors feature the powerful and efficient "Zen" architecture in 6-core,12-thread as well as 4-core, 8-thread options, to deliver enhanced performance, immersive experiences and high performance innovation to gamers and consumers worldwide with a price range of $169 to $249 USD SEP.

"Ryzen will ultimately bring innovation and competition to virtually every segment of the PC market, and Ryzen 5 is the next big step on that journey, designed to achieve new levels of compute performance for millions of PC users," said Jim Anderson, senior vice president and general manager, Computing and Graphics Group, AMD. "AMD reinvigorated the high-performance desktop market with Ryzen 7 earlier this month, and AMD Ryzen 5 now brings the power and efficiency of the 'Zen' core to users in the highly popular sub-$300 segment of the market."

AMD today released the 17.3.2 Beta version of its Radeon Software Crimson ReLive. This release features official support for the upcoming Mass Effect: Andromeda space opera, and a 12% performance boost in the game for RX 480 graphics cards compared to results obtained under the previous driver release.

This driver release also sees some fixed issues with texture corruption on some surfaces of The Division under DX12. In addition, this driver release features a fix for what could only have been a rare issue with texture flickering while task-switching on For Honor, considering it only affected 4x Multi-GPU system configurations. This release also features long lists of Known Issues, which you can take a look at after the break.

As always, you can grab the drivers right here at TPU, through our revamped downloads section. Just follow the link below.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition 17.3.2 Beta

TechPowerUp today released the latest version of GPU-Z, the popular graphics subsystem information and diagnostic utility. Version 1.18.0 adds support for new GPUs, and comes with several improvements. To begin with, GPU-Z v1.18.0 adds support for AMD Radeon RX 580, RX 570, RX 560, and RX 550; and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, Quadro P4000, P1000, P600, and P400. Support is also added for Intel "Apollo Lake" Pentium N4200 integrated graphics. In terms of user-interface improvements, GPU-Z v1.18.0 now displays the latest version number for update checks. An error message when uploading the graphics BIOS is also addressed. Also fixed is clock-speeds being read as -1 on Pascal cards with overclocking disabled.DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z v1.18.0

The change-log follows.

Over 12 hours ahead of its unveiling, Guru3D accidentally (timezone confusion) posted some juicy details about AMD's exciting Ryzen 5 desktop processor lineup. What makes these chips particularly exciting is that they occupy several sub-$250 price points, and offer the kind of gaming performance you'd expect from the larger 8-core Ryzen 7 series chips, since not a lot of games need 8 cores and 16 threads. The Ryzen 5 series will launch with two 6-core, and two 4-core SKUs, all four of which feature SMT (simultaneous multi-threading), and unlocked base-clock multipliers.

The Ryzen 5 series is topped by the Ryzen 5-1600X, priced at USD $249. This 6-core/12-thread chip features the full 16 MB of L3 cache available on the 14 nm "Summit Ridge" silicon, and backs it with clock speeds of 3.60 GHz core and 4.00 GHz TurboCore, with the XFR (extended frequency range) feature enabling higher clocks depending on the effectiveness of your CPU cooling. This chip could be AMD's power move against the Intel Core i5-7600K. Next up, is the Ryzen 5-1600 (non-X), priced at $219. This chip lacks the XFR feature, and comes with slightly lower clocks out of the box, with 3.20 GHz core, and 3.60 GHz TurboCore. You still get an unlocked base-clock multiplier, which Intel's $220-ish competitor to this chip, the Core i5-7500, sorely lacks.

In a blog post titled "Tips for Building a Better AMD Ryzen System", AMD has shed some light on the current memory support quirks with their Ryzen CPUs. First interesting detail: Ryzen processors do not offer memory dividers for DDR4-3000 or DDR4-3400. As such, AMD recommends that users looking to use higher memory speeds with their Ryzen processors instead look towards 3200 or 3500 MT/s. Due to Ryzen's preferences when it comes to memory, AMD also recommends that users pay particular attention to motherboard vendor's memory QVL lists for speeds greater than DDR4-2667.

Remember RAM importance on Ryzen processors' performance, which is given newfound importance in alleviating possible bottlenecks related to AMD's Data Fabric, the interconnect technology being used to communicate between different CCX's in AMD's 8-core Ryzen 7 and upcoming 6-core Ryzen 5 processors. Higher data rate of your memory subsystem should better help Ryzen's inter-core communication, and thus allow for higher performance in multiple scenarios, more so than with any other current CPU architecture.

ADATA Technology, a leading manufacturer of highperformance DRAM modules, NAND Flash products, and mobile accessories is proud to share that all DDR4 offerings from its XPG high performance hardware brand have been officially certified by AMD as compatible with the AM4 socket and accompanying processors, namely the recently-launched Ryzen range. XPG memory was validated while installed on MSI motherboards, signaling major cooperation between ADATA and MSI.

With formal AMD approval, customers know they are purchasing a fully compatible product when selecting XPG DDR4 to be used on AMD AM4-based motherboards. As XPG DDR4 has been added to the AMD QVL (qualified vendor list), customers can rely on seamless compatibility without having to worry about POST or other conflict issues.

For the all-in-one water coolers Liquid Freezer 120, Liquid Freezer 240 and Liquid Freezer 360, ARCTIC now offers a retention ring for the new AMD Ryzen processors with AM4 socket. Therefore all already acquired Liquid Freezers can be upgraded with the AM4 kit. The retention module can be ordered directly from ARCTIC support and is free of charge upon presentation of the invoice copy. The bulk of our CPU-coolers, including the new Freezer 33 series, is already compatible to the AM4-socket and needs no further adaption. An overview is available here.

QNAP Systems, Inc. will be exhibiting at the Photography Show taking place at the NEC, Birmingham, UK, from March 18th to March 21st, 2017. Visitors heading to QNAP's stand C51 will have the chance to get hands on with QNAP's latest NAS solutions for all image creators, including the industry-leading Thunderbolt 3 NAS and many other models of the feature-rich NAS series.

QNAP will present amateur and professional photographers a variety of QNAP NAS solutions designed to suit their needs in image production. With live demos, visitors will see how QNAP NAS can help optimise their workflows. The TVS-882T Thunderbolt 2 NAS is a perfect match for Mac users. The TVS-882T features up to 20Gb/s bandwidth to deliver high-speed file transfers and to boost the 4K video editing process, making it ideal for 4K image production workflow. For image creators with multiple needs in backup, the TVS-473, equipped with the powerful AMD R-Series APU, is the perfect NAS solution to build a private cloud.

We've previously covered how AMD's RX 500 series is to be a rebrand of the company's successful RX 400 series. Previous reports pegged the RX 500 series' launch on April 11th; now, it would seem that there has been a slight, one-week delay on the launch date, with it having been pushed back to April 18th. Apparently, this delay is looking to allow more time to "fine-tune the drivers".

The RX 500 series are purportedly straight rebrands from equivalent RX 400 series GPUs (RX 580 will be a rebrand of the RX 480, and so on down the ladder). The need for driver fine-tuning seems a little baffling considering these straight rebrands, but may have more to do with the reported Polaris 12 chips that are expected for launch than any other metric. Remember, RX 500 chips are expected to carry somewhat higher clock-speeds than their RX 400 originals, with some improved power/performance ratio being derived from improvements in foundry processes. But if the rebranding scheme holds up, don't expect these to bring in any meaningful changes towards these cards' performance. AMD is hoping Polaris tides them over through the mainstream market until it can introduce its Vega-based, high-performance GPUs, which are heralded to mark AMD's return to the high-performance consumer graphics segment in a while. Fingers crossed.Source: Thanks @TheMailMan78

The Vega based line of AMD GPUs are definitely a big unknown at this point, so any sightings or benchmarks of it are highly sought after by the rumormill. Well, here is another one to add to your pile of rumor-material folks: AMD has posted a card benchmark to Compubench that bests even the GTX 1080.

Why hold the hype?

There are two obvious issues. One, this is a compute only benchmark, and has little relevance to the average gamer. Two, in the same benchmark, a 980TI also beats the 1080. Stranger yet, the 1080 is also beaten by its little brother, the 1070. Take this one with a grain of salt, for the obvious reasons. It won't stop the the hypetrain from using this info to its own end, but maybe you can avoid being smashed by it by using some critical thinking.

AMD is now saying reports of poor thermal performance from the flagship Ryzen products can be attributed to a simple thing: Temperature Offsets. Apparently, to keep a "consistent fan policy," AMD has placed a 20C offset on the Ryzen 1700X and 1800X products, making them report temperature a good 20C above what the sensor reads. This interesting design choice may most assuredly be confusing to end users, but AMD is confident software will soon automatically adjust for this offset and report the true temperature when required.

In the same blog post detailing the changes on the 1700X and 1800X, AMD claims that temperature reporting "may be offset on certain CPU models so that all models on the AM4 Platform have the same maximum tCTL value." This could mean other future models would utilize a similar setup, so remember that moving forward with AMD's Zen-based lineup.

In a blog post that is sure to stun many users expecting a "thread scheduler patch" in modern Windows versions for AMD Zen-based CPUs, AMD has apparently investigated the reports of thread scheduling issues and found that "the Windows 10 thread scheduler is operating properly for "Zen," and we do not presently believe there is an issue with the scheduler adversely utilizing the logical and physical configurations of the architecture."

So, if you were expecting a Windows 10 or maybe even 7 patch to address some performance concerns, don't hold your breath. The company notes that they tested both Windows 10 and Windows 7 and they "do not believe there is an issue with scheduling differences between the two versions of Windows." In other words, 7 is already ok as far as scheduling, no patch required.

Power users sometimes really go the extra mile towards achieving the best performance on their hardware. And sometimes, this process includes delidding, as in, removing the processor's Integrated Heatspreader (IHS). This would allow for users to sometimes replace less than perfect TIM (Thermal Interface Material) companies use, achieving lower operating temperatures, and possibly even higher overclocks.

Well, you really shouldn't try to do so with AMD's Ryzen 7. The reason: attempting to delid said processors cost overclocking genius der8auer a grand total of 3 (three!) Ryzen 7 samples before he managed to do it without damaging the processor. This happens because contrary to other CPUs, AMD's Ryzen 7 IHS comes soldered to the chip, which obviously increases difficulty and risk of such a delidding process. Apparently, AMD did a pretty good job with the thermal interfaces of Ryzen 7 anyway - der8auer achieved only a 2ºC decrease in operating temperatures on the delidded Ryzen sample. Long story short: maybe it's not worth it. Especially if your cooling solution of choice isn't able to achieve proper contact with the CPU after the process. You can see a video of the direct cooling test, after the break.

BIOSTAR is proud to introduce new additions to its growing AMD RYZEN motherboard lineup designed with the perfect balance of cost and performance with the new RACING B350GT3 and RACING B350ET2 motherboards, the first micro-ATX motherboards for AMD RYZEN. Featuring support for AM4 socket processors including AMD RYZEN which deliver incredible multithreaded performance at less price than its competitor, the BIOSTAR RACING B350GT3 and RACING B350ET2 allows users who want to unleash the power of AMD RYZEN without spending too much.

BIOSTAR sets the stage for the micro-ATX AM4 market as the pioneer in including RGB LED function in its micro-ATX B350 motherboards. The BIOSTAR RACING B350GT3 is ideal for system builders and gamers that want an RGB lighting-capable system with the latest AMD B350 chipset. In addition to this, the BIOSTAR RACING B350ET2 sets itself apart from the competition by introducing 1.5V USB charger functionality and SATA POWER characteristics, perfect for iCafe owners who want to feature LED-equipped gaming headphones from the USB.

At the 2017 Open Compute Project U.S. Summit, AMD announced their collaboration with Microsoft to incorporate the cloud delivery features of AMD's next-generation "Naples" processor with Microsoft's Project Olympus -- Microsoft's next-generation hyperscale cloud hardware design and a new model for open source hardware development with the OCP community.

Through Microsoft's contribution of the Project Olympus design much earlier in the cycle than many OCP projects, AMD was able to engage early on in the design process and foster a deep collaboration around the strategic integration of AMD's upcoming "Naples" processor. The performance, scalability and efficiency found at the core of Project Olympus and AMD's "Naples" processor means the updated cloud hardware design can adapt to meet the application demands of global datacenter customers.

ARCTIC announces its new Freezer 33 Series. The high-performance semi passive CPU coolers Freezer 33, Freezer 33 CO and Freezer 33 Plus are the successor models of the Freezer 32 series. They are equipped with PWM controlled 120 mm cooling fans and offset heat pipes to ensure optimal heat dissipation. The low footprint of the Freezer 33 avoids interference with the RAM, even if there are two fans used. Fast and easy to install and extremely reliable, the mounting system is compatible with Intel and the new AMD Ryzen AM4 socket.

Semi passive cooling makes the Freezer 33 coolers very efficient and extra quiet. During simple applications, such as creating documents, the CPU is cooled passively. The F12 PWM fan only powers up at a higher load, starting at 40 % PWM. In this way, an optimal cooling capacity at a low noise level is guaranteed.

AMD today unveiled the "Naples" enterprise processor, and it is big. The chip could mark AMD's return to competitive enterprise CPUs after years. The first "Naples" based part has some staggering specifications - 32 CPU cores spread across eight CCX units, SMT enabling 64 threads, an octa-channel (yes, eight channels) DDR4 integrated memory controller, an industry-leading 64-lane PCI-Express gen 3.0 root complex, and AMD's new Infinity Fabric interconnect, which lets it talk to the neighboring CPU, in a 2P system. The IMC supports up to 2 TB of memory.

AMD will competitively price "Naples" against Intel's Xeon E5-2600 series 2P chips, offering more cores, wider memory interfaces, more memory support, and more PCIe lanes. AMD will tap into the good energy-efficiency of its "Zen" architecture to clock these chips competitively higher than Intel chips, to churn out more overall performance. AMD is scheduled to launch the first processors based on the "Naples" silicon, within Q2-2017.