AMD released the latest version of Radeon Software Crimson Edition. Version 16.2.1 is marked "non-WHQL" and hence should be a beta. The driver comes with a CrossFireX profile for "Far Cry Primal," along with a variety of game-specific bug fixes for "Fallout 4," and "Rise of the Tomb Raider." It also fixes an issue of choppy display on systems with both FreeSync and CrossFire being enabled. Grab the drivers from the links below.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.2.1 for Windows 10/8.1/7 64-bit | Windows 10/8.1/7 32-bit

AMD today announced new additions to its 2016 Desktop processor family, offering increasingly powerful processor options available for anyone seeking outstanding gameplay and power efficiency for their desktop PC. Setting a new APU Standard, the new AMD A10-7890K is the fastest AMD desktop APU released to date, with 1.0 TFLOPS of theoretical compute performance. This new processor has been paired with the top-of-the-line AMD Wraith Cooler to deliver a high-performance combination, enabling best-in-class online gaming, while offering near silent operation for a premium experience.

Gamers will be able to enjoy playing the most popular online and eSports games right out of the box on high settings with the new AMD A10-7890K APU, which is capable of providing smooth frame rates in some of the most popular online games like League of Legends, DOTA2, and Counter Strike: Global Offensive. AMD APUs combine the power of AMD processors with the performance of discrete Radeon R7 class graphics in one convenient SoC, and support DirectX 12, OpenGL, Vulkan, and FreeSync in addition to Microsoft Xbox One game streaming on Windows 10.

AMD is working on a standardized external graphics solution for notebooks. This solution will allow people with ultra-thin notebooks to enjoy the mobility served up by frugal, mainstream hardware; as well as high-end gaming, with the graphics card plugged in at home. It also probably gives AMD greater control over design and cooling solutions. Unlike a mobile GPU that sits inside your notebook, and makes it bulky due to additional cooling and power requirements, an external graphics card sits on your desk, sipping on wall socket power.

AMD's external graphics solution isn't necessarily an AMD-branded piece of hardware, but rather an open specification for notebook vendors to follow. AMD will merely provide the GPUs and software ecosystem that makes the solution truly universal and plug-n-play, with "standardized connectors, cables, drivers, and OS support." Such a graphics card will interface with just any notebook with a high-speed interface (eg: Thunderbolt). Its drivers will make it crunch your games, while sending back output to your notebook's display, over the same connection. This gives you the mobility of an ultra-thin notebook. You should also be able to plug this into your work's boring Dell desktop, or any SFF ITX box. Pictured below is a Razer Core graphics solution embedding a Radeon R9 Nano. Other examples include MSI Gaming Dock and Alienware Graphics Amplifier.

Samsung Electronics launched its new curved monitor line-up including CF591 (27-inch model) and CF390 (23.5- and 27-inch models). Samsung's newest curved displays meet the diverse multimedia and multitasking needs of both professional and individual users, and foster a visually-comfortable environment conducive to long-term use.

Since releasing the industry's first curved LED monitor in 2014, Samsung has continued to refine its design to accommodate growing demand from various user groups. The new CF591 and CF390 monitors feature many of Samsung's latest innovations, including a sharper curve (1800R, translating to a curvature radius of 1,800 mm) and improved picture quality to deliver an optimal presentation that matches the shape of the human eye. Samsung will launch the new curved monitors in the US, Europe and Asia in March and will expand the sales to other regions by April.

AMD, which has been timing its upcoming dual-GPU "Fiji" graphics card to launch sometime this year, may have demoed a production version of the card in one of its launch partners, Falcon Northwest's, Tiki high-end gaming desktop, as a "VR developer box." AMD's Roy Taylor, in a recent tweet, captions a picture of this dev box as being "the world's best DirectX 12 VR developer box," leading the press to speculate that it's running the company's dual-GPU "Fiji" card.

A close look at AMD's VR dev box, through its windowed graphics card compartment, reveals an air-cooled AMD reference graphics card, which VideoCardz' trigonometry pins as being shorter than a Radeon R9 390X reference board. It could be a reference R9 380X, but then a reference dual-GPU "Fiji" PCB is roughly of the same length, and a R9 380X wouldn't earn the title of being the "world's best" from a senior AMD exec while there are faster AMD cards, such as the R9 Fury. The ability of the full-spec "Fiji" silicon to cope well with a rather simple air-cooler in the R9 Nano fans even more speculation that a dual-GPU "Fiji" board could make do with a powerful air-channel cooler.

AMD released its monthly major update to Radeon Software Crimson Edition, its software suite that provides drivers and system software for AMD Radeon discrete and integrated graphics processors. Version 16.2 Beta comes with game-specific optimization for "Ashes of the Singularity" Benchmark 2.0, including support for features such as DirectX 12 multi-GPU and asynchronous compute shaders. Performance improvements are added for "Rise of the Tomb Raider," and CrossFire profiles are added for "Tom Clancy's The Division" and XCOM 2. A number of bugs related to "Rise of the Tomb Raider" and "Fallout 4" were fixed.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.2 Beta for Windows 10/8.1/7 64-bit | Windows 10/8.1/7 32-bit

The change-log follows.

At Embedded World today, AMD announced its 3rd Generation AMD Embedded G-Series SoCs and the Embedded G-Series LX SoC, providing customers a broadened portfolio of performance options. The latest offerings expand developers' ability to scale x86 platforms, starting with the entry-level AMD Embedded G-Series LX SoC, which is pin compatible to the previous generation G-Series SoC devices. Also announced today are two new, higher performing 3rd Generation AMD Embedded G-Series SoCs, codenamed "Prairie Falcon" and "Brown Falcon," which introduce for the first time pin compatibility for G-Series processors with the higher performance AMD Embedded R-Series SoC.

The new products expand upon the low power capabilities of the award-winning AMD Embedded G-Series SoC platform, bringing scalable performance, power, and price across the CPU, GPU, multimedia, and I/O controller hardware, helping to lower development costs for AMD customers. Together, the new G-Series processors deliver immersive, graphically rich experiences across a broad range of platforms, from entry-level to mainstream gaming, digital signage, imaging, and industrial control.

GIGABYTE unveiled its flagship socket AM3+ motherboard featuring an up-to-date feature-set, the 990FX-Gaming. The board is part of the new wave of socket AM3+ motherboards AMD promised, in its recent AMD FX + Wraith release, to serve up modern connectivity such as USB 3.1 and M.2 slots with NVMe support. The board supports 220W FX-9000 series processors, in addition to the latest FX-8370, out of the box. It draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS power connectors, and conditions it using a 10-phase VRM.

The AM3+ socket is wired to four DDR3 DIMM slots, supporting up to 64 GB of dual-channel DDR3-2400 MHz memory; and the AMD 990FX north bridge. This chip puts out two PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots. The board's third PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slot is electrical x4, and wired to the SB950 southbridge. Storage connectivity includes six SATA 6 Gb/s ports, and an M.2 (20 Gb/s) slot. The board features GIGABYTE's top of the line AMP-Up onboard audio implementation, including a 110 dBA SNR CODEC, a TI Burr Brown OPA2134 user-replaceable OPAMP, Nichicon Muse capacitors, and ground-layer isolation. Networking is care of a Killer E2201 controller. Modern connectivity includes two USB 3.1 ports, and four USB 3.0 ports. The board is driven by UEFI BIOS, and features GIGABYTE's dual-UEFI tech. GIGABYTE is pricing the 990FX-Gaming at US $150.

AMD has joined with The Associated Press to form a new virtual reality experience channel to fuel next-generation journalism. As part of the collaboration between the companies, AP will leverage AMD Radeon graphics technology to render lifelike VR environments built around news and documentary content, and AMD will provide the hardware platforms, software technology and VR expertise to support AP's journalism in VR and 360 video.

VR journalism is a new age of truly captivating and experiential news that can put all of us at the heart of the events that shape our world. On the scene and in the moment, virtual reality can free us to learn and explore another time and place as if we were there. From the shouts and cries to the cheers and parades, VR journalism presents a rare opportunity to experience the world seemingly from within.

"VR can help people achieve a visceral experience of news and documentaries so they can feel what it's like to actually be there," said Raja Koduri, senior vice president and chief architect, Radeon Technologies Group. "The technology can enable us to figuratively walk in another's shoes, leading to greater understanding and empathy. The Associated Press is one of the most trusted sources of independent newsgathering, and AMD is a leading innovator for computing and visualization technologies. AMD Radeon graphics are designed to power the most realistic experience possible for audiences everywhere, and together with AP we'll work to fuel the expansion of the global VR ecosystem."

This week on TechPowerUp News, new details emerge of AMD's upcoming "Zen" micro-architecture; Intel "fixes" micro-code of its non-K "Skylake" processors to prevent base-clock (BClk) overclocking.

The recent 6.4 magnitude Taiwan earthquake, which hit the island nation on February 6th, affected TSMC worse than expected. Taiwan's premier semiconductor foundry, TSMC, had initially expected semiconductor wafer shipments to be down by less than 1%, but it is now emerging that the drop in shipments could be higher, because the damage to one of its facilities, Fab-14, is worse than originally assessed.

TSMC, in an official communication to its clients, assured that 95% of the foundry machines could return to functionality within 2-3 days after the earthquake. To that effect, machines in Fab-6 and Fab-14B have been fully restored. Despite the disaster, the company appears confident of reaching revenue targets of US $5.9-6.0 billion for Q1-2016. TSMC is the primary foundry partner of major fabless semiconductor companies, such as Qualcomm, NVIDIA, and AMD. AMD recently moved its next-generation GPU manufacturing to Korean silicon giant Samsung, while NVIDIA is building its next "Pascal" GPU family on TSMC's process.

AMD announced its first public beta driver featuring support for the Vulkan API. The company is a major contributor to the development of the API, since most of it is based on its Mantle code. Version 16.15.1009 supports Windows 7 (SP1), Windows 8.1, and Windows 10. All of AMD's Graphics CoreNext based GPUs and APUs support Vulkan. This includes the company's Radeon HD 7700 series thru HD 7900 series; R9/R7 200 series, R9/R7 300 series, the R9 Fury series, and AMD APUs based on the "Godavari" and "Carrizo" silicons. This driver comes just in time for the Vulkan release of The Talos Principle.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Beta for Vulkan

GIGABYTE started its Radeon R9 380X graphics card lineup with just one model, the R9 380X G1.Gaming (GV-R938XG1 GAMING-4GD). The company now launched its variant, which sticks to AMD reference clock speeds, the R9 380X WindForce 2X (GV-R938XWF2-4GD). Based on a custom-design PCB by GIGABYTE, the card features the company's WindForce 2X cooling solution, which features an aluminium fin-stack heatsink that uses three copper heat pipes to draw heat directly from the GPU die; dissipating it with a pair of 90 mm spinners. The cooler features 0 dBA idle, it completely shuts the fans off when the GPU is idling.

Based on the 28 nm "Antigua" silicon, the Radeon R9 380X features 2,048 stream processors, 128 TMUs, 32 ROPs, and a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 4 GB of memory. GIGABYTE's card sticks to AMD reference clock speeds of 970 MHz core, and 5.70 GHz (GDDR5-effective) memory. The card draws power from a single 8-pin PCIe power connector. Display outputs include two dual-link DVI, and one each of DisplayPort 1.2a and HDMI 1.4a connectors. The card will be priced at US $230.

A former AMD employee who was with the company till July 2015, disclosed vague details of the various chip projects he was involved in. Two of those projects, labeled "A" and "B" were core-logic (southbridge). Project "F" drew the attention of the press to a graphics chip with a die-area of 232 mm², 430 function blocks, built on the 14 nm LPP process. A function block can be any differentiated or unique structure on a silicon die. 3DCenter speculates that this could be a GPU based on the company's upcoming "Polaris" (GCN 4.0) architecture; and likely a performance-segment chip from the next-gen GPU family.

Aitech Defense Systems Inc. recently announced the M598, the latest video and graphics PMC in its vast line of AMD-driven solutions, designed to simultaneously drive several independent video streams in a wide variety of outputs. The versatile PMC uses the AMD Radeon E8860 (Andelaar) GPU, providing six independent graphics heads with 2 GB of GDDR5 operating at up to 1125 MHz.

In addition to the independent video stream capture, the M598 provides advanced video overlay functionality. Once the E8860 processor generates the graphics images, an input from one of the video formats is superimposed and the final image is sent to a monitor. Used in civil or military aviation or ground vehicle systems, the M598 is ideal for a number of graphics-intensive display computing environments. These include fixed- and rotary-wing mission and cockpit display computers and heads-up displays as well as electro-optical (EO) video camera, EO night vision and Infrared (IR) video frame grabbing, multi-role tactical mission displays found in advanced 2D and 3D C4ISR and EW video processing systems.

CERN engineer Liviu Valsan, in a recent presentation on datacenter hardware trends, presented a curious looking slide that highlights some of the key features of AMD's upcoming "Zen" CPU architecture. We know from a recent story that the architecture is scalable up to 32 cores per socket, and that AMD is building these chips on the 14 nanometer FinFET process.

Among the other key features detailed on the slide are symmetric multi-threading (SMT). Implemented for over a decade by Intel as HyperThreading Technology, SMT exposes a physical core as two logical CPUs to the software, letting it make better use of the hardware resources. Another feature is talk of up to eight DDR4 memory channels. This could mean that AMD is readying a product to compete with the Xeon E7 series. Lastly, the slide mentions that "Zen" could bring about IPC improvements that are 40 percent higher than the current architecture.

AMD today announced increasing momentum for the 6th Generation AMD PRO A-Series mobile processors, based on the introduction of two new HP notebook design wins, new large-scale enterprise deployments, and the expansion of HP adoption of AMD FreeSync technology in its notebooks and displays. The 6th Generation AMD PRO A-Series processors, which efficiently integrate extensive AMD CPU, graphics, security, and video processing IP into a single SoC design, will now power two new HP 600 series ProBooks.

The HP ProBook 645 14-inch and HP ProBook 655 15.6-inch notebooks allow businesses to equip their workforces with widely configurable and extremely cost-effective HP notebook PCs, enabling executive-class collaboration and professional-grade capabilities. Containing AMD PRO A-Series processors with brilliant AMD Radeon graphics, Windows 10, robust DDR3 memory, and professional-grade peripheral devices, these HP ProBooks create a top-of-the-line user experience.

This week on TechPowerUp News: New AMD CPUs and APUs hit the stores; Seagate served a class-action lawsuit over false reliability claims of its hard drives; and more details of AMD "Zen" architecture.

Rise of Tomb Raider could be among the first AAA games that take advantage of DirectX 12, with developer Crystal Dynamics planning a massive update that adds a new renderer, and new content (VFX, geometry, textures). The latest version of the game features an ominously named "DX12.dll" library in its folder, and while it doesn't support DirectX 12 at the moment, a renderer selection has appeared in the game's launcher. DirectX 12 is currently only offered on Windows 10, with hardware support on NVIDIA "Kepler" and "Maxwell" GPUs, and on AMD Graphics CoreNext 1.1 and 1.2 GPUs.

GIGABYTE unveiled the F2A88X-D3HP mid-range socket FM2+ motherboard, based on AMD A88X chipset. Built in the ATX form-factor, the board draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS power connectors; conditioning it for the APU with a 6-phase VRM. Expansion slots include one PCI-Express 3.0 x16, a PCI-Express 2.0 x16 (electrical x4), two legacy PCI, and three PCIe 2.0 x1 slots.

The board supports up to 64 GB of dual-channel DDR3-2400 memory. Storage connectivity includes eight SATA 6 Gb/s ports. Modern connectivity includes two USB 3.1 (10 Gb/s) ports, with one each of type-A and type-C; and four USB 3.0 ports (two on the rear panel, two via headers). Display outputs include HDMI 1.4a, dual-link DVI, and D-Sub. 8-channel HD audio with ground-layer isolation and electrolytic capacitors; and gigabit Ethernet, make for the rest of its connectivity. The board is driven by UEFI BIOS, with GIGABYTE's proprietary Dual-UEFI technology.

ViewSonic Corp., a leading global provider of visual solution products, announces its new XG Series of professional-level gaming monitors, the XG2401, XG2701 and XG2700-4K, are now shipping. ViewSonic's XG Series of high-performance gaming monitors deliver essential technologies and features ideal for gamers, and are available through all major e-tail sites.

The XG2401 is a 24-inch Full HD monitor packed with features like a 144 Hz refresh rate, and AMD's FreeSync variable refresh rate technology that eliminate screen tearing and stuttering for fluid gameplay during fast-paced action scenes. A blazing-fast 1ms response time and low input lag provides smooth screen performance - even in the most graphic-intense sequences. For optimum speed and performance, SmartSync technology automatically selects the best refresh rate, response time, and lowest input lag needed in FPS games. A black stabilization function helps players spot enemies lurking in the dark, while maintaining brilliant rich colors and contrast.

AMD released a quick follow up to Tuesday's (02/02) Radeon Software Crimson Edition (RSCE) 16.1.1 Beta release; with a Hotfix release. Version 16.1.1 Hotfix includes AMD CrossFire profiles for "Fallout 4," in addition to "Rise of the Tomb Raider," and in particular a flickering issue which was noticed on CrossFire machines running "Fallout 4." The rest of its feature-set is identical to that of the 16.1.1 Beta. Grab the driver for your OS from the link below.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.1.1 Hotfix

ASRock introduced the A88M-ITXac socket FM2+ motherboard. As its name suggests, the board is built in the mini-ITX form-factor, and is based on AMD A88X chipset, supporting the latest socket FM2+ APUs and CPUs. The board draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS power connectors, conditioning it with a 5-phase CPU VRM. The socket is wired to two DDR3 DIMM slots, supporting up to 32 GB of dual-channel DDR3-2400 memory; and the board's lone expansion slot - a PCI-Express 3.0 x16.

Storage connectivity on the A88M-ITXac includes six SATA 6 Gb/s ports, and an M.2 PCIe port (on the reverse side of the PCB). Network connectivity includes 802.11ac WLAN (up to 433 Mbps), Bluetooth 4.0, and gigabit Ethernet. Display outputs include one each of HDMI 1.4a, dual-link DVI, and D-Sub. The board supports AMD Dual-Graphics, which lets you run the APU's onboard graphics in tandem with a select Radeon discrete graphics card, for added performance. Four USB 3.0 ports, and 6-channel HD audio make up the board's modern connectivity. The company didn't announce pricing.

AMD today launched new thermal solutions, including the flagship AMD Wraith Cooler, as well as the new AMD A10-7860K and new AMD Athlon X4 845 desktop processors. Designed for the consumer who cares about how their desktop PC runs, sounds, and looks, AMD now offers new thermal solutions that generate less than one-tenth the noise of their predecessors -- running at a near-silent 39 decibels, about as quiet as a library.

The new AMD Wraith Cooler combines near-silent operation with unique styling via a sleek fan shroud and LED illumination. Providing superb cooling, the new design delivers 34 percent more airflow and 24 percent more surface area for heat dissipation than its predecessor.

AMD's next-generation "Zen" x86-64 CPU micro-architecture will support up to 32 cores per socket, according to leaked Linux kernel patch on LKML. We know from older reports, that AMD clumps groups of four cores in subunits it calls "Zen quad-core units." Not to be confused with its current "module" design, a quad-core unit is a group of four completely independent cores, which share nothing other than an L3 cache. TechFrag used this bit to deduce that the "Zen" architecture is scalable up to eight quad-core units per socket, or 32 cores per socket.