According to a post by @g01d3nm4ng0 on Twitter/X, we now know that AMD is readying yet another AGESA update for AM5 motherboards. The new version is, based on information from our own sources, a minor update to the current version. As such, AMD will be moving from 1.0.0.7b to 1.0.0.7c. @g01d3nm4ng0 didn't reveal any details of the new AGESA apart from the screenshot below, but we asked around and managed to find out what the new AESA addresses.

The update is specifically for those with Samsung DDR5 memory in their AM5 motherboards and it addresses multiple memory related stability issues. We weren't given the full details as to what those are, but there have been some reports about there being issues specifically with Samsung DDR5 memory in some AM5 boards and hopefully this will solve all those problems. We don't have a release time frame for the updated AGESA, but with 1.0.0.7b barely out the door, it might take a few weeks before this one makes it through all the internal testing at the motherboard makers.

AMD today announced the Radeon PRO W7600 and W7500 graphics cards for the professional-visualization (pro-vis) market segment. These cards target the mid-range of the pro-vis segment, with segment price-band ranging between $350-950. The two are hence positioned below the W7800 and W7900 that the company launched in April. The W7600 and W7500 are based on the same RDNA3 graphics architecture as those two, and the client-segment RX 7000 series. AMD is pricing the the two new cards aggressively compared to NVIDIA. Both the W7500 and W7600 are based on the 6 nm "Navi 33" silicon.

The Radeon PRO W7600 leads today's launch, maxing out the silicon it is based on—you get 32 RDNA3 compute units, or 2,048 stream processors; 64 AI Accelerators, 32 Ray Accelerators; 128 TMUs, and 64 ROPs. The card comes with 8 GB of 18 Gbps GDDR6 memory across a 128-bit wide memory bus. The memory does not feature ECC. The card comes with a 130 W typical power draw, with a single 6-pin PCIe power connector. It uses a slick single-slot lateral-airflow cooling solution. AMD claims 20 TFLOPs peak FP32 performance.

ASRock launches the company's first all-white motherboard available on both Intel & AMD platforms, and the exciting thing is, this design is not limited to just high-end product, the first three motherboards to have this brand new outfit will be B760M-HDV/M.2 & H610M-HDV/M.2+ D5 from Intel, as for the AMD side we have B550M Pro SE. Looking good is no longer a privilege to expensive motherboards, for the first time stylish budget-friendly product has become a new trend of DIY.

Besides the brand new outfit, the functionality has been upgraded too, new Dragon 2.5G Lan and DDR5 memory support on selected models gives the new motherboard a boost of performance, all three motherboards are compatible with NVMe M.2 storage devises and most importantly, RGB LED header is available for stunning yet creative PC builds.

AMD CEO Dr Lisa Su, in her Q2-2023 Financial Results call, confirmed that the company will launch new "enthusiast-class" gaming graphics cards within Q3-2023 (any time before October). "In gaming graphics, we expanded our Radeon 7000 GPU series in the second quarter with the launch of our mainstream RX 7600 cards for 1080p gaming. We are on track to further expand our RDNA 3 GPU offerings with the launch of new, enthusiast-class Radeon 7000 series cards in the third quarter," she stated.

There are two distinct possibilities of what "enthusiast class" entails. The first and most obvious one, could be the introduction of the RX 7800 series, including the RX 7800 XT, which is expected to closely resemble the limited-edition RX 7900 GRE by the specs; but a less talked-about possibility could even be the RX 7950 series. In its testing, the RX 7900 GRE was found to offer raster 3D performance comparable to the previous-generation RX 6950 XT although with better ray tracing performance on account of improved Ray Accelerators, which would put it behind the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti that AMD is trying to compete with. This should mean that for AMD to have a compelling "RX 7800 XT" product, it should perform faster than the RX 7900 GRE (possible through higher clock speeds or a few more CU).

AMD today announced revenue for the second quarter of 2023 of $5.4 billion, gross margin of 46%, operating loss of $20 million, net income of $27 million and diluted earnings per share of $0.02. On a non-GAAP basis, gross margin was 50%, operating income was $1.1 billion, net income was $948 million and diluted earnings per share was $0.58.

"We delivered strong results in the second quarter as 4th Gen EPYC and Ryzen 7000 processors ramped significantly," said AMD Chair and CEO Dr. Lisa Su. "Our AI engagements increased by more than seven times in the quarter as multiple customers initiated or expanded programs supporting future deployments of Instinct accelerators at scale. We made strong progress meeting key hardware and software milestones to address the growing customer pull for our data center AI solutions and are on-track to launch and ramp production of MI300 accelerators in the fourth quarter."

AMD just released a special version of its Adrenalin graphics drivers with specific optimization for "Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart." The company's recent 23.7.2 WHQL drivers lacked day-zero optimization for the game, which caused some controversy, especially given that real time ray tracing in the game wouldn't work. The one-off drivers carry the version number 23.10.23.03, and come with optimization for the game. They also address the application crash and driver timeout issues noticed when running the game with ray tracing and DSR enabled. Since these drivers are not a part of the main driver trunk of AMD Software, we will not be hosting them.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Software Adrenalin 23.10.23.03 Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart Drivers

Inventec, a global leader in high-powered servers headquartered in Taiwan, is launching its cutting-edge C805G6 server for data centers based on AMD's newest 4th Gen EPYC platform—a major innovation in computing power that provides double the operating efficiency of previous platforms. These innovations are timely, as the industry worldwide faces converse challenges—on one hand, a growing need to reduce carbon footprints and power consumption, while, on the other hand, the push for ever higher computing power and performance for AI. In fact, in 2022 MIT found that improving a machine learning model tenfold will require a 10,000-fold increase in computational requirements.

Addressing both pain points, George Lin, VP of Business Unit VI, Inventec Enterprise Business Group (Inventec EBG) notes that, "Our latest C805G6 data center solution represents an innovation both for the present and the future, setting the standard for performance, energy efficiency, and security while delivering top-notch hardware for powering AI workloads."

TrendForce reports that the HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) market's dominant product for 2023 is HBM2e, employed by the NVIDIA A100/A800, AMD MI200, and most CSPs' (Cloud Service Providers) self-developed accelerator chips. As the demand for AI accelerator chips evolves, manufacturers plan to introduce new HBM3e products in 2024, with HBM3 and HBM3e expected to become mainstream in the market next year.

The distinctions between HBM generations primarily lie in their speed. The industry experienced a proliferation of confusing names when transitioning to the HBM3 generation. TrendForce clarifies that the so-called HBM3 in the current market should be subdivided into two categories based on speed. One category includes HBM3 running at speeds between 5.6 to 6.4 Gbps, while the other features the 8 Gbps HBM3e, which also goes by several names including HBM3P, HBM3A, HBM3+, and HBM3 Gen2.

AMD Radeon RX 6000 and RX 700 series based on RDNA 2 and RDNA 3 GPU architectures have been benchmarked by folks over at ComputerBase. However, these weren't regular benchmarks of performance but rather power consumption. According to their latest results, they discovered that enabling Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) can lower the power consumption of AMD Radeon cards in idle. Using a 4K display with a 144 Hz refresh rate, ComputerBase benchmarked Radeon RX 6800/6700 XT and RX 7900 XT, both last-generation and current-generation graphics cards. The performance matrix also includes a comparison to Intel Arc A770, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, RTX 3080, and RTX 4080.

Regarding performance figures, the tests compare desktop idle consumption, dual monitor power consumption, window movement, YouTube with SDR at 60 FPS, and YouTube with HDR at 60 FPS, all done on a 4K 144 Hz monitor setup. You can see the comparison below, with the most significant regression in power consumption being Radeon RX 7900 XTX using 81% less power in single and 71% less power in dual monitor setup.

The escalating challenges in acquiring high-performance x86 servers have prompted Chinese data center companies to accelerate the shift to Arm-based system-on-chips (SoCs). Investment banking firm Bernstein reports that approximately 40% of all Arm-powered servers globally are currently being used in China. While most servers operate on x86 processors from AMD and Intel, there's a growing preference for Arm-based SoCs, especially in the Chinese market. Several global tech giants, including AWS, Ampere, Google, Fujitsu, Microsoft, and Nvidia, have already adopted or developed Arm-powered SoCs. However, Arm-based SoCs are increasingly favorable for Chinese firms, given the difficulty in consistently sourcing Intel's Xeon or AMD's EPYC. Chinese companies like Alibaba, Huawei, and Phytium are pioneering the development of these Arm-based SoCs for client and data center processors.

However, the US government's restrictions present some challenges. Both Huawei and Phytium, blacklisted by the US, cannot access TSMC's cutting-edge process technologies, limiting their ability to produce competitive processors. Although Alibaba's T-Head can leverage TSMC's latest innovations, it can't license Arm's high-performance computing Neoverse V-series CPU cores due to various export control rules. Despite these challenges, many chip designers are considering alternatives such as RISC-V, an unrestricted, rapidly evolving open-source instruction set architecture (ISA) suitable for designing highly customized general-purpose cores for specific workloads. Still, with the backing of influential firms like AWS, Google, Nvidia, Microsoft, Qualcomm, and Samsung, the Armv8 and Armv9 instruction set architectures continue to hold an edge over RISC-V. These companies' support ensures that the software ecosystem remains compatible with their CPUs, which will likely continue to drive the adoption of Arm in the data center space.

Based on details posted on Twitter/X by a pair of well known leakers, AMD appears to be working on a pair of different Ryzen 8000-series mobile processors. The previously known Strix Point is said to get up to four Zen 5 cores and eight Zen 5c cores, whereas the Strix Halo is said to get 16 Zen 5 cores, according to @Olrak29_. This is something that was posted by Moore's Law is Dead back in April as well, who claimed the chip will launch sometime at the end of 2024. MLID also suggested that the Strix Halo will feature a 40 CU GPU and a 256-bit LPDDR5X memory interface, making it a very different proposition from your average APU from AMD.

@kopite7kimi chimes in on Twitter to point out that "Strix Halo looks like a desktop Zen 5 with a different IOD." This is definitely something that would be possible for AMD to do and if we look at the MLID information, the Strix Halo processor appears to have something called a Mall Cache, which seems to be something of a catch all cache for the various components inside the chip, such as the AI Engine and the GPU. Time will tell if AMD delivers on Strix Halo or not, but this might be the first notebook processor that can handle gaming at a decent resolution without needing a discrete GPU. Then again, with a rumoured peak TDP of 120 W, this chip is also going to run hotter and draw more power than most mobile processors to date.

PowerColor has today revealed the Red Devil Radeon RX 7900 GRE 16 GB graphics card, which appears to look like a slimmer version of its existing siblings—the more powerful Red Devil RX 7900 XT and 7900 XTX. We have experienced a steady flow of news relating to AMD's new Golden Rabbit Edition GPU—with benchmark results released by review outlets in China, as well as a closer look at an unshrouded example. It was previously reported that Team Red would not be producing a reference model—VideoCardz now believes that XFX will be announcing itself as the primary manufacturing partner for said card.

Sapphire's custom equivalent was leaked earlier this week—a NITRO+ Lite-esque shroud design was unboxed and photographed ahead of today's official reveal. At the time of writing Sapphire has not published a product page for its brand new RX 7900 GRE model, but retail units are available to buy from their official store on JD.com. This NITRO+ variant is going for 5499 RMB (~$769), roughly $27 on top of AMD's official MSRP. PowerColor has not announced any pricing for the Red Devil RX 7900 GRE, but it has the same clock speeds—2050 MHz (game) & 2395 MHz (boost)—as the NITRO+. VideoCardz stated that these factory produced settings: "likely represent the highest configuration suggested by AMD."

SolidRun has announced the world's first rugged system design that combines 8-core AMD Ryzen 7040 series processors with multiple Hailo-8 AI accelerators to create its Bedrock R7000 Edge AI for artificial intelligence (AI) applications. This new member in SolidRun's Bedrock family of fanless modular industrial PCs is specifically designed to meet demanding vision-based situational awareness in harsh environments.

The new system integrates with the AMD Ryzen 7840HS processor, a state-of-the-art 4 nm APU with 8C/16T Zen 4 CPU and integrated RDNA 3 Radeon 780M GPU. The 20 native PCIe Gen 4 lanes and up to three Hailo-8 AI accelerators can be fully utilized together with NVMe Gen4x4 storage, dual 2.5 Gbit Ethernet and 4x4K displays. The CPU and all devices are passively cooled by the innovative fanless cooling system of the Bedrock R7000 in an industrial temperature range of -40°C to 85°C.

An interesting system popped up on Geekbench Browser early this morning—on initial inspection the evaluated high-end PC was sporting hardware of 2021-vintage, but its graphics card was observed as an outlier. The Intel Core i9-12900K (Alder Lake-S) CPU was sitting on an MSI MPG Z690 Carbon WiFi mainboard, with 64 GB of DDR5 SDRAM (3990 MT/s). The benchmarked computer was running Microsoft Windows 11 Pro (64-bit) on a power saver (economizador) plan. According to the entry's OpenCL information section we are looking at an attached GPU device called "GFX1102 ID," the board name is revealed to be "AMD Radeon PRO W7600" with 8 GB of VRAM. This lower-end alternative to existing (RDNA 3) Radeon Pro models—W7900 (48 GB) and W7800 (32 GB)—could be nearing a public launch.

This information aligns the workstation-oriented card with AMD's Navi 33 GPU—the same GFX1102 designation appears within TPU's database entry (look at the Shader ISA (GFX11.0) graphics feature). VideoCardz reckons that the leaked Radeon PRO W7600 is closely related to AMD's mobile Radeon RX 7700/7600 series—based on Navi 33, due to their matching IDs. Their report proposed: "Based on this data, the GPU is expected to have a clock speed of 1940 MHz. Comparatively, this is 310 MHz lower than the Radeon RX 7600 gaming model, which refers to its Game Clock of 2250 MHz. The Compute Unit field refers to "Workgroup Processor/WGP" cluster, so the card features 32 Compute Units or 2048 Stream Processors, the same configuration as the RX 7600. The card is listed with 8 GB of memory, but it remains uncertain whether this model will support ECC (error correction), a feature found in the W7900/W7800 models. It's important to note that the W6600 did not utilize this type of memory."

Introducing the Versal HBM Series VHK158 Evaluation Kit. This features the Versal HBM series VH1582 device, which integrates multi-Tbps High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), hardened connectivity IP, and adaptive compute in a single device, eliminating the bottlenecks between memory, I/O, and compute while delivering up to 6 times more memory bandwidth.

The VHK158 evaluation kit is an evaluation platform for the Versal HBM series VH1582 device designed to keep up with the higher memory needs of compute intensive, memory bound applications, providing adaptable acceleration for data center, wired networking, test & measurement, and aerospace & defense applications. The VHK158 board's primary focus is to enable demonstration and evaluation of the VH1582 silicon and support customer application development

AMD's China exclusive Radeon RX 7900 GRE has been put through its paces by Expreview and the US$740 equivalent card should in short not carry the 7900-series moniker. In most of the tests, the card performs like a Raden RX 6950 XT or worse, with it being beaten by the Radeon RX 6800 XT in 3D Mark Fire Strike, even if it's only by the tiniest amount. Expreview has done a fairly limited comparison, mainly pitching the Radeon RX 7900 GRE against the Radeon RX 7900 XT and NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4070, where it loses by a mile towards AMD's higher-end GPU, which by no means was unexpected as this is a lower tier product.

However, when it comes the GeForce RTX 4070, AMD struggles to keep up at 1080p, where NVIDIA takes home the win in games like The Last of US Part 1 and Diablo 4. In games like F1 22 and Assassin's Creed Hall of Valor, AMD is only ahead by a mere percentage point or less. Once ray tracing is enabled, AMD only wins in F1 22 and it's by less than one percent again and Far Cry 6, where AMD is almost three percent faster. Moving up in resolution, the Radeon RX 7900 GRE ends up being a clear winner, most likely partially due to having 16 GB of VRAM and at 1440p the GeForce RTX 4070 also falls behind in most of the ray traced game tests, if only just in most of them. At 4K the NVIDIA card can no longer keep up, but the Radeon RX 7900 GRE isn't really a 4K champion either, dropping under 60 FPS in more resource heavy games like Cyberpunk 2077 and The Last of Us Part 1. Considering the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti only costs around US$50 more, it seems like it would be the better choice, despite having less VRAM. AMD appears to have pulled an NVIDIA with this card, which at least performance wise, seems to belong in the Radeon RX 7800 segment. The benchmark figures also suggests that the actual Radeon RX 7800 cards won't be worth the wait, unless AMD prices them very competitively.

Update 11:45 UTC: [Editor's note: The official MSRP from AMD appears to be US$649 for this card, which is more reasonable, but the performance still places this in in a category lower than the model name suggests.]

AMD today announced plans for continued growth in India through an approximate $400M investment over the next five years. The planned investment includes a new AMD campus in Bangalore, Karnataka that will serve as the company's largest design center, as well as the addition of approximately 3,000 new engineering roles by the end of 2028. The new AMD campus is expected to open before the end of 2023 and will feature extensive lab space, state-of-the-art collaboration tools and seating configurations designed to foster teamwork. The investment is supported by the various policy initiatives of the Government of India focused on the semiconductor industry.

"We welcome the AMD plan to expand its leading-edge R&D engineering operations in India," said Mr. Ashwini Vaishnaw, Union Cabinet Minister for Railways, Telecommunications, Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India. "I welcome AMD's decision to set up its largest R&D design center in India and expansion of the India-AMD partnership. It will certainly play an important role in building a world class semiconductor design and innovation ecosystem. It will also provide tremendous opportunities for our large pool of highly skilled semiconductor engineers and researchers and will catalyse PM Narendra Modi's vision of India becoming a global talent hub," said Mr. Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Minister of State for Electronics and IT, Skill Development and Entrepreneurship.

The GPU at the heart of the China-exclusive AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE (Golden Rabbit Edition) sparked much curiosity. It is a physically different GPU from the one found in desktop Radeon RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 XTX graphics cards. AMD wouldn't go through all that effort designing a whole different GPU just for a limited edition graphics card, which means this silicon could find greater use for the company—for example, this could be the package AMD uses for its upcoming mobile RX 7900 series. AMD wouldn't go through all the effort designing a first-party MBA (made by AMD) PCB for the silicon just for the RX 7900 GRE, and so this PCB, with this particular version of the "Navi 31" silicon, could see a wider global launch, probably as the rumored Radeon RX 7800 XT, or something else (although with a different set of specs from the RX 7900 GRE).

We compared the sizes of the new "Navi 31" package found in the RX 7900 GRE, with those of the regular "Navi 31" powering the RX 7900 XT/XTX, the previous-generation "Navi 21" powering the RX 6900 XT, and the NVIDIA AD103 silicon powering the desktop GeForce RTX 4080. There are some interesting findings. The new smaller "Navi 31" package is visibly smaller than the one powering the RX 7900 XT/XTX. It is a square package, compared to the larger rectangular one, and has a significantly thinner metal reinforcement brace. What's interesting is that the 5 nm GCD is still surrounded by six 6 nm MCDs. We don't know if they've disabled two of the six MCDs, or whether they're dummies. AMD uses dummy chiplets as structural reinforcement in some of its EPYC server processors. The dummies spread some of the mounting pressure applied by the IHS or cooling solution, so the logic behind surrounding the GCD with six of these MCDs could be the same.

ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) today announced the new ROG Strix SCAR 17 X3D, the perfect fusion of cutting-edge silicon and ROG engineering. Featuring the AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX3D mobile processor equipped with AMD 3D V-Cache technology for the very first time, the Strix SCAR 17 X3D takes performance to a whole new level. By doubling the L3 cache of the mighty Ryzen 9 7945HX processor, the Ryzen 9 7945HX3D gives users a boost in games that are hungry for this onboard ultrafast memory. Paired with a 240 Hz QHD display, Conductonaut Extreme liquid metal on the GPU, and a vapor chamber, the Strix SCAR 17 X3D is ready to dominate the leaderboards.

Making great processors even better
While the original 2023 ROG Strix SCAR 17 came equipped with AMD Ryzen 7000 Series processors, the AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX3D is truly in a league of its own. It leverages the power of AMD 3D V-Cache technology, a stacking of extra ultra-high-speed L3 cache vertically on top of one of the two core compute dies (CCD). This extra cache enables the eight cores to perform certain calculations quickly and efficiently, notably in gaming. For situations where increasing CPU frequency simply doesn't show significant performance gains, 3D V-Cache technology holds the potential to unlock extra compute power.

AMD's upcoming China-exclusive Radeon RX 7900 GRE (Golden Rabbit Edition) graphics card is reportedly configured with 80 compute units (CU), and not the previously thought 84, according to a leaked TechPowerUp GPU-Z screenshot. While GPU-Z 2.54.0 isn't fully aware of the RX 7900 GRE, and can get some hard-coded details (such as release dates) wrong, since it has the ability to detect "Navi 31" and the RX 7900 series, it is able to count the compute units.

The screenshot describes the RX 7900 GRE as featuring 80 CU, or 5,120 stream processors—the same count as the previous-gen RX 6900 XT, but based on the newer RDNA3 graphics architecture. Also detected are a TMU count of 320, ROP count of 80 (a vast reduction from the 192 available on the silicon, if true). We've known from older reports that the RX 7900 GRE is configured with a 256-bit wide GDDR6 memory interface, holding 16 GB of video memory. What's new is that while the RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 XTX use 20 Gbps memory, the RX 7900 GRE is given slower 18 Gbps memory, as detected by GPU-Z. This results in a memory bandwidth of 576 GB/s, a significant reduction from the 960 GB/s enjoyed by the RX 7900 XTX.

AMD today announced the Ryzen 9 7945X3D mobile processor, which it claims is the fastest notebook processor for gaming, faster than even Intel's Core i9-13980HX. The 7945X3D is a 16-core/32-thread processor that leverages AMD 3D Vertical Cache technology. Much like the desktop Ryzen 9 7950X3D, the 7945X3D features 64 MB of stacked 3D vertical cache memory on one of its two "Zen 4" CCDs, which gives it 96 MB of last-level cache. The second one is a regular "Zen 4" CCD with 32 MB of L3 cache—again, just like the desktop 7950X3D. The most interesting aspect has to be that AMD claims to have pulled off leadership gaming performance at a 55 W+ TDP.

The Ryzen 9 7945X3D is based on the "Dragon Range" multi-chip module. This is essentially a mobile-optimized BGA variant of the desktop "Raphael" MCM, with a higher degree of power optimization. The processor features 16 "Zen 4" CPU cores spread across two CCDs, each with 1 MB of L2 cache. The first CCD has 96 MB of L3 cache thanks to the 3DV cache, while the second CCD has 32 MB of it. Despite its power constrained form-factor, the 7945X3D has a maximum boost frequency of 5.40 GHz. Each of the two CCDs is built on the 5 nm EUV foundry node. The L3D (the die stacked on top of the first CCD) is built on 6 nm, as is the client I/O die (cIOD). The processor supports dual-channel DDR5, and has a 28-lane PCI-Express Gen 5 root complex. AMD claims that the Ryzen 9 7945X3D is on average 15% faster at gaming than its current flagship processor, the 16-core Ryzen 9 7945HX. This should mean that the processor is faster than the Intel Core i9-13980HX. The first notebook to debut the AMD Ryzen 9 7945X3D is the ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 17 X3D, which goes on sale on August 22, 2023.

Thermalright has taken yet another low-key approach to announcing new products—the Taiwan hardware cooling specialist has updated its website with Heilos thermal pads. The model name looks to be a typo—should they have used "Helios" instead? A prominent sun graphic is placed on the bottom left of Thermalright's packaging for both of the Intel and AMD variants. It is unfortunate that something got lost in translation, or a spellcheck did not pick up on the small error before going to print/publication. Anyway...Thermalright is offering two sizes, with an identical 0.2 mm thickness—40x40 mm for AMD's AM4/AM5 CPU platforms, and a smaller pad (40x30 mm) for Intel LGA115X/1200/1700 CPUs. Pricing and availability is TBD.

These easy-peel away applicators provide an alternative route for users who fret about the best way to deal with traditional tubes of thermal paste. Tom's Hardware has pored over the Heilos specs—these pads offer thermal conductivity performance (8.5 W/mK) and resistance (0.04°C cm²/W), comparable (in their opinion) to "inexpensive" tubes of Arctic MX-4 and MX-5. The latter ranks at number four on the publication's "list of the best thermal pastes." Older thermal pads from other manufacturers have been criticized for falling short in terms of cooling performance, when cross-referenced against market leading thermal pastes—it is encouraging to see Thermalright addressing these concerns (specs-wise). We hope that evaluation samples have been sent out to review outlets.

We're extreme optimists by the nature of our mission, but the response to the Framework Laptop 16 pre-order launch last week was beyond anything we could have imagined. We expected to sell the first five batches over the course of a few months. Instead, we sold through them in 12 hours. The currently open pre-order batch will ship in Q1 2024, and we're working with our suppliers to ensure we have the production capacity to avoid pre-order timing going deeper into 2024. AMD was also able to provide more game codes for Starfield Premium Edition to let us continue offering it for additional pre-orders that include a Radeon RX 7700S (while quantities last).

A couple of great write-ups and videos went live alongside the launch. First, Sean Hollister at The Verge shared his detailed thoughts from an exclusive hands-on with a pre-production Framework Laptop 16, stating "I am staggered that Framework 16 even exists". AMD also prepared a video featuring Frank Azor, Chief Architect of Gaming Solutions & Marketing, explaining how we partnered to make it exist! Watch this featurette below.

AMD's Chinese office has announced that company representatives will be present at this year's ChinaJoy event—their Weibo social media account confirmed that: "from July 28th to July 31st, 2023, in Hall E6 of Shanghai New International Expo Center, super hardcore and mega cool AMD hardware will be on the scene, bringing you a fast and fun gaming experience. We are looking forward to meeting you!" ITHome thinks that the timing of this announcement points to a possible official unveiling of the Radeon RX 7900 GRE (Golden Rabbit Edition) on the showroom floor.

The publication has cited a tip provided by the one and only momomo_us—the Chinese market exclusive Golden Rabbit Edition will be released tomorrow, which lines up with ChinaJoy 2023's kick off time. Recent leaks have revealed that the 84 Compute Units + 16 GB configured graphics card is a new SKU, sitting below the RX 7900 XT in Team Red's Radeon RDNA 3 hierarchy. It seems to be "built on the mysterious Navi 31 + Navi 32 hybrid GPU." Additionally, ITHome reports that AMD has partnered up with ASUS, and will be exhibiting ROG Moba 7 Plus series laptops (sporting Ryzen Dragon Range APUs) at the Shanghai event.

Talking with XDA-Developers, AMD has confirmed more details about the upcoming Phoenix2 APU, which should debut with Ryzen 3 7440U and Ryzen 5 7540U APUs. Unlike the larger Phoenix APU, the Phoenix2 APU will have a hybrid design with Zen 4 and Zen 4c cores. As confirmed by AMD, the Phoenix2 APU will be a 6-core design, which makes it pretty clear it will feature two Zen 4 and four Zen 4c cores. It will also come with a Radeon 740M GPU with 4 RDNA3 compute units (CUs). The Phoenix2 APU will also lack the Ryzen AI core. Unlike Intel's hybrid approach, Zen 4c cores will have the same IPC as Zen 4, same instructions, but have less L3 cache per core.

AMD has previously confirmed that the Ryzen 3 7440U will have a smaller die size of 137 mm², compared to 178 mm² on the Ryzen 5 7640U. While AMD did not directly confirmed that the Ryzen 5 7540U will also be based on the Phoenix2 APU, official specification shows it with the same 4 GPU cores and without Ryzen AI core, making it pretty obvious it will be based on the same Phoenix2 APU. Hopefully, AMD will come up with more official details about its Phoenix2 APU as there are still a lot of unknowns.