We would like to address the recent media reports regarding the SOC Voltage exceeding 1.3 V on GIGABYTE's AMD AM5 motherboards especially when EXPO is enabled in the latest beta BIOS.

GIGABYTE respects and appreciates media's support and favor to GIGABYTE motherboards for long time. In terms of the SOC Voltage measurement, the authentic measurement point and method is critical since the SOC Voltage will differ by that. The CPU internal SOC Voltage (SVI3 interface) is the most crucial indicator to motherboards, and, in general, the PWM Output Voltage will be higher than the CPU internal SOC Voltage (SVI3 interface) due to various physical factors.

An AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics card is capable of trading blows with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090, as overclocker jedi95 found out. With its power limits unlocked, the RX 7900 XTX was found reaching engine clocks as high as 3.46 GHz, significantly beyond the "architected for 3.00 GHz" claim AMD made in its product unveil last Fall. At these frequencies, the RX 7900 XTX is found to trade blows with the RTX 4090, a segment above its current segment rival, the RTX 4080.

Squeezing 3.46 GHz out of the RX 7900 XTX is no child's play, jedi95 used an Elmor EVC2SE module for volt-modding an ASUS TUF Gaming RX 7900 XTX, essentially removing its power-limit altogether. He then supplemented the card's power supply, so it could draw as much as 708 W (peak), to hold its nearly 1 GHz overclock. A surprising aspect of this feat is that an exotic cooling solution, such as liquid-nitrogen evaporator, wasn't used. A full-coverage water block and DIY liquid cooling did the job. The feat drops a major hint at how AMD could design the upcoming Radeon RX 7950 XTX despite having maxed out the "Navi 31" silicon with the RX 7900 XTX. The company could re-architect the power-supply design to significantly increase power limits, and possibly even get the GPU to boost to around the 3 GHz-mark.

According to the latest rumor, the upcoming NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti could be priced at $399 for the 8 GB and $499 for the 16 GB version. As rumored earlier, the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB version is scheduled to launch on May 24th, while the 16 GB version will be launching in late July. The latest rumor comes from MEGAsizeGPU over at Twitter, who has a pretty good record when it comes to leaks, and was actually the first to leak the launch dates.

At $399, the RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB has the same launch price as the RTX 3060 Ti, back in December 2020. As said, the RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB is rumored to launch on May 24th. AMD is also rumored to lift the review embargo for the Radeon RX 7600 graphics card on the same day, with availability expected on May 25th, so it will be an interesting battle for the mid-range market. At $499, the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB version sounds a bit overpriced, and it will make it $100 cheaper than the GeForce RTX 4070. In the meantime, MSI RTX 4060 Ti Ventus 3X graphics card has been leaked by a French retailer, showing the card in its full glory. Unfortunately, the price was put just as a placeholder, so we do not have a lot more details. While the listing was removed in the meantime, Videocardz snatched a screenshot.

Chinese company Loongson, specializing in creating processors for usage in mainland China, has been steadily working on enabling its next-generation Loongson 3A6000 CPUs. Aiming to provide the performance level of Intel Willow Cove and AMD Zen 3, these new CPUs will use Loongson's custom LoongArch Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) with a new set of 64-bit superscalar LA664 cores. Today, thanks to the report from Phoronix, we find out that Loongson has submitted some Linux patches that enable the upcoming 3A6000 CPUs to work with Linux-based operating systems at launch. Interestingly, as the new CPU generation gets closer to launch, more Linux kernel patches begin to surface.

Today's kernel patches focus on supporting the hardware page table walker (PTW). As PTW can handle all fast paths of TLBI/TLBL/TLBS/TLBM exceptions by hardware, software only needs to handle slow paths such as page faults. Additionally, in the past, LoongArch utilized "dbar 0" as a complete barrier for all operations. However, this full completion barrier severely impacted performance. As a result, Loongson-3A6000 and subsequent processors have introduced various alternative hints. Loongson plans to ship samples to select customers in the first half of 2023, so we could see more information surfacing soon.

Last year, Crucial canned its Ballistix brand of gaming focused memory, but it seems like the company still wants to offer its customers a more premium product, as Crucial has just introduced its new Pro series of memory products. Crucial will offer its new Pro series in both DDR5 and DDR4 flavours at either DDR5-5600 or DDR4-3200 speeds. It should be noted that the DDR4 modules still rely on a green PCB, while the DDR5 modules get the same black PCB as Crucial's regular DDR5 modules. Beyond the heatsink, there isn't much that differs between the Pro series and Crucial's regular modules, but there is one thing that might matter to potential buyers.

Crucial has added support for AMD EXPO and Intel XMP 3.0 to its Pro series of modules. In the case of AMD EXPO this only applies to DDR5 modules, whereas the DDR4 modules support Intel XMP 2.0, in this case a feature its standard DDR4 modules lack. This should make it easier for end users to take advantage of the extra performance offered by some of these modules. That said, as Crucial has stuck to JEDEC timings, taking the Pro DDR5-5600 UDIMM kit as an example, you end up with timings of 46-46-45-45 at 1.1 Volts, where competing products have timings in the range of 36-36-36-36, although usually at 1.25 Volts or higher. Even as far as JEDEC timing goes, Crucial has chosen the middle ground for DDR5 5600, as there is a timing option from JEDEC that supports 40-40-40-40, which would make more sense for a more premium product. Price wise, a 32 GB kit with two 16 GB modules of DD5-5600 modules carries an $11 price premium over Crucials standard modules, with a retail price of US$114.99 versus US$103.99, but there are better options out there at this price point.

Listings for two custom AMD Radeon RX 7600 GPUs have appeared on PC Canada's webstore, according to VideoCardz - who were notified by keen-eyed locals from the Great White North. The online electronics seller has likely created these page entries by mistake - the information on hand is not exactly refined, indicating that the temporary text has come straight from hardware distributors - Althon Micro is Sapphire's chosen distribution and support partner for North American territories.

The prematurely published pages show that the Sapphire Pulse and MSI Mech 2X Classic models are both overclocked and specced with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory. The custom graphics cards are not ready to purchase, as expected, with an indication of zero units being in-stock. At the time of writing, PC Canada has the Sapphire RX 7600 PULSE OC listed at $335.80 (451.99 CAD), and the MSI Mech 2X RX 7600 at $329.85 (443.99 CAD). These prices are subject to change, given that the information presented seems to have originated from placeholder sources.

AMD's next-generation Ryzen 8000 "Granite Ridge" desktop processor based on the "Zen 5" microarchitecture, will continue to top out at 16-core/32-thread as the maximum CPU core-count possible, says a report by PC Games Hardware. The processor will retain the chiplet design of the current Ryzen 7000 "Raphael" processor, with two 8-core "Zen 5" CCDs, and one I/O die. It's very likely that AMD will reuse the same 6 nm client I/O die (cIOD) as "Raphael," just the way it used the same 12 nm cIOD between Ryzen 3000 "Matisse" and Ryzen 5000 "Vermeer;" but with updates that could enable higher DDR5 memory speeds. Each of the up to two "Eldora" Zen 5 CCDs has 8 CPU cores, with 1 MB of dedicated L2 cache per core, and 32 MB of shared L3 cache. The CCDs are very likely to be built on the TSMC 3 nm EUV silicon fabrication process.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the PCGH leak would have to be the TDP numbers being mentioned, which continue to show higher-performance SKUs with 170 W TDP, and lower tiers with 65 W TDP. With its CPU core-counts not seeing increases, AMD would bank on not just the generational IPC increase of its "Zen 5" cores, but also max out performance within the power envelope of the new node, by dialing up clock speeds. AMD could ride out 2023 with its Ryzen 7000 "Zen 4" processors on the desktop platform, with "Granite Ridge" slated to enter production only by Q1-2024. The company could update its product stack in the meantime, perhaps even bring the 4 nm "Phoenix" monolithic APU silicon to the Socket AM5 desktop platform. Ryzen 8000 is expected to retain full compatibility with existing Socket AM5, and AMD 600-series chipset motherboards.

The AMD Ryzen 7 7700X has been discounted down to $294.99 in the US, which actually makes it less expensive than the Ryzen 7 7700 (non-X). Since it launched at $399.99 and later pushed down to $329.99, the latest discount makes it quite a catch. In Europe, the price is still holding at around €320, depending on the region, although it has been seen at €309 earlier.

The AMD Ryzen 7 7700X is an 8-core/16-thread Zen 4 CPU with 40 MB of cache and a 105 W TDP. It works at 4.5 GHz base and 5.4 GHz Turbo clocks. As spotted by Videocardz, the discount was available on both Amazon and Newegg but the one on Amazon has either been removed or ended and now holds at $339. It is possible that it was a limited deal coming directly from AMD. The next step is the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, but the price has not budged from $449.

According to data from Mercury Research posted on Twitter, AMD has gained CPU market share against Intel over the past year. AMD has gone from a 27.7 percent market share in Q1 2022 to a 34.6 percent market share in the first quarter of 2023, which is an increase of 6.9 percent, whereas Intel has gone from 72.3 percent to 65.4 percent, still placing Intel at almost two thirds of the market of x86 CPUs. It should be noted that this includes all types of CPUs, but it's unclear if it includes the chips AMD sells to Microsoft and Sony for their respective consoles.

A separate screenshot posted by @firstadopter details server CPU market share, excluding IoT, although it's unclear what that means in this specific case. Here, AMD has gained 6.3 percent market share, but the company has only gone from a meager 11.6 percent last year, to 18 percent this year, with Intel holding a massive 82 percent market share. AMD's gain here was lower than overall, but it shows that larger corporations are starting to adopt more and more AMD hardware on the server side, where in all fairness, AMD has taken something of a lead over Intel when it comes to the maximum amount of CPU cores each company can offer, even though the per core performance still lags behind Intel to a degree. It'll be interesting to see if AMD can maintain its momentum in market share gain once Intel launches more competitive products later this year, especially in the server market space.

Sapphire's Radeon RX 7600 PULSE graphics card was leaked, albeit in fully boxed form, earlier this week. VideoCardz received a tip on Tuesday about a stack of products sitting in a retail store located somewhere in Asia - an insider source had taken photos of several boxes, weeks ahead of the rumored May 25 hardware launch. A brave seller on Singapore's Carousell online marketplace listed a number of Sapphire Radeon RX 7600 PULSE cards on the site, but these pages were swiftly taken down by admin. Specifications printed on outer packaging revealed that this GPU model packs 8 GB of VRAM and 32 RDNA3 CUs - indicating a full configuration of AMD's Navi 33 GPU die.

The embargo has been broken once again - earlier today VideoCardz published leaked images of the card itself (out of the box). The photos seem to be of official origin - perhaps destined for product pages on Sapphire's website(s) or online retail listings. A new PULSE custom cooling solution is on view - revealing a dual-fan and dual-slot design with a largely black cooler, accented with red markings plus a bit of white lettering. The shroud seems to lack any integrated RGB lighting zones or strips. An 8-pin power connector is present, possibly indicating that the custom card only requires 150 W (8-pin) + 75 W (PCIe) or more in operational power.

The future is here. The Republic of Gamers is proud to announce the ROG Ally, a brand-new Windows 11 gaming handheld featuring a 7-inch 1080p screen, up to 512 GB of NVMe storage, and enough power to play the latest AAA games at smooth framerates. Sporting an AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme APU, the Ally has incredible graphics performance, rivaling modern living room consoles while weighing in at a lightweight 608 grams.

The Ally ushers in a new generation of handheld gaming consoles. Handhelds have always been a frustratingly compromised experience, with lower resolution graphics, lower framerates, and clunky controls - they allowed you to play games on the go, but it was never the same as the living room. In fact, many titles were handheld-friendly spinoffs of their console counterparts, rather than the same game. Now, all that changes: the Ally lets you play all your games, from any platform, wherever you go. Welcome to a new age of portable gaming.

Possible specifications of the upcoming AMD Radeon RX 7600 graphics card leaked to the web. At this point we don't know if the RX 7600 maxes out the silicon it is based on (with room for a faster RX 7600 XT). The leak appears to be from marketing materials of the RX 7600. It speaks of 32 Compute Units. This works out to the same 2,048 stream processors as the previous-generation RX 6600 XT, but an increase from the 1,792 of the RX 6600. The mention of AI accelerators confirms that this GPU is based on the latest RDNA3 graphics architecture.

The other RDNA3 feature referenced is the Radiance Display Engine, which supports the latest DisplayPort 2.1 and HDMI 2.1a outputs, along with 12 bpc color, and support for resolutions as high as 4K 180 Hz with a single cable. Apparently, the GPU that the RX 7600 is based on has 32 MB of Infinity Cache memory, which is the same amount as the previous-generation "Navi 23" silicon powering the RX 6600 series. For the flagship "Navi 31," the Infinity Cache memory size is generationally reduced to 96 MB (from 128 MB on "Navi 21,") because the memory bus width has generationally increased to 384-bit (from 256-bit). This could mean that the RX 7600 has a 128-bit wide memory bus, given that its Infinity Cache size is unchanged from that of the RX 6600 series.

A more detailed launch schedule for both the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 lineup and AMD Radeon RX 7600 has now surfaced online, suggesting that NVIDIA could launch the first RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB on May 24th, a day before the AMD Radeon RX 7600, making it a rather busy week for reviewers.

Videocardz managed to confirm that NVIDIA plans to announce all three RTX 4060 series SKUs in mid-May, but only the RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB will actually launch in May. The current schedule puts the RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB for the second half of July, and the RTX 4060 8 GB for the first half of July. Interestingly, the rumored date for AMD Radeon RX 7600 8 GB graphics card is set for May 25th, just a day after NVIDIA's scheduled launch. Of course, these dates are not carved in stone and both AMD and NVIDIA could easily change them. Hopefully, we'll hear more as we draw closer to the end of this month.

• RTX 4060 Ti 8G: Announcement: Mid-May, Release: May 24th
• RTX 4060 Ti 16G: Announcement: Mid-May, Release: 2H July
• RTX 4060 8G: Announcement: Mid-May, Release 1H July

As we await the launch of AMD's remaining lineup of Radeon RX 7000 series GPUs like RX 7800 XT, RX 7700 XT, etc., AMD's marketing department is comparing last-generation products against each other. Sasa Marinkovic, Senior Director of Gaming Marketing at AMD, has posted a Tweet that initially claimed to compare AMD Radeon RX 6800 16 GB gaming performance versus NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 8 GB card in ray tracing and rasterization. However, the follow-up Tweet cleared that the chart is a comparison for rasterization performance only, and no ray tracing has been enabled. In an odd move to compare last-generation solutions, it is logical to do so from a price perspective, as both GPUs can be found at relatively the same price point at retailers like Newegg.

As far as the performance, the chart shows a comparison of the average FPS at 1440p. In titles like Valorant, Radeon RX 6800 can achieve 31% higher FPS. NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3070 was only faster in Metro Exodus, GTA V, and Dota 2, while the remaining titles benefitted Radeon RX 6800. You can check the chart below.

This update is a continuation of our response to this issue. As mentioned, ASUS has been working with AMD on defining new rules for the new BIOS updates. These updates will continue to be completed as necessary. The BIOS updates address concerns regarding potential damage that may occur when using Ryzen 7000 series processors with our AM5 motherboards by following the latest guidance from AMD. This includes a cap on SOC voltage at 1.3 V. Please download the latest version of the BIOS updates from asus.com/support.

Thank you again for choosing our product. If you still have any questions, or are concerned that your motherboard may have been affected by this issue, please contact our ASUS support team in your region. If an issue is identified, your motherboard will be covered by our warranty. Our support teams are ready to assist you.

Today, AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) announced the "AMD Data Center and AI Technology Premiere," an in-person and livestreamed event to showcase the company's growth strategy and expanding product portfolio and capabilities for data center and AI. AMD Chair and CEO Dr. Lisa Su will be joined by other AMD executives and key customers to detail new products, and momentum across data center, AI, adaptive and high-performance computing solutions.

The live stream will start at 10 a.m. PT on Tuesday, June 13 at www.amd.com/datacenter as well as the AMD YouTube channel.

As covered on TPU yesterday - Newegg has recently reduced the asking price for AMD's flagship desktop Ryzen 9 7950X3D processor to $629.99. The $70 discount below MSRP represents a 10% saving for keen customers looking to upgrade to some of the best enthusiast silicon available at the moment, but this offer is only available via Newegg's Ebay store. The e-tailer has also (at some point today) rolled out the same percentage cut for the step-down model - Ryzen 9 7900X3D - which brings its price down to $539.99 (originally $599.99) according to the updated Ebay listing.

The 12-core Ryzen 9 7900X3D CPU seems to offer less value in terms of cost per core/thread when compared to its more powerful 16-core sibling ($40/$20) - when taking the (likely temporary) Newegg price cut into account, resulting in a per core price of almost bang on $45 ($22.50 per thread). AMD's Ryzen 9 7900X3D processor has not been reviewed by TPU, but the general consensus seems to be that it gets ignored due to its occupying of the unfavorable middle-ground between the more capable 7900X3D and naturally cheaper 8-core Ryzen 7 7800X3D. The latter has yet to be discounted (across the North American hardware market), so it is possible that Newegg is trying to encourage an uptake of the really expensive models with its latest price offers.

The latest AMD AGESA 1.0.0.7 AM5 platform microcode that the company recently released to improve stability of machines powered by Ryzen 7000X3D processors, more importantly, prevent them from physical damage due to increased voltage in voltage-assisted overclocking scenarios; reportedly impacts memory overclocking capabilities, too, reports g01d3nm4ng0. The "PROCHOT Control" and "PROCHOT Deassertation Ramp" toggles that were available in the oldest versions of AGESA for AM5, are not available in the latest production AGESA.

The memory compatibility is also affected. AMD recently added support for odd-density DDR5 memory modules, such as 24 GB and 48 GB, which make up 48 GB and 96 GB 2-module (dual-channel, four sub-channel) kits. It is possible to max out 192 GB, but while the older AGESA 1.0.0.6 allowed memory frequencies of up to DDR5-6000 with SoC voltage of 1.3 V, the newer AGESA is only stable up to DDR5-4400 at this density. To be fair, most motherboards advertise maximum memory frequencies of under DDR5-4800 for memory configurations where there are two DIMMs per channel, and both DIMMs are dual-rank (so four dual-rank DIMMs in all, which is the least optimal memory configuration from a memory frequency and latency perspective).

During the OCP Regional Summit, AMD has shared plans to replace AGESA with openSIL. The change will not come soon, and according to details, it will be a slow process starting in 2026. AGESA firmware updates are quite important but also vulnerable to cyber-attacks, which is one of the key points for the new OpenSIL, which is proposed as an open-source solution.

As detailed by Phoronix, AMD mentioned the Open-Source Silicon Initialization Library (openSIL) back in mid-April, when it launched initial support for 4th Gen EPYC processors and its reference platform. Although initially aimed at server processors, AMD has made clear during the OCP presentation that the OpenSIL is meant to be a replacement to AMD Generic Encapsulated Software Architecture (AGESA), covering the entire product stack. As said, AMD plans for openSIL to be simple, easily scalable, lightweight, and open-source, thus increasing the overall security.

Newegg is selling AMD's top-of-the-range Ryzen 9 7950X3D CPU for $629.99 - so $70 below the usual asking price in the USA - although buyers will have to venture onto the e-tailer's Ebay store in order to pick up some fancy 16-core silicon action, Newegg's main site lists the CPU for the regular sum of $699.99. This weekend's sudden discount represents the lowest ever price for Ryzen 9 7950X3D only two months into its product lifespan. According to Ebay's tracking stats (for this particular product page) only four units have sold in the past 24 hours, and that a "limited quantity" of AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D CPUs are available to purchase.

TPU's February review of this processor was filled with praise (plus awards: Editor's Choice & Innovation), but the high asking price was a point of contention. This weekend's (likely temporary) discount now gives the potential buyer a little bit of extra value - with the CPU's per core price dropping just under $40, and per thread cost being slightly south of $20. AMD's Ryzen 7000X3D series has been through a bumpy batch since late April - some owners have reported hardware burnouts and AMD is currently working on fixes. Buyer perception could have been affected by recent publicity, so it is possible that Newegg is attempting to get some surplus stock out of the door.

Barron's Magazine has been on a technology industry kick this week and published their interview with AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su on May 3. The interviewer asks Su about her views on Moore's Law and it becomes apparent that she remains a believer of Gordon Moore's (more than half-century old) prediction - Moore, an Intel co-founder passed away in late March. Su explains that her company's engineers will need to innovate in order to carry on with that legacy: "I would certainly say I don't think Moore's Law is dead. I think Moore's Law has slowed down. We have to do different things to continue to get that performance and that energy efficiency. We've done chiplets - that's been one big step. We've now done 3-D packaging. We think there are a number of other innovations, as well." Expertise in other areas is also key in hitting technological goals: "Software and algorithms are also quite important. I think you need all of these pieces for us to continue this performance trajectory that we've all been on."

When asked about the challenges involved in advancing CPU designs within limitations, Su responds with: "Yes. The transistor costs and the amount of improvement you're getting from density and overall energy reduction is less from each generation. But we're still moving (forward) generation to generation. We're doing plenty of work in 3 nanometer today, and we're looking beyond that to 2 nm as well. But we'll continue to use chiplets and these type of constructions to try to get around some of the Moore's Law challenges." AMD and Intel continue to hold firm with Moore's Law, even though slightly younger upstarts disagree (see NVIDIA). Dr. Lisa Su's latest thoughts stay consistent with her colleague's past statements - AMD CTO Mark Papermaster reckoned that the theory is pertinent for another six to eight years, although it could be a costly endeavor for AMD - the company believes that it cannot double transistor density every 18 to 24 months without incurring extra expenses.

The ASUS ROG Ally handheld games console emerged last month and it was revealed to pack some impressive "custom" AMD hardware - the two companies have boasted that the collaboration has resulted in two special SoCs - the Ryzen Z1 and Ryzen Z1 Extreme. Silicon enthusiasts were quick to point out that the Z1 series sported similar specifications to mobile/ultra-portable chipsets in AMD's 7040U family - in particular the Ryzen 7 7840U looks almost identical to its gaming equivalent (Ryzen Z1 Extreme). Andrew E. Freedman at Tom's Hardware was curious and motivated enough to request clarification (about this situation) from AMD. Team Red were happy to respond and acknowledged the apparent similarities between the gaming and laptop chipset ranges, but also stated that Z1 APUs have been tweaked by company engineers to a certain degree.

Matthew Hurwitz, a client PR manager at AMD, provided a response to the Tom's Hardware-issued query: "The Ryzen Z1 series are purpose-built with handheld gaming in mind. To accomplish this, AMD engineers had to validate entirely new power ranges and optimize the voltage curves specifically for this use case - this optimization and validation work should not be trivialized. So while the technology building blocks (like 'Zen 4' and RDNA 3) are similar between the 7040 and Z1 series, the resulting models have very distinct characteristics customized for their use cases. In addition, the AMD Ryzen AI engine is not available on AMD Ryzen Z1 series processors." Hurwitz also confirmed that AMD's XDNA AI engine is merely disabled (so not removed at hardware level) on the two Z1 APUs - this feature is only enabled on the range-topping Ryzen 7 7840U model and mid-range Ryzen 5 7640U. So yes, there are small differences but AMD and ASUS have probably saved some money on development costs by creating and adopting the "slightly adjusted" Z1 SoC series.

Update May 6th: Tom's Hardware has amended their article (as of May 5, 5:03 p.m. ET) - another source within AMD has informed them about the Z1 and Z1 Extreme APUs having configurable TDPs of 9 W to 30 W. The original story - and AMD's website - claimed a range of 15-30 W.

Real-time ray tracing (RT), using Microsoft DirectX ray tracing (DXR) and Vulkan Ray Tracing, adds a new level of incredible realism to games through effects like ray-traced reflections, shadows, ambient occlusion, and global illumination. Ray tracing is used in many of the latest games such as The Callisto Protocol, F1 22, Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, and Returnal to maximize graphics fidelity and deliver the ultimate visual experience.

AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 2 (AMD FSR 2) is the cutting-edge temporal upscaling technology designed to produce incredible image quality and boost framerates in supported games. AMD Radeon RX 7900 Series graphics feature advanced AMD RDNA 3 compute units with 2nd generation ray tracing accelerators to help deliver incredible RT performance in games.

AMD is reported to be reissuing its old Zen+ (12 nm) tech in order to meet demand for cheaper, lower-end systems in China, according to information released by Board Channels this week. The insider source claims that a new production order has been placed for Ryzen 3000G series APUs (requesting up to 30,000 units) and these processors are likely to be sold as part of hardware bundles with (similar vintage) low-end AM4-based motherboards - for example the B450 and A320 series, these older boards are still popular budget choices in China and readily available. The leak does not mention whether AMD is choosing to issue completely new hardware or if it is simply reproducing its 2019-era SKUs.

AMD released two Ryzen 3000G models back in 2019 - the 3400G and 3200G, both are quad-core Picasso APUs although the latter is lacking in simultaneous multithreading. It is not clear whether the super low budget AMD Athlon 3000G model will be included as part of the alleged 30K unit order. The 3000G series' onboard iGPUs (based on AMD's first generation Vega architecture) are likely preferred by the budget-conscious buyer since a discrete graphics card is not an essential part of builds intended for an office setting or a simple/functional home computer setup.

Avalanche Software has released quite a big patch for Hogwarts Legacy, improving visual, performance, gameplay, and general stability. In addition to more than 500 bug fixes, it also brings the new Arachnophobia Mode.

Performance-wise, the newest patch resolves general crashes on the PC and various memory leaks, brings plenty of optimizations, fixes ray tracing issues, and more. It also updates minimum driver recommendation for NVIDIA graphics cards, updates NVIDIA DLSS to v3.1.2, AMD FSR to v2.2, and Intel XeSS to v1.1.