GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd, a leading manufacturer of motherboards, graphics cards, and hardware solutions, proudly announced the ultimate memory performance of DDR5 XMP 8000 is achieved with the X670E AORUS MASTER motherboard based on the latest AMD AGESA BIOS code at a SOC voltage of 1.3 V.

GIGABYTE always works closely with AMD to ensure our motherboard designs provide supreme performance and reliability, particularly on the optimum memory performance by exclusively advanced memory layout design. Meanwhile, GIGABYTE is releasing a new beta BIOS for the X670 and B650 AORUS/AERO series motherboards for the most remarkable memory performance on the AM5 platform. The new BIOS will be available at the end of July in succession. Please pay close attention to the GIGABYTE website to download the update for optimal performance.

A set of intriguing 3DMark Time Spy benchmark results have been released by hardware leaker All_The_Watts!!—these are alleged to have been produced by prototype Radeon RX 7700 and Radeon RX 7800 graphics cards (rumored to be based on variants of the Navi 32 GPU). The current RDNA 3 lineup of mainstream GPUs is severely lacking in middle ground representation, but Team Red is reported to be working on a number of models to fill in the gap. We expect a number of leaks to emerge as we get closer to a rumored product reveal scheduled for late August (to coincide with Gamescon).

The recently released 3DMark Time Spy scores reveal that the alleged Radeon RX 7700 candidate scored 15,465 points, while the RX 7800 achieved 18,197 points—both running on an unspecified test system. The results (refer to the Tom's Hardware-produced chart placed below) are not going to generate a lot of excitement at this stage when compared to predecessors and some of the competition—evaluation samples are not really expected to be optimized to a great degree. We hope to see finalized products with decent drivers putting in a good appearance and performing better later on this year.

EK, the leading manufacturer of premium liquid cooling equipment, is introducing the all-new EK-Quantum Power² Kits. These kits come equipped with full D-RGB support, feature an extensive range of award-winning Quantum Line products that share the same design language, and pack various supplementary accessories. The new Kits are aimed at enthusiasts who have powerful PC hardware and seek high-end cooling solutions without having to pick custom loop parts themselves.

With the inclusion of extra accessories, these Quantum Power² kits simplify the loop-building process, making it a hassle-free experience. Some added benefits include D-RGB lighting for customizable RGB effects, a dye pack to create a unique coolant color, two 90-degree rotary fittings, reservoir tube clamps for alternative mounting options, and much more.

The AMD Radeon RX 7600 8 GB GPU debuted in late May, with an official MSRP of $269 for North America, and €299 for European territories. The lower than expected entry price point for US customers came as a surprise to some media outlets—launch MSRP was expected to be closer to $299, but Team Red allegedly made some last minute adjustments. Board partners often charge more for their custom designs—with beefier heatsinks, extra cooling fans and RGB lighting zones adding to costs. Acer seems to be taking quite a bold approach with their Southern European pricing strategy for two new Radeon RX 7600 Predator BiFrost models.

Potential customers in the States seem to be getting a slightly better deal—the Predator BiFrost Radeon RX 7600 8 GB card is reported to retail for roughly $274 while its overclocked sibling could cost around $290. Acer Spain has stated in official press material that their Radeon RX 7600 Predator BiFrost series will start at €399 (~$448), and confirmed to local tech site El Chapuzas Informatico that this higher than expected figure was not a typo. Retailers in the region have had a difficult time shifting units, and implemented price cuts shortly post launch time—the current cheapest custom RX 7600 card on the market is going for €259. It will be interesting to see whether the rest of Europe will be treated to the €399 starter prices for Acer's debut foray into Radeon graphics technology.

Today, Lenovo unveiled the newest additions to its ThinkPad mobile workstation portfolio. Powered by the latest AMD Ryzen PRO 7040 Series Mobile processors with optional NVIDIA RTX professional graphics, the new ThinkPad P16v, P16s Gen 2 and P14s Gen 4 complement the models announced in May 2023, offering customers a broad choice in mobile workstation PC solutions. ThinkPad P Series devices deliver breakthrough performance, premium design, and durability for demanding workflows across a variety of price points and include support for Windows 11 and several flavors of Linux. Bringing advanced and power-efficient processors with AMD PRO technologies and Ryzen AI on select models opens up an enhanced world of AI-driven features for advanced collaboration on ThinkPad mobile workstations.

"Our latest workstations are designed to help our customers make a difference and drive a positive long-lasting impact in their fields, whether it's research and design, engineering and finance, media and entertainment, healthcare and education, or anything else. We are committed to delivering human-centric innovations that empower our customers to unleash their potential with ThinkPad mobile workstations," said Rob Herman, VP and GM, Worldwide Workstation and Client AI Business at Lenovo.

Intel decided to drop the relatively new AVX-512 instruction set for laptop/mobile platforms when it was discovered that it would not work in conjunction with their E-core designs. Alder Lake was the last generation to (semi) support these sets thanks to P-cores agreeing to play nice, albeit with the efficiency side of proceedings disabled (via BIOS settings). Intel chose to fuse off AVX-512 support in production circa early 2022, with AMD picking up the slack soon after and working on the integration of AVX-512 into Zen 4 CPU architecture. The Ryzen 7040 series is the only current generation mobile platform that offers AVX-512 support. Phoronix decided to benchmark a Ryzen 7 7840U against older Intel i7-1165G7 (Tiger Lake) and i7-1065G7 (Ice Lake) SoCs in AVX-512-based workloads.

Team Red's debut foray into AVX-512 was surprisingly performant according to Phoronix's test results—the Ryzen 7 7840U did very well for itself. It outperformed the 1165G7 by 46%, and the older 1065G7 by an impressive 63%. The Ryzen 7 APU was found to attain the highest performance gain with AVX-512 enabled—a 54% performance margin over operating with AVX-512 disabled. In comparison Phoronix found that: "the i7-1165G7 Tiger Lake impact came in at 34% with these AVX-512-heavy benchmarks or 35% with the i7-1065G7 Ice Lake SoC for that generation where AVX-512 on Intel laptops became common."

AMD is planning to plug the Atlantic gap between its mainstream Radeon RX 7600 and enthusiast-class RX 7900 XT with the RX 7800 series and RX 7700 series, with either an announcement or teaser planned for 2023 Gamescom, which is scheduled for August. There could be up to four new graphics card SKUs announced, with their product launches spread across Q3 and Q4 2023. The "Navi 32" MCM is expected to power at least three of these SKUs, while it was recently rumored that AMD could design a new GPU that has the GCD of the "Navi 31" on the package of "Navi 32" with its four MCDs, to end up with a higher CU count than what the "Navi 32" can offer.

The "Navi 32" GPU is an MCM, just like the "Navi 31" powering the RX 7900 series. It is rumored to feature a 5 nm GCD (graphics compute die) with 60 RDNA3 compute units, which work out to 3,840 stream processors, 120 AI accelerators, 60 Ray Accelerators, 240 TMUs, and possibly 128 ROPs. The four 6 nm MCDs give it 64 MB of Infinity Cache, and a 256-bit wide GDDR6 memory interface. Assuming the RX 7800 XT uses the unnamed new MCM with the GCD of the "Navi 31" that has a CU count somewhere between 60 and 72, a maxed-out "Navi 32" could power the RX 7800, while its cut-down variants power the RX 7700 XT and RX 7700.

Simply NUC, Inc, a leading mini PC solutions company, announced they are prepared to continue ramping their investment in mini PCs and the NUC product line as Intel has announced their intentions to stop investment in this area and pivot their strategy to enable ecosystem partners to continue NUC innovation and growth.

"I am privileged to have helped start up the NUC business at Intel," said John Deatherage CMO of Simply NUC. "Simply NUC has a strong portfolio of branded products and remains 100% focused and committed to delivering small form factor solutions."

AMD's laptop-oriented Ryzen 7040 series of Zen 4 processors APUs—based on 4 nm "Phoenix" monolithic silicon—have been slow to hit the market, but folks have had plenty of time to study spec sheets and press material. The presence of similar-ish 7040HS and 7040H product assignments (also sharing nearly identical specifications) has caused some confusion within the PC hardware community. Team Red has finally got round to explaining the significance of their -HS and -H identifiers—product pages were updated with new information this month, showing that the Ryzen 7040H series exists as a Chinese market exclusive. NA, EMEA, APJ, LATAM regions will be getting the closely related Ryzen 7040HS lineup instead. ASUS, Lenovo, and Machenike are set to launch new laptop models in China that will feature Ryzen 7040H APUs—VideoCardz found it interesting that "some of them will not have discrete graphics and will have a higher TDP of 65 W".

According to information and images released by Xfastest, Acer seems to be preparing a new trio of Predator BiFrost custom cards. The series is currently limited to a single factory overclocked model, based on Intel's Arc A770 16 GB GPU. One of the new cards seems to be a cheaper (~$258) A750 8 GB BiFrost model, so Acer's Alchemist ACM-G10 GPU variant lineup is welcoming one addition.

Acer is also embracing RDNA 3 courtesy of AMD, although graphics card enthusiasts could see the introduction of two new Predator BiFrost models based on Radeon RX 7600 8 GB GPU as less than exciting prospects. The leaked photos seem to show a cooler design that lacks ARGB around the two cooling fans—budget friendly pricing (~$290 for the overclocked model, and ~$258 for non-OC) suggests that fancy livery is not so important in the low-to-mid-range tier.

Taichi Lite series is here! Based on the existing Z790/B650E Taichi motherboard, the Taichi Lite kept the original specs & features but with less RGB & simpler exterior design. Taichi Lite series motherboard will be focusing purely on the functionality, performance and durability, and with the new simplified design concept, ASRock has brought the long awaited affordable high end motherboard finally back to the market.

Both Z790/B650E Taichi Lite motherboard will be equipped with 24 phase VRM for Vcore to give unlimited CPU performance, other exciting features and technologies are also available too, such as PCIe 5.0 technology for graphics cards and M.2 SSDs, an incredible IO that includes the latest USB4 offering a fast and simple level of connection for work or home.

Graphics card prices on a much-needed downward spiral, and this doesn't spare even the enthusiast class of graphics cards. The AMD flagship Radeon RX 7900 XTX is available for as low as $799 with retailer promotions. Specifically, an ASRock Radeon RX 7900 XTX Phantom Gaming graphics card is listed on Newegg for $899, with a coupon shaving off a further $100. That's a 30% departure from the $999 MSRP of AMD for the RX 7900 XTX.

At $799, the RX 7900 XTX applies pressure on the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti, as the RX 7900 XTX can now be had at its MSRP. The RX 7900 XTX is on average 31% faster than the RTX 4070 Ti at 4K Ultra HD in our testing (the intended use-case of the RX 7900 XTX), and about 21% faster than the RTX 4070 Ti at 1440p (intended use-case of the RTX 4070 Ti). The RTX 4070 Ti is about 4% to 9% faster at real-time ray tracing.

We are happy to share that our AMD FidelityFX Software Development Kit (SDK) is now available for download!

What is the AMD FidelityFX SDK?
The AMD FidelityFX SDK is our new and easy to integrate solution for developers looking to include AMD FidelityFX technologies into their games without any of the hassle of complicated porting procedures. In a nutshell, it is AMD FidelityFX graphics middleware.

Today, AMD announced that SAP has chosen AMD EPYC processor-powered Google Cloud N2D virtual machines (VMs) to run its cloud ERP delivery operations for RISE with SAP; further increasing adoption of AMD EPYC for cloud-based workloads. As enterprises look toward digital modernization, many are adopting cloud-first architectures to complement their on-premises data centers. AMD, Google Cloud and SAP can help customers achieve their most stringent performance goals while delivering on energy efficiency, scalability and resource utilization needs.

AMD EPYC processors offer exceptional performance as well as robust security features, and energy efficient solutions for enterprise workloads in the cloud. RISE with SAP helps maximize customer investments in cloud infrastructure and, paired with AMD EPYC processors and Google Cloud N2D VMs, aims to modernize customer data centers and transform data into actionable insights, faster. "AMD powers some of the most performant and energy efficient cloud instances available in the world today," said Dan McNamara, senior vice president and general manager, Server Business Unit, AMD. "As part of our engagement with Google Cloud and SAP, SAP has selected AMD EPYC CPU-powered N2D instances to host its Business Suite enterprise software workloads. This decision by SAP delivers the performance and performance-per-dollar of EPYC processors to customers looking to modernize their data centers and streamline IT spending by accelerating time to value on their enterprise applications."

AMD and Bethesda have officially launched the Starfield Game Bundle today—this promotion has been leaked several times recently, with Team Red's Taiwanese operation revealing (late last week) that the campaign would be starting on July 11. That date also applies to the vast majority of global territories—company web presences are showing that the new game bundle has gone live with their offer of "Get Starfield when you buy select AMD Ryzen processors, AMD Radeon graphics cards, or a gaming system that contains both."

Bethesda's Starfield is scheduled for release on September 6—prospective AMD hardware buyers are invited to select Standard or Premium Edition tiers, depending on the choice of qualifying Ryzen or Radeon products. The entry point comprises Ryzen 5 7000 series CPUs or Radeon 6600 GPUs. Premium 5-day early access is made available to buyers of Ryzen 9 7000 CPUs or Radeon cards starting with RX 6700 models.

The AMD Ryzen 5 7500F CPU has been popping up via various leaks—with no official announcements made despite photos, basic specifications and benchmark results appearing online. Tom's Hardware could not extract a comment directly from Team Red, so it pivoted to inside sources instead to find out more about the mysterious Zen 4 iGPU-less processor. The news site discovered that this model is very likely going to be a Chinese market exclusive—insiders reckon that it will be released closer to the end of this month. Retailers and e-tailers in the region are getting first dibs, with the Ryzen 5 7500F also made available to SIs (system integrators), so pre-built computers featuring this AM5 CPU could be released soon after.

Tom's Hardware believes that the: "Ryzen 5 7500F is very similar to the Ryzen 5 7600 and will operate with a 65 W TDP, and thus have slightly lower boost clock speeds than the 7600." It suspects that a recently published benchmark showing that single-core performance edges past the Ryzen 5 7600X (105 W TDP) is not all that accurate—these results should be "taken with a grain of salt." According to their verified sources, the Ryzen 5 7500F should "perform slightly slower than the regular 65 W Ryzen 5 7600 (non-X)." The article presents some hope that AMD is simply market testing the CPU prior to a possible USA rollout, but insiders indicate that company plans have the Ryzen 5 7500F marked for launch in China only.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a transformative force in chip design, with recent examples from China and the United States showcasing its potential. Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, believes that AI can empower individuals to become programmers, while Lisa Su, CEO of AMD, predicts an era where AI dominates chip design. During the 2023 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, Su emphasized the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration for the next generation of chip designers. To excel in this field, engineers must possess a holistic understanding of hardware, software, and algorithms, enabling them to create superior chip designs that meet system usage, customer deployment, and application requirements.

The integration of AI into chip design processes has gained momentum, fueled by the AI revolution catalyzed by large language models (LLMs). Both Huang and Mark Papermaster, CTO of AMD, acknowledge the benefits of AI in accelerating computation and facilitating chip design. AMD has already started leveraging AI in semiconductor design, testing, and verification, with plans to expand its use of generative AI in chip design applications. Companies are now actively exploring the fusion of AI technology with Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools to streamline complex tasks and minimize manual intervention in chip design. Despite limited data and accuracy challenges, the "EDA+AI" approach holds great promise. For instance, Synopsys has invested significantly in AI tool research and recently launched Synopsys.ai, the industry's first end-to-end AI-driven EDA solution. This comprehensive solution empowers developers to harness AI at every stage of chip development, from system architecture and design to manufacturing, marking a significant leap forward in AI's integration into chip design workflows.

AMD today announced that Executive Vice President and Chief Sales Officer Darren Grasby will transition into a new role as executive vice president, strategic partnerships and that Phil Guido has joined the company as executive vice president and chief commercial officer. Guido will be responsible for leading the AMD worldwide sales organization with a focus on further accelerating adoption of the company's leadership products with commercial and data center customers.

"I am excited to welcome Phil to our leadership team as we take the next steps in our journey to make AMD the commercial and data center compute partner of choice," said AMD Chair and CEO, Dr. Lisa Su. "Phil brings extensive enterprise and sales experience that will be incredibly valuable as we focus on deepening our enterprise partnerships and accelerating our growth in the data center, embedded and commercial markets. I also want to thank Darren for his transformational leadership as chief sales officer over the last eight years, and I look forward to leveraging his significant industry experience to lead strategic partnerships in his new role."

The Puget Systems benchmark database outed AMD's Ryzen 5 7500F 6-core/12-thread processor last week—industry experts proposed that it was the first example of a Ryzen 7000 SKU with a disabled iGPU. A South Korean retailer indicated unit pricing of around $170-180, with a possible local launch date on July 7. It seems that retail units have not hit the market (at the time of writing), but Geekbench 6.1 results have since appeared online. According to an entry on the Geekbench database—that was spotted by Olrak29 earlier today—the Ryzen 5 7500F has a base clock of 3.7 GHz. It can boost up to 5.0 GHz on a single core, while all cores can reach a maximum of 4.8 GHz. The listing confirms that this new SKU sits firmly in the AMD "Raphael" CPU family.

The processor was tested on a system running Microsoft Windows 11—partial specifications of the evaluation build include an ASUS TUF Gaming A620M-PLUS WIFI motherboard and 32 GB of DDR5-6000 RAM. The tested Ryzen 5 7500F CPU achieved scores of 2782 points (single-core) and 13323 points (multi-threaded), which places it slightly ahead of the Ryzen 5 7600X in multi-thread performance. It trails slightly behind with its single-core result, but these figures are impressive considering that the Ryzen 5 7500F will likely be offered at a more budget friendly price when compared to its closest iGPU-enabled siblings.

Gamers Nexus recently visited AMD's headquarters in Austin, Texas—a previous video documented company employees discussing the history of Zen CPUs, and the showcasing of historical prototypes including (unreleased) Ryzen 9 5950X3D and 5900X3D models. The YouTube channel promised that more AMD HQ tour footage would be shared over the next couple of weeks—their latest upload has (host) Steve Burke talking to representatives from various internal labs.

A notable detail extracted from Team Red's thermal laboratory was an old heat spreader concept for Zen 4 processors—the team evaluated whether a concealed vapor chamber would offer improved cooling performance versus conventional metal solutions. Their tests determined that the extra cost (not disclosed) required to integrate a vapor chamber was not worth the resultant 1°C temperature difference, when lined up against a traditional metal design IHS. AMD confirmed that the concept was not developed further since prototype chips were also found to generate heat exceeding expected normal levels, under continuous long-term workload conditions.

Last week Bethesda announced AMD as its exclusive partner for Starfield on the PC platform, although the short video presentation did not tease upcoming hardware/software bundles. Details of a Ryzen 7000-series CPUs promotional campaign emerged seven days later thanks to a mini-store page appearing on Newegg's retail site. The Starfield promo was not active at the time, but AMD Taiwan has made it official that the event will be going live on July 11 (at least in that territory).

According to the freshly published event site their offer will be running until September 30, and product serial numbers will not be redeemable after October 28. Eligible hardware includes the aforementioned Ryzen 7000 processor family, as well as Radeon GPUs. Thankfully Team Red has made sure to make a significant number of RDNA 2 models eligible for the Starfield incentive, with the entry point being RX 6600. All discrete RDNA 3 cards qualify—starting with RX 7600 and jumping up to the expensive RX 7900 XT and 7900 XTX GPUs. AMD Taiwan's info graphics show a two tier system—Standard Edition (NT$1990) applies to buyers of Ryzen 5/7 7000 series CPUs or Radeon 6600 through 7600 cards. Premium Edition (NT$2890) will grant a 5-day early access period—exclusive to buyers of Ryzen 9 7000 CPUs or Radeon cards starting at RX 6700.

According to the Linux Kernel Mailing List, AMD started to enable next-generation processors by submitting patches to the Linux kernel. Codenamed Family 1Ah or Family 26 in decimal notation, the set of patches corresponds to the upcoming AMD Zen 5 core, which is the backbone of the upcoming Ryzen 8000 series processors. The patches have a few interesting notes, namely few of them being: added support for the amd64_edac (Error Detection and Correction) module and temperature monitoring; added PCI IDs for these models covering 00h-1Fh and 20h; added required support in k10temp driver.

The AMD EDAC driver also points out that the Zen 5 server CPUs will max out with 12-channel memory. Codenames 0-31 correspond to next-generation EPYC, while 40 to 79 are desktop and laptop SKUS. Interestingly, these patches are just the start, as adding PCI IDs and temperature drivers are basic enablement. With the 2024 launch date nearing, we expect to see more Linux kernel enablement efforts, especially with more complicated parts of the kernel.

AMD late Thursday released the Adrenalin 23.7.1 WHQL drivers. While these do not come with optimization for any new games since the previous 23.5.2 drivers, they add several new Vulkan API extensions, and fix a few issues. In particular, they introduce Vulkan-based accelerated video decode for H.264 and H.265 formats, among 8 other extensions spanning the Khronos and Valve trunks. The drivers also claim to improve idle power and multi-monitor power draw of RX 7000 series GPUs.

Among the issues fixed with Adrenalin 23.7.1 WHQL include sub-optimal VR performance or stuttering noticed with RX 7000 series GPUs, and an application crash for DaVinci Resolve Studio with AV1 video playback. The drivers improve idle- and multi-monitor power-draw for RX 7000 series GPUs on some 4K@144 Hz displays, and multi-monitor configurations. Display corruption noticed with WWE 2K23, and Nioh 2 have been fixed.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Software Adrenalin 23.7.1 WHQL

Newegg is currently running a time limited offer on AMD's flagship Ryzen 9 7950X3D CPU—the base price sits at $662, but a promotional voucher can be applied at checkout that removes $105. Amazon USA price matched the competition earlier today—via their own voucher system—but stock allocation of the powerful desktop processor appears to be sold out. North American customers eager to acquire an attractively priced Ryzen 9 7950X3D soon-ish will have to do business with Newegg.

The latest $557 deal is certainly more generous when compared to a campaign run by the American online retailer back in May, albeit via their Ebay store—several Ryzen 7000X3D-series CPUs were discounted at the time, perhaps in reaction to bad publicity swirling around the product lineup (referring to accounts of hardware burnouts). The Ryzen 9 7950X3D was reduced to a previous all-time low of $629.99. Perhaps public perception of AMD's top flight models has not improved all that much since then (plus other economical factors), and very deep discounts are necessary to attract customers. A Newegg mini-store page recently revealed a forthcoming "Starfield Game Bundle Promotion," that will apply to all Ryzen 7000-series CPUs. The AMD + Bethesda initiative will probably kick in closer to the game's September 6 launch date.

Sapphire has officially boarded the white PCB design train, a trend most popular within China's PC hardware market—the Hong Kong-based graphics card specialist is teasing its oddly named "Power Elves" custom cooling solution. They have decided to pair this new look with non-cutting edge silicon, namely AMD's Radeon RX 6500 XT GPU. The budget Navi 24 XT (RDNA 2) card looks to be cooled by a single fan and heatsink array housed within a shroud approximating a Mini-ITX form factor.

Sapphire appears to using its "Angular Velocity Fan Blade," as seen on its Radeon RX 7000-series PULSE and NITRO custom models, so it is somewhat odd that we are not seeing a new-ish RX 7600 GPU in fresh Polar Elves/all-white livery. Since the company is merely teasing this upcoming 4 GB model (at the time of writing) we can assume that it will be served by the normal single 8-pin power connector, and its name assignment suggests a factory overclock will be applied as standard.