After Gigabyte and ASUS, it appears that MSI is also working on a similar motherboard concept that puts most, if not all, connectors on the reverse side of the motherboard. MSI will be joining Gigabyte, ASUS and MaxSun with such concept, as MSI B650 DIY-APE motherboard has been now spotted online. In order to optimize cable management, the idea is that most, if not all connectors are located on the reverse side of the motherboard, allowing users to hide power, fan, storage, and peripherals cables behind the motherboard.

According to the latest leak, MSI is apparently working on two motherboards based on AMD B650 chipset that have entered a qualification state. While it means that these are still far away from being a retail product, it is certainly an interesting concept that we are looking forward to. Of course, this also means that one would need a compatible PC case, that has strategically placed cutouts in order to access those connectors. The original post has some of those cases pictured. In addition to ASUS, MaxSun, and now MSI, Gigabyte also had a similar concept with Project Stealth.

AMD today announced it is bringing world-class performance and energy efficiency to embedded systems with AMD EPYC Embedded 9004 Series processors. The new 4th generation EPYC Embedded processors powered by "Zen 4" architecture provide technology and features for embedded networking, security/firewall and storage systems in cloud and enterprise computing as well as industrial edge servers for the factory floor.

Built on the "Zen 4" 5 nm core, the processors combine speed and performance while helping reduce both overall system energy costs and TCO. The series is comprised of 10 processor models with performance options ranging from 16 to 96 cores, and a thermal design power (TDP) profile ranging from 200 W to 400 W. The performance and power scalability afforded with AMD EPYC Embedded 9004 Series processors make them an ideal fit for embedded system OEMs expanding their product portfolios across a range of performance and pricing options. The AMD EPYC Embedded 9004 Series processors also include enhanced security features to help minimize threats and maintain a secure compute environment from power-on to run time, making them well suited for applications with enterprise-class performance and security needs.

AMD today announced the appointment of five technical leaders to the role of AMD Corporate Fellow. These appointments recognize each leader's significant impact on semiconductor innovation across various areas, from graphics architecture to advanced packaging. "David, Nathan, Suresh, Ben and Ralph - whose engineering contributions have already left an indelible mark on our industry - represent the best of our innovation culture," said Mark Papermaster, chief technology officer and executive vice president of Technology and Engineering at AMD. "Their appointments to Corporate Fellow will enable AMD to innovate in new dimensions as we work to deliver the most significant breakthroughs in high-performance computing in the decade ahead."

Appointment to AMD Corporate Fellow is an honor bestowed on the most accomplished AMD innovators. AMD Corporate Fellows are appointed after a rigorous review process that assesses not only specific technical contributions to the company, but also involvement in the industry, mentoring of others and improving the long-term strategic position of the company. Currently, only 13 engineers at AMD hold the title of Corporate Fellow.

A curious OEM-only AMD Radeon RX 6300 desktop graphics card surfaced on Chinese peer-to-peer marketplaces. The card is a true single-slot, half-height (low-profile) graphics card, with an active fan-heatsink based cooling; and two display outputs—a pair of HDMI 2.1 ports. The card draws all its power from the PCIe slot, and features a PCI-Express 4.0 x4 host interface. The RX 6300 is based on the same 6 nm "Navi 24" silicon as the RX 6400 and RX 6500 XT, although it is rumored to be heavily cut down. The mobile RX 6300M has 768 out of 1,024 stream processors enabled, so one can expect a similar cut-down for the RX 6300. Perhaps the most interesting piece of specifications is the memory—2 GB GDDR6. It's possible that the card has a puny 32-bit memory interface, half that of the 64-bit interface the "Navi 24" is capable of. The person selling it has it listed at just ¥399 RMB (around $60).

DFI, the global leader in embedded solutions, today announced their latest PCSF51 next-generation 1.8" Single Board Computer at Embedded World 2023. The 1.8" SBC powered by the revolutionary AMD Ryzen Embedded R2000 Processor, the PCSF51 features advanced graphics processing and computing capabilities in a miniature form factor. Equipped with flexible expandability and I/O versatility, this energy-efficient SBC is tailored for use in industrial applications, robotics, edge computing, AI vision systems, and more.

"By leveraging the latest AMD Ryzen Embedded R2000 Processor, we have achieved many advantages for the tiny yet powerful PCSF51," said DFI President Alexander Su. "We have a positive outlook for future Industrial Pi innovations." Compared to its previous generation GHF51 with the AMD Ryzen R1000 Processor, the latest R2000 processor built into the PCSF51 delivers upgraded performance with double the max CPU core count, scalability up to four CPU cores and eight threads, and a 50% increase in CPU power. Graphics performance is boosted by 15% with up to eight graphic compute units. The design of the PCSF51 has also been enhanced from the previous GHF51, with an easier-to-use on board power/reset and HDMI, in addition to a thinner thermal module. With rich multimedia capabilities, it can support ultra-high-resolution displays in 4K resolution.

AMD has announced the immediate availability of its Ryzen 7045 HX-series (Dragon Range) processors for high performance laptop devices. In a Youtube video released on March 10, AMD's Jason Banta has announced the availability of the world's most powerful mobile processor, the Ryzen 9 7945HX. He listed the OEM partners who have integrated the 7945HX into flagship level laptop models. He also declared that this range topping CPU is a competition beater. Gaming benchmark tests have demonstrated that the Ryzen 9 7945HX beats Intel's Raptor Lake Core i9-13950HX by an average margin of 10%.

AMD has finally released some of the official gaming benchmark for its 8-core Ryzen 7 7800X3D processor that should be coming in April, and, now that AMD has released some of the first gaming benchmarks, it appears that it outperforms the Intel Core i9-13900K by up to 24 percent. Officially, AMD is putting the Ryzen 7 7800X3D against the Intel Core i7-13700K, leaving the Core i9-13900K and the Core i9-13900KS to its 16- and 12-core Ryzen 7000X3D SKUs.

Although some of its Ryzen 7000X3D series chips are available as of February 28th, namely the Ryzen 9 7950X3D and the Ryzen 9 7900X3D, AMD has pushed back the launch of its 8-core/16-thread Ryzen 7 7800X3D. This was quite a surprise and a big letdown, especially due to its tempting $449 price tag. One of the reasons might be the fact that the Ryzen 7 7800X3D is simply too good and might put a lot of pressure on even AMD's own SKUs, let alone Intel's lineup.

When Intel announced the appearance of the 4th generation Xeon-W processors, the company announced that the clock multiplier was left unlocked, available for overclockers to try and push these chips even harder. However, it was only a matter of time before we saw the top-end Xeon-W SKU take a chance at beating the world record in Cinebench R23. The Intel Xeon W9-3495X SKU is officially the world record score holder with 132,484 points in Cinebench R23. The overclocker OGS from Greece managed to push all 56 cores and 112 threads of the CPU to 5.4 GHz clock frequency using liquid nitrogen (LN2) cooling setup. Using ASUS Pro WS W790E-SAGE SE motherboard and G-SKILL Zeta R5 RAM kit, the OC record was set on March 8th.

The previous record holder of this position was AMD with its Threadripper Pro 5995WX with 64 cores and 128 threads clocked at 5.4 GHz. Not only did Xeon W9-3495X set the Cinebench R23 record, but the SKU also placed the newest record for Cinebench R20, Y-Cruncher, 3DMark CPU test, and Geekbench 3 as well.

It's almost cherry-blossom season in Japan, and MINISFORUM released a special edition mini PC to mark it. The UM773 SE has a pastel pink body color along with a cherry-blossom print. Under the hood, it rocks an AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS processor (6 nm, Zen 3+, "Rembrandt Refresh" silicon), with an 8-core/16-thread CPU, and a 12-CU RDNA2 iGPU (Radeon 680M). You get two DDR5 SO-DIMM slots to drop in your own memory, and an M.2-2280 NVMe SSD slot with PCI-Express 4.0 x4 wiring, to use your own SSD, and a 2.5-inch drive bay with SATA 6 Gbps.

Networking connectivity on the MINISFORUM UM773 SE include 2.5 GbE, WiFi 6E, and Bluetooth 5.2. USB connectivity includes USB4, for a type-C port that supports DisplayPort passthrough from the iGPU. There are a couple of 10 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2 type-C ports, a couple of such type-A ports, and a couple of USB 2.0 type-A. A couple of HDMI ports, and HD audio make for the rest of it. The box measures 127 mm x 128 mm x 47 mm (WxDxH). The UM773 SE is sold either as a barebones that lacks memory and SSDs; or as prebuilts with 1x 16 GB, 2x 8 GB, and 2x 16 GB memory; each with a 512 GB NVMe SSD.

Update Mar 10th: MINISFORUM confirmed the US price of the UM773 SE to be $429 for the barebones, $579 for the prebuilt with 16 GB memory and 512 GB SSD, $639 for the one with 32 GB memory and 512 GB SSD, and $679 for the top model with 32 GB memory and 1 TB SSD storage.

AMD's entry-level Ryzen 3 4300G APU, which was being sold in the OEM/SI channels, is sneaking its way into the retail PIB space, with Japanese retailers listing it as a retail part. Until now, you could only get the 4300G as part of a pre-built, or as part of a retail "bundle," where they would simply pull one of these chips out of a tray, install it on an entry-level A520 or A320 chipset motherboard, and sell along with a stick of memory. The 4300G is commanding a roughly $100 (equivalent) price, which could make sense for entry-level mom-and-pop PCs.

The Ryzen 3 4300G is based on the 7 nm "Renoir" silicon, and is a Socket AM4 processor with integrated graphics. The processor has one of its two CCXs disabled, leaving you with a 4-core/8-thread CPU based on the "Zen 2" microarchitecture, that has 512 KB of L2 cache per core, and 4 MB of L3 cache shared among the four cores. The processor also features a dual-channel DDR4 memory interface, a PCI-Express Gen 3 interface, and an iGPU based on the Radeon "Vega" graphics architecture. It has a TDP of 65 W.

There are two distinct developments in the client processor space for AMD—first, its Ryzen 7000X3D desktop processors have managed to retain gaming performance competitiveness against Intel's fastest 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" processors; and second, that its Ryzen 7045HX "Dragon Range" mobile processors are picking up interest in the enthusiast-segment notebook community, where its advanced 5 nm + 6 nm process is dealing damage to 13th Gen Core mobile processors in performance/Watt, and gaming performance. Can AMD dial things up a notch? Technically, yes.

It should technically be possible for AMD to build "Dragon Range" multi-chip modules using "Zen 4" + 3D Vertical Cache CCDs (CPU complex dies), much in the same way it did for the desktop product stack. Such a processor would either have one CCD with the 3DV cache for a CPU core-count of up to 8-core/16-thread; or a contraption similar to the desktop 7950X3D, wherein one of the CCDs has 3DV cache, while the other is a regular "Zen 4" CCD, for core-counts of up to 16-core/32-thread. But will AMD build such chips? A lot would depend on the volumes of L3Ds (the 6 nm dies with the 64 MB 3D Vertical cache memory that operates at 2.5 TB/s), the production of CCDs with 3DV cache; and whether AMD is able to achieve the right performance/Watt numbers against Intel's fastest 8P+16E "Raptor Lake" mobile processors.

AMD is working on the AGESA 1.0.0.7 BIOS update that should resolve issues and bring support for 24 GB and 48 GB DDR5 memory modules and kits on the AM5 platform. The latest report, coming from Twitter, suggest that AMD is working hard on the AGESA release, so motherboard manufacturers could push BIOS updates early next month or in May. While Intel's 600- and 700-series motherboards are happily working with 24 GB and 48 GB DDR5 memory modules and kits, allowing users to use up to 192 GB (4x48 GB) of memory in their systems, it comes as a surprise that AMD did not release an official, or even a BETA BIOS update for such modules.

There were already reports that such 24 GB and 48 GB DDR5 modules are having issues on AMD's AM5 platform and while the BIOS can detect the memory, it simply will not boot into Windows. This latest report originally comes from hardware leaker chi11eddog over at Twitter, and suggests that AMD and its motherboard partners are well aware of the issue and the AGESA BIOS firmware v1.0.0.7 should bring full support for so-called "non-binary" 24 GB and 48 GB DDR5 memory modules.

Support for AMD's Smart Access Memory and the overarching Resizable BAR technologies has been removed from the RadeonSI Gallium3D OpenGL driver as of today's Mesa 22.3.7 release. The comment in the announcement simply reads, "Disable Smart Access Memory because CPU access has large overhead." The nail in the coffin seems to have been this bug ticket submitted last month for the game Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1, in which the user reported the game running oddly slow on their RX 6600 while previously they had no issues on the much older R9 380. The solution provided was to simply disable ReBAR/SAM either with radeonsi_disable_sam=true or via UEFI. In the comments of the ticket lead RadeonSI developer Marek Olšák states, "We've never tested SAM with radeonsi, and it's not necessary there."

Apparently the performance advantages weren't panning out for RadeonSI, and since direct optimizations of these features was not a primary goal the decision was made to cut them out. Attempts to optimize SAM with RadeonSI date as far back as December 2020 and Mesa 21.0, but support for SAM under Linux goes further back. None of the changes to RadeonSI will affect other drivers such as RADV, the open-source Radeon Vulkan driver, and this code change is limited to only the RadeonSI OpenGL driver.

AMD "Zen 4" processors offer unmatched efficiency at lower power, and notebook manufacturers are beginning to notice that the company's high core-count Ryzen 7045HX series "Dragon Range" mobile processors offer performance and battery-life highly competitive to 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" processors. The Ryzen 7 7745HX is an 8-core/16-thread processor with a single 5 nm "Zen 4" chiplet, and default TDP of 55 W. Chinese tech publication Golden Pig Upgrade reviewed a notebook powered by the 7745HX, and compared it with one rocking a Core i7-13700HX 8P+8E. The reviewer found the 7745HX to offer superior performance/Watt and gaming performance that either matches or beats the "Raptor Lake," which is held back by aggressive power-management and an older 10 nm-class process node.

Avalanche Software has released the latest March 8 patch for Hogwarts Legacy, that fixes various bugs and improves gameplay, performance, and stability. The extensive update also includes fixes for online, gameplay, audio, UI, cinematics, ray tracing, save game, display and miscellaneous issues.

The changelog includes major reworks, from patching out memory leaks, improved VRAM usage, to VFX crashes, lighting optimizations with NVIDIA drivers, improved stability and performance with ray tracing, directional light shadows and shadows on trees with ray tracing, various Ansel issues, and plenty of gameplay issues, including missions, broom flight, world events, and characters. The new patch also updates the minimum Nvidia and AMD graphics driver recommendations, which could be directly connected to the improved VRAM usage, as the game was easily going over 14 GB with RT enabled on 1080p, 1440p, and 2160p resolutions.

Over the past month, memory manufacturers started releasing DDR5 memory modules of 24 GB and 48 GB densities, which make up 48 GB (2x 24 GB), 96 GB (2x 48 GB or 4x 24 GB) and even 192 GB (4x 48 GB) capacities. There's only one catch—these modules only work with 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" and 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" processors, as their memory controllers support a maximum of 192 GB of memory, and 24/48/96 GB DIMM densities. MEGAsizeGPU decided to find out what happens when one of these kits is installed on an AMD Ryzen 7000 "Zen 4" platform.

A Corsair Vengeance DDR5-5600 48 GB (2x 24 GB) memory kit was installed on a machine consisting of an AMD Ryzen 5 7600X processor, and an ASUS ROG Strix B650E-E Gaming motherboard (BIOS version 1222). It turns out that the machine POSTs, and is able to start the UEFI setup program. Here, the program is able to display the correct 48 GB memory amount, and the memory density of each of the two modules. The trouble is, Windows would not boot, and does not go past the Boot Manager. It halts with an error message that indicates a hardware problem.

Supermicro, Inc., a Total IT Solution Provider for Cloud, AI/ML, Storage, and 5G/Edge, is announcing the latest addition to its revolutionary ultra-high performance, high-density petascale class all-flash NVMe server family. Supermicro systems in this high performance storage product family will support the next-generation EDSFF form factor, including the E3.S and E1.S devices, in form factors that accommodate 16- and 32 high-performance PCIe Gen 5 NVMe drive bays.

The initial offering of the updated product line will support up to one-half of a petabyte storage space in a 1U 16 bay rackmount system, followed by a fully petabyte storage space in 2U 32 bay rackmount system for both Intel and AMD PCIe Gen 5 platforms.

AMD has released its latest Adrenalin drivers for Radeon graphics cards. With support dating back to RX 400, the latest Adrenalin 23.3.1 WHQL drivers bring a lot of improvements to the table, as well as support for Halo Infinite Ray Tracing Update and Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty game. Most importantly, the new driver has a series of fixes, including intermittent driver timeout, system freeze, or BSOD, with the latest Radeon RX 7000 series. Problems in games such as Premium Gold Packs in EA SPORTS FIFA 23 and Dying Light 2 lighting effects corruption have been fixed. As far as Radeon RX 6000 series goes, this driver release manages to fix corruption in certain scenes with ray tracing enabled observed in the Returnal game. Check the list below for the entire set of changes.Download: AMD Radeon Graphics Drivers 23.3.1 WHQL here.

AMD could tease its next-generation graphics performance enhancement rivaling NVIDIA DLSS 3, at the 2023 Game Developers Conference (GDC 2023), slated for March 23. While the company didn't name it, its GDC 2023 session brief references an "exciting sneak peek of new FidelityFX technologies" that will be "available soon," meaning that it isn't the recently released FSR 2.2. We expect this to be the very first look at FSR 3.0.

AMD frantically dropped in the first mention of FSR 3.0 in its Radeon RX 7900 series RDNA3 announcement presentation (slide below). The company let out precious little details of the new technology except the mention that it offers double the frame-rate versus FSR 2 (at comparable image quality). Does this involve a frame-rate doubling technology similar to DLSS 3? We don't know yet. It could just be a more advanced upscaling algorithm that doubles performance at a given quality target compared to FSR 2. We'll know for sure later this month. It would be a coup of sorts for AMD if FSR 3.0 doesn't require RX 7000 series GPUs, and can run on older Radeon GPUs, whereas DLSS 3 requires the latest GeForce RTX 40-series GPUs.

Although it has already been available in some games, AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.2 is now available as an Unreal Plugin over on GPUOpen. AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution 2 has been already used in some games ever since AMD released the source code for the technology, which includes the titles like Forza Horizon 5, Need For Speed Unbound, and F1 22, but implementation in various engines can take time, and now it is available as a plugin for Unreal Engine. AMD's FSR 2.2 brings several improvements including new logic that should reduce "High-Velocity Ghosting," an issue that usually plagues racing games. It also feature a new Debug API Checker, which should provide much easier debugging for developers.

Prices of the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT RDNA3 graphics card are on a downward slope, with the card now starting at $800 on US computer hardware retailer Newegg. The ASRock RX 7900 XT Phantom Gaming, a custom-design graphics card, has been holding at $799.99 for roughly a week now, while the next cheapest card, an XFX co-branded AMD reference graphics card, is going for $839.99 on the site. These prices put the RX 7900 XT in a direct clash with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti. The RX 7900 XT was launched with an AMD MSRP of $899.99, with a performance level that compelled NVIDIA to re-position the RTX 4070 Ti (originally announced as the $900 RTX 4080 12 GB), to $800. In our testing, the RX 7900 XT is about 5% faster than the RTX 4070 Ti in conventional raster 3D graphics, but with a ray tracing performance that's comparable to the previous-generation RTX 3080 Ti.

AMD updated its game bundle campaign for Radeon graphics cards to include "The Last of Us Part 1." The new bundle went live as the previous one for "The Callisto Protocol" and "Dead Island 2" ended on February 4. The new bundle includes the latest RX 7000 series graphics cards in its list of eligible products. Starting February 5, new purchases of AMD Radeon graphics cards or prebuilt gaming desktops with them, in select markets and through participating retailers, will be eligible to a free copy of "The Last of Us Part 1." Eligible graphics cards include Radeon RX 7900 XTX, RX 7900 XT, RX 6950 XT, RX 6900 XT, RX 6800 XT, RX 6800, RX 6750 XT, RX 6700 XT, RX 6700, RX 6650 XT, RX 6600 XT, RX 6600, RX 6500 XT, and RX 6400, so the full stack of desktop AMD Radeon RX 6000 series and RX 7000 series products, are eligible.

Although we've known most of the details of AMD's I/O die in its Zen 4 processors, until now, AMD hadn't shared a die shot of the cIOD, but thanks to its ISSCC 2023 presentation, we not only have a die shot of the cIOD, but some friendly people on the internet have also made annotations for us mere mortals. There are no big secrets here, but based on the annotations by @Locuza_ we now know for certain that it's not possible to use the current I/O die with three CCDs, as it only has two GMI3 interfaces, to which the CCDs are connected.

If you're wondering about the 2x 40-bit memory interface, it's for ECC memory support outside of the on-die ECC support of DDR5 memory. Also note that DDR5 memory is two times 32-bit in non ECC mode. That said, it's up to the motherboard makers to implement support for ECC memory, but it would appear all Zen 4 CPUs support it. The addition of a GPU, even a basic one like this, takes up a fair bit of space inside the cIOD, especially once you add things like video decoders/encoders and so on. In fact, it appears that the parts related to the GPU and video decoders/encoders take up at least a third of the space inside the I/O die, yet thanks to a significant die shrink from the Zen 3 era cIOD, it's physically smaller in the Zen 4 processors, while having an estimated 58 percent increase in transistors.

Once upon a time, the data center market represented a duopoly of x86-64 makers AMD and Intel. However, in recent years companies started developing custom Arm-based processors to handle workloads as complex within smaller power envelopes and doing it more efficiently. According to Counterpoint Research firm, we have the latest data highlighting a significant new player called Ampere Computing in the data center world. With the latest data center revenue share report, we get to see Intel/AMD x86-64 and AWS/Ampere Arm CPU revenue. For the first time, we see that a 3rd party company, Ampere Computing, managed to capture as much as 1.54% market revenue share of the entire data center market in 2022. Thanks to having CPUs in off-the-shelf servers from OEMs, enterprises and cloud providers are able to easily integrate Ampere Altra processors.

Intel, still the most significant player, saw a 70.77% share of the overall revenue; however, that comes as a drop from 2021 data which stated an 80.71% revenue share in the data center market. This represents a 16% year-over-year decline. This reduction is not due to the low demand for server processors, as the global data center CPU market's revenue registered only a 4.4% YoY decline in 2022, but due to the high demand for AMD EPYC solutions, where team red managed to grab 19.84% of the revenue from 2022. This is a 62% YoY growth from last year's 11.74% revenue share. Slowly but surely, AMD is eating Intel's lunch. Another revenue source comes from Amazon Web Services (AWS), which the company filled with its Graviton CPU offerings based on Arm ISA. AWS Graviton CPUs accounted for 3.16% of the market revenue, up 74% from 1.82% in 2021.

Even more performance now also for RX 7900XTX Merc 310 GPU! Alphacool expands the assortment with the new and innovative Eisblock Aurora cooler for active water cooling of AMD RX 7900XTX Merc 310 graphics cards.

The enormous waste heat of the new graphics card generation is excellently dissipated with the cooler. Thanks to the particularly filigree fin structure, the cooling surface was increased and a very good water flow was made possible. The jet plate with revised inflow engine also distributes the water perfectly on the cooling fins. The full chrome plating of the copper base not only provides resistant protection against acids, scratches and damage, but also achieves remarkable homogeneity and significant gloss.