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.

AMD's upcoming Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7985WX "Storm Peak" workstation processor surfaced on Puget Systems PugetBench online database. The 7985WX is a 64-core/128-thread processor based on the "Zen 4" microarchitecture, that's configured with an 8-channel DDR5 memory interface (16 sub-channels), and a 128-lane PCI-Express Gen 5 root-complex. The processor was spotted running on an AMD internal development board codenamed "Boulder Gulch" (AMD uses weird internal codenames to back-trace leaks). The machine had a cool 256 GB of 8-channel DDR5-5600 memory, and an NVIDIA RTX A5000 GPU. AMD is planning to release the Ryzen 7000WX workstation processor series some time in October 2023.

RubyRapids and westlake tipped off VideoCardz to the presence of interesting information sitting within the latest AMD Adrenalin update notes—its integrated driver compatibility list has been expanded with the addition of a mobile-oriented iGPU Radeon 700M family (780M, 760M and 740M). It seems that Team Red's Phoenix series will be included in the main branch, and not be limited to OEM distribution for software improvements. A public driver release schedule for the Radeon 700M series will provide gamers with access to official updates through normal channels, with the benefit of—hopefully—no major delays.

VideoCardz reckons that an integration into the main branch means: "that whether the GPU being updated relies on RDNA3 in a discrete GPU or as an integrated solution, it will be fully supported through one package. The latest 23.7.2 driver now supports Radeon 7000 desktop and mobile, AMD Ryzen 7045 Dragon Range, Ryzen 7040U and Ryzen 7040HS series." The ASUS ROG Ally's Ryzen Z1 series seems to be the exception, since AMD has not included these APUs in the latest list of supported devices. Folks who have pored over the document have discovered up to "517 devices listed on the hardware support list, including PCI Device IDs and sub-IDs." Many Phoenix APU models are seemingly destined for fitting in a wide variety of laptops and (very likely handheld) gaming consoles. A mysterious model—Ryzen 7 7840S—was also spotted. This looks to be a Lenovo-specific 8-core Ryzen processor based on Phoenix silicon—ITHome believes that it utilizes a customized FP8 package.

AMD has released the latest Adrenalin 23.7.2 WHQL drivers. The release notes include several fixed issues, including those seen in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II when Radeon Anti-Lag is enabled, as well as issues with higher GPU Memory Utilization when using certain record and stream settings like instant replay, corruption seen with some player models while playing Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA Mega Mix+ on certain AMD graphics cards, issue with audio getting out of sync with video when recording from AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition with AVC and HEVC codecs, and display signal issues after switching windows on certain Adaptive-Sync enabled monitors with some AMD graphics cards like the Radeon RX 7900 XTX.

The release notes also include a note that factory reset has been temporarily disabled as a precautionary measure due to isolated installation issues during PC upgrades, and AMD Cleanup Utility can be used as a temporary option. AMD also notes that it is working with game developers of Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart to resolve stability issues in the game when ray tracing is enabled, so we expect an update soon.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Software Adrenalin 23.7.2 WHQL

AMD is preparing its Ryzen 5 7500F processor for a global launch according to reports from earlier today—Team Red's German operation has since informed local media outlets about its updated international release strategy for the iGPU-less Zen 4 desktop SKU. Markus Lindner, a regional company spokesman stated: "This processor model will be available starting July 23, 2023 at 9PM ET. It will be available in greater China as a processor-in-box, and in the rest of world as an option for select system builders."

Chinese reviewers have been getting hands-on experience with the Ryzen 5 7500F, with early reports pointing to impressive performance for its price point ($180) when lined up against competing Intel Core i5-13400 and i5-13400F CPUs. International buyers could express concern regarding AMD Germany's mentioning that availability will be somewhat limited to system integrators. Hopefully these "select system builders" will have good distribution links to retail outlets—70% of TPU quick poll participants expressed interest in seeing a western launch (prior to AMD's "global" announcement).

Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson has picked up some interesting insider knowledge about the long rumored PlayStation 5 Pro gaming console—his (side hustle) Key to Gaming article theorizes that a project codenamed "Trinity" has been in-progress since early 2022. Sony is apparently sticking to its tradition of using Matrix themed codenames for internal hardware projects—PlayStation 4 Pro was referred to as "Neo," and PlayStation VR's alias was "Morpheus." His inside sources claim that Sony has been showing off Trinity prototype units to game development studios, with refreshed dev kits lined up for the "majority" of interested parties by November 2023.

Henderson's sources provided scant info about Trinity's specs and performance goals: "Although the Pro's specs were difficult to pin down, (admittedly) due to my lack of technological prowess, sources have stated that Trinity with have 30 WGP and 18000mts memory. As for the consoles performance targets and as to be expected, the PlayStation 5 Pro will be targeting improved and consistent FPS at 4K resolution, a new "performance mode" for 8K resolution, and accelerated ray tracing. Whether or not a PlayStation 5 Pro console is desired enough in the current market remains to be seen, but as of writing, the PlayStation 5 Pro is in development and is targeting a November 2024 release date." The leaked information has been interpreted several ways by different outlets—mostly focusing on the improved AMD RDNA-powered GPU. I have included Zuba_Tech's updated spec sheet (see below), which seems to be a bit on the fanciful side of things (proposing 72 CUs). Others have theorized that the revised GPU could offer twice the performance of the base PS5 model's Oberon RDNA 2-based GPU (36 CUs).

Minisforum Today has just revealed exciting information about their latest ITX Mini PC. This sleek device incorporates a motherboard that was showcased at the COMPUTEX 2023 booth, featuring variants from the Intel Raptor Lake HX55 series and AMD 7045HX series CPU. The all-new Minisforum ITX Mini PC is equipped with a PCIe 5.0 x16 slot and discrete graphics card for seamless desktop connectivity. It also supports SFX power supply for added convenience.

Moreover, Minisforum has meticulously designed an elegant 6L case for this new member, catering to users who desire both aesthetics and functionality. Customers have the flexibility to purchase the motherboard separately or opt for the complete set, which includes both the motherboard and the ITX PC case. While Minisforum has not yet disclosed the price and launch date, this highly anticipated product is sure to make waves in the market.

The China-specific AMD Ryzen 5 7500F desktop processor could see a wider international launch, reports VideoCardz, citing the AMD website, which has marked its regional availability as "global." The processor is priced at USD $180 for the retail PIB package. The 7500F is a 6-core/12-thread processor based on the same "Raphael" Zen 4 MCM as the 7600X, but lacks integrated graphics, has a lower 65 W TDP, and slightly lower clock speeds. The processor saw a China-exclusive release earlier this week. Chinese and regional media with access to samples reviewed the processor, noting that its gaming performance 6% behind that of the Ryzen 5 7600X at 1080p, but more importantly, the Ryzen 5 7500F is 13% faster than the Core i5-13400 in terms of average FPS, and about 8% faster in 1% low FPS.

This makes the Ryzen 5 7500F a faster gaming processor than the $200 Core i5-13400, and the $180 Core i5-13400F, which it was originally designed to square off against. The Ryzen 5 7500F is configured with 6 cores and 12 threads, 1 MB of L2 cache per core, and 32 MB of shared L3 cache. The processor has a base frequency of 3.70 GHz, with a 5.00 GHz boost that's just 100 MHz behind that of the Ryzen 5 7600 (65 W), and 300 MHz behind the 7600X (105 W). The "F" in the brand extension indicates a lack of integrated graphics, which shouldn't be a dealbreaker for the processor's intended audience—PC gamers. AMD is including a Wraith Stealth stock cooler with the retail 7500F, which coupled with A620 chipset motherboards that start at $125, should make for a formidable mainstream gaming PC platform with ample upgrade headroom.

A new vulnerability has been discovered in AMD Zen 2 based CPUs by Tavis Ormandy, a Google Information Security researcher. Ormandy has named the new vulnerability Zenbleed—also known as CVE-2023-20593—and it's said to affect all Zen 2 based AMD processors, which means Ryzen 3000, 4000 and 5000-series CPUs and APUs, as well as EPYC server chips. The reason why Zenbleed is of concern is because it doesn't require a potential attacker to have physical access to the computer or server in question and it's said to be possible to trigger the vulnerability via executing a javascript on a webpage. This means that the attack vector ends up being massive, at least when we're talking about something like a webhosting company.

Zenbleed is said to allow a potential attacker to gain access to things like encryption keys and user logins via triggering something called "the XMM Register Merge Optimization2, followed by a register rename and a mispredicted vzeroupper." Apparently this requires some precision for the vulnerability to work, but due to these registers being used system wide, even a sandboxed attacker can gain access to them. AMD has already issued a patch for its EPYC server CPUs, which obviously are the most vulnerable systems in question and the company is planning to release patches for all of its Zen 2 based CPUs before the end of the year. Hit up the source links for more details about Zenbleed.