AMD announced that the AMD Pensando Distributed Services Card, powered by the industry's most advanced data processing unit (DPU)1, will be one of the first DPU solutions to support VMware vSphere 8 available from leading server vendors including Dell Technologies, HPE and Lenovo.

As data center applications grow in scale and sophistication, the resulting workloads increase the demand on infrastructure services as well as crucial CPU resources. VMware vSphere 8 aims to reimagine IT infrastructure as a composable architecture with a goal of offloading infrastructure workloads such as networking, storage, and security from the CPU by leveraging the new vSphere Distributed Services Engine, freeing up valuable CPU cycles to be used for business functions and revenue generating applications.

As we await technical documents from AMD detailing its new "Zen 4" microarchitecture, particularly the all-important CPU core Front-End and Branch Prediction units that have contributed two-thirds of the 13% IPC gain over the previous-generation "Zen 3" core, the tech enthusiast community is already decoding images from the Ryzen 7000 series launch presentation. "Skyjuice" presented the first annotation of the "Zen 4" core, revealing its large branch-prediction unit, enlarged micro-op cache, TLB, load/store unit, and dual-pumped 256-bit FPU that enables AVX-512 support. A quarter of the core's die-area is also taken up by the 1 MB dedicated L2 cache.

Chiakokhua (aka Retired Engineer) posted a table detailing the various caches and their latencies, comparing it with those of the "Zen 3" core. As AMD's Mark Papermaster revealed in the Ryzen 7000 launch event, the company has enlarged the micro-op cache of the core from 4 K entries to 6.75 K entries. The L1I and L1D caches remain 32 KB in size, each; while the L2 cache has doubled in size. The enlargement of the L2 cache has slightly increased latency, from 12 cycles to 14. Latency of the shared L3 cache is also up, from 46 cycles to 50 cycles. The reorder buffer (ROB) in the dispatch stage has been enlarged from 256 entries to 320 entries. The L1 branch target buffer (BTB) has increased in size from 1 KB to 1.5 KB.

GeIL is readying a fairly large lineup of its EVO V and Polaris RGB DDR5 memory lines featuring the AMD EXPO technology. These modules will pack both AMD EXPO and Intel XMP 3.0 profiles, but their advertised specs will apply on AMD Ryzen 7000-series platforms, whereas the XMP 3.0 profiles included will be an approximation of these specs. GeIL's lineup includes 32 GB dual-channel kits of two 16 GB modules. Frequencies include DDR5-4800 (JEDEC native), DDR5-5200 (JEDEC native), and EXPO-backed DDR5-5600, DDR5-6000, DDR5-6000 with tighter timings, DDR5-6200, and DDR5-6400. The exact part number, timings, and module voltages, are in the table below.

AMD in its Ryzen 7000 series launch event shared its near-future CPU architecture roadmap, in which it confirmed that the "Zen 4" microarchitecture, currently on the 5 nm foundry node, will see an optical-shrink to the 4 nm process in the near future. This doesn't necessarily indicate a new-generation CCD (CPU complex die) on 4 nm, it could even be a monolithic mobile SoC on 4 nm, or perhaps even "Zen 4c" (high core-count, low clock-speed, for cloud-compute); but it doesn't rule out the possibility of a 4 nm CCD that the company can use across both its enterprise and client processors.

The last time AMD hyphenated two foundry nodes for a single generation of the "Zen" architecture, was with the original (first-generation) "Zen," which debuted on the 14 nm node, but was optically shrunk and refined on the 12 nm node, with the company designating the evolution as "Zen+." The Ryzen 7000-series desktop processors, as well as the upcoming EPYC "Genoa" server processors, will ship with 5 nm CCDs, with AMD ticking it off in its roadmap. Chronologically placed next to it are "Zen 4" with 3D Vertical Cache (3DV Cache), and the "Zen 4c." The company is planning "Zen 4" with 3DV Cache both for its server- and desktop segments. Further down the roadmap, as we approach 2024, we see the company debut the future "Zen 5" architecture on the same 4 nm node, evolving into 3 nm on certain variants.

G.SKILL International Enterprise Co., Ltd., the world's leading brand of performance overclock memory and PC components, is excited to announce two new DDR5 memory series, the Trident Z5 Neo and Flare X5 series, designed for the new AMD Ryzen 7000 Series processors and 600 series motherboards. The Trident Z5 Neo family offerings include RGB (Trident Z5 Neo RGB) and non-RGB (Trident Z5 Neo) variants. Programmed with AMD EXPO technology and created with hand-screened memory ICs, the Trident Z5 Neo and Flare X5 series allow PC enthusiasts, gamers, and overclockers to experience the performance of the new AMD AM5 platform.

Designed for DDR5 memory-enabled AMD Ryzen 7000 Series desktop processors, the Trident Z5 Neo and Flare X5 series are pre-programmed with the latest AMD EXPO (EXtended Profiles for Overclocking) memory profiles, which allow users to easily overclock the memory kits. By simply enabling the AMD EXPO profile in the BIOS with a compatible motherboard and processor, users can unleash overclocked memory speeds on AMD Ryzen 7000 Series processors.

CORSAIR, a world leader in enthusiast components for gamers, creators, and PC builders, today announced the launch of DOMINATOR PLATINUM RGB DDR5 for AMD, VENGEANCE RGB DDR5 for AMD and VENGEANCE DDR5 for AMD, featuring new AMD EXPO technology and ready to power the next generation of Ryzen 7000-series powered PCs.

Available in frequencies up to a screaming-fast 6,000MT/s, and even higher in the future, all CORSAIR DDR5 for AMD kits offer AMD EXPO (Extended Profiles for Overclocking), allowing these modules to be set to their rated speed and performance in just a few clicks. AMD EXPO technology makes setup simple and ensures users can easily run their memory at the speed it was created to run at.

AMD in its Ryzen 7000 launch event teased its next-generation Radeon graphics card based on the RDNA3 graphics architecture. Built on an advanced process node just like "Zen 4," AMD is hoping to repeat the magic of the RX 6000 series, by achieving a 50% performance-per-Watt gain over the previous generation. which allows it either to build some really efficient GPUs, or consume the power headroom to offer significantly higher performance at power levels similar as the current-gen.

AMD's teaser included a brief look at the air-cooled RDNA3 flagship reference-design, and it looks stunning. The company showed off a live demo of the card playing "Lies of P," a AAA gaming title that made waves at Gamescom for its visuals. The game was shown playing on an RDNA3 graphics card running on a machine with a Ryzen 9 7950X processor at 4K, with extreme settings. AMD CEO Dr Lisa Su confirmed a 2022 launch for RDNA3.

AMD today announced the Ryzen 7000 series "Zen 4" desktop processors. These debut the company's new "Zen 4" architecture to the market, increasing IPC, performance, with new-generation I/O such as DDR5 and PCI-Express Gen 5. AMD hasn't increased core-counts over the previous-generation, the Ryzen 5 series is still 6-core/12-thread, the Ryzen 7 8-core/16-thread, and Ryzen 9 either 12-core/24-thread, or 16-core/32-thread; but these are all P-cores. AMD is claiming a 13% IPC uplift generation over generation, which coupled with faster DDR5 memory, and CPU clock speeds of up to 5.70 GHz, give the Ryzen 7000-series processor an up to 29% single-core performance gain over the Ryzen 5000 "Zen 3."

At their press event, AMD showed us an up to 35% increase in gaming performance over the previous-generation, and an up to 45% increase in creator performance (which is where it gets the confidence to stick to its core-counts from). The "Zen 4" CPU core dies (CCDs) are built on the TSMC 5 nm EUV (N5) node. Even the I/O die sees a transition to 6 nm (N6), from 12 nm. The switch to 5 nm gives "Zen 4" 62 percent lower power for the same performance, or 49% more performance for the same power. versus the Ryzen 5000 series on 7 nm. The "Zen 4" core along with its dedicated L2 cache is 50% smaller, and 47% more energy efficient than the "Golden Cove" P-core of "Alder Lake."

EK, the leading computer cooling solutions provider, is announcing the latest generation of EK-Quantum Velocity² water blocks. These socket-specific water blocks are engineered specifically for the upcoming AMD AM5 socket and Ryzen 7000-series CPUs. Like its AM4 predecessor, the AM5 water block features EK-Matrix7 compatibility, which means it's designed according to the standard where the product's height and port distance are managed in 7 mm increments.

The product deploys a modified Velocity² cooling engine optimized for Ryzen 7000-series CPUs to ensure the best cooling performance and optimal coolant flow. While the mounting hole pattern of the new AM5 socket is still 54 x 90 mm, the AM5 motherboards now have an integrated CPU socket backplate with #UNC 6-32 threads, therefore requiring a new mounting system.

A screenshot of an alleged AMD Ryzen 9 7950X "Zen 4" processor surfaced on the web, courtesy of OneRaichu, and this time there's no blur-out with the score field—15645 points. When compared to the alleged CPU-Z Bench scores of the Core i9-13900K "Raptor Lake" from last week, the Intel 8P+16E hybrid processor ends up 7.9% faster than this score, but still a very close second.

The Ryzen 9 7950X ends up a significant 23.47% faster than the leaked score of the Core i7-13700K (8P+8E), and the AMD flagship scores 33.5% faster than the previous-gen Intel flagship Core i9-12900K. While both the i7-13700K and i9-12900K are 8P+8E, the "Raptor Lake" gets ahead with higher IPC for the P-cores, slightly higher clocks, and more cache for the E-core clusters. The 7950X is also 32.12% faster than its predecessor, the Ryzen 9 5950X "Zen 3," and a whopping 58.39% faster than the Core i7-12700K (8P+4E).

Possible launch SEP pricing of AMD's Ryzen 7000 series "Zen 4" desktop processors leaked to the web by Wccftech, which appear to be similar to those of the Ryzen 5000 "Zen 3" at launch. AMD will launch a slim set of four SKUs in its first round of these processors—the flagship Ryzen 9 7950X (16-core/32-thread), followed by the second-best Ryzen 9 7900X (12-core/24-thread), the Ryzen 7 7700X (8-core/16-thread), and the mid-range Ryzen 5 7600X (6-core/12-thread).

Apparently, the series debuts with the Ryzen 5 7600X at $299, or the same SEP of the Ryzen 5 5600X at launch. The Ryzen 7 7700X launches at $449. The Ryzen 9 7900X comes in at $549, and the flagship Ryzen 9 7950X at $799, which again, is identical to that of the 5950X. Besides processors, motherboard vendors are expected to launch their first Socket AM5 motherboards, debuting with the AMD X670E and X670 chipsets. There's talk of mid-range chipsets such as the B650 and B650E, but we haven't seen any confirmed products show up on motherboard vendors' websites, yet. Pre-launch pricing for the X670E and X670 put them at a significant premium over the current Socket AM4 flagship boards based on the X570. Besides processors and motherboards, we could see announcements from memory vendors launching their first DDR5 memory products to feature AMD EXPO technology.

AMD's upcoming launch of Ryzen 7000 series processors will bring an entirely new AM5 platform that will enable newer technologies and protocols. We have DDR5 memory and PCIe 5.0 connection with everything at level five. However, the upcoming chipsets AMD has designed to work alongside the new processors will be available in several variants. There will be regular X670 and B650 versions that support either a PCIe 5.0 GPU or a PCIe 5.0 M.2 NVIMe SSD. Today, we got a confirmation that not only the big X670 chipset has an "E" or "Extreme" version, but its smaller brother B650 as well. With X670E and B650E, users get both PCIe 5.0 connectivity for their GPU and M.2 NVIMe SSD. For more information, we have to wait for AMD's official launch information later today.

Fmax (or Frequency max), is the maximum clock speed an AMD "Zen" processor will automatically boost/overclock to, at stock multiplier settings. To go beyond this, you'll have to increase the multiplier value, and overclock the traditional way. The Fmax value for AMD's upcoming flagship desktop processor, the Ryzen 9 7950X "Zen 4," is reportedly set at 5.85 GHz. To facilitate this, you'll have to enable settings such as Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO), to eke out the power limits needed to get here. Competing Intel parts, such as the "Raptor Lake" Core i9-13900K, is reported to have a similar maximum boost frequency, of 5.80 GHz, but that's just for its 8 P-cores.

The upcoming AMD Ryzen 9 7950X 16-core/32-thread processor is allegedly over 40% faster than its predecessor, the 5950X, at the CPU-Z Bench multi-threaded test, according to a leaked benchmark screenshot scored by harukaze5719, and tabulated by Wccftech. The 7950X is shown with a score of 16809 points, which puts it 41 percent faster than the 5950X, and 43% faster than the i9-12900K. It's also shown to be behind the leaked benchmarks of the i9-13900K by a whisker—with the upcoming Intel chip being 0.5% faster.

Considering Sony's recently announced price hike for the PS5 (in whatever soil lies outside the U.S.), the question remained whether Microsoft would follow suit. Sony's claimed reasons for the price hike, stemming from rising inflation and increased production costs, are certainly general and actual enough that they could be true for any business. Yet it seems that Microsoft is either not operating in the same global landscape as Sony - or perhaps the company is merely more willing to shoulder the additional costs so as not to increase pricing.

Speaking with Windows Central, Microsoft clarified that "We are constantly evaluating our business to offer our fans great gaming options. Our Xbox Series S suggested retail price remains at $299 (£250, €300) the Xbox Series X is $499 (£450, €500)." Which is actually a great thing, especially considering that gamers around the world are still underserved in the amount of available PS5 and Xbox consoles that have been made available to buy. The Xbox stock situation has improved faster than that of the PS5, but there are still millions of gamers who haven't been able to get their hands on one or the other - and those still waiting for a PS5 console for no fault of their own are now dealing with increased pricing on an almost 2-year-old console.

Y-Cruncher is a multi-threaded Pi calculation benchmark. Its author, Alexander Yee, has access to an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X 16-core/32-thread sample, and has developed the latest version 0.7.10 of the Y-Cruncher binary with optimization for the "Zen 4" microarchitecture, and to take advantage of the AVX-512 instruction-set on these chips. Without disclosing the juicy performance numbers obtained in his testing, Yee posted a screenshot of Y-cruncher with the 7950X, on a machine with Windows 11 22Hx, and 64 GB of memory. You know it's optimized, since the multi-core efficiency is as high as 98% (all threads are being saturated with the Pi calculation workload).

Alleged Cinebench R23 single-threaded benchmark numbers of the upcoming Ryzen 7 7700X and Ryzen 5 7600X "Zen 4" processors, leaked to the web by Greymon55, and tabulated by VideoCardz, show the two chips to be matching Intel's 12th and 13th Gen Core processors. The 7700X 8-core/16-thread processor is shown scoring anywhere between 2000 to 2099 points (denoted as 20xx), while the 7600X does anywhere between 1900 to 1999 points (19xx). This would see the two easily match/beat the 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" P-cores, with the i9-12900K scoring 2000 points, and the i5-12600K getting 1920 points.

Numbers for the unreleased 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" put Intel at an advantage, with the i9-13900K allegedly scoring 2290 points, and the i5-13600K allegedly 1967 points, but what's important is that the single-thread performance, and application performance of less-parallelized workloads, such as games, could be highly competitive for "Zen 4" against Intel.

AMD is allegedly ready with a working "Zen 4" chiplet that has stacked 3D Vertical Cache (3DV cache) memory, which supplements the on-die L3 cache, and is found to massively improve gaming performance. "Moore's Law is Dead" reports that the Zen 4 + 3DV Cache chiplet will be used with various Ryzen 7000X3D SKUs, as well as special EPYC "Genoa" SKUs.

The 3DV Cache deployed with the "Zen 4" chiplet is a second-generation to the one on the "Zen 3 + 3DV cache" chiplet, and AMD has worked on a number of bandwidth and latency improvements, so it performs in-sync with the generationally-faster on-die L3 cache of the "Zen 4" chiplet. Unlike the CCD below it that's built on TSMC N5 (5 nm EUV), the L3D (the stacked die with the 3DV cache) is possibly be built on an older node, such as N6 (6 nm), since it only contains a slab of memory and doesn't warrant N5. "Moore's Law is Dead" reports that AMD expects to repeat the magic of the 5800X3D when it comes to gaming performance, and expects Ryzen 7000X3D processors to dominate Intel's 13th Gen "Raptor Lake" processors. This was echoed by another reliable source, greymon55.

The latest Community Update 1 patch of "Dying Light: Stay Human" adds support for the AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.0 (FSR 2.0) performance enhancement. This adds several more quality-performance presets that improve visuals over FSR 1.0 at a given frame-rate, or improve frame-rate at a given quality-level. The update also improves the game's memory-management of the GPU's video memory in DirectX 12 mode, which should benefit features such as real-time ray tracing. There are other minor fixes for SSAO and TAA temporal anti-aliasing.

AMD is now TSMC's second largest customer for its 5 nanometer N5 silicon fabrication node, according to a DigiTimes report. The Taiwan-based semiconductor industry observer also reports that AMD is more resilient than Intel in facing any downturns in the PC industry, in the coming few months. PC sales are expected to slump by as much as 15 percent in the near future, but the lower market-share compared to Intel; and the flexibility for AMD to move its CPU chips over to enterprise product to feed the growth in server processor segment, means that the company can ride over a bumpy road in the near future. The lower market-share translates to "lesser pain" from a slump compared to Intel. The report also says that embracing TSMC for processors "just in time" means that AMD has a front-row seat with product performance, time-to-market, yields, and delivery.

AMD is on the anvil of two major product launches on 5 nm, the Ryzen 7000 series "Raphael" desktop processors on August 30 (according to the report), and EPYC "Genoa" server processors in November 2022. The company is planning to refresh its notebook processor lineup in the first half of 2023, with "Dragon Range," and "Phoenix Point" targeting distinct market segments among notebooks. "Dragon Range" is essentially "Raphael" (5 nm chiplet + 6 nm cIOD) on a mobile-optimized BGA package, letting AMD cram up to 16 "Zen 4" cores, and take on Intel's high core-count mobile processors. The iGPU of "Dragon Range" will be basic, since designs based on this chip are expected to use discrete GPUs. "Phoenix Point" is a purpose-built mobile processor with up to 8 "Zen 4" cores, and a powerful iGPU based the RDNA3 architecture.

Ansys announced that Ansys Mechanical is one of the first commercial finite element analysis (FEA) programs supporting AMD Instinct accelerators, the newest data center GPUs from AMD. The AMD Instinct accelerators are designed to provide exceptional performance for data centers and supercomputers to help solve the world's most complex problems. To support the AMD Instinct accelerators, Ansys developed APDL code in Ansys Mechanical to interface with AMD ROCm libraries on Linux, which will support performance and scaling on the AMD accelerators.

Ansys' latest collaboration with AMD resulted in a solution that, according to Ansys' tests, significantly speeds up simulation of large structural mechanical models—between three and six times faster for Ansys Mechanical applications using the sparse direct solver. Adding support for AMD Instinct accelerators in Ansys Mechanical gives customers greater flexibility in their choice of high-performance computing (HPC) hardware.

The Cinebench R20 score of an AMD Ryzen 7 7700X "Zen 4" processor (possibly engineering sample), was allegedly leaked to the web by "Extreme Player Hall," a video-format tech news published on Bili Bili, as discovered by 9550pro on Twitter. The 8-core/16-thread processor was shown scoring 773 points in the single-thread test, and 7701 points in the multi-threaded one. These numbers put it 25-30 percent faster than the current Ryzen 7 5800X, as pointed out by Greymon55. The multi-threaded performance of this chip is roughly on par with that of the 5900X, which means AMD is overcoming a 50% CPU core-deficit on the backs of higher IPC and memory bandwidth.

The 25% single-core performance gain over the 5800X, if extrapolated to other less-parallized workloads such as gaming, could put this processor about 5-10% ahead of the 5800X3D, and about 4-9% ahead of the Core i9-12900K. The 7700X could face an uphill task measuring up to "Raptor Lake" in multi-threaded tests, given that Intel is doubling down on its Hybrid Architecture, with more E-cores across the lineup. AMD may still have a crack at matching Raptor Lake's gaming performance with future variants that have 3DV Cache.

AMD in its HotChips 22 presentation released a block-diagram of its biggest AI-HPC processor, the Instinct MI250X. Based on the CDNA2 compute architecture, at the heart of the MI250X is the "Aldebaran" MCM (multi-chip module). This MCM contains two logic dies (GPU dies), and eight HBM2E stacks, four per GPU die. The two GPU dies are connected by a 400 GB/s Infinity Fabric link. They each have up to 500 GB/s of external Infinity Fabric bandwidth for inter-socket communications; and PCI-Express 4.0 x16 as the host system bus for AIC form-factors. The two GPU dies together make up 58 billion transistors, and are fabricated on the TSMC N6 (6 nm) node.

The component hierarchy of each GPU die sees eight Shader Engines share a last-level L2 cache. The eight Shader Engines total 112 Compute Units, or 14 CU per engine. The CDNA2 compute unit contains 64 stream processors making up the Shader Core, and four Matrix Core Units. These are specialized hardware for matrix/tensor math operations. There are hence 7,168 stream processors per GPU die, and 14,336 per package. AMD claims a 100% increase in double-precision compute performance over CDNA (MI100). AMD attributes this to increases in frequencies, efficient data paths, extensive operand reuse and forwarding; and power-optimization enabling those higher clocks. The MI200 is already powering the Frontier supercomputer, and is working for more design wins in the HPC space. The company also dropped a major hint that the MI300, based on CDNA3, will be an APU. It will incorporate GPU dies, core-logic, and CPU CCDs onto a single package, in what is a rival solution to NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchip.

An alleged AMD Ryzen 5 7600X "Zen 4" engineering sample showed up on the Chinese gray market. The sample is reportedly clocked at 4.40 GHz, which is below the 4.70 GHz base frequency of the 7600X as shown in leaked specs sheets; with a rumored boost frequency of up to 5.30 GHz. It looks like 6-core/12-thread will indeed be the core-configuration for the Ryzen 5 7000 series, with which Intel hopes to take on 13th Gen Core i5 that has 6P+4E (16-thread) on the lower-end SKUs, and 6P+8E (20-thread) on the higher-end ones.

ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) today announced the latest gaming gear at Gamescom 2022, including the AMD X670E series motherboards, AIO coolers, PSU, displays, networking products, and peripherals. Along with these products, ROG released its first music single Reality, with vocals by renowned voice actor and musician Troy Baker, more commonly known for his roles in video games like The Last of Us and Uncharted series. An anime-inspired interactive 360° music video featuring the song is available on YouTube.

ROG Swift OLED PG42UQ / PG48UQ: The 42-inch ROG Swift OLED PG42UQ is designed for immersive desktop gaming and features 4K visuals at an overclocked 138 Hz refresh rate. The OLED panel ensures the deepest hues, as well as vibrant colors thanks to a 98% DCI-P3 color gamut and Delta E < 2 color difference. An ultrafast 0.1 ms (GTG) response time ensures great viewing and gaming experiences. The larger, 48-inch ROG Swift OLED PG48UQ is ideal for those looking to play their games on an even bigger scale. ROG OLED monitors include a custom heatsink that offers more surface area for heat exchange, resulting in up to 8% lower operating temperatures compared to ROG monitors without a heatsink to ensure better OLED performance and longevity.