AMD Ryzen 9 7900X3D is the often-ignored middle child of the 7000X3D series that's flanked by the reigning gaming CPU champion, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D; and the company's flagship Ryzen 9 7950X3D, which performs within 5% of the 7800X3D in gaming, but with the added 8 cores shoring up its productivity performance against the Core i9-14900K. Pricing of the 7900X3D dropped to $409 on Amazon, which is a huge departure from its $600 launch price. At this price, the 7900X3D is set up for a direct clash with the Intel Core i7-14700K, which is going for $400, with its iGPU-disabled sibling, the i7-14700KF listed at $392.

The Ryzen 9 7900X3D is is a 12-core/24-thread dual-CCD processor, with its 12 cores spread among two CCDs in a 6+6 configuration. The first of the two CCDs has the 96 MB L3 cache thanks to the 3D Vertical Cache (3D V-cache) technology, while the second is a regular CCD with just the 32 MB on-die L3 cache, but which can sustain higher clock speeds than the 3D V-cache CCD. The similar 16 core 7950X3D flagship can be had for $600, or about $50 higher than the i9-14900K, while the 7800X3D is going for $370.

Redevelopment of the AMD Radeon Anti-Lag+ feature is in full swing, and the feature is coming back soon, the company confirmed. Responding to a specific question on Twitter on reintroduction of Anti-Lag+, AMD's gaming solutions head Frank Azor confirmed that it is coming soon. Anti-Lag+ is AMD's whole system latency reduction technology that rivals NVIDIA Reflex.

Anti-Lag+ benefits not just competitive online gaming, but is also supposed to be a vital component for FSR 3 frame-generation, as the technology imposes a considerable amount of latency. You can notice this in current titles with FSR 3, including in some cases, ghosting artifacts with fast-moving objects in a 3D scene. This is why NVIDIA Reflex is an integral component of DLSS 3 Frame Generation, and is enabled along with it. AMD had withdrawn Anti-Lag+ as the technology had inadvertently tripped Anti-Cheat mechanisms of several online games, causing automated player bans that game developers had to manually identify and reverse. The company will have to redesign the way Anti-Lag+ works, and extensively test it with competitive games before reintroducing it.

iBUYPOWER, a leading manufacturer of high-performance custom gaming PCs, today announced it has become the official PC of VALORANT Champions Tour (VCT) Americas, VCT Game Changers North America, and VCT Game Changers Brazil. As iBUYPOWER celebrates its 25th anniversary, the partnership amplifies and highlights iBUYPOWER's dedication and integral role in supporting esports players with quality and reliable tools to succeed in their craft.

The 'iBUYPOWER ACE' moment will bring added excitement and value to both professional players and their communities of fans throughout the 2024 VCT Americas schedule. To celebrate the iBUYPOWER ACE, a triumphant, high-skill, moment where a single player eliminates all five of the opposing team's players to achieve victory, iBUYPOWER will be unlocking PC giveaways for VCT Americas fans (currently available to residents of the United States and Canada).

AMD has quietly funded an effort over the past two years to enable binary compatibility for NVIDIA CUDA applications on their ROCm stack. This allows CUDA software to run on AMD Radeon GPUs without adapting the source code. The project responsible is ZLUDA, which was initially developed to provide CUDA support on Intel graphics. The developer behind ZLUDA, Andrzej Janik, was contracted by AMD in 2022 to adapt his project for use on Radeon GPUs with HIP/ROCm. He spent two years bringing functional CUDA support to AMD's platform, allowing many real-world CUDA workloads to run without modification. AMD decided not to productize this effort for unknown reasons but did open-source it once funding ended per their agreement. Over at Phoronix, there were several benchmarks testing AMD's ZLUDA implementation over a wide variety of benchmarks.

Benchmarks found that proprietary CUDA renderers and software worked on Radeon GPUs out-of-the-box with the drop-in ZLUDA library replacements. CUDA-optimized Blender 4.0 rendering now runs faster on AMD Radeon GPUs than the native ROCm/HIP port, reducing render times by around 10-20%, depending on the scene. The implementation is surprisingly robust, considering it was a single-developer project. However, there are some limitations—OptiX and PTX assembly codes still need to be fully supported. Overall, though, testing showed very promising results. Over the generic OpenCL runtimes in Geekbench, CUDA-optimized binaries produce up to 75% better results. With the ZLUDA libraries handling API translation, unmodified CUDA binaries can now run directly on top of ROCm and Radeon GPUs. Strangely, the ZLUDA port targets AMD ROCm 5.7, not the newest 6.x versions. Only time will tell if AMD continues investing in this approach to simplify porting of CUDA software. However, the open-sourced project now enables anyone to contribute and help improve compatibility. For a complete review, check out Phoronix tests.

GIGABYTE is ready with its first custom design graphics card based on the AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE (Golden Rabbit Edition). Originally designed for the Chinese domestic market, the RX 7900 GRE is finding its way across other Asian markets, and is also available in Europe. This GIGABYTE graphics card could be among the RX 7900 GRE cards to make it to the old continent. The card's design resembles that of the company's RX 7800 XT Gaming OC, which is slightly smaller than that of the RX 7900 XT Gaming OC. It features a triple-slot WindForce 3X cooling solution with a dual aluminium fin-stack heatsink that uses a copper base-plate, four heatpipes, and a trio of 80 mm fans. The card is about 30 cm long, 13 cm tall, and 5.6 cm thick. It uses a pair of 8-pin PCIe power connectors.

The Radeon RX 7900 GRE is based on the "Navi 31" XL silicon, which is essentially the "Navi 31" chiplet GPU on a compact package that's about the size of a "Navi 32." AMD designed this smaller package for its mobile RX 7900 series SKUs. The RX 7900 GRE is configured with 80 RDNA3 compute units, which make up 5,120 stream processors, 160 AI accelerators, 80 Ray accelerators, and 320 TMUs. It gets the full 192 ROP count of the silicon. The SKU only has four out of six MCDs (memory cache dies) enabled, which gives it 64 MB of Infinity Cache, and a 256-bit wide memory bus, driving 16 GB of 18 Gbps GDDR6 for 576 GB/s of memory bandwidth. The total board power (TBP) of the RX 7900 GRE is configured at 260 W, which is about the same as that of the RX 7800 XT. The GIGABYTE Gaming OC card is expected to come with a slight factory overclock for the GPU.

AMD Ryzen 7 8700G continues to be the favorite new toy for overclockers and enthusiasts. Der8auer succeeded in de-lidding the chip (removing its IHS), to reveal the monolithic "Hawk Point" silicon underneath. By default, the chip uses soldered TIM, but with the IHS removed and sTIM residue cleaned off, the chip could be prepared for direct die cooling, through liquid metal TIM. This feat enabled load temperatures to drop from 85°C to just over 60°C. This enabled a 5.00 GHz all-core overclock for the chip's 8 "Zen 4" CPU cores.

Also over the last week, SkatterBencher succeeded in getting the iGPU engine clock of the 8700G to 3.30 GHz, which is 50 MHz higher than the slider limit for Precision Boost Overdrive. SkatterBencher's report says that an 8700G can have its power limits raised all the way up to 170 W. The 3.30 GHz iGPU overclock was supported by a core voltage of 1.25 V (which is high considering the tight vCore limits AMD sets for its APUs). The increased power limits and clock speeds result in a 22.31% iGPU performance increase when averaged over 14 tests.

AMD's upcoming family of Ryzen 9000 series of processors on the AM5 platform will carry a new silicon SKU under the hood—Zen 5. The latest revision of AMD's x86-64 microarchitecture will feature a few interesting improvements over its current Zen 4 that it is replacing, targeting the rumored 10-15% IPC improvement. Thanks to the latest set of patches for GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), we have the patch set that proposes changes taking place with "znver5" enablement. One of the most interesting additions to the Zen 5 over the previous Zen 4 is the expansion of the AVX instruction set, mainly new AVX and AVX-512 instructions: AVX-VNNI, MOVDIRI, MOVDIR64B, AVX512VP2INTERSECT, and PREFETCHI.

AVX-VNNI is a 256-bit vector version of the AVX-512 VNNI instruction set that accelerates neural network inferencing workloads. AVX-VNNI delivers the same VNNI instruction set for CPUs that support 256-bit vectors but lack full 512-bit AVX-512 capabilities. AVX-VNNI effectively extends useful VNNI instructions for AI acceleration down to 256-bit vectors, making the technology more efficient. While narrow in scope (no opmasking and extra vector register access compared to AVX-512 VNNI), AVX-VNNI is crucial in spreading VNNI inferencing speedups to real-world CPUs and applications. The new AVX-512 VP2INTERSECT instruction is also making it in Zen 5, as noted above, which has been present only in Intel Tiger Lake processor generation, and is now considered deprecated for Intel SKUs. We don't know the rationale behind this inclusion, but AMD sure had a use case for it.

AMD FSR 3 Is Coming To The Thaumaturge—a Gripping and Dark RPG. The Thaumaturge is a story-driven RPG with morally ambiguous choices, taking place in the culturally diverse world of early 20th century Warsaw. In this world, Salutors exist: esoteric beings that only Thaumaturges can truly perceive and use for their needs. The Thaumaturge launches February 20th, with AMD FSR 3. Watch the brand new story trailer below.

When it launches later this month, The Thaumaturge will feature AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 3. FSR 3 transforms gaming experiences with massive and responsive framerates in supported games using a combination of temporal upscaling technology, advanced frame generation, and built-in latency reduction technology.

An AMD Athlon K7 "Pluto" processor has been examined by Fritzchens Fritz, a well known close-up photographer of CPU and GPU dies—his latest project has uncovered a decades old hidden secret. He posted this discovery to social media earlier this week, and made sure to include various images for context purposes: "AMD Athlon K7 Pluto Top Metal Layer. A revolver and Texas Map can be found in one of the four corners! And some explanations about the stone relief. The relief contains the AMD Athlon K7 Series from: Argon -> Pluto -> Thunderbird -> Palomino -> Thoroughbred -> Barton." Team Red's turn of the millennium mainstream processor family fought off Intel's Pentium III CPU architecture (1999 to 2000)—many contemporary reports have handed that time period's victory to AMD. Fritz's funny find received a lot of news coverage, with many authors expressing disbelief about the miniscule revolver and Map of Texas being hidden in (sort of) plain sight for nearly 25 years.

Phil Park, an AMD veteran—currently working in the memory systems department as a Fabric performance engineer—posted an insightful reply to Fritz's historical guesstimations (Greco-Roman themes via the stone relief). Another Team Red revelation was revealed: "The original Athlon naming scheme (Mustang, Thunderbird, Spitfire) had a different theme (cars), but the rumor was that some companies got wind of this, so we changed themes rather than get involved in dumb trademark battles over internal codenames. So it became horses." If we read between the very obvious lines, Park suggests that Ford, Chevrolet, and BMW were keeping an eye on AMD product naming conventions.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti an now be found for as low as $699, which means it is now selling at the same price as the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT graphics card. The GeForce RTX 4070 Ti definitely lags behind the Radeon RX 7900 XT, and packs less VRAM (12 GB vs. 20 GB), and the faster GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER is selling for around $100 more. The Radeon RX 7900 XT is around 6 to 11 percent faster, depending on the game and the resolution.

The GeForce RTX 4070 Ti card in question comes from MSI and it is Ventus 2X OC model listed over at Newegg.com for $749.99 with a $50-off promotion code. Bear in mind that this is a dual-fan version from MSI and we are quite sure we'll see similar promotions from other NVIDIA AIC partners.

Phoronix head honcho, Michael Larabel, has noticed another set of interesting updates for AMD Graphics on Linux—albeit in preparation for next generation solutions: "engineers on Monday (February 5) posted a few new patch series for enabling some updated IP (intellectual property) blocks within their open-source AMDGPU Linux kernel graphics driver. This new IP is presumably part of the ongoing hardware enablement work for their next-gen RDNA 4 graphics." Team Red GitHub patches for "GFX12" targets appeared online last November, again highlighted by Larabel's investigative work—AMD engineers appear to be quite determined with their open-source software endeavors, as seen in LLVM-Project notes regarding GFX1200's enablement.

The new "IP block" updates included patches for the enabling ATHUB 4.1, LSDMA 7.0, IH 7.0, and HDP 7.0—presumably for next generation Radeon graphics solutions. Larabel provided a quick breakdown of these components: "ATHUB 4.1 is needed for clock-gating / power management features, LSDMA 7.0 is the latest IP for Light SDMA for general purpose System DMA (SDMA) on the GPU, IH 7.0 for the Interrupt Handler on the GPU, and HDP 7.0 for the Host Data Path support for CPU accessing the GPU device memory via the PCI BAR. As far as code changes, the big chunks of the work are from the auto-generated header files." He believes that AMD's engineers have largely moved on from current generation tasks: "The big version bumps for these IP blocks all the more are likely indicative of these bits being for next-gen RDNA 4 as opposed to further iterating on RDNA3 or similar." The patches could be merged into the upcoming Linux 6.9 release, possibly coinciding with a Radeon RX 8000 series rollout.

Retailer specific discounts are creating quite the pileup of graphics card options between the $300 to $500 mark. With enough time spent finding the right deal, you could potentially buy a much faster graphics card that you'd planned for, at a given price. Hot on the heels on a recent Best Buy deal that brought the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB down to $344, or within just $15 of the Radeon RX 7600 XT, we're hearing about a couple of Newegg deals that see the Radeon RX 7700 XT down to just $353, or $9 more than the RTX 4060 Ti, and $24 more than an RX 7600 XT.

At $353, the RX 7700 XT changes the game, as it is a firmly 1440p-class GPU, compared to the 1080p-class RTX 4060 Ti and RX 7600 XT. In our testing, the Radeon RX 7700 XT is an incredible 17% faster than the RTX 4060 Ti at 1080p for just $9 more; and 19% faster than it at 1440p. Compared to the RX 7600 XT, the RX 7700 XT is a staggering 39% faster at 1080p, and 44% faster at 1440p. Even with ray tracing enabled, the RX 7700 XT dominates the RTX 4060 Ti. At 1080p with ray tracing enabled, the RTX 4060 Ti averages just 2% faster than the RX 7700 XT, but at 1440p, the RX 7700 XT in fact ends up 14% faster than the RTX 4060 Ti thanks to its much heavier SIMD engine, and 50% higher memory bandwidth. The Newegg deal doesn't even cover a cheap custom design, but the mighty PowerColor RX 7700 XT Hellhound and Fighter.

ZOTAC USA Inc., a leading manufacturer of innovative gaming hardware solutions, is thrilled to announce the market launch of three new MEK HERO pre-built Gaming PCs: the MEK HERO A7647S, A7647STI, and A7748S built using the latest ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER Twin Edge OC, ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER Trinity OC White Edition, and ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER Trinity Black Edition Graphic Cards. These are teamed up with AMD Ryzen 5 7600 and Ryzen 7 7700X processors, offering stunning 4K graphics for unprecedented gaming performance with AI-accelerated DLSS 3.5 and Real-Time Ray Tracing, bringing gamers an immersive gaming experience. This new series of MEK HERO offers 3 years of warranty coverage, specifically for the included ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 40 SUPER Series Graphics Card component.

The MEK HERO A7647S, A7647STI, and A7748S Gaming PCs feature 16 GB DDR5 system memory and NVMe M.2 SSD storage, elevating PC gaming and the visual content creation process to new heights. Each MEK HERO Gaming PC undergoes meticulous assembly and hand-testing in the United States, ensuring the highest build quality. Crafted for optimal performance, durability, and an unmatched experience, MEK HERO Gaming PCs with GeForce RTX 40 SUPER Series Graphics Cards are tailored to meet the demands of hardcore gamers and content creators alike.

AMD FSR 3 comes to Starfield in our latest Steam Beta. Those of you playing on Steam can opt into the Beta to see the improvements brought to the game before this update becomes available to all our PC Starfield players. This new feature allows for a combination of upscaling as well as advanced frame generation, boosting your framerate for better performance. While AMD's FSR 3 works for a wide range of video cards, you will want to verify that your system supports it so that you get the best experience. It is also recommended to use FSR 3 with VSync ON and with a VRR monitor for the best experience.

For those participating, you can enable FSR 3 by heading to Display Settings and accessing the Upscaling options. From there you will be able to cycle through the option best suited for your experience. As with any update, we look forward to reading your feedback and seeing you share your experiences. Thank you for your support and see you in Starfield!

Recently, MINISFORUM updated the CPU of V3 to AMD's latest Ryzen7 8840U on its official website. Previously, the preview page for V3 went live on January 3rd. It is understood that MINISFORUM is expected to hold the V3 and Spring New Product Launch Event at the end of March 2024. MINISFORUM V3 is the world's first high-performance AMD AI 3-in-1 tablet, featuring AMD's latest Ryzen7 8840U, built on a 4 nm process, with Zen 4 CPU and RDNA3 GPU architecture, 8 cores 16 threads, a base frequency of 3.30 GHz, and a maximum boost frequency of 5.10 GHz, with a TDP of 15-30 W, and a 16 MB L3 cache. It integrates Radeon 780M graphics. V3 also boasts a dual-fan and four-copper-pipe cooling system, achieving 28 W sustained performance release, providing sustained power for AI model training, graphic rendering, video editing, and gaming entertainment.

The AMD 8840U is also paired with a proprietary XDNA AI processor, with NPU computing power up to 16TOPS and processor computing power up to 38TOPS. Based on this, V3 is equipped with a new AMD Ryzen AI, creating an AI Windows triple-in-one tablet PC with the highest security level from Microsoft, supporting Microsoft Real-time Communication, and hardware design supporting Microsoft Copilot, which can be called upon with a single click, providing real-time intelligent suggestions and assistance, helping users easily complete tasks in various scenarios for efficient office work.

AMD's newly announced Ryzen 8000G "Hawk Point" desktop APUs do not support ECC memory, contrary to what the specifications on the AMD website had initially shown, Reddit users found out. The company has since quietly edited its product pages to remove the bit about ECC support. For the overwhelming majority of desktop client use cases, including enthusiast PCs, ECC memory support is irrelevant. That said, the memory controllers of "Phoenix" in Ryzen PRO 7000 mobile processors for commercial notebooks support ECC memory, and so it stands to reason that upcoming Ryzen PRO models for both commercial desktops and notebooks might feature it.

The AMD Ryzen 7 8700G and Ryzen 5 8600G are based on the 4 nm "Hawk Point" monolithic silicon, with a more overclocker-friendly set of DDR5 memory controllers than the ones found in the Ryzen 7000 "Raphael" processors. Besides support for several high-frequency DDR5 modes, the memory controller technically supports ECC (at least "Phoenix" does, on the Ryzen PRO 7000 mobile processors). The memory controller also supports a maximum of 256 GB of memory, or 64 GB dual-rank memory modules per slot. It also supports 24 GB and 48 GB DIMM densities.

Prices of the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT graphics card hit new lows, with a Sapphire custom-design card selling for $699 with a coupon discount on Newegg. This puts its price a whole $100 cheaper (12.5% cheaper) than the recently announced NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER. The most interesting part of the story is that the RX 7900 XT is technically from a segment above. Originally launched at $900, the RX 7900 XT is recommended by AMD for 4K Ultra HD gaming with ray tracing; while the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER is officially recommended by NVIDIA for maxed out gaming with ray tracing at 1440p, although throughout our testing, we found the card to be capable of 4K Ultra HD gaming.

The Radeon RX 7900 XT offers about the same performance as the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER, averaging 1% higher than it in our testing, at the 4K Ultra HD resolution. At 1440p, the official stomping ground of the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER, the RX 7900 XT comes out 2% faster. These are, of course pure raster 3D workloads. In our testing with ray tracing enabled, the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER storms past the RX 7900 XT, posting 23% higher performance at 4K Ultra HD, and 21% higher performance at 1440p.

AMD today announced the launch of AMD Embedded+, a new architectural solution that combines AMD Ryzen Embedded processors with Versal adaptive SoCs onto a single integrated board to deliver scalable and power-efficient solutions that accelerate time-to-market for original design manufacturer (ODM) partners. Validated by AMD, the Embedded+ integrated compute platform helps ODM customers reduce qualification and build times for faster time-to-market without needing to expend additional hardware and R&D resources. ODM integration using Embedded+ architecture enables the use of a common software platform to develop designs with low power, small form factors, and long lifecycles for medical, industrial, and automotive applications.

"In automated systems, sensor data has diminishing value with time and must operate on the freshest information possible to enable the lowest latency, deterministic response," said Chetan Khona, senior director of Industrial, Vision, Healthcare and Sciences Markets, AMD. "In industrial and medical applications, many decisions need to happen in milliseconds. Embedded+ maximizes the value of partner and customer data, with energy efficiency and performant computing that enables them to focus in turn on addressing their customer and market needs."

PowerColor, a leader in innovative graphics card solutions, is proud to announce the launch of its latest marvel in the gaming world: the PowerColor RX 7900 XT Hellhound - Spectral White Edition. Following the overwhelming success of the 7800 XT Spectral White model, this new release brings the same unique design elements to the powerful Radeon 7900 XT series.

Spectral White Edition: A Symphony in White
The RX 7900 XT Hellhound Spectral White Edition is a testament to PowerColor's commitment to exceptional design and engineering. It features an all-white PCB, heatsink, and cooling solution, setting a new benchmark in graphics card aesthetics. This card is not just a performance powerhouse; it's a statement piece for any gaming setup, offering a pristine, unified look that white PC build enthusiasts will adore.

NVIDIA's latest RTX 40 series graphics cards feature impressive new technologies like DLSS 3 that can significantly enhance performance and image quality in games. However, owners of older 20 and 30 series NVIDIA GeForce RTX cards cannot officially benefit from these cutting-edge advances. DLSS 3's Frame Generation feature, in particular, requires dedicated hardware only found in NVIDIA's brand new Ada Lovelace architecture. But the ingenious modding community has stepped in with a creative workaround solution where NVIDIA has refused to enable frame generation functionality on older generation hardware. A new third-party modification can unofficially activate both upscaling (FSR, DLAA, DLSS or XeSS) and AMD Fluid Motion Frames on older NVIDIA cards equipped with Tensor Cores. Replacing two key DLL files and a small edit to the Windows registry enables the "DLSS 3" option to be activated in games running on older hardware.

In testing conducted by Digital Foundry, this modification delivered up to a 75% FPS boost - on par with the performance uplift official DLSS 3 provides on RTX 40 series cards. Games like Cyberpunk 2077, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, and A Plague Tale: Requiem were used to benchmark performance. However, there can be minor visual flaws, including incorrect UI interpolation or random frame time fluctuations. Ironically, while the FSR 3 tech itself originates from AMD, the mod currently only works on NVIDIA cards. So, while not officially supported, the resourcefulness of the modding community has remarkably managed to bring cutting-edge frame generation to more NVIDIA owners - until AMD RDNA 3 cards can utilize it as well. This shows the incredible potential of community-driven software modification and innovation.

The Manjaro Linux team exhibited Orange Pi Neo gaming handhelds at the annual FOSDEM event this past weekend. Attendees were welcomed to play around with early examples at the KDE booth in Brussels, Belgium—Orange Pi expressed its ambition (last year) to expand its single-board operation into the flourishing handheld gaming PC market. According to past reports, the Neo was teased throughout 2023—so it was not surprising to witness working prototypes in the hands of open-source enthusiasts in recent days. Orange Pi has selected AMD's Ryzen 7 7840U "Phoenix" APU—a laptop/notebook processor that is emerging as the de facto choice for many handheld gaming systems. The most globally available mainstream Windows 11 options—ASUS ROG Ally and Lenovo Legion Go—sport Ryzen Z1 and Ryzen Z1 Extreme SoCs, that are eerily similar in design to the popular Ryzen 7 7840U chip.

Orange Pi and Manjaro are targeting a late 2024 launch (according to Android Pimp)—this could place the Neo alongside potential next-generation devices with upgraded internals. Neo's unique selling point seems to be a slimmer (than normal) profile—the "ultra slim and small" handheld's dimensions are 259 mm x107 mm x 19.9 mm, coupled with a 7-inch FHD+ LCD screen (1920 x 1200, WUXGA, 16:10, 500 nits peak Brightness, 120 Hz Refresh Rate). A proper D-pad design and "YXBA" button layout indicate that a retro gaming-oriented playerbase is being targeted, although twin hall-effect sticks and linear triggers bring things firmly into the 2020s tech-wise.

In 2024, the tech industry remains steadfastly focused on AI, with the continued rollout of advanced AI chips leading to significant enhancements in processing speeds. TrendForce posits that this advancement is set to drive growth in both DRAM and NAND Flash across various AI applications, including smartphones, servers, and notebooks. The server sector is expected to see the most significant growth, with content per box for server DRAM projected to rise by 17.3% annually, while enterprise SSDs are forecast to increase by 13.2%. The market penetration rate for AI smartphones and AI PCs is expected to experience noticeable growth in 2025 and is anticipated to further drive the average content per box upward.

Looking first at smartphones, despite chipmakers focusing on improving processing performance, the absence of new AI functionalities has somewhat constrained the impact of AI. Memory prices plummeted in 2023 due to oversupply, making lower-priced options attractive and leading to a 17.5% increase in average DRAM capacity and a 19.2% increase in NAND Flash capacity per smartphone. However, with no new applications expected in 2024, the growth rate in content per box for both DRAM and NAND Flash in smartphones is set to slow down, estimated at 14.1% and 9.3%, respectively.

Changwang has released an interesting looking Mobile on Desktop (MoDT) Mini-ITX motherboard in China—as spotted by HXL—for AMD Ryzen 7000 series mobile processors. The manufacturer has chosen to forego with a short plus catchy model name—Changwang's product page lays out the basic facts within the board's title. This a 170 x 170 mm compact form factor board that is NAS and storage oriented—with an AMD FP8 socket that accommodates Zen 3+ "Rembrandt" and Zen 4 "Phoenix" processors. At present, the only available options to purchase are Ryzen 7 7840HS configurations (with or without an air cooler). The specification sheet lists other processor options, including the recently launched "Hawk Point" Ryzen 7 8845HS model, as well as Ryzen 9 7940HS, Ryzen 7 7735HS (Zen 3+ Rembrandt), and Ryzen 5 7640HS.

You are limited to SODIMM (up to 5600 MT/s with the 7840HS config), due to Changwang choosing a mobile processor platform for a compact desktop motherboard that offers little in terms of upgradability. As pointed out by Tom's Hardware: "These motherboards with integrated Ryzen 7000 "Phoenix" processors might have been pretty killer a few months ago, but just days ago, AMD launched its Ryzen 8000G series APUs for the desktop, which use the same Phoenix chip that the Ryzen 7040HS chips use. Ryzen 8000G chips are a little faster, more customizable, and can be installed and upgraded like regular desktop chips, which are all significant points against Changwang's motherboard...However, when it comes to price, Changwang has the advantage. With a cost of 2888 RMB or about $400, the Ryzen 7 7840HS-equipped board looks pretty decent. A Ryzen 7 8700G retails for $329, and the cheapest AM5 Mini-ITX boards cost $130 at minimum (and come with the A620 chipset)." The Changwang board also offers an unprecedented number of interface options—its unique selling points include support for nine SATA drives, four 2.5 Gbit NICs, Thunderbolt 4, USB 4, PCIe Gen 4x4, etc.

AMD is readying the new 800-series motherboard chipset to launch alongside its next-generation Ryzen 9000 series "Granite Ridge" desktop processors that implement the "Zen 5" microarchitecture. The chipset family will be led by the AMD X870E, a successor to the current X670E. Since AMD isn't changing the CPU socket, and this is very much the same Socket AM5, the 800-series chipset will support not just "Granite Ridge" at launch, but also the Ryzen 7000 series "Raphael," and Ryzen 8000 series "Hawk Point." Moore's Law is Dead goes into the details of what sets the X870E apart from the current X670E, and it all has to do with USB4.

Apparently, motherboard manufacturers will be mandated to include 40 Gbps USB4 connectivity with AMD X870E, which essentially makes the chipset a 3-chip solution—two Promontory 21 bridge chips, and a discrete ASMedia ASM4242 USB4 host controller; although it's possible that AMD's QVL will allow other brands of USB4 controllers as they become available. The Ryzen 9000 series "Granite Ridge" are chiplet based processors just like the Ryzen 7000 "Raphael," and while the 4 nm "Zen 5" CCDs are new, the 6 nm client I/O die (cIOD) is largely carried over from "Raphael," with a few updates to its memory controller. DDR5-6400 will be the new AMD-recommended "sweetspot" speed; although AMD might get its motherboard vendors to support DDR5-8000 EXPO profiles with an FCLK of 2400 MHz, and a divider.

AMD's December 2023 launch of new Instinct series accelerators has generated a lot of tech news buzz and excitement within the financial world, but not many folks are privy to Team Red's MSRP for the CDNA 3.0 powered MI300X and MI300A models. A Citi report has pulled back the curtain, albeit with "projected" figures—an inside source claims that Microsoft has purchased the Instinct MI300X 192 GB model for ~$10,000 a piece. North American enterprise customers appear to have taken delivery of the latest MI300 products around mid-January time—inevitably, top secret information has leaked out to news investigators. SeekingAlpha's article (based on Citi's findings) alleges that the Microsoft data center division is AMD's top buyer of MI300X hardware—GPT-4 is reportedly up and running on these brand new accelerators.

The leakers claim that businesses further down the (AI and HPC) food chain are having to shell out $15,000 per MI300X unit, but this is a bargain when compared to NVIDIA's closest competing package—the venerable H100 SXM5 80 GB professional card. Team Green, similarly, does not reveal its enterprise pricing to the wider public—Tom's Hardware has kept tabs on H100 insider info and market leaks: "over the recent quarters, we have seen NVIDIA's H100 80 GB HBM2E add-in-card available for $30,000, $40,000, and even much more at eBay. Meanwhile, the more powerful H100 80 GB SXM with 80 GB of HBM3 memory tends to cost more than an H100 80 GB AIB." Citi's projection has Team Green charging up to four times more for its H100 product, when compared to Team Red MI300X pricing. NVIDIA's dominant AI GPU market position could be challenged by cheaper yet still very performant alternatives—additionally chip shortages have caused Jensen & Co. to step outside their comfort zone. Tom's Hardware reached out to AMD for comment on the Citi pricing claims—a company representative declined this invitation.