GIGABYTE today showed off its upcoming AMD X670E and X670 chipset-based Socket AM5 motherboard lineup for the Ryzen 7000-series "Zen 4" desktop processors due to launch in September. Given AMD's push for PCI-Express Gen 5 connectivity beyond just the PEG slot, the new X670E chipset, with multiple Gen 5 M.2 slots, covers the upper end of the GIGABYTE AORUS motherboard series, with the X670E AORUS Xtreme and the X670E AORUS Master. The lower-end of the lineup is based on the X670, with the AORUS Pro and AORUS Elite tiers.

Both the X670E and X670 offer at least one PCI-Express 5.0 x16 slot (which can be further split into two x8 Gen 5 slots); and at least one PCI-Express 5.0 x4 M.2 NVMe slot wired to the AM5 processor. The X670E is differentiated in having an additional Gen 5 M.2 slot that is wired to the SoC, besides downstream Gen 5 PCIe connectivity from the chipset. The AORUS Xtreme leads the pack with a monstrous 18-phase VRM that uses 105 A DrMOS, an 8-layer PCB, four Gen 5 M.2 slots, the highest-grade onboard audio with ESS-made headphones DAC, AQuantia 10 GbE, WiFi 6E, and a plethora of overclocker-friendly features.

Earlier this week, some details, including the PCB layout of the MSI MEG X670E Godlike leaked, but now MSI has shared some additional details, including a picture of the board. In fact, MSI shared most of thespecs of the Godlike board during Computex, but the company didn't release a picture back then. However, now we know the power design, which consists of 24+2 phases and a 105 A power stage. MSI has also created its own screwless M.2 slots, as well as heatsinks, which simply clip in place after the SSD has been installed, although it doesn't appear the Godlike board has screwless heatsinks for more than one of M.2 drives.

Other features include 10 and 2.5 Gbps Ethernet, as well as AMD's RZ616 WiFi 6E module. MSI hasn't gone for USB4 from what we know and nothing was mentioned with regards to USB4 during the MSI presentation. MSI also seems to have skipped video outputs on this board, but it's possible that one of the USB-C ports will support display output, even though that wasn't the case back at Computex. As with many other X670E boards, the Godlike supports 60 W USB PD charging via the front USB-C port.

It's pretty clear that we're getting very close to the launch of AMD's AM5 platform and the Ryzen 7000-series CPUs, with spec details and even pricing brackets tipping up online. Wccftech has posted what the publication believes will be the lineup we can expect to launch in just over a month's time, if rumours are to be believed. The base model is said to be the Ryzen 5 7600X, which the site claims will have a base clock of 4.7 GHz and a boost clock of 5.3 GHz. There's no change in processor core or thread count compared to the current Ryzen 5 5600X, but the L2 cache appears to have doubled, for a total of 38 MB of cache. This is followed by the Ryzen 7 7700X, which starts out a tad slower with a base clock of 4.5 GHz, but it has a slightly higher boost clock of 5.4 GHz. Likewise here, the core and thread count remains unchanged, while the L2 cache also gets a bump here for a total of 40 MB cache. Both these models are said to have a 105 W TDP.

The Ryzen 9 7900X is said to have a 4.7 GHz base clock and a 5.6 GHz boost clock, so a 200 MHz jump up from the Ryzen 7 7700X. This CPU has a total of 76 MB of cache. Finally the Ryzen 9 7950X is said to have the same base clock of 4.5 GHz as the Ryzen 7 7700X, but it has the highest boost clock of all the expected models at 5.7 GHz, while having a total of 80 MB cache. These two SKUs are both said to have a 170 W TDP. Price wise, from top to bottom, we might be looking at somewhere around US$700, US$600, US$300 and US$200, so it seems like AMD has adjusted its pricing downwards by around $100 on the low-end, with the Ryzen 7 part fitting the same price bracket as the Ryzen 7 5700X. The Ryzen 9 7900X seems to have had its price adjusted upwards slightly, while the Ryzen 9 7950X seems to be expected to be priced lower than its predecessors. Take these things with the right helping of scepticism for now, as things can still change before the launch.

An AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5995WX 64-core/128-thread workstation processor was overclocked to 5.15 GHz all-core by Taiwanese overclocker TSAIK, under extreme cooling, and it [predictably] crushed the Cinebench R23 world-record. The chip scored a godlike 116142 points in the multi-threaded benchmark, ahead of the previous record-holder—105170 points scored on a Threadripper 3990X, by Splave.

The 5995WX, as we mentioned, was subjected to extreme cooling, using liquid-nitrogen. using a Bitspower-made evaporator. The chip was supported by 128 GB of octal-channel DDR4-3200 memory, and an MSI PRO WS WRX80 motherboard. Windows 10 21H2 was the OS of choice. Threadrippers will continue to dominate multi-threaded CPU benchmark leaderboards until Intel can put up a fight with an HEDT variant of its upcoming "Sapphire Rapids" processor.

With AMD making it clear in investor-communications that its next-generation Ryzen 7000 "Zen 4" desktop processors will launch before October 2022; the countdown to their launch started. Wccftech got hold of a possible set of key dates. Apparently, August 28 is the big date on which AMD will formally announce its Ryzen 7000 Socket AM5 desktop processor lineup.

Following the August 28 announcement, the review NDA—the date on which you can read the first reviews of the retail products—is reportedly set at September 13. Market availability follows two days later, starting September 15. This is when you can actually buy the processor and compatible motherboards off the shelves. There's no word on a pre-order date; but it's always advisable to catch reviews before committing to purchase something that ships before launch date. These dates align with a mid-June leak of the launch date by AMD in a retailer promotion meeting held in China.

During this year's Flash Memory Summit, Phison, a company known for SSD controllers and now flash drives, demonstrated a system running AMD Ryzen 7000 series processors based on Zen 4 architecture. What is interesting about the shown specification is that the system was running an engineering sample of an upcoming Zen 4-based CPU with the latest storage technologies at impressive speeds. Using a Phison PS5026-E26 SSD controller, also called E26, the PCIe 5.0 SSD is powered by Micron's latest 232-layer TLC NAND flash. This new NAND technology will also bring greater densities to the market by promising higher endurance, higher read/write speeds, and better efficiency.

With AMD's upcoming AM5 platform, support for PCIe 5.0 SSDs is a welcome addition. And we today have some preliminary tests that show just how fast these SSDs can run. In CrystalDiskMark 8.0.4, it achieved over 10 GB/s in both read and write. We know that the E26 controller is capable of 12 GB/s speeds, so more fine-tuning is needed. Being an early sample, we expect final specifications to be better. The system is powered by an engineering sample of a six-core, twelve-threaded Zen 4 CPU running at unknown clocks, codenamed 100-000000593-20_Y. We can expect to see more of this technology once AMD's AM5 platform lands and Phison-powered SSDs hit the shelves in September.

AMD in its Q2-2022 financial results call with analysts, confirmed that the company's next-generation Ryzen 7000 desktop processors based on the "Zen 4" microarchitecture will debut this quarter (i.e. Q3-2022, or before October 2022). CEO Dr Lisa Su stated "Looking ahead, we're on track to launch our all-new 5 nm Ryzen 7000 desktop processors and AM5 platforms later this quarter with leadership performance in gaming and content creation."

The company also stated that its next-generation Radeon 7000 series GPUs based on the RDNA3 graphics architecture are on-track for launch "later this year," without specifying whether it meant this quarter, which could mean launch any time before January 2023. AMD is also on course to beating Intel to the next-generation of server processors with DDR5 and PCIe Gen 5 support, with its EPYC "Genoa" 96-core processor slated for later this year, as Intel struggles with a Q1-2023 general availability timeline for its Xeon Scalable "Sapphire Rapids" processor.

A possible PCB layout diagram of the ASUS ROG Crosshair X670E APEX motherboard was leaked to the web. We could tell it's the APEX, looking at its 1DPC (one DIMM per channel) memory layout. The ROG APEX line of motherboards are geared toward extreme overclocking, with 1DPC being the best possible memory topology. We could make out several features from this diagram. The board draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX, two 8-pin EPS, and a 6-pin PCIe. A mammoth 26-phase VRM powers the CPU. The board appears to have its power connectors and onboard buttons angled sideways, making it most suitable for bench rigs.

The AMD Socket AM5 is wired to two DDR5 DIMM slots (one DIMM per channel, with two sub-channels, each); and a PCI-Express 5.0 x16 slot. This splits to a second slot in x8 mode. The third slot is electrical x8, and wired to the X670E chipset. While there are three M.2 slots onboard, this is likely Gen 4 x4. The board's main Gen 5 M.2 slots are located on an included DIMM.2 daughterboard that inserts into a proprietary slot next to the DIMM slots. It's likely that the board offers USB4 connectivity, besides SupremeFX HD audio, Wi-Fi 6E, 2.5 GbE, and an abundance of USB 3.x connectivity in various forms.

An alleged AMD Ryzen 7000 pre-release sample was shown running DDR5-6400 memory speed, which is already a 23 percent memory overclock on top of the DDR5-5200 native memory clock speed support. We've known since April that the Ryzen 7000 "Zen 4" processors are being designed with a focus on good memory overclocking headroom, and this is the first instance of an enthusiast-class memory speed on this platform. The feat was pulled off by Toppc, a professional overclocker affiliated with MSI.

The most interesting aspect of this feat is the density. The machine is shown featuring 64 GB of memory—something currently only doable with 32 GB quad-rank (double-sided) DIMMs; or by populating all four slots on the motherboard with 16 GB dual-rank (single-sided) DIMMs, or a 2DPC setup, which would make this feat all the more impressive. The CPU-Z screenshot by Toppc reveals a DRAM clock of 3202 MHz (DDR5-6404), and timings of 32-38-38-96. The Socket AM5 Ryzen 7000 desktop processors only support DDR5 memory type (no backwards-compatibility with DDR4), and AMD states that since it is betting solely on DDR5 (with no DDR4 sidewheels), enthusiasts can expect a good memory overclocking experience.

Unofficial driver packs tend to unlock features outside of a product's feature-set, and the most prominent of these for AMD Radeon GPUs is the NimeZ series. Their latest 22.7.1-based driver pack extends Radeon Noise Suppression technology support to older generation GPUs (which predate the RX 5000 series). This would cover the RX 500/400 series "Polaris," the RX Vega series, and even the much older Graphics CoreNext architecture (R# 300-series and 200-series from a decade ago). Most importantly, this brings the technology to the various generations of AMD Ryzen and A-series APUs. Use of unofficial drivers isn't covered under product warranties, but then your pre-RDNA graphics card is probably outside its coverage anyway.

Today, the AMD GPUOpen announced that AMD developed a new tool for game developers using ray tracing technologies to help organize the model geometries in their scenes. Called Radeon Raytracing Analyzer (RRA) 1.0, it is officially available to download for Linux and Windows and released as a part of the Radeon Developer Tool Suite. With rendering geometries slowly switching from rasterization to ray tracing, developers need a tool that will point out performance issues and various workarounds in the process. With RRA, AMD has enabled all Radeon developers to own a tool that will answer many questions like: how much memory is the acceleration structure using, how complex is the implemented BVH, how many acceleration structures are used, does geometry in the BLAS axis align enough, etc. Developers will find it very appealing for their ray tracing workloads.

AMDRRA is able to work because our Radeon Software driver engineers have been hard at work, adding raytracing support to our Developer Driver technology. This means that once your application is running in developer mode - using the Radeon Developer Panel which ships with RRA - the driver can log all of the acceleration structures in a scene with a single button click. The Radeon Raytracing Analyzer tool can then load and interrogate the data generated by the driver, presenting it in an easy-to-understand way.

An innocuous search through the media asset-bank on the AMD website revealed the processor model numbers of the four Ryzen 7000 series "Zen 4" chips the company plans to debut its next-generation lineup with. These include the Ryzen 9 7950X, the Ryzen 9 7900X, the Ryzen 7 7700X, and the Ryzen 5 7600X. Older reports theorized that AMD could stick to a slim launch cycle with just 4 SKUs to be launched initially, and the series expanding to cover various price-points, later in 2023. The company didn't provide any specifications of these processors. It is rumored that AMD could announce these processors as early as in August, with availability slated for mid-September, 2022.

AMD on Tuesday released the AMD Software Adrenalin 22.7.1 drivers, which include several major updates to the feature-set. To begin with, AMD has significantly updated its OpenGL ICD (installable client driver), which can have an incredible 79 percent increase in frame-rates at 4K with "Fabulous" settings, as measured on the flagship RX 6950 XT, and up to 75 percent, as measured on the entry-level RX 6400. Also debuting is AMD Noise Suppression, a new feature that lets you clear out your voice-calls and in-game voice-chats. The software leverages AI to filter out background noises that don't identify as the prominent foreground speech. Radeon Super Resolution support has been extended to RX 5000 series and RX 6000 series GPUs running on Ryzen processor notebooks with Hybrid graphics setups.

Besides these, Adrenalin 22.7.1 adds optimization for "Swordsman Remake," support for Radeon Boost plus VRS with "Elden Ring," "Resident Evil VIII," and "Valorant." The drivers improve support for Windows 11 22H2 Update, and Agility SDK 1.602 and 1.607. A few more Vulkan API extensions are added with this release. Among the handful issues fixed are lower-than-expected F@H performance on RX 6000 series, Auto Undervolt disabling idle-fan-stop; "Hitman 3" freezing when switching between windows in exclusive fullscreen mode; blurry web video upscaling on certain RX 6000 series cards, and Enhanced Sync locking framerates to 15 FPS with video playback on extended monitors.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Software Adrenalin 22.7.1

Once again the Eurasian Economic Commission has been helpful by sharing the model names of multiple upcoming graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA, which was dug up by @harukaze5719. This time around it's AFOX, a fairly minor graphics card manufacturer based out of Hong Kong that has submitted products for trademark registration. If these are the final product names or not, it's not clear and there are some "irregularities" in the submission as well, but we'll get to that in a second. Looking at the AMD cards, all the model names are as expected, ranging from the Radeon RX 7500 to the RX 7900XT in even steps of 100, with non XT and XT models for each SKU.

On the NVIDIA side we have the RTX 4050 to the RTX 4090TI, again with even steps, but of 10 this time and TI models of all cards, which seems a bit odd on the lower-end. However, AFOX has also registered trademarks for four RTX 30x0 Super cards, suggesting that NVIDIA might refresh its lineup of Ampere cards before it launches the 4000-series. This is obviously just an indication of things that may happen and should be taken with a fair helping of salt.

Courtesy of Planet 3DNow! we now have an idea when AMD might be launching the Ryzen 7000-series of CPU's, as the site posted about an upcoming AMD event called Meet the Experts on Twitter. The event registration page reads "Supporting the recent launch of AMD Ryzen 7000 Series processors," which suggests that the new Ryzen 7000-series is likely to launch on or before the 4th of August. The event takes place at 11:00 in the morning, CDT (Central Daylight Time) or 16:00 UTC.

The event will showcase motherboards from AMD's partners and representatives from ASRock, ASUS, Biostar, Gigabyte and MSI will be attending the online event. There's still no mention of the B650E chipset, but apparently X670E and X670 products will be shown, but not even B650 at this point. Based on the short summary blurb, we're also likely to see a PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD being shown off. AMD will obviously have a separate launch event for the Ryzen 7000-series, but if that will take place on the same day, or on a different date, is unknown at this point.

Sapphire introduced one of the first Radeon RX 6500 XT graphics cards in the retail channel to feature 8 GB of video memory, double that of the 4 GB standard for the SKU. The Sapphire Pulse RX 6500 XT 8 GB resembles the company's standard Pulse RX 6500 XT in design. At this point it's unclear how Sapphire went about deploying 8 GB of memory with the RX 6500 XT, given its narrow 64-bit GDDR6 memory interface.

Sapphire probably used four 16 Gbit memory chips, with two chips piggybacking a 32-bit memory channel. This would finally put the metal backplate to some use, as two of the chips could be located on the reverse side of the PCB. The memory ticks at the same 18 Gbps speed as the standard RX 6500 XT. The card's typical board power is increased to 130 W, up from the 107 W AMD reference. This is probably because the added memory chips, as well as slightly increased clock speeds of 2685 MHz (game clock), vs. 2615 MHz reference. The company didn't announce pricing or availability, but is planning a global launch for this card.

QNAP Systems, Inc., today launched the TS-h1290FX NAS. Providing QNAP's first PCIe 4.0 and U.2 NVMe/SATA all-flash NAS in a tower form factor, the TS-h1290FX excels in the most demanding work environments such as collaborative high-resolution video workflows. Featuring AMD EPYC 8/16-core processors, built-in 25GbE and 2.5GbE connectivity, PCIe Gen 4 expansion, and up to petabyte-scale storage capacity, the TS-h1290FX tackles data-intensive and latency-sensitive applications, such as large media file transfer, real-time editing of 4K/8K high-resolution media, online collaborative workflows, and virtualization applications.

"Modern businesses and studios shouldn't need to dedicate entire rooms to accommodate hot and loud servers, and that's where the TS-h1290FX comes in. Contained within a unique tower form factor and utilizing quiet cooling is exceptional performance driven by a server-grade processor, all-flash U.2 NVMe SSD storage, and QNAP's enterprise-grade QuTS hero operating system," said Jason Hsu, Product Manager of QNAP.

AMD is readying a Noise Suppression software to go with future updates to AMD Software Adrenalin. A rival to NVIDIA RTX Voice, the software cancels background noise both from your microphone, as well as from the person on the other side of the line, in a voice chat. It does so by isolating voices from sounds it interprets as background noise or sounds uncharacteristic of voices.

Much like NVIDIA, AMD is relying on a "real-time deep-learning algorithm" to identify and isolate human voices from an audio stream, although the company wouldn't say how the AI is being accelerated on the hardware. Since AMD Noise Suppression is being distributed through the Adrenalin package, it's reason to believe that you'll need an AMD Radeon GPU (either discrete or integrated), to use the software.

The newest addition to the Razer Blade laptop family, the Blade 14, is now available in the fan-favorite colorway Quartz. The Quartz edition will be available specifically on the Blade 14 model that features the NVIDIA GeForce 3070 Ti Laptop GPU alongside the AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX processor for the best balance between power and portability. Additionally, new models of both the Quartz and Black colorways. Existing Razer Blade 14 2022 models will require a software update to utilize these new features.

The updated USB C ports offer speeds up to 40 Gbps and allow for Thunderbolt functionality, meaning that the Blade 14 can be paired with external GPUs like the Razer Core X Chroma.

Today, Alienware reaches new milestones with the launch of the most powerful 17" AMD Advantage laptop, introduction of the standard-defying 480 Hz panel technology for the first time, and unveiling of our first-ever 16-inch Dell G Series laptop. We continue to hold true to the Alienware ethos of creating the apex gaming experience. These advancements are dedicated to making your images sharper, your gameplay smoother, and your experience more immersive through a perfect storm of industry leading gaming technology and iconic design.

For those who value raw power, the Alienware m17 R5 is the laptop for you. It claims the throne as the world's most powerful 17" AMD Advantage laptop, delivering truly remarkable performance. The m17 R5 is forged from a partnership with AMD that features AMD Ryzen 6000 series processors, AMD Radeon RX 6000 series graphics, and new AMD Smart Technologies. Today's update welcomes the new AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT 12 GB GDDR6 GPU to the configuration lineup.

Graphics card prices continue to fall in China with NVIDIA & AMD holding excessive stock of RTX 3000/RX 6000 cards without enough consumers interested in buying them. The companies have resisted pressure to lower the official MSRP of these cards with most retailers now offering discounts of between 5% and 30%. The largest drops are with flagship cards such as the NVIDIA RTX 3090 Ti which is now available for 9499 RMB (1415 USD) which is 38% below MSRP while the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT is 4999 RMB (744 USD) a 37.5% reduction. The prices for all graphics cards are now below MSRP with drops amounting to 20% on average for NVIDIA and 19% for AMD.

Although AMD has not as yet announced its B650E chipset, rumour about such a chipset started before Computex. To date, no specific motherboard models have been mentioned by model name, but courtesy of Videocardz, we now have a list of several upcoming models from ASRock. The company has already announced its X670E range of motherboards, which consists of five models, of which four can already be seen on the ASRock website. ASRock appears to be planning five B650E boards, plus another six B650 SKU's. The company also appears to be the OEM for NZXT's second AMD motherboard, which appears to be called the N7-B65XT, which might also be a B650E based board.

Unfortunately we don't know any of the technical details about the upcoming B650/B650E boards from ASRock, but the model names give away that two of the five B650E boards will be Mini-ITX boards. It doesn't look like ASRock will be offering a high-end B650E model, but at least there will be an upper mid-range Steel Legend board. ASRock will also have a couple of mATX B650 boards, one should be a more gaming focused mid-range model, with the other being what appears to be a fairly basic model. One peculiar addition is a B650 SKU with the prefix LiveMixer, which is a new series from ASRock as far as we're aware. ASRock doesn't appear to be offering any X670 motherboards at all, at least not based on the current information.

ViewSonic Corp., a leading global provider of visual solutions, announces an expansion of its gaming line with the launch of the new ViewSonic OMNI gaming monitor, the VX2418C. This 24-inch curved screen monitor features native 1080p resolution, an ultra-fast refresh rate, 1 ms response time and AMD FreeSync Premium technology. The OMNI VX2418C is a feature-rich gaming monitor with a great price point. The OMNI VX2418C comes with a 165Hz refresh rate and a 1ms (MPRT) response time, making it ideal for both esports professionals and aspiring gamers. AMD FreeSync Premium technology seamlessly synchronizes the frame rate output, effectively eliminating screen-tearing and stuttering for smooth gameplay. The Full HD, 1080p VA panel, 1500R curve and exclusive ViewMode presets are ideal for console gaming and ensure incredible image quality that will make even a casual gamer feel like a pro.

"We've seen great momentum in esports and an increase in demand as new tech hardware is being developed that compliment the OMNI line. With ViewSonic OMNI monitors, we're offering a line of products that can hit great price points while still providing the features, technologies, and functionalities that aspiring gamers and esports players demand," said Jeff Muto, Business Line Director at ViewSonic. "The OMNI VX2418C gaming monitor delivers smooth gameplay and amazing responsiveness that lets aspiring gamers upgrade their set up without breaking the bank."

RansomHouse, a newly established group aimed at monetizing stolen data, claims to own more than 450 Gb of data coming from AMD. The RansomHouse group is structured as the middleman and makes sure that hackers and victims negotiate to get the funds to hackers and data back to victims. It is claimed that the leaked AMD data contains network files, system information, and AMD passwords. This could be a very dangerous data breach, as inter-company passwords are used to access confidential files and personal information. The group notes that they own 450 Gb or gigabits of data, which translates into 56.25 GB or gigabytes of stolen data. We are not yet sure if the Gb notation is misspelled. It is claimed that AMD's poor security practices like using "password" passwords lead to the data breach, and no special ransomware software was used.

Tom's Hardware reached out to AMD for a statement, and got the following response:

AMD Representative for Tom's HardwareAMD is aware of a bad actor claiming to be in possession of stolen data from AMD. An investigation is currently underway.

Intel is preparing to launch its next-generation desktop platform codenamed Rocket Lake-S. According to the presentation held by Intel today in Shenzen, China, we have official information regarding some of the platform features that Raptor Lake is bringing. Starting with memory support, Raptor Lake is still carrying the transitional DDR4 and DDR5 support, as the full swing towards DDR5 is still in progress. Unlike the previous generation Alder Lake, which brought DDR5-4800 support, Raptor Lake's integrated memory controller can drive DDR5 modules with a 5600 MT/s configuration. As DDR4 support remains, it is limited to 3200 MT/s speed.

Interesting information from the leaked slide points out that support for CPU-attached NVMe storage remains PCIe Gen4. While AMD will provide an AM5 socket with CPU-attached NMVe storage on PCIe Gen5 protocol, Intel is taking a step back and holding on to Gen4. The CPU is outputting 16 PCIe Gen5 lanes on its own. Motherboard vendors for the upcoming 700-series boards for Raptor Lake can still provide a PCIe Gen5 NVMe slot; however, it will have to subtract eight Gen5 lanes from the PCI Express Graphics (PEG) slot and route them to NVMe storage. As our testing shows, this will affect GPU's performance by a few percent. AMD's upcoming AM5 platform has no such issues, as the CPU provides both the PEG and CPU-attached NVMe storage with sufficient PCIe Gen5 bandwidth.