NVIDIA's latest series of RTX 30 series graphics cards continue to remain elusive more than eight months after their release thanks to a combination of global chip shortages, logistics delays, and mining demand. The pricing for the latest generation graphics cards from various European retailers has been compiled and analyzed by 3DCentre and it paints a gloomy picture for gamers. The RTX 3080 now retails for 2999€ or 317% higher than the MSRP of 719€, other RTX 30 series cards saw price increases between 107% - 204%. This trend isn't exclusive to team Green with AMD's RX 6000 series also seeing significant price increases with the average price for an RX 6800 reaching 159% of MSRP at ~1600€, while other cards in the lineup see increases between 70% - 100%. The complete price history for all the cards tracked can be found at the source below. We don't see these prices falling significantly anytime soon unless there is a large drop in mining demand or a significant production increase.

AMD today released the latest version of their Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition drivers. Version 21.5.2 features support for the impending release of Days Gone. It also adds support for Microsoft's Direct X 12 Velocity SDK - meant to make it easier and faster for game developers to implement Direct X 12 features onto their development pipeline.

The new drivers also feature support for Shader Model 6.6. This particular revision for Microsoft's Shader Model implements expanded atomic operations (64-bit), dynamic resource binding, derivatives and samples in compute shaders, packed 8-bit computations, and wave size. Read on after the break for fixed issues, and remaining issues that AMD is aware of. Follow the link below towards our very own download section.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition 21.5.2 Beta

AMD is reportedly preparing to launch a B2 stepping of their Ryzen 5000 series of processors, codenamed Vermeer. Thanks to the findings of Patrick Schur, who was lucky to get ahold of AMD's processor codes, we have information that AMD is slowly preparing a B2 stepping of Vermeer processors, to come as a refresh. First off is the alleged Ryzen 9 5950XT 16 core, 32 threaded models which are supposed to feature a base speed of 3.4 GHz, and a boost frequency of 5.0 GHz, entering the 5 GHz world. Another B2 stepping that we know about is an alleged Ryzen 5 5600XT 6 core, 12 threaded design. This one features the same frequencies as its Ryzen 5 5600X variant, meaning 3.7 GHz base, and 4.6 GHz boost frequencies.

Of course, all this information should be taken with a big grain of salt, as we don't know what AMD is planning to do, or how the company plans to manifest any new product launch.

German publication, Igor's LAB, has got ahold of some information regarding AMD's upcoming Radeon RX 6600 series graphics card. Based on the Navi 23 SKU, the GPU is supposed to satisfy all the entry-level needs one would expect from a GPU. That means light 1080p gaming and multimedia streaming. For starters, let's get into details of the die. Igor's LAB notes that the die size is 235.76mm2, with a 35x35 mm package. The die will be centered in a package with a 45-degree rotation, which you can see how it looks in the images below. Additionally, the Navi 23 GPU will have SKUs ranging from 65 Watts to 95 Watts of Total Graphics Power (TGP). As far as frequency goes, the card BIOS points to the maximum clock speed of 2350 MHz, which is lower than the rumored 2684 MHz.

When it comes to memory, the upcoming Navi 23 GPUs can be equipped with up to 16 GB of GDDR6 memory, however, it is most likely that the regular gamer version will come with 8 GB of VRAM, while the Radeon Pro models will use the full 16 GB limit. As far as interface is concerned, the Radeon RX 6600 series will be limited to PCIe 4.0 x8 connection, as the low-end GPU doesn't require a full x16 slot. With the bandwidth of the PCIe 4.0, only eight lanes are enough for this GPU. These cards are expected to hit the market sometime in June, and we are waiting for the official announcement.

AMD processors have been very good at the field of security, on par with its main competitor, Intel. However, from time to time, researchers find new ways of exploiting a security layer and making it vulnerable to all kinds of attacks. Today, we have information that two new research papers are being published at this year's 15th IEEE Workshop on Offensive Technologies (WOOT'21) happening on May 27th. Both papers are impacting AMD processor security, specifically, they show how AMD's Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV) is compromised. Researchers from the Technical University of Munich and the University of Lübeck are going to present their papers on CVE-2020-12967 and CVE-2021-26311, respectfully.

While we do not know exact details of these vulnerabilities until papers are presented, we know exactly which processors are affected. As SEV is an enterprise feature, AMD's EPYC lineup is the main target of these two new exploits. AMD says that affected processors are all of the EPYC embedded CPUs and the first, second, and third generation of regular EPYC processors. For third-generation EPYC CPUs, AMD has provided mitigation in SEV-SNP, which can be enabled. For prior generations, the solution is to follow best security practices and try to avoid an exploit.

The AMD embedded roadmap for 2020 - 2023 was recently leaked and reveals some interesting information about AMD's upcoming Zen 4 based EPYC server processes. The current generation 7003 series of Zen 3 EPYC processors offer up to 64 cores and 128 threads with a TDP range of 120 W - 280 W. The next-generation EPYC 7004 "Genoa" Zen 4 processors will push the maximum core count to 96 cores and 192 threads with a maximum TDP of 320 W. The Zen 4 based EPYC processors will move to a 12 chiplet design up from the current 8 chiplet design which allows for the core increase that will increase the physical size of the processors and require a new SP5 socket. The new EPYC 7004 series processors will also support the latest features such as 12 channel DDR5-5200 ECC memory and PCIe Gen5.

XPG, a fast-growing provider of systems, components, and peripherals for Gamers, Esports Pros, and Tech Enthusiasts, announces the XPG GAMMIX D45 and SPECTRIX D45G RGB DDR4 memory modules. Sporting rugged industrial designs and equally robust capabilities, the modules are designed for discerning overclockers and gamers seeking gaming flair and reliable overclocking performance.

The GAMMIX D45 and SPECTRIX D45G RGB sport black armor-like aluminium exteriors with rugged ridges and a hefty look and feel. Not only do they look and feel robust, but they also offer incredibly sturdy performance for overclocking. They achieve this by using only the highest quality IC chips and PCBs and feature Intel Extreme Memory Profile (XMP) 2.0 support. XMP 2.0 makes overclocking a snap and enhances system stability. Instead of adjusting individual parameters in BIOS, users can do it right through their PC's operating system. Both modules have been rigorously tested, and verified to work with the latest AMD platforms for hassle-free compatibility and seamless performance. Both modules come in the following capacities - 8, 16, and 32 GB.

AMD in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), revealed that its wafer supply agreement with GlobalFoundries has been amended. Under the new terms, AMD places orders for wafers from GlobalFoundries up to 2024, with purchase targets set for each year leading up to 2024. Beyond meeting these targets, AMD is free from all other exclusivity commitments. The agreement was previously amended in January 2019, setting annual purchase targets for 2019, 2020, and 2021, while beginning a de-coupling between AMD and GlobalFoundries. This enabled the company to source 7 nm (or smaller) chips, such as CCDs and GPUs, from other foundries, such as TSMC, while keeping GlobalFoundries exclusive for 12 nm (or larger) nodes.

The updated wafer supply agreement unlocks many possibilities for AMD. For starters, it can finally build a next-generation sIOD (server I/O die) on a more efficient node than GlobalFoundries 12LP, such as TSMC 7 nm. This transition to 7 nm will be needed as the next-gen "Genoa" EPYC processor could feature future I/O standards such as DDR5 memory and PCI-Express Gen 5, and the switching fabric for these could be too power-hungry on 12 nm. The "Zen 4" CPU core complex dies (CCDs) of "Genoa" are expected to be built on TSMC 5 nm.

MSI today rolled out the Optix AG321CR, a curved 31.5-inch gaming monitor. Its VA panel features 1500R curvature, and conventional 16:9 aspect-ratio, with WQHD (2560 x 1440 pixels) native resolution. Its other gamer-relevant specs include 1 ms (MPRT) response time, 165 Hz refresh rate, 10-bpc color (1.07 billion colors), 178°/178° viewing angles, and support for AMD FreeSync Premium technology. Other panel specs include 250 cd/m² maximum brightness, and 3,000:1 static contrast ratio. Its stand allows height, tilt, and 30° of pivot. A USB 2.0 hub, and an RGB ornament behind the panel, make for the rest of it. The company didn't reveal pricing.

Specifications of AMD's upcoming mid-range Radeon RX 6600 XT and Radeon RX 6600 recently surfaced, and now we see screenshots of TechPowerUp GPU-Z confirming the two. The RX 6700 XT is shown featuring 2,048 stream processors, 128 TMUs, 32 ROPs, and a 128-bit wide GDDR6 memory interface with 8 GB of memory. The RX 6600 (non-XT), on the other hand, is shown featuring 1,792 stream processors, 112 TMUs, 32 ROPs, and the same 8 GB of GDDR6 memory. Both chips feature PCI-Express Gen 4 support, but much like the RX 5500 XT, the "Navi 23" only has 8 PCIe lanes. GPU-Z also seems to detect raytracing.

The 7 nm "Navi 24" silicon will very likely be the smallest discrete GPU based on the RDNA2 graphics architecture. The chip surfaced in technical documentation under the codename "Beige Goby." AMD uses such internal codenames to track sources of leaks. No specs of the "Navi 24" are known yet, but it could be significantly smaller than the "Navi 23" that powers the Radeon RX 6600 series and possibly the RX 6500 series, reportedly packing up to 2,048 stream processors. The "Navi 24" chip could also help AMD compete against NVIDIA and an emerging Intel in entry-level discrete GPUs for notebooks.

Pictures of the mysterious AMD 4700S SoC desktop kit just hit the web, courtesy Disclosuzen. As we reported earlier, the 4700S could be derived from the semi-custom SoC AMD originally co-developed with Microsoft for the Xbox Series X/S consoles. Close-ups of the PC motherboard reveals an interesting aspect—the board lacks any discernible display output, and instead relies on a PCI-Express graphics card. The board is built in the Mini-ITX form-factor, and draws power from a conventional combination of 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS power connectors.

A custom-design fan-heatsink cools the SoC. There are no memory slots, an unknown amount of hardwired memory under the SoC heatsink. 6-channel HD audio, wired Ethernet, and twelve USB ports (six each of USB 3.x and USB 2.0), make for the rest of the I/O. Storage connectivity is interesting—there are no M.2 NVMe slots, just two SATA ports. Why AMD even came up with this contraption is anyone's guess, but we guess it serves two purposes—1, it lets AMD harvest dies with faulty iGPUs, and 2, it serves as a decent developer platform, for game devs to at least optimize for the CPU. The lack of any NVMe storage interfaces points to the likelihood of this board not being meant for the general audience. Retail channel availability of the board seems unlikely, although it won't surprise us if suppliers on AliExpress list it anyway.

AMD is preparing to round-out its RX 6000 series lineup with the upcoming RX 6600 XT and RX 6600, introducing true midrange GPUs to their latest generation RDNA2 architecture. According to recent leaks, both graphics cards should feature AMD's Navi 23 chip, another full chip design, instead of making do with a cut-down Navi 22 (even though that chip still only powers one graphics card in the AMD lineup, the RX 6700 XT).

According to the leak, the RX 6600 XT should feature 2048 stream processors and 8 GB of GDDR6 memory over a 128-bit memory bus. The RX 6600, on the other hand, is said to feature a cut-down Navi 23, with only 1796 stream processors enabled out of the original silicon design, whilst offering the same 8 GB GDDR6 over a 128-bit memory bus. There are even some benchmark scores to go with these leaks: supposedly, the RX 6600 XT scores 9,439 points in 3DMark Time Spy (Graphics), while the RX 6600 card scores 7,805 points. Those scores place these cards in the same ballpark as the RDNA-based RX 5700 XT and RX 5700. It's expected that these cards feature a further cut-down 32 MB of Infinity cache - half that of the RX 6700 XT's 64 MB. With die-size being an estimated 236 mm², AMD is essentially introducing the same performance with 15 mm² less area, whilst shaving some 45 W from that cards' TDP (225 W for the RX 5700 XT, and an estimated 180 W for the RX 6600 XT).

Since lobbying is both legal and regulated in the US (an attempt to bring attempts of influencing political power by corporations under legal boundaries, as opposed to being done in the dark), it feels like it was only a matter of time before big tech attempted to join under one banner. As such, the Semiconductors in America Coalition (SIAC) has now been put together, and boasts of 64 members including Microsoft, Apple, TSMC, Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, Arm, and Samsung. It seems that all of these companies - which are often at odds with one another when it comes to competing for consumers' choice and money - have found enough similarities to get organized in an attempt to nudge political power in their favor.

SIAC said in a press release that its mission is to "advance federal policies that promote semiconductor manufacturing and research in the U.S. to strengthen America's economy, national security, and critical infrastructure." The first announcement from the SIAC following its foundation was its intention to support the CHIPS for America Act. The Act (supported by The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) and President Joe Biden) has already been approved by the House and the Senate as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2021 but has not yet been funded. It seems that SIAC's first mission is to get the government to open up its $50 billion-deep pockets.

ASUS today updated its flagship AMD Radeon RX 6000 series graphics card lineup with the new ROG Strix LC Radeon RX 6900 XT TOP T16G. This card is visually identical to the ROG Strix LC RX 6900 XT O16G the company launched last December, but with a handful updates. The biggest of these is the new "Navi 21 XTXH" silicon, the highest bin of AMD's top RDNA2 chip, which enables at least 10% higher clock-speeds than the standard RX 6900 XT. ASUS has tuned this up further, with a max boost frequency of a stunning 2525 MHz, compared to 2365 MHz on the original (O16G). The game clocks have been increased to 2375 MHz, compared to 2135 MHz on the O16G. Notice how the game clocks of the new T16G are higher than the max boost clocks of the original O16G? That's the magic of the new XTXH silicon.

These apart, the company hasn't made any changes to the visual design. A liquid+air hybrid cooling solution dominates the product. The AIO liquid closed-loop cooling solution pulls heat from the GPU and surrounding memory chips, while a base-plate and a chunky back-plate pull heat from the other components, which is ventilated by a lateral blower. The AIO is cooled by a 240 mm x 120 mm radiator. The card continues to pull power from a combination of three 8-pin PCIe power connectors. The company didn't reveal pricing, but it's very likely to be close to 2 grand.

HTC VIVE, the global leader in premium virtual reality (VR), today set a new benchmark for business and consumer VR, bringing 5K resolution and a 120-degree field of view as standard to the two new VR headsets announced today at VIVECON 2021, HTC's global VR conference. VIVE Pro 2 pushes the boundaries of PC VR for incredible gaming, creating, and experiences, while VIVE Focus 3 redefines business VR with a purpose-built All-in-One with no compromises. HTC also announced VIVE Business, its comprehensive range of tools designed to support businesses of any size to get the most out of VR.

"Today's launch marks a major milestone in our strategy to create the very best immersive experiences. We have listened to our customers, from well-known global companies to smaller firms and professional users, and have designed these premium headsets from the ground up to meet the challenges they face, adding a professional range of software, platform and services to make implementation as smooth and effective as possible," said Cher Wang, HTC Chairwoman and CEO. "In line with our mission, we've combined the very latest technology with the needs and aspirations of our customers, enabling them to unleash their imagination to improve people's lives and solve problems for business and society."

AMD announced that AMD EPYC 7003 Series processors will be used to power a new supercomputer for the National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC) Singapore, the national high-performance computing (HPC) resource center dedicated to supporting science and engineering computing needs.

The system will be based on the HPE Cray EX supercomputer and will use a combination of the EPYC 7763 and EPYC 75F3 processors. The supercomputer is planned to be fully operational by 2022 and is expected to have a peak theoretical performance of 10 petaFLOPS, 8x faster than NSCC's existing pool of HPC resources. Researchers will use the system to advance scientific research across biomedicine, genomics, diseases, climate, and more.

Even as the desktop Radeon RX 6700 (non-XT) is nowhere in sight, AMD is planning to scale its RDNA2 graphics architecture further down, with the RX 6600 XT and RX 6600. Regulatory filings by board partner ASRock with the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC), for the unreleased RX 6600 XT and RX 6600, hit the web, courtesy Komachi Ensaka. The filings list out internal SKU numbers. An interesting thing to note here is that both the RX 6600 XT and RX 6600 could have 8 GB of memory as standard. Given that the RX 6700 series is already pulling up to 12 GB over a 192-bit wide memory bus, it's likely that the RX 6600 series could use a narrower 128-bit bus for its 8 GB, use the fastest 16 Gbps memory chips (at least on the XT variant), and attempt to shore up memory bandwidth using Infinity Cache. A market launch typically follows EEC filings by 3 months, so the RX 6600 series could see a late-Summer launch.

PNY announced today the addition of the XLR8 Gaming EPIC-X RGB DDR4 4,000 MHz Desktop Memory to the company's high-performance XLR8 line of PC memory for gaming PCs. The new 4,000 MHz modules will deliver the ever-higher levels of overclocked performance demanded by today's gamers, while RGB lighting adds style to any PC build.

As games become increasingly competitive, gamers require faster performance from their systems. PNY addresses this with each addition to the XLR8 lineup. For creators looking to edit video or render photos, students wanting to have the answers first, or hardcore gamers looking to squeeze the maximum frames per second (FPS) from their system, PNY has everyone's back.

ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) today announced a unique concept gaming laptop created exclusively for world champion professional skateboarder Nyjah Huston. The ROG Strix Nyjah Huston Special Edition concept gaming laptop is based on the acclaimed ROG Strix SCAR series, the leading laptops built for professional esports players. The concept introduces new design explorations at the intersection of the esports and skateboarding cultures. Developing this concept for Nyjah Huston allowed ROG to explore novel ways to enhance the experience of ROG gaming laptops, paving the way for new design thinking and future innovations.

"ASUS makes such great laptops, I am hyped to be working with them," said Huston. "I have a bunch of friends who are into esports and they all told me ASUS is the best, so it was easy decision for me to partner with ROG." Born in California, Nyjah Huston began skateboarding at age five and quickly became a household name in professional skateboarding. He is now the top ranked athlete in Street League Skateboarding and has earned 19X Games medals since 2009, including 13 golds. This year, Huston is in line to represent the United States at the 2021 Olympic Summer Games in Tokyo, Japan. He also has a long history in gaming, having been featured in multiple popular skateboarding games.

British competition regulator Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) on Monday, launched an enquiry into the ramifications of AMD's buy-out of FPGA maker Xilinx. The agency is soliciting opinions from the public on whether the $35 billion all-stock purchase will make goods and services less competitive for the UK. Unlike NVIDIA's Arm buyout the Xilinx acquisition is seeing no opposition from tech-giants. The Register notes that AMD could combine Xilinx's FPGAs with its x86 CPU and RDNA SIMD to create highly customizable HPC accelerators. AMD president Dr Lisa Su said "By combining our world-class engineering team and deep domain expertise, we will create an industry leader with the vision, talent and scale to define the future of high performance computing."

The X570S is a new motherboard series from AMD which offers fanless chipset cooling for silent operations. The new motherboard series features an optimized chipset with power-saving features to achieve the fanless design. While there are currently a few passive X570 boards they come at a high price so these new X570S boards will be a welcome addition. MSI is reportedly planning to release eight new X570S motherboards to replace their high-end and mainstream X570 offerings. The MSI X570S Carbon appears to be a complete redesign rather than a chipset swap with larger heatsinks, increased SATA ports, and various other improvements.

Samsung is readying a powerful Arm-based SoC rivaling Apple's groundbreaking M1 silicon, under its Exynos brand. This chip is being designed for thin-and-light notebooks, as well as premium tablets, essentially letting Samsung target Apple's MacBook (M1) and iPad Pro form-factors. Unlike Apple, Samsung won't be burdened with having to rally its ISV partners to develop specifically for its hardware; the company is preparing to launch notebooks in the second half of 2021 that are powered by a Windows 10 on Arm derivative. This would give the notebook access to all of the applications already developed for the OS, including Office and certain Adobe Creativity Suite apps. The M1-rivaling Exynos chip will pack the latest-generation 64-bit Arm CPU cores, as well as an integrated GPU designed by AMD.

TechPowerUp today released the latest version of TechPowerUp GPU-Z, the tiny-yet-mighty software that gives you information, monitoring, and diagnostics of your PC graphics subsystem. Version 2.39.0 adds support for the Gen12 Xe LP integrated graphics solution found with Intel 11th Gen Core "Rocket Lake" processors. GPU-Z also has the ability to tell the new "Navi 21 XTXH" Radeon RX 6900 XT variant, from the standard RX 6900 XT. Support is also added for NVIDIA RTX 3060 Mobile, RTX 3050 Ti Mobile, RTX 3050 Mobile, RTX A5000, T500, CMP 30HX, CMP 40HX, CMP 90HX; and AMD Radeon Pro W5500M, and Barco MXRT 4700.

Version 2.39.0 also improves in several areas. The integrated screenshot feature is refreshed to better capture the window area. The XML dump is made more usable, with information that includes BIOS UEFI support, WHQL status, Driver Date, DXR, DirectML, OpenGL and Resizable BAR. The video memory utilization sensor is disabled on TCC mode-enabled NVIDIA GPUs. A number of minor issues were also fixed, related to Resizable BAR detection, clock readings on AMD RDNA2 mobile GPUs, a bug with OpenGL detection on certain systems, memory clock readings on certain legacy GPUs, BIOS date readings on legacy GPUs, etc. Grab it from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z 2.39.0The change-log follows.

AMD in 2020 set out on an ambitious project to develop Wi-Fi modules under its own marquee. This was catalyzed in part by the company's Ryzen PRO line of mobile processors, to better compete with Intel's Core vPro processors, which included Intel's own vPro-ready WLAN modules as part of a package to notebook OEMs. Come 2021, and AMD's module is ready, and is debuting with a handheld game console.

The new AMD RZ608 WLAN module is cutting-edge, in supporting Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax over 6 GHz) in addition to a plethora of older Wi-Fi standards; and Bluetooth 5.2. 6 months seem like an awfully short amount of time for AMD to whip up a WLAN product portfolio from scratch, especially with the IP tangles involved. The company instead chose to partner with MediaTek, which has access to all the IP needed to develop such a product. The WLAN PHY appears to be a MediaTek design, specifically based on the MT7921K chip. We'll hear a lot more about the RZ608, as it might start showing up in notebooks powered by Ryzen 5000 "Cezanne" processors. It remains to be seen if the chip makes it to desktop platforms, too.