AMD today released Radeon Software Adrenalin 18.5.1 WHQL drivers. These are the first WHQL-certified drivers from the company for Windows 10 April 2018 Update, complying with WDDM 2.4, and support not just AMD Radeon discrete GPUs, but also Ryzen "Raven Ridge" APUs with integrated Radeon Vega graphics. The drivers support Microsoft PlayReady 3.0 DRM on "Polaris" GPUs.

Besides these features, Radeon Software Adrenalin 18.5.1 WHQL comes with optimization for "Ancestors Legacy," with up to 6 percent higher frame-rates at 1080p, measured with an RX Vega 56, and up to 13 percent higher frame rates on an RX 580 (8 GB) at 1080p. The update fixes HBCC not resetting to default value when "Restore Factory Defaults" option is used in Radeon Settings. It also addresses ReLive streaming to Facebook intermittently failing; Netflix users experiencing display corruption on "Polaris" multi-GPU systems, abnormally high game load times in "Destiny 2," and fixes for screen tearing observed on FreeSync displays with performance metrics enabled.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 18.5.1 WHQL

The change-log follows.

AMD today announced unprecedented adoption of its AMD Ryzen PRO processors - including new notebooks and desktops powered by Ryzen PRO processors with built-in Radeon Vega graphics now available from the world's three largest enterprise PC OEMs. AMD Ryzen PRO APUs for premium commercial desktop and notebooks provide commercial PC buyers with new levels of choice and innovation and enable Dell, HP, and Lenovo to create a range of business systems, from sleek enterprise notebooks to powerful commercial desktops. Combined, these systems make up the broadest portfolio of AMD processor-based enterprise PCs in the company's history.

BIOSTAR presents an essential computing and home entertainment micro-ATX motherboard - the BIOSTAR A320MH. Based on the AMD A320 chipset, the BIOSTAR A320MH runs the latest 2nd generation AMD Ryzen CPUs and is easy to setup on Windows 7 and Windows 10. The BIOSTAR A320MH features exclusive 6+ experience with Speed+: USB 3.1 Gen 1, Smart Speed LAN, Audio+: HD Audio with 7.1-channel, Video+: HDMI4K2K, DirectX 12, Durable+: Moistureproof PCB, Low RdsOn P-Pak MOS, Protection+: ESD Protection, USB Polyswitch, OC, OV, OT Protection, DIY+: HeaderZone. The micro-ATX form factor design allows users to have enough space and flexibility for office, home entertainment and graphic design needs. It also includes free download of Smart Speed LAN software (Windows 7 only).

AMD A320 Chipset: Essential Computing for Office/Home with Media Playback
The BIOSTAR A320MH features the AMD A320 chipset for use with AM4 processors in a micro-ATX form factor. It offers essential features and performance to meet needs for daily computing with its dual DIMM slots supporting up to 32GB of 2667MHz DDR4 memory, one PCI-E 3.0 x16 slot and two PCI-E 1.0 x16 slots. As for connectivity, the BIOSTAR A320MH packs a Realtek RTL8111G controller for up to 100MB/s Ethernet connectivity along with two USB 3.1 Gen1 ports, one USB 3.1 Gen1 header, four USB 2.0 Ports and two USB 2.0 headers for lots of expansion possibilities.

AMD has disclosed, via a pretty standard addition to their website, the existence of some ill-guarded secrets. The secrets in point are low-power variants of the company's 2000-series APUs, which come and join AMD's lineup with lowered TDPs to increased energy efficiency. The Ryzen 3 2200GE and Ryzen 5 2400GE slot right alongside their previously released counterparts, but have enjoyed some clock tuning (and likely some silicon binning as well) to bring their TDPs down from the 2200 and 2400's 65 W to only 35 W - an impressive feat considering there's no difference, at the execution unit level, on these silicon pieces.

Yesterday AMD held their "One Year Ryzen Anniversary" call which reiterated the company's success introducing Ryzen products and also provided insight into what's planned for 2018 and beyond.

When asked about market share status and goals, Jim Anderson, SVP and GM of Computing and Graphics at AMD, mentioned that their near-term goal is reaching levels that the company enjoyed during their early-2000s market-leadership that they had thanks to the Athlon64 processors, which were strong competitors to what Intel offered at the time. Specifically, Jim said "I don't see any reason we can't get back to historical share levels that AMD has enjoyed in the past." Back in the 2000s the company boomed on a market share above 20% for desktop and slightly below 20% for notebook, also thanks to Intel's weakness in driving technology forward.

Continuing with its trend of leaking AMD slides, Spanish website Informatica Cero has now published some purported company slides leading up to AMD's 2020 strategy. New information concerns the appearance of a new, value-oriented mobile APU in the form of "Dali" - let's hope performance on that is slightly more predictable than the particular style of the artist whose name it follows. Dali therefore joins AMD's "Renoir" APU and "Vermeer" CPUs (both expected in the 7 nm process) for AMD's 2020 roadmap. This is an interesting product, which AMD is likely positioning for tablets and ultraportables.

Another interesting tidbit is AMD's outlook for their Threadripper line of HEDT CPUs. The company is looking towards its 7 nm rendition of these powerhouse chips, codenamed "Castle Peak", to bring them, in a literal way, to that figurative peak. AMD compares Threadripper to a Monster Truck of computing, and is apparently hoping to introduce Castle Peak as early as 2019. AMD then plans to further refine these "process inflection point" products in a new generation to come right after, in 2020 (much like the company has done now with Zen and Zen+).

Dell may not believe in an imminent "AMD-Intel duopoly", even though the green team has some very interesting products in its portfolio. But even so, Dell has silently launched some Inspiron laptops that are powered by AMD's latest architecture. The total number of AMD-powered laptops reaches four in their Inspiron 17 5000 line, with a mix of AMD's latest Ryzen 3 and Ryzen 5 APUs with Vega integrated graphics.

ASUS today announced that its complete lineup of AM4-socket-based motherboards now offer support for the first Zen architecture-based AMD Ryzen desktop processors with Radeon Vega graphics Accelerated Processing Units (APUs), via a BIOS update that's available immediately. These all-new AMD Ryzen 2000 Series APUs combine up to four Zen-based CPU cores with integrated Radeon Vega graphics. When used in combination with ASUS AMD AM4 Series motherboards, AMD Ryzen 2000 Series APUs offer great-value performance and deliver best-in-class gaming and graphics experiences.

Existing owners of ASUS AM4-socket motherboards can update their systems quickly and easily with the intuitive ASUS USB BIOS Flashback or ASUS EZ Flash 3 tools. In addition, an updated graphics driver - available from the ASUS support website - pushes the integrated AMD Radeon graphics to new performance heights for best-ever visual and gaming experiences with AMD Ryzen 2000 Series APUs.

Here are the first pictures of AMD Ryzen 3 2200G and Ryzen 5 2400G "Raven Ridge" desktop APU retail PIB (processor in box) packages. The PIB package includes the APU itself, an AMD Wraith Stealth cooling solution, a case-badge, and some documentation. These packages are visually distinguishable from Ryzen 3 and Ryzen 5 "Summit Ridge" CPU PIB packages, with a chrome silver band heading the front face, which has prominent AMD Radeon Vega Graphics branding. It keeps up with the APUs' full retail names: "AMD Ryzen 3 2200G with Radeon Vega 8 graphics" and "AMD Ryzen 5 2400G with Radeon Vega 11 graphics." The Ryzen 3 2200G is expected to be priced (MSRP) at USD $99.99, and the Ryzen 5 2400G at $169.99; both parts launch in the retail channel on the 12th of February. The two have been extensively detailed in our older article.

AMD today revealed specifications of its first desktop socket AM4 APUs based on the "Zen" CPU micro-architecture, the Ryzen 2000G "Raven Ridge" series. The chips combine a quad-core "Zen" CPU with an integrated graphics core based on the "Vega" graphics architecture, with up to 11 NGCUs, amounting to 704 stream processors. The company is initially launching two SKUs, the Ryzen 3 2200G, and the Ryzen 5 2400G. Besides clock speeds, the two are differentiated with the Ryzen 5 featuring CPU SMT, and more iGPU stream processsors. The Ryzen 5 2400G is priced at USD $169, while the Ryzen 3 2200G goes for $99. Both parts will be available on the 12th of February, 2018.

The Ryzen 5 2400 features an 4-core/8-thread CPU clocked at 3.60 GHz, with a boost frequency of 3.90 GHz; 2 MB of L2 cache (512 KB per core), and 4 MB of shared L3 cache; and Radeon Vega 11 graphics (with the 11 denoting NGCU count), featuring 704 stream processors. The iGPU engine clock is set at 1250 MHz. The dual-channel DDR4 integrated memory controller supports up to 64 GB of dual-channel DDR4-2933 MHz memory. The Ryzen 3 2200G is a slightly cut down part. Lacking SMT, its 4-core/4-thread CPU ticks at 3.50 GHz, with 3.70 GHz boost. Its CPU cache hierarchy is unchanged; the iGPU features only 8 out of 11 NGCUs, which translate to 512 stream processors. The iGPU engine clock is set at 1100 MHz. Both parts feature unlocked CPU base-clock multipliers; and have their TDP rated at 65W, and include AMD Wraith Stealth cooling solutions.

Following its Ryzen 5 2400G and Ryzen 3 2200G socket AM4 APU announcement, AMD announced price cuts for its Ryzen family of processors, across the board. These are official price cuts, and not seasonal retailer discounts. The price cuts have been made in a bid to make its existing socket AM4 Ryzen processors more competitive against 8th generation Intel Core "Coffee Lake" processors.

Among the notable changes, are bringing the entire Ryzen 7-series lineup under the $350-mark, with the 1800X being priced at $349, the 1700X at $309, and the 1700 non-X at $299. These changes make the three competitive against the Core i7-8700K (which is scraping the $400-mark in many places), and the i7-8700 non-K (around $330). The Ryzen 5-series six-core parts also receive much-needed price-cuts to make them competitive against the Core i5 six-core SKUs, such as the i5-8600K and i5-8400. There are marginal changes in the Ryzen 3 series and Ryzen Threadripper series. All price cuts are tabled below.

Building on the global enthusiasm generated in 2017 by Ryzen processors and Radeon graphics technology, AMD today detailed its forthcoming roll-out plan for its new and next generation of high-performance computing and graphics products during an event in Las Vegas just prior to the opening of CES 2018. Alongside announcing the first desktop Ryzen processors with built-in Radeon Vega Graphics, AMD also detailed the full line up of Ryzen mobile APUs including the new Ryzen PRO and Ryzen 3 models, and provided a first look at the performance of its upcoming 12nm 2nd generation Ryzen desktop CPU expected to launch in April. In graphics, AMD announced the expansion of the "Vega" family with Radeon Vega Mobile and that its first 7nm product is planned to be a Radeon "Vega" GPU specifically built for machine learning applications.

"We successfully accomplished the ambitious goals we set for ourselves in 2017, reestablishing AMD as a high-performance computing leader with the introduction and ramp of 10 different product families," said AMD President and CEO Dr. Lisa Su. "We are building on this momentum in 2018 as we make our strongest product portfolio of the last decade even stronger with new CPUs and GPUs that bring more features and more performance to a broad set of markets."

A mysterious AMD APU showed up on SiSoft SANDRA online database, featuring a massive integrated graphics. The chip reports itself to SANDRA as "AMD Fenghuang Raven," and is likely a semi-custom chip being tested by an AMD engineer in the course of its development. SANDRA reports the integrated graphics component as "AMD 15FF Graphics," featuring 1,792 stream processors across 28 compute units, 555 MHz engine clock, and 2 GB of video memory with 182.15 GB/s memory bandwidth. The result doesn't put out too many details about the CPU component, except its 2.40 GHz clock speed. The iGPU scored 98 points on SANDRA graphics tests with Direct3D 11 API, and 39.99 GB/s observed score.

It's been confirmed by AMD that the company's XFR (eXtended Frequency Range) tech that has made its way to the company's desktop Ryzen CPUs has seen its way i to the company's APUs as well, in the form of mXFR. This much was to be expected - mobile form factors arguably represent the best platform for dynamic frequency changes, marrying best performance and power consumption whenever one or the other is required. Speaking to TechReport, an AMD representative confirmed that Raven Ridge chips will feature mXFR capabilities depending on the platform they're implemented in, and spoke in particular of the Ryzen 5 2500U + HP ENVY x360 capabilities on that particular front.

"Not all notebooks with the AMD Ryzen mobile APU will offer the necessary thermal solution to enable the performance upside of mXFR," the AMD representative said, "but the HP ENVY x360 featuring the AMD Ryzen Processor with Radeon Vega Graphics is the first solution to do so. Users will look for "amplified mXFR performance" in the marketplace should they desire a laptop that offers this capability." This means that while typical TDP for Raven Ridge solutions should stand at the 15 W value, power consumption of the CPU + GPU combo can increase its TDP up to 25 W given particular workload, battery state and temperature conditions, which should increase performance in detriment of battery life.

Update: Industry sources are saying that the 256 MB dedicated system memory to graphics card tasks is currently a firmware limitation, and should be expanded in future firmware revisions to 512 MB and even 1 GB of fully-addressable system DDR4 memory.

AMD's mobile APUs are expected to come with a range of graphics solutions, one of which is the titular Vega 8. Vega 8 isn't supposed to be a high-performance, desktop-class GPU implementation. Instead, it's AMD's counter to NVIDIA's recently announced MX 110 and MX 130 discrete GPUs, which usually deliver relatively low gains (as much as manufacturers want to tout them as extraordinary) when compared to Intel integrated solutions, by far the most widespread IGP. It's expected that Vega 8 performance will slot somewhere around MX110-MX130 levels; and being the low-performance, low cost solution that it's aiming to be, Vega 8 has been made almost unrecognizable from the Vegas we know.

ASUS recently released BIOS updates for its socket AM4 motherboards based on AMD X370 and B350 chipsets, which implement AGESA 1.0.0.7, which as you'll recall, paves the way for implementing support for upcoming processors, based on AMD's Vega-infused "Raven Ridge" APU silicon, and the 12 nm refreshed Ryzen "Pinnacle Ridge" silicon due for February 2018. ASUS published, and later withdrew the BIOS updates as the media got whiff of them.

The next parts for AMD's mainstream-desktop socket AM4 platform will be Ryzen "Raven Ridge" APUs, which let you finally use the HDMI and DisplayPorts on your motherboards. "Raven Ridge" combines a quad-core "Zen" CPU with a 640-stream processor integrated graphics based on the "Vega" graphics architecture. The "late-2017 or early-2018" time-line for these chips still appears to stand. RedGamingTech suggests that AMD's answer to Intel "Coffee Lake" processors, the 12 nm Ryzen "Pinnacle Ridge" processors, could be out by as early (or late) as February 2018. These chips could be previewed or teased at the company's events held on the sidelines of the 2018 International CES.

HP posted the datasheet of its upcoming 2-in-1 notebook PC, the ENVY x360 15-bq101na, which could be the world's first implementation of AMD's upcoming 14 nm "Raven Ridge" APU. The silicon combines a quad-core "Zen" CPU with an integrated graphics core based on the "Vega" GPU architecture. The datasheet speaks of an "AMD Ryzen 5 2500U" processor powering the machine.

The Ryzen 5 2500U is being described as featuring a quad-core CPU clocked at 2.00 GHz with 3.60 GHz boost frequency, and 6 MB of cache. This could very well be total-cache, since that's how AMD likes OEMs to advertise cache on its chips, which works out to 512 KB of L2 cache per core, and 4 MB of shared L3 cache. The graphics core features the branding "AMD Radeon Vega M," confirming that this chip is indeed a derivation of "Raven Ridge."

AMD is readying an update to its AGESA micro-code. AGESA is an essential component of AMD platform motherboard BIOSes responsible for starting the processor at system start-up. Updates to it improve the motherboards' memory and CPU compatibility. Following its all-important AGESA 1.0.0.6 update that vastly improves memory compatibility of AMD Ryzen processors, the company is readying an even newer version. The new AGESA 1.0.0.7 update prompts significant changes to the structure of motherboard BIOSes, making it easy to implement support for upcoming socket AM4 chips, such as the "Raven Ridge" APUs, and the 2nd generation Ryzen "Pinnacle Ridge" CPUs.

Professional overclocker elmor, who is currently associated with ASUS ROG, responding to an Overclockers.net forums question about the Crosshair VI series motherboard, mentioned that AGESA 1.0.0.7 significantly changes the BIOS structure of AMD motherboards, which will make it easier implement support for future processors. "AGESA 1007 comes with support for Raven Ridge APUs. AMD has also changed the entire BIOS base structure so we have to do a lot of work to port everything to the new version, which may result in further bugs. The advantage is that it makes it easier to support future CPUs (Raven Ridge, Pinnacle Ridge)," he said. Updates to AGESA are distributed by motherboard manufacturers as BIOS updates.

A Geekbench page has just surfaced for AMD's upcoming Raven Ridge APUs, which bring both Vega graphics and Ryzen CPU cores to AMD's old "the future is Fusion" mantra. The APU in question is being tagged as AMD's Raven Ridge-based Ryzen 5 2500U, which leverages 4 Zen cores and 8 threads (via SMT) running at 2.0 GHz with AMD's Vega graphics.

According to Geekbench, the Ryzen APU scores 3,561 points in the single-core score, and 9,421 points in the multi-core score. Compared to AMD's A12-9800, which also leverages 4 cores (albeit being limited to 4 threads) running at almost double the frequency of this Ryzen 5 2500U (3.8 GHz vs the Ryzen's 2 GHz), that's 36% better single-core performance and 48% better multi-core performance. These results are really fantastic, and just show how much AMD has managed to improve their CPU (and in this case, APU) design over their Bulldozer-based iterations.

AMD Tuesday agreed to settle in its longstanding class-action lawsuit by investors for making misleading guidance over its first-generation accelerated processing units (APUs), codenamed "Llano." AMD was alleged to have oversold the potential of "Llano" in driving up revenues to the company, causing losses to investors. AMD is reported to have reached an agreement with the class to settle for USD $29.5 million. The settlement is yet to be approved by Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who has been hearing the case since 2014, sitting in session for the US District Court in Oakland, California. Under the proposed deal, AMD's insurers foot the bill for the settlement, while it continues to deny any wrongdoing.

It looks like AMD will combine its two latest intellectual properties, the "Zen" CPU micro-architecture, and the "Vega" graphics architecture into a single silicon after all, as reports citing leaked OpenCL tables confirm that the company's upcoming Ryzen "Raven Ridge" APU will feature graphics compute units (CUs) based on the "Vega" architecture. It's becoming increasingly clear, that "Raven Ridge" features a "Zen" CCX unit, and a "Vega" based graphics core with up to 12 NGCUs, making up 768 stream processors. The "Zen" CCX talks to the "Vega" graphics core using Infinity Fabric, the same interconnect used between two CCX units on the "Summit Ridge" silicon, and between two "Summit Ridge" dies on the Ryzen Threadripper MCM.

The "Raven Ridge" silicon will hence feature up to 4 CPU cores, with SMT enabling up to 8 threads, up to 8 MB of L3 cache, a "Vega" based graphics core with up to 12 NGCUs making 768 stream processors, a dual-channel DDR4 integrated memory controller, and the same integrated southbridge as "Summit Ridge," featuring two SATA 6 Gb/s ports, and USB 3.0 ports directly from the SoC. In addition, you get a PCI-Express 3.0 x16 interface for graphics, which can be split into two x8 for 2-way multi-GPU. The OpenCL listings speak about two distinct variants, one with 11 NGCUs, and another with 8. AMD plans to roll out the first "Raven Ridge" based products as Ryzen 5 series and Ryzen 7 series mobile APUs, with a desktop debut a little later.

At the second annual Capsaicin SIGGRAPH event, AMD unveiled new professional graphics cards designed to dramatically accelerate the pace of professional content creation today, while enabling creators to take bold new steps into the more demanding workflows of tomorrow. Based on AMD's next-generation "Vega" GPU architecture, the Radeon Pro WX 9100 and Radeon Pro SSG professional graphics cards defy convention, introducing advanced technology never before seen in the professional space that reduces or eliminates traditional content creation barriers, empowering artists, designers and engineers to better realize their visions.

"Today we're seeing the convergence of our professional markets. Real-time visualization, graphics virtualization, and machine intelligence are coming together to enable extraordinary new possibilities for professionals, and no one is better positioned to win than AMD. Radeon Pro was built on the promise of enabling the art of the impossible, giving professional content creators a means to realize even their wildest ambitions. But their visions and the technology needed to achieve them is a moving target, an unending challenge that demands more from creators and the technology they use every year. With the new Radeon Pro WX 9100 and Radeon Pro SSG, we're breaking new ground and we can't wait to see how you unleash this power," said Ogi Brkic, general manager, professional graphics, Radeon Technologies Group, AMD.

AMD's AM4 socket really is shaping up to be one of the company's most versatile to date. From true quad-core CPUS (just now available through Ryzen 3's launch through to veritable svelte behemoths 8-core, 16-thread CPUs, AM4 has something for every consumer. AMD is now taking that show further with the release of the Bristol Ridge family of APUs, which includes eight APUs and three CPUs. While pricing wasn't announced at time of writing, the top-priced part should fall below the $110 mark and bottom out at $50, so as not to collide with AMD's Ryzen 3 1200 (although these products aren't specifically overlapping anyway.)

AMD's new entry-level processors will hit a maximum of 65 W TDP, with the top spot being taken by the 2-module, 4-threads A12-9800, running at 3.8 GHz base and 4.2 GHz Turbo. This part holds a Radeon R7 GPU with 512 Stream Processors (GCN 1.3, the same as in the Fury GPUs) running at 800 MHz Base and 1108 MHz Turbo. There are three 35 W parts (denoted by a capital E after the model name.) One thing users should take into account is that the Bristol Ridge APUs deliver a maximum of 8x PCIe 3.0 lanes - thus rendering a multi-GPU solution unfeasible.

So, yes, Intel, I think the AMD engineers who have developed the Zen architecture from the ground-up would take issue with that. Especially when AMD's "Glued-together" dies actually wipe the proverbial floor with the blue company's chips in power-performance ratios, and deliver much better multi-threaded performance than Intel's offerings. Not bad for a "Glued-together" solution, I'd say.

Our resident W1zzard had this to say regarding AMD's latest CPUs: "The SenseMi power-management system seems to be working well in idle, with the 8-core machine drawing the same amount of power as Intel's quad-core "Kaby Lake" machine." And "At stock speeds, the energy-efficiency of Ryzen is truly phenomenal. Prime95 loads all cores and threads on the chip, and the Ryzen ends up with as much power draw as the quad-core Intel i7-7700K. The high power draw result of the overclocked chip is due to the increased voltage needed to achieve stable operation." And let's not forget this: This is epic. We're assuming you've sifted through our game-test results before seeing this page, and so you'll find that the gaming power draw of the 8-core Ryzen makes Intel's quad-core i7-7700K look bad. Power draw is as much as 30W lesser! Ryzen is hands down the most energy-efficient performance CPU AMD ever made, and easily outclasses Intel's 14 nm "leadership." Good show."

ECS took to Computex to showcase seven different motherboards from both AMD and Intel. First up we have the Z270 Lightsaber, which is great at deflecting laser blaster shots. It's an LGA 1151 socket motherboard, features 8-channel audio courtesy of a Realtek ALC 1150 audio chip, a Killer E2500 Gigabit controller, 1x M.2 slot with support for SATA, NVMe, and Intel Optane. There are 3x PCIe x16 slots, which work at x8 x8 x4 when all slots are populated, as is usual with Z270 motherboards.