Lisa Su of Advanced Micro Devices has become the world's highest-paid CEO, according to a recent survey from The Associated Press on CEO compensation. Lisa Su's pay package was valued at $58.5 million after some extremely impressive company performance over her last five years as CEO on the back of the wild success of EPYC, Ryzen, and Radeon. This pay package comprised a base salary of $1 million, a performance bonus of $1.2 million, $56 million in stocks. This makes Lisa Su the first woman to become the highest-paid CEO and one of only 20 women on the list, versus 309 men.

Linux kernel patches reference an AMD "Sienna Cichlid" GPU, which Phoronix believes could be the fabled "Big Navi" GPU. We know this is a GPU and not a headless CDNA scalar processor as the patches include code for VCN 3.0 video encoding capabilities (RDNA2's media engine), and DCN3 (RDNA2's display engine), which constitute bulk that AMD could get rid of on CDNA chips. The unusual internal codename could reference AMD's next generation RDNA2 architecture based flagship GPU, armed with 80 compute units (5,120 stream processors), Radeon Intersection Engines (accelerate real-time ray-tracing). The codename comes across as unusual, but AMD does tend to use wacky internal codenames to detect sources of leaks.

Adobe is releasing an important feature update to Premiere Pro later this week, which promises to introduce significant improvements to video encoding performance by better leveraging GPU acceleration. The new version 14.2 of Premiere Pro will leverage NVENC to boost encoding by over 5 times compared to CPU. The suite leveraged shaders to accelerate video effects and improving export times, but until now hadn't leveraged NVIDIA's hardware encoder. For machines with GeForce and Quadro GPUs, this means improved export times on H.264, H.265, and HEVC codecs. Without getting into specifics, Adobe mentioned that Premiere Pro will tap into video hardware acceleration capabilities of AMD Radeon GPUs, too.

Update 07:55 UTC: Adobe posted release notes of the latest version 14.2 of Premiere Pro. The list of system requirements needed for hardware-accelerated H.264 and HEVC encoding appears vague beyond pointing out that you need a compatible graphics solution. The list of compatible GPUs includes a wide selection of NVIDIA GPUs covering both its professional Quadro and consumer GeForce brands. On the AMD front, however, only the professional Radeon Pro SKUs are listed, and no consumer Radeon RX series SKUs.

MAINGEAR, an award-winning PC system integrator of custom gaming desktops, notebooks, and workstations, today launched the MAINGEAR Pro WS, a highly-versatile workstation designed to meet the needs of professional creatives and content producers, pairing best-in-class hardware configurations with MAINGEAR's lifetime customer support to deliver maximum performance and mission-critical reliability. The MAINGEAR Pro WS is available now in customizable and pre-configured systems for several leading creative applications, including "Recommended By Luxion (Makers of KeyShot)" MAINGEAR Pro WS configurations for 3D rendering.

AMD today announced revenue for the first quarter of 2020 of $1.79 billion, operating income of $177 million, net income of $162 million and diluted earnings per share of $0.14. On a non-GAAP* basis, operating income was $236 million, net income was $222 million and diluted earnings per share was $0.18.

"We executed well in the first quarter, navigating the challenging environment to deliver 40 percent year-over-year revenue growth and significant gross margin expansion driven by our Ryzen and EPYC processors," said Dr. Lisa Su, AMD president and CEO. "While we expect some uncertainty in the near-term demand environment, our financial foundation is solid and our strong product portfolio positions us well across a diverse set of resilient end markets. We remain focused on strong business execution while ensuring the safety of our employees and supporting our customers, partners and communities. Our strategy and long-term growth plans are unchanged."

AMD has today released an update to its Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020, in the so-called edition 20.4.2. The new driver revision brings a heap of features and improvements that fix a lot of issues that users have experienced. AMD now brings support for titles like Gears Tactics and Predator: Hunting Grounds. Some of the fixes are big ones for RX Vega cards like the resolvent of system hang or black screen when running Folding@Home while also running an application using hardware acceleration of video content. Others include a fix for a system crash or hang that may be experienced when using the Edge browser to play Netflix content. For a full list of features and improvements please check out the list below.

DOWNLOAD: Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition 20.4.2

AMD is preparing to launch its next-generation of Radeon Instinct GPUs based on the new CDNA architecture designed for enterprise deployments. Thanks to the popular hardware leaker _rogame (@_rogame) we have some information about the configuration of the upcoming Radeon Instinct MI100 "Arcturus" server GPU. Previously, we obtained the BIOS of the Arcturus GPU that showed a configuration of 128 Compute Units (CUs), which resulted in 8,192 of CDNA cores. That configuration had a specific setup of 1334 MHz GPU clock, SoC frequency of 1091 MHz, and memory speed of 1000 MHz. However, there was another GPU test board spotted which featured a bit different specification.

The reported configuration is an Arcturus GPU with 120 CUs, resulting in a CDNA core count of 7,680 cores. These cores are running at frequencies of 878 MHz for the core clock, 750 MHz SoC clock, and a surprising 1200 MHz memory clock. While the SoC and core clocks are lower than the previous report, along with the CU count, the memory clock is up by 200 MHz. It is important to note that this is just a test board/variation of the MI100, and actual frequencies should be different.

Microsoft's flight simulator, an upcoming game designed to bring real-life scenarios of flying an airplane, just got a list of system requirements needed to run a game. To play with Flight Simulator, you would at least need to have a quad-core CPU like AMD Ryzen 3 1200 or Intel Core i5-4460 equipped system, along with 8 GB of RAM. For graphics, you would need a GPU with at least 2 GB of VRAM, where the requirement is either AMD Radeon RX 570 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 GPU. Another interesting observation is the requirement of 150 GB of drive space, meaning that this game will be pretty big. Internet connection needs to be 5 Mbps at minimum, and as you up the resolution and graphics, you would need a faster connection. You can check out the entire table below.

The need for incrementally faster connection comes out of one reason - adaptive streaming. The game looks stunning, and if you wish to play at the highest quality, parts of the game will be rendered in the cloud. Microsoft is using its Azure infrastructure to help and render parts of the game and stream it down to your PC. This ensures that your PC is capable of playing the game and Microsoft is showing how they can tap the power of cloud for uses like this.

Today, HP Inc. unveiled its newest Z by HP mobile workstation and HP ENVY portfolio - designed for creators who push the envelope of what's possible. The HP ZBook Studio, HP ZBook Create, and the HP ENVY 15 are the latest additions to the HP Create Ecosystem, which launched at Adobe MAX in 2019.

The powerful line-up enables all levels of creators, including consumers, prosumers and professionals, to capture, create, and bring to life digital concepts and ideas that can be shared, enjoyed, and experienced. In the past, creators had to choose between heavy workstations or bulky gaming devices to get the power they require for work and play. Today, HP is pushing the boundaries of engineering and creative productivity by allowing photographers, vloggers, graphic designers, architects, film makers, and everyone in between, to achieve what was never thought possible.

AMD today announced in the form of a blog post that its upcoming graphics cards based on RDNA 2 architecture will feature support for Microsoft's latest DirectX 12 Ultimate API. "With this architecture powering both the next generation of AMD Radeon graphics cards and the forthcoming Xbox Series X gaming console, we've been working very closely with Microsoft to help move gaming graphics to a new level of photorealism and smoothness thanks to the four key DirectX 12 Ultimate graphics features -- DirectX Raytracing (DXR), Variable Rate Shading (VRS), Mesh Shaders, and Sampler Feedback." - said AMD in the blog.

Reportedly, Microsoft and AMD have worked closely to enable this feature set and provide the best possible support for RDNA 2 based hardware, meaning that future GPUs and consoles are getting the best possible integration of the new API standard.

Microsoft Thursday released the DirectX 12 Ultimate logo. This is not a new API with any new features, but rather a differentiator for graphics cards and game consoles that support four key modern features of DirectX 12. This helps consumers recognize the newer and upcoming GPUs, and tell them apart from some older DirectX 12 capable GPUs that were released in the mid-2010s. For a GPU to be eligible for the DirectX 12 Ultimate logo, it must feature hardware acceleration for ray-tracing with the DXR API; must support Mesh Shaders, Variable Rate Shading (VRS), and Sampler Feedback (all of the four). The upcoming Xbox Series X console features this logo by default. Microsoft made it absolutely clear that the DirectX 12 Ultimate logo isn't meant as a compatibility barrier, and that these games will work on older hardware, too.

As it stands, the "Navi"-based Radeon RX 5000 series are "obsolete", just like some Turing cards from the GeForce GTX 16-series. At this time, the only shipping product which features the logo is NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 20-series and the TITAN RTX, as they support all the above features.

AMD Financial Analyst Day presents an opportunity for AMD to talk straight with the finance industry about the company's current financial health, and a taste of what's to come. Guidance and product teasers made during this time are usually very accurate due to the nature of the audience. In this live blog, we will post information from the Financial Analyst Day 2020 as it unfolds.20:59 UTC: The event has started as of 1 PM PST. CEO Dr Lisa Su takes stage.

AMD has been on a roll in both consumer, professional, and exascale computing environments, and it has just snagged itself another hugely important contract. The US Department of Energy (DOE) has just announced the winners for their next-gen, exascale supercomputer that aims to be the world's fastest. Dubbed "El Capitan", the new supercomputer will be powered by AMD's next-gen EPYC Genoa processors (Zen 4 architecture) and Radeon GPUs. This is the first such exascale contract where AMD is the sole purveyor of both CPUs and GPUs, with AMD's other design win with EPYC in the Cray Shasta being paired with NVIDIA graphics cards.

El Capitan will be a $600 million investment to be deployed in late 2022 and operational in 2023. Undoubtedly, next-gen proposals from AMD, Intel and NVIDIA were presented, with AMD winning the shootout in a big way. While initially the DOE projected El Capitan to provide some 1.5 exaflops of computing power, it has now revised their performance goals to a pure 2 exaflop machine. El Capitan willl thus be ten times faster than the current leader of the supercomputing world, Summit.

AMD has just re-released Radeon Software 20.1.3 as WHQL. These drivers are identical to the Adrenalin 20.1.3 Beta drivers posted earlier this month, with the only difference being WHQL certification. It looks like AMD's driver team is hard at work fixing the various issues reported. 20.1.3 WHQL is an important release as it now gives RX 5600 XT owners a WHQL driver — previously they had to resort to beta drivers to power their new purchase.

Radeon Software Adrenalin 20.1.4 Beta was released just days ago and does include additional changes that aren't integrated in 20.1.3 WHQL yet, because Microsoft's WHQL certification process takes some time. A few days ago we reported that AMD silently patched a driver security issue with 20.1.1 Beta, maybe that's a reason, too, why we're seeing a WHQL version today.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 20.1.3 WHQL

CORSAIR, a world leader in high-performance gaming peripherals and enthusiast components, today announced its new models of stunning AMD-powered gaming PCs, the CORSAIR VENGEANCE 6100 Series. Starting with the VENGEANCE 6180 and VENGEANCE 6182, these cutting-edge gaming PCs combine the power of 3rd generation AMD Ryzen processors and AMD Radeon RX 5700 Series graphics with high-quality CORSAIR components, all in a compact cube form factor that's 33% smaller than a standard mid-tower and brimming with fully customizable RGB lighting.

Since launching in 2018, the CORSAIR VENGEANCE family has emerged as one of the most awarded and sought-after gaming PCs on the market thanks to its impressive power, distinctive style, and deeply embedded customizable RGB lighting. Both the CORSAIR VENGEANCE 6180 and 6182 incorporate a liquid-cooled AMD Ryzen 7 3700X CPU with eight cores and 16 threads, an AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT 8 GB graphics card, and 16 GB of CORSAIR VENGEANCE RGB PRO DDR4-3200 Memory. Both models are cooled by a CORSAIR Hydro Series H100i RGB PLATINUM Liquid CPU cooler and powered by a CORSAIR RM650 80 PLUS Gold power supply.

AMD today unveiled AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition, the next generation of its software suite for AMD Radeon graphics, providing gamers, creators and enthusiasts with a unique set of features and capabilities that deliver unparalleled visual fidelity and phenomenal gaming experiences. Featuring a fully redesigned gaming application, AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition puts powerful capabilities at gamers' fingertips. It includes the new Radeon Boost feature, bringing enhanced performance and fluidity to fast-motion gameplay, new Integer Display Scaling technology that rejuvenates old games for modern displays, as well as significant enhancements to the acclaimed AMD Link mobile application, to Radeon Image Sharpening, Radeon Anti-Lag, and much more.

Our detailed write-up, including performance testing on Navi, Vega and Polaris can be found here.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition 19.12.2 WHQL"With each Radeon Software release, we laser-focus on bringing innovative features gamers demand, significant performance improvements, and the ultimate in software stability and reliability," said Andrej Zdravkovic, corporate vice president of software development at AMD. "AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition takes gaming on Radeon graphics to the next level with breathtaking visual quality, faster performance, and a host of unique, must-have features that dramatically improve the overall user experience."

An independent study conducted by the European Hardware Association (EHA) has revealed that AMD now ranks higher than Intel in the CPU space. While we have seen this as recently as last week, where we reported on top sellers across some Amazon webstores in Europe, with AMD scoring most of the top sellers in both Germany and the UK, this is the first time a comprehensive study has put some verifiable, science-generated numbers for us to see.

According to the EHA, 60% of the European PC enthusiasts (in a sample of 10,000 respondents) showed a strong sentiment towards AMD as their favored manufacturer of CPUs, and would choose any sort of system with an AMD CPU over an Intel one (including APU, AMD + Radeon graphics cards and AMD + NVIDIA graphics cards). This is a far cry from the same time around last year, where AMD only held 40% of a similar sample's preferred buying intention, and up from the 50% shown in the same study, carried out in 2H2019. The same survey also shows a slightly increased preference for AMD's graphics cards, with the 1H2019 showing 19% preference compared to 23% in this latest study.

According to a source cited by China's Ithome, AMD has contacted AIB with regards to launch plans for the company's RX 5500, the mainstream graphics cards based on Navi 14. For now, there are still no news on any RX 5500 XT graphics cards from the company - whether or not there is such as SKU being prepared for later launch is still unclear. The launch date of December 12th is in line with previous release expectations, and should be a full launch with multiple AIB partners releasing their solutions.

The RX 5500 has been tested to be acompetitor to NVIDIA's GTX 1660 graphics card, replacing AMD's RX 570, RX 580 and RX 590 graphics cards from the product stack. The Navi 14 chip that the RX 5500 is based on TSMC's 7 nm manufacturing technology, is configured with 22 RDNA compute units (1,408 stream processors), and features a 128-bit wide GDDR6 memory bus. VRAM-wise it will be available in either 4 GB or 8 GB of memory running at 14 Gbps data-rate, yielding 224 GB/s of memory bandwidth. GPU clocks are listed as 1670 MHz "Boost," and 1845 MHz "Gaming". Typical board power is rated at 110 W, with a single 8-pin PCIe power input being enough to deliver required power save for some more exotic AIB designs.

The leading global motherboard, graphics card and mini PC manufacturer, ASRock, announces their latest Phantom Gaming series graphics cards - the Radeon RX 5700 XT Phantom Gaming D 8G OC, and Radeon RX 5700 Phantom Gaming D 8G OC, which are equipped with AMD's latest generation of 7 nm Radeon RX 5700 series GPUs, with 8 GB GDDR6 video memory, and the latest PCI Express 4.0 support, coupled with outstanding heat dissipation triple-fan design, brilliant ARGB lighting effects, and the stylish metal backplate. With all these advanced specifications and rich features, they are undoubtedly designed for gamers, providing an outstanding 1440p gaming experience.

AMD has today released a new and improved version of their "Adrenalin" graphics card driver with the release of the version 19.11.1. The new release brings many bug fixes and most importantly a support for Red Dead: Redemption II game. Some of the improvements with the 19.11.1 are the fixes for frame rate limit of 60 FPS in some game titles that utilize Vulkan API; OBS streaming now doesn't get a heavy frame drop when using AMF encoding and error when some users try to connect to Twitch from the connect page in Radeon Settings for live streaming is gone.

Download the AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 19.11.1 Driver.

The AMD Embedded business provides SoCs and discrete GPUs that enable casino gaming companies to create immersive and beautiful graphics for the latest in casino gaming platforms, which are adopting the same high-quality motion graphics and experiences seen in modern consumer gaming devices. AMD Embedded provides casino and gaming customers a breadth of solutions to drive virtually any gaming system. The AMD Ryzen Embedded V1000 SoC brings CPU and GPU technology together in one package, providing the capability to run up to four 4K displays from one system. The AMD Ryzen Embedded R1000 SoC is a power efficient option while providing up to 4X better CPU and graphics performance per dollar than the competition.

Beyond SoCs, AMD also offers embedded GPUs to enable stunning, immersive visual experiences while supporting efficient thermal design power (TDP) profiles. AMD delivers three discrete GPU classes to customers with the AMD Embedded Radeon ultra-high-performance embedded GPUs, the AMD Embedded Radeon high-performance embedded GPUs and the AMD Embedded Radeon power-efficient embedded GPUs. These three classes enable a wide range of performance and power consumption, but most importantly offer features that the embedded industry demands including planned longevity, enhanced support and support for embedded operating systems.

The upcoming single-player Star Wars Jedi: Fallen order will be a tall calling for Respawn. Few franchises are as loved as Star Wars, and this one will definitely leave a mark in the company's legacy. It's unlikely EA will "pull an EA" on the studio even if it flops, though: Apex Legends remains an incredibly successful release form Respawn Entertainment, and it should be enough to hold EA's reins - at least for a while.

The system requirements for the highly-awaited, story-driven single-player game have been outed, and they're in the usual side of things. Minimum requirements call for an AMD FX-6100 or an Intel Core i3-3220, paired with 8 GB of RAM and an AMD Radeon HD 7750 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 - alongside 65 GB of storage. The recommended specs are relatively standard as well, and nothing to throw users in an upgrade fit... We're looking at an AMD AMD Ryzen 7 1700 or an Intel i7-6700K, 16 GB of system RAM, An AMD RX Vega 56 or NVIDIA GTX 1070 graphics cards. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order drops on November 15th.

MSI, the world's No.1 gaming brand, has just announced its latest Alpha 15 gaming laptop. Armed with the new AMD Radeon RX 5500M graphics, the Alpha 15 is the first gaming laptop to feature 7 nm technology, bringing cutting-edge hardware to the mainstream. MSI even created a dedicated category and a new logo for the unique yet innovative segment. The new logo takes form of a thunderbird with rising wings, representing strength, innovation and prosperity. Being the first and dominant of its kind, MSI has presented the new beast with the name "Alpha".

As typical MSI gaming tradition, the laptop also packs ample gaming features from powerful cooling system, per-key RGB keyboard, Giant Speaker, High-Res audio, and more. Gamers who purchase the Alpha 15 via selected channels will also be eligible for a complimentary copy of either Borderlands 3 or Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint."

The marriage of Intel and AMD IPs in the form of the Kaby Lake-G processors was met with both surprised grunts from the company and a sense of bewilderment at what could come next. Well, we now know what came next: Intel hiring several high-level AMD employees on the graphics space and putting together its own motley crew of discrete GPU developers, who should be putting out Intel's next-gen high-performance graphics accelerators sometime next year.

The Kaby Lake-G processors, however, showed promise, pairing both Intel's (at the time) IPC dominance and AMD's graphics IP performance and expertise on a single package by placing the two components in the same substrate and connecting them via a PCIe link. A new and succinct Intel notice on the Kaby Lake-G page sets a last order time (January 31, 2020, as the last date for orders, and July 31, 2020, as the date of last shipments), and explains that product market shifts have moved demand from Kaby Lake-G products "to other Intel products". Uptake was always slow on this particular collaboration - most of it, we'd guess, because of the chips' strange footprint arrangement for embedding in systems, which required custom solutions that had to be designed from scratch. And with Intel investing into their own high-performance graphics, it seems clear that there is just no need to flaunt their previous collaborations with other companies in this field. Farewell, Intel-AMD Kaby Lake-G. We barely knew you.

XFX today finally launched their thick, custom version of the AMD Navi-powered RX 5700 XT. The new RX 5700 XT THICC III Ultra features a triple-slot (well, 2.7 slots, but who's counting but we?) cooling solution with three cooling fans, thus upping the ante compared to previous XFX THICC graphics cards. XFX boasts hat their THICC III Ultra features a peak Boost clock of 2025 MHz, and typical Boosts in the area of 1935 MHz (a 10.3% increase compared to AMD's reference specs).

The THICC design philosophy stands the test of time here, with the card mainly being black colored, with some silver accents. A thick aluminium fin-stack fed by a copper baseplate and copper heat pipes ensure a constant heat transfer from the GPU chip to the fin-stack array, which now sees three fans working overtime to dissipate all that framerate-produced heat - fed by a pair of 8-pin connectors.