As AMD is preparing to launch a highly-anticipated refresh of the Radeon RX 6000 series, codenamed RX 6x50 XT series. Alongside AMD, add-in board partners (AIBs) will have their say as well, and today we get to take a look at the alleged specifications of Sapphire's highest-end upcoming products. According to Chiphell member RaulMee, who claims to possess the specification of the newest Sapphire models, we are expected to see a bit higher total board power (TGP) with the arrival of this refresh. First and foremost, the Sapphire RX 6950XT TOXIC is the fastest air-cooled model from Sapphire, with a boost clock of up to 2565 MHz (255 MHz over AMD's reference 2310 MHz model), carrying a TGP of 364 Watts in OC BIOS. Regular TGP for this model is 332 Watts with a boost speed of up to 2532 MHz. Please note that this includes the power output of GPU and memory.

Next up, we have Sapphire's RX 6950XT NITRO+ SKUs. The non-SE card is a minor improvement over the AMD Radeon RX 6950XT reference GPU and offers a Silent BIOS option. The RX 6950XT NITRO+ Special Edition can go up to 325 Watts and 2435 MHz with OC BIOS applied. Silent BIOS is also an option, and it lowers the TGP to 303 Watts and 2368 MHz. The alleged specification chart also carries Sapphires' RX 6750XT & 6650XT NITRO+ GPUs, of which you can check the clock speeds and TGPs below.

The upcoming AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT has recently appeared in a benchmark listing on the GFXBench website where it performed 2% faster than the AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT. The Radeon RX 6750 XT is an upcoming refresh of the RX 6700 XT featuring faster GDDR6 memory running at 18 Gbps and increased clock speeds. The RX 6750 XT achieved a score of 366.5 FPS in the single GFXBench 5.0 Aztec Ruins High Tier off-screen entry which is 2% faster than the average RX 6700 XT score at 362.2 FPS for the same test. This initial test is not likely to be a representative sample of the card's performance but we would expect further tests to leak in the coming days. The AMD Radeon RX 6750XT is set to be officially unveiled on May 10th and will gradually replace existing RX 6700 XT offerings.

Update: The card has also been tested in various other GFXBench 5.0 tests including Aztec Ruins Normal Tier, Manhattan, and T-Rex where it achieves scores 6% - 12% above the RX 6700 XT.

Based on a pair of screenshots posted on Twitter by leaker @momomo_us, it appears that AMD's refreshed graphics cards aren't that far away, as Italian retailer Breakpoint has listed several Radeon RX 6x50XT cards on its website, alongside pricing. The cards in question are all from Sapphire and consist of Toxic, Nitro+ and Pulse cards. The listings have already been removed, but it might not matter too much, as the pricing isn't exactly affordable. For example, the Toxic RX 6950 XT LE Gaming OC was listed for €3,133.83, although that does include an AIO cooler.

The Nitro+ RX 6950XT model was listed at over €3,000, whereas the Nitro+ RX 6750XT was listed at over €1,400, or around €200 more than an RX 6800. The Nitro+ version of the RX 6650XT was listed north of €850, but even the two Pulse versions of the RX 6750XT and RX 6650XT are in the same crazy ballpark. Even the upcoming entry level RX 6400 model is listed at over €360 and you'd have to be mad to pay that kind of money for such a basic card. These prices are simply pure nonsense and should not be taken as an indicator of what these upcoming cards will cost. AMD is said to be launching the refreshed cards on the 10th of May, but the company might make an announcement later this month, where it will reveal the specs.

According to the latest investigation made by a German publication, Igor's Lab, AMD's Adrenalin GPU software could experience unexpected behavior when Ryzen Master software is integrated into it. Supposedly, the combination of the two would allow AMD Adrenalin GPU software to misbehave and accidentally change CPU PBO and Precision Boost settings, disregarding the user's permissions. What Igor's Lab investigated was a case of Adrenalin software automatically enabling PBO or "CPU OC" setting when applying GPU profiles. This also happens when the GPU is in the Default mode, which is set automatically by the software.

Alterations can happen without user knowledge. If a user applies custom voltage and frequency settings in BIOS, Adrenalin software can and sometimes will override those settings to set arbitrary ones, potentially impacting the CPU's stability. The software can also alter CPU power limits as it has the means to do so. This problem only occurs when AMD CPU is combined with AMD GPU and AMD Ryzen Master SDK is installed. If another configuration is present, there is no change to the system. There are ways to bypass this edge case, and that is going back to BIOS to re-apply CPU settings manually or disable PBO. A Reddit user found that creating new GPU tuning profiles without loading older profiles will also bypass Adrenalin from adjusting your CPU settings. AMD hasn't made comments about the software, and so far remains a mystery why this is happening.

A few days ago, Intel announced its first official discrete graphics card efforts, designed for laptops. Called the Arc Alchemist lineup, Intel has designed these SKUs to provide entry-level to high-end options covering a wide range of use cases. Today, AMD has responded with a rather exciting Tweet made by the company's @Radeon Twitter account. The company compared Intel's Arc Alchemist A370M GPU with AMD's Radeon RX 6500M mobile SKUs in the post. These GPUs are made on TSMC's N6 node, feature 4 GB GDDR6 64-bit memory, 1024 FP32 cores, and have the same configurable TDP range of 35-50 Watts.

Below, you can see AMD's benchmarks of the following select games: Hitman 3, Total War Saga: Troy, F1 2021, Strange Brigade (High), and Final Fantasy XIV. The Radeon RX 6500M GPU manages to win in all of these games, thus explaining AMD's "FTW" hashtag on Twitter. Remember that these are vendor-supplied benchmarks runs, so we have to wait for some media results to surface.

Encoding video is one of the significant tasks that modern hardware performs. Today, we have some data of AMD and NVIDIA solutions for the problem that shows how good GPU hardware encoders are. Thanks to Chips and Cheese tech media, we have information about AMD's Video Core Next (VCN) encoder found in RDNA2 GPUs and NVIDIA's NVENC (short for NVIDIA Encoder). The site managed to benchmark AMD's Radeon RX 6900 XT and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 GPUs. The AMD card features VCN 3.0, while the NVIDIA Turing card features a 6th generation NVENC design. Team red is represented by the latest work, while there exists a 7th generation of NVENC. C&C tested this because it means all that the reviewer possesses.

The metric used for video encoding was Netflix's Video Multimethod Assessment Fusion (VMAF) metric composed by the media giant. In addition to hardware acceleration, the site also tested software acceleration done by libx264, a software library used for encoding video streams into the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC compression format. The libx264 software acceleration was running on AMD Ryzen 9 3950X. Benchmark runs included streaming, recording, and transcoding in Overwatch and Elder Scrolls Online.Below, you can find benchmarks of streaming, recording, transcoding, and transcoding speed.

AMD is preparing to announce their FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) successor tomorrow, on March 17th before a showcase of the technology at GDC 2022 as we previously reported on according to leaked slides obtained by VideoCardz. AMD FSR 2.0 will use temporal data and optimized anti-aliasing to improve image quality in all presents and resolutions compared to its predecessor making it a worthy component against NVIDIA DLSS 2.0. The slides also confirm that FSR 2.0 doesn't require dedicated machine learning hardware acceleration and will be compatible with a "wide range of products and platforms, both AMD and competitors".

The technology has been implemented in Deathloop where FSR 2.0 "Performance" mode with ray tracing increased frame rates from 53 FPS to 101 FPS compared to 4K native resolution with ray tracing. The slides do not reveal if AMD will make the source code for FSR 2.0 open-source as they have done for FSR and Intel is planning to do with XeSS. AMD is also expected to release Radeon Super Resolution which is an FSR driver implementation available for all games on March 17th.

AMD has today released version 22.2.3 of their Adrenalin Radeon drivers adding support for Elden Ring and improving performance for Shadow Warrior 3 and GRID Legends. The drivers are reported to increase performance 5% - 6% in Shadow Warrior 3 when running at 4K High settings compared to Radeon Software Adrenalin 22.2.2 while in GRID legends at 4K Ultra High settings this ranged from 7% - 15%. The known issues remain identical to those from version 22.2.2 with the complete change-log listed below.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 22.2.3

The recently announced AMD Ryzen 6000 series mobile Zen 3+ processors feature a significant graphics improvement with up to 12 RDNA2 Compute Units available. These new graphics solutions have recently been tested and compared by an engineer working for Lenovo in China. The Radeon 680M and Radeon 660M feature 12 and 6 RDNA2 Compute Units respectively and have been tested against the NVIDIA MX450 and the Intel Iris Xe Graphics G7. The Radeon 680M represents an 85% performance improvement over the Radeon RX Vega 8 and is 24% faster than the discrete NVIDIA MX450 mobile GPU in 3DMark. This lead narrows in real-world tests where the 680M is only 1.1% faster than the MX450 and the 660M is 37% slower.

The mid-range Radeon 660M is still significantly faster than the Intel Iris Xe Graphics G7 (96EU) found in the i7-12700H beating it by 9% in 1080P gaming. The review also looks at power efficiency for the Radeon 660M & 680M showing that in their highest power configurations performance increases by 10% for the 660M and 42% for the 680M. The Radeon 680M remains behind the NVIDIA GTX 1650 Max-Q which holds a 25% lead. The Ryzen 6000 mobile series will be available in laptops starting from next month.

Akasa, manufacturer of cooling solutions and computer cases, today updated two of its fanless compact cases designed to replace actively-cooled systems of mini-PCs. For starters, the new Akasa Turing ABX is a next-generation compact fanless case for GIGABYTE AMD Ryzen BRIX 4000U-Series Mini-PC with Radeon GPU. The Turing ABX case is compatible with the following GIGABYTE Ryzen BRIX models: GB-BRR3-4300, GB-BRR5-4500, GB-BRR7-4700, and GB-BRR7-480. It brings out all of the I/O ports that come standard with these BRIX models; however, the cooling system is replaced with Akasa's fanless design integrated within the case.

And last but not least, Akasa also launched Newton A50 fanless case for ASUS PN51 and PN50 mini-PCs. Coming in with a 1.3-liter design, this case represents a very compact solution capable of carrying 5000 and 4000 Series AMD Ryzen processors and Radeon Vega 7 Graphics. As far as I/O options, the case brings everything that ASUS PN51 and PN50 PCs have to offer; however, the cooling system is also replaced by Akasa's fanless design. You can learn more about Turing ABX here and Newton A50 here. For availability, you can expect these cases to become available in the next three weeks from Scan.co.uk, Amazon, Caseking, Jimms PC, Performance-PCs. Pricing is unknown.

3DMark Fire Strike Hall of Fame is where overclockers submit their best hardware benchmark trials and try to beat the very best. For years, one record managed to hold, and today it just got defeated. According to an extreme overclocker called "biso biso" from South Korea and a part of the EVGA OC team, the top spot now belongs to the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card. The previous 3DMark Fire Strike world record was set on April 22nd in 2020, when Vince Lucido, also known as K|NGP|N, set a record with four-way SLI of NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti GPUs. However, that record is old news since January 27th, when biso biso set the history with AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT GPU.

The overclocker scored 62389 points, just 1,183 more from the previous record. He pushed the Navi 21 XTX silicon that powers the Radeon RX 6900 XT card to an impressive 3,147 MHz. Paired with a GPU memory clock of 2370 MHz, the GPU was probably LN2 cooled to achieve these results. The overclocker used EVGA's Z690 DARK KINGPIN motherboard with Intel Core i9-12900K processor as a platform of choice to achieve this record. You can check it out on the 3DMark Fire Strike Hall of Fame website to see yourself.

AMD announced the Radeon RX 6500 XT and RX 6400 at CES just a few days ago. These new entry-level cards debut the company's first 6 nm GPU, codenamed "Navi 24"—the smallest chip from the RDNA2 family. Navi 24 is barely the size of a motherboard chipset, roughly 100 mm² in die size. The chip only features a 64-bit wide GDDR6 memory interface, needing just two memory chips to achieve 4 GB of memory size. While AMD has been fairly quiet about it, people quickly found out that the Navi 24 GPU only uses a PCI-Express 4.0 x4 host interface. While the physical connector is x16, there is only enough signal traces for x4.Even the most updated 2.43.0 public version of GPU-Z misreports the bus interface as PCIe x16 4.0 though, which will certainly lead to confusion in the reviewer community who trust GPU-Z to report the correct specs and speeds for their articles. Maybe that's the reason why AMD has decided to not send us a sample this time—a first in 15 years.

Update Jan 20th: GPU-Z 2.44.0 has been released, which properly reports the PCIe bus configuration of RX 6500 XT.

The semicondustor market in 3Q21 is red hot with total revenue of the global top 10 IC design (fabless) companies reaching US$33.7 billion or 45% growth YoY, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. In addition to the Taiwanese companies MediaTek, Novatek, and Realtek already on the list, Himax comes in at number ten, bringing the total number of Taiwanese companies on the top 10 list to 4.

Qualcomm has been buoyed by continuing robust demand for 5G mobile phones form major mobile phone manufacturers with further revenue growth from its processor and radio frequency front end (RFFE) departments. Qualcomm's IoT department benefited from strong demand in the consumer electronics, edge networking, and industrial sectors, posting revenue growth of 66% YoY, highest among Qualcomm departments. In turn, this drove Qualcomm's total 3Q21 revenue to US$7.7 billion, 56% growth YoY, and ranking first in the world.

AMD today announced that AMD President and CEO Dr. Lisa Su will host its 2022 Product Premiere on January 4, 2022. Dr. Su will highlight innovations and solutions featuring upcoming AMD Ryzen processors and AMD Radeon graphics. The AMD Product Premiere livestream will be accessible to the public beginning at 10 a.m. EST on Tuesday, January 4 at AMD.com; replays will be available after the conclusion of the livestream event. The link to the AMD 2022 Product Premiere event page can be found below.

AMD is allegedly preparing to announce the Radeon RX 6000S mobile graphics card based on a refreshed RDNA 2 architecture. The new card will be manufactured on TSMC's N6 process which offers an 18% logic density improvement over the N7 process currently used for RDNA 2 products resulting in increased efficiency or performance. The switch to the IP compatible N6 node should also improve yields and shorten production cycles allowing AMD to remain competitive with new cards from NVIDIA and Intel. We have limited information on this alleged card except that it will likely be announced in early 2022 at CES and that AMD may also release discrete RX 6000S series desktop graphics cards.

AMD announced the AMD Radeon PRO V620 GPU, built with the latest AMD RDNA 2 architecture which delivers high-performance GPU acceleration for today's demanding cloud workloads including immersive AAA game experiences, intensive 3D workloads and modern office productivity applications at scale in the cloud.

With its innovative GPU-partitioning capabilities, multi-stream hardware accelerated encoders and 32 GB GDDR6 memory, the AMD Radeon PRO V620 offers dedicated GPU resources that scale to multiple graphics users, helping ensure cost-effective graphics acceleration for a range of workloads. Built using the same GPU architecture that powers the latest generation game consoles and PC game experiences, the AMD Radeon PRO V620 GPU is also designed to develop and deliver immersive AAA game experiences.

Gigabyte Technology Co. Ltd, a leading manufacturer of premium gaming hardware, today announced a new AMD Radeon RX 6600 graphics card - the Gigabyte Radeon RX 6600 Eagle 8G. The Eagle graphics card is the best choice for those who desire a unique design optimized for power efficiency and durability, and the ability to experience incredible high-framerate 1080p gaming.

AMD Radeon RX 6600 graphics cards are based on the breakthrough AMD RDNA 2 gaming architecture, designed to deliver the optimal balance of performance and power efficiency. Offering 32 MB of high-performance AMD Infinity Cache, 8 GB of GDDR6 memory, AMD Smart Access Memory technology and other advanced features, the new graphics cards are designed to bring next-generation desktop gaming experiences to the midrange market. They also support AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution, an open-source spatial upscaling solution designed to increase framerates in select titles while delivering high-resolution gaming experiences.

The Alphacool Eisblock Aurora acrylic GPX water cooler with backplate is now also available for MSI Radeon RX 6700 XT Gaming X graphics cards.

More performance! Voltage converters and V-RAM is now cooled much better and more effectively with liquid cooling. This is due to the components being brought closer to the cooler through the use of thinner, yet more powerful Thermal pads. The reduction of the thickness of the nickel-plated copper block to 5.5mm and the constant optimisation of the water flow within the heat sink promise a significant increase in performance. In addition to performance, design also plays an important role. The addressable digital RGB LEDs are embedded directly in the cooling block and give the cooler its very own visual touch.

AMD is expected to announce their Radeon RX 6600 graphics card on October 13th according to leaked documents. The graphics card will feature a cut-down Navi 23 GPU with 28 Compute Units and 1,792 stream processors compared to 32 and 2,048 on the RX 6600 XT. The card has also been revealed to feature 8 GB of GDDR6 memory running at 14 Gbps on a 128-bit memory bus. The first images of cards from board partners including XFX, ASRock, and PowerColor have been published by VideoCardz covering 5 different RX 6600 models.

The XFX Speedster SWFT 210 features a unique shorter PCB design with a relocated 8-pin power connector in addition to a redesigned backplate which differs from the RX 6600 XT model. PowerColor appears to be releasing Hellhound and Fighter models with identical designs as their RX 6600 XT counterparts featuring 2-slot cooling and single 8-pin power connectors. ASRock is preparing two Challenger series models both sharing the same PCB with the single-fan Challenger ITX and dual-fan Challenger D. These new cards will reportedly match the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 according to a leaked internal benchmark.

Got €600 to spare? Great, as that means that you can afford an AMD Radeon 6600 graphics card when they launch sometime next month. Courtesy of both a Dutch and a Portuguese computer shop, we now have an idea of what the cards will cost ahead of the retail launch which is said to be on the 13th of October.

The Portuguese shop also kindly posted pictures of the Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 6600, which comes as expected with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory, which it lists for €589.90. The Dutch shop was less forthcoming with their MSI Radeon RX 6600 MECH 2X 8 GB, but to be honest, it might not matter what these cards look like at these kinds of price points. The MSI card is listed at €600,41, so make sure you bring some coins as well.

The AMD Radeon RX 6600 is expected to launch in October after documents received by VideoCardz reveal that reviews for the card are set to be published on October 13th. The documents reveal that board partners who will be releasing cards for review will need to have informed AMD by September 15th and can begin shipping them to reviewers on September 29th. The AMD Radeon RX 6600 will use the Navi 23 GPU with 4 Compute Units disabled for a total of 28. This will give the card 1792 Stream Processors which will be paired with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory. The documents also show that AMD is not planning to release an RX 6600 reference card so no pricing information was included. We expect that the card will be shortly available after the listed review embargo is lifted on October 13th at 9 AM EST.

BIOSTAR, a leading brand of motherboards, graphics cards, and storage devices, today announced product support for the latest AMD Ryzen 5000G series Cezanne processors. AMD's next-generation Ryzen 5000G series desktop processors codenamed "Cezanne" are ready to invade the global market. The new 5000G series processors are based on Zen 3 architecture, AMD's Ryzen 5000 series of desktop APUs based on the Zen 3 CPU and Vega GPU microarchitectures succeeding the Ryzen 4000 "Renoir" series.

Extreme performance enabled for personal computing with up to 8 cores fueled by the world's most advanced 7 nm processor core technology, the AMD Ryzen 5000 G-series desktop processors with Radeon graphics deliver ultra-fast responsiveness and multi-threaded performance for any use case.

According to this Reddit thread, multiple AMD customers are reporting that the latest stock update on AMD's web store has left them without a desired product, and anger over the broken functionality. As AMD operates its own web-based storefront with all the latest CPUs and GPUs, users are constantly checking if the store has anything to offer in these times of processor scarcity, where it is impossible to purchase the latest generation of graphics cards or processors. AMD updated the website today with the newest batch of Ryzen processors and Radeon graphics cards, users have been reporting that the website functionality has been broken.

Multiple users tried to purchase their desired product, but the AMD website notified them that the queue is paused for about 30 minutes, and seemingly no one was able to purchase anything. People have been reporting that the Captcha used to verify that you are not a robot has failed as well, and adding the product to the cart was impossible, as seen in the image below. As there are multiple such comments posted in the thread, it leads us to write a report on it, wondering what is going on with AMD's storefront operations and what AMD is doing about it. With multiple users trying to purchase an AMD product, they were left with their hands empty, to wonder what is going on.

CPU-Z, the software of choice for monitoring the CPU and its attributes, has yesterday been updated to version 1.97, which brings much-needed and interesting features. For starters, the new version adds support to detect Intel Core i9-12900K, Core i7-12700K, and Core i5-12600K "Alder Lake" CPUs and the Intel Z6xx chipset platform. Those specific SKUs are the top of the line in their respective categories, and it is only logical that support for the new generation starts there.

Next up, the software now supports detection of the latest DDR5 DRAM technology, which can now also be detected along with the new XMP 3.0 profile format. Last but not least, the software is adding detection for AMD's Radeon RX 6600 XT GPU as well.

To download the latest update, head over to our downloads section. If you wanna get pinged automagically when a new version is released, select the yellow "Get Notified" button on that same page.

"The focus of our development has always been to improve the deliverable performance." (Rico Weber, WATERCOOL CEO, Sep.2020). This quote marked the beginning of the development of the new HEATKILLER V VGA cooler. In addition to an increase of performance, the focus also lay on improvements in handling and durability. The HEATKILLER VGA coolers, known for their outstanding workmanship, have also been visually enhanced. In the latest revision for AMD graphics cards of the RX 6800/6900XT series, the HEATKILLER V has been further optimized.

The inflow to the cooling structure has been completely reworked. It now is placed with a vertical offset above a second level. The inlet and outlet channels cross each other, but are spatially separated from each other. The new design allows a symmetrical arrangement of the cooling channels. The advantage of the symmetrical design is a steady flow through the heat sink. Dead zones and hotspots are thus effectively avoided. At the same time the windage is reduced. The HEATKILLER V for RX 6800/6900XT features a vertical cooling structure, which significantly improves the cooling performance even more. The enlarged cooling surface ensures exceptionally low GPU temperatures. To reduce turbulences, all cooling channels were manufactured in a rounded design.