A comprehensive leak of documents—from a FTC versus Microsoft case—has exposed short and long-term plans in the world of Xbox. It seems that a relatively mild refresh of current generation Xbox Series X and S is lined up for the second half of 2024, but presentation material (dated April 2022) also reaches far into the future with strategies for next-gen gaming hardware. The bigwigs at Xbox were projecting a "full convergence" of their proprietary "xCloud" gaming platform and physical console hardware to deliver "cloud hybrid games" for 2028—schemes and priorities could have shifted in the interim, given various legal challenges and takeover bids.

One of the slides points to Microsoft getting the technical nitty-gritty sorted by CY2023—with two main options presented for consideration: a licensed ARM 64 design or a "Zen 6-based" AMD 64 processor. The next-gen Xbox's GPU aspect could incorporate a Navi 5 design (RDNA 5)—weighing up either a co-operation with AMD, or an IP license of said graphics architecture. VideoCardz theorizes that: "the latter option seems more likely if the ARM 64 chip is chosen over the Zen 6 APU." A key goal in this area seems to be an implementation of "Next-Gen DirectX Ray tracing" and "ML-based Super Resolutions" features. A Neural Processing Unit (NPU) is marked as a key provision for the 2028 console—granting some nice-to-have perks including: latency compensation, frame rate interpolation and various enrichments of the user experience.

Inside sources have claimed that Bungie is working on a third project—codename: Gummy Bears—alongside Destiny 2 (their bread and butter IP) and the still mysterious Marathon reboot. Several media outlets keep close tabs on activity at the Sony Interactive Entertainment-owned studio—"Gummy Bears" is believed to be a "light-hearted" and "colorful" alternative to the other multiplayer experiences in Bungie's stable. Paul Tassi (writing for Forbes) believes that Bungie's "Matter" concept is synonymous with "Gummy Bears"—past job adverts have outlined a "team-based action game" that takes: "inspiration from fighting games, platformers, MOBAs, life sims, and frog-type games, wrapped up in a lighthearted, comedic world."

TheGamePost has chosen to follow up on their previously leaked summertime information with another major claim—multiple sources have alleged that Epic's Unreal Engine forms the technical foundation of "Gummy Bears," a team-based combat title with isometric gameplay. Switching to an outside toolset would be quite an unusual move for Bungie—the veteran development house has relied on its (extremely mature) Tiger Engine for more than a decade. One insider placed emphasis on the new IP being built in Unreal Engine 5 for current-gen platforms. PlayStation-specialist site Insider Gaming has contacted Sony for comment on the situation, and conducted a quick investigation: "As far as the accuracy of this report, Insider Game has yet to verify it with its independent sources. However, a quick look at Bungie's career page shows a job listing for an "Unannounced Project" where the required skills include the ability to code in C++. This is the programming language used for Unreal Engine."

A hefty information dump—originating from documents relating to a Microsoft vs. FTC legal case—has revealed plans (dated April 2022) for an upcoming refresh of current generation Xbox Series X and S consoles. Microsoft Gaming's head honcho, Phil Spencer, dismissed the need for a mid-gen refresh of the more powerful model—his summertime 2023 declaration came after the rumor mill coughed up speculative details of Sony working on a more potent PlayStation 5. The leaked roadmap and slides points to a refreshed Xbox Series X console lined up for launch in October 2024. The new cylindrical design is codenamed "Brooklin" and features an all-digital entertainment scheme—internal upgrades include a 2 TB SSD, plus support for Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2. An "improved sustainability story" suggests that the refresh will consume less power.

A 6 nm die shrink of the current Xbox Series X "Scarlett" APU with Zen 2/RDNA2 setup is reportedly in the cards. It seems that Microsoft is not preparing something that could compete with a theoretical "PlayStation 5 Pro." The leaked roadmap states that Brooklin's projected MSRP is $499—so no price hike over the original. The refreshed Xbox Series S—codenamed "Ellewood"—retains the existing Series S aesthetic, along with its entry-level $299 price tag. Microsoft's roadmap has it launching earlier than "Brooklin"—August 2024. Internal storage is set at 1 TB, and an updated southbridge grants support for Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2. A low-power standby mode is said to consume only 20% of the current gen model's sleepy intake. The 2022 roadmap also mentions a refreshed "Sebile" Xbox controller, with the aim to get it launched by May 2024, so several months before the projected arrival of revised X and S consoles.

A trio of allegedly official presentation slides appeared on X yesterday, posted by Underfox3—the leaker stopped short of revealing the origin of this material. They simply commented: "AMD Threadripper Pro is coming...🔥." The next generation HEDT processor family is expected to arrive in the fall, and the opening slide pretty much confirms this launch window (starting September 22—autumnal equinox). There has been a noticeable uptick in Zen 4 "Storm Peak" 7000-series pre-release units appearing online lately—so the timing seems plausible. Text segments do not mention the 7000-series in specifics, but an IHS render visible on the second slide looks somewhat similar—in shape—to a grey market-listed Threadripper Pro 7985WX. VideoCardz has compiled various leaked SKUs into a chart (see below).

A very general claim is made on the second slide—boasting a 20% performance increase over their Threadripper Pro 5000 series—but detailed information (prowess in single or multi-core tests) or in-depth benchmark results are not included. VideoCardz surmises from an interpretation of the third slide—noting: "support for 96 cores, marking a 50% boost over the TR PRO 5000 series. This suggests that the 20% improvement likely pertains to the single-core Zen 4 boost." The final slide also shows said 96-core Threadripper Pro processor tipped against Intel's Xeon W9-3495X CPU (a 56-core Sapphire Rapids candidate)—the former is said to produce 75% more renders per day. Per frame completion time is 657 second versus 1125 seconds (respectively).

Activity on the next-gen Ryzen Threadripper front has ramped up over the past week—we previously witnessed a fairly comprehensive spec leak of Pro 7995WX and 7975WX processors last week, thanks to Dell Precision Tower workstations getting tested out in SiSoftware's Sandra suite. Pre-release "Zen 4" HEDT hardware seems to be out in the wild—YuuKi_AnS has posted a photo of an allegedly SP6 socket-ready AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 7985WX CPU.

This sample is apparently for up for sale on an unspecified online marketplace, advertised as having a TDP rating of 350 W. An AMD OPN core code reads: "100-00000454," although the photographed unit lacks any external "Threadripper" branding. The seller describes the for-sale processor as possessing "minor signs of use" as evidenced by scuffs and marks, but it is said to be fully functional and no repairs are required to get it in operational mode. The screen grab does not include any details about pricing or location.

Reuters appears to be following every (internal) step that TSMC takes—their latest report suggests that company leadership has "told its major suppliers to delay the delivery of high-end chip making equipment." Two anonymous sources believe that execs are anxious about a predicted decrease in customer demand, and cost control plans have been implemented as a temporary measure. ASML is allegedly one of the vendors affected by TSMC's decision making.

Reuters conducted an interview with ASML CEO Peter Wennink a week prior—he acknowledged that some orders for high-end tools had been pushed back, without naming specific client identities, but the situation should resolve itself shortly. He stated that it was a mere "short-term management" issue: "we've had several (news) reports about fab readiness. Not only in Arizona... but also in Taiwan." ASML is reported to be operating at maximum capacity, and overall sales are forecast to grow 30% this financial year.

Microsoft has scheduled a special product announcement event for next week—Germany's WinFuture has likely spoiled all mystery ahead of time by revealing two next generation Surface devices. It was already speculated that Microsoft would exhibit a bunch of new portable Windows PCs at the upcoming September 21 New York City-based shindig, but this week's leak treats us to photos and initial specifications for the Laptop Studio 2 and Laptop Go 3. The former retains its predecessor's 14.4-inch 3:2 format display, with a 2400×1600 resolution and 120 Hz refresh rate. Under-the-hood improvements for the Surface Laptop Studio 2 include a jump up to 13th Gen Intel Core Raptor Lake CPUs (from 11th Gen Tiger Lake)—WinFuture reckons that two options are lined up: Core i7-13700H and and Core i7-13800H. The Surface Laptop Studio 2's discrete graphics solution is speculated to be a mobile NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 or RTX 4060 GPU.

A base model could rely on an iGPU based on Intel Iris Xe graphics architecture. 64 GB of LPDDR5X memory is believed to exist with some configurations, which is a nice upgrade (albeit probably a very pricey option) over the previous generation's 16 or 32 GB RAM offerings. The leaked photos indicate that a Micro-SD slot and USB Type-A connector are new additions for 2023's model. The WinFuture article presents some prices—€2249 (~$2400) for the basic iGPU model, mid-tier with RTX 4050: €2729 (~$2915), and €3199 (~$3415) for an almost top flight model sporting 32 GB RAM and RTX 4060. The Surface Laptop Go 3, meanwhile, looks a little less exciting—it is said to get a CPU bump up to Intel Core i5-1135G and Core i5-1235U processors. Otherwise it looks largely similar to its previous-gen sibling. The leak did not include images of a reported Surface Go 4, but WinFuture expects it to be presented next week, powered by an Intel N200 SoC.

Mass production at TSMC's Phoenix, Arizona Fab 21 facility has been delayed until 2025, but the top brass are keen to get some activity started at their North American foundry—it is possible that they want to avoid potential contract breaches, caused by various setbacks. Taiwan's Money DJ (interpreted by TrendForce) reports that a pilot scheme will be implemented by the first quarter of 2024—industry sources believe that a small batch trial run will result in 4000 to 5000 wafer starts per month (WSPM). Setup delays have dropped projected efficiency ratings—analysts reckon that the Arizona plant cannot match the sheer effectiveness of operations back in Taiwan.

TrendForce cites a number of factors, including: "a shortage of skilled equipment installation personnel, local union protests, and differences in overseas safety regulations have caused delays in equipment installation." TSMC chairman Mark Liu expressed optimism about the situation earlier this month—citing significant progress (at the Fab 21 site) over the past five months as an early sign of success for the project. Insiders claim that TSMC is considering a major upgrade of its currently in-construction Japanese facility—extra capacity at the existing location and a second foundry could be on the table.

IMDA, Singapore's rating board, has evaluated a new version of Horizon Forbidden West—a website entry for an upcoming "Complete Edition" on the PlayStation 5 platform was uncovered late last week. This information was removed at a later date since, but several media outlets have preserved crucial details. Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition is M18 rated in that part of the world, thanks to gory content and sexual themes. IMDA's extended classification blurb implies that the base campaign as well as this year's Burning Shores DLC will be bundled together in a new package.

Dealabs leaker billbil-kun believes that a PC version is lined up for "imminent" release on Steam and the Epic Games Store—they cannot confirm an exact launch date, but it could arrive within a month based on potentially accurate data leaks. Sony tends to keep its flagship titles exclusive to PlayStation systems for 18 months—the base Horizon Forbidden West game arrived on PlayStation 4 and 5 last February...so the timing is about right for a converted edition to arrive PC-side. A State of Play presentation is scheduled for later today—billbil-kun recommends that folks check it out, given recent insights posted by Giant Bomb's Jeff Grubb.

TSMC's Japanese facilities are set to fabricate "mature-technology chips" (28 nm and 22 nm) once construction at the site concludes next year—this $8.6 billion fab on Kyushu Island is proving to be a promising prospect for company leadership back in Taiwan. A Reuters report suggests that more ambitious plans are afoot for Japan as a key production base—two anonymous insiders claim that problems encountered at the Arizona plant have caused a shift in focus onto other global TSMC sites.

There is potential for further expansion and upgrades in Kikuyo, Kumamoto Prefecture—TSMC has reportedly taken an "increasingly optimistic view" of Japan's work culture, relatively cheap-to-build facility and a co-operative government. A smooth ramp-up of the first fabrication facility is the primary goal in 2024, but adjusted plans could add more capacity. The insiders think that a second site is also a possibility, with consideration for more advanced chip making.

ASUS has registered an unprecedented number of AMD Radeon RX 7000-series mid-range graphics card SKUs with the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC)—we were somewhat impressed with PowerColor's new SKU count, as reported on TPU two days ago, but Team ASUS shrugs that off with ease. 64 new models based on Radeon RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT GPUs have been lodged with the EEC—it should be noted that some of these are unlikely to reach final market form. VideoCardz points out that ASUS has a track record of favoring NVIDIA silicon in terms of offering multiple models across budget, mid level and premium tiers: "ASUS has never released such a large number of cards for a single SKU. Their plans for Radeon models are notably more modest compared to their GeForce RTX 40 counterparts, and some of the listed SKUs are rarely used for AMD GPUs."

ASUS decided to keep things simple with its launch day selection of Radeon RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT cards—arriving in TUF Gaming form, with black or white color options. Their latest EEC registration provides an early insight into potential plans for an extensive expansion of Navi 32 GPU-based card models—with additional TUF Gaming options, as well as ROG Strix, Dual, and ProArt SKUs. ASUS has historically adhered to a tradition of picking black shroud designs for its ProArt card series, but the EEC info dump reveals white variants.

We heard murmurings back in early August about a slightly disappointing future for RDNA 4—multiple sources claimed that AMD had dropped development of a Navi 31 successor. Rumored reasons included "a cost justification of developing high-end GPUs to push enough volumes over the product lifecycle," as well as the apparent complexity of chiplet designs making it difficult to climb up the ladder of generational performance improvements.

The "narrowed" RDNA 4 product lineup is said to only encompass Navi 43 and Navi 44 GPUs, with a heavier focus on mid-range offerings. Lately, Bits And Chips has decided to pile on with another theory, likely obtained from their favored inside source: "AMD will sacrifice next Radeon gaming GPUs (RX 8000) output at TSMC in order to pump up FPGA and GPGPU production." The AI hardware market is in a boom phase, and Team Red is keen to catch up with NVIDIA—past reports have suggested that Team Green production priorities have shifted away GeForce RTX 4090 GPUs, in favor of an output uptick of "immensely profitable" H100 AI GPUs. Is AMD simply copying the market leader's homework?

PowerColor has registered a significant number of AMD Radeon RX 7000-series SKUs with the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC)—these enrollments are seemingly always a good source of pre-launch information. Naturally, the ever reliable harukaze5719 has reported on this latest filing. The most interesting new SKUs within this leak appear to be Radeon RX 7600 XT graphics cards lined up in Hellhound and Fighter flavors—perhaps an early hint of Team Red prepping different versions of existing RDNA 3 GPUs. Scott Herkelman, AMD's senior vice president, stated last month that no new RX 7000-series ASICs were in the pipeline. The already released Radeon RX 7600 8 GB GPU is the sole entry within its lower end gaming segment for the current generation.

Technical information is not included with EEC filings, so we can only speculate about the choice of Navi 3x GPU with these leaked XT variants. VideoCardz has questioned the slightly peculiar allocations of 10 GB and 12 GB VRAM specs: "(raising) questions about AMD's choice of GPU architecture. One possibility is that they are using the Navi 33 with unusual 96-bit and 80-bit memory configurations, although this seems counterintuitive as it would result in lower memory bandwidth compared to the RX 7600. The Navi 33 GPU is typically limited to a 128-bit memory interface." Alternatively, they also propose that a "heavily cut-down Navi 32 GPU" could exist that "grants 192/160-bit memory." SKUs based on AMD's unreleased Radeon RX 6750 Golden Rabbit Edition (GRE) GPU are also visible within PowerColor's registration, also sporting 10 GB and 12 GB video memory configurations. Additionally, the Taiwanese graphics card specialist appears to be preparing a couple of white and SAKURA edition Radeon RX 7800 XT and 7700 XT cards.

Taiwan's Economic Daily reckons that a freshly formed partnership between TSMC, Broadcom, and NVIDIA will result in the development of cutting-edge silicon photonics. The likes of IBM, Intel and various academic institutes are already deep into their own research and development processes, but the alleged new alliance is said to focus on advancing AI computer hardware. The report cites a significant allocation of—roughly 200—TSMC staffers onto R&D involving the integration of silicon photonic technologies into high performance computing (HPC) solutions. They are very likely hoping that the usage of optical interconnects (on a silicon medium) will result in greater data transfer rates between and within microchips. Other benefits include longer transmission distances and a lower consumption of power.

TSMC vice president Yu Zhenhua has placed emphasis on innovation, in a similar fashion to his boss, within the development process (industry-wide): "If we can provide a good silicon photonics integrated system, we can solve the two key issues of energy efficiency and AI computing power. This will be a new one...Paradigm shift. We may be at the beginning of a new era." The firm is facing unprecedented demand from its clients—it hopes to further expand its advanced chip packaging capacity to address these issues by late 2024. A shift away from the limitations of "conventional electric" data transmissions could bring next generation AI compute GPUs onto the market by 2025.

Hardware leaker, YuuKi_AnS, has briefly turned their attention away from all things Team Blue—their latest leak points to upcoming server-grade processors chez AMD. A Zen 6 core-based 9006 EPYC CPU series, codenamed "Venice," is expected to arrive within two to three years along with an all-new SP7 socket—this information seems to have been sourced from an unnamed server manufacturer's product roadmap. A partial view of said slide also reveals forthcoming equipment powered by Intel "Falcon Shore" and NVIDIA "Blackwell" GPU technologies.

As reported a couple of months ago, older insider info has AMD using "Weisshorn" as an in-house moniker for Zen 6 "Morpheus" architecture, destined for Venice CPUs—alleged to form part of a 2025/2026 EPYC lineup. YuuKi_AnS proposes that these will utilize either 12-channel or 16-channel DDR5 memory configurations—thus providing plenty of bandwidth across hundreds of Zen cores. Altogether very handy for cloud, enterprise, and HPC workloads—industry experts reckon that 384-core counts are feasible on single packages. Naturally, a Team Red timeline dictates that Zen 5 "Nirvana" is due before Zen 6 "Morpheus," so EPYC 9005 "Turin(-X)" and 8005 "Turin-Dense" lineups are (allegedly) up for a 2024-ish launch window on SP5 (LGA-6096) and SP6 (LGA 4094) socket types.

Intel's advanced packaging prowess demonstration took place this week—attendees were able to get an early-ish look at Team Blue's sixth Generation Xeon Scalable "Sapphire Rapids" processors. This multi-tile datacenter-oriented CPU family is projected to hit the market within the first half of 2024, but reports suggest that key enterprise clients have recently received evaluation samples. Coincidentally, renowned hardware leaker—Yuuki_AnS—has managed to source more information from industry insiders. This follows their complete blowout of more mainstream Raptor Lake Refresh desktop SKUs.

The leaked slide presents a bunch of evaluation sample "Granite Rapids-SP" XCC and "Sierra Forest" HCC SKUs. Intel has not officially published core counts for these upcoming "Avenue City" platform product lines. According to their official marketing blurb: "Intel Xeon processors with P-cores (Granite Rapids) are optimized to deliver the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO) for high-core performance-sensitive workloads and general-purpose compute workloads. Today, Xeon enables better AI performance than any other CPU, and Granite Rapids will further enhance AI performance. Built-in accelerators give an additional boost to targeted workloads for even greater performance and efficiency."

A new version of Minecraft for Xbox Series X and S consoles has been registered with ratings boards around the world—as reported by Eurogamer, the first appearance arrived back in August through Germany's USK system, and more recently with the ESRB (USA). This lead to speculation that Mojang Studios was prepping a visually-upgraded variant of the game for current generation consoles. Microsoft and Xbox teased a significant ray tracing graphical option back in 2020, prior to Series X launching, but we have not heard much since then. Bedrock Edition, utilizing the RenderDragon engine, is set to improve graphics across most platforms, yet only PC gamers get to enjoy ray tracing features on capable/compatible hardware.

Microsoft has seemingly become fed up with the latest batch of news reports, and reached out to media outlets in order to shutdown further conjecture on the topic.
A company spokesperson informed Eurogamer and other sites about the situation: "Given the number of platforms and geographies in which Minecraft is available, we periodically go through rating reviews and updates with different regional boards. This recent rating is not indicative of any new versions or platform support for Minecraft in the near future." A 2022 test build inadvertently included "prototype code for ray tracing support on Xbox consoles," but was swiftly eliminated from public view soon after release. A spokesperson stated back then: "this early prototype code has been removed from Preview and doesn't signal near future plans to bring ray tracing support to consoles."

In the weeks leading up to Gamescom 2023 all sorts of Nintendo-related rumors started to spew forth—the boldest being a public unveiling of their much anticipated Switch successor during the conference segment. This did not transpire—of course—with Nintendo choosing to showcase existing games and hardware on the trade fair floor in Germany. Post-event murmurs proposed another highly unlikely circumstance—claims posted to social media and on forums pointed to a top secret demo session of "Switch 2" hardware occurring "behind closed doors" at Gamescom, with an elite set of development teams in attendance. These rumblings were largely dismissed due to unsubstantiated information coming from less than reliable sources.

Eurogamer and Video Games Chronicles (VGC) reached out to their cadre of industry insiders to find out more—newly published articles seem to align with recent leaks. The former understands that: "Developer presentations for Switch 2 took place behind closed doors, with partners shown tech demos of how well the system is designed to run. One Switch 2 demo is a souped up version of Switch launch title Zelda: Breath of the Wild, designed to hit the Switch 2's beefier target specs. (To be clear, though - this is just a tech demo. There's no suggestion the game will be re-released." An insider familiar with the games industry in Spain alleged, a few months ago, that Switch 2 development kits had been delivered to a notable local development partner.

DigiTimes Asia has picked up on some intriguing insider information—their source claims that Apple could be pivoting hardware development in the direction of lower-cost portable personal computer solutions. Their current "budget-friendly" champ is the M1 SoC-equipped MacBook Air (of 2020 vintage), starting at $999 for mortals—education incentives can lower that entry price down to $899. The gigantic American multinational technology company debuted a 15‑inch MacBook Air M2 model this year, but sales figures have allegedly not met projected targets. The DigiTimes report indicates that Apple engineers are preparing new hardware for a different market segment—education was mentioned earlier—Google and its partners remain dominant here with cost effective Chromebooks.

Apple's iPad family offers some "wallet friendly" alternatives for students, but industry experts note that ChromeOS-based laptops are easier to use for educational tasks and iPads: "cannot compete with Chromebooks on price." An all-new lower tier MacBook lineup—sitting below their Air range—is supposedly already in development, with a launch window projected for the second half of 2024 (lead time is said to be around nine months). A more competitive retail price is achievable due to the use of "cheaper material for the laptop's metal outer shell, and cheaper mechanical components."

Six Intel 14th Gen Core Raptor Lake-S Refresh SKUs were prematurely listed by an e-tailer late last month, with the already leaked Core i9-14900K CPU model popping up again (a week later) via CPU-Z and Geekbench tests. This higher end K and KF product lineup is expected to launch at some point next month—according to the rumor mill. Team Blue could be preparing cheaper non-K models for an unveiling at CES 2024, but a leaker has decided to spoil the fun way in advance. YuuKi_AnS uploaded an allegedly extremely comprehensive list of 14th Gen SKUs, complete with full specifications to their X/Twitter handle. This grants an early glimpse of lowly Intel 300 and 300T models—both featuring a 2P+0E core configuration—these appear to be modern successors to (now retired) Pentium Gold and Celeron branded budget-friendly processor families.

It should be noted that the leaked slide (dated September 5) states that everything sitting within the table is a qualification sample (QS), therefore these chips are subject to change due to their pre-production nature. Parts of the table look a bit iffy—support for DDR5 memory varies across the range, while EEC memory support is also very inconsistent. Intel seems to be sticking with the usual set of three different die designs for desktop Raptor Lake Refresh CPUs—Tom's Hardware points out that: "the B0 die (8P-16E) powers SKUs from the Core i5-14600 and up, while the C0 (8P+8E) die targets models from Core i5-14400 to Core i5-14500T. On the contrary, the H0 (6P+0E) die, which is the lowest of the trio, will be inside the Intel 300 to Core i3-14100T chips."

Argentina's HD Tecnología site has obtained and published AMD's official data outlining the performance prowess of the soon-to-be released Radeon RX 7800 XT & RX 7700 XT GPUs, when stacked up against their closest rivals—NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB and RTX 4070 12 GB. Team Red could have "cherry-picked" some of this information, and presented resultant performance charts during the grand unveiling of their mid-range RDNA 3 cards at last month's Gamescom press event. HD Tecnología claims that the fuzzy batch of screengrabs were obtained from an official review guide, they chose to not share pages containing precise details of system specifications. An embargo imposed on media outlets is set to be lifted tomorrow, which coincides with the launch of AMD's Navi 32-based contenders.

The test system was running games within a DirectX 12 environment, possibly at maximum settings—general hardware specs included an non-specific AMD Ryzen 7000-series CPU coupled with DDR5 memory on unidentified AM5 motherboard. VideoCardz's abbreviated analysis of the numbers stated: "In summary, without ray tracing, the Radeon RX 7800 XT outperforms the GeForce RTX 4070 by almost 7% on average, while with ray tracing enabled, it maintains a slight 0.5% lead. Conversely, the RX 7700 XT exhibits 16% higher performance over the RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB. However, the presence of ray tracing can tip the scales slightly in NVIDIA's favor, resulting in an 8.5% lead over the AMD GPU."

AMD's Zen 4 high-end desktop (HEDT) family could be closing in on a launch window—AsRock's European office has registered a number of motherboards with the EEC, and KOMACHI_ENSAKA spotted a model sporting a TRX50 chipset sitting in the middle of mainstream gaming Lightning and Riptide offerings. The "TRX50 WS" seems to be the first sighting of an AMD Threadripper 7000 "Storm Peak" series workstation board. TRX50 is presumably the logical successor to Team Red's existing TRX40 platform—the latter supports third generation (Zen 3) Ryzen Threadripper 5000 "Chagall" processors. AMD has not publicly published any details regarding next-gen Threadripper and Threadripper Pro product lineups, but several leaks have pointed to the new HEDT platform arriving within the second half of 2023.

A mid-August Geekbench database entry outed the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7995WX—this 96 core/192 thread CPU scored 2095 points in single-core tests, and 81408 multi-core points—these results have it positioned as one of the fastest processors submitted to Geekbench. The test system was running Geekbench v5.5 for Linux (Ubuntu 22.04 LTS). It is speculated that four (or more) models could be released with differing core counts: 16, 32, 64 and 96—please refer to the VideoCardz authored chart (below). Past rumors have SP5 and SP6 socket types linked to the "Storm Peak" family, with the introduction of DDR5 memory standard to Threadripper.

ITHome has picked up on interesting retail activity in China, where AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT graphics cards are deeply discounted. This seems to correspond to a possible discontinuation of Team Red's Navi 23 XT GPU—a Board Channel source stated: "AMD factory has stopped production of a certain GPU. At the present time, shipments from all AIB brands have stopped with inventory being cleared. AMD has stopped production for the Radeon RX 6650 XT, and nearly all brands will have their inventory cleared by the end of September." Board partners in China appear to running sales promotions, with cards reduced from an original MSRP of 3099 RMB ($425) down to as low as 1739 RMB (~$240), although these adjusted prices are mostly hovering around the 2000 RMB (~$275) mark.

AMD recently declared that its Radeon RX 7000 desktop lineup is now complete, following the unveiling of mid-range RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT cards at last week's Gamescom trade fair in Cologne, Germany. Their low-to-mid tier Radeon RX 7600 card, based on the Navi 33 XL GPU, is the sole successor to multiple RDNA 2 predecessors (RX 6600, 6600 XT & 6650 XT). AMD and its board partners are likely prioritizing larger scale RDNA 3 production, so the latest batch of GPU industry insider information is not all that surprising. Tom's Hardware points out that: "there is hardly any point for AMD to continue production of Navi 23. The company's RDNA 3-based Navi 33 GPU integrates 13.3 billion transistors, has 2048 SPs, and performs better than its direct predecessor. Meanwhile, it has a smaller die size (204 mm² vs 237 mm²) and is made on TSMC's N6 process technology (as opposed to N7 in the case of Navi 23), so it may well be cheaper to produce."

Lenovo's Legion Go handheld gaming system was uncovered by Windows Report over a week ago following a series of minor leaks emerging throughout the summer. Key points of discovery included an AMD Ryzen Z1 APU, detachable Joy-Con-esque controllers and Windows 11 being the operating system of choice. The news site has today divulged even more details, thanks to a trusted anonymous source sending in an official product press release. It seems that Lenovo is planning to unveil the Go and matching accessories (AR glasses & headphones) at next month's IFA 2023 trade fair in Berlin. The handheld gaming device could launch in early October, with the base model starting at $799 (MSRP).

According to the leaked document, Lenovo's Legion Go is specced with an 8.8 inch, 2560 x 1600 pixel 144 Hz refresh rate IPS LCD touchscreen display—its maximum brightness is allegedly rated at 500 nits. AMD's Ryzen Z1 Extreme APU—that debuted with the ASUS ROG Ally—appears to run the show. The leak also indicates that 16 GB of LPDDR5X-7500 memory is soldered to the Go's mainboard, alongside a user-replaceable PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 2242 SSD. The document infers that Lenovo is prepping variants with 256 GB, 512 GB, and 1 TB SSD storage configurations.

AMD is aiming to launch its Ryzen 8000 desktop CPUs, codenamed "Granite Ridge," at some point next year. The next generation Zen 5 core microarchitecture is expected to arrive alongside (Navi) RDNA 3.5 iGPU cores according to the last batch of Team Red product roadmaps. Today, hardware tipsters Olrak29_ and Kepler_L2 have made claims on social media that part of the Ryzen 7000 CPU legacy will continue with the succeeding desktop processor lineup—we already know that Granite Ridge will exist as a Socket AM5 package, but today's leak proposes that these next-gen chips are lined up to utilize the same IO die as sported by AMD's current Zen 4 desktop family.

These new rumors suggest that the "reused" Ryzen 7000 IOD (I/O Die) chiplet will grant the familiar allocation of 28 PCIe Gen 5 lanes, memory controllers, USB functions, plus RDNA 2 iGPU cores. Wccftech points out that: "...interestingly, AMD lists the Ryzen 7000 "desktop" CPUs with Navi 3.0 support whereas the Radeon 710M iGPU in fact is based on the RDNA 2 graphics core. The next-gen lineup was mentioned to support the newest RDNA 3.5 GPU core which will be coming to the Strix APU family next year but that isn't the case either." The article proposes that "RDNA 3.5 GPU cores on the AM5 platform" could arrive with the advent of upcoming Ryzen APUs—namely 6 nm Rembrandt (6000G) and 4 nm Phoenix (7000G) desktop solutions.