MSI is excited to announce the launch of the latest AMD Ryzen 9000 Series processors, set to debut on the AM5 platform. Powered by advanced 4 nm CPU process technology, the Ryzen 9000 Series promises to revolutionize the computing landscape with unmatched performance, efficiency, and versatility for gamers and content creators. At launch, August 8th, AMD Ryzen 7 9700X, and Ryzen 5 9600X are available while the Ryzen 9 9950X and 9900X will launch on August 15th. These processors will feature up to 16 cores and 32 threads, with a theoretical maximum boost clock speed of 5.7 GHz, 64 MB of L3 cache, and a maximum TDP of 170 W.

AMD Ryzen 9000 Series will also support PCIe 5.0 for the GPU and M.2 while enhancing DDR5 memory speed. Notably, the AMD Ryzen 7 9700X offers approximately 12% better overall performance than the first-gen AMD 3D V-cache CPU. All these processors are compatible with the AM5 socket, and existing AMD 600 Series motherboards and Ryzen 9000 Series processors can seamlessly integrate by updating to the latest BIOS, available on MSI's product support page.

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.

AMD today released the latest version of its Radeon Software Adrenalin drivers. Version 21.6.1 beta introduce support for the upcoming FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) feature, AMD's answer to the NVIDIA DLSS. We also postedour in-depth review of FSR today. The driver release notes don't mention which exact titles support it at launch, so we'll probably have to wait until a formal launch of the feature. In addition, the drivers also introduce support for the Radeon RX 6800M mobile graphics, and optimization for "Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance."

Among the bugs fixed with this release are one which causes FreeSync to lock up during task-switching, an application crash with "Anno 1800" in DirectX 12 mode; AMD Cleanup Utility accidentally mopping up non-graphics AMD drivers (such as chipset, storage, etc.); lower than expected performance with "Destiny 2" on some products; and enabling raytracing in "Ring of Elysium" causing an application crash. Grab the drivers from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.6.1 beta
READ: Our review of AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution

AMD today released the Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.4.1 drivers, which introduce major updates to the soft-product that completes your AMD Radeon graphics cards. The drivers come with updates to the Radeon Software interface, and the AMD Link remote-gameplay utility. Radeon Software now comes with an improved installer with installation presets that let you choose between a Full (typical) installation, with all software features installed; a Minimal installation with an interface that only has basic settings related to the display and GPU; and "driver-only" that only installs the display driver, and no additional software.

There are several new features introduced within Radeon Software. Vivid Gaming Display Color Enhancement is a new monitor color profile that enables a more "vivid" color palette that lets you liven up "color deficient" scenes. The interface lets you take control of protanopia, deuteranopia, and tritanopia components of the color. The search bar that lets you dig through the hundreds of features, has been improved. There are many other minor UI improvements, such as stats in the Games tab, a toggle for the in-built web-browser, and global controls for the hotkeys.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.4.1

Yuri "1usmus" Bubliy released the latest major version of Clock Tuner for Ryzen (CTR), the definitely utility designed for overclocking and memory tuning of AMD Ryzen processors. The app simplifies the myriad of performance-related settings on the AMD platform, and gives professional overclockers the fine-grained control they want. The latest version 2.00 available for download on TechPowerUp today, adds support for Ryzen 5000 series "Vermeer" desktop processors based on the "Zen 3" microarchitecture, and Ryzen 4000G series "Renoir" desktop APUs. This should particularly come as a boon for memory overclockers looking to pair a Ryzen 7 Pro 4750G with a 1-DPC motherboard such as the MSI B550 Unify-X, to chase down AMD memory OC and latency records.

Next up, we see additional diagnostic and tuning modes. The app adds an in-built monitoring utility, so you don't need to run Ryzen Master on the side. The new "Phoenix" feature restores the app's working state following an application crash, reboot, or BSOD. The new Hybrid OC feature lets you combine the accuracy of manual OC, with the efficiency of PBO (Precision Boost Overdrive), so your processor isn't locked at a high clock speed, only to get power/thermal throttled when you need it to run at its manual OC clocks. The app improves the Initial Frequency Smart Offset feature. Profile management has been improved. A host of stability issues and bugs with the application have been fixed.

DOWNLOAD: Clock Tuner for Ryzen (CTR) 2.0 by Yuri Bubliy

AMD has announced they will be introducing Adaptive Undervolting tools for their precision Boost Overdrive software, available for the latest Ryzen 5000 series CPUs. This feature will be made available come launch of AGESA 1180 on 400-series and 500-series motherboards (estimated availability in early December), and will require a BIOS update to enable at the software level. According to AMD, this tool will dynamically calculate the precise amount of voltage required for a given task, analyzing internal sensors (such as workload, temperature, socket limits) and adapting voltage values on the fly at up to 1000 times a second.

This approach by AMD will bring a new age for CPU undervolting, which usually only allows for users to undervolt their CPU on the basis of the worst-case scenario: usually, the way undervolters work is by incrementally reducing the CPU's voltage and testing for stability via stress applications, gaming, or other specialized applications. This means that the CPU will have adequate juice so as not to fail in these scenarios - but of course, your CPU isn't always (in fact, it's almost never, depending on your specific use-case) using the full CPU processing power; this means that all other workloads where the CPU isn't under 100% utilization still have room for voltage reductions. With AMD's Adaptive Undervolting, this will now become possible.