AMD's 5th Generation Ryzen "Cezanne" APU sprung up on SiSoft SANDRA database, with big hints as to the areas where the company could innovate next. Apparently, "Cezanne" is a very similar silicon to "Renoir." It appears to feature the same iGPU solution, based on the "Vega" architecture. We're now learning that the iGPU even has the same core configuration, with up to 512 stream processors, and a likely bump in iGPU engine clocks over the Ryzen 4000 "Renoir" chips.

Much of the innovation is with the CPU component. Although the CPU core count is not yet known, the company is deploying its "Zen 3" microarchitecture, which sees all cores on the silicon sharing a large common slab of L3 cache. The "Vega" based iGPU should still perform better than the solution on "Renoir," as it's assisted by higher engine clocks, and possibly a higher IPC CPU component. In the SANDRA screenshot, the iGPU was shown bearing 1.85 GHz engine clocks, which amounts to a 100 MHz speed-bump compared to the engine clocks of the Ryzen 4000H and 4000U.

AMD has quietly added two new mobile processors to its lineup, the AMD 3015e and AMD 3020e are 6 W dual-core Zen chips with Vega 3 graphics. The AMD 3015e features dual 14 nm Zen cores with multi-threading running at a base frequency of 1200 MHz with a turbo frequency of 2300 MHz. The onboard Vega 3 GPU runs at 600 MHz and the chip can support 1600 MHz DDR4 memory. The AMD 3020e keeps the same dual 14 nm Zen cores but loses multi-threading, the base clock remains the same at 1200 MHz but the turbo frequency gets a bump to 2600 MHz. The Vega 3 GPU also gets a boost to 1000 MHz along with the addition of 2400 MHz DDR4 memory support.

Lenovo has recently unveiled two new laptops utilizing the AMD 3015e, the Lenovo 100e 2nd Gen and 300e 2nd Gen. The Lenovo 100e 2nd Gen features 4 GB DDR4 memory, 64 GB eMMC, Wi-Fi 6, 11.6" 720p screen, and runs Windows 10. The Lenovo 300e 2nd Gen has a similar build with the addition of a 360° hinge, pen support, and optional 128 GB SSD. The new AMD 3015e processor found in the laptops should perform ~20% faster than the Intel Celeron N4120. The Lenovo 100e 2nd Gen and 300e 2nd Gen will be available in September for 219 USD and 299 USD respectively.

Hot on the heels of a June story of a 11th Gen Core "Tiger Lake" processor's Gen12 Xe iGPU playing "Battlefield V" by itself (without a graphics card), Tech Epiphany bring us an equally delicious video of an AMD Ryzen 7 4700G desktop processor's Radeon Vega 8 iGPU running "Doom Eternal" by itself. id Software's latest entry to the iconic franchise is well optimized for the PC platform to begin with, but it's impressive to see the Vega 8 munch through this game at 1080p (1920 x 1080 pixels) no resolution scaling, with mostly "High" details. The game is shown running at frame-rates ranging between 42 to 47 FPS, with over 37 FPS in close-quarters combat (where the enemy models are rendered with more detail).

With 70% resolution scale, frame rates are shown climbing 50 FPS. At this point, when the detail preset is lowered to "Medium," the game inches close to the 60 FPS magic figure, swinging between 55 to 65 FPS. The game is also shown utilizing all 16 logical processors of this 8-core/16-thread processor. Despite just 8 "Vega" compute units, amounting to 512 stream processors, the iGPU in the 4700G has freedom to dial up engine clocks (GPU clocks) all the way up to 2.10 GHz, which helps it overcome much of the performance deficit compared to the Vega 11 solution found with the previous generation "Picasso" silicon. Watch the Tech Epiphany video presentation in the source link below.

A recent listing on SiSoftware reveals a possible new single-board computer from ASRock, the 4X4-V2000. This listing is likely for the successor to the 4X4-V1000M released by ASRock last year with an embedded first-generation Ryzen CPU. This new listing indicates that the V2000 will be making the switch to Ryzen 4000 with the 7 nm Ryzen 5 4600U. This processor upgrade should bring a significant speed boost over the previous 14 nm chip, featuring 6 cores and twelve threads along with six Vega cores running at 1500 MHz.

AMD's top upcoming Socket AM4 desktop APU, the Ryzen 7 PRO 4750G, was put through Geekbench 5, as discovered by TUM_APISAK. The processor produced performance figures in the league of the popular Ryzen 7 3700X desktop processor. Both are 8-core/16-thread processors based on the "Zen 2" microarchitecture, but while the 3700X has additional L3 cache and added power budget for the CPU cores (as the processor completely lacks an iGPU); the PRO 4750G offers a Radeon Vega 8 iGPU with its engine clock above 2.00 GHz. Both chips were compared on Geekbench 5.2.2.

The single-core performance of both the PRO 4750G and 3700X are similar, with the PRO 4750G scoring 1239 points, and the 3700X scoring 1266 points. The 3700X has a slight upper hand with multi-core performance, with 9151 points compared to 8228 points of the PRO 4750G. This is attributable to the 3700X enjoying four times the L3 cache size. The Ryzen 7 PRO 4750G is expected to be the top desktop SKU based on the 7 nm "Renoir" silicon that features eight "Zen 2" CPU cores, and an iGPU based on the "Vega" graphics architecture, featuring 8 NGCUs amounting to 512 stream processors. The processor features AMD PRO feature-set that make it fit for use in commercial desktops in large business environments.

Renowned leaker APISAK has digged up benchmarks for AMD's upcoming Ryzen 4700G, 4400G and 4200G Renoir APUs in 3D Mark. These are actually for the PRO versions of the APUs, but these tend to be directly comparable with AMD's non-PRO offerings, so we can look at them to get an idea of where AMD's 4000G series' performance lies. AMD's 4000G will be increasing core-counts almost across the board - the midrange 4400G now sports 6 cores and 12 threads, which is more than the previous generation Ryzen 5 3400G offered (4 cores / 8 threads), while the top-of-the-line 4700G doubles the 3400G's core-cpount to 8 physical and 16 logical threads.

This increase in CPU cores, of course, has implied a reduction in the area of the chip that's dedicated to the integrated Vega graphics GPU - compute units have been reduced from the 3400G's 11 down to 8 compute units on the Ryzen 7 4700G and 7 compute units on the 4400G - while the 4200G now makes do with just 6 Vega compute units. Clocks have been severely increased across the board to compensate the CU reduction, though - the aim is to achieve similar GPU performance using a smaller amount of semiconductor real-estate.

Xiaomi today announced the impending release of three new laptops with 13", 14", and 16" diagonals. The ideal is tantalizingly clear: to launch a laptop available at all the most popular resolutions, with the specs to match, and pricing that's incredibly aggressive - as is Xiaomi's usual trademark. All three Xiaomi RedmiBook models carry AMD's Latest Ryzen 4000 CPUs in the form of the Ryzen 5 4500U or Ryzen 7 4700U - so you know you're in for very attractive performance and battery life metrics from the get go.

The RedmiBook 13 comes in three configurations. The base model, featuring an AMD Ryzen 5 4500U CPU, 8 GB RAM and a 512 GB SSD variant is priced at CNY 3,799 (roughly $530); the AMD Ryzen 5 4500U CPU, 16 GB RAM and 512 GB SSD variant is priced at CNY 3,999 (roughly $560); upgrade for an AMD Ryzen 7 4700U CPU (Vega 8 graphics) paired with 16 GB RAM and a 1 TB SSD and you'll be asked for CNY 4,999 (roughly $700).

AMD at its 2020 Financial Analyst Day event unveiled its upcoming CDNA GPU-based compute accelerator architecture. CDNA will complement the company's graphics-oriented RDNA architecture. While RDNA powers the company's Radeon Pro and Radeon RX client- and enterprise graphics products, CDNA will power compute accelerators such as Radeon Instinct, etc. AMD is having to fork its graphics IP to RDNA and CDNA due to what it described as market-based product differentiation.

Data centers and HPCs using Radeon Instinct accelerators have no use for the GPU's actual graphics rendering capabilities. And so, at a silicon level, AMD is removing the raster graphics hardware, the display and multimedia engines, and other associated components that otherwise take up significant amounts of die area. In their place, AMD is adding fixed-function tensor compute hardware, similar to the tensor cores on certain NVIDIA GPUs.

AMD today announced the expansion of the AMD Ryzen Embedded ecosystem with two new AMD Ryzen Embedded R1000 low-power processors that provide customers with a new TDP range of 6 up to 10 W. AMD also announced new customers offering Mini PCs based on the AMD Ryzen Embedded processors from Sapphire, SECO, Simply NUC and others.

"AMD is ushering in a new age of high-performance computing for the embedded industry," said Rajneesh Gaur, corporate vice president and general manager, Embedded Solutions, AMD. "We are doing this with cutting-edge technology to display immersive graphics in 4K resolution with AMD Ryzen Embedded processors, and we are now offering access to high performance in power-efficient solutions with these new low-power Ryzen Embedded R1000 processors."

SAPPHIRE Technology builds on the reputation and strength of its embedded systems business division by announcing a new series of embedded motherboards with a compact footprint that deliver improved levels of performance, features and stability to customers. Powered by the latest AMD Ryzen Embedded Processor which feature the AMD Radeon "Vega" graphics combined with the high-performance "Zen" CPU, the BP-FP5 and NP-FP5 embedded platforms provide a stable balance of low power consumption and optimized performance for the embedded markets.

According to Paul Smith, Director of SAPPHIRE's Embedded Business Division, "the versatile and effective design of these boards with low power compute and high-resolution multimedia display capability make them perfect for a wide variety of industry applications in the Embedded space such as industrial PC, interactive digital signage, thin clients and POS terminals".

AMD's upcoming "Renoir" silicon will be the company's most important, as it will sit at the heart of not just desktops, but also notebooks and ultraportables. A brilliant report by _rogame on Reddit compiles the chip's many iGPU variants along with iGPU device-IDs, and slots them in various platform variants. Renoir will target four key market segments characterized by TDP: 15 W ultraportables, 45 W mainstream notebooks, 65 W mainstream desktops, and 35 W low-power desktops.

As for the iGPU itself, "Renoir" was last reported as being a processor that combines "Zen 2" CPU cores with an iGPU that has SIMD machinery from the "Vega" architecture, but with updated display- and multimedia-engines from "Navi." According to _rogame, Renoir's iGPU will have up to 13 NGCUs, which work out to 832 stream processors. AMD internally marks the iGPU as RV B##, where RV refers to "Radeon Vega," and B## referring to the iGPU variant. The commercial name of the iGPU will be different. B12 is the highest variant, with 12-13 CUs, B10 has 10-11 CUs, B8 has 8-9 CUs, B6 has 6 CUs, and B4 has 3-4 CUs. The B12 configuration will be exclusive to the mobile parts. The desktop parts cap out at B10. Renoir is expected to dominate AMD's processor launch cycle through the first half of 2020.

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."

AMD "Renoir" is the company's next-generation APU that improves iGPU and CPU performance over the current 12 nm "Picasso" APU. An AMD "Renoir" APU engineering sample running on a "Celadon-RN" platform prototyping board, was allegedly put through 3DMark 11, and its performance numbers surfaced on Reddit, in three data-sets corresponding with three hardware configurations. In the first one, dubbed "config 1," the CPU is clocked at 1.70 GHz, the iGPU at 1.50 GHz, and the system memory at DDR4-2667. In "config 2," the CPU runs at 1.80 GHz, and the iGPU and memory frequencies are unknown. In "config 3," the CPU runs at 2.00 GHz, the iGPU at 1.10 GHz, and the memory at DDR4-2667. Raw benchmark output from 3DMark 11 Performance preset are pasted for each of the configs below (in that order). The three mention 3DMark database result IDs, but all three are private when we tried to look them up.

The "config 1" machine scores 3,547 points in the performance preset of 3DMark 11. It's interesting to note here that the iGPU clock is significantly higher than that of "Picasso." In "config 2," a 3DMark performance score of 3,143 points is yielded. The CPU clock is increased compared to "config 1," but the score is reduced slightly, which indicates a possible reduction in iGPU clocks or memory speed, or perhaps even the iGPU's core-configuration. In "config 3," we see the highest CPU clock speed at 2.00 GHz, but a reduced iGPU clock speed at 1.10 GHz. This setup scores 2,374 points in the 3DMark performance preset, a 33% drop from "config 1," indicating not just reduced iGPU clocks, but possibly also reduced CU count. "Renoir" is expected to combine "Zen 2" CPU cores with an iGPU that has the number-crunching machinery of "Vega," but with the display- and multimedia-engines of "Navi."

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.

AMD today released their latest Radeon Software driver. Version 19.9.3 brings with it a much requested feature: support for Radeon Image Sharpening (RIS) on graphics cards based on the Vega architecture. It has been a sore point in the community for some time now how AMD's Vega, their high-performance architecture that offered greater performance than Polaris, was left in the dust in support for AMD's RIS, with only Navi (and then Polaris) users being able to benefit from the image quality-enhancing feature. Now, AMD has finally baked in driver support for that feature with Vega, so you can go on, install the latest driver, and see what it's all about.

Additionally to adding RIS support for Vega, this driver includes specific performance and stability optimizations for Ghost Recon Breakpoint, the online tactical shooter from Ubisoft whose release is slated for October 4th. You can rest assured that you will have the best gameplay experience AMD could muster for launch day with this particular set of drivers. Grab them in our downloads section.

AMD's next-generation "Renoir" APU, which succeeds the company's 12 nm "Picasso," will be the company's truly next-generation chip to feature an integrated graphics solution. It's unclear as of now, if the chip will be based on a monolithic die, or if it will be a multi-chip module of a 7 nm "Zen 2" chiplet paired with an enlarged I/O controller die that has the iGPU. We're getting confirmation on two key specs - one, that the iGPU will be based on the older "Vega" graphics architecture, albeit with an updated display engine to support the latest display standards; and two, that the processor's memory controller will support the latest LPDDR4X memory standard, at speeds of up to 4266 MHz DDR. In comparison, Intel's "Ice Lake-U" chip supports LPDDX4X up to 3733 MHz.

Code-lines pointing toward "Vega" graphics with an updated display controller mention the new DCN 2.1, found in AMD's new "Navi 10" GPU. This controller supports resolutions of up to 8K, DSC 1.2a, and new resolutions of 4K up to 240 Hz and 8K 60 Hz over a single cable, along with 30 bits per pixel color. The multimedia engine is also suitably updated to VCN 2.1 standard, and provides hardware-accelerated decoding for some of the newer video formats, such as VP9 and H.265 at up to 90 fps at 4K, and 8K up to 24 fps, and H.264 up to 150 fps at 4K. There's no word on when "Renoir" comes out, but a 2020 International CES unveil is likely.

AMD has reportedly discontinued production of its flagship Radeon VII graphics card. According to a Cowcotland report, AMD no longer finds it viable to produce and sell the Radeon VII at prices competitive to NVIDIA's RTX 2080, especially when its latest Radeon RX 5700 XT performs within 5-12 percent of the Radeon VII at less than half its price. AMD probably expects custom-design RX 5700 XT cards to narrow the gap even more. The RX 5700 XT has a much lesser BOM (bill of materials) cost compared to the Radeon VII, due to the simplicity of its ASIC, a conventional GDDR6 memory setup, and far lighter electrical requirements.

In stark contrast to the RX 5700 XT, the Radeon VII is based on a complex MCM (multi-chip module) that has not just a 7 nm GPU die, but also four 32 Gbit HBM2 stacks, and a silicon interposer. It also has much steeper VRM requirements. Making matters worse is the now-obsolete "Vega" architecture it's based on, which loses big time against "Navi" at performance/Watt. The future of AMD's high-end VGA lineup is uncertain. Looking at the way "Navi" comes close to performance/Watt parity with NVIDIA on the RX 5700, AMD may be tempted to design a larger GPU die based on "Navi," with a conventional GDDR6-based memory sub-system, to take another swing at NVIDIA's high-end.

Bitspower formally launched its Brizo BR-VGRVIIRD full-coverage water block for the AMD Radeon VII graphics card. The block combines a nickel-plated copper primary material with a clear acrylic top that has brushed metal embellishment with laser-etched Bitspower and Radeon VII logos. The top has a factory-fitted addressable-RGB LED setup that plugs in direct to a 3-pin aRGB header. The block features a large micro-fin lattice that covers all chiplets on the "Vega 20" MCM, the 7 nm GPU die, and the four HBM2 stacks. The block is single-slot capable, measuring 266.2 mm x 136 mm x 15.22 mm (WxDxH). It features standard G1/4" threads for up to four fittings (multi-GPU capable). The company didn't reveal pricing.

AMD "Navi 10" is a very different GPU from the "Vega 10," or indeed the "Polaris 10." The GPU sees the introduction of the new RDNA graphics architecture, which is the first big graphics architecture change on an AMD GPU in nearly a decade. AMD had in 2011 released its Graphics CoreNext (GCN) architecture, and successive generations of GPUs since then, brought generational improvements to GCN, all the way up to "Vega." At the heart of RDNA is its brand new Compute Unit (CU), which AMD redesigned to increase IPC, or single-thread performance.

Before diving deeper, it's important to confirm two key specifications of the "Navi 10" GPU. The ROP count of the silicon is 64, double that of the "Polaris 10" silicon, and same as "Vega 10." The silicon has sixteen render-backends (RBs), these are quad-pumped, which work out to an ROP count of 64. AMD also confirmed that the chip has 160 TMUs. These TMUs are redesigned to feature 64-bit bi-linear filtering. The Radeon RX 5700 XT maxes out the silicon, while the RX 5700 disables four RDNA CUs, working out to 144 TMUs. The ROP count on the RX 5700 is unchanged at 64.

AMD today announced the Radeon Pro Vega II and Pro Vega II Duo graphics cards, making their debut with the new Apple Mac Pro workstation. Based on an enhanced 32 GB variant of the 7 nm "Vega 20" MCM, the Radeon Pro Vega II maxes out its GPU silicon, with 4,096 stream processors, 1.70 GHz peak engine clock, 32 GB of 4096-bit HBM2 memory, and 1 TB/s of memory bandwidth. The card features both PCI-Express 3.0 x16 and InfinityFabric interfaces. As its name suggests, the Pro Vega II is designed for professional workloads, and comes with certifications for nearly all professional content creation applications.

The Radeon Pro Vega II Duo is the first dual-GPU graphics card from AMD in ages. Purpose built for the Mac Pro (and available on the Apple workstation only), this card puts two fully unlocked "Vega 20" MCMs with 32 GB HBM2 memory each on a single PCB. The card uses a bridge chip to connect the two GPUs to the system bus, but in addition, has an 84.5 GB/s InfinityFabric link running between the two GPUs, for rapid memory access, GPU and memory virtualization, and interoperability between the two GPUs, bypassing the host system bus. In addition to certifications for every conceivable content creation suite for the MacOS platform, AMD dropped in heavy optimization for the Metal 3D graphics API. For now the two graphics cards are only available as options for the Apple Mac Pro. The single-GPU Pro Vega II may see standalone product availability later this year, but the Pro Vega II Duo will remain a Mac Pro-exclusive.

Apple today introduced the all-new Mac Pro, a completely redesigned, breakthrough workstation for pros who push the limits of what a Mac can do, and unveiled Apple Pro Display XDR, the world's best pro display. Designed for maximum performance, expansion and configurability, the all-new Mac Pro features workstation-class Xeon processors up to 28 cores, a high-performance memory system with a massive 1.5TB capacity, eight PCIe expansion slots and a graphics architecture featuring the world's most powerful graphics card. It also introduces Apple Afterburner, a game-changing accelerator card that enables playback of three streams of 8K ProRes RAW video simultaneously.

Pro Display XDR features a massive 32-inch Retina 6K display with gorgeous P3 wide and 10-bit color, an extreme 1,600 nits of peak brightness, an incredible 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio and a superwide viewing angle, all at a breakthrough price point. Together, the new Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR are the most powerful tools Apple has ever put in the hands of pro customers and will change pro workflows forever.

TechPowerUp GPU-Z is a handy graphics subsystem information, diagnostic, and monitoring utility no enthusiast can leave home without, and today we bring you its latest version. The new TechPowerUp GPU-Z v2.21.0 adds support for NVIDIA Quadro P500. More importantly, it fixes sensor data readouts being broken for the Radeon VII with Radeon Software 19.5.1 (or later) installed. A broken GPU load sensor for AMD "Raven Ridge" APUs has also been fixed. Lastly, OpenCL support detection has been added for Radeon VII and other graphics cards based on the "Vega 20" MCM. Grab it from the link below.DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z

The change-log follows.

A Sapphire product manager and PR director, speaking to the Chinese press spilled the beans on AMD's upcoming Radeon Navi graphics card lineup. It looks like with Navi, AMD is targeting the meat of the serious gamer market, at two specific price points, USD $399 with a "Pro" (cut-down) product, and $499 with an "XT" (fully-fledged) product. AMD has two NVIDIA products in its crosshairs, the GeForce RTX 2070, and the RTX 2060. In the interview, the Sapphire rep mentioned "stronger than 2070", when talking about performance numbers, which we assume is for the Navi XT variant - definitely promising. The $399 Navi "Pro" is probably being designed with a performance target somewhere between the RTX 2060 and RTX 2070, so you typically pay $50 more than you would for an RTX 2060, for noticeably higher performance.

Sapphire also confirmed that AMD's Navi does not have specialized ray-tracing hardware on the silicon, but such technology will debut with "next year's new architecture". They also suggested that AMD is unlikely to scale up Navi for the enthusiast segment, and that the Vega-based Radeon VII will continue to be the company's flagship product. On the topic of Radeon VII custom designs, Sapphire commented that "there is no plans for that". On the other hand, Sapphire is actively working on custom designs for the Navi architecture, and mentioned that "work on a "Toxic" version of Navi is complete, and it is watercooled". Many people have speculated that AMD will unveil Navi at its Computex keynote address on May 27. Sapphire confirmed that date, and also added that the launch will be on 7th of July, 2019.

AMD is giving finishing touches to its Ryzen 3000 "Picasso" family of APUs, and Thai PC enthusiast TUM_APISAK has details on their CPU clock speeds. The Ryzen 3 3200G comes with 3.60 GHz nominal clock-speed and 4.00 GHz maximum Precision Boost frequency; while the Ryzen 5(?) 3400G ships with 3.70 GHz clock speeds along with 4.20 GHz max Precision Boost. The "Picasso" silicon is an optical shrink of the 14 nm "Raven Ridge" silicon to the 12 nm FinFET process at GlobalFoundries, the same one on which AMD builds "Pinnacle Ridge" and "Polaris 30."

Besides the shrink to 12 nm, "Picasso" features upgraded "Zen+" CPU cores that have improved Precision Boost algorithm and faster on-die caches, which contribute to a roughly 3% increase in IPC on "Pinnacle Ridge," but significantly improved multi-threaded performance compared to 1st generation Ryzen. Clock speeds of both the CPU cores and the integrated "Vega" iGPU are expected to increase. Both the 3200G and 3400G see a 100 MHz increase in nominal clock-speed, and 300 MHz increase in boost clocks, over the chips they succeed, the 2200G and 2400G, respectively. The iGPU is rumored to receive a similar 100-200 MHz increase in engine clock.

Just in time for the release of Bethesda's open-world first-person shooter Rage 2 (find our performance analysis here), AMD has released their latest installment of the Radeon Adrenalin 2019 edition drivers for their graphics cards to make the most of the game. Indeed, AMD claims an improvement in game performance of up to 16% on the Radeon VII relative to last month's 19.4.3 drivers, and this is in addition to added support for the big Windows 10 May 2019 update and instruction tracing for AMD's GPU Profiler version 1.5.X. There is a plethora of fixed issues listed as well, and the usual list of known bugs, all of which can be seen past the break. We have also hosted the drivers installer for your convenience, which can be found at the link below.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 19.5.1