Lenovo has released a trio of new Windows 10 laptops based on new, 2nd generation AMD Ryzen PRO processors, in their famous ThinkPad form factor. There are two models that are part of the T series of ThinkPads, while one is part of X series. For reminding, the T series is the flagship line that offers the best balance between ruggedness, features, processing power, and portability in a 14 or 15-inch unit, while the X series focuses on portability.

The new ThinkPads use the second generation of AMD Ryzen PRO processors, which are 12nm improvements of the previous 14nm Ryzen Family. They carry the 3000 name branding but are similar to the 2000 series of desktop CPUs.

AMD has filed a trademark for an updated design on their Vega logo. The original Vega logo was made out of two full triangles, arranged in such a way as to form the letter "V". The updated trademark has since made an appearance on AMD's professional line of graphics cards, in the form of packaging for the Radeon Pro WX 9100 - likely an effort from AMD to further separate its professional and consumer graphics.

The new logo is the old being revisited, with the same prismatic arrangement, but with added detailing for a 3D effect, which makes sense in the 3D rendering world that AMD's professional graphics cards are used in. Perhaps this AMD investment in updating the branding means a refresh could be coming for its professional graphics card market that still uses the Vega architecture, though this is mere speculation at this point.

At the Taiwan Embedded Forum, AMD announced the Ryzen embedded product family is growing with the new AMD Ryzen Embedded R1000 SoC. Building upon the success of the Ryzen Embedded V1000 SoC, the AMD Ryzen Embedded R1000 SoC provides embedded customers with dual core, quad-threaded performance, as well as the ability to run fanless, low power solutions for 4K displays; while providing leading-edge security features. The AMD Ryzen Embedded R1000 is perfect for applications in digital displays, high-performance edge computing, networking, thin clients and more.

Customers like Advantech, ASRock Industrial, IBASE, Netronome, Quixant and others are already working on Ryzen Embedded R1000-based products. As well, Atari© is using the high-performance Vega 3 graphics and 'Zen' CPU architecture in the AMD Ryzen Embedded R1000 SoC to power the upcoming Atari VCS game system.

Today, AMD announced the latest additions to its PRO processor lineup: 2nd Gen AMD Ryzen PRO mobile processors with Radeon Vega Graphics and AMD Athlon PRO mobile processors with Radeon Vega Graphics. Providing commercial notebook users with power-efficient performance, state-of-the-art security features, and commercial-grade reliability and manageability, these new processors enable global PC manufacturers to create a wide range of business systems, from premium professional notebooks to everyday productivity notebooks. Initial commercial systems from HP and Lenovo are expected this quarter with other OEMs and further platform updates anticipated later in 2019.

"Modern PC users expect the experience between professional and personal to be imperceptible, and business notebook users want to utilize the latest modern features including 3D modeling, video editing, multi-display setups while multitasking securely, to get more done," said Saeid Moshkelani, senior vice president and general manager, Client Compute, AMD. "With AMD Ryzen PRO and Athlon PRO mobile processors, AMD delivers the right performance, features, and choice to OEMs and commercial users, combined with the productivity, protection, and professional features needed to ensure seamless deployment throughout an organization."

AMD today released the latest version of their Radeon Adrenalin 2019 Drivers with beta version 19.3.3. This release adds support for Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Generation Zero. In regards to performance improvements AMD made no mention of any with this release; however, a few fixes were implemented. Up first is Rainbow Six Siege which should no longer have texture flickering or intermittent corruption issues. Meanwhile, in DOTA 2 VR AMD has managed to eliminate stutter problems on HMD devices when the game is utilizing the Vulkan API. They also made mention of two known issues as well. The first issue impacts AMD Ryzen mobile processors with Radeon Vega Graphics, on which the mouse cursor can disappear or go beyond the top boundary of a display. While the second problem pertains to WattMan gauges along with the performance metrics, overlay being inaccurate on systems with an AMD Radeon VII installed.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Adrenalin Edition 19.3.3 Beta

Apple today updated its iMac line with up to 8-core Intel 9th-generation processors for the first time and powerful Vega graphics options, delivering dramatic increases in both compute and graphics performance. From consumers to pros alike, users will notice their iMac is faster for everyday tasks all the way up to the most demanding pro workloads. This boost in performance, combined with its gorgeous Retina display, sleek all-in-one design, quiet operation, fast storage and memory, modern connectivity and macOS Mojave, makes iMac the world's best desktop.

"Customers are going to love the huge boost in iMac performance. With up to 8-core processors and powerful Vega graphics, the iMac lineup is stronger than ever," said Tom Boger, Apple's senior director of Mac Product Marketing. "With its stunning Retina display, amazing design, twice the performance, and macOS Mojave that our customers love, iMac is by far the best desktop in the world."

TechPowerUp today released the latest version of TechPowerUp GPU-Z, the graphics subsystem information, monitoring, and diagnostic utility no enthusiast can leave home without. Version 2.17.0 adds support for new GPUs, and fixes a number of issues. To begin with, GPU-Z adds support for AMD Radeon VII, NVIDIA TITAN RTX, GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, GeForce RTX 20-series Mobile, Quadro RTX 4000, Intel "Amber Lake" GT2 graphics, among several other rare GPU models detailed in the change-log. Support is also added for AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition drivers.

Among the several issues fixed are improved monitoring on Radeon RX 580 2048-SP, default boost frequency reporting on GTX 1660 Ti and certain "Pascal" GPUs, missing fan sensors on RTX 20-series cards with no display connected, a start-up crash and DXVA 2.0 report crash noticed on Windows XP machines; power-limit reporting and BIOS extraction crashes on certain older NVIDIA GPUs, various general crashes caused by physical memory access, and video memory reporting on "Vega" based graphics cards with 16 GB memory. There are numerous user-experience improvements, including simplified sensor labels, improved memory usage readouts, a more functional crash-reporter that lets you describe the problem along with an e-mail address input so we could directly get back to you; memory timings readouts only appearing in compatible environments, etc. Grab GPU-Z from the link below.DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z v2.17.0

The complete change-log follows.

AMD today released their latest Radeon Software Adrenaline 2019 Edition drivers. This latest beta, version 19.2.3, brings with it support for AMD Ryzen mobile processors with Vega graphics which see up to a 10% performance boost on average versus the 17.40 launch drivers. Titles included in the performance testing were; Destiny 2, Shadow of War, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Civilization 6, and the Witcher 3. Furthermore, various eSports title have seen performance gains of up to 17%, again when compared to the older 17.40 launch drivers. The games AMD used for testing were; Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Fortnite, Player Unknown's Battleground, and World of Warcraft. The only other performance gains specifically mentioned in this driver release is a 3% boost in Dirt Rally 2 on the Radeon RX Vega 64.

AMD has fixed a few issues with this release as well including player character outlines being stuck on screen after being revived in Battlefield V being the most significant fix. Otherwise, all other fixes or changes are related to AMD software or features such as ReLive wireless VR, FreeSync, and fan tuning. That said, a few prominent issues remain some of which have been around for some time like mouse lag on multi-monitor systems when one display is turned off. Other problems include Radeon WattMan not applying settings changes on the AMD Radeon VII. Meanwhile, the performance metrics overlay may fluctuate giving inaccurate readings on the previously mentioned Radeon VII. For full details, you can check the changelog after the break.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 19.2.3

The leading global motherboard, graphics card and mini PC manufacturer, ASRock, launches the flagship level product - Phantom Gaming X Radeon VII 16G graphics card, featuring AMD's world's first 7nm Radeon VII gaming GPU and 16GB 4096-bit HBM2 memory with powerful computing performance, plus full instruction set support such as DirectX 12, OpenGL 4.5 and Vulkan for the latest AAA-rated games, virtual reality (VR), 3D rendering and video editing applications, and next-generation computing workloads. It provides a great experience for enthusiast gamers and professional creators.

The Phantom Gaming X Radeon VII 16G graphics card is equipped with the Radeon VII gaming GPU built on the latest 7nm process technology based on the next-generation Vega architecture, achieving a base/boost frequency of 1400/1750 MHz and with 16GB 4096-bit HBM2 memory which is twice the capacity of the previous generation Radeon RX series, while the 1TB/s maximum memory bandwidth that is 2.1 times of the previous generation. The average game performance increased by 29%, and the average content creation efficiency increased by 36% compared with the previous generation Radeon RX series.

Apple's MacBook Pro (2018) with the AMD Radeon RX Vega 20 graphics option appears to have a serious design flaw related to its video subsystem. The laptop tends to show severe screen flickering and lines crossing through the picture after waking up from extended periods of idling (after the display has turned off). The problem persists even through reboots. A reboot will make the flickering go away, however the next time the MacBook idles and decides to turn off its display, waking the machine will bring the flicker back. Most common remedies an enthusiast could think of, such as disabling the auto-switching between integrated- and discrete GPUs, and preventing the monitor from idling, don't appear to fix the problem.

The problem was discovered on a brand new $4,500 15-inch MacBook Pro (Intel Core i9, AMD Vega 20, 32 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD). Upon its discovery, it was taken to the Apple Store, where the employees immediately replaced it without further questions when they heard "display corruption after standby". The replacement process was hassle-free, it looks like others have faced this issue with this MacBook Pro model and Apple is trying to quickly resolve it to keep the lid on it. However, after a couple of days, the problem re-surfaced on the replacement MacBook, too. Both models were running MacOS "Mojave" version 10.14.2.

GIGABYTE, the world's leading premium gaming hardware manufacturer, today announced the launch of Radeon VII HBM2 16G, the latest Radeon VII graphics cards built upon the world's first 7nm gaming GPU. Based on the enhanced second-generation AMD 'Vega' architecture, Radeon VII is equipped with 3840 stream processors and 16GB of ultra-fast HBM2 memory (second-generation High-Bandwidth Memory). It is designed to deliver exceptional performance and amazing experiences for the latest AAA, e-sports and Virtual Reality (VR) titles, demanding 3D rendering and video editing applications, and next-generation compute workloads.

According to the AMD official website, the Radeon VII graphics card enables high-performance gaming and ultra-high quality visuals. Ground-breaking 1 TB/s memory bandwidth and a 4,096-bit memory interface paves the way for ultra-high resolution textures, hyper-realistic settings and life-like characters. With the high speeds of today's graphics cards, framerates often exceed the monitor refresh rate, causing stuttering and tearing.

Amidst breaking news about PowerColor designing what could be the first custom-design Radeon VII graphics card, the company also unveiled its reference-design Radeon VII card, the AXVII 16GBHBM2-3DH. This card sticks to AMD's reference design clock speeds of up to 1750 MHz boost, and up to 1800 MHz "peak" clock speeds, with the memory ticking at 1000 MHz. It implements the slick, solid-aluminium triple-fan stock cooling solution AMD designed for this card. Drawing power from a pair of 8-pin PCIe power connectors, the card puts out three DisplayPort 1.4 and an HDMI 2.0b. Based on the 7 nm "Vega 20" silicon, the Radeon VII packs 3,840 stream processors, 240 TMUs, 64 ROPs, and a 4096-bit wide HBM2 memory interface, holding 16 GB of memory. It's likely that PowerColor will sell this card close to AMD's MSRP for this card, USD $699.

PowerColor, one of AMD's foremost AIB (Add-in-Board) partners, is preparing at least as many as five different SKUs based on the latest, upcoming AMD graphics chip. While AMD did say that initial availability of the new, shrunk-down Vega graphics card would be limited to base design models, it's clear that at least PowerColor wants to bring its years of R&D on cooling solutions to bear.

The product codes for PowerColor's in-development SKUs stand as AXVII 16GBHBM2-3DH (reference model), AXVII 16GBHBM2-2D2H (RedDragon Triple Fan), AXVII 16GBHBM2-2D2HD (RedDevil Triple Fan), AXVII 16GBHBM2-2D2H/OC (RedDragon Triple Fan OC, and AXVII 16GBHBM2-2D2HD/OC (RedDevil Triple Fan OC). Whether PowerColor is moving the fastest, has the best relations with AMD, or is just the one company whose beans have been spilled is uncertain for now, but you can expect other brands to join in on the SKU development, if they aren't doing so already (highly, highly doubtful at that).Update (30/01): A PowerColor representative on Reddit stated that the company is not planning to launch any custom-design Radeon VII in the immediate future. "We did clarify to the media, that at this moment we will only carry AMD reference design and at the moment we do not have custom model planned in the immediate future," they said. PowerColor didn't completely shut off the possibility of a "Red Devil" branded Radeon VII. "Obviously there's quite of you guys out there wanting our Red Devil series on the Vega VII and we will always consider the option. Just not at this point," the statement read.

System software code used for detecting and installing AMD's upcoming Radeon "Navi" family of graphics processors surfaced in the latest Apple MacOS "Mojave" beta. Version 14.2 beta of the operating system packs preparation for AMD's next-generation GPUs through a device identifier "0x73101002." A similar piece of code surfaced on early versions of MacOS "Sierra" some 6 months prior to Radeon "Vega" family launch, which perfectly aligns with this release of Mojave preceding the speculated mid-2019 launch of "Navi."

The code makes four references, Navi 16, Navi 12, Navi 10, and Navi 9. We're not quite sure if these are brand names or ASIC codes pointing to the number of next-generation compute units enabled on the silicon. If they are the latter, and assuming AMD hasn't changed the number of stream processors per NGCU, we're looking at the possibility of these chips being mid-range performance successors to the "Polaris" family, and it's likely they'll find place in Apple's upcoming generation of iMac, and possibly even MacBooks.Many Thanks to theoneandonlymrk for the tip.

Computer Upgrade King demoed 2 new extremely powerful and colorful mATX gaming desktops at CES that release in Spring 2019. On display at Patriot's suite, they featured their Continuum Mini which has an intense infinity mirror front panel with large side vents to ensure excellent air flow. Inside, there was an NVidia RTX 2080 TI GPU and an Intel i9-9900K CPU with their own custom cooling system consisting of an RGB CPU water block, anodized brushed aluminum reservoir and pump combo, front mounted 240mm radiator and lotus style ARGB fans.

On display at AMD's suite, they featured their Stratos Mini which has a triple RGB fan front panel with metal blade design to ensure excellent air flow. Inside, there was a Gigabyte Vega 56 GPU, an AMD Threadripper 2950X CPU with their own custom cooling system, a Team Group T-Force Delta RGB SSD, and halo style RGB fans.

A report via Tom's Hardware.de says that AMD's plans for the upcoming Radeon VII are somewhat one-dimensional, in that only reference designs will be available for this particular rendition of the Vega architecture. And this doesn't mean"initial availability" only on reference cards, like NVIDIA has been doing with their Founder's editions; the report claims that at no point in time will there actually be a custom-designed Radeon VII. The quantity of Radeon VII GPUs will apparently be "strictly limited" come launch - a likely result of the decision to make use of TSMC's 7 nm process, which will have to serve not only AMD's Ryzen 3000 and Epyc CPUs when those are actually launched, but all of TSMC's other clients.

This is in contrast with AMD CEO Lisa Su's words during her CES keynote, who said that Radeon VII would be available from "several leading add-in board partners plan to offer the cards". According to a Tom's Hardware.de Taiwanese source, "You cannot leak anything that does not exist" in regards to third-party designs. And another Chinese source said "the quantity of Radeon VII is strictly limited… not sure if AMD wants to open AIB to have an own design later".

The Epic Games Store with its aggressive developer earnings program is drilling away at Steam's already-installed hegemony as the PC gaming platform of choice. A mere 12% royalty for the storefront means much more money goes back to the developers, and the more copies are sold of a given game, the bigger the profit will become. This is why some games have already even left Steam's shores to find a home on the Epic Games Store, and now, a AAA title in The Division 2 will be skipping Steam entirely. With launches on Ubisoft's own store and an 88% cut on the Epic store, Ubisoft will be looking to maximize their profits.

That part of the story is done; Ubisoft has also outed the system requirements for the PC version of The Division 2, which, for a minimum of 30 FPS at 1080p, will require either an AMD FX-6350 or Intel Core I5-2500K CPU, 8 GB of RAM, and 2 GB of video RAM on an AMD Radeon R9 270 or Nvidia GeForce GTX 670.

PC World managed to get a hold of NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, picking his thoughts on AMD's recently announced Radeon VII. Skirting through the usual amicable, politically correct answers, Jensen made his thoughts clear on what the competition is offering to compete with NVIDIA's RTX 2000 series. The answer? Vega VII is an "underwhelming product", because "The performance is lousy and there's nothing new. [There's] no ray tracing, no AI. It's 7nm with HBM memory that barely keeps up with a 2080. And if we turn on DLSS we'll crush it. And if we turn on ray tracing we'll crush it." Not content on dissing the competition's product, Jensen Huang also quipped regarding AMD's presentation and product strategy, saying that "It's a weird launch, maybe they thought of it this morning."

While many have watched or at the very least seen our coverage of AMD's live stream at CES 2019, it just can't compare to seeing the latest graphics card from the company up close and personal. Therefore as soon as we had the opportunity, we took a closer look at the AMD Radeon VII and let us just say the reference card is indeed a bit fancy. The shroud itself is made of metal and has a very similar look and feel to the one used on the Radeon RX Vega 64 liquid cooled reference cards. However, instead of using an AIO for this release AMD instead opted for three uniform fans and a massive heatsink. Not only does this make the card more compatible with small form factor systems, it is also less of a hassle to install. Display outputs consist of 3x DisplayPort and 1x HDMI. Sadly AMD did not include a VirtualLink port (USB Type-C) like NVIDIA for VR headsets, which is rather odd considering AMD is also part of the VirtualLink consortium.

Power delivery is handled by two 8-pin PCIe power connectors giving the card access to a theoretical limit of 375-watts which is 75-watts more than its 300-watt TDP. Considering the Radeon VII has the same power level as the Vega 64 it offers 25% more performance at the same power level. Compute unit count falls between the Vega 56 and Vega 64 at precisely 60 CUs. That said, a few missing CUs are of no consequence when you consider how close the Vega 56 performed to the Vega 64 once tweaked. As for clock speeds AMD has stated the Radeon VII will have a 1.8 GHz core clock, while the 16 GB of HBM2 will deliver 1 TB/s of memory bandwidth over the 4096-bit memory interface.

AMD today announced the Radeon VII (Radeon Seven) graphics card, implementing the world's first GPU built on the 7 nm silicon fabrication process. Based on the 7 nm "Vega 20" silicon with 60 compute units (3,840 stream processors), and a 4096-bit HBM2 memory interface, the chip leverages 7 nm to dial up engine clock speeds to unprecedented levels (above 1.80 GHz possibly). CEO Lisa Su states that the Radeon VII performs competitively with NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 2080 graphics card. The card features a gamer-friendly triple-fan cooling solution with a design focus on low noise. AMD is using 16 GB of 4096-bit HBM2 memory. Available from February 7th, the Radeon VII will be priced at USD $699.

Update: We went hands on with the Radeon VII card at CES.

Today, AMD announced the first members of its 2019 mobility line-up encompassing all notebook segments: 2nd Gen AMD Ryzen 3000 Series Mobile Processors powering ultrathin and gaming notebooks; AMD Athlon 300 Series Mobile Processors powering mainstream notebooks with the fast and efficient "Zen"3 core; and optimized 7th Gen AMD A-Series processors, elevating performance for mainstream Chromebooks. In addition, AMD announced that starting this quarter, gamers, creators and enthusiasts will be able to install Radeon Software Adrenalin software to bring the latest GPU features and game optimizations to all systems powered by AMD Ryzen Processors with Radeon Graphics.

"Users expect mobile PCs that excel at both everyday tasks and compute-heavy experiences, and with our latest mobile processor portfolio AMD offers exactly that across all levels of the market," said Saeid Moshkelani, senior vice president and general manager, Client Compute, AMD. "Notebook users want to experience the latest modern features while streaming, gaming, or finishing work faster. Enabling breakthrough entertainment experiences, AMD is pleased to enable a wide range of AMD powered notebooks than ever that deliver on those expectations with blazing fast performance, rich graphics, and long battery life."

AMD today released their yearly driver update called Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition v18.2.2. For the past three years, the company has been releasing year-end feature-packed updates to Radeon Software. The 2017 version saw the introduction of Radeon Software "Adrenalin", before which we had Crimson/ReLive and Omega. The company also sped up its driver release cycle to match AAA game releases, and over the years, increased its reliability score and customer satisfaction. With Radeon Software Adrenalin, AMD is targeting three key consumer segments: Gamers, Enthusiasts, and Creators.

Today, Intel is revealing major details about its upcoming CPU and graphics architectures to select audience. A big scoop VideoCardz landed is the company's next-generation Gen11 integrated graphics core, the first major upgrade to the company's 4-year old Gen9 architecture. According to them, a Gen11 (default GT2 trim we assume) graphics core should offer a compute throughput of 1 TFLOP/s, which is in the league of the Radeon Vega 8, with its 1.12 TFLOP/s throughput. The Vega 8 is part of AMD's Ryzen 3 2200G processor.

Raw compute power only paints half the picture, the iGPU reportedly also supports tile-based rendering. This is a highly publicized method of rendering that made its consumer debut with NVIDIA "Pascal." Also mentioned are redesigned FPU interfaces, support for half-precision FP16, 2x pixel/clock pipelines, display stream compression that lets it support 5K and 8K displays, and adaptive sync. Intel will debut its Gen11 iGPU with its upcoming Core "Ice Lake" processors that debut on the company's 10 nm silicon fabrication process.

AMD late November filed a trademark application with the USPTO for a new logo, for its second generation "Vega" graphics architecture, built around the 7 nm silicon fabrication process. The logo looks similar to the original Vega "V," with two bands marking out the Roman numeral II (2). This logo could appear on the product and marketing on a series of new Radeon Pro and Radeon Instinct (and possibly even gaming-grade Radeon RX?) graphics cards based on AMD's new "Vega 20" multi-chip module. This chip features a doubling in memory bandwidth thanks to its 4096-bit wide HBM2 interface, and the optical shrink of the GPU die to the 7 nm node could enable AMD to dial up engine clocks significantly.

It has been confirmed by Seasonic that their FOCUS PLUS power supplies are experiencing potential conflict with a select number of graphics cards. In regards to NVIDIA, the compatibility issue is currently limited to the ASUS GeForce GTX 970 STRIX. In limited instances, this particular graphics card can encounter a black screen under heavy load. Testing by Seasonic has determined that the issue is caused by higher than normal ripple when the GPU is heavily stressed. They also determined that solving the problem simply required using modified PCIe cables that feature enhanced shielding.

When it comes to AMD GPUs things are a bit more problematic. Both of AMD's Vega 56 and Vega 64 series of graphics cards with serial numbers before January 2018, can experience system shutdowns when paired with a FOCUS PLUS power supply. The issue is caused by higher than normal peak current being emitted by these graphics cards when under heavy load. This results in the power supply's internal protection safety being triggered. Considering Seasonic's popularity the fact these power supplies are encountering problems is likely going to be a hit to their brand image. At least they are stepping up to the plate having admitted to the problem while also investigating the root causes. They are also encouraging anyone that is encountering issues to contact them for assistance.