MSI OCLab made some groundbreaking disclosures about the gaming performance of upcoming AMD Ryzen 9000X3D processors. It looks like AMD is set to dominate the Intel Core Ultra 2-series "Arrow Lake-S" desktop processors in gaming performance, if these numbers hold up. In the games that MSI tested, namely "Far Cry 6," "Shadow of the Tomb Raider," and "Black Myth: Wukong," the "8-core 9000X3D" processor, or the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, is found to be 11% faster on average than the Ryzen 7 7800X3D. The "16-core 9000X3D" processor, which is expected to be the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, is an impressive 13% faster than its predecessor, the Ryzen 9 7950X3D.

Normally we'd expect bigger gen-on-gen gains for the 8-core part than the 16-core part, but the 16-core 9000X3D pulling ahead by that much over its predecessor hints at the possibility of AMD either giving it significantly higher clock speeds, or the rumor about AMD deploying both 3D V-cache on both its CCDs could be true after all. The 9950X3D could end up roughly on-par with the 9800X3D if this turns out to be true, given that the gaming performance delta between the 7800X3D and 7950X3D is roughly that much—2-3 percentage points. Intel earlier this week officially announced the Core Ultra 2-series desktop processors. As part of the announcement, the company put out some first-party gaming performance numbers, which put the top Core Ultra 9 285K either on-par with the Core i9-14900K, or faster by 2-3%, which means it should land behind even the 7950X3D in gaming performance, and AMD is set to dominate Intel in gaming performance with the 9000X3D series.

AMD has unveiled its latest EPYC processors, codenamed "Turin," featuring Zen 5 and Zen 5C dense cores. Phoronix's thorough testing reveals remarkable advancements in performance, efficiency, and value. The new lineup includes the EPYC 9575F (64-core), EPYC 9755 (128-core), and EPYC 9965 (192-core) models, all showing impressive capabilities across various server and HPC workloads. In benchmarks, a dual-socket configuration of the 128-core EPYC 9755 Turin outperformed Intel's dual Xeon "Granite Rapids" 6980P setup with MRDIMM-8800 by 40% in the geometric mean of all tests. Surprisingly, even a single EPYC 9755 or EPYC 9965 matched the dual Xeon 6980P in expanded tests with regular DDR5-6400. Within AMD's lineup, the EPYC 9755 showed a 1.55x performance increase over its predecessor, the 96-core EPYC 9654 "Genoa". The EPYC 9965 surpassed the dual EPYC 9754 "Bergamo" by 45%.

These gains come with improved efficiency. While power consumption increased moderately, performance improvements resulted in better overall efficiency. For example, the EPYC 9965 used 32% more power than the EPYC 9654 but delivered 1.55x the performance. Power consumption remains competitive: the EPYC 9965 averaged 275 Watts (peak 461 Watts), the EPYC 9755 averaged 324 Watts (peak 500 Watts), while Intel's Xeon 6980P averaged 322 Watts (peak 547 Watts). AMD's pricing strategy adds to the appeal. The 192-core model is priced at $14,813, compared to Intel's 128-core CPU at $17,800. This competitive pricing, combined with superior performance per dollar and watt, has resonated with hyperscalers. Estimates suggest 50-60% of hyperscale deployments now use AMD processors.

Today, Lenovo announced its industry-leading ThinkSystem infrastructure solutions powered by AMD EPYC 9005 Series processors, as well as AMD Instinct MI325X accelerators. Backed by 225 of AMD's world-record performance benchmarks, the Lenovo ThinkSystem servers deliver an unparalleled combination of AMD technology-based performance and efficiency to tackle today's most demanding edge-to-cloud workloads, including AI training, inferencing and modeling.

"Lenovo is helping organizations of all sizes and across various industries achieve AI-powered business transformations," said Vlad Rozanovich, Senior Vice President, Lenovo Infrastructure Solutions Group. "Not only do we deliver unmatched performance, we offer the right mix of solutions to change the economics of AI and give customers faster time-to-value and improved total value of ownership."

AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D is rumored to launch sooner than expected, with the company targeting at least an announcement within October, with reviews and product availability within Q4 2024. The chip combines the latest "Zen 5" microarchitecture with 3D V-cache technology, and is expected to increase AMD's gaming performance outlook compared to the 7800X3D, which remains the fastest processor for gaming. An alleged screenshot of the processor grinding away at Cinebench surfaced, which reveals that the processor is capable of a 5.20 GHz all-core boost frequency, and comes with an impressive 4.70 GHz base frequency.

To put these clock speeds into perspective, the current Ryzen 7 9700X processor without the 3D V-cache, comes with a 3.80 GHz base and 5.50 GHz maximum boost frequency. This would be the first time that an X3D SKU is coming with a higher base frequency than a regular SKU. For example, the 7800X3D comes with a 4.20 GHz base frequency compared to the 4.50 GHz of the 7700X. Interestingly, the 5.20 GHz all-core boost frequency of the 9800X3D is on par with the all-core boost of the 9700X, which only hits 5.50 GHz boost on lightly threaded workloads. It remains to be seen what TDP and package power tracking (PPT) values AMD gives the 9800X3D, given that it had to retrofit the SKU with a 105 W cTDP mode via firmware, to eke out an up to 10% performance gain over the original specs.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise today announced the HPE ProLiant Compute XD685 for complex AI model training tasks, powered by 5th Gen AMD EPYC processors and AMD Instinct MI325X accelerators. The new HPE system is optimized to quickly deploy high-performing, secure and energy-efficient AI clusters for use in large language model training, natural language processing and multi-modal training.

The race is on to unlock the promise of AI and its potential to dramatically advance outcomes in workforce productivity, healthcare, climate sciences and much more. To capture this potential, AI service providers, governments and large model builders require flexible, high-performance solutions that can be brought to market quickly.

MiTAC Computing Technology Corporation, an industry-leading server platform design manufacturer and a subsidiary of MiTAC Holdings Corporation (TSE:3706), today announced the launch of its new high-performance servers, featuring the latest AMD EPYC 9005 Series CPUs and AMD Instinct MI325X accelerators.

"AMD is the trusted data center solutions provider of choice for leading enterprises worldwide, whether they are enabling corporate AI initiatives, building large-scale cloud deployments, or hosting critical business applications on-premises," said Ravi Kuppuswamy, senior vice president, Server Business Unit, AMD. "Our latest 5th Gen AMD EPYC CPUs provide the performance, flexibility and reliability - with compatibility across the x86 data center ecosystem - to deliver tailored solutions that meet the diverse demands of the modern data center."

Dell Technologies (NYSE: DELL) expands the world's broadest generative AI (GenAI) solutions portfolio with Dell AI Factory additions tailored for AMD environments. These solutions offer enterprises enhanced AI capabilities, including greater scalability and flexibility, to stay competitive in the evolving technology landscape.

"By integrating AMD technology into the latest Dell servers, AI solutions and services through the Dell AI Factory, we're providing the performance and efficiencies enterprises need today and in the future," said Arthur Lewis, president, Infrastructure Solutions Group, Dell Technologies. "Together with AMD, we are setting new standards in AI performance, giving enterprises powerful and cost-effective solutions essential for modern data-driven environments."

ASRock Rack Inc., a leading innovative server company, announced upgrades to its extensive lineup to support AMD EPYC 9005 Series processors. Among these updates is the introduction of the new 6U8M-TURIN2 GPU server. This advanced platform features AMD Instinct MI325X accelerators, specifically optimized for intensive enterprise AI applications, and will be showcased at AMD Advancing AI 2024.

ASRock Rack Introduce GPU Servers Powered by AMD EPYC 9005 series processors
AMD today revealed the 5th Generation AMD EPYC processors, offering a wide range of core counts (up to 192 cores), frequencies (up to 5 GHz), and expansive cache capacities. Select high-frequency processors, such as the AMD EPYC 9575F, are optimized for use as host CPUs in GPU-enabled systems. Additionally, the just launched AMD Instinct MI325X accelerators feature substantial HBM3E memory and 6 TB/s of memory bandwidth, enabling quick access and efficient handling of large datasets and complex computations.

Supermicro, Inc., a Total IT Solution Provider for AI, Cloud, Storage, and 5G/Edge, announces the launch of a new series of servers, GPU-accelerated systems, and storage servers featuring the AMD EPYC 9005 Series processors and AMD Instinct MI325X GPUs. The new H14 product line represents one of the most extensive server families in the industry, including Supermicro's Hyper systems, the Twin multi-node servers, and AI inferencing GPU systems, all available with air or liquid cooling options. The new "Zen 5" processor core architecture implements full data path AVX-512 vector instructions for CPU-based AI inference and provides 17% better instructions per cycle (IPC) than the previous 4th generation EPYC processor, enabling more performance per core.

Supermicro's new H14 family uses the latest 5th Gen AMD EPYC processors which enable up to 192 cores per CPU with up to 500 W TDP (thermal design power). Supermicro has designed new H14 systems including the Hyper and FlexTwin systems which can accommodate the higher thermal requirements. The H14 family also includes three systems for AI training and inference workloads supporting up to 10 GPUs which feature the AMD EPYC 9005 Series CPU as the host processor and two which support the AMD Instinct MI325X GPU.

ASUS today announced a series of servers powered by the groundbreaking AMD EPYC 9005-series processors, setting new standards in performance and density for AI-driven data center workloads. The full line-up includes ASUS ESC A8A-E12U supporting AMD Instinct MI325X accelerators, and ASUS ESC8000A-E13P GPU servers, capable of supporting eight GPUs for large-scale AI model training, ensuring unmatched computational power. ASUS RS520QA-E13 is a multi-node server for EDA and cloud computing. ASUS offers versatile solutions including RS720A-E13, RS700A-E13, and RS521A and RS501A for general-purpose tasks. These servers are engineered to deliver excel performance across a wide range of applications, meeting the demands of the most rigorous workloads.

At the core of these servers lies AMD EPYC 9005-series processors, previously codenamed Turin, and based on the Zen 5 architecture with up to 192 cores / 384 threads and up to 5 GHz frequencies, powerhouse CPUs designed to elevate AI-driven data center workloads to unprecedented levels. With industry-leading vCPU density, EPYC 9005-series processors combine optimized compute and AI capabilities to deliver superior performance in AI inference, whether handling mixed or traditional tasks. This lineup diversity is unified by the x86 architecture, enables customers to easily integrate ASUS servers powered by AMD EPYC 9005-series processors into their existing x86 infrastructure. This allows for efficient transitions and migrations within the data center, ensuring continuity and maximizing operational efficiency.

MSI, a leading global provider of high-performance server solutions, today introduced its latest AMD EPYC 9005 Series CPU-based server boards and platforms, engineered to tackle the most demanding data center workloads with leadership performance and efficiency.

Featuring AMD EPYC 9005 Series processors with up to 192 cores and 384 threads, MSI's new server platforms deliver breakthrough compute power, unparalleled density, and exceptional energy efficiency, making them ideal for handling AI-enabled, cloud-native, and business-critical workloads in modern data centers.

Giga Computing, a subsidiary of GIGABYTE and an industry leader in generative AI servers and advanced cooling technologies, today announced support for AMD EPYC 9005 Series processors with the release of new GIGABYTE servers alongside BIOS updates for some existing GIGABYTE servers using the SP5 platform. This first wave of updates supports over 60 servers and motherboards that customers can choose from that deliver exceptional performance for 5th Generation AMD EPYC processors. In addition, with the launch of the AMD Instinct MI325X accelerator, a newly designed GIGABYTE server was created, and it will be showcased at SC24 (Nov. 19-21) in Atlanta.

New GIGABYTE Servers and Updates
To fill in all possible workload scenarios, using modular design servers to edge servers to enterprise-grade motherboards, these new solutions will ship already supporting AMD EPYC 9005 Series processors. The XV23-ZX0 is one of the many new solutions and it is notable for its modularized server design using two AMD EPYC 9005 processors and supporting up to four GPUs and three additional FHFL slots. It also has 2+2 redundant power supplies on the front-side for ease of access.

AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) today announced the availability of the 5th Gen AMD EPYC processors, formerly codenamed "Turin," the world's best server CPU for enterprise, AI and cloud. Using the "Zen 5" core architecture, compatible with the broadly deployed SP5 platform and offering a broad range of core counts spanning from 8 to 192, the AMD EPYC 9005 Series processors extend the record-breaking performance and energy efficiency of the previous generations with the top of stack 192 core CPU delivering up to 2.7X the performance compared to the competition.

New to the AMD EPYC 9005 Series CPUs is the 64 core AMD EPYC 9575F, tailor made for GPU powered AI solutions that need the ultimate in host CPU capabilities. Boosting up to 5 GHz, compared to the 3.8 GHz processor of the competition, it provides up to 28% faster processing needed to keep GPUs fed with data for demanding AI workloads.

Today, AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) announced its third generation commercial AI mobile processors, designed specifically to transform business productivity with Copilot+ features including live captioning and language translation in conference calls and advanced AI image generators. The new Ryzen AI PRO 300 Series processors deliver industry-leading AI compute, with up to three times the AI performance than the previous generation, and offer uncompromising performance for everyday workloads. Enabled with AMD PRO Technologies, the Ryzen AI PRO 300 Series processors offer world-class security and manageability features designed to streamline IT operations and ensure exceptional ROI for businesses.

Ryzen AI PRO 300 Series processors feature new AMD "Zen 5" architecture, delivering outstanding CPU performance, and are the world's best line up of commercial processors for Copilot+ enterprise PCs. Laptops equipped with Ryzen AI PRO 300 Series processors are designed to tackle business' toughest workloads, with the top-of-stack Ryzen AI 9 HX PRO 375 offering up to 40% higher performance and up to 14% faster productivity performance compared to Intel's Core Ultra 7 165U. With the addition of XDNA 2 architecture powering the integrated NPU, AMD Ryzen AI PRO 300 Series processors offer a cutting-edge 50+ NPU TOPS (Trillions of Operations Per Second) of AI processing power, exceeding Microsoft's Copilot+ AI PC requirements and delivering exceptional AI compute and productivity capabilities for the modern business. Built on a 4 nm process and with innovative power management, the new processors deliver extended battery life ideal for sustained performance and productivity on the go.

During its "Advancing AI" conference today, AMD has updated its AI accelerator portfolio with the Instinct MI325X accelerator, designed to succeed its MI300X predecessor. Built on the CDNA 3 architecture, Instinct MI325X brings a suite of improvements over the old SKU. Now, the MI325X features 256 GB of HBM3E memory running at 6 TB/s bandwidth. The capacity memory alone is a 1.8x improvement over the old MI300 SKU, which features 192 GB of regular HBM3 memory. Providing more memory capacity is crucial as upcoming AI workloads are training models with parameter counts measured in trillions, as opposed to billions with current models we have today. When it comes to compute resources, the Instinct MI325X provides 1.3 PetaFLOPS at FP16 and 2.6 PetaFLOPS at FP8 training and inference. This represents a 1.3x improvement over the Instinct MI300.

A chip alone is worthless without a good platform, and AMD decided to make the Instinct MI325X OAM modules a drop-in replacement for the current platform designed for MI300X, as they are both pin-compatible. In systems packing eight MI325X accelerators, there are 2 TB of HBM3E memory running at 48 TB/s memory bandwidth. Such a system achieves 10.4 PetaFLOPS of FP16 and 20.8 PetaFLOPS of FP8 compute performance. The company uses NVIDIA's H200 HGX as reference claims for its performance competitiveness, where the company claims that the Instinct MI325X outperforms NVIDIA H200 HGX system by 1.3x across the board in memory bandwidth, FP16 / FP8 compute performance and 1.8x in memory capacity.

Even though the global economy shows signs of recovery, worldwide shipments of traditional PCs dipped 2.4% year-over-year (YoY) to 68.8 million units, during the third quarter of 2024 (3Q24), according to preliminary results from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker. Factors including rising costs and inventory replenishment led to a surge in shipments in the previous quarter, resulting in a slightly slower sales cycle.

"Demand, without a doubt, has returned for PCs amongst consumers and commercial buyers," said Jitesh Ubrani, research manager with IDC's Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers. "However, much of the demand was still concentrated at the entry-level thanks to a recovering economy and the back-to-school season in North America. That said, newer AI PCs such as Copilot+ PCs from Qualcomm along with Intel and AMD's equivalent chips as well as Apple's expected M4-based Macs are expected to drive the premium segment in coming months."

For the first time in its storied legacy, John Marston's beloved journey can be experienced on PC in stunning, new detail, with both Red Dead Redemption and its iconic zombie-horror companion story, Undead Nightmare, arriving to PC on October 29. In collaboration with Double Eleven, this new version adds PC-specific enhancements including native 4K resolution at up to 144hz on compatible hardware, monitor support for both Ultrawide (21:9) and Super Ultrawide (32:9), HDR10 support, and full keyboard and mouse functionality.

There's also support for NVIDIA DLSS 3.7 and AMD FSR 3.0 upscaling technologies, NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation, adjustable draw distances, shadow quality settings, and more. Check out the new trailer above and stay tuned for more details, including information later this week on how to pre-purchase Red Dead Redemption and Undead Nightmare at the Rockstar Store, Steam, or the Epic Games Store.

After Apple, we just learned that AMD is the next company in line for US-based manufacturing in the TSMC Arizona facility. Industry analyst Tim Culpan reports that TSMC's Fab 21 in Arizona will soon be producing AMD's high-performance computing (HPC) processors, with tape out and manufacturing expected to commence on TSMC's 5 nm node next year. This move comes after previously reported Apple's A16 SoC production, which is already in progress at the facility and could see shipments before the end of this year, significantly ahead of the initially projected early 2025 schedule. The production of AMD's HPC chips in Arizona marks a crucial step towards establishing an AI-hardware supply chain operating entirely on American soil, which is expected to further expand with Intel Foundry and Samsung Texas facility.

Making HPC processors domestically serves as a significant milestone in reducing dependence on overseas semiconductor manufacturing and strengthening the US's position in the global chip industry. Adding to the momentum, TSMC and Amkor recently announced a collaboration on advanced packaging technologies, including Integrated Fan-Out (InFO) and Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate (CoWoS), which are vital for high-performance AI chips. However, as Amkor facilities are yet to be built, these chips are going to be shipped back to Taiwan for packaging before being integrated into the final product. Once the Amkor facility is up and running, Arizona will become the birthplace of fully manufactured and packaged silicon chips.

AMD today introduced the Radeon PRO V710, the newest member of AMD's family of visual cloud GPUs. Available today in private preview on Microsoft Azure, the Radeon PRO V710 brings new capabilities to the public cloud. The AMD Radeon PRO V710's 54 Compute Units, along with 28 GB of VRAM, 448 GB/s memory transfer rate, and 54 MB of L3 AMD Infinity Cache technology, support small to medium ML inference workloads and small model training using open-source AMD ROCm software.

With support for hardware virtualization implemented in compliance with the PCI Express SR-IOV standard, instances based on the Radeon PRO V710 can provide robust isolation between multiple virtual machines running on the same physical GPU and between the host and guest environments. The efficient RDNA 3 architecture provides excellent performance per watt, enabling a single slot, passively cooled form factor compliant with the PCIe CEM spec.

It's finally here! ASUSTOR NAS devices with AMD Ryzen CPUs have finally launched! With four to ten drive bays; the Lockerstor Gen3 series arrives with both flexibility and performance. The Lockerstor Gen3 series is designed for extreme performance while maintaining extreme efficiency. In a first for ASUSTOR, the Lockerstor Gen3 features a Quad-Core AMD Ryzen Embedded SoC that boosts to 3.8 GHz. Take advantage of four to ten drive bays, and four M.2 slots for NVMe SSDs that use PCIe 4.0, dual 10GbE, dual 5GbE, and dual USB4. 16 GB of ECC DDR5-4800 memory that's expandable to 64 GB. This combination of powerful hardware is not only faster, but sets the new performance standard.

The AMD Ryzen V3C14 SoC is built on a 6 nm process for maximum performance and efficiency. At a 25 W maximum TDP, it achieves energy savings even when crunching high-performance tasks. All Lockerstor Gen3 devices are equipped with dual 10GbE and dual 5GbE network ports, with single-port 10 GbE read/write speeds reaching up to 1176 MB/s and 1018 MB/s, while SMB multi-channel performance using RAID 5 can reach up to 2005 MB/s and 1090 MB/s respectively.

High-resolution die-shots of the AMD "Zen 5" 8-core CCD were released and annotated by Nemez, Fitzchens Fitz, and HighYieldYT. These provide a detailed view of how the silicon and its various components appear, particularly the new "Zen 5" CPU core with its 512-bit FPU. The "Granite Ridge" package looks similar to "Raphael," with up to two 8-core CPU complex dies (CCDs) depending on the processor model, and a centrally located client I/O die (cIOD). This cIOD is carried over from "Raphael," which minimizes product development costs for AMD at least for the uncore portion of the processor. The "Zen 5" CCD is built on the TSMC N4P (4 nm) foundry node.

The "Granite Ridge" package sees the up to two "Zen 5" CCDs snuck up closer to each other than the "Zen 4" CCDs on "Raphael." In the picture above, you can see the pad of the absent CCD behind the solder mask of the fiberglass substrate, close to the present CCD. The CCD contains 8 full-sized "Zen 5" CPU cores, each with 1 MB of L2 cache, and a centrally located 32 MB L3 cache that's shared among all eight cores. The only other components are an SMU (system management unit), and the Infinity Fabric over Package (IFoP) PHYs, which connect the CCD to the cIOD.

A new rumor circulating via VideoCardz reveals alleged Cinebench R23 rendering scores for the upcoming AMD Ryzen 9 9800X3D CPU series. The lineup supposedly includes 8-core, 12-core, and 16-core models, all featuring Zen5 architecture and 3D V-Cache technology. The leak consists of Cinebench R23 benchmark scores, however, there are no screenshots, so it should be treated with caution as it comes from CodeCommando, a relatively new source with only one verified leak to his name—the Ryzen 9000 slides that emerged shortly before AMD's official announcement.

Comparing the results posted from CodeCommando with TechPowerUp review data of the previous generation, the picture presents itself in a promising way for the upcoming AMD CPUs. The Ryzen 9 9950X3D is around 10% faster in single-core and 17% faster in multi-core compared with Ryzen 9 7950X3D, while Ryzen 7 9800X3D seems to be 20% faster in single-core and 28% faster in multi-core than Ryzen 7 7800X3D. These initial benchmark results show notable performance gains for the 8-core SKU, with both X3D models demonstrating higher multi-core scores than their non-X3D counterparts. While the 9800X3D shows slightly lower single-core performance than the 8-core 9700X, it exceeds the 9700X in multi-core tests. This multi-core advantage likely comes from a higher TDP, though specific power specifications haven't been revealed yet.

Firaxis Games has published full PC system requirements for the upcoming Sid Meier's Civilization VII strategy game that will be launched on February 11th next year, and it looks like it won't need a powerful hardware, at least unless you want to run it at 4K/UHD resolution and with high graphics preset. Unfortunately, Firaxis Games has not revealed any details regarding support for NVIDIA DLSS or AMD FSR, at least not yet.

According to details, you'll need at least an Intel Core i3-10100 or AMD Ryzen 3 1200 CPU, 8 GB of RAM, and either an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050, AMD Radeon RX 460, or an Intel Arc A380 graphics card. Of course, these are minimum requirements so expect the game to run at 1080p resolution at 30 FPS and Low graphics preset. The game will also need 20 GB of SSD storage and Windows 10/11 64-bit OS. The recommended requirements, which should run the game at Medium graphics preset, 1080p resolution, and 60 FPS, include an Intel Core i5-10400 or AMD Ryzen 5 3600X CPU, 16 GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060, AMD Radeon RX 6600, or an Intel Arc A750 graphics card.

The mid-range graphics card segment is seeing some interesting moves by board partners of AMD and NVIDIA in recent times, making it possible to get a 1440p-class contemporary graphics card under $400. AMD markets the Radeon RX 7700 XT as a 1440p-class GPU, and our review agrees with this notion. VideoCardz spotted the card going for as cheap as $349, a $100 (22%) drop in price from its $449 launch price. The card in question is a PowerColor RX 7700 XT Fighter, the company's affordable custom-design based on the GPU, which is listed on Newegg for $349. The card comes with a triple-slot cooling solution with a triple-fan setup. It sticks to AMD reference clock speeds for the RX 7700 XT. Here's the kicker, even at this price, you are eligible for a game bundle worth $60 with this card, the current offer includes copies of both "Warhammer 40000: Space Marine II," and "Unknown 9 Awakening."

AMD today made four key announcements for its Ryzen 9000 series "Granite Ridge" desktop processors based on the "Zen 5" microarchitecture. These mainly aim to improve upon the products as originally launched in August. To begin with, AMD announced a 105 W cTDP (configurable TDP) mode for the Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 7 9600X processors, with full warranty coverage. This setting can be enabled in the UEFI setup program of a motherboard running its latest version of UEFI firmware, which encapsulates the AGESA ComboAM5 PI 1.2.0.2 microcode. The setting raises the PPT (package power tracking) value of the 9700X and 9600X to 140 W, and treats them as if they were 105 W TDP processors. These chips were originally launched by AMD with 65 W (88 W PPT), and as reviewers quickly found out, unlocking power improves performance at stock clock speeds, as it improves boost frequency residence of these chips.

Next up, is the AGESA PI 1.2.0.2 microcode itself, which introduces the 105 W cTDP mode for the 9700X and 9600X along with warranty coverage, which we just talked about; plus works to improve the core-to-core latency on the Ryzen 9 9900X and Ryzen 9 9950X. These are processors with two CPU complex dies (CCDs), each with either 8 or 6 cores enabled. To the software, this is still a single-socket (1P) CPU with 12 or 16 cores. Although some awareness of the dual-CCD architecture is added to the OS scheduler to help it localize certain kinds of workloads (such as games) to a single CCD, reviewers noted that core-to-core latency on the dual-CCD chips was still too high, which should affect performance when a software's threads are migrating between cores, or if a workload is multithreaded, such as media encoding. AMD addressed exactly this with the new AGESA PI 1.2.0.2 update.