Even though the NDA still isn't up on AMD's second volley of Ryzen-based CPUs, some lucky buyers are already running some of the upcoming Ryzen 5 processors after some sellers jumped the gun. Now, a YouTube video by user "Santiago Santiago." is making the rounds in which he compares gaming performance between the Ryzen 5 1400 (4-core, 8-thread part @ 3.2 GHz base, 3.4 GHz boost), Intel's i5 7400 (4-cores @ 3.0 GHz base, 3.5 GHz boost), and the Pentium G4560, a Kaby Lake dual-core CPU with Hyper Threading @ 3.5 GHz base clocks. The user even snapped a picture proving he has his hands on this chip.

MSI today introduced the X370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC socket AM4 motherboard for AMD Ryzen processors and 7th generation A-series APUs. A variant of the X370 Gaming Pro Carbon the company launched its X370 motherboard lineup with, this board includes support for 802.11ac WLAN and Bluetooth 4.2 using a PCI-Express x1 add-on card. The card features an Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 8265 controller, which supports Dual Band 2x2 802.11ac and MU-MIMO Rx, and a maximum bandwidth of 867 Mbps. The card takes up a PCI-Express slot on your motherboard, and has a small riser cable that plugs into your motherboard for low-level wake-on-LAN functions, and the Bluetooth connection. The included MSI Gaming LAN app lets you run your machine with two Internet connections (one over the WLAN card, and the other over the wired gigabit Ethernet port), and lets you assign specific applications to the two connections. The rest of the board's feature-set is identical to that of the original X370 Gaming Pro Carbon.

Today, Intel announced the availability of the Intel Xeon processor E3-1200 v6 product family, which includes eight new versions that provide key improvements in processor speed, enhanced memory capabilities, hardware-enhanced security and reliability features with support for the latest Intel graphics.

Designed for entry-level servers used by small-business customers and powering entry-level workstations used by business professionals worldwide, the Intel Xeon processor E3-1200 v6 product family supports the increasing workloads and workflows of today's server and workstation customers, delivering greater business intelligence, acceleration and agility.

While Intel has made some definite announcements and product launches of its own take on 3D XPoint technology with its Optane-based professional and consumer products, Micron has been a little late to the party on both. However, recent reports peg Micron's take on the new memory technology, under its QuantX brand, to ship later this year.

Micron is apparently taking a path that differs from Intel's though, in that it's looking to license its 3D Xpoint technology to other storage makers (not currently known which), in SSD or DDR-like formats, according to the company. However, these products will likely first target the enterprise space, with QuantX-based SSDs on the PCI-Express 3.0/NVMe protocols, with capacities of up to 1.4TB. Micron is aligning QuantX with emerging throughput technologies like Gen-Z, which could expand QuantX's reach towards the ARM server market, which has seen increasing interest in recent times.. The QuantX storage and memory will have their own dedicated controllers, sitting close to the CPU for quick data transfers, thus reducing potential bottlenecks.

In an interesting report that would give some credence to reports of AMD's take on the HEDT market, it would seem that some Ryzen chips with 12 Cores and 24 Threads are making the rounds. Having an entire platform built for a single processor would have always beenludicrous; now, AMD seems to be readying a true competitor to Intel's X99 and its supposed successor, X299 (though AMD does have an advantage in naming, if its upcoming X399 platform really does ship with that naming scheme.)

Intel's next-generation HEDT processor platform, based on the "Kaby Lake" micro-architecture, is the 7th generation Core i7 "Kaby Lake-X" family. The platform is based on the new LGA2066 CPU socket, and a new motherboard chipset, the Intel X299 Express. The platform builds on the strengths of the Intel HEDT (high-end desktop) market-segment, in offering double the memory bandwidth and PCIe lanes as the LGA1151 mainline desktop platform, and succeeds the current Core "Broadwell-E" family processors that run on socket LGA2011v3 motherboards, with Intel X99 Express chipsets.

The first chip on the X299 platform isn't a meaty two-figure core-count chip, but the 4-core Intel Core i7-7740K. This chip lacks an integrated graphics core. Its TDP has been increased to 112W from 91W of the i7-7700K. Someone with access to an i7-7740K sample paired it with an ASRock X299 Fatal1ty Gaming i7 motherboard, and posted SiSoft SANDRA processor arithmetic and multimedia performance scores of the chip. The chip performs close to the Ryzen 5 1600X six-core chip, but falls short of the Ryzen 7 1800X.

Some rumors and whispers have been making the rounds lately, regarding a HEDT platform incoming from AMD. This platform (built upon a new X399 chipset planned exclusively for it) would use a cut-down version of the Naples-based server SP3 socket called SP3r2. SP3r2 and the new chip will reportedly offer quad channel memory support, pitting them directly in competition with Intel's HEDT lineup in terms of memory bandwidth.

Reportedly, engineering samples of the 180W 16-core Ryzen currently run at 3.1 GHz Base, 3.6 GHz Boost clocks, which leads towards performance in the level of two Ryzen 7 1700 chips. If the rumors are true and such a platform is in development, then we will surely hear of some more chips designed for it. Going through the trouble of creating a new chipset and platform for a single CPU model doesn't seem likely. Perhaps some 12-core and 20-core chips are lurking just below the surface?

It's not rocket science to simulate smaller upcoming Ryzen series chips when you have a Ryzen 7 1800X. By disabling two out of its eight cores and adjusting its clock speeds, TechSpot simulated a Ryzen 5 1600X processor. While the Ryzen 5 1600X was a near-perfect simulation by TechSpot, the 1500X isn't entirely accurate. AMD is carving out the 1500X by disabling an entire CCX (quad-core complex), leaving the chip with just 8 MB of L3 cache, disabling four cores on the 1800X still leaves the full 16 MB L3 cache untouched. The Ryzen Master software lets you disable 2, 4, or 6 cores, but not specific cores, so it's entirely possible that disabling 4 cores using Ryzen Master turns off two cores per CCX. Nevertheless, the gaming performance results are highly encouraging.

According to the gaming performance figures for the simulated 1600X six-core and 1500X quad-core Ryzen chips put out by TechSpot, the 1600X barely loses any performance to the 1800X. Today's AAA PC games have little utility with 8 cores and 16 threads, and you'll hardly miss the two disabled cores when gaming on a 1600X powered machine. The simulated 1500X loses a bit more performance, but nothing of the kind between the quad-core Intel Core i7-7700K and the dual-core i3-7350K. When paired with a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti in "Mafia III," for example, you lose 12.8% performance as you move from the $499 1800X to the $189 1500X (simulated); but you lose 35% performance as you move from the $329 i7-7700K to the $189 i3-7350K. Find more interesting results in the source link below.

NAND has come here to stay, and it's market penetration still has a lot of leeway. Samsung, bar none the biggest and best player in the NAND field, is in a uniquely privileged position to develop new technologies and capitalize on them. Remember that Samsung has so many distinct product lines on which to monetize its advancements that any new investment is hardly a make it or break it affair.

Z-NAND is Samsung's answer to other developing technologies such as 3D XPoint, of which Intel has just announced the first commercial product. Z-NAND looks to stand at the intersection between NAND and DRAM, and is more of an evolution of the NAND design than it is a totally new technology (thus distancing itself from the likes of 3D XPoint.)

It would seem Microsoft is ever looking for more creative ways of pushing its Windows 10 operating system towards the masses. Some Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users have apparently encountered one of these: a lock on system updates. The error message, which reads "Your PC uses a processor that isn't supported on this version of Windows", points towards a hardware lock-in in exchange for added security and updates.

A Microsoft Support page sheds some light on this issue: that Windows 10 is the only Microsoft operating system to support particular hardware configurations. Namely, systems based on Intel's "seventh (7th)-generation processors or a later generation" (Kaby Lake); "AMD seventh (7th)-generation ("Bristol Ridge") processor or a later generation"; and "Qualcomm "8996" processor or a later generation". This move on Windows 7 might make some sense; however, Windows 8.1 is still in its lease of life (and Microsoft support) until at least 2018.

EK Water Blocks, the world leading premium liquid cooling manufacturer, is proud to release a monoblock liquid cooling solution for several ASUS Z270 motherboards. EK-FB ASUS Z270E Strix RGB Monoblock is compatible with ASUS Aura Sync, thus offering a full lighting customization experience!

Designed and engineered in cooperation with ASUS, this monoblock uses the award-winning EK-Supremacy EVO cooling engine to ensure best possible CPU cooling performance. This water block directly cools Intel LGA-1151 socket type CPU and power regulation (MOSFET) module as water flows directly over all critical areas. It is a very high flow water block that can be easily used with the system using weaker water pumps.

Intel and Mobileye announced on March 13 that they have entered into a definitive agreement pursuant to which Intel will acquire Mobileye. Under the terms of the agreement, a subsidiary of Intel will commence a tender offer to acquire all of the issued and outstanding ordinary shares of Mobileye for $63.54 per share in cash, representing a fully-diluted equity value of approximately $15.3 billion and an enterprise value of $14.7 billion.

The acquisition will couple the best-in-class technologies from both companies, including Intel's high-performance computing and connectivity expertise and Mobileye's leading computer vision expertise to create automated driving solutions from the cloud through the network to the car.

MSI is proud to announce a brand new Enthusiast GAMING motherboard, the Z270 GAMING M6 AC. Inspired from a futuristic armored spaceship, the Z270 GAMING M6 AC design with multilayer plating, wings and armaments emphasize an ultramodern style.

The complete motherboard and heatsink design offers a strong look and feel and uses heavy quality components to deliver the best performance and stability as the base of any gaming rig. Added features such as Audio Boost 4 with Nahimic 2, Twin Turbo M.2 with M.2 Shield, VR Boost, Killer LAN & Intel WIFI AC, and the option to fully customize the RGB LEDs to any color using Mystic light, makes the Z270 GAMING M6 AC one of the most high-end and desirable Z270 motherboards to build a gaming rig with.

Microsoft is looking to reduce costs in its Azure cloud computing platforms for tasks like search, storage, machine learning and big data. And after having developed a version of Windows for servers that use ARM processors, in a joint work with Qualcomm and Cavium, Microsoft seems to also be looking forward to leave its dependency on Intel products as nothing but a memory. Microsoft's ARM server design, dubbed Project Olympus, looks to hardware innovations so as to reduce costs, boosting competitiveness and flexibility in regards to other big players in the cloud space, like Amazon and Alphabet. That the design is open source is also a boon to other businesses and Microsoft partners.


Though the design isn't "deployed into production yet (...) that is the next logical step," said Jason Zander, vice president of Microsoft's Azure cloud division. "This is a significant commitment on behalf of Microsoft. We wouldn't even bring something (...) if we didn't think this was a committed project and something that's part of our roadmap."

ENERMAX announces a new compact CPU cooler ETS-N31 for mainstream processors. With TDP capacity up to 130W, ETS-N31 is a budget friendly CPU cooler with effective cooling performance for entry-level and mid-range systems, such as budget workstations or gaming PC with a dedicated video card.

Compatible with mainstream sockets, including the latest AMD AM4
ETS-N31 comes with flexible mountings for Intel LGA 775/1366/1150/1151/1155/1156, and AMD AM4/AM3/AM3+/AM2/AM2+/FM1/FM2/FM2+. Furthermore, ETS-N31 also includes 1-clip fan bracket to help facilitate the installation.

Proven cooling techniques included & perfect RAM compatibility
ETS-N31 harnesses proven cooling techniques, VGF (Vortex Generator Flow, patented), VEF (Vacuum Effect) and HDT (Heat-pipe Direct Touch) to enhance cooling performance. Besides, this compact side flow cooler featuring asymmetric heat pipe design offers best possible RAM compatibility.

Let's quietly approach the elephant in the room: Intel's pricing structure will hardly stand the onslaught of AMD's Ryzen, which, if early benchmarks are to be believed, has apparently caught Intel with its pants down. Even purely from the leaks that have been following us non-stop in the last several months, it's obvious that AMD managed to outdo itself in the best way possible, managing to develop an architecture which offers up to 52% more performance than their previous one. Intel, which was enjoying the sun-shaded comfort of carrying a virtual, high-performance x86 monopoly, grew stagnant in innovation, ensuring it would stretch its bottom-line by way of minimal R&D investment - just enough to be able to name their improvements as a "new generation" of processors each year.

This in turn has led to an interesting outlook in the high-performance x86 market: customers aren't blind, and they see when a company is stretching its fingers in their pockets. A stagnant performance increase on Intel's customer processors with almost a decade of single-digit increments and paralyzed core-counts to an (admittedly strong) architecture have taken away a lot of customers' goodwill towards Intel. That Intel still has strong brand cognition is a no-brainer, but it doesn't have as much brand credit these days, on account of the low performance gains, and tick-tock falter, than it did in the days of Athlon 64. AMD has the benefit of being the underdog, of coming up with something new, fresh and performant (with headlines claiming it is the latest revival of a sleeping giant)... and those are all points that put pressure on Intel to reignite interest on its products.

AMD did it again: building-up such a tremendous speed on its new products' hype train that the Ryzen 7 1700X, Ryzen 7 1800X, and Ryzen 7 1700 managed to jump straight to first, second, and fourth spots of Amazon's list of best-selling CPUs, respectively, dethroning even Intel's mighty i7 7700K. Granted, it isn't hard for the processors from one or the other manufacturer to quickly jump and wrangle about the spots on retailer's best seller lists - there Are only two manufacturers of consumer-grade, high-performance x86 CPUs. But keep in mind: this is a pre-order we're talking about, with nothing but leaks and marketing maneuvering for consumers to base their purchase on.

The new year now heralds the arrival of the 7th generation of the Intel Core processors at Shuttle. The first chips for the mobile segment appeared under the code name Kaby Lake back in the autumn of last year. The desktop version is now hitting the market in the first quarter of 2017. What Kaby Lake means for users is primarily more graphics performance coupled with lower power consumption. A BIOS update is required to make current Shuttle XPC Barebones compatible. An XPC with an LGA 1151 socket is also essential.

Intel's Atom CPU line may bring back ugly memories of the netbook era and slow, underpowered devices that were often jokingly compared to the compute power of a common potato, but this latest line of Atom CPUs appears to have evolved into something much different.

At the high end of the C3000 line, Intel is talking in terms of 16-core CPUs, and not 16-core weaklings either. The announcement includes some features borrowed from the coveted Xeon line, such as hardware virtualization, and RAS (reliability, availability, and serviceability) which is a tech designed for enterprise data needs.

Synology Inc. is aware of a new processor erratum discovered in the Intel Atom C2000 family. After in-depth investigation, the possibility of seeing accelerated degradation of a certain processor component is rare after prolonged and heavy usage. This erratum is not known to cause data loss, nor any safety hazards. Based on hundreds of thousands of shipped products equipped with Intel C2538 processors since 2014, Synology has not seen any abnormal error rates compared to products equipped with different Intel processors.

As of today, all products equipped with Intel C2538 processors are performing in-line with Synology's quality standards. As a testament to our confidence in Synology's product reliability, we are extending the warranty for Intel C2538 based products by an additional year. A dedicated service email, has also been implemented for further questions.

Benchmarks have leaked on AMD's upcoming Ryzen CPUs, and if accurate, these are the ones that will change the name of the game from "Hype Train" to "Reality Check". Part of a verified Passmark entry, the test system consisted of an AMD Ryzen 8-core, 16-thread ES clocked at 3.4 GHz (which puts it closely on the Ryzen 7 1700X territory, though it isn't known whether Turbo to its rated 3.8 GHz was active or not), seated on an entry-level MSI A320 AM4 motherboard (absent of overclocking functionality) and 16GB of 2400MHz DDR4 memory.

The tests include integer math, floating point performance, prime numbers, encryption, compression, sorting, SSE performance and physics. The AMD Ryzen 7 1700X outperformed every other CPU in 5 out of the 8 tests, including Intel's fastest 8-core chip, the $1099 Broadwell-E i7 6900K. When put side by side against Intel's slightly less expensive $999 8 core extreme edition Haswell-E i7 5960X, Ryzen was faster in 6 out of the 8 tests. The 1700X showed particularly good performance in integer math and encryption, workloads typically associated with server workloads (and where the bulk of the profit is).

By now, we've all seen, or at least heard, about Intel CEO's Brian Kraznich Fab 42 announcement (done from the Oval Office, no less). It was to be a joint press conference to announce a highly impactful investment on U.S. soil, which also turned into some welcome PR for Intel, and got the CEO some face time with the President.

It has to be said though, that hailing this as a Trump administration win is simply politics doing its best: spinning the truth for its own benefit. I say this because the original announcement for the construction of this Arizona fab was done way back in 2011, with then Intel CEO Paul Otellini breaking the news that they would spend $5 billion on the plant during the Obama Administration. Construction started that year, with overall expectation for its completion being somewhere around 2013. Cue the usual delays, and enter 2013's 10% decline of the PC market, and Intel did what any sensible company would do in the wake of lower expected volume of shipments (and respectively lower production needs) - they postponed the opening of the factory, indefinitely, instead choosing to improve manufacturing capability of its then already-operational fabs. So, the factory wasn't announced because of President Trump's policies and overall government acumen, nor is it probably going to be finished by the time his first term ends.

Intel is readying a fleet of new SSDs based on its new 3D XPoint non-volatile memory, a technology that Intel hopes will replace NAND flash in the years to come. The company developed this technology in collaboration with Micron Technology, under its IMFlash Technologies banner. The first Intel SSDs with this memory will be sold under the Optane brand. There are several sub-brands targeting the various market segments (client, enterprise, data-center, etc.), and technical slides of the data-center targeted Optane DC P4800X SSD were leaked to the web.

One of the first Optane DC P4800X SSDs comes in a rather measly capacity of 375 GB. The drive is built in the half-height PCI-Express add-on card (AIC) form-factor, with PCI-Express 3.0 x4 host interface. The drive belts out sequential transfer rates of up to 2400 MB/s reads, with up to 2000 MB/s writes, which may not sound like much given that even TLC NAND flash based PCIe 3.0 x4 drives offer higher transfer rates; until you look at three key metrics - latency, random-access performance, and endurance.

At an investor meeting in February, Intel touched upon its performance guidance for its 8th generation Core processor family due for later this year. Based on the 14 nm "Cannon Lake" silicon, these processors are expected to have a bigger performance gain over the preceding 7th gen Core "Kaby Lake" micro-architecture, than Kaby Lake had over its predecessor, the 6th gen Core "Skylake."

In a slide titled "advancing Moore's Law on 14 nm," Intel illustrated how Kaby Lake processors are on average 15 percent faster than Skylake parts, in SYSmark. While Kaby Lake has negligible IPC gains over Skylake, the newer chips are clocked significantly higher, making up Intel's performance targets. Unless Cannon Lake is a significantly newer micro-architecture than Kaby Lake, we could expect them to come with even higher clock speeds. Will the Core i7-8700K be a 5 GHz chip?

Intel today extended the performance capabilities of the Intel Xeon processor E7-8800 v4 product family with the addition of a high-performance SKU in the processor family's Advanced SKU stack. The new SKU delivers the processor family's highest performance to handle the most demanding, mission-critical enterprise workloads. Businesses can use Intel Xeon processor E7-8894 v4-based servers to derive faster insights from the unprecedented amount of data being generated to create new services and improve customer experiences.

The Intel Xeon processor E7-8894 v4 combines high memory capacity and compute performance to deliver quicker results and improved productivity. The processor is targeted at scale-up workloads such as large databases, enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), online transaction processing (OLT) and in-memory analytics. The ability to scale-up allows more resources (more sockets and more memory) to be added to a single node image.