PC Components, Peripherals And Gadget Reviews And News
Dig into our deep-dive product reviews and news of PC components from processors, to motherboards, graphics cards (GPUs), sound cards, and storage, along with other gadgets and peripherals that complete the computing experience. Whether you're a DIY PC enthusiast builder or just looking to read-up on what should be inside or connected to your next pre-built PC, here's where you'll find all the nuts and bolts sorted on what makes modern computer systems tick, as well some of the best user interface devices to go with them.
In preparation for the impending launch of AMD's next-generation Vega GPU architecture, which will eventually reside at the top of the company's graphics product stack, AMD is refreshing its mainstream graphics card line-up with some more-powerful Polaris-based offerings. In time, the new Radeon RX 580, RX 570, RX 560, and RX 550 cards launching today will supplant all of the current-generation Radeon RX 400-series cards, though these new cards are not radically different from their predecessors. Their clocks, shader counts, and memory configurations have been tweaked, but they’re still based on the same Polaris architecture and offer similar feature sets. The MSI Radeon RX 570 and Radeon RX...
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Although it seems like it has been longer, AMD launched its Ryzen 7 family of processors based on the all-new Zen microarchitecture just a little over a month ago. Based on the level of engagement virtually all of our Ryzen-related articles have received, we have to assume all of you regulars have already seen our launched coverage of Ryzen 7. However, if you somehow missed it, it is available right here. In our Ryzen 7 coverage, we were able to disclose a few details regarding the more mainstream targeted Ryzen 5 series of processors, but save for a few AMD provided data points, performance wasn’t one of them. Until today, that is. AMD’s Ryzen 5 series of processors should be available...
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AMD captured the attention of PC gamers and performance enthusiasts everywhere with the launch of its Ryzen 7 series processors. The trio of 8-core chips take on Intel's venerable Core i7 series at the high-end of its product stack and forthcoming Ryzen 5 Series CPUs from AMD are expected to compete with Intel's Core i mid-range products. However, with the extra attention and lime light AMD garnered, came significant scrutiny as well. And with any entirely new platform architecture, there are bound to be "corner cases" and a few performance anomalies -- as was the case with the now infamous "1080p gaming" situation with Ryzen. We like to call it the "CPU-limited" corner case because at 1080p...
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After a prolonged development cycle and strategic build-up that got many enthusiasts worked into a frenzy, AMD launched its Ryzen 7 family of processors based on the company’s Zen microarchitecture a couple of short weeks ago. We’ve got the full scoop on Ryzen 7 available for you right here if you missed the news as it broke. A couple of details regarding the mainstream Ryzen 5 family were also revealed during the Ryzen 7 launch, but today we’ve got lots of additional details to share and can tell you about AMD's entire Ryzen 5 processor line-up. Unlike the Ryzen 7 series, which consists entirely of 8-core / 16-thread processors, the Ryzen 5 family has two tiers consisting of 6-core / 12-thread...
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We learned a lot about the Zen microarchitecture and the consumer-targeted Ryzen 7 series of desktop processors at AMD’s tech day a couple of weeks back. Much of the information we gleaned from AMD at the event, in addition to the numerous leaks, rumors, and official news items that trickled out over the last couple of years, was explained in our Ryzen 7-series launch coverage – which you can check out right here.AMD's "Firsts" In The Data Center / Enterprise MarketThere were some other interesting bits of information disseminated at tech day that we weren’t able to reveal in our launch piece, however, related to AMD’s Zen-based server platform, codenamed Naples. As we’ve mentioned in the past,...
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The AMD Ryzen 7 family of processors are finally here. The anxious anticipation for a more powerful competitor to Intel CPUs that has worked many PC enthusiasts into a frenzy -- the likes of which we haven’t seen in over a decade -- has finally come to an end. Today, we can present you all with the independent Ryzen benchmarks and technical details you’ve all been waiting for. Power, performance profiles and overclocking – we’ve got it all on tap. We’ve had all three of the initial AMD Ryzen 7 series processors in hand for testing, including the flagship Ryzen 7 1800X, the Ryzen 7 1700X, and their low-power cousin the Ryzen 7 1700. At their core, all three of these processors are fundamentally...
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AMD President and CEO, Dr. Lisu Su, took to the stage at AMD’s Ryzen Tech Day and opened the event with some official speeds, feeds, pricing information, and benchmark scores from the company’s upcoming Ryzen series processors. To date, we’ve seen a number of leaks with related data and benchmarks, but the numbers and information we’ll be presenting here are straight from AMD – they are the real deal, not rumors or speculation. And we’ve got a couple of surprises and new pieces of information to share as well. As most of you probably know by now, AMD’s stated goal with Ryzen – which is based on AMD’s Zen microarchitecture -- was a 40% IPC (instructions per clock) uplift, with competitive frequencies,...
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AMD has a lot riding on Ryzen, its new generation CPU architecture that is supposed to return the chip designer to its former glory among power users and enthusiasts. We won't say it is a make or break release for AMD—the company has shown an uncanny ability to survive through tough periods—but it is certainly the biggest and most anticipated CPU launch by AMD in several years, and arguably over a decade. To ensure everything goes well without a hitch, AMD has lined up over a dozen high-performance AM4 motherboards from five hardware partners, including ASRock, ASUS, Biostar, Gigabyte, and MSI. All 16 AM4 motherboards that are on tap are built around two desktop chipsts for Ryzen, X370 and X300....
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Although GPUs based on the technology are not quite ready to ship, AMD recently briefed us on some of the finer details of its next-generation architecture, codenamed Vega.One of the underlying forces behind Vega’s design is that conventional GPU architectures have not been scaling well for diverse data types. Gaming and graphics workloads have shown steady progress, but today GPUs are used for much more than just graphics, and this fact was at the core of Vega’s design philosophy.Game install sizes are also expanding exponentially, to the point where they may reach 10’s of gigabytes now. The professional graphics space works with even larger datasets, which may creep into petabyte territory,...
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AMD and the Radeon Technologies Group have seen great success with their FreeSync adaptive refresh rate technology. Since its introduction, over 120 FreeSync compatible displays have been brought to market that target a wide array of form factors and price points. With CES and the impending launch of its next-generation GPU architecture codenamed Vega, AMD is now ready to unleash FreeSync 2 on the world, with a goal to ultimately improve pixel quality and address some issues with first-gen products.One of the growing pains associated with FreeSync and its wide-array of compatible displays, is that the experience isn’t always ideal or similar across products. The displays support different maximum...
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AMD Radeon Pro WX 7100, 5100 And 4100 Series Workstation Graphics Review: Polaris Goes Pro [Updated]
Update 12/20/2016 - This article has been updated with AMD Radeon Pro WX 7100 benchmarks and information. The Radeon Pro WX 7100 is currently the highest-end card in AMD's Pro WX series line-up. AMD initially unveiled the Polaris-based Radeon Pro WX-series of professional workstation graphics cards all the way back in July at SIGGRAPH. Along with the initial announcement, AMD also disclosed that all of the cards would be built and sold by AMD exclusively, that the cards would carry 10-year warranties, and be backed by 24/7 VIP support. The FirePro brand would eventually be phased out as well, with the Radeon Pro moniker taking over as the company's pro graphics branding. Radeon Pro...
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We’ve been hearing about AMD’s next-generation Zen-based processors for quite a while now, though the company just officially announced that desktop and mobile variants will be branded RYZEN. Over the past few months, we’ve seen Zen in action in both high-performance desktop and server applications and have been able to disclose a handful of features, specifications, and performance details. Today however, with AMD poised to host its “New Horizon” webcast, we have some more information to share related to the RYZEN branding, the ZEN architecture, and AM4 platform as a whole. First and foremost is the actual branding for its Zen-based processors for desktops, formerly codenamed “Summit Ridge”....
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AMD is announcing a new series of Radeon-branded products today, targeted at machine intelligence (AI) and deep learning enterprise applications, called Radeon Instinct. As its name suggests, the new Radeon Instinct line of products are comprised of GPU-based solutions for deep learning, inference, and training. The new GPUs are also complemented by a free, open-source library and framework for GPU accelerators, dubbed MIOpen. MIOpen is architected for high-performance machine intelligence applications, and is optimized for the deep learning frameworks in AMD’s ROCm software suite, which we recently talked about here. During a recent visit with AMD, it was noted that we generate roughly...
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AMD President And CEO Dr. Lisa Su AMD has been slowly releasing information about its next-generation Zen processor core architecture since mid-last year. Complete specifications haven’t been officially released, but we do know that initial Zen-based processors will be manufactured using a 14nm FinFET process, and that a Zen core-based family of products will eventually scale all the way from mobile devices on up to big-iron, enterprise servers. News of a 32-core / 64-thread Zen-based server processor codenamed “Naples” broke a few months back, and AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su recently showed off an 8-core / 16-thread desktop variant codenamed Summit Ridge. Desktop and mobile Zen processors and APUs...
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