Items tagged with APU
Although they are well known overseas, those of you that live in the United States are probably not as familiar with a little company called Huawei. The thing is, it isn't little, and it has been around for quite a while. In fact, Huawei has been around since 1986 and is actually the largest telecommunications equipment manufacturer in the world. As of 2018 they are also the second largest smartphone manufacturer in the world, second only to Samsung. Huawei pushed Apple into third place earlier this year by taking a 15.8% stake in the worldwide market. That's impressive seeing as just three years...
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If you're the current owner of a Raven Ridge-based APU, then you've no doubt gotten used to a somewhat languid pace of new driver releases. While AMD's standalone Radeon add-in graphics cards frequently receive new driver updates, the company's APUs haven’t been so lucky. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that this policy will get much better, as it has been confirmed that AMD APUs (a la Raven Ridge) will only be updated every three months (quarterly). A forum member over at Overclockers UK wondered aloud, "How come there is no raven ridge support with the last two drivers?...
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AMD is brewing something up for Computex that enthusiasts will want to pay attention to. The chipmaker has sent out emails with a bit of detail about the press conference it will have at the show. That conference will take place on June 6th in Taipei and AMD wants folks to pay attention to the conference, despite not really saying what it will be about. What we do know from the email is that AMD is promising hardware demos that have never been seen and is promising to showcase its innovation and leadership. That sounds a lot like new hardware and rumors point to new gear in the Radeon Vega...
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AMD has run into a bit of trouble with a "specific boot issue" that might be affecting some second gen Ryzen desktop processors, specifically Raven Ridge APUs, when those chips are socketed into an early AMD Socket AM4 mainboard. According to AMD, since the release of the AMD Socket AM4 mainboards in early 2017, alongside the Ryzen desktop processors, there have been several BIOS updates made available through board partners. AMD wrote, "These updates not only provide improved system performance but also expand support for newer processors as they become available." The rub for owners...
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AMD is gearing up to launch its Raven Ridge APUs on the desktop, and in preparation for that, motherboard makers are starting to roll out BIOS updates to support the upcoming chips. This highlights one of the benefits of the AM4 platform, in that AMD is committed to supporting future processor releases through at least 2019, based on previous roadmaps that show Matisse (desktop) and Picasso (desktop/notebook APU) both sticking with the AM4 socket. Raven Ridge APUs are based on AMD's Zen architecture, combining up to 4 Zen-based CPU cores with integrated Vega graphics. We recently had a chance to...
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Llano has once again surfaced from the murky deaths to make headlines in the tech world. The last time we talked about AMD’s Llano Accelerated Processing Unit (APU), AMD investors filed a lawsuit against the company regarding its hyping up the product’s 2011 launch. “[AMD] repeatedly highlighted the strong and significant interest in, demand for, and unit shipments of its Llano APUs,” said the plaintiffs in the 2014 filing. “Defendants falsely and misleadingly represented that AMD's desktop business was in a 'strong position' and that it would continue to rebound in 2012,” which was allegedly a...
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Much of the focus on AMD's AM4 platform has been Ryzen, which now spans three different product tiers based on the company's Zen architecture (Ryzen 3, Ryzen 5, and Ryzen 7). However, Ryzen is not the only processor family that is compatible with AM4. AMD served up 7th generation Bristol Ridge A-series APUs and Athlon X4 processors for AM4 motherboards to system integrators and OEMs in September 2016. Now those chips are headed to retail. Keeping track of the different architectures can be a bit confusing especially when there is overlap among new sockets. In this case, we are about talking about...
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It is only a matter of time before AMD comes out with an accelerated processing unit (APU) based on its Zen microarchitecture. Giving us a glimpse at what AMD has in store is a new listing in SiSoftware's SANDRA benchmark database. One of the newest entries shows what looks to be an engineering sample of AMD's forthcoming Raven Ridge APUs, which may end up using the same Ryzen branding as AMD's desktop CPUs. The engineering sample in question pairs Zen and Vega in one neat and tidy package. Most of the details in SANDRA's listing are now hidden, likely at the request of AMD, though screen captures...
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To remain competitive with Intel, AMD needs its upcoming Zen architecture to impress on both the performance and power side of things. If Zen is impressive, then it could mean great things for AMD. For the first time in recent memory, it'd actually be able to compete with Intel in key segments. It's always hard to guess just how impressive a new launch is going to be; we can take the promises of companies, but all too often those fall flat. The latest rumors surrounding Zen, though, put the architecture in a great light. New reports are showing that AMD could launch a Zen APU in 2019 that...
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AMD has begun shipping its newly minted 7th Generation APUs known as "Bristol Ridge" to its hardware partners, the company announced this week. The new APUs will be integrated into systems built by several different OEM vendors, with HP and Lenovo getting first dibs, followed by others that will pair the processors with AMD's new AM4 platform. Bristol Ridge brings faster compute and graphics performance than previous generation APUs, with AMD claiming up to a 99 percent advantage in gaming graphics compared to Intel's Skylake chips. Graphics performance has traditionally been a strong suit of Intel's...
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PC enthusiasts and hardcore gamers are passionate about their hardware. We all lust after expensive, high-performance CPUs, GPUs, monstrous RAM kits, and ultra-fast solid state storage devices. But for many of us, top of the line PC components may be overkill, and in some situations, a more mainstream rig will do just fine. That’s the crux of the message AMD has been trying to get across for quite some time with its mainstream APU line-up. Sure, you could build a high-performance rig with a top of the line processor and beefy discrete GPU, but why spend the money if you don’t have to? To that end,...
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Intel is making headlines at Computex this week with its outrageous Core i7-6950X deca-core processor, which comes with an equally outrageous price tag. However, AMD also came to Taipei with new processors in-hand, but they’re not nearly as outlandish or expensive as Intel’s latest and greatest enthusiast chips. The company this morning announced its 7th generation A-Series lineup and is looking to deliver high performance and efficiency at unbeatable price points. The new 7th generation APUs are still built using a 28nm manufacturing process and include Excavator cores throughout the lineup. Despite...
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At the risk of not wanting to count chickens before they hatch, it's pretty hard to not be excited for AMD right now. For so many years, the company has struggled to increase its share value due to a lack of truly competitive products. However, this week, we've heard of two examples of how AMD could turn itself around, and the benefits are already materializing. A couple of days ago, we reported that AMD struck a deal to license its processor and SoC technologies so that Tianjin Haiguang Advanced Technology Investment Co., can create its own processors based on AMD's technologies. The deal is reported...
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AMD just released some details regarding its upcoming seventh generation of A-Series and FX APUs, formerly codenamed Bristol Ridge. Bristol Ridge is essentially a refresh of the previous generation Carrizo design and uses the same 28nm process. In lieu of a die shrink, however, AMD has made improvements to the manufacturing process, tweaked the transistor mix, and enabled new features that were previously dormant in Carrizo, and the end result is higher frequencies at a given power level, in addition to some IPC (instructions per clock) improvements. The newly activated features...
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