Items tagged with (NASDAQ: AMD)
With AMD's second-generation Ryzen CPUs set to land on April 19, we're beginning to see the inevitable flood of supporting motherboards coming from AMD's close partners. As has become tradition, ASUS has plenty of boards to choose from, right out-of-the-gate. That includes five boards from ASUS' Republic of Gaming series, and another under the TUF brand. The flagship in this new line-up is the ROG Crosshair VII Hero, which features a second SKU that adds Wi-Fi into the mix. As the flagship, this board has all the bells and whistles, and generally speaking, it's likely to be the best suited for those with grand overclocking ambitions. The Strix takes the ROG featureset to a more affordable level,...
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If you're planning to go the Ryzen Threadripper route with your new build, but haven't yet settled on a motherboard choice, Gigabyte has thrown yet another option onto the pile. While most Threadripper motherboards released up to this point are noteworthy in their own right, the new X399 DESIGNARE EX does manage to stand apart from the crowd. First, let's start with the aesthetics, which are downright awesome on this motherboard. The vast majority of Threadripper boards released thus far have stuck to a very black or dark aesthetic, whereas with its DESIGNAIRE EX, Gigabyte lightens things up a bit. It gives us a nice blend of silver-on-black, with a splash of color added by way of RGB LED over...
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At its launch, one of the most common complaints about AMD's Radeon RX Vega cards was their reference cooler, and in particular, its weak cooling performance. Reference coolers are rarely that impressive, but it was especially true with a powerful GPU like Vega. Immediately, people yearned to see what companies like Gigabyte would release to one-up that reference design. It didn't seem likely at first that Gigabyte was even going to release its own variant of the Vega 64, but lo and behold, it's happened. What you see below is the company's GAMING OC, sporting not just two large fans, but a large overall chassis. This GAMING OC card is much taller than the reference design (1-1.5", it appears),...
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For ages, a 1ms response time has been the de facto standard for serious gamers, although we think most would agree that up to 4ms isn't too bad. 8ms is outright ridiculous. Well, both 4ms and 8ms seem real lackluster when compared to AOC's upcoming offerings: a couple of monitors sporting a 0.5 ms response time; or in other words, a response time that's 1/2,000th of a second. Whether or not most gamers would even notice the perceived difference between 1ms and 0.5ms is hard to gauge, but many serious gamers are likely to take this kind of release seriously simply because every little bit helps. And, this AOC duo sports other features that make them seem downright impressive. Both of these monitors,...
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Hot on the heels of the launch of one of the most disruptive CPUs in recent memory, G.SKILL has announced that it has a full complement of 32GB+ memory kits that will perfectly suit AMD's latest high-end platform, Ryzen Threadripper (read our full review). When Ryzen first launched earlier this year, hitting even DDR4-3000 seemed like it required luck, but AMD's Zen platforms as a whole have matured a lot since then, hence the reason that G.SKILL is now offering a super-fast DDR4-3600 kits for those looking to maximize their overall system performance, not just the memory (AMD's Infinity Fabric bus directly benefits from faster memory). Both DDR4-3466 and 3600 kits are being made available with...
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Over the weekend, we talked about an issue surrounding AMD's Ryzen-based processors on Unix-based OSes. Today, we learn a lot more about what's going on, as well as which products are actually affected. But first, let's get the upside out of the way: this bug is rare, and requires very specific conditions. The vast majority of users are not going to experience an issue, but it's at least an issue to be aware of. With almost comical timing, SMT issues surrounding both FreeBSD and Linux were outed at around the same time, although it's now been confirmed that the issues are different. Through exhaustive testing, Phoronix discovered that Ryzen under Linux will segfault up and down if a handful of...
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It's starting to look like there's an inherent bug with AMD's Zen-based chips that is causing issues on Unix-based operating systems, with both Linux and FreeBSD confirmed. The bug doesn't just affect Ryzen desktop chips, but also AMD's enterprise EPYC chips. It seems safe to assume that Threadripper will bundle it in, as well. It's not entirely clear what is causing the issue, but it's related to the CPU being maxed out in operations, thus causing data to get shifted around in memory, ultimately resulting in unstable software. If the bug is exercised a certain way, it can even cause machines to reset. The revelation about the issue on FreeBSD was posted to the official repository, where the...
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There's a whole lot of excitement surrounding AMD's Ryzen Threadripper, which is widely expected to be the most potent weapon that AMD's had to do battle with against Intel on the enthusiast desktop in quite some time. Ryzen 7 helped secure AMD's mainstream positioning, whereas Threadripper pits the new architecture versus the top-end of Intel's stack - such as Core i9 Skylake-X. As we've covered previously, AMD's top-end Threadripper is the 1950X, priced at $999. This 16-core chip offers 32 threads, while the 1920X, priced at $799, shaves 25% of the cores and threads off. While the 1950X gives us the first consumer 16-core, the 1920X likewise gives us the first consumer 12-core. We're still...
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Can you feel that excitement in the air? We're of course talking about one of the most anticipated PC hardware launches of 2017: AMD's Ryzen Threadripper processors. Ryzen's launch in March was an important one for AMD, as it proved to the world that it was once again competitive with Intel, but now that that's over and done with, AMD's is moving onto the next thing. That happens to be hitting Intel where it really hurts: lucrative top-end enthusiast chips. While Intel's current top-end Skylake-X chip, i9-7900X, boasts 10 cores and 20 threads, AMD's top Threadripper chips are going to deliver 6 additional cores, and likewise, 12 additional threads - and sell it for the same $999 MSRP. Even if...
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Are you planning to go the AMD Ryzen route with your new build and want a motherboard that gives it the "high-end foundation it deserves"? If so, ASUS has got the board for you, with its new Crosshair VI Extreme. The Crosshair VI Extreme is built around AMD's top-end X370 chipset and boasts aesthetics that any enthusiast should be pleased to see gracing the inside of their build. Want LEDs? Don't fret: this board is littered with them, and as an added bonus, there's a new header that allows you to use strips with per-LED color control. Tying into the RGB love, ASUS' Aura SDK can be adopted by any hardware vendor that wishes to support its ecosystem, ultimately giving owners the ability to...
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Ever since AMD launched its Ryzen processors for the desktop, many security conscious users have pleaded with the company to open source its PSP - no, not the portable console, but rather its "Platform Security Processor". This chip is found on most AMD platforms from 2013 on, and behaves much like Intel's Management Engine does: it offers simple low-level access to the computer. Both AMD and Intel share the same message about these unique chips; they are there to keep us protected. Because the OS can't see what the PSP or IME is doing, though, the user will likewise be oblivious to the chip's actions. That might not matter much if the chip keeps our machine more secure. However, what happens...
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All major Linux kernel releases carry a handful of special updates, but there are some that are still a lot more notable than others. Linux 4.12 is one of those kernels, with even Linus Torvalds stating that it's one of the "bigger releases historically". A big reason for that? Well, for starters, it include introductory AMD Radeon Vega support. This comes hot on the heels of AMD unleashing its Vega Frontier Edition to the world, and close to a month before the consumer variants launch at SIGGRAPH 2017 in Los Angeles. AMD's Vega architecture is now supported in Linux - to some extent It's important to note that this is truly introductory Vega support. Phoronix's Michael Larabel notes that with...
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It feels a little weird to write about performance results for AMD's EPYC processors and not have to tie the word "leak" into it. As we covered just last week, AMD has finally unleashed its hugely anticipated EPYC processor line for the server market, and to say it's long overdue would be a gross understatement. There is no doubt that Ryzen is important for AMD's desktop aspirations, but EPYC is hugely important for its chance to steal back enterprise market share from Intel. Today, we get a glimpse of some of what EPYC can deliver, as some results have hit SiSoftware's Sandra repository. The EPYC model tested was AMD's current top-end, the 7601, which boasts 32-cores, 64 threads, and perhaps...
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Who doesn't love getting a little bit more than what they paid for? If you're a Radeon RX 480 owner, you might just be able to experience such a gift, as it's been discovered that a simple BIOS flash is all it takes to turn that card into a brand-new RX 580. A user over at techPowerUp tried his hand at flashing a BIOS pulled from a Sapphire RX 580 Limited Edition and applying it to his own card. Lo and behold, it worked without a hassle. Now this user gets to enjoy a performance boost of about ~5%. As with all things of this nature, your mileage is going to vary. If you don't mind trying your hand at a BIOS flash, and already own an RX 480, it won't be hard to find out if your card is going...
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