Monday, June 10th 2019

AMD E3 Next Horizon Event: Live Blog

It's been a very busy May-June for AMD as the company pushes out its major client-segment product lines spread across Computex 2019, and E3 2019. At Computex, the company focused on its 3rd generation Ryzen "Zen 2" desktop processors, and led its partners to show us a galaxy of new motherboards based on the AMD X570 chipset. It turns out that the company was saving a handful processor SKUs focused on gamers for E3.

The second important product launch of course is Radeon RX 5700 series, based on AMD's new "Navi 10" silicon on which its new RDNA graphics architecture debuts. With its AIB (add-in board) partners expected to be allowed to make custom-design cards, and based on what little nuggets of information AMD put out, "Navi" promises to stir up a key performance-segment price-band that's currently held by NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 2070 and RTX 2060. The AMD keynote will see the company CEO Dr. Lisa Su and her top execs take centerstage to make some big announcements. With E3 being a purely entertainment / client-segment forum, the AMD keynote promises not bore with tiresome topics such as AI, self-driving cars, etc.
2:30 PM PDT: Ahead of its keynote, AMD posted a teaser video of its new RDNA graphics architecture on YouTube.


3:00 PM PDT: The event begins with CEO Dr. Lisa Su taking centerstage. "Exciting time for gamers everywhere, with coherence between hardware and software."

3:06 PM PDT: "AMD owes its recent success to big technology bets that are paying off now."

3:07 PM PDT: Lisa Su confirms next-generation PlayStation is powered by AMD IP, as is Google Stadia. Also talks about the Xbox "Project Scarlett"

3:08 PM PDT: PC. Now we're talking.

3:11 PM PDT: Key details on Zen 2 CPU architecture at the heart of Ryzen 3000. Also AMD's performance claims. We've seen these slides at the Computex 2019 keynote.

3:16 PM PDT: AMD answering Intel's "real-world gaming" challenge:

3:18 PM PDT: Ryzen 5 3600X specs confirmed, including gaming performance. Beats Core i5-9600K.

All CPU models available 7/7/2019.

3:20 PM PDT: Time to talk Navi. Maintains RDNA is a cleanslate architecture.

3:25 PM PDT: Meet the Radeon RX 5700 XT. Leadership performance in its class.

3:27 PM PDT: The leaks seem to be correct. "Ready for overclocking"

Performance beats the RTX 2070 in World War Z.

3:29 PM PDT: Radeon RX 5700 (non-XT) Specs:

Up to 10% faster than RTX 2060 (RX 5700 non-XT).

Radeon Media Engine supports 4K encode and decode, and updated codecs for hardware-acceleration. Radeon Display Engine has updated connectivity.

3:33 PM PDT: FidelityFX pre-baked free-to-use special effects that improve visual fidelity without performance cost; available through GPUOpen.

3:35 PM PDT: Radeon Image Sharpening is essentially FidelityFX for games that don't support it.

3:36 PM PDT: Radeon Anti-Lag is a groundbreaking new feature that works to reduce GPU-to-monitor lag and input lag. Treat for e-sports gamers.
Lower input-lag without increasing frame-rates!

3:40 PM PDT: Pricing! Availability 7/7/2019, both SKUs. RX 5700 XT is priced at $449, and RX 5700 at $379. "Gears 5" bundled!

3:47 PM PDT: Gears 5 as rendered on an RX 5700 XT.

Although Gears 5 releases September, RX 5700-series buyers who get the game bundled also have early access to pre-release testing versions from July.

3:54 PM PDT: Borderlands 3 is Ryzen+Radeon optimized, including FidelityFX. Gearbox also uttered "AMD Studios," an internal dev-relations moniker, detailed as a steady supply of AMD hardware to game developers at Gearbox. AMD is flexing its dev-relations muscle once again.

4:00 PM PDT: Unity talks about HDRP. Also confirms Ryzen+Radeon optimization, and support for FidelityFX.

4:07 PM PDT: Ubisoft confirms Ryzen+Radeon optimization for Tom Clancy's "Ghost Recon: Breakpoint," including FidelityFX, async-compute, FreeSync 2 HDR.

4:11 PM PDT: AMD launches Radeon RX 5700X 50th Anniversary Edition with 1.98 GHz Boost frequency, priced at $499, exclusively on AMD.com
4:12 AM PDT: AMD also announces Ryzen 9 3950X 16-core processor, priced $749, launches September.
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