ATLUS has announced Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance, coming to the Nintendo Switch family of systems, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Windows and Steam on June 21, 2024. The latest title in the series, Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance allows players to enjoy the story of Shin Megami Tensei V in its entirety, with a new story path, untold in the original. Massively expanded with new areas, demons, and music, Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance features more accessible gameplay, an improved battle system, new demon experiences, and greater field exploration.

When a grisly murder scene in modern-day Tokyo blocks the protagonist's walk home, an unplanned detour leaves him buried and unconscious. He finds himself in a wasteland ravaged by apocalypse now called Da'at. Before bloodthirsty demons can claim his life, a savior emerges, and they unite to become a mighty being, neither human nor demon: a Nahobino.

An interesting Intel document leaked out last month—it contained detailed pre-release information that covered their upcoming 15th Gen Core Arrow Lake-S desktop CPU platform, including a possible best scenario 8+16+1 core configuration. Thorough analysis of the spec sheet revealed a revelation—the next generation Core processor family could "lack Hyper-Threading (HT) support." The rumor mill had produced similar claims in the past, but the internal technical memo confirmed that Arrow Lake's "expected eight performance cores without any threads enabled via SMT." These specifications could be subject to change, but tipster—InstLatX64—has uprooted an Arrow Lake-S engineering sample: "I spotted (CPUID C0660, 24 threads, 3 GHz, without AVX 512) among the Intel test machines."

The leaker had uncovered several pre-launch Meteor Lake SKUs last year—with 14th Gen laptop processors hitting the market recently, InstLatX64 has turned his attention to seeking out next generation parts. Yesterday's Arrow Lake-S find has chins wagging about the 24 thread count aspect (sporting two more than the fanciest Meteor Lake Core Ultra 9 processor)—this could be an actual 24 core total configuration—considering the evident lack of hyper-threading, as seen on the leaked engineering sample. Tom's Hardware reckons that the AVX-512 instruction set could be disabled via firmware or motherboard UEFI—if InstLatX64's claim of "without AVX-512" support does ring true, PC users (demanding such workloads) are best advised to turn to Ryzen 7040 and 8040 series processors, or (less likely) Team Blue's own 5th Gen Xeon "Emerald Rapids" server CPUs.

A leaked Intel documentation we reported on a few days ago covered the Arrow Lake-S platform and some implementation details. However, there was an interesting catch in the file. The leaked document indicates that the upcoming 15th-Generation Arrow Lake desktop CPUs could lack Hyper-Threading (HT) support. The technical memo lists Arrow Lake's expected eight performance cores without any threads enabled via SMT. This aligns with previous rumors of Hyper-Threading removal. Losing Hyper-Threading could significantly impact Arrow Lake's multi-threaded application performance versus its Raptor Lake predecessors. Estimates suggest HT provides a 10-15% speedup across heavily-threaded workloads by enabling logical cores. However, for gaming, disabling HT has negligible impact and can even boost FPS in some titles. So Arrow Lake may still hit Intel's rumored 30% gaming performance targets through architectural improvements alone.

However, a replacement for the traditional HT is likely to come in the form of Rentable Units. This new approach is a response to the adoption of a hybrid core architecture, which has seen an increase in applications leveraging low-power E-cores for enhanced performance and efficiency. Rentable Units are a more efficient pseudo-multi-threaded solution that splits the first thread of incoming instructions into two partitions, assigning them to different cores based on complexity. Rentable Units will use timers and counters to measure P/E core utilization and send parts of the thread to each core for processing. This inherently requires larger cache sizes, where Arrow Lake is rumored to have 3 MB of L2 cache per core. Arrow Lake is also noted to support faster DDR5-6400 memory. But between higher clocks, more E-cores, and various core architecture updates, raw throughput metrics may not change much without Hyper-Threading.

Intel's upcoming Sierra Forest Xeon server chip has debuted on Geekbench 6, showcasing its potential in multi-core performance. Slated for release in the first half of 2024, Sierra Forest is equipped with up to 288 Efficiency cores, positioning it to compete with AMD's Zen 4c Bergamo server CPUs and other ARM-based server chips like those from Ampere for the favor of cloud service providers (CSP). In the Geekbench 6 benchmark, a dual-socket configuration featuring two 144-core Sierra Forest CPUs was tested. The benchmark revealed a notable multi-core score of 7,770, surpassing most dual-socket systems powered by Intel's high-end Xeon Platinum 8480+, which typically scores between 6,500 and 7,500. However, Sierra Forest's single-core score of 855 points was considerably lower, not even reaching half of that of the 8480+, which manages 1,897 points.

The difference in single-core performance is a matter of choice, as Sierra Forest uses Crestmont-derived Sierra Glen E-cores, which are more power and area-efficient, unlike the Golden Cove P-cores in the Sapphire Rapids-based 8480+. This design choice is particularly advantageous for server environments where high-core counts are crucial, as CSPs usually partition their instances by the number of CPU cores. However, compared to AMD's Bergamo CPUs, which use Zen 4c cores, Sierra Forest lacks pure computing performance, especially in multi-core. The Sierra Forest lacks hyperthreading, while Bergaamo offers SMT with 256 threads on the 128-core SKU. Comparing the Geekbench 6 scores to AMD Bergamo EPYC 9754 and Sierra Forest results look a lot less impressive. Bergamo scored 1,597 points in single-core, almost double that of Sierra Forest, and 16,455 points in the multi-core benchmarks, which is more than double. This is a significant advantage of the Zen 4c core, which cuts down on caches instead of being an entirely different core, as Intel does with its P and E-cores. However, these are just preliminary numbers; we must wait for real-world benchmarks to see the actual performance.

AMD today launched its first client processors that feature the compact "Zen 4c" CPU cores, with the Ryzen 5 7545U and Ryzen 3 7440U mobile processors for thin-and-light notebooks. The "Zen 4c" CPU core is a compacted version of the "Zen 4" core without the subtraction of any hardware components, but rather a high density arrangement of them on the 4 nm silicon. A "Zen 4c" core is around 35% smaller in area on the die than a regular "Zen 4" core. Since none of its components is removed, the core features an identical IPC (single thread performance) to "Zen 4," as well as an identical ISA (instruction set). "Zen 4c" also supports SMT or 2 threads per core. The trade-off here is that "Zen 4c" cores are generally clocked lower than "Zen 4" cores, as they can operate at lower core voltages. This doesn't, however, make the "Zen 4c" comparable to an E-core by Intel's definition, these cores are still part of the same CPU clock speed band as the "Zen 4" cores, at least in the processors that's being launched today.

The Ryzen 5 7545U and Ryzen 3 7440U mobile processors formally debut the new 4 nm "Phoenix 2" monolithic silicon. This chip is AMD's first hybrid processor, in that it has a mixture of two regular "Zen 4" cores, and four compact "Zen 4c" cores. The six cores share an impressive 16 MB of L3 cache. All six cores feature 1 MB of dedicated L2 cache. There is no complex hardware-based scheduler involved, but a software based solution that's deployed by AMD's Chipset Software, which tells the Windows scheduler to see the "Zen 4" cores as UEFI CPPC "preferred cores," and prioritize traffic to them, as they can hold on to higher boost frequency bins. The "Phoenix 2" silicon inherits much of the on-die power-management feature-set from the "Phoenix" and "Rembrandt" chips, and so are capable of a high degree of power savings with underutilized CPU cores and iGPU compute units.

AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D, the company's ambitious new 8-core/16-thread Socket AM4 processor that claims to match the Core i9-12900K "Alder Lake" in gaming performance, will launch at an MSRP of USD $449, according to prices of several upcoming AMD Ryzen processors leaked to the web. The 5800X3D is clocked lower than the 5800X, with 3.40 GHz base and 4.50 GHz boost frequencies, but the large 96 MB L3 cache from the 3D Vertical Cache memory, overcomes this.

The Ryzen 7 5700X is an interesting new 8-core/16-thread part. It's based on the "Vermeer" MCM just like the 5800X, and unlike the 5700G that's based on the "Cezanne" monolithic silicon. The 5700X is clocked at 3.40 GHz base, with 4.60 GHz boost, compared to the 3.80 GHz base and 4.70 GHz boost frequency of the 5800X. The Ryzen 7 5700X is launching at $299 MSRP, which implies that the company is cutting the MSRP of the Ryzen 5 5600X that originally occupied this price-point.Update Mar 9th: Correction: the Ryzen 5 5500 is a 6-core/12-thread part.

Driven by forces such as the pandemic, geopolitics, and the digital transformation of everyday life, there has been a shortage of global foundry production capacity for nearly two years and shortages have been especially severe for mature 1Xnm~180nm nodes, according to TrendForce's investigations. Although all foundries are furiously increasing capital expenditures to expand capacity, unrealized future expansion does not ease existing supply issues. In addition, the uneven distribution of supply chain resources that has exacerbated the shortage of parts and components has yet to be definitively alleviated. Circumstances as a whole will continue affecting shipments of related whole devices. Only the PC category is expected to emerge largely unscathed in 1Q22.

Moving into 1Q22, TrendForce states, due to the limited increase in production capacity, the market's supply situation is expected to be approximately the same as in 4Q21. However, some end products have entered their traditional off-season cycle and the slowdown in demand momentum is expected to alleviate the immediate pressure on OEMs and ODMs regarding supply chain stocking.

Researches from the University of Virginia and University of California San Diego have published their latest case study. The two universities have worked hard to discover a new Spectre vulnerability variant that can pass all of the existing Spectre mitigations and exploit all of the existing processors coming from Intel and AMD. The vulnerability exploits all of the existing x86 processors, and as it is new, there are not implementations of hardware mitigation. The whitepaper called "I see dead μops" takes the implementation of exploiting micro-op caches that could lead to a potential data leak in the processor, which is leading to a Spectre-type exploit.

Modern x86 processors break down complex instructions into smaller RISC-like units called micro-ops, in the frontend, where it makes the design of the backend part much simpler. The micro-ops are stored in the micro-ops cache. The paper is describing micro-op cache-based timing channel exploits in three primary settings: "a) across code regions within the same thread, but operating at different privilege levels, (b) across different co-located threads running simultaneously on different SMT contexts (logical cores) within the same physical core, and (c) two transient execution attack variants that leverage the micro-op cache to leak transiently accessed secrets, bypassing several existing hardware and software-based mitigations, including Intel's recommended LFENCE."

The release of Cyberpunk 2077 has brought a rather large controversy around it, with many gamers being disappointed with their purchases. The game has generated massive hype before it was released, and when it dropped, gamers from all around the world found themselves disappointed in the quality of the game itself. Most notably, the game developer, CD Project RED, has made a massive game and discovered many bugs along the way. That buggy release was shipped to customers. However, the game developer is not going to watch it remain like that and has issued a hotfix release 1.05 that is supposed to iron out a few major bugs and bring many improvements.

On PC, the game was underperforming on AMD Ryzen CPUs, and now the patch is applied: "[AMD SMT] Optimized default core/thread utilization for 4-core and 6-core AMD Ryzen (tm) processors. 8-core, 12-core and 16-core processors remain unchanged and behaving as intended. This change was implemented in cooperation with AMD and based on tests on both sides indicating that performance improvement occurs only on CPUs with 6 cores and less." For a full list of gameplay, UI, visual, and quest updates, please check out this hotfix list here. Update is now available on all platforms and you should download it.

Greenliant has secured major design wins with its EnduroSLC solid state drives (SSDs) in a wide range of demanding, extreme environment applications for customers that need best-in-class reliability and product longevity. Greenliant's proprietary EnduroSLC Technology substantially enhances data retention and extends the write endurance of 1-bit-per-cell SSDs with advanced hardware ECC capabilities and NAND flash management algorithms. EnduroSLC SSDs not only offer superior data retention capabilities under complex temperature conditions, but also support 50K, 100K and industry-leading, ultra high 250K+ program-erase (P/E) cycles, which are at least a 5x improvement over pseudo-SLC (pSLC) SSDs and a 50x improvement over MLC NAND-based products.

For systems that are in remote locations and costly to maintain-from satellite to subsea communications-customers recognize the value of EnduroSLC SSDs; they can reliably operate and retain data for long periods of time in harsh conditions. Long-life, write-intensive products, such as transportation black box recorders and industrial data loggers, have also benefitted from the enhanced features of EnduroSLC SSDs. EnduroSLC storage products are designed with Greenliant's advanced SATA, NVMe PCIe and eMMC controllers, operate at industrial temperatures (-40 to +85 degrees Celsius) and are backed by the company's Long-Term Availability program (http://bit.ly/SSD-LTA-program), providing an extra level of support.

Following the previous report about AMD's upcoming "Renoir" APU lineup of processors for notebook and desktop, we have new information about the new processor models and their configurations. Supposed to launch in early 2020, the Renoir lineup is supposed to feature up to 8 cores and 16 threads in high-end models. Dubbed Ryzen 4000 series, the new APU lineup will be available in four configurations determined by its TDP: 15 W and 45 W chips for notebooks, and 35 W and 65 W variants meant for desktop.

According to WCCFTech, AMD will launch high-performance Ryzen 9 4900H and Ryzen 7 4800H APUs soon in the first notebooks. Supposed to be part of the "H" series of mobile APUs, these models will feature high core count, that can reach up to 8 cores, SMT support as well, all within TPD of 45 Watts. A power-optimized Ryzen 7 4800HS has also appeared in the listings as a lower clocked alternative to Ryzen 7 4800H, which is supposed to feature lower TDP as well. All of the former processors appear listed as the base of ASUSes upcoming GA401 and GA502 laptops, featuring 16 GB of RAM, Windows 10, and a 14-inch display. While configurations of the laptop will affect its price, Ryzen 7 4800HS powered model is currently listed at 1904 EUR, featuring 16 GB of RAM and 1 TB of storage, so we now have a ballpark price estimate to speculate upon.

AMD Tuesday expanded its 3rd generation Ryzen desktop processor lineup with two new product additions, the 12-core/24-thread Ryzen 9 3900, and the 6-core/12-thread Ryzen 5 3500X. Both chips are particularly interesting given their naming. The 3900 is a slightly subdued twin of the company's current flagship, the 3900X, with a small amount of clock speed traded off for a huge drop in TDP. This chip ticks at 3.10 GHz with 4.30 GHz boost, compared to 3.80/4.60 GHz frequencies of the 3900X. Its TDP, however, is rated at just 65 W, compared to 105 W of the 3900X. You get 512 KB of dedicated L2 cache per core, and 64 MB of L3 cache.

The Ryzen 5 3500X is another interesting part, in which the "X" makes a world of difference from the Ryzen 5 3500. Whilst the 3500 is a 6-core/6-thread part devoid of SMT, the 3500X is 6-core/12-thread (features SMT), has the same exact 3.60 GHz nominal clocks as the popular Ryzen 5 3600, but a slightly lower 4.10 GHz boost frequency, compared to 4.20 GHz of the 3600. The Ryzen 5 3500X is expected to be marginally cheaper than the 3600, at around $189, and is currently only being offered to OEMs and system integrators in China. The company hasn't finalized pricing for the 3900, yet.

As AMD's Ryzen 5 3500 processor is inching closer to launch, we learn more possible specifications of the chip AMD is designing to take on Intel's popular Core i5-9400/9400F processor. Late July, we learned that the chip will be a 6-core model, breaking away from convention set by past generations, of the x500 Ryzen SKU being 4-core/8-thread. Thai PC enthusiast TUM_APISAK, who has a fairly high hit-rate on unreleased products, predicts that the 3500 will be six-core, but lack SMT (it will be 6-core/6-thread).

The Ryzen 5 3500 will be clocked at 3.60 GHz nominal, with a boost frequency of 4.10 GHz. There's no word on other specs, such as L3 cache amount. A single "Zen 2" chiplet normally has 32 MB of it (16 MB per CCX). The main competitor from the Intel stable is the Core i5-9400 / i5-9400F, which ticks at 2.90 GHz with 4.10 GHz boost. The i5-9400F in particular has had a big impact in the sub-$200 segment, as it's been aggressively priced under promotions by various DIY retailers. The chip lacks an iGPU, but has the specs to pull a fairly powerful gaming PC. With the Ryzen 5 3600 at $199, AMD could price the new chip around $169-179.

When AMD launched its Ryzen 9 3900X 12-core/24-thread processor at its Computex 2019 keynote, our readers commented on the notable absence of a 16-core SKU, given that a "Matisse" multi-chip module with two 8-core "Zen 2" chiplets adds up to that core-count. Some readers noted this could be a case of AMD holding back its top performing part in the absence of competition in the segment from Intel. It turns out, the company was saving this part up for an E3 2019 unveiling.

The Ryzen 9 3950X maxes out "Matisse" MCM with 16 cores, 32 threads via SMT, a staggering 64 MB of L3 cache (72 MB including the 8 MB of total L2 cache), and a stunning 105-Watt TDP figure that's unchanged from the company's TDP for the 3900X. The Ryzen 9 3950X is clocked at 3.50 GHz, with a maximum boost frequency of 4.70 GHz. The company is yet to reveal its price, but given that the $499 price-tag has already been taken by the 3900X, one could expect an even higher price. It remains to be seen if the 3950X will launch alongside the rest of the series on 7/7.

Intel Tuesday once again shook the IT world by disclosing severe microarchitecture-level security vulnerabilities affecting its processors. The Microarchitectural Data Sampling (MDS) class of vulnerabilities affect Intel CPU architectures older than "Coffee Lake" to a greater extent. Among other forms of mitigation software patches, Intel is recommending that users disable HyperThreading technology (HTT), Intel's simultaneous multithreading (SMT) implementation. This would significantly deplete multi-threaded performance on older processors with lower core-counts, particularly Core i3 2-core/4-thread chips.

On "safer" microarchitectures such as "Coffee Lake," though, Intel is expecting a minimal impact of software patches, and doesn't see any negative impact of disabling HTT. This may have something to do with the 50-100 percent increased core-counts with the 8th and 9th generations. The company put out a selection of benchmarks relevant to client and enterprise (data-center) use-cases. On the client use-case that's we're more interested in, a Core i9-9900K machine with software mitigation and HTT disabled is negligibly slower (within 2 percent) of a machine without mitigation and HTT enabled. Intel's selection of benchmarks include SYSMark 2014 SE, WebXprt 3, SPECInt rate base (1 copy and n copies), and 3DMark "Skydiver" with the chip's integrated UHD 630 graphics. Comparing machines with mitigations applied but toggling HTT presents a slightly different story.

AMD in 2012 launched the FX-8150, the "world's first 8-core desktop processor," or so it says on the literal tin. AMD achieved its core-count of 8 with an unconventional CPU core design. Its 8 cores are arranged in four sets of two cores each, called "modules." Each core has its own independent integer unit and L1 data cache, while the two cores share a majority of their components - the core's front-end, a branch-predictor, a 64 KB L1 code cache, a 2 MB L2 cache, but most importantly, an FPU. There was much debate across tech forums on what constitutes a CPU core.

Multiprocessor-aware operating systems had to be tweaked on how to properly address a "Bulldozer" processor. Their schedulers would initially treat "Bulldozer" cores as fully independent (as conventional logic would dictate), until AMD noticed multi-threaded application performance bottlenecks. Eventually, Windows and various *nix kernels received updates to their schedulers to treat each module as a core, and each core as an SMT unit (a logical processor). The FX-8350 is a 4-core/8-thread processor in the eyes of Windows 10, for example. These updates improved the processors' performance but not before consumers started noticing that their operating systems weren't reporting the correct core-count. In 2015, a class-action lawsuit was filed against AMD for false marketing of FX-series processors. The wheels of that lawsuit are finally moving, after a 12-member Jury is set up to examine what constitutes a CPU core, and whether an AMD FX-8000 or FX-9000 series processor can qualify as an 8-core chip.

A post via Chiphell makes some substantial claims on AMD's upcoming Zen 2 microarchitecture, built on the 7 nm process. AMD has definitely won the core-count war once again (albeit with a much more decisive blow to Intel's dominance than with Bulldozer), but the IPC battle has been an uphill one against Intel's slow, but sure, improvement in that area over the years. AMD did say, at the time they introduced the Zen architecture, that they had a solid understanding on Zen's choke points and its improveable bits and pieces - and took it to heart to deliver just that.

So, yes, Intel, I think the AMD engineers who have developed the Zen architecture from the ground-up would take issue with that. Especially when AMD's "Glued-together" dies actually wipe the proverbial floor with the blue company's chips in power-performance ratios, and deliver much better multi-threaded performance than Intel's offerings. Not bad for a "Glued-together" solution, I'd say.

Our resident W1zzard had this to say regarding AMD's latest CPUs: "The SenseMi power-management system seems to be working well in idle, with the 8-core machine drawing the same amount of power as Intel's quad-core "Kaby Lake" machine." And "At stock speeds, the energy-efficiency of Ryzen is truly phenomenal. Prime95 loads all cores and threads on the chip, and the Ryzen ends up with as much power draw as the quad-core Intel i7-7700K. The high power draw result of the overclocked chip is due to the increased voltage needed to achieve stable operation." And let's not forget this: This is epic. We're assuming you've sifted through our game-test results before seeing this page, and so you'll find that the gaming power draw of the 8-core Ryzen makes Intel's quad-core i7-7700K look bad. Power draw is as much as 30W lesser! Ryzen is hands down the most energy-efficient performance CPU AMD ever made, and easily outclasses Intel's 14 nm "leadership." Good show."

Apparently, AMD's nomenclature of its flagship Ryzen Threadripper won't look like years-of-birth of today's gamers after all. The flagship 16-core part will bear the model name Ryzen Threadripper 1950X (and not the previously-reported 1998X). This chip was put through GeekBench 4.1.0, on an ASRock X399 Professional Gaming, paired with 16 GB of DDR4-2133 MHz memory. Whether it's dual-channel or quad-channel, is not known at this point. What is known, however, is that 2133 MHz isn't the best memory frequency for Ryzen; and paired with quad-channel DDR4-3200, one could expect the best possible performance. The 1950X was clocked at 3.40 GHz for this test, which probably is its final nominal clock speed, after all.

The Ryzen Threadripper 1950X sample scored 4,167 single-thread performance, and 24,539 points in multi-threaded performance. To put these numbers into perspective, an Intel Xeon E5-2697A v4 16-core/32-thread processor based on the "Broadwell" architecture scores 30,450 points in multi-threaded performance, even if single-thread performance is as low as 3,651 points. Perhaps the memory setup or SMT isn't optimally set for the Threadripper chip. Among the other Threadripper SKUs AMD plans to launch on July 27 are the 12-core/24-thread Ryzen Threadripper 1920X and 1920 (non-X).

AMD, in an interview with Forbes, confirmed that it is working to improve DDR4 memory support of its Ryzen series processors, to enable higher memory clocks. AMD Ryzen users find it difficult to get DDR4 memory clocks to run above 3000 MHz reliably. With memory clock being linked with the chip's Infinity Fabric clock (the interconnect between two CCX units on the "Summit Ridge" silicon), the performance incentives for higher memory clocks are just that much more.

AMD confirmed that its AGESA update for May improves DDR4 memory compatibility, although it also stressed on the need for motherboard manufacturers to improve their board designs in the future, with more PCB layers and better copper traces between the DIMM slots and the SoC socket. The company assures that more updates to AGESA are in the pipeline, and would improve performance of Ryzen processors at various levels. The AGESA updates are dispensed through motherboard vendors as BIOS updates.

AMD has given its flagship Ryzen processor, the Ryzen 7 1800X, a small price cut. The chip is now priced at USD $469 on leading online retailers in the US, down from its launch price of $499. This $30 cut, however, isn't spread over to AMD's other Ryzen 7 series parts. The Ryzen 7 1700X continues to go for $399, and the Ryzen 7 1700 (non-X) around $329. Prices of the Ryzen 5 series six-core and quad-core parts seem unaffected, too.

AMD's flagship processor, the Ryzen 7 1800X features eight cores, SMT enabling 16 logical CPUs for the software to deal with, 512 KB of L2 cache per core, and 16 MB of shared L3 cache. It is clocked at 3.60 GHz, with 4.00 GHz TurboCore frequency, and XFR (extended frequency range) unlocking higher automated overclocks depending on the effectiveness of your cooler. The socket AM4 chip is built on the 14 nm process, and has a 95W TDP rating.

AMD Ryzen 5 series desktop processors are officially available from today. The lineup is designed to compete with Intel's Core i5 quad-core "Kaby Lake" processor family, and consists of 6-core and 4-core parts carved out of the 14 nm "Summit Ridge" silicon. The lineup begins with the $169 Ryzen 5 1400 and $189 Ryzen 5 1500X quad-core parts, featuring SMT that enable 8 logical CPUs, 8 MB of L3 cache, unlocked multipliers, and XFR on the 1500X. The 1400 is clocked at 3.20 GHz with 3.40 GHz boost, while the 1500X ticks at 3.50 GHz with 3.70 GHz boost, and XFR enabling higher automatic overclocks.

While the Ryzen 5 1400 and 1500X compete with Core i3 and Core i5 "Kaby Lake" models under $200; the $219 Ryzen 5 1600 and $249 1600X six-core parts target the Core i5-7600K, with their 6 cores, 12 threads, 16 MB of L3 caches, and unlocked multipliers. The 1600 is clocked at 3.20 GHz with 3.60 GHz boost, while the 1600X ticks at 3.60 GHz core and 4.00 GHz boost. All four chips are available immediately.

Over 12 hours ahead of its unveiling, Guru3D accidentally (timezone confusion) posted some juicy details about AMD's exciting Ryzen 5 desktop processor lineup. What makes these chips particularly exciting is that they occupy several sub-$250 price points, and offer the kind of gaming performance you'd expect from the larger 8-core Ryzen 7 series chips, since not a lot of games need 8 cores and 16 threads. The Ryzen 5 series will launch with two 6-core, and two 4-core SKUs, all four of which feature SMT (simultaneous multi-threading), and unlocked base-clock multipliers.

The Ryzen 5 series is topped by the Ryzen 5-1600X, priced at USD $249. This 6-core/12-thread chip features the full 16 MB of L3 cache available on the 14 nm "Summit Ridge" silicon, and backs it with clock speeds of 3.60 GHz core and 4.00 GHz TurboCore, with the XFR (extended frequency range) feature enabling higher clocks depending on the effectiveness of your CPU cooling. This chip could be AMD's power move against the Intel Core i5-7600K. Next up, is the Ryzen 5-1600 (non-X), priced at $219. This chip lacks the XFR feature, and comes with slightly lower clocks out of the box, with 3.20 GHz core, and 3.60 GHz TurboCore. You still get an unlocked base-clock multiplier, which Intel's $220-ish competitor to this chip, the Core i5-7500, sorely lacks.

So, it's not just Windows that will be pulling the "you need the latest version" card when it comes to Ryzen CPU support. Apparently, Linux will need kernel version 4.9.10 or better to enable a lot of features, SMT included. If you really want good support, the "newer the better" is generally the way to go.

Operating below that version won't necessarily stop Ryzen from functioning as a CPU, but several notable features, most notably SMT, will be completely "broken" according to the article at Phronix.

Phronix notes that the fix landed in early February. It notes in the commit message:

After: a33d331761bc ("x86/CPU/AMD: Fix Bulldozer topology") our SMT scheduling topology for Fam17h systems is broken, because the ThreadId is included in the ApicId when SMT is enabled. So, without further decoding cpu_core_id is unique for each thread rather than the same for threads on the same core. This didn't affect systems with SMT disabled. Make cpu_core_id be what it is defined to be.

So there it is, for you techno-wizards. Apparently, microcode actually is relevant to support features, and Microsoft's claims have some degree of merit.

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.