ZOTAC TECHNOLOGY, a global company focused on innovation, announces three brand-new series of compact form-factor mini AI PCs powered by cutting-edge processors. These mini AI PCs, powered by Intel and AMD processors with dedicated Neural Processing Units (NPU), let users embrace the next generation of computing empowered by Artificial Intelligence.

Accelerated with embedded NPUs within Intel Core Ultra and AMD Ryzen Processors, the brand-new AI PC ZBOX lineup brings the power of Artificial Intelligence to the desk, allowing users to jumpstart their productivity or creativity with AI-powered acceleration. ZBOX's signature lightweight form factor chassis coupled with next-gen hardware create a new generation of versatile, capable personal computers that are smarter to use and even easier to set up.

Colorful Technology Company Limited, a leading brand in gaming PC components, gaming laptops, and Hi-fi audio products, proudly presents the CVN B650M GAMING FROZEN motherboard. This motherboard is our first AMD AM5 motherboard that supports the AMD Ryzen 7000 Series and the latest AMD Ryzen 8000 Series processors that feature the groundbreaking AMD Ryzen AI technology as well as support for AVX-512.

The CVN B650M GAMING FROZEN supports the latest AMD Ryzen 8000G Series APUs with AMD Ryzen AI technology. It also supports the AMD Ryzen 7000 and AMD Ryzen 7000 X3D Series processors with 3D V-Cache Technology, as well as support for the future AM5 processors. AMD Ryzen AI brings the power of personal computing closer to you on an AI PC, unlocking a whole new level of efficiencies for work, collaboration, and innovation so that you can stay connected better with the world around you.

Microsoft, Intel, and AMD are attempting to jumpstart demand in the PC industry again, under the aegis of the AI PC—devices with native acceleration for AI workloads. Both Intel and AMD have mobile processors with on-silicon NPUs (neural processing units), which are designed to accelerate the first wave of AI-enhanced client experiences on Windows 11 23H2. Microsoft's bulwark with democratizing AI has been Copilot, as a licensee of Open AI GPT-4, GPT-4 Turbo, Dali, and other generative AI tools from the Open AI stable. Copilot is currently Microsoft's most heavily invested application, with its most capital and best minds mobilized to making it the most popular AI assistant. Microsoft even pushed for the AI PC designator to PC OEMs, which requires them to have a dedicated Copilot key akin to the Start key (we'll see how anti-competition regulators deal with that).

The problem with Microsoft's tango with Intel and AMD to push AI PCs, is that Copilot doesn't really use an NPU, not even at the edge—you input a query or a prompt, and Copilot hands it over to a cloud-based AI service. This is about to change, with Microsoft announcing that Copilot will be able to run locally on AI PCs. Microsoft identified several kinds of Copilot use-cases that an NPU can handle on-device, which should speed up response times to Copilot queries, but this requires the NPU to have at least 40 TOPS of performance. This is a problem for the current crop of processors with NPUs. Intel's Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" has an AI Boost NPU with 10 TOPS on tap, while the Ryzen 8040 "Hawk Point" is only slightly faster, with a 16 TOPS Ryzen AI NPU. AMD has already revealed that the XDNA 2-based 2nd Generation Ryzen AI NPU in its upcoming "Strix Point" processors will come with over 40 TOPS of performance, and it stands to reason that the NPUs in Intel's "Arrow Lake" or "Lunar Lake" processors are comparable in performance; which should enable on-device Copilot.

AMD's next-gen EPYC Zen 5 processor family seems to be nearing launch status—late last week, momomo_us uncovered an unnamed motherboard's datasheet; this particular model will accommodate a single 9000-series CPU—with a maximum 400 W TDP—via an SP5 socket. 500 W and 600 W limits have been divulged (via leaks) in the past, so the 400 W spec could be an error or a: "legitimate compatibility issue with the motherboard, though 400 Watts would be in character with high-end Zen 4 SP5 motherboards," according to Tom's Hardware analysis.

AMD's current-gen "Zen 4" based EPYC "Genoa" processor family—sporting up to 96-cores/192-threads—is somewhat limited by its DDR5 support transfer rates of up to 4800 MT/s. The latest leak suggests that "Turin" is upgraded quite nicely in this area—when compared to predecessors—the SP5 board specs indicate DDR5 speeds of up to 6000 MT/s with 4 TB of RAM. December 2023 reports pointed to "Zen 5c" variants featuring (max.) 192-core/384-thread configurations, while larger "Zen 5" models are believed to be "modestly" specced with up to 128-cores and 256-threads. AMD has not settled on an official release date for its EPYC "Turin" 9000-series processors, but a loose launch window is expected "later in 2024" based on timeframes presented within product roadmaps.

On February 26, 2024, AMD received new research related to an industry-wide DRAM issue documented in "ZENHAMMER: Rowhammering Attacks on AMD Zen-based Platforms" from researchers at ETH Zurich. The research demonstrates performing Rowhammer attacks on DDR4 and DDR5 memory using AMD "Zen" platforms. Given the history around Rowhammer, the researchers do not consider these rowhammering attacks to be a new issue.

Mitigation
AMD continues to assess the researchers' claim of demonstrating Rowhammer bit flips on a DDR5 device for the first time. AMD will provide an update upon completion of its assessment.

AMD Socket AM4 platform gets yet another lease of life, as the company is planning another round of processor models for the platform. This was revealed by AMD in a meeting with its channel partners as part of the AMD Advantage Club event. The Ryzen 5000XT line of desktop Socket AM4 processors will be modeled along the Ryzen 3000XT series that formed the company's final refresh of the Ryzen 3000 "Zen 2" family before it launched the Ryzen 5000 series. The 3000XT series were criticized for being mere 100-200 MHz speed bumps that didn't offer tangible benefits over the parts they were replacing from the stack, but merely being a means for AMD to restore its presence at certain price-points. It remains to be seen what the 5000XT series looks like. In all likelihood, these will continue to be speed-bumps of the Ryzen 5000 "Vermeer" processors; but at attractive price-points. The slide revealing the 5000XT series also reveals two new SKUs—the Ryzen 7 8700F, and the Ryzen 5 8400F. Both are likely to be based on the 4 nm "Hawk Point" monolithic silicon, but with their iGPUs disabled.

George Hotz and his startup operation (Tiny Corporation) appeared ready to completely abandon AMD Radeon GPUs last week, after experiencing a period of firmware-related headaches. The original plan involved the development of a pre-orderable $15,000 TinyBox AI compute cluster that housed six XFX Speedster MERC310 RX 7900 XTX graphics cards, but software/driver issues prompted experimentation via alternative hardware routes. A lot of media coverage has focused on the unusual adoption of consumer-grade GPUs—Tiny Corp.'s struggles with RDNA 3 (rather than CDNA 3) were maneuvered further into public view, after top AMD brass pitched in.

The startup's social media feed is very transparent about showcasing everyday tasks, problem-solving and important decision-making. Several Acer Predator BiFrost Arc A770 OC cards were purchased and promptly integrated into a colorfully-lit TinyBox prototype, but Hotz & Co. swiftly moved onto Team Green pastures. Tiny Corp. has begrudgingly adopted NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 GPUs. Earlier today, it was announced that work on the AMD-based system has resumed—although customers were forewarned about anticipated teething problems. The surprising message arrived in the early hours: "a hard to find 'umr' repo has turned around the feasibility of the AMD TinyBox. It will be a journey, but it gives us an ability to debug. We're going to sell both, red for $15,000 and green for $25,000. When you realize your pre-order you'll choose your color. Website has been updated. If you like to tinker and feel pain, buy red. The driver still crashes the GPU and hangs sometimes, but we can work together to improve it."

Microsoft revealed that its DirectSR (Direct Super Resolution) API, which seeks to standardize super resolution-based performance enhancement technologies in games, has a hardware-independent default code path that is essentially based on AMD FSR 2.2, a Microsoft Dev Manager speaking at GDC has revealed. DirectSR provides a common set of APIs for game developers to integrate super resolution—so that developers don't have to separately implement DLSS, FSR and XeSS. Rather these upscalers, and others, can register themselves with the DirectSR API, and then get fed a dozen of input parameters that they may (or may not) use to improve the upscaling quality. Since AMD has open-sourced the code of FSR 2.2 on GPUOpen, and it is entirely shader-based, and doesn't use exotic technologies such as AI, Microsoft decided to use FSR 2.2 as the base algorithm for DirectSR. If other algorithms like DLSS are available on the user system, these can be activated by the user, too, of course, but supporting them requires no extra work from the developer side.Update 18:15 UTC: Updated the news post to make it clear that the FSR 2.2 code path is merely a default, and other upscalers are free to hook into DirectSR to provide upscaling.

According to a report by the Financial Times, China has banned the use of Intel and AMD chips in government computers. The decision, which aims to reduce reliance on foreign technology and boost domestic semiconductor production, is expected to have far-reaching implications for the global tech industry and geopolitical relations. The Chinese government has instructed PC suppliers to replace foreign-made CPUs with domestic alternatives in all government computers within the next two years. This directive is part of China's broader strategy to achieve self-sufficiency in critical technologies and reduce its vulnerability to potential supply chain disruptions or geopolitical tensions. The ban on Intel and AMD chips is likely to significantly impact the two companies, as China represents a substantial market for their products.

However, the move also presents an opportunity for Chinese semiconductor manufacturers like Loongson and Sunway to expand their market share and accelerate the development of their next-generation chip technologies. By reducing its dependence on foreign technology, China aims to strengthen its position in the global tech landscape and mitigate the risks associated with potential sanctions or export controls. As China pushes for self-sufficiency in semiconductors, the global technology industry will likely experience a shift in supply chains and increased competition from Chinese manufacturers. This development may also prompt other countries to reevaluate their reliance on foreign technology and invest in domestic production capabilities, potentially leading to a more fragmented and competitive global tech market.

Vastarmor is a relatively young graphics card manufacturer and AMD board partner (since the RDNA 2 days)—their Alloy product range was updated with new Radeon RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT triple-fan "PRO" models last September. VideoCardz has discovered a new dual-fan "non-PRO" white variant—the Vastarmor RX 7700 XT Alloy White 12 GB. TPU's GPU database entry lists a release date of August 25—according to the VideoCardz report, Vastarmor has not settled on final pricing or an official launch date. The standard black (with small red accents) RX 7700 XT Alloy model did reach Chinese retailers last year—the pale variant is predicted to cost about the same, or demand a slight premium over the black version.

Specifications remain consistent across both—according to VideoCardz: "Vastarmor has verified that the card maintains a base clock of 1784 MHz, a game clock of 2276 MHz, and a boost clock that reaches up to 2600 MHz (an overclock of 2.2% for boost). Despite its compact size, measuring at 26.3 x 13.2 cm, the card demands three slots due to its thickness of 5.6 cm. Power-wise, it relies on standard 8-pin power connectors, installed in pairs." The factory-set overclocks are identical to the numbers designated to Vastarmor's RX 7700 XT Alloy PRO model, although their triple-fan design is slightly slimmer. The longer design accommodates a 90 mm fan, positioned between two 100 mm units.

Without making much noise, AMD lifted the memory overclocking limits of the Radeon RX 7900 GRE graphics card with its latest Adrenalin 24.3.1 WHQL drivers, TechPowerUp found. The changelog is a bit vague and states "The maximum memory tuning limit may be incorrectly reported on AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE graphics products."—we tested it. The RX 7900 GRE has been around since mid-2023, but gained prominence as the company gave it a global launch in February 2024, to help AMD better compete with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Super. Before this, the RX 7900 GRE had started out its lifecycle as a special edition product confined to China, and its designers had ensured that it came with just the right performance positioning that didn't end up disrupting other products in the AMD stack. One of these limitations had to do with the memory overclocking potential, which was probably put in place to ensure that the RX 7900 GRE has a near-identical total board power as the RX 7800 XT.

Shortly after the global launch of the RX 7900 GRE, and responding to drama online, AMD declared the limited memory overclocking range a bug and promised a fix. The overclocking limits are defined in the graphics card VBIOS, so increasing those limits would mean shipping BIOS updates for over a dozen SKUs from all the major vendors, and requiring users to upgrade it by themselves. Such a solution isn't very practical, so AMD implemented a clock limit override in their new drivers, which reprograms the power limits on the GPU during boot-up. Nicely done, good job AMD!

Dr. Lisa Su introduced AMD's "next-gen AMD Ryzen" processor series during a recent presentation at the Beijing AI PC Innovation Summit—this announcement confirms that Team Red's RDNA 3+ (AKA 3.5) graphics technology is destined to arrive (on board) with the launch of "Strix Point" processors. Product roadmaps remain unchanged—when compared to slides from last December—AMD still anticipates a 2024 launch window. China has been introduced to current-gen "Hawk Point" Ryzen 8040 mobile and 8000G (AM5) desktop processors—key AMD personnel presented a variety of products, including region-specific budget options.

David Wang, SVP of GPU Technology and Engineering R&D, covered the RDNA 3+ and XDNA 2 architectures (very briefly) during his on-stage appearance—he dedicated most of his attention to current-gen "Hawk Point" processors. The Strix Point integrated solution—a GFX1150 target—has been linked to "RDNA 3.5" for a while, a lot of this information was gleaned from publicly visible AMD patch notices. The latest Team Red software engineering activities indicate that Zen 5 CPU enablement is nearing a possible finish line.

AMD's Beijing AI PC Innovation Summit served as introduction point for a Chinese market launch of "Hawk Point" Ryzen 8040 mobile series and 8000G desktop processors—news coverage has, so far, focused on that rollout as well as a teasing of next-gen "Strix Point" processors. HXL/9550pro has put a spotlight on an easy-to-miss presentation slide—their social media post revealed the existence of new budget-friendly Ryzen 8000F CPUs. Team Red seems to be preparing two China-exclusive SKUs: Ryzen 7 8700F and Ryzen 5 8400F—not many details were revealed on-stage, so reporters have played a guessing game with speculated technical information. Industry experts believe that the 8700F is an iGPU-less version of AMD's "Hawk Point" Ryzen 7 8700G APU—utilizing the same 8 core and 16 thread configuration, but missing the Radeon 780M integrated graphics solution.

The lower-end SKU is a more perplexing product, since AMD did not elaborate much during "budget" product unveilings—VideoCardz put its thinking hat on for this one: "meanwhile, the 8400F might be harder to guess, as the name sits between 8500G and 8300G, both featuring vastly different configurations. An educated guess would be 6 cores and 12 threads, possibly with two Zen 4 and four Zen 4c cores." The "F" model suffix gained attention last year—courtesy of Team Red's Ryzen 5 7500F CPU. This iGPU-less "Raphael" Zen 4 SKU was initially released as a Chinese market exclusive, but eventually headed West as an option for system integrators.

AMD at GDC 2024 announced the FidelityFX Super Resolution 3.1 (FSR 3.1). While the original FSR 3.0 feature-set largely carries forward the super resolution upscaler from FSR 2.2, adding frame generation on top; the new FSR 3.1 adds several image quality improvements to the upscaler itself, improving image quality at every performance preset. Specifically, it improves the temporal stability of the output at rest and in movement, to reduce flickering and shimmering, or "fizziness" around objects in motion. The new upscaler also reduces ghosting, and better preserves detail.

Next up, is a rather important change in the way the frame generation technology works. AMD has decoupled FSR 3.1 frame generation from the upscaling tech, which allows frame generation to work with other upscaling solutions, such as DLSS or XeSS. The possibilities of such a decoupling are endless—have an RTX 30-series "Ampere" GPU that lacks DLSS 3 frame generation support? No worries, use DLSS 2 for the upscaling, and FSR 3.1 for the frame generation. AMD is also clumping its FidelityFX family of technologies into a new FidelityFX API that makes it easier for developers to debug, and paves the way for forward-compatibility with future versions of FSR. Lastly, FSR 3.1 supports Vulkan API, and the Microsoft Xbox GDK. AMD plans to release FSR 3.1 to developers through its GPUOpen platform in Q2-2024, and its first implementations on games are expected later this year. In the meantime, AMD implemented FSR 3.1 on "Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart," to showcase the new upscaler.

AMD today released the latest version of its Adrenalin graphics drivers. Version 24.3.1 WHQL comes with optimization for Dragon's Dogma 2, Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition, and Outpost: Infinity Siege. The drivers also add AMD HYPR-Tune optimizations for Dragon's Dogma 2, Diablo IV, Ghostrunner 2, and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.

The drivers address a fairly large number of issues. To begin with, excessive micro-stutter after enabling AFMF for select games has been fixed. Driver timeout issues with Helldivers 2 and Starcraft II on RX 7900 series GPUs has been fixed. Excessive loading times with World of Warcraft (DX12) on some GPUs has been fixed. A purple tinge noticed in Dying Light 2 Stay Human Reloaded Edition with Radeon Boost enabled, has been fixed. Invisible or missing textures on some characters with Cossacks 3 has been fixed. Incorrect memory tuning limit reported for the RX 7900 GRE has been fixed. Also fixed is a shader caching failure for Windows usernames containing accented characters. Grab the driver from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Software Adrenalin 24.3.1 WHQL

Yesterday, AMD announced that its cutting-edge adaptive computing technology was selected by Sony Semiconductor Solutions (SSS) for its newest automotive LiDAR reference design. SSS, a global leader in image sensor technology, and AMD joined forces to deliver a powerful and efficient LiDAR solution for use in autonomous vehicles. Using adaptive computing technology from AMD significantly extends the SSS LiDAR system capabilities, offering extraordinary accuracy, fast data processing, and high reliability for next-generation autonomous driving solutions.

In the rapidly evolving landscape of autonomous driving, the demand for precise and reliable sensor technology has never been greater. LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) technology plays a pivotal role in enabling depth perception and environmental mapping for various industries. LiDAR delivers image classification, segmentation, and object detection data that is essential for 3D vision perception enhanced by AI, which cannot be provided by cameras alone, especially in low-light or inclement weather. The dedicated LiDAR reference design addresses the complexities of autonomous vehicle development with a standardized platform to enhance safety in navigating diverse driving scenarios.

George Hotz and his Tiny Corporation colleagues were pinning their hopes on AMD delivering some good news earlier this month. The development of a "TinyBox" AI compute cluster project hit some major roadblocks a couple of weeks ago—at the time, Radeon RX 7900 XTX GPU firmware was not gelling with Tiny Corp.'s setup. Hotz expressed "70% confidence" in AMD approving open-sourcing certain bits of firmware. At the time of writing this has not transpired—this week the Tiny Corp. social media account has, once again, switched to an "all guns blazing" mode. Hotz and Co. have publicly disclosed that they were dabbling with Intel Arc graphics cards, as of a few weeks ago. NVIDIA hardware is another possible route, according to freshly posted open thoughts.

Yesterday, it was confirmed that the young startup organization had paused its utilization of XFX Speedster MERC310 RX 7900 XTX graphics cards: "the driver is still very unstable, and when it crashes or hangs we have no way of debugging it. We have no way of dumping the state of a GPU. Apparently it isn't just the MES causing these issues, it's also the Command Processor (CP). After seeing how open Tenstorrent is, it's hard to deal with this. With Tenstorrent, I feel confident that if there's an issue, I can debug and fix it. With AMD, I don't." The $15,000 TinyBox system relies on "cheaper" gaming-oriented GPUs, rather than traditional enterprise solutions—this oddball approach has attracted a number of customers, but the latest announcements likely signal another delay. Yesterday's tweet continued to state: "we are exploring Intel, working on adding Level Zero support to tinygrad. We also added a $400 bounty for XMX support. We are also (sadly) exploring a 6x GeForce RTX 4090 GPU box. At least we know the software is good there. We will revisit AMD once we have an open and reproducible build process for the driver and firmware. We are willing to dive really deep into hardware to make it amazing. But without access, we can't."

Naughty Dog, developer of "The Last of Us Part I" released a small patch for the Windows PC version of the game, which adds official support for FidelityFX Super Resolution 3 (FSR 3). This includes support for both FSR 3 Frame Generation, and FSR 3 Super Resolution. Today's update takes the count of games that officially support FSR 3 up to 19. There are unofficial ways to mod most popular games to support AMD's latest upscaling tech, thanks to the algorithm being freely available through AMD's GPUOpen platform.

Today, Lenovo launched its latest business laptop offerings in the form of the ThinkPad L series and ThinkPad X13 series. The new laptops are a testament to Lenovo's commitment to innovation and sustainability with features such as enhanced repairability, more recycled materials, efficient power management, and powerful processing capabilities with built-in security and manageability. With these offerings, Lenovo is not only showcasing its technological expertise but also its dedication to supporting a diverse customer base in achieving success across many business segments.

Lenovo's latest ThinkPad L series and X13 series with multiple advancements geared towards enhancing user experience. The new models offer several form factors - including 13-inch or 13-inch 2-in-1, 14-inch and introducing new 16-inch displays in ThinkPad L16 - catering to those in need of portability without compromising performance. Equipped with an optional higher resolution 5MP camera, users can expect enhanced video conferencing and content creation capabilities. The 16:10 ratio displays are designed to offer an immersive viewing experience for optimal productivity and with support up to 64 GB RAM, these laptops promise seamless multitasking and enhanced performance. Improvements in rear vent thermals ensure efficient cooling for prolonged usage, while select models offer support for up to Wi-Fi 7 and 4G LTE or 5G sub6 on select models, enhancing connectivity options. Powered by Intel Core Ultra processors with Intel vPro or AMD Ryzen PRO 7030 Series processors on ThinkPad L14 Gen 5 and L16 Gen 1, these new laptops are designed to optimally run Windows 11 and are poised to elevate productivity and streamline professional tasks.

Last week, the Professional Gamers League (PGL) announced an interesting overhaul of tournament hardware—new systems will be fitted with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 graphics cards, then hooked up to BenQ ZOWIE XL2566K 24.5" 360 Hz gaming monitors. Their previous generation machines were (initially) designed around AMD's Ryzen 9 5950X processor, but the organization is leaving AM4 platforms behind: "PGL is excited to announce that our team has fully optimized upgraded gaming PCs in partnership with Afromnazareth, and we are ready to deliver an unparalleled esports experience at the PGL CS2 Major Copenhagen 2024. At the heart of this cutting-edge setup is the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D processor, explicitly chosen for its exceptional performance capabilities and ability to handle the demands of CS2. This processor is renowned for its superior gaming performance, offering players the speed, power, and efficiency required to perform at the highest levels of competition."

The Ryzen 7 5800X3D is a more straightforward upgrade—as an easy drop-in for the PGL's older AM4 platform machines, but a leap into new ecosystems will grant a bit of future-proofing. Team Red is expected to support AM5 across a couple of processor generations. PGL did upgrade systems with 5800X3D CPUs, due to player feedback—according to Tom's Hardware: "there was some discontent among players with the previous configuration with the Ryzen 9 5950X because, while the chip sports 16 Zen 3 execution cores, Counter-Strike 2 doesn't exploit the processor's prowess. Some players criticized PGL's poor processor choice for previous events, claiming lousy frame rates." Performance connoisseurs will be pleased to hear about the tournament organizer's new push into modern platforms—Silviu Stroie, PGL CEO, stated: "we have meticulously optimized this bespoke gaming setup to ensure that every participant experiences CS2 in the highest fidelity without compromise. The AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU stands out as a game-changer in the esports arena, promising to elevate the competitive play of CS2 to new heights."

AMD in a GPUOpen blog post showed off some "super early" performance numbers for a Radeon RX 7900 XTX GPU rendering a DirectX 12 workload using Work Graphs, instead of the traditional ExecuteIndirect method. Work Graphs is method by with GPUs enjoy greater autonomy in executing render and general purpose compute workloads, by vastly reducing the role of the CPU in the rendering pipeline. At the ongoing GDC 2024, AMD showed off a performance demo of a DirectX 12 rendering workload that implements Work Graphs, running in sync with Mesh Nodes, a feature that will process draw calls while the rest of the graph is executing. This is compared its render times to the traditional method. The differences are staggering.

It takes the traditional ExecuteIndirect method 64% longer to render a frame compared to Work Graphs, in other words, the new method is 39% faster. This has a direct impact on frame-rates for applications that implement Work Graphs. Although not part of the demo, AMD RDNA 3 also implement a silicon-level acceleration for Multi-draw indirect, another API-level feature that's underutilized. AMD's demo showcases a 3D scene without the HUD UI and skybox, being rendered on a single work graph dispatch. Work Graphs and Mesh Nodes are the next big feature addition to the DirectX 12 API feature-set, which will begin rolling out later this year. Both AMD and NVIDIA have ongoing implementation efforts to implement it.

Close monitoring of AMD engineering activities—around mid-February time—revealed the existence of a new set of patches for GNU Compiler Collection (GCC). At the time, news reports put spotlights on Team Red's "znver5" enablement—this target indicated that staffers were prepping Zen 5 processor microarchitecture with an expanded AVX instruction set (building on top of Zen 4's current capabilities). Phoronix's Michael Larabel has fretted over AMD's relative silence over the past month—regarding a possible merging of support prior to the stable release of GCC 14.

He was relieved to discover renewed activity earlier today: "AMD Zen 5 processor enablement has been merged to GCC Git in time for the GCC 14.1 stable release that will be out in the coming weeks. It was great seeing AMD getting their Zen 5 processor enablement upstreamed ahead of any Ryzen or EPYC product launches and being able to do so in time for the annual major GNU Compiler Collection feature release." Team Red is inching ever closer to the much anticipated 2024 rollout of next-gen Ryzen 9000 processors, please refer to a VideoCardz-authored timeline diagram (below)—"Granite Ridge" is an incoming AM5 desktop CPU family (reportedly utilizing Zen 5 and RDNA 2 tech), while "Strix Point" is scheduled to become a mobile APU series (Zen 5 + RDNA 3.5).

AMD's flagship desktop processor, the Ryzen 9 7950X3D, saw an impressive retailer-level price-cut, sending its street-price down to $565 on Newegg, or nearly $135 (19%) below its launch price of $700. The processor is listed at $595, but a $30 discount coupon sends the price down to $565. It's not just Newegg, even Amazon US has the chip listed at $591, with a $26 discount coupon sending it down to $565. The Ryzen 9 7950X3D is about 1% slower than the 7800X3D at gaming, but is still about as fast as the Core i9-14900K at gaming; and its 8 additional "Zen 4" cores helps shore up productivity performance over the 7800X3D.

Price-cuts to the Ryzen 9 7950X3D can be seen as a move to greet last week's launch of the Intel Core i9-14900KS, an enthusiast-magnet for its up to 6.20 GHz clock-speeds, and overclocking headroom; but in our testing, the new chip barely beats the Ryzen 7 7800X3D in gaming; although is 2% faster than the regular i9-14900K at both gaming- and productivity.

The mid-range AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT is not supposed to have 16 GB of video memory, but the same hardware modders from Brazil behind the recent GeForce RTX 2080 16 GB mod, had other ideas for the card. They have not only increased the memory size to 16 GB through memory chip replacement, but also succeeded in widening its memory bus to 256-bit. The RX 5600 XT was launched in 2018 with 6 GB of 14 Gbps GDDR6 memory over a 192-bit memory interface. The card is cut down from the 7 nm "Navi 10" silicon powering the RX 5700 series, by enabling 36 out of 40 compute units (the same count as the RX 5700), but with a truncated 192-bit memory bus wired to 6 GB of memory (and so 25% lower memory bandwidth).

Paulo Gomes and Ronaldo Buassali pulled off the daring Radeon RX 5600 XT memory mod, which involves not just increasing the memory size from 6 GB to 16 GB, but also widening the memory bus from 192-bit to 256-bit. Since the RX 5600 XT is based on the same "Navi 10" GPU as the RX 5700, custom-design graphics cards tend to reuse PCB designs from the RX 5700 series, and have two vacant memory pads that are sometimes exposed and even balled. The mod involves three key stages—to replace the six 8 Gbit GDDR6 memory chips with eight 16 Gbit ones; to add the required electrical SMDs and VRM components for the two additional memory chips; and lastly, to give the card a modified BIOS that can let it play with the new memory configuration. The "Navi 10" silicon also powers certain Radeon Pro graphics cards with 16 GB of memory using 16 Gbit memory chips, so that could be the starting point for the BIOS mod.

Acer introduced the Predator Bifrost Radeon RX 7900 GRE OC graphics card. This card is based on what appears to be an identical board design to its Predator Bifrost RX 7800 XT OC. Given that the TBP of both GPUs is similar to each other around the 260 W-mark, this shouldn't be a cause for concern. The card features a triple-slot cooling solution, with an aluminium fin-stack heatsink, and three Frostblade 3.0 fans with webbed impellers, designed to maximum axial airflow. The card draws power from a pair of 8-pin PCIe power connectors. Display outputs include three DisplayPort 2.1, and an HDMI 2.1. The card comes with a healthy factory OC of 2050 MHz Game clock, compared to 1880 MHz AMD reference for the RX 7900 GRE.

Based on the compacted version of the "Navi 31" chiplet GPU, the RX 7900 GRE is powered by the latest RDNA 3 graphics architecture, and features 5,120 stream processors across 80 compute units (CU); besides 160 AI accelerators, 80 Ray accelerators, 320 TMUs, and 160 ROPs. Only four of the six memory cache dies (MCDs) are enabled, so the GPU gets 64 MB of Infinity Cache, and a 256-bit wide GDDR6 memory interface, driving 16 GB of memory at 18 Gbps (576 GB/s bandwidth). Acer didn't reveal pricing.