Processors - Page 101

Qualcomm recently announced their Snapdragon 835, the first 10nm SoC, and here we are already talking about 7nm chips.

Earlier this year, Samsung announced that they will start producing 7nm chips in early 2018, meaning they could be ready for their nex year's Galaxy S flagship.

According to a new report, MediaTek and TSMC are working together to bring a next-generation SoC. The 7nm SoC will have 12 cores.

AMD launched its Ryzen CPU family - at least the high-end 8C/16T parts in the Ryzen 7 range, but the server CPU market is about to be disrupted by their upcoming Naples CPU family.

Naples is a massively scalable 32C/64T system-on-chip (SoC) design, with support for two high-performance threads per core. We have 8-channel DDR4 support with room for 32 DIMMs on server boards, and so much more.

AMD Naples Features:

AMD has well and truly shaken up the CPU market with the release of Ryzen processors, led by the flagship Ryzen 7 1800X. Now that Ryzen is here, we're already hearing about Zen 2 - which will be known as Pinnacle Ridge.

The current Ryzen family of CPUs is known as Summit Ridge, but Zen 2 and Zen 3 should deliver better IPC performance, new features, and other goodies. Ryzen in its first-gen appearance had a 52% IPC (Instructions Per Clock) over the previous generation AMD CPU architecture - while Zen 2 and Zen 3 should deliver 5-15% improvements in IPC.

During a recent AMA on Reddit, AMD CEO Lisa Su said: "In new product development, you always learn a lot and we have our list of thingsthat we are adding to zen2 and zen3 to get even more performance going forward".

AMD has come out swinging in the desktop CPU market with their unbelievable Ryzen 7 family of CPUs, led by the impressive $499 chip in the Ryzen 7 1800X - but it's getting close to the time where they disrupt the datacenter market with Naples.

AMD's upcoming Naples CPU will offer up to 32 'Zen' cores, with huge bandwidth and IO numbers to boot, with "volume availability building in the second half of the year through OEM and channel partners". Forrest Norrod, senior vice president and general manager, Enterprise, Embedded and Semi-Custom business unit, AMD explains: "Today marks the first major milestone in AMD re-asserting its position as an innovator in the datacenter and returning choice to customers in high-performance server CPUs".

He continued: "Naples' represents a completely new approach to supporting the massive processing requirements of the modern datacenter. This groundbreaking system-on-chip delivers the unique high-performance features required to address highly virtualized environments, massive data sets and new, emerging workloads".

Intel is scrambling in what seems like a feverish emergency over AMD's new Ryzen processors, with Microcenter dropping Core CPU prices like crazy - and now, Intel is sending tech media emails saying "call us before you write" your Ryzen review. This is what happens when AMD launches their new Ryzen 7 1800X processor priced at $499, offering performance that rivals Intel's current $1000+ processor.

Charlie Demerjian, Semi Accurate founder and super-awesome comic book collector said: "Intel PR sent out a last-minute "call us before you write" email to most of the press, but not SemiAccurate, after hours last night. You could infer that they are suddenly really worried about something".

This isn't too far out of the norm for one company to email reviewers over their competitors' impending launch, but Intel seemed unstoppable... until Ryzen. Now, there are other reports that Intel will simply throw down more money than AMD can handle to fight Ryzen, and what I want to know now is - will Intel continue with its tease of AMD Radeon graphics inside of their CPUs? Now that Ryzen is a massive threat to their CPU monopoly, I think plans are going to change in a big way over the coming months.

AMD dropped its Ryzen processors onto the market a few days ago, hitting the #1 and #2 best-selling CPUs on Amazon within hours, breaking world records without breaking a sweat, and of course - hitting Intel where it hurts.

Intel has now reacted, as I thought they would - by reducing the prices of their Core range of processors across the board. Microcenter is already listing the processors with huge price reductions, with their flagship Core i7-6950X dropping by $300 ($1899 to $1599) while the Core i7-6900K drops by $200 from $1199 to $999, the Core i7-7700K has been slashed by $80 ($379 to $299). The full price cuts:

Now the question remains: how long until other retailers begin dropping the prices of their Intel CPUs - and will they get cheaper? Intel must be feeling the threat of Ryzen quicker than anticipated, for the company to be reacting this quickly - it only means great things for not just AMD, but the world.

AMD has launched its Ryzen CPU family to some huge fanfare, with the Ryzen 7 1800X and Ryzen 7 1700X becoming the #1 and #2 best-selling CPUs on Amazon within hours - and now, some retailers are already selling out of their first batches of pre-orders.

Right now, the Ryzen 7 1800X is unavailale on Amazon - with no ETA on new stock, with Newegg saying the Ryzen 7 1800X is out of stock. The Ryzen 7 1700X and 1700 processors are in stock for now, but I'm sure they're going to sell quickly - especially with news that the $329 processor can overclock to 4GHz+ and beat the Ryzen 7 1800X.

NCIX has the Ryzen 7 1800X, 1700X, and 1700 all available for pre-order (in both the US and Canada), while Memory Express has all 3 processors (for the Canadian market only). Fry's says that all of their Ryzen CPUs are now out of stock, so if you're in the market for a new Ryzen PC - you might want to pull the trigger, now.

AMD launched their higher-end/enthusiast Ryzen 7 range in the last 36 hours, with the flagship Ryzen 7 1800X - but it's the mainstream and mid-range CPUs that will be shifting the ground beneath Intel's feet - with the Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 3 range of chips.

Now we're hearing that AMD will be launching their Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 3 range of CPUs in Q2 2017 - which means sometime between April and June, perfect for a huge unveil during Computex in late-May, early-June. Ryzen 5 will aim at the Core i5 processors from Intel, with 6C/12T - providing more CPU threads than the higher-end Core i7-7700K and its 4C/8T.

The Ryzen 5 1600X is meant to cost $259, while the Ryzen 5 1500 will cost $229. Ryzen 3 will arrive as 4-core CPUs, and they should be CHEAP AS CHIPS, offering some great performance and more CPU threads for the CPU intensive games/applications out there.

AMD's new Ryzen 7 1700 might cost just $329, but it offers some monster performance when overclocked - especially when it hits 4GHz, where it keeps up with the flagship Ryzen 7 1800X.

OCUK member 'Gibbo' overclocked his retail Ryzen 7 1700 processor using an ASUS Crosshair VI Hero motherboard, with the Ryzen 7 1700 hitting 4.05GHz on all 8 cores. At this speed, the overclocked Ryzen 7 1700 is running at 450MHz higher than the 1800X.

Gibbo explained: "We just tested a 1700, it hit 4.0GHz stable in everything, but ONLY in the Crosshair mainboard, the lower-end boards it was hovering around 3.80GHz as the VRM's were cooking with extra voltage. It however was maxing around 4050MHz, so I'd say 1700 can do 3.9-4.1GHz, of course the 1800X will probably do 4.1-4.3 as no doubt better binned, but if your clocking the motherboard has a big impact on the overclock and so far ASUS Crosshair and Asrock Taichi seem the best two".2

Thanks to the fancy SenseMI technology inside of AMD's new Ryzen processors, they will be self-overclocking with Extended Frequency Range (XFR) tech - and the better the cooling, the higher XFR cranks the frequency.

This means it will be a good idea to buy the best cooling your case can handle, so the frequency of your new Ryzen CPU reaches as high as XFR can push it. I wasn't too surprised to see Amazon offering Ryzen 7 1800X and 1700X bundles with Corsair AIO units, more specifically Corsair's damn good Hydro Series H100i V2 Extreme Performance Liquid CPU cooler.

The bundle lets you save $33, dropping the price of the Corsair H100i from $129.99 to $96.99.

Samsung has just officially unveiled its next-gen Exynos 9 Series of processors, led by the Exynos 9 Series 8895 - Samsung's first processor to use 10nm FinFET technology.

Samsung's new Exynos 9 Series 8895 is the first processor to have a gigabit LTE modem that supports five carrier aggregation, or 5CA. This means Exynos 8895-powered smartphones will be capable of 1Gbps downlink speeds, and 150Mbps uploads.

The new Exynos 8895 has an 8-core processor at its heart, with 4K video support thanks to ARM's latest Mali-G71 GPU, and when teamed with the advanced MFC (multi-format codec) it will support video recording and playback at a huge 4K 120FPS. This is a huge deal, as it means Samsung's new Galaxy S8 might be capable of 4K 120FPS support... which would be, in the words of Ron Burgundy, that would be "kind of a big deal".

AMD is hitting a new stride, unlike anything the company has seen before. We know their history leading into last year, starting this new direction with the GPU division splitting off into Radeon Technologies Group. RTG launched the mid-range Radeon RX 400 series, led by the Radeon RX 480. It was a great hit for AMD, but the CPU side of their business wasn't doing so well - until now.

AMD launched their much anticipated - seriously, have you seen any CPU in history apart from Intel's first Core series have this much hype? - Ryzen processors with a massive thud, dropping the Ryzen 7 1800X with 8C/16T @ 4GHz for just $499. Intel would be scrambling right now with how they're going to combat this, but in the meantime AMD is enjoying the #1 and #2 best-selling CPU spots on Amazon right now.

The Ryzen 7 1800X is breaking world records on Cinebench multi-threaded benchmarks, oh and the #4 best-selling CPU on Amazon is the Ryzen 7 1700. If the winning continues at this rate, AMD will be hitting a Donald Trump level of winning - where there'll be so much winning, we'll be begging AMD to stop. That's until Vega - that is.

AMD has made its Ryzen CPU family official with three SKUs unveiled so far: Ryzen 7 1800X, Ryzen 7 1700X, and the Ryzen 7 1700. The media that attended received a Ryzen review kit, which includes:

I think the review kit is awesome, with a few notes: I want one... really bad. Second, the inclusion of VENGEANCE memory is a nice stab at Intel... nice work there, AMD.

We heard about the price of the Ryzen 7 1800X quite a while ago, where we reported the very early rumors of the $499 pricing - and I still remember AMD asking me "do I really think my report on $499 pricing is correct" - and I always backed it up.

Now we're here at the launch of Ryzen, with a 52% improvement in IPC performance - led by the flagship Ryzen 7 1800X. AMD's new Ryzen 7 1800X has 8C/16T of CPU performance with Base and Boost clocks of 3.6GHz and 4GHz, respectively.

We have their SenseMI technology, something we've gone into detail with - with AMD using a smarter CPU architecture that is actually smarter. It adaptively controls your CPU for lower power consumption, but will ramp right up with Precision Boost - overclocking your Ryzen processor in 25MHz increments (100MHz with Intel) on-the-fly.

Yesterday, AMD's CEO, Lisa Su, welcomed a room full of industry partners, analysts, and press with open arms and a cheerful attitude to officially introduce AMD's top three Ryzen SKUs. I was in attendance, and I will go over their slides and demos that I can share publically today.

For starters, AMD's goal for Ryzen IPC increase was 40%. AMD was happy to report they exceeded their goal, and improved IPC 52% over their previous generation products. That is a huge increase, and we probably won't see an increase like this ever again from either camp. AMD also shared the first die shot of the 8-Core Ryzen CPU.

AMD's "Ryzen 7" lineup will include three CPUs, the 1700, the 1700X, and the 1800X. The presentation started with the 1700X, and it will have a base clock of 3.4GHz, a boost up to 3.8GHz, and a 95-watt TDP. AMD claims that the 1700X offers 4% higher performance than the Intel i7-6900K and 39% higher performance than the i7-6800K.

Xiaomi has confirmed on the Chinese social media website Weibo that they would launch their own 'Pinecone' processor on February 28th in Beijing.

The company earlier announced that they wouldn't be present at this year's MWC in Barcelona cause "they have nothing to show," but they chose a date for the official Pinecone launch exactly during MWC.

The company hasn't provided any additional info, but it was previously speculated that we could see this chip in Xiaomi's upcoming Mi 5c.

Samsung's flagships last year, the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, were powered by either Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820, or Samsung's Exynos 8 Octa processor, depending on the market.

Ever since the rumors about the Galaxy S8 and S8+ started floating around, we have been hearing about the Snapdragon 835, which the devices will feature. However, it is highly possible that some markets will receive phones powered by an Exynos 9 processor, which is yet to be announced.

Read also: Samsung Galaxy S8 color options and pricing leak

AMD's upcoming Ryzen CPUs are going to shake up the entire market, but another exciting aspect is the motherboards that will be released - and while we've already been teased by the GIGABYTE, ASUS and even ASRock - now we're being greeted by the X370 Gaming Pro Carbon from MSI.

MSI's upcoming X370 Gaming Pro Carbon is a slick looking board with distinct PCIe ports for your graphics cards, Mystic Light RGBs, 4 x DDR4 DIMM slots, 2 x M.2 slots, HDMI, DVI, USB 3.0 and USB-C connectivity, it looks like one of the best Ryzen motherboards so far.

The stars are aligning for AMD's upcoming Ryzen CPU family, with the mid-range Ryzen 5 1600X to reportedly come in at a price of just $260 - featuring 6C/12T of CPU performance at 3.3GHz, and 3.7GHz under Boost - also with XFR pushing past 3.7GHz as the cooling scales (the better the cooling tech, like a Corsiar AIO unit - the higher XFR pushes the frequency).

Well, early benchmarks indicate that the Ryzen 5 1600X show that Cinebench R15 performance is very strong, with a score that its edging on Intel's Core i7-6800K, a CPU that costs $170 more at $430. It also offers performance that is only just shy of the Core i7-6850K, a chip that costs $617. This means AMD's new CPU is 138% cheaper, under half the cost - and remember, the motherboard savings will be $100-$150 easily.

The Ryzen 5 processors are the CPUs that will be the most disruptive to Intel, as AMD will be selling chips at under half the cost of the equivalent Intel - so gamers can now have even faster PCs, with a significant saving. This is money now spared up for the graphics card, so when Vega launches in a few months time - gamers will build an all-AMD gaming PC that will kick some serious ass, at what seems like a possibly big savings on the entire system.

I can't contain my excitement for new technology, with our first official tease of Ryzen motherboards from GIGABYTE and ASUS - and now a tease of AMD's rumored Ryzen CPU overclocking software, something called Ryzen Master.

VideoCardz.com is reporting the news from a screenshot they grabbed from NAMEGT, but it's blurred out - but as they report "the software looks awfully similar to Radeno Settings". There are sliders that look like AMD will let you tweak your Ryzen CPU at a core level, overclocking individual CPU cores - which is a freakin' nice touch.

It looks like there are other settings for XFR (Extended Frequency Range) technology, which is something that will automatically adjust CPU frequency depending on the cooling technology you're using. I'm sure we'll find out more about Ryzen Master in the coming days, and the new couple of weeks ramping up to AMD's big launch of Ryzen.