CPU, APU & Chipsets - Page 146

As we previously reported, Qualcomm is set to unveil their newest mid-range Snapdragon 660 on May 9th.

The 660 will follow the footsteps of Snapdragon 652, but according to the sources, it will be much closer to their flagship chipset.

Although it won't be built on a 10nm process like Snapdragon 835, but rather 14nm, it will use an octa-core CPU with Kryo 280 cores, the same cores as the 835. The GPU tagged with the SoC should be an Adreno 512.

After launching their latest top-tier chipset in January, Snapdragon 835, Qualcomm is all set to unveil their newest mid-range Snapdragon 660 on May 9th.

The 660 will follow the footsteps of Snapdragon 652, but according to the sources, it will be much closer to their flagship chipset.

Although it won't be built on a 10nm process like Snapdragon 835, but rather 14nm, it will use an octa-core CPU with Kryo 280 cores, the same cores as the 835. The GPU tagged with the SoC should be an Adreno 512.

For the first time in over 10 years, AMD is beginning to take back some of that glorious CPU market share pie from Intel - thanks to the release of their new Ryzen processors.

The latest quarterly market share report from PassMark, which is based on thousands of submissions that enter their database every quarter, AMD is making strides in CPU market share - even though it's a small uptick, it's a valuable one. You can see that the uptick is pretty large considering the slowly dwindling numbers from 2006, where AMD didn't really have anything worthwhile for consumers to buy in the CPU business.

Everything changed with Ryzen, and while a 2% increase isn't much - the new Ryzen 7 processors sold like hotcakes - selling out as soon as they hit. Keep in mind that AMD was also bottlenecked by AM4 motherboard availability, but we should begin to see all of this disappear as the weeks and months fly past - so the Q2 2017 numbers for AMD should be even more interesting.

AMD hasn't had the smoothest launch with Ryzen, but the company is quickly refining its new CPU architecture and now we have the latest release of its core logic (chipset) drivers, for Windows 7, 8.1, and 10.

AMD's new v17.10 WHQL drivers include the new Windows power management plan 'Ryzen Balanced Power' which will be better than the stock 'Balanced' power plan in Windows 10, something that will allow better power management through Windows, to the silicon-level power management logic inside of Ryzen processors through SenseMI.

This includes fine-grained voltage and clock gating over individual cores, something that would normally trip up latency problems with OS-level power management through P-state triggers. The new power plan is compatible with AMD's new A320, B350, and X370 chipsets, and is available right here.

Intel is continuing to show signs that it is scared to its core over AMD's new Ryzen processors, and the threat of the Naples-based 32C/64T processor has Intel pre-emptively launching its new Xeon Gold and Platinum platforms. The new series of CPUs from Intel are based on the new Purley platform, on LGA 3647.

There's a huge line of up new Xeon processors, with up to 28 cores and 56 threads at 2.5GHz, while they are going to be slotting into the new R3 socket. The new Xeon Gold and Platinum processors are available with less cores and higher frequencies of up to 3.6GHz, while low-power Xeon processors will arrive with 2GHz speeds.

Intel is splitting its new Xeon CPUs into four families: Platinum is the 8000 series, Gold with the 6000 and 5000 series, while the 4000 series will be Silver, and the 3000 series is Bronze. Intel will use between 10 cores on the new Xeon processors, right up to the monster 28-core chip with Hyper-Threading, rolling the CPU threads up to 56.

Just as Samsung and Qualcomm have begun to ship the Galaxy S8 and S8+ which feature the Snapdragon 835, rumors have already begun to suggest a similar partnership for the Galaxy S9.

The Snapdragon 845 is the next rumored SoC from Qualcomm that is expected to be announced this year and ship in devices next year.

While it is unknown whether Samsung will actually use the rumored Snapdragon 845, the two companies are reportedly in talks to determine exactly which models will ship with Snapdragon inside. Currently, the Snapdragon 835 is shipping in the Samsung Galaxy S8 in the United States, China, and Japan. Depending on how the talks go, we could see that existing relationship either expand or contract.

We've already written about Intel's next-gen CPUs launching two months early, but now we have a date: May 30. Intel will reportedly announce its next-gen CPUs and new X299 chipset during their conference at Computex 2017 in Taipei.

The latest news is coming from Bench.life, which is reporting that Intel's Senior VP Navin Shenoy will make the announcement during his keynote speech on May 30, while general availability of the new CPUs will start on June 26. Now, what new CPUs can we expect from Intel, especially now since AMD kicked them pretty hard in the pants with their new Ryzen CPUs.

Intel is reportedly preparing new 4, 6, 8, 10, and even new 12-core CPUs - so expect Hyper-Threading on most of them, making them 4C/8T, 6C/12T, 8C/16T, 10C/20T, and a monstrous 12C/24T. We should expect Basin Falls X-Series to include new Kaby Lake-X and Skylake-X processors. Kaby Lake-X will be the family of quad-core processors, while Skylake-X will handle the higher-end SKUs.

As the first devices with Samsung's 10nm process start to hit the market, like the Galaxy S8, the company is already starting to spin up the next generation of their 10nm process in Korea.

Samsung has announced that they have already qualified their 10nm LPP manufacturing process which is expected to offer double digit improvements to performance or power.

Samsung started production for the current LPE process in October with devices hitting the market this week. That puts us at around a six month lead time between the beginning of production and an actual availability date. However, much of the equipment and processes should be the same as 10nm LPE, the current lead manufacturing process at Samsung which could mean a shorter time to market.

AMD never needed to knock Intel off its CPU leadership position to win, it just needed to disrupt the market enough so that it forced their main competitor out of a zombie-like dominant state. Intel has been winning for far too long, and within weeks of AMD's launch of the Ryzen CPU family - now available in Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 5, Intel has reacted in multiple ways. The 52% IPC improvement in the Zen architecture must have taken Intel by surprise, with some amazing value for money in the Ryzen 7 1800X as it's a 8C/16T part on the cheap.

First, were the rumors of the next-gen X299 platform - and then the news of the weirdly-placed Core i7-7740K, a HEDT part on LGA2011, but with 4C/8T. Intel launching an 8-threaded CPU, a little faster than the much cheaper LGA1151-based Core i7-7700K, but on the more expensive LGA2011 platform, strange. Then the news of Intel cancelling its IDF (Intel Developer Forum) convention, after nearly 20 years in operation. IDF17 was cancelled in the process.

Now there is news that continues this strange Bizarro world that we're living in, with Team Blue now rumored to be bringing the launch of its Basin Falls platform by two months, with the new family bringing us the Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X processors. The new Basin Falls platform will arrive with the new X299 chipset, while the 'accelerated launch' of the next-gen Coffee Lake architecture is reportedly primed for an August 2017 release, pulled up 5 months from January 2018.

I've been testing the new Ryzen 5 1600X extensively over the last week or so, and have come to really love what AMD has achieved with it - offering 6C/12T of CPU performance for $249.

But now the 6C/12T processor has been overclocked to 5.9GHz on LN2 by overclocker der8auer. He used the ASUS ROG Crosshair IV Hero X370 motherboard with a BIOS from February 8, alongside G.Skill Trident Z DDR4 RAM, a Samsung SSD, and Windows 7.

With most of these huge overclocks under LN2, it's with one core enabled - leaving the other 3 (and the four Hyper-Threading cores) disabled. AMD's new Ryzen 5 1600X has its full 6C/12T enabled, with all of them running at 5.9GHz der8auer broke all of the records for Cinebench, Geekbench, and GPUPi. AMD's Ryzen 5 1600X @ 5.9GHz beats out the Intel Core i7-5820K from the 6-threaded awards it used to have.