CPU, APU & Chipsets News - Page 2

AMD has pushed out a Ryzen chipset driver update and there's a hint that this might foreshadow something pretty exciting - namely the ability to manually tune X3D chips from the Ryzen 7000 generation for better performance.

Owners of AMD's top-end X3D processors have been keenly awaiting this ability (Image Credit: AMD)

Tech Powerup (via Wccftech) caught wind of the release of AMD's version 5.08.02.027 driver, noticing that it arrived with a few new components onboard.

That includes a new Sensor Fusion Hub driver (useful for stuff to do with cameras, for Windows Hello logins, for example), along with a 'Platform Management Framework' driver for Ryzen 7040 processors (laptop chips for thin-and-light portables).

Recycling a three-year-old Ryzen APU for AI is quite an ingenious move, with a Redditor sharing a clip of them turning the Ryzen 5 4600G into a makeshift 16GB graphics card ready to run a range of AI applications like Stable Diffusion and MiniGPT-4.

The trick to turning the Ryzen 5 4600G into a 16GB graphics card is that an APU like this doesn't have dedicated memory; it shares system memory. The Redditor took their system's 32GB of DDR4 memory and allocated 16GB of that to the Ryzen 5 4600G - with 16GB being the maximum amount of memory you can assign to an iGPU.

The Ryzen 5 4600G first hit the scene in 2020, a Zen 2 APU with a boost clock of 4.2 GHz and a Vega iGPU with seven Compute Units clocked at close to 2 GHz. The newer Ryzen 5 5600 G has since replaced the APU, so the Ryzen 5 4600G currently retails for around USD 95 - making it a budget option for those running memory-intensive AI tasks.

AMD's upcoming Threadripper Pro 7000WX "Storm Peak" series will shake up the workstation CPU market, thanks to the Ryzen Threadripper Pro 7995WX being spotted in a new Geekbench 5 submission. A 96-core and 192-thread monster, it will replace the existing Ryzen Threadripper Pro 5995WX as AMD's' flagship workstation CPU - delivering a whopping 50% increase in core count.

Ryzen Threadripper Pro 7995WX spotted in a new Geekbench 5 submission.

According to the benchmark results, the new CPU was connected to an HP Z6 G5 A Workstation system - with additional information confirming that the 96-core CPU could achieve a boost clock speed of 5.1 GHz (though this is incorrectly reported as 7.97 GHz).

As the new Threadripper Pro 7000WX series is based on the Zen 4 architecture, the Threadripper Pro 7995WX is also paired with 512GB of DDR5 memory (though the Geekbench listing doesn't confirm the full memory spec) with a sizable 384 MB of L3 Cache and 96MB of L2 Cache - which is similar to AMD's data center-focused EPYC 9654.

Intel's Lunar Lake processors are again in the spotlight, this time with a leak about the architecture that'll be employed in the performance and efficiency cores.

Wccftech picked up on a tweet from InstLatX64 that shows Intel has added support for Lunar Lake CPUs in its latest Perfmon update.

We can see that as previously rumored, Lunar Lake will run with Lion Cove for its performance cores and Skymont with the efficiency cores.

A new report from Jon Peddie Research highlights some good news for the client-based CPU market covering notebooks and desktops - Q2 2023 saw 53.6 million CPUs ship, up 17% from the previous quarter. But it's more of a recovery than a continued upward trend, as total CPU shipments have decreased by 23% year-on-year.

Quarterly shipments of desktop and notebook CPUs, image credit: Jon Peddie Research.

It's a similar trend for iGPUs, with shipments increasing by 14% to 49 million units for Q2 2023, but this also represents a year-on-year decline of -29%. Per the CPU shipment chart supplied by Jon Peddie Research, we see a market share split of 72% for notebook CPs and 28% for desktop CPUs as portable devices continue to dominate the space.

The most interesting news from the Q2 2023 data collected for this report is the overall CPU market share split between the two big players - Intel and AMD. According to the report, Intel's market share increased by 23% compared to the previous quarter, while AMD's overall CPU market share decreased by -5.3%.

AMD's Zen 5 processors will be a bigger leap forward than Zen 3 chips were over Zen 2, we're told by a YouTube leaker.

This nugget and a bunch of other rumors on what'll likely be AMD's Ryzen 8000 CPUs were provided by RedGamingTech (RGT).

The theory is that the leakage comes from a source who has been pretty accurate in the past, and we even get some benchmarks spilled here.

Intel's Raptor Lake Refresh processors are not too far off now, and a further indication this is the case is an uptick in the pace at which leaks are coming - with a fresh piece of spillage emerging on the Core i5-14600K.

As VideoCardz flagged up, on Twitter, HXL posted screenshots of CPU-Z showing the core configuration and boost speed of the 14600K (apply all the usual caution around nuggets from the rumor mill).

If correct, the Core i5-14600K will maintain the same core count as the 13600K, namely 6 performance cores and 8 efficiency cores (for a total of 14-cores, with 20-threads - debunking a previous rumor, incidentally).

AMD's Ryzen processors are currently outgunning Intel on the desktop by some margin, with the Ryzen 7800X3D and 5800X3D shifting a ton of units in particular, according to the latest sales figures from a major retailer in Europe.

This is MindFactory in Germany, and the weekly stats come courtesy of TechEpiphany, who provides these sales breakdowns regularly on Twitter.

Of course, we must bear firmly in mind that these aren't official figures, and neither is one European retailer a yardstick by which we can judge the whole desktop market.

Although not officially announced, there are several leaks surrounding the upcoming AMD Ryzen 8000 Strix Point APUs that will use Zen 5 architecture, with the big boy Strix Halo APU set to feature up to 16 Zen 5 Cores alongside 40 Compute Units of RDNA 3.5 graphics. That's Radeon RX 6750 XT or even PlayStation 5-like performance!

Although it's not a like-for-like comparison, this is more GPU power than the recently released AMD Radeon RX 7600, which features 32 Compute Units. It's on par with the AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT, a card made for high-end 1440p gaming.

As a potential flagship model, even with a 4nm process having 40 RDNA 3.5 CUs will certainly increase the die size by a decent amount. Still, as an all-in-one solution, there's no need for discrete graphics when you've got a configuration similar to what you find in the desktop space. Radeon RX 6750 XT performance on something like the ROG Ally sounds fantastic.

Earlier this week, we got word that there was a brand-new Ryzen 9 7945HX3D mobile CPU from AMD out in the wild, and today the company has confirmed that it is indeed real and the very first mobile CPU to feature its impressive 3D V-Cache technology. AMD's 3D V-Cache powered Ryzen CPUs deliver some of the best gaming performance in the desktop space, so this is great news for laptop and notebook gamers.

It's set to debut in a single product, though, the ROG Strix SCAR 17 X3D laptop from ASUS - the first device to use "exclusive AMD 3D V-Cache technology." The addition of 3D V-Cache stacked L3 cache technology brings the on-chip memory capacity up to an impressive 144 MB, and this is paired with a max boost clock speed of 5.4GHz in a 55W TDP package - making it one of the fastest mobile processors currently available.

With 3D V-Cache in the desktop space delivering a sizable boost to gaming performance in resolutions like 1080p and 1440p, it's the sort of product that makes perfect sense for gaming laptops. Not to mention the lower power draw of X3D CPUs being ideal for the efficiency-is-king mobile market.