Processors - Page 81

AMD has been kicking all sorts of CPU ass in the desktop CPU market against Intel, but it is about to bring the Zen pain to the gaming notebook world this year... and even coronavirus can't stop it.

Now we have some leaked goodness on an upcoming ASUS TUF Gaming notebook, which packs the flagship AMD Ryzen 9 4900H processor (45W TDP), while another option is on the table for the Ryzen 9 4900HS (35W TDP). Both of these laptops with the Ryzen 9 4900H/HS processors will have 8 cores / 16 threads of Zen 2-based CPU goodness at up to (around) 4.2GHz boost. But now, we have some pictures to share thanks to our friends at VideoCardz.

This isn't the first time we've seen the Ryzen 9 4900HS on leaks, with the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 notebook leaked, packing the Ryzen 9 4900HS processor, a 14-inch QHD display, 16GB of RAM, an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q graphics card with 6GB of GDDR6 memory, and a 1TB SSD.

AMD talked about its next-gen Zen 3 architecture during its recent Financial Analyst Day, which will be followed up by the Zen 4 architecture the year after.

AMD has promised that its Zen 3 architecture be introduced later this year, while consumer CPUs powered by the Zen 3 architecture will arrive in March 2021. After that, we can expect the Zen 4 architecture in 2022, where I presume we'll see them introduced sometime in 2021 after Zen 3 has been firmly planted into our hearts.

The new Zen 3 processors will arrive as next-gen Ryzen 4000 series CPUs and on the 7nm node, while the Zen 4-based Ryzen 5000 series CPUs will arrive on the newer, and smaller 5nm process. We should expect a pretty big increase in performance with the new Zen 3 architecture, unlike the upgrades over the Zen architecture with the new Zen 2 architecture.

AMD knocked Intel for a six with its 7nm node in 2019, but don't worry -- Intel has a plan up its sleeve, it just won't be able to get there until 2022 or so.

Intel CFO George Davis said during a recent conference that Intel's 10nm productivity will be less than its 22nm and 14nm nodes. But don't worry, as there is a good side to this as Intel plans to hit process parity in late 2011 with its 7nm node, while making a "stronger" process node than AMD.

Intel is aiming for 2022 where it'll have process leadership again, as it has promised 5nm chips without the +++ attached to them, at least at first. Intel says that it will be shifting from 10nm to 7nm, which is a total shocker (sarcasm) and that the jump down from 7nm to 5nm will most likely hurt Intel's gross margin, but the process leadership must be worth it for Intel to do this.

We are still just getting our toes dipped in the waters of PCIe 4.0 thanks to AMD's recent launch of the X570 chipset, and Ryzen 3000 series processors -- but PCIe 5.0 and PCIe 6.0 are also on the way. You know the story, technology never slows down.

PCI-SIG has officially announced version 0.5 of the new PCIe 6.0 standard -- yeah PCIe 6.0, not PCIe 5.0 -- which will have an insane 8x the bandwidth of PCIe 3.0 that most people are using today. PCIe 3.0 starts things off with 32GB/sec of bandwidth on a full PCIe 3.0 x16 port, while PCIe 4.0 x16 offers up to 64GB/sec.

Things start to really ramp up with PCIe 5.0 x16 with a huge 128GB/sec, but PCIe 6.0 takes things to the stars with 256GB/sec on a PCIe 6.0 x16 port. This means we're looking at a huge 8Gbps per lane of bandwidth with PCIe 6.0 -- crazy stuff, and while graphics cards won't benefit too much from it (unless things change in a big way), next-gen NVMe SSDs, networking controllers, and other technologies will suck up all that additional bandwidth easily.

AMD launched its insane Ryzen Threadripper 3990X processor recently, rocking 64 cores and 128 threads but what operating system do you need to squeeze everything out of the 128-threaded CPU? AMD has the answer.

Now that reviewers have had their time with the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X processor, a few questions have been raised -- something that saw the 128 threads on the CPU being split into two groups of 64 threads each which saw a hit on performance. This is where reviewers and enthusiasts recommended higher-end versions of Windows 10 (Windows 10 Pro for Workstations and Windows 10 Pro for Enterprise) as well as Linux.

But now AMD has come out and addressed it, saying: "We wanted to clarify that AMD officially recommends Windows 10 Professional or Linux for the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X. Higher editions/versions of Windows 10 confer no additional performance or compatibility benefits to the processor. We do understand that this suggestion has been made in some articles, and our team is presently testing this further, but this is the official recommendation".

A mysterious new APU from AMD has been discovered by '_rogame', with the new APU packing 8 CPU cores (no SMT so we have 8C/8T) at 4GHz and 16GB of shared memory between the RAM and VRAM (12GB RAM and 4GB VRAM).

As for the GPU that remains a total mystery for now, but what we do know is that this new APU could be anything -- anything from the Xbox Series S (Lockhart) APU for the mid-range next-gen Xbox, or it could be a successor to the Fireflight APU which powered the Subor Z+ console.

Even in its leaked form we still have benchmark scores to share, where the new APU has a 3DMark Time Spy score of 7.1K which is pretty good -- it keeps up with an AMD Ryzen 9 3900X + overclocked NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER graphics card which scores 7.3K. So while it won't blow the socks off of the Xbox Series X in terms of performance, we're looking at maybe this being the non-SMT version (whereas the Xbox Series X has the full 8C/16T chip) and thus powering the Xbox Series S / Lockhart console.

A slew of new leaks are teasing that AMD's next-gen Zen 3 architecture, Ryzen 4000-series CPUs, and new 600-series chipset are all ramping to launch towards the tail end of 2020.

Electronic Times is reporting that AMD's new 600-series chipset will support both USB 3.2 and USB 4.0, with AMD's new chipset designed to support the next-gen Zen 3 architecture and Ryzen 4000 series processors. We should expect large IPC gains with the new Zen 3 processors, which will continue to see AMD excel in the CPU market.

AMD will have a flagship X670 chipset, something that will continue to support he AM4 socket and PCIe 4.0 standard, but we could also see native Thunderbolt 3 support included. Other rumors do state that AMD could shift away from the AM4 socket, but that would be a big shift -- it would end backwards compatibility, but it could introduce new tech like DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 standards going forward.

It looks like Intel will be finding itself in some (extremely) hot water with its upcoming Comet Lake-S family of CPUs with the new flagship 10-core/20-thread model packing some heat.

ComputerBase sat down with motherboard makers on the CES show floor, talking about Intel's upcoming 14nm-based Comet Lake-S processors. The site was told that motherboard makers have their Z490 boards ready to go, but Intel is holding everything back.

Intel's new Comet Lake-S will span an entire range of processors from Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, and the flagship Core i9. But it's the high-end model that might be in serious trouble, with ComputerBase: "Several motherboard manufacturers revealed that the 10-core breaks the 300-watt mark at maximum load. Not surprisingly, the 9900KS already exceeded the 250-watt mark in scenarios of this kind".

CES 2020 - Intel didn't have too much to show during its CES 2020 keynote compared to AMD, which came out swinging with its 64-core/128-thread Ryzen Threadripper 3990X processor, super-powered Ryzen 4000 series mobile CPUs, and the new mid-range Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics card.

But what Intel did have to show off was a new range of next-gen Tiger Lake CPUs, new chips that will be made on the 10nm node and pack twice the graphics power of the previous-gen offerings from Intel. Intel teased a Tiger Lake-powered thin-and-light gaming laptop playing some games, but weren't detailed in what resolution, or detail level it was playing in.

We do know that Tiger Lake CPUs will have Intel Xe GPU cores -- and while we're talking about Xe, Intel showed off some Destiny 2 gameplay on its DG1 discrete graphics card. It was very brief, and had even less detail than the Tiger Lake show off -- but there we have it. Tiger Lake CPUs teased for later this year, and our first 'demo' of DG1 at CES 2020.

CES 2020 - We knew it was coming, but now it is official -- AMD's new kick ass flagship Zen 2-based Ryzen Threadripper 3990X is real and boy, is it a beast.

The new AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X offers up an insane 64 cores and 128 threads of CPU power on the new TRX40 platform, with the 64C/128T chip having a base CPU clock of 2.9GHz, and boost CPU clock of 4.3GHz. AMD says that its new Ryzen Threadripper 3990X processor hits 25,000 points in the Cinebench R20 benchmark.

AMD teased a V-Ray benchmark load of a scene from Terminator: Dark Fate, rendering on the competitors best -- dual Intel Xeon Platinum 8280 processors (combined 56C/112T) in 1 hour 30 minutes... but on the new Ryzen Threadripper 3990X it takes just 1 hour 3 minutes in comparison. Better yet, a $3990 processor versus $20,000 -- a gigantic difference.

CES 2020 - AMD has just made its new Ryzen 7 4800H processor official, with the Ryzen 7 4800H being a powerhouse laptop CPU that even kicks the ass of Intel's desktop CPU in the Core i7-9700K.

AMD's new Ryzen 7 4800H processor has desktop-class performance on-the-go, with it coming in as an 8C/16T processor with 2.9GHz base and up to 4.2GHz boost CPU clocks on a 45W TDP. AMD built the new Ryzen 7 4800H processor for the most demanding workloads, and is a gigantic step ahead of its previous mobile designs.

The company compared the new AMD Ryzen 7 4800H processor against Intel's own Core i7-9750H processor (6C/12T @ 45W) and the desktop Core i7-9700K (8C/16T @ 95W) where it beat both of these CPUs easily. Hell, the new Ryzen 7 4800H is 13% faster than the desktop-bound Core i7-9700K and that is a hugely impressive thing to see.

CES 2020 - Intel has come out swinging at CES 2020 this year, revealing its new 10th-gen Comet Lake-H family of CPUs that will continue on the 14nm+++ node, but will pack architectural improvements the company has made since Skylake.

Intel has something truly exciting on offer with its 10th-gen Comet Lake-H family of CPUs, with a new flagship chip that will offer up 8C/16T at over 5GHz. There will be Core i5, Core i7, and Core i9 models that will feature 4C/8T, 6C/12T, and 8C/16T respectively.

The company teased just before CES 2020 kicks off that its new Core i9 series processors will offer the full 8 cores and 16 threads at over 5GHz, all inside of a notebook. This will come down to the thermal design and cooling technology used by gaming notebooks like ASUS, Razer, and others -- but it will be powered by Intel's own Thermal Velocity Boost technology that will offer crazy boost CPU clocks when possible.

Samsung has kicked off the new decade in a big way, with the South Korean giant making major progress in its pursuits to become the #1 semiconductor manufacturer by 2030. Samsung has just made a prototype 3nm process using GAAFET technology.

Gate All Around (GAAFET) technology is different to the widely-used and known FinFET standard, with GAAFET seeing a reduction in the total silicon size by around 35%, while consuming 50% less power. This blend can see a 33% performance increase over the still-yet-released 5nm FinFET process.

The design of GAAFET is much different to Planar FET and FinFET designs, with 4 Gates on channel compared to just 1 Gate and 3 Gates, respectively. This means power leakage is kept to a minimum, with control over the channel improved the shrinking of the node process becomes easier. This paves the way for more efficient transistor design, even at its teeny-tiny size -- ushering in a huge performance-per-watt jump over the 5nm FinFET process.

Oh, how the tables have turned -- Intel has no CPUs that are capable of supporting PCIe 4.0 technology, so they need to use AMD Ryzen 3000 series CPUs along with an X570 motherboard to test their latest storage products.

Intel technical marketing performance engineer, Frank Ober, tweeted (above) that Intel can send PCIe 4.0-capable SSDs to developers, but they'll need PCIe 4.0-capable CPUs and motherboards to test them. The super-fast new Alder Stream SSDs (an updated version of their Optane drive tech, with second-gen 3D XPoint technology).

But in order to ramp up those speeds they will need more PCIe lanes, and since PCIe 3.0 is pretty much tapped out -- the doubling in bandwidth to PCIe 4.0 is a tasty offering. But, Intel has no PCIe 4.0 anything right now -- so they're stuck. Intel won't have PCIe 4.0-capable CPUs until 2021 which means they need to lean on their main competitor in AMD until then.

In a world of custom and AIO coolers in all shapes and sizes, it blows my mind to be writing about a beasty 32C/64T AMD EPYC processor and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 graphics card being passively cooled -- yeah, fanless.

AnandTech has the scoop on TureMetal's new system that packs an AMD EPYC 7551 processor (32C/64T) with its own 180W TDP, joined by GIGABYTE's own GeForce RTX 2070 graphics card with a 175W TDP, meaning the entire system has 355W between the CPU and GPU alone and yet it is passively cooled.

TureMetal uses a Supermicro ATX motherboard, and then builds it inside of its in-house UP10 chassis. The chassis has support for a 140W CPU and 160W GPU for 300W total, but with some adjustments the company was able to cram in the 32C/64T processor and Turing-powered GeForce RTX 2070 graphics card.

AMD has just had its stock reach records highs to kick 2020 off in a big way, and while the company has already officially teased it will push the high-performance computing world at CES 2020 -- the company could unveil its next-gen Zen 3 architecture.

New rumors are surfacing after a Taiwanese newspaper published a report that AMD CEO Lisa Su would "disclose details about Zen 3 architecture at a press conference during CES". We reported back in October 2019 that AMD's new Zen 3 architecture could bring up to and over 8% IPC gains, and another 200MHz as well.

AMD's new Zen 3 architecture will power the next wave of CPUs from AMD in 2020 and 2012, with the new EPYC, Ryzen Threadripper 4000 family, and new Ryzen 4000 series family. The new EPYC is codenamed Milan, while Ryzen Threadripper 4000 goes by Genesis Peak and Ryzen 4000 series with Vermeer. AMD will be making the new Zen 3-based EPYC, Ryzen Threadripper 4000 series and Ryzen 4000 series CPUs on the 7nm+ node.

Intel is preparing its new range of 10th Gen CPUs for 2020, with VideoCardz tweeting out some juicy information on the upcoming Intel Core i9-10900K processor and its clock speeds.

According to this tweet from VideoCardz the Intel Core i9-10900K will have a base CPU clock of 3.7GHz, single turbo of 5.1GHz, max turbo boost of 5.2GHz and a mysterious new 'velocity boost' of 5.3GHz. The new velocity boost is something that isn't quite that new -- but it will be for most people.

Intel has used Thermal Velocity Boost (TVB) previously in notebook CPU designs, but it seems it could be skipping the silicon pond into the desktop CPU realm with its new Core i9-10900K (and I'm sure, other 10th Gen CPU designs). If the tweet from VideoCardz is correct, the Thermal Velocity Boost on the Core i9-10900K will be 5.3GHz.

Intel has its Xe GPU still cooking in the oven, as it does with its upcoming Tiger Lake CPUs -- but now we have some more details on the Xe DG1 GPU itself.

VideoCardz is reporting the latest leak on Intel's new Xe DG1 GPU from a leak from the EEC, which shows us that DG1 could sport 96 Execution Units, and up to 768 shading units. This would mean Xe DG1 is a very entry-level graphics solution, something along the lines of integrated graphics now -- or up to a GeForce GT 1030 (yeah, the one without the X).

We are to expect Intel's Tiger Lake to roll out with 96 EUs based on Gen12 Xe graphics, compared to the 72 EUs on Skylake, 48 EUs on Broadwell, and 40 EUs on Haswell. We should expect more news on Xe and DG1 at CES 2020, which is right around the corner.

AMD has been on the fresh new 7nm node for a few months now, pumping out a bunch of Zen 2-based EPYC, Ryzen Threadripper, and Ryzen CPUs -- as well as a slew of new Navi-based Radeon 5000 series cards. Intel has struggled, to say the least, to get to 10nm let alone 7nm.

But now it seems there will be another competitor in 7nm space with Chinese company Zhaoxin its new KX-7000 processor coming up next, using an unannounced CPU architecture and built on the 7nm node with an integrated GPU. The new Zhaoxin CPU will have a GPU that has DX12 support, and features PCIe 4.0 and DDR5 technology support.

Zhaoxin has its KaiSheng series CPU which rocks up to 32 cores, and is made on the older 16nm node... but the company has plans to offer up to 32C/64T on its new server CPU offerings. This will bring Zhaoxin up to the same level as AMD's current Ryzen Threadripper CPUs, leaving AMD to dominate the server CPU game with its Zen 2-based EPYC range of processors.

Intel is years behind in the CPU node game allowing AMD to rip right past and take over with its Zen CPU architecture firmly placed into the leadership position on 7nm -- but it doesn't mean Intel will be taking this lying down.

Dr. Ian Cutress of AnandTech was on the ground at the IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) where it was revealed what Intel plans over the next 10 years. In the slide you can see above, Intel has mapped out the next 10 years that starts with its (continued struggles) on 10nm while seeing 7nm CPUs drop in 2021.

But we can also see that Intel is aiming for 5nm in 2023, 3nm in 2025, 2nm in 2027, and finally -- if you can even believe it, 1.4nm CPUs in 2029. Intel is expecting a two year flow between CPUs, even though it has been stuck on 14nm for what feels like forever now. Just how small is 1.4nm though? Cutress writes that it is the "equivalent of 12 silicon atoms across". Incredible stuff.