AMD B550 Chipset coming soon

Reports are coming in that AMD and its partners are readying motherboards based on a new mainstream B550 chipset. Following the X570, B550 will be the second socket AM4 chipset designed specifically to go with the new Ryzen 3000 CPUs while still being backward compatible with 2^nd gen chips. No word on pricing yet but it’s pretty safe to assume that it will be significantly cheaper than its enthusiast grade sibling.

B550 will succeed and replace the aging B450 which probably is the most popular midrange chipset right now thanks in no small parts to its exceptional value. With B550, AMD would be looking to carry the tradition on, added some incremental features. For starters, the new chipset will feature more SATA III ports and general purpose PCIe (Gen 2/Gen 3) lanes to handle the I/O duties. B550 will retain its predecessor’s overclocking ability – meaning it’ll just be as easy to OC a lower priced (and clocked) Ryzen processor as before. On a side note, it’ll be interesting to see if the passive chipset cooling (with a fan) trend of the X570 based boards will continue on the B550 as well.   

B550, however, will miss on some key highlights compared to the flagship X570. The implementation of the PCIe Gen 4 will be one of those. This means it’ll be a PCIe Gen 3 x4 interlink between the motherboard chipset and the CPU, unlike the PCIe Gen 4 x4 connection found in the X570 chipset. Fortunately, this will not affect real-world performance in any tangible way as we’ve already seen Ryzen processors performing identically on both X570 and B450 (also PCIe Gen 3) based motherboards. Plus, the downstream PCIe Gen 4 lanes from the processor itself should be there for the motherboard manufacturers to put those in good use. Reports also suggest that the population of the USB 3.2 Gen-2 (10 GB/s) ports may not see a rise – at two, it'll be identical to previous generation chipsets but much lower than the eight found in X570.

All in all, AMD’s new B550 chipset could be a perfect solution for budget builders among us, especially those looking for a reasonably future-proof Ryzen 3000 PC but still holding out due to the high price of X570 motherboards.

RX 5700 XT and RX 5700 Review: Navi makes a solid impression

The past two or three years have been a mixed bag for AMD's graphics wing, unlike its CPU division which has been on a role with Ryzen. The last time it had a major successful launch was three years ago, with Polaris GPUs. The pricey and power hungry Vega, while working as a stopgap solution, never quite took the fight to Nvdia's camp. And considering the 7nm Radeon VII was never meant for pure gaming, AMD had to bring something to table that could not only disrupt Nvidia's Turing line-up but pave the way for future Radeon products.

That something came in the form of 7nm Navi GPU, launched back in July along with 3rd generation Ryzen processors. Apart from bringing all the benefits of a process-shrink, Navi features a new and improved RDNA (Radeon DNA) graphic architecture and replaces GCN (Graphics Core Next) based Vega within AMD's product stack.

While RDNA isn't a complete architectural overhaul, many of its aspects have new elements introduced in almost every level. With RDNA, AMD's focus is on improved single-threaded performance and better utilization of fixed-function hardware. That means RDNA is better suited for gaming whereas GCN was better at handling complex HPC type workloads - part of the reason why AMD still keeps the GCN based Radeon 7 around.

Update Round-up: AMD fixes Ryzen, Microsoft breaks Windows 10

Updates and patches have become big parts of our daily digital life these days and last few days both AMD and Microsoft have dropped some big ones; although, with very different results.

First up is AMD and its promised fix which we reported about in our in-depth coverage of Ryzen 3000 processors' boost-clock controversy. If you haven't yet read it then please do so for some much needed context and insight on the matter. Here is a TLDR version:.

With the recent debates over boost-frequency of  Ryzen 3000 series desktop processors, AMD promised an impending update that would fixate any oddities in boost behavior that bars the processor cores to hit the max-boost ceiling. The chip-maker claimed in a blog post that it has identified a bug which is responsible for sub-optimal performance of its boosting algorithm under certain workloads.

So, does the fix works? For the most part, yes it does. Some review-sites have already got their hands on the updated firmwire containing the fix and put their Ryzen CPUs through tests. Techpowerup's Ryzen 9 3900X clocked higher on the new BIOS with AGESA 1.0.0.3ABBA and even boosted beyond its 4.6GHz rateing which wasn't possible with the old BIOS.

India adds two more supercomputers to strengthen researches: Aims to deploy over 60 in next three years

India's HPC (high Performance Computing) initiative has finally gathered some much needed momentum as the country adds two more supercomputers to its growing computational repertoire. According to press reports, these new supercomputers are being deployed at IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) Kharagpur and IISER (Indian Institute of Science Education and Research) Pune. 

This initiative comes as a part of  National Supercomputing Mission undertaken by India's Department of Science and Technology (DST) and Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. The mission is currently in its first phase in which a series of six supercomputers are to be installed in education and research facilities across the nation. The first one, named "Param-Shivay", is already functional at IIT Varanasi and can churn up-to 837 Teraflops of data. By December this year, another three will be made available to IIT Kanpur, IIT Hyderabad, and Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Advanced Studies (JNIAS) which will conclude the first phase.

AMD roadmaps reveal Zen 3, RDNA 2 on-track for 2020 lunch: Zen 4 by 2022?

It's roadmap time again! Guru3D.com have published couple of new ones from AMD that talk about things to come in both CPU and GPU fronts. The slides, which seems to have been reserved for corporate briefing, make reference to Zen 3, RDNA 2 and even Gen 4. While nothing concrete or out of line of what we already know, this confirms that AMD is on track with future iterations of its current-gen designs.

Here, the CPU roadmap shows that AMD already has the design phase of  Zen 3 completed and currently is working on the design of its successor, Zen 4. Future CPUs (Ryzen 4000?) based on Zen 3 core-architecture will be built on a 7nm+, i.e. a more refined and mature 7nm, fabrication process at TSMC. Moreover, Zen 3 will utilize an EUV (Extreme UltraViolet) lithography compared to Zen 2's DUV ( Deep UltraViolet). With Zen 3, AMD's stated goal is enhanced power efficiency but the higher transistor density granted by the process refinements can be used towards raising the clock-speed as well.

The underlying timeline in the above roadmap spans five years and lack finer graduations which means no specific launch dateline. But it looks like AMD has a 2020 launch in mind for Zen 3.

It's not all quiet on the graphics front either! This year we saw AMD introducing its Navi GPUs based on company's latest graphics architecture dubbed RDNA. The next update to that will come in form of RDNA2 which is in design, also destined for 7nm+ process. At this point in time, we don't know much about RDNA2 and it could be at least a full year off from now considering AMD is yet to release its full RDNA product stack.

All in all, AMD sure seems poised to take its newfound momentum into the future and executed well enough, can usher a new era for the company!

AMD Ryzen 3000 Boost-Clock controversy and what you need to know

If you’re an enthusiast like me, you must be aware of the ongoing controversy over the boost-clock speeds of AMD’s recently launched Ryzen 3000 series processors. What started with some early adopters finding it hard to hit the rated boost frequencies on their respective Ryzen CPUs has now found its way into more serious contention, supported by claims from both reliable and unreliable sources. Things have specially heated-up after well-known overclocker “der8auer” conducted a survey which puts a big question mark on the ability (or the lack there-off) of most 3^rd gen Ryzen CPUs to operate at their advertised max boost-clock! While this controversy doesn’t necessarily jeopardize Ryzen’s status as the current champ of desktop processors on the whole, it sure creates a cloud of confusion or two in the mind of average consumer and enthusiast alike. Here we’ll try to dispel any such confusion by going deep into the matter and seek the truth.