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.

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.

Itanic nears its last voyage: Intel to phase out Itanium server processors

Intel is finally done with the sad saga that is Itanium! According to reports, the microchip giant has notified partners of its intent to cease development and manufacturing of its Itanium server processors beyond current generation which is the Itanium 9700 series. Intel will accept orders till January, 2020, while the last batches would be shipped by mid 2021. So begins the rather unceremonious end of life cycle for what was once perceived as the next frontier of computing.

Coffee Lake CPUs without processor graphics: No IGP, same price

Intel’s CES campaign this year didn’t bring much joy to the average desktop users/gamers. AMD had Ryzen 3rd gen and Radeon VII up its sleeves, Nvidia released RTX 2060; meanwhile the only “new” processor Intel came up with during the show was a locked Core i5-9400. However, the silicon giant disclosed plans for releasing some Coffee Lake refresh chips with their integrated graphics chips disabled. Those versions will come with an “F” moniker suffixed with the original model name (i7 9700KF for example). Other than the disabled graphics, everything else i.e. frequency, no. Of cores, amount of cache etc. remain identical. Have a look.

Processor model	core/thread	Base/Boost clock	IGP	Memory	Cache	TDP
Core i9-9900K	8 / 16	3.6 / 5.0	UHD 630	DDR4-2666	16MB	95W
Core i9-9900KF	8 / 16	3.6 / 5.0	No	DDR4-2666	16MB	95W
Core i7-9700K	8 / 8	3.6 / 4.9	UHD 630	DDR4-2666	12MB	95W
Core i7-9700KF	8 / 8	3.6 / 4.9	No	DDR4-2666	12MB	95W
Core i5-9600K	6 / 6	3.7 / 4.6	UHD 630	DDR4-2666	9MB	95W
Core i5-9600KF	6 / 6	3.7 / 4.6	No	DDR4-2666	9MB	95W
Core i3-8100	4 / 4	3.6/ -	UHD 630	DDR4-2400	6MB	65W
Core i3-8100F	4 / 4	3.6/ -	No	DDR4-2400	6MB	65W

3rd generation Ryzen Processors: Things that we learned at CES

AMD unveils world's first 7nm chip - beats Intel i9

There was no shortage of cutting-edge techs and glittering new devices in this year's CES, From VR bikes and robot butlers to paper-thin notebooks and foldable smartphones, gracing the show floor as they were to entice your inner nerd. Yet it was AMD that stole the show with a not-yet-finalized piece of silicon with two chiplets in it. And by the time you realized it was an early engineering sample of the company's upcoming Ryzen 3rd generation desktop processor - world's first 7nm desktop CPU, you probably couldn't care less about the rest of CES! We can't blame you either, it's Ryzen we're talking about after all - the processor that single-handedly changed the landscape of desktop computing in last two years. And from what we saw in CES, things are about to be shaken-up once more.
 
Expectation were pretty high when Dr. Lisa Su, Ceo and president of AMD, took to the stage to deliver her keynote address. Rumors and speculations were making rounds prior to the event within tech sites and forums, speaking of Ryzen 3000 series SKUs with some of them being too good to be true. Having been well aware of the anticipation, Dr. Su made good use of limelight that CES offers. AMD teased us with a working silicon, the aforementioned sample, of a 3rd generation Ryzen 8-core/16-thread CPU and showed glimpses of performance that we can expect from their upcoming high-end platform which will also be the first to support PCIe gen 4.0. 

The de-lidded CPU die that AMD showed features a new chiplet design. The bigger chip is built on a 14nm GlobalFoundries process and it handles the I/O duties along with various controllers and connectivity. It's the somewhat inconspicuous smaller chip where in lie the next-gen cores(presumably housed within next-gen Core-complex or CCX), built on a bleeding-edge TSMC 7nm fabrication process. It's a clever design choice as the performance of CPU mostly depends on its cores. Also, splitting the manufacturing load between two fabs might help AMD overcome some early yield issues.

If you look carefully, as some keen-eyed reviewers did, you can see that there is just about enough space to nudge another 8-core/16-thread chiplet or perhaps even a graphics one in future. The 16C/32T config might be reserved for HEDT and socket TR4.

These new chips will also implement Zen 2 core design. Back in 2017 when AMD introduced it's completely new and forward looking Zen micro-architecture with the 1st gen Ryzen processors, the company also stated its commitment to improve and enhance the design in a regular and long-term basis. Staying true to that course, AMD launched 2nd gen Ryzen line up last year based on Zen+ micro-architecture which brought minor refinements along with a matured 12nm process. Zen 2 however is going to be the next big step in the architecture's logical evolution and we expect some major improvements in the core-design; The primary of those being an uplift in IPC (instructions per clock-cycle), one that would enable AMD to close-in on Intel's still superior single-threaded performance.

In a performance demo, AMD pitted its yet unnamed octal-core Ryzen 3rd gen against a Coffee Lake Refresh Core i9 9900K - Intel's flagship behemoth costing around 55,000 Rupees. The selected benchmark was Cinebech - one of the darlings of enthusiasts and reviewers around the world. AMD didn't disclosed the clock-speed of the sample but mentioned it's not final which means there is still room for improvement; the Intel chip ran on its default 3.6GHz/5GHz speed. Results are very impressive - The Ryzen actually completed the rendering faster(2057score, 135w) and consumed much less power than its Intel counterpart(2040score, 180w). There was also a gaming demo of Forza Horizon 4 and while it was running smooth @4K, we can't get much out of that.
 
From that Cinebench score alone, we can see that the 3rd gen Ryzen (R7 3700X/3800X??) is at least 15% faster than current flagship R7 2700x and matches Coffee Lake Refresh parts core-for-core. Even after taking Cinebench's multithread affinity into account, that seems like a remarkable generational leap for AMD. Not long ago we were used to accepting ~5% performance gain over previous gen CPUs, thanks to Intel and its stingy updates.
 
From the looks of it 3rd gen Ryzen processors should clock higher, how much we don't know. We can guess it's going to be in the range of ~4.5GHz to 4.8GHz. We also don't know at this point how much pure IPC gain AMD has achieved with these new breed of chips, just as we don't know how they are going to be priced. What we know is this - Ryzen 3rd gen is shaping up to be another powerhouse of a processor from AMD. With backward compatibility guaranteed, this is great news for existing AM4 users as they can just drop in these new CPUs for a clean and hassle-free upgrade.

Optimization matters: Ryzen gets a performance boost in Ashes of the Singularity

Ashes of the Singularity was the first PC game to come out with full DirectX 12 support and now it has also become the first Ryzen optimized title out there. In an interesting turn of events, Oxide Games – the studio which created Ashes of the Singularity – has released a patch update to improve the game’s performance on AMD’s recently launched Ryzen processors. Independent reviewers with access to game’s latest beta version have already run benchmarks and results demonstrate a performance boost of around 20%. This not only improves the in-game standings of Ryzen 7 CPUs but more importantly, it gives us an idea of what could be done if game developers are willing to tap into Ryzen’s ample resources.

AMD’s rumored super-HEDT platform: 16-core/32-thread Ryzen CPU on its way?

It’s becoming increasingly difficult these days to keep AMD’s Ryzen out of the limelight. The latest rumor to hit the inter-web speaks of an upcoming and yet unnamed 16-core desktop processor from AMD with an accompanying new socket. According to these unconfirmed speculations (originally from Chinese tech-site Chiphell), the new processor would be pitted squarely against Intel’s HEDT champion i7-6950X – a 10-core/20-thread behemoth. If the rumors are to be believed, AMD’s answer to that is going to be an even larger chip, accommodating 16 physical cores with equal number of logical ones by virtue of SMT.

AMD Ryzen 5 CPUs: Here comes the mainstream - specs, features and performance expectation

With the Ryzen 7 series of desktop processors AMD has made its much awaited return to the high-performance computing market and what a come-back story it has been! After years of frustration and misfiring, the perennial underdog has finally delivered a truly competitive x86 core design that can, in most cases, give Intel a good run for its money. But the Ryzen saga is just beginning and after launching the initial salvo comprising the flagship trio of Ryzen 7 1800X, 1700X and 1700, AMD wants to shift its attention to the mainstream. The result is Ryzen 5 which forms the mid-range of AMD’s new processor line-up and brings the same Zen goodness to a more affordable package.

Intel core i3-7350K performance analysis: unlocked, overclockable and overpriced?

One of the more interesting highlights of the Kaby Lake launch was the introduction of a multiplier unlocked core i3-7350K. Traditionally, the “K”-stamping which denotes the unlocked status of an Intel CPU is reserved for much costlier chips, namely the highest range i5s and i7s; dual-core i3 processors on the other hand represent excellent value thanks to their lower prices. So, when the news broke of an overclockable i3 - many enthusiasts, especially those on a budget, thought they’d found the dream chip. After all, not everybody can afford a 21K i5-7600K to entice their overclocking urge! We however wasn’t particularly captivated by its price tag and decided to hold our opinion for a later day. Meanwhile some of the leading hardware review-sites have recently published benchmark results of i3-7850K and that gives us ample reasons to go back and tackle the question of whether or not this is the right processor for you.

Intel HEDT beware: Ryzen Benchmark leaks suggest strong multithreaded performance and remarkable IPC gain

As we eagerly approach the launch of Ryzen processors, benchmark leaks continue to pour in like cats and dogs. Every tech forum member and their mod is out posting (or reading) leaked benchmarks; Chinese, Greek, Nordic – any website would do as long as the Google translator can spot the word “Ryzen”! Here, at the Technoprozium, we don’t usually take fondly to rumors and leaks as those often turn out to be false, exaggerated or even artificial. The fervor surrounding Ryzen however is quite real and compelled us to gather a few latest and interesting leaked benchmarks to share with you.

Ryzen countdown: list of new CPUs, specs, price and release date

AMD Ryzen processors are ready for shipment, image credit Videocardz, click to enlarge

The wait for AMD’s long waited Ryzen microprocessors is almost over. According to many sources worldwide, at least some of these next-gen high-end chips are going to be released within February 28^th – March 2^nd timeframe. With the NDA being lifted at the end of the current month, we can expect to see the reviews and benchmarks on the launch date too. The reports suggest that it’ll be the flagship 8-core/16-thread models coming out first, followed closely by the others members of what is supposed to be a family of no less than 17 brand new CPUs. Various tech publications seem to have already gotten their hands on review samples; which means Ryzen is being put through its paces as I write this!

Kaby Lake comes to desktop: here is what you need to know

Intel has finally taken the veils off of its 7^th generation core Kaby Lake processors. The announcement came at the grand floors of CES and with it, the immediate availability of Intel’s latest family of desktop processors. From what Technoprozium has learnt, retail availability can be expected around halfway through January 2017 with e-tailer already offering the parts online. We have already covered the Kaby Lake architecture andperformance expectation in detail, it’s time to get things official. Here, we’ll try to sum-up the most important aspects of this launch and pass the verdict. Let’s go.

Kaby Lake preview: architecture and performance expectation of Intel's 7th-gen core

Right now AMD Ryzen may be the epicenter of all hype and enthusiastic excitement, but that doesn’t mean that Intel is sitting idly! Far from that, the company is prepping its new line of Kaby Lake processors for an early 2017 launch. Kaby Lake is the codename of the 7^th generation of Intel’s core-architecture, succeeding the 6^th –gen core known as Skylake. Consistent with Intel’s monolithic and scalable design approach, this new core will cover a broad range of arrangements and power a vast array of devices ranging from 4.5Watt 2-in-1s to 91Watt mainstream desktops. Thankfully, Kaby Lake is much more of a known entity compared to Ryzen. Mobile Kaby Lake parts are already out in the market with a few reviews online and we have a pretty good idea about the desktop side too. Here, we’ll try to highlight the important bits.

Zen evolves: AMD has Ryzen!

AMD’s upcoming Zen core-architecture has grabbed a lot of attention recently and with good reasons too. Zen is not only the brand new x86 micro-architecture from AMD in a long time; it also has the difficult yet important task of bringing the competition back into the enthusiast space. The competition that was still there back in the K10/K12 days, resulting in some fine line of CPUs like Phenom and Thuban. Since then however things have been downhill for AMD. FX processors based on Bulldozer, the company’s last generation micro-architecture didn’t fare well and while Piledriver, its eventual update, improved performance a bit it was nowhere near challenging Intel’s supremacy. Whether Zen is going to change all that is a million rupee question and to get the answer we have to wait till the 1^st quarter of 2017 when the Summit Ridge platform (Zen + AM4 motherboards) will be made available for mass market. For now we know this – it’ll be called Ryzen and it can go toe-to-toe with an Intel i7-6900K!

Last week AMD hosted an event dubbed New Horizon in Austin, Texas to shed new lights on some of the specs, features and performance of the upcoming release. So without wasting anytime, let’s delve into the details. First of all – "Zen" has evolved into "Ryzen"! No, it’s not some kind of a new Pokemon if that’s what you’ve been wondering about; rather, it’s the name under which the first products based on Zen architecture will see the light of day. This may sound a bit confusing to the uninitiated but that’s how things are in the semiconductor industry – lots of codes and lots of names! For now just remember that the underlying architecture is still the same old Zen but the new series of processors based on it are going to be branded as Ryzen. Does that mean that AMD is going to ditch the “FX” moniker which the current batches of Vishera CPUs bear? Seems very likely as the company may decide to give the famed “FX” branding a rest after the not so glorious 2^nd innings and start things anew with “Ryzen”. There could be more than one high-end processor under the “Ryzen” branding umbrella along with the one that AMD demonstrated in the event. The part in question is an 8-core 16-thread model, clocked at 3.4GHz base frequency and features a whopping 16MB L3 cache (20MB total). The TDP (Thermal Design Power) is a very respectable 95W for such specifications. There is no word on the boost clock although AMD has indicated that the clock frequency could go even higher. Remember that the silicon isn’t yer ready for the primetime and it wasn’t that long ago when early engineering samples were reported to be operating at around 2.8GHz with AMD itself showing a 3GHz part during IDF. Needless to say the final clock speed will be one of the most interesting aspects of Ryzen launch. 

Handbrake video transcoding results as captured by Tom's Hardware

Next-up is performance and once again AMD is doing a good job of not disclosing hard numbers! That’s understandable though being this close to launch. Instead AMD arranged some demos where Ryzen was pitted against a fully-fledged i7-6900K. Now that’s some serious competition as this is an octal-core Broadwell-E part which belongs to Intel’s coveted HEDT (High End Desk-top) line-up and boasts a 3.2Ghz base clock which can reach 3.70 GHz with boost. Not to mention the astronomical price tag of INR.90K that it bears! Blender and Handbrake were among AMD’s benchmark of choice and we know both software can utilize multiple-core CPUs efficiently. In the Blender demo Ryzen seems to finish the rendering as fast as the i7-6900K, while in Handbrake it’s faster by a few seconds! There’s gaming too, Battlefield 1 to be specific, where both CPUs appeared to deliver very similar gaming experience and frame-rates. Unfortunately it was being played at 4K resolution where it’s mostly GPU bound – so, that doesn’t tell much about Ryzen’s gaming capability. As many reviewers have already noted, the mainstream i7-6700K (or the 7700K, depending on the time) would be a more practical challenger to Ryzen when it comes to gaming. A curious little observation could be made though from one of the demos – gaming and streaming, when done simultaneously felt smoother on Ryzen @3.4GHz than i7-6700K @4.5GHz! We leave the conclusion to you as we’re not sure if this is gaming or multitasking :)

 

These are some striking results even after considering the favorable conditions which are generally associated with such organized demos. Finally, it looks like AMD has done a commendable job of designing a modern efficient processor. You may already know that from an architectural viewpoint Zen/Ryzen is quite a departure from AMD’s recent design philosophy. With the Bulldozer core-architecture AMD went for a “speed-demon” design with deep pipeline resulting in a processor core optimized for high frequencies. But that speed came at the cost of high latency and branch miss-prediction penalties which severely affected the IPC (Instruction per Clock-cycle) throughput. Also, the modular CMT (Clustered Multi Threading) approach of Bulldozer where computing resources are shared within a module, proved inefficient in most single threaded workloads. Piledriver brought some much needed refinement but that didn’t prevent AMD from essentially ceding the high-end of personal computing market to its arch nemesis. The mainstream FX CPUs never received the proposed Steamroller and Excavator upgrades as AMD didn’t thought it to be prudent to invest resources and time into a battle already lost. Instead the engineering team, lead by famous architect Jim Keller, focused its attention on Zen. Zen is much more of a conventional design with a strong emphasis on IPC. In fact AMD claims to deliver a radical 40% throughput gain, clock for clock, when compared to previous generation. To what extent that promise would realize into practical benchmarks remains to be seen but these early findings indicates that AMD might finally have something big in form of Ryzen in its hand.

Haswell-E: The next big thing?

image courtesy of  vr-zone
(click to enlarge)

One of the more interesting news to reach us here at Technoprozium during this last New Year’s Eve is about Intel’s upcoming HEDT (High End Desktop) Haswell-E processors. Haswell-E is supposed to supplant Ivy Bridge-E at the highest end of Intel’s desktop spectrum. According to reports published by various hardware review sites, we are looking at a third quarter 2014 release which would put it somewhere between July and September. In recent times, Intel has been quite immaculate with its "Tick-tock" execution which dictates that the firm replaces an existing core-architecture with a new one within roughly a one year time frame. If you remember that Ivy Bridge-E was introduced around the same time last year, this news is not that much surprising. However, as always the devil lies in detail!

AMD launches A10-6790K: A new APU for socket FM2

While we are all waiting for Kaveri - the core-architecture that will drive AMD’s next-gen APUs, it seems that the firm isn’t quite done with its current line-up. So here comes A10-6790K – the newest member in AMD’s Richland family of APUs. Designated for socket FM2, this new model comes with a base clock frequency of 4.0GHz that can reach up to 4.3GHz in turbo mode.

Intel's IGP evolution: Ticking and tocking its way to the mainstream

I can still remember the day when I came across the term "bottleneck" for the first time! It was not that long ago- I was stuck with my Pentium IV powered PC which won't run most of my favourite games of that time. Back then I was just a clueless student and thought my CPU was the culprit. But that was not the case as one of my better 'informed' friends rightfully indicated toward my iGPU (Integrated Graphics Processing Unit) which happened to be the lackluster (even by the standards of that time) Intel Extreme graphics. Even though my CPU wasn't the best in class, it still could run those games but my inbuilt graphics was the limiting factor or "bottleneck" as the term implies. Of-course I could've bypassed the whole scenario by simply switching to a separate video card or dGPU (Discrete Graphics Processing Unit) but that would require more space, more power, more hustle and surely more spending which I couldn't afford. This pretty much was the story with most systems back then and while the integrated graphics parts were sufficient to drive the 2D desktop components and images, 3D workloads were beyond both their purpose and capacity. Since then a lot of things have changed in the world of personal computing, but it is only recently that the IGP performance of mainstream PC's has reached a level which is more or less acceptable not only in terms of general computing but also gaming. Today, we'll have a quick look at how Intel's graphics solutions have evolved over time.

New Cedar Trail Netbooks: Not quite the upgrade you wanted

ASUS Eee PC

After Intel announced the Cedar Trail line-up as a much needed update to its low power Atom CPU back in 2011, it was just a matter of time before the OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturer) started to ship new Netbooks and Nettops based on these new chips. And that's exactly the case as there are reports of new Netbooks/Eee PCs from around the web. ASUS has always been among the forerunners when it comes to this segment with its fast product launch and consistent updates, so no wonder there to see them offering some of these Netbooks. We also expect the other usual suspects like Acer, MSI and Samsung to follow soon. These look like fine little PCs and I'm sure the OEMs will do their part to make these even more attractive. But what intrigues me is the new Cedar Trail Atom CPU that seats right in the heart of these Netbooks. Let's take a closer look.

VIA EPIA motherboards: Quad-core solution in mini-ITX form factor

Remember VIA? The only other company that provides x86-compatible microprocessors and platforms except Intel and AMD? Yes, although VIA is no longer considered to be a force in the mainstream PC (desktop/laptop) arena, it has managed to survive in other market segments like the embedded devices. Many tend to forget that the viability of x86 based solutions extends beyond performance computing and that there is large market of industry specific devices, namely- digital signage, kiosk, sales automation and media application devices etc. VIA is a major player in this market and delivers efficient, affordable products. VIA technology's latest offerings are two new mini-ITX mainboards, named EPIA-M900 and EPIA-M910 respectively, which are additions to the already existing EPIA series of mainboards. Mini-ITX is an Interesting choice for form factor as this is not your usual ATX or micro-ATX motherboard, but looking at the targeted market of embedded sectors- this pretty much makes sense. More interestingly VIA offers a choice of combining its own quad-core E-series processors, which scale up to 1.46+ GHz and have 4MB L2 cache, with these boards.