One of the hot topics of last year was AMD not making Zen 3 processors compatible with the first generation of AM4 socket boards, so the 300 series chipsets are out of luck. However, this issue has seen an unexpected development. Last month, a number of 300-generation boards received new BIOSes, enabling official upgrades to newer processors – Ryzen 4000G APUs and, in some cases, even Ryzen 5000s. Read more “Gigabyte and MSI B350 & X370 boards support Ryzen 4000/5000”
New AM5 platform and a socket is coming this year for AMD CPUs, even adopting the LGA approach for the first time. Some details have already leaked, but much remains unknown. Rather interesting news about the new chipsets, to be used on ADM AM5, has popped up recently: a mainstream version named B650 and a high end version called X670 are coming, the latter being notable for allegedly consisting of multiple chips. Read more “AMD X670 chipset on AM5 platform could be a pair of B650 dies”
In the summer we reported that Russia is now making (or rather designing, as fabbing will happen at TSMC) its own ARM Baikal-M CPUs, which are also being used in computers intended for state administration. It was an outdated SoC with Cortex-A57, the very first 64-bit ARM cores. But now the same company has a much cooler processor: a 48-core with a newer architecture that could replace the cheaper server Xeons and Epycs. Read more “Russia has local Baikal-S server CPUs. 6nm 128-core in the works”
Last month, Intel has released Alder Lake CPUs, with the highest Core i9-12900K model scoring both single-thread and gaming performance lead. But there’s more coming. Intel is now said to be developing Core i9-12900KS, an even faster model, or rather a special edition. This CPU should perform even better, thus securing Intel’s lead against the possibility that AMD counterattacks i9-12900K successfully with its 3D V-Cache CPUs. Read more “Intel plans a special edition 5.2GHz all-core boost Alder Lake”
Five to ten years ago, Intel had been the undisputed king of silicon processes, but the delay of 10nm node has ended that and TSMC has been the clear leader since. It is often said that its processes are specialised for mobile use, still remaining inferior to Intel in terms of the maximum achieved clock frequency. But this might change soon. The company will now focus on this very area and high performance chips for PCs. Read more “N4X: TSMC unveils special processes for high performance chips”
Since HBM2E is no longer used in gaming GPUs due to its price, the highest performing graphic memory is now the PAM4-based GDDR6X, developed by Micron for Nvidia and reaching transfer rates of up to 21.0 GHz. However, it could now be outperformed by the classic GDDR6. Samsung has announced 20GHz and even 24GHz samples of GDDR6 (or GDDR6+?), that could bring about a 50% bandwidth increase when compared to current GDDR6. Read more “Samsung will make GDDR6 50% faster than today, already sampling”
We got a peek at the prices of cheaper B660 motherboards for Intel Alder Lake recently. So far, motherboards for the new desktop platform have generally been expensive. Why is that? According to TechPowerUp’s intel, it’s a combination of many factors and several features of Alder Lake processors. Some are quite surprising, for example the LGA 1700 socket itself is apparently much more expensive than you’d expect it to be. Read more “Causes of high Alder Lake mobo prices? PCB, VRM, even the socket”
Obscure hardware has been thriving lately, with AMD choosing to recycle APUs used in consoles into improvised PC CPUs. Following the Jaguar chip from the Xbox One, this year theAMD 4700S Desktop Kit, a CPU with 8 Zen 2 cores produced from defective PlayStation 5 APUs, has appeared. And AMD now seems to be preparing a similar CPU with a new 4800S designation. A mainboard fitted with such should be suited for gaming. Read more “AMD 4800S: Zen 2 console APU comes to PCs, now with PCIe 4.0”
GeForce RTX 2060 with 12GB of memory is officially here. Earlier leaks had it coming on December 7, which is the date of store availability. In the end Nvidia already “revealed” the card last week. But extremely quietly, the company just published the specs of the “new” on its website. The return of the RTX 2060, or arguably RTX 2060 Super is now a real thing. But unfortunately there are some questions around the price. Read more “GeForce RTX 2060 12GB quietly released. More memory costs more”
It has been over a year since Nvidia has announced a deal to buy ARM – source of the instruction set and CPU architectures that power embedded and mobile devices, phones and increasingly computers, laptops and servers. But now it looks like there is a major chance that this merger will not happen. US authorities have raised the loudest “NO” yet, aiming to stop the acquisition for fear it would stifle innovation and competition. Read more “Nvidia-ARM merger dead? US authorities seek to block the sale”
There was news that (some) boards for Alder Lake using B660 chipset won’t support PCI Express 5.0. But it looks that may not be an actual limitation of that chipset, but rather something that will depend on pricing of each particular model. It turns out that even some Z690 boards will be like this. Gigabyte has a first such board, and it seems that these models might be the key to building an Alder Lake PC relatively cheaply. Read more “Z690 Alder Lake boards can lack PCIe 5.0 too, for cost reasons”
DDR5 memory modules for PCs have arrived on the market only recently so their replacement should be many years away (the span between the introduction of DDR4 and DDR5 has been more than seven years). But Samsung, as one of the main memory modules producers, has now announced more distant plans for the successors of the DDR5 memory (DDR6), but also new graphic memory, to replace GDDR6 and GDDR6X at the Tech Day 2021 conference. Read more “Future of memory tech: Samsung on DDR6, GDDR7 and GDDR6+”
HDD capacities have been rising slowly lately and new larger HDDs often take very long to ship after being announced. But it looks like we are finally getting somewhere: the first 20 TB capacity HDDs (without SMR) are coming, from Western Digital. They’re actually coming to the market with general availability. What’s more, they are interesting because they are the first drives with the recently introduced OptiNAND technology. Read more “First OptiNAND-based WD HDDs go on sale. 20 TB without SMR”
It’s been a little over a year since Nvidia announced the 2.0 generation of their FPS-increasing AI upscaling DLSS, with significantly better quality thanks to temporal reconstruction and stabilization. Now it has been refined into DLSS 2.3, which brings a new AI for better quality, but at the same time Nvidia also introduces a purely spatial upscaler, which is actually a competitor or alternative for the similar AMD FSR technology. Read more “Nvidia launches improved DLSS and FSR competitor Image Scaling”
The new Z690 platform, with a LGA 1700 socket and Alder Lake CPU just launched by Intel is the first one to use DDR5 memory. Optionally the CPUs can still be used with DDR4 memory modules. You might feel like buying a DDR4 mainboard could be a mistake blocking the path to a later CPU upgrade. But we have good news for you – Alder Lake is not the last CPU with DDR4 support, such mainboards will also support upcoming CPUs. Read more “13th Generation Raptor Lake/Core CPUs to maintain DDR4 support”
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