CPU, APU & Chipsets News - Page 3

Quarterly reports and financial documents for large tech companies are often a mix of numbers and figures that require digging to find some of the most interesting takeaways. And that's still certainly the case with AMD's latest Q1 2023 financial results, but with the current state of the PC market, it's hard not to see the historic operating loss of USD 145 million as a cause for concern.

Image credit: AMD.

Especially when you compare that to the last year's operating income of USD 951 million, making it a 115% decrease and the first overall loss for AMD in years. As AMD's business encompasses several sectors, the Client Segment covering AMD Ryzen products looks to have seen the most notable decline, with revenue down 65% year on year, from over USD 2 billion to USD 700 million.

This segment alone reported an operating loss of USD 172 million, a stark contrast to the rapid growth seen in the Embedded Segment, which saw massive growth with revenue up 163%. This is reflected in the following statement from AMD Chair and CEO Dr. Lisa Su, who notes that AMD will prioritize its data center and embedded portfolio.

It looks like Intel might be preparing to change the name of its Core family of processors, departing from the terminology used for a long time now, namely (pun not intended) the Core i3, i5, i7 and i9 tiers of CPU.

This originates from a leak of an Intel processor via the Ashes of the Singularity benchmark database, an 18-thread CPU with the name 'Core Ultra 5 1003H', apparently switching the Core i5 naming scheme with Core Ultra 5.

At the time, it wasn't clear whether this might just be a different codename used for an engineering sample chip, but now, as VideoCardz points out, Bernard Fernandes, who is Intel's Director of Global Communications, has tweeted on the subject.

A new tweet from @OreXda simply states that 'AMD signed to use Samsung Foundry 4nm,' which points to AMD using Samsung's 4nm process for future products. It's unclear what these products will be, but looking back at Samsung's plans in 2021, there was word that AMD was eyeing the Samsung Foundry to produce 4nm CPUs designed for Chromebooks.

All of this comes down to TSMC's limited capacity, which for 4nm is apparently at its absolute peak, and with recent reports pointing to Samsung's fabrication process yielding better results as time goes on - a switch for certain low-power products makes sense for AMD.

Sourcing chips from multiple sources, as long as the quality is there, is a sound strategy and will allow AMD to get products out on time instead of delaying things ala the Ryzen 7040 Phoenix APUs. However, it's worth stating that product delays can happen for several reasons beyond manufacturing.

Ryzen CPUs burning up has been one of the most talked about things in the PC space in recent weeks, with AMD releasing an official statement noting that excessively high voltages on AM5 motherboards with the new Ryzen 7000X3D chips were damaging both the chip and motherboard.

A catastrophic outcome that has led to several outlets conducting their own tests alongside AMD - with a deep dive from Gamers Nexus dropping on the weekend showcasing that it was able to get an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D to effectively "explode" and melt the motherboard-side connections.

Even though the issues and voltage spikes are seemingly linked with overclocked memory using EXPO or XMP kits, AMD's root cause does note that the new firmware limiting the SoC voltage to 1.3C won't affect how memory performs.

AMD's Zen 4 processors have recently been under the spotlight because of reported cases of the CPUs dying due to overheating, but there's good news in that a fix has been implemented, and BIOS updates carrying it should soon be available.

A Ryzen 7800X3D CPU that died of heat damage (Image Credit: Speedrookie on Reddit)

The burnout issue was related to SoC voltages being cranked up above safe limits, a theory previously proposed by multiple sources in the industry that turned out to be correct.

AMD had already issued a statement on this matter, but a second message clarifies the exact cause and outlines the fix.

AMD has formally announced new Ryzen Z1 and Ryzen Z1 Extreme processors designed for "handheld PC gaming consoles," like the upcoming ASUS ROG Ally, which will use the Ryzen Z1 Extreme. This is great news for the future of portable PCs as gaming consoles and will undoubtedly lead to several new devices in the coming years that will deliver incredible results.

AMD Ryzen Z1 and Ryzen Z1 Extreme specs, image credit: AMD.

With AMD RDNA 3 architecture-based graphics and "Zen 4" processing, the Ryzen Z1 Extreme features 8 cores and 16 threads with 12 AMD RDNA 3 Compute Units and 24 MB of cache. The baseline Ryzen Z1 features 6 cores and 12 threads with 4 AMD RDNA 3 Compute Units, and 22 MB of cache.

The Ryzen Z1 Extreme sounds particularly impressive, with AMD noting that it can deliver up to 8.6 TFLOPS of graphics performance - more than the AMD hardware found inside the PlayStation 4 Pro and Xbox One X. Designed for portable gaming handhelds that feature 1080p displays AMD has released the following in-game benchmark results for the Ryzen Z1 Series.

With reports of AMD Ryzen 7000 Series processors burning out and causing damage to the CPUs and motherboards, there are reports outlining what could be causing the issues. Earlier today, we reported that it looks to be related to overclocking SoC voltages.

The issue looks quite serious as the result is a damaged CPU and motherboard. Board partners like MSI and ASUS are releasing firmware updates designed to address the problems relating to the AM5 platform and AMD's new Ryzen 7000X3D processors with 3D V-Cache.

Voltage restrictions will minimize the chances of these processors experiencing physical damage to both the chip and motherboard socket. With several reports of the issue cropping up on Reddit, AMD has issued a statement (via Anandtech) below.

We've just seen a couple of fresh nuggets from the rumor mill pertaining to Intel's Meteor Lake processors, and it turns out there may still be desktop models incoming - at least up to Core i5 chips.

VideoCardz picked up on this, first of all pointing out a piece of spillage from Intel itself, namely an Intel Design-In Tools web page for an 'LGA1851-MTL-S Interposer for the Gen5 VR Test Tool'.

MTL-S stands for Meteor Lake-S, meaning desktop Meteor Lake processors, and the existence of such a test tool at least hints that we might still see desktop chips released. Rather than more recent rumors which have suggested that it's likely that all we'll get this year is a Raptor Lake refresh. (Most recently, that's been the line of thinking from Moore's Law is Dead, though the YouTuber did note that he couldn't rule out Meteor Lake desktop for 2023).

AMD Ryzen 7000 processors have been burning out - literally dying, and in some cases, there are reports of them damaging the motherboard they're in, too - and a reason why this is happening has now been put forward.

A dead Ryzen 7800X3D processor with heat damage clearly visible in the form of a bulge (Image Credit: Speedrookie on Reddit)

A report from Tom's Hardware informs us that the root cause is SoC voltages being jacked up to unsafe levels in affected CPUs. That's according to multiple industry sources who wish to stay anonymous for the time being.

Naturally, we must remain cautious around this as it's not an official declaration of the problem from AMD, but those sources are all saying the same thing, and are backed up by a statement from motherboard maker ASUS (made to expert overclocker Der8auer).

MSI has deployed a new BIOS release in which the motherboard manufacturer has implemented restrictions to stop Ryzen 7000X3D processors from having their voltage juiced up.

These are worrying reports about AMD's latest 3D V-Cache processors (Image Credit: AMD)

As you may have seen, this follows reports at the weekend on Reddit where some owners of Ryzen 7000 CPUs with 3D V-Cache posted about their chip dying (and motherboard, for that matter).

The original report was from a system with a Ryzen 7800X3D and an ASUS motherboard. The owner noted that a bulge was observed in the pad of the dead CPU, speculating that this was the result of too much heat causing the pad to expand.