Tag Archives: Advanced Micro Devices

Technology

AMD’s RDNA 3 GPUs are Way Cheaper Than the RTX 4090

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Screenshot: AMD

Back in August, Dr. Lisa Su introduced the world to AMD’s newest iteration of CPU technology, the Ryzen 7000 Series–but she didn’t stop there. We got an announcement for an announcement: RDNA 3, AMD’s next generation of GPU technology. Well, today is November 3rd, and we now know more about AMD’s answer to the RTX 40 Series.

01:25

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Dr. Su began the presentation by reflecting on the Ryzen 7000 Series release and stating AMD’s ambitious goals, much like she did during the previous presentation. For RDNA3, she reiterated the company’s commitment to energy efficiency and performance.

“At the forefront of what we’re doing, it’s all about power and energy efficiency. We want to make sure that we continue to innovate around performance-per-watt leadership to enable all of the gamer upgrades with fantastic performance, but at a reasonable power.” – Dr. Lisa Su

Starting with the new chiplet design, RDNA 3 takes a modular approach with the intention of optimizing the efficiency of the overall GPU design. Much like the Ryzen CPU family, RDNA3 will utilize a mixed chiplet architecture. With a 5nm graphics die (GCD) compute unit containing all of the shaders, display engines, and updated media engine, the GCD is paired with a 6nm Memory Cache Die (MCD) that consists of the GDDR6 controller as well as 96 MB of AMD’s Infinity Cache–2nd Generation Infinity Cache, that is!

With this new design, the RNDA 3 chiplet will have an interconnect speed of up to 5.3 TB/s (a 2.7x increase over RDNA 2), enabling up to 61 TFLOPS of compute. All of this will be supported by up to 24 GB of GDDR6 with a memory bus up to 384-bit (not the GDDR6X we saw in the RTX 4090) and, according to Dr. Su, will enable RDNA 3 GPUs to achieve up to 54% greater performance-per-watt over the previous generation.

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So, what is this magical mystery GPU? Well, it’s actually two GPUs: the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT.

The Radeon RX 7900 XTX comes with 24 GB of GDDR6 and Radeon RX 7900 XT comes with 20 GB of GDDR6. Engineered as both 4K and 8K gaming GPUs, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT have a number of updates over the previous generation that will help push it into the future of gaming.

Starting with dedicated AI acceleration, RDNA 3 is said to improve AI-based functions of the GPU by 2.7x and ray tracing instructions by 1.8x over RDNA 2. In rendering applications–including ray tracing, this new architecture is said to obtain up to 50% more performance per compute unit and double the instructions per clock. This is a much-needed leap for Radeon graphics to compete within this particular space of graphics processing!

Screenshot: AMD

But, there’s more:

AMD’s new Radiance Display is the engine pushing all of that data into the display. The engine will support 12 bit-per-channel color with up to 68 billion colors as well as higher refresh rates. Thanks in no small part to DisplayPort 2.1 and HDMI 2.1 adoption, the RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT will support refresh rates of up to 900 Hz at 1440p, 480 Hz at 4K, and 165 Hz at 5K.

Alongside of the Radiance Display engine, AMD also unveiled a new dual media engine for simultaneous encode and decode for both AVC and HEVC formats. This engine will also support AV1 encoding and decoding, with a max resolution of 8K60. Later on in the presentation, AMD teased future support for AV1 encoding support within OBS as well as other popular video streaming and editing software. This teaser also included a future feature called SmartAccess Video, which will leverage Ryzen CPUs and Radeon GPUs together to supposedly provide up to a 30% uplift in 4K multi stream encoding.

When it comes to gaming performance, the RX 7900 XTX is purported to operate up to 1.7x better than AMD’s former flagship GPU, the Radeon RX 6950 XT, in rasterization and up to 1.6x better in ray tracing games. Using FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR), the charts AMD showed for the 7900 XTX showed several titles running at frame rates far exceeding 200 FPS at 4K. One standout was Valorant, which showed the RX 7900 XTX running at 704 FPS! Lots of bold claims here, but we’ll have to see for ourselves once the cards are in the hands of 3rd-party reviewers!

When it comes to the actual specifications, the RX 7900 XTX will have 96 compute units with a game clock of 2.3 GHz. All of this is said to run at a total board power draw of 355 W. For context, that is 95 W less than NVIDIA’s RTX 4090 Founder’s Edition while hovering close to the RX 6950 XT’s typical board power. The RX 7900 XT will have 84 compute units with a game clock of 2 GHz and a total board power of 300 W.

Oh yeah, and neither one of them will require a special cable to power them.

This is just the hardware, though. AMD took some time to talk about FSR adoption, the uplift in performance seen within FSR2, and how well RDNA 3 operates with it enabled. One example the company showed off was Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla running at 96 frames per second at 8K. It was a short clip, but pretty wild to see all the same. But AMD wanted us to know that FSR isn’t stopping at FSR2. There’s a new iteration, FSR3. At the time of the announcement, AMD said that Radeon users can expect up to 2x more frames per second over FSR2 and that the technology would be available in 2023.

Continuing the conversation about software, AMD’s Frank Azor shared updates to Radeon Adrenaline software, including a new feature coming in the first half of 2023 called AMD HYPR-RX. This feature will be a one-button optimizer to give AMD systems the best possible performance without having to make all of the adjustments yourself.

Screenshot: AMD

Team Red also shared its commitment to providing the best CPU and GPU unified experience by working with system integrators to bring the AMD Advantage line to the desktop platform. This means pairing AMD GPUs and CPUs together in system configurations carefully curated by AMD for the supposed best possible AMD experience.

The Radeon RX 7900 XTX and Radeon RX 7900 XT will be available on December 13th, 2022. And the price? $999 and $899 USD, respectively. This is an amazing distinction from NVIDIA’s $1599 flagship.

We look forward to seeing just how these GPUs perform out in the wild! Let us know in the comments what you are most excited for in AMD’s announcement today and if you plan on making an upgrade before the year is through.

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Business

Individual Investors Ramp Up Bets on Tech Stocks

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Technology stocks have taken a beating this year. Many individual investors have used it as an opportunity to double down.

The Nasdaq Composite Index—home to the big tech stocks that propelled the market’s decadelong rally—has fallen 21% in 2022. Shares of

Amazon.com Inc.

AMZN 10.36%

and the parents of Google and

Facebook

META -1.01%

have suffered double-digit declines as well, stung by higher interest rates and souring attitudes about their growth prospects. 

Yet many of those stocks remain the most popular among individual investors who say they are confident in a rebound and expect the companies to continue powering the economy. 

In late July, purchases by individual investors of a basket of popular tech stocks hit the highest level since at least 2014, according to data from Vanda Research. The basket includes the FAANG stocks—Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc., Amazon,

Apple Inc.

AAPL 3.28%

,

Netflix Inc.

and Google parent

Alphabet Inc.

GOOG 1.79%

—along with a handful of others like

Tesla Inc.

and

Microsoft Corp.

Meanwhile, Apple, chip company

Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

and the tech-heavy Invesco QQQ Trust exchange-traded fund have remained among the most popular individual bets since 2020. 

Interest in risky and leveraged funds tied to tech and stocks like

Nvidia Corp.

has also swelled, a sign that investors have stepped in to play the wild swings in the shares. 

It has been a fruitful bet for many. Tech stocks have been on the rebound of late, partly on investor hopes for a slower path of interest-rate increases in the months ahead. The Nasdaq gained 12% in July, its best month since April 2020, outperforming the broader S&P 500, which rose 9.1%.

Individual investor Jerry Lee says: ‘The market is severely undervaluing how much tech can actually play into our lives.’



Photo:

Peggy Chen

“I’m extremely bullish on tech,” said Jerry Lee, a 27-year-old investor in New York who co-founded a startup that helps people find jobs. “The market is severely undervaluing how much tech can actually play into our lives.” 

In coming days, investors will be parsing earnings reports from companies such as AMD and

PayPal Holdings Inc.

for more clues about the market’s trajectory. Data on manufacturing and the jobs market are also on tap. 

Mr. Lee said he recently stashed cash into a technology-focused fund that counts Apple and Nvidia among its biggest holdings, after years of pouring money into broad-based index funds. His experience working at firms such as Google has made him optimistic about the sector’s future, he said.

Gabe Fisher holds stock in Meta Platforms, Amazon and Alphabet.



Photo:

Ethan Kaplan

Even last week when many of the industry’s leaders, including Apple, Amazon and Alphabet, warned their growth is slowing, investors pushed the stocks higher and expressed confidence in the ability of the companies to withstand an uncertain economy. Apple logged its best month since August 2020, while Amazon finished its best month since October 2009, helped by a 10% jump in its shares on Friday alone.

Many investors also pounced on the tumble in shares of Facebook parent Meta Platforms. The stock was the top buy among individual investors on the Fidelity brokerage Thursday when it fell 5.2% in the wake of the social-media giant’s first-ever revenue drop. Tesla,

Ford Motor Co.

and leveraged exchange-traded funds tracking the tech-heavy Nasdaq-100 index were also widely traded that day.

Gabe Fisher, a 23-year-old investor near San Francisco, said he is holding on to stocks like Meta, Amazon and Alphabet. 

“Even if these companies never grow at as fast of a pace, they’re still companies that are so relevant and so prevalent that I’m going to hold on to them,” Mr. Fisher said.

He said he also has a small position in

Cathie Wood’s

ARK Innovation Exchange-Traded Fund that he doesn’t plan to sell soon, even though the fund has lost more than half of its value this year. 

Other investors have been turning to riskier corners of the market. Leveraged exchange-traded funds tracking tech have been the third- and fourth-most-popular ETFs for individual investors to buy this year, behind funds tracking the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 indexes. These funds allow investors to make turbocharged bets on the market and can double or triple the daily return of a stock or index.

Many individual investors have also turned to the options market to bet on tech. Bullish bets that would pay out if Tesla shares rose have been among the most widely traded in the options market, according to Vanda. Individual traders have spent more on Tesla call options on an average day this year than on Amazon, Nvidia and options tied to the Invesco QQQ Trust combined, according to Vanda. The firm analyzed the average premium spent on options that are out-of-the-money, or far from where the shares are currently trading. 

Jeff Durbin, a 59-year-old investor based in Naples, Fla., said he regrets missing out on buying big tech stocks decades ago.  

He has scooped up shares of companies like artificial intelligence firm

Upstart Holdings Inc.

and

Shopify Inc.

SHOP -3.01%

—and hung on despite their sharp swings. Shopify, for example, dropped 14% in a single session last week as it said it would cut about 10% of its global workforce. “It’s painful, but I missed out on things like Amazon and Netflix when they were cheap,” Mr. Durbin said. “Who is going to be the Amazon and Apple 20 years from now?”

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Technology

New Lenovo Legion 7 and Slim 7 Laptops Pair Brawn with Beauty

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Lenovo Legion 7
Photo: Florence Ion/Gizmodo

Lenovo is best known for its ThinkPad business laptops, but its Legion series has birthed some of the best gaming systems I’ve used in the past few years. Today, the laptop maker is replacing the old with a new fleet consisting of the Legion 7 and Legion Slim 7, each available with either AMD or Intel (denoted with an “i” in the model name) processors.

Along with the latest processors and graphics cards from the two main chipmakers, these gaming rigs sport multiple 16-inch display options, a bevy of ports, massive batteries, and some fun RGB lighting. Consistent across all systems is an understated design with pops of colorful lighting, 1080p webcams, and high-res panels.

Lenovo Legion 7 and Legion Slim 7 release date and price

Before we dig in, let’s talk pricing and availability. The Legion 7i will start at $2,449 when it launches later this month. Its AMD sibling, the Legion 7, comes in at $2,059 and will be available in June.

The Legion Slim 7 models are less expensive, though remain in the premium category; the Slim 7i, running on Intel chips, will cost $1,589 when it arrives this month while the Legion Slim 7 with AMD Ryzen processors is expected to go on sale in June for $1,519.

These are only starting prices, so you’ll pay extra for upgrades to the processor, graphics card, and display. I’m afraid the price of these systems, which is already high at the base models, could quickly get out of hand once you’ve configured them to your liking.

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Lenovo Legion 7 and 7i

While the Slim models are designed for portability, the Legion 7 and Legion 7i are all about performance. These two systems can be configured with the latest processors from AMD (Legion 7) and Intel (Legion 7i): up to a Ryzen 9 6900HX or Intel Core i9-12900HX, respectively. They each support up to 32GB of DDR5 RAM (16GB x 2) and up to a 2TB SSD.

Lenovo Legion 7
Photo: Florence Ion/Gizmodo

On the graphics front, the Legion 7i’s Intel CPUs pair with Nvidia GPUs in the form of either an RTX 3070 Ti (8GB of RAM) or an RTX 3080 Ti (16GB RAM). The AMD model goes all in on Team Red with either a Radeon RX6700M or RX6850M GPU.

Turning to the design, the Legion 7 and 7i have a simple, understated unibody chassis made from aluminum and magnesium. Two noteworthy design elements include a CNC metal trim around the edges and some dazzling RGB lighting bordering the deck, glowing through the vents, and illuminating a full-size keyboard with a numpad and WASD Force Sensory keys that let you accelerate an in-game character based on the force you apply.

Photo: Florence Ion/Gizmodo

At 14.1 x 10.4 x 0.76 inches and 5.5 pounds, the Legion 7 isn’t the most portable gaming laptop, but it isn’t a stationary beast, either. I wouldn’t want to bring it onto a flight, but a quick jaunt to a nearby cafe won’t result in any trips to the chiropractor.

In a way, the thickness pays off with the wide array of ports this laptop offers: on the left side are two Thunderbolt 4 (or two USB 3.2 Type-C and a USB4 Type-C on Legion 7i) ports; on the right side are a USB Type-C connection, a webcam shutter switch (for a 1080p webcam), and a headphone jack; and on the rear are two USB Type-A ports, another USB Type-C port, an HDMI 2.1 connection, an RJ45 Ethernet port, and a power jack. Sorry content creators, no SD card slot here.

Photo: Florence Ion/Gizmodo

There are a few display options available for the Legion 7, but one, in particular, sounds promising. Opt for the premium screen and you get a 16-inch, 2560 x 1600-pixel panel with a 16:10 aspect ratio, a 3-millisecond response time, and—take note, gamers—a variable refresh rate that scales from 165Hz to 240Hz. The other option is identical except with a standard 165Hz refresh rate. They are both certified to VESA DisplayHDR 400 and Dolby Vision specs.

Wrapping things up is a spec we don’t see too often: a 99.99Whr battery. Add another hundredth and Lenovo would risk getting in trouble with the TSA, the folks who set the capacity limits for batteries allowed on planes. What that means for runtimes is unclear. What I can tell you is that, with “Super Rapid Charge,” the Legion can juice up from dead to 100% in around 80 minutes.

Lenovo Legion Slim 7 and Slim 7i

It doesn’t take a Ph.D. to decipher the differences between the Legion Slim 7 and the standard model. These are, you guessed it, more portable versions for folks like students, professional gamers, or creative pros, who need to work or play away from their desks.

I’ll get right to it: the Legion Slim 7 and Slim 7i weigh 4.5 pounds and measure 14.1 x 10.1 x 0.67 inches, meaning they are considerably lighter and thinner than their full-size counterparts. You won’t find an Ethernet port on these, but there is an SD card reader

Lenovo Legion Slim 7 (left); Lenovo Legion 7 (right)
Photo: Florence Ion/Gizmodo

What do you lose in the downsize? To start, a bit of power. While you can get up to the same Core i9-12900HK or Ryzen 9 6900HK CPUs, the Slim 7i and Slim 7 start with Core i5 and Ryzen 5 CPUs.

More options certainly isn’t a bad thing, since you can bump up the CPU power to match the non-Slim versions. Where the non-Slim version has the advantage is with the GPU; the Slim 7i starts with an RTX 3050 Ti and goes up to the RTX 3070, but can’t reach up to the RTX 3080. Similarly, the Slim 7 can be equipped with a Radeon RX 6800S GPU, but no 6850M. You also drop memory from 32GB to an unorthodox 24GB (8GB onboard and a 16GB slot). Storage, however, still goes up to 2TB.

Lenovo Legion Slim 7
Photo: Florence Ion/Gizmodo

Another key difference is the screen options, and here is where the fine print really matters. The Legion Slim 7i with Intel chips can be equipped with a 16-inch, 2560 x 1600-pixel mini-LED display with a 165Hz refresh rate and 3ms response time. Available later in the year, this panel option peaks at an eye-watering 1,250 nits and is VESA DisplayHDR 1000 and Dolby Vision certified. Mini-LED, by the way, is a fairly new technology that sits somewhere between LED and OLED, delivering outstanding contrast, black levels, and brightness.

Lenovo Legion Slim 7
Photo: Florence Ion/Gizmodo

I assume that display upgrade will cost a pretty penny; if it’s out of your price range, you can go with a standard IPS display with a 165Hz refresh rate. Interestingly, the AMD model doesn’t get the mini-LED treatment and instead mirrors the options available on the standard version: a 2560 x 1600 IPS panel with a 165 to 250Hz variable refresh rate, or a similar panel with a flat 165Hz refresh rate.

Lenovo did, however, find a way to pack that 99.99Whr battery in the Slim model as well. I can’t promise you long battery life, but you do at least get Super Rapid Charge for getting the battery to full in under an hour and a half.

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World

U.S. Stocks Finish Volatile Session With Gains

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U.S. stocks flipped higher Monday as government-bond yields retreated and investors took the opportunity to scoop up shares of beaten-down technology and other growth stocks.

The S&P 500 climbed 24.34 points, or 0.6%, to 4296.12 after dropping nearly 1.7% earlier in the session. The Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced 238.06 points, or 0.7%, to 34049.46.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index rose 165.56 points, or 1.3%, to 13004.85.

Twitter

shares rose 5.7% after the social-media company accepted

Elon Musk’s

$44 billion takeover deal.

All three indexes had opened lower after Chinese shares suffered their worst selloff in more than two years as Beijing sticks to its zero-Covid strategy while faced with increasing cases in major cities. Oil prices fell, at one point dipping below $100 a barrel, before staging an afternoon rally.

A decline in bond yields signaled to investors that the Federal Reserve may not move to raise interest rates as aggressively as feared, investors said.

“Rates had been weighing against the market,” said

Jack Ablin,

chief investment officer of Cresset Capital. “Now what we’re seeing is a reversal of that trend.”

The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note ticked down to 2.825% Monday from 2.905% Friday as investors sought safer assets to hold. Yields and prices move inversely.

“I think a lot of growth stocks have been punished too severely,” said

Brian Price,

head of investment management for Commonwealth Financial Network. “Part of what we’re seeing may be a reversal of that. Longer-term rates have just moved so far.

“The market is stepping back and assessing if they should have moved so fast. And falling interest rates tend to help growth stocks.”

Twitter rose $2.77 to $51.70.

Microsoft

climbed $6.69, or 2.4%, to $280.72, while Google parent

Alphabet

added $68.77, or 2.9%, to close at $2,461.48

Meantime, the S&P 500’s energy sector was the biggest decliner, falling 3.3%.

Schlumberger

fell $2.96, or 7.1%, to $38.69.

Halliburton

dropped $2.36, or 6.3%, to $35.33.

APA,

Apache’s parent company, slipped $1.63, or 4%, $39.08.

Investors are worried that strict policies China has in place to combat Covid-19 will further disrupt global supply chains. But the extended lockdowns, and a slowdown in China’s economy, also could crimp global demand for oil, investors said.

The Shanghai Composite and CSI 300 indexes fell 5.1% and 4.9%, respectively. Those were the largest single-day percentage declines for both benchmarks since February 2020, in the early days of the pandemic. 

The offshore yuan fell about 1% to trade at about 6.59 per dollar. That was the lowest since November 2020, according to FactSet. The decline built on a selloff last week that ended months of relative stability.

As Shanghai remains locked down amid China’s biggest Covid-19 outbreak, residents are taking to social media to vent about a shortage of food or they are bartering with neighbors. Anxiety and hunger are prompting many to question Beijing’s pandemic strategy. Photo: Chinatopix Via AP

“The problem with inflation is it can get embedded and we see inflation getting quite sticky,” said

Sebastian Mackay,

a multiasset fund manager at Invesco. “What we’re seeing is a combination of the war in Ukraine and the lockdown in China causing supply issues.”

Limitation of movement in China also could sap demand for oil. Brent crude, the international benchmark for oil, fell 4.1% to $102.32 a barrel. Oil prices still remain near historically high levels due to concerns about disruptions to energy markets from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

In other corporate news, shares of

Coca-Cola

rose 69 cents, or 1.1%, to $65.94. The company said it logged higher sales for the latest quarter as demand held up in the face of price increases.

Advanced Micro Devices

added $2.55, or 2.9%, to $90.69 after a Raymond James analyst lifted his rating on the chip maker’s shares.

Elevated inflation has caused the Federal Reserve to increase efforts to combat it. Last week, Fed Chairman

Jerome Powell

signaled that the central bank is ready to tighten monetary policy more quickly and indicated that it was likely to raise interest rates by a half-percentage point at its meeting in May.

Money managers are worried that the Fed’s aggressive interest-rate increases could slow economic growth or even tip the economy into recession. This could lead to a situation where the Fed has to raise interest rates in the short term but cut them in the long term, Mr. Mackay said. 

On Monday, the

Cboe

Volatility Index—Wall Street’s so-called fear gauge, also known as the VIX—approached its highest level since mid-March before retreating to 27.02.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average on Friday posted its worst one-day percentage change since October 2020.



Photo:

BRENDAN MCDERMID/REUTERS

Gold futures fell  2% to $1,893.20 a troy ounce. While gold is historically seen as an inflation hedge, it pays no yield, making it less attractive than government bonds in a time of rising interest rates. The cost of buying gold, which is denominated in dollars, also is more expensive for foreign investors when the dollar strengthens.

Overseas, the pan-continental Stoxx Europe 600 dropped 1.8%. South Korea’s Kospi declined 1.8%, and Japan’s Nikkei 225 contracted 1.9%.

How the Biggest Companies Are Performing

Write to Caitlin Ostroff at caitlin.ostroff@wsj.com and Justin Baer at justin.baer@wsj.com

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Business

Intel Earnings Beat Estimates. Why Its Stock Is Falling.

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Text size

Intel stock fell after the company reported earnings.


David Paul Morris/Bloomberg


Intel

stock fell in extended trading Thursday after the company missed sales expectations and said its chief financial officer plans to retire in May. The company also chalked a decline in its PC business to broader component shortages.

For the third quarter, Intel reported adjusted earnings of $1.71 a share and adjusted revenue of $18.1 billion. The earnings figure beat analyst estimates of $1.11 a share, but analysts were looking for revenue of $18.2 billion, according to FactSet.

Intel stock (ticker: INTC) has dropped 9.8% in premarket trading Thursday following the report. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) stock has risen 1.9%, suggesting that the issue is with Intel specifically, and not with chip stocks generally.

“We broke ground on new fabs, shared our accelerated path to regain process performance leadership, and unveiled our most dramatic architectural innovations in a decade,” CEO Pat Gelsinger said in a statement summing up the quarter.

Revenue in the PC-focused client computing group fell 2% year over year to $9.7 billion. The company said notebook volumes were hampered by industrywide component shortages, but that was partially offset by higher average selling prices and strength in the desktop computer business. Revenue in its data center group business jumped 10% to $6.5 billion.

The company said CFO George Davis plans to retire from Intel in May 2022, and that the company will conduct a search for a successor.

Intel raised its full-year adjusted earnings outlook to $5.28 a share, from $4.80. It also raised its outlook for 2022 adjusted gross margin to 57% from 56.5%. The company anticipates gross margins between 51% and 53% over the next two to three years and then moving upward from there.

The company expects revenue of about $74 billion in 2022, with a compound annual growth rate of 10% to 12% over the next four to five years. Consensus estimates for full-year 2022 revenue recently sat at $73.1 billion, according to FactSet.

Meanwhile, Intel expects capital expenditures of between $25 billion and $28 billion in 2022.

Intel also said its investor day will be pushed back to Feb.17, 2022, from Nov.18. On the earnings call, Gelsinger cited the search for a CFO and added that he hopes the event can take place in-person.

Write to Connor Smith at connor.smith@barrons.com

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Technology

Original Xbox Ditched AMD For Intel At The Very Last Minute

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Photo: JEFF CHRISTENSEN (Getty Images)

When the first Xbox console was revealed on stage back in 2001, it was announced that it was packing an Intel CPU. This had been a last-minute decision on Microsoft’s part; so last-minute, in fact, that according to the “Father of the Xbox” Seamus Blackley AMD engineers were sitting in the front row of the console’s debut.

Blackley, who is always good for interesting stories around the console’s development and launch, shared another earlier today. In a series of tweets, he tells the story of the console’s 2001 launch showcase:

(Note: Lisa Su is the current President and CEO of AMD, but wasn’t with the company at the time of the Xbox’s launch. “Andy” was Andrew Grove, the CEO of Intel at the time, while “Bill” is Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates).

As we approach @Xbox 20th, I feel a need, once again, to apologize for the literal last second, @AMD engineers-who-helped-us-make-the-prototype-boxes-sitting-in-the-front-row-for-the-announcement switch to an Intel CPU. It was Andy calling Bill. Not me. @LisaSu. I beg mercy.

I was standing there on the stage for the announcement, with BillG, and there they were right there, front row, looking so sad. I’ll never forget it. They had helped so much with the prototypes. Prototypes that were literally running the launch announcement demos ON AMD HARDWARE.

I felt like such an ass.

Cold-blooded! That’s about as last-minute as a swap like this could be, and must have sucked for the AMD folks involved. I don’t personally care what components made it into the box or which company ultimately profited from it, but just from a personal standpoint, I feel so sorry for these engineers.

Imagine putting in all that work, getting the invite to the Xbox event, sitting right there, watching the launch games be showcased on your hardware and then…womp sorry some other company gets to swoop in and actually make all the money.

Anyway, if you’re looking for some kind of corporate redemptive arc to this story, both the PS5 and Xbox Series X are powered by AMD CPUs.

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(You can see Gates announce an Intel CPU at around the 2:29 mark below)

 

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Technology

You Can Use Windows 11 on Unsupported Hardware, But You May Not Want to

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Is your device compatible with the next version of Windows?
Image: Microsoft

Windows 11 is going to be a major upgrade. But before you can get there, Microsoft wants you to have the necessary hardware. The company published a blog post officially detailing the system requirements for Windows 11. It lays out the processors and systems that will be compatible with the new operating system, while also helping clear out some of the confusion caused by the company’s initial guidance on the necessary hardware.

Microsoft’s list of system requirements includes at least a 1GHz or faster CPU, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage. Devices will also need version 2.0 of the Trusted Platform Module (TPM), which aids with security clearance and is available on most modern motherboards.

The list of Windows 11-ready Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm processors includes the usual cadre of Intel 8th Gen and beyond CPUs. Most notably, there’s a chunk of 7th Gen Intel Core Kaby Lake and first-generation AMD Zen CPUs not on the list, which is a bit of a surprise considering these SoCs were released in 2016 and 2017, respectively. The only 7th-generation Intel processors listed as compatible are Intel Core X-series processors, Xeon W-series processors, and, specifically, the Core i7-7820HQ processor, which is the CPU used inside Microsoft’s own Surface Studio 2.

AMD’s first-gen Ryzen chip didn’t make the chopping block. “After carefully analyzing the first generation of AMD Zen processors in partnership with AMD, together we concluded that there are no additions to the supported CPU list,” writes Microsoft. The company adds that devices that didn’t meet the minimum hardware requirements “had 52 percent more kernel mode crashes” in Windows 11, whereas those that met the minimum hardware requirements “had a 99.8 percent crash-free experience.”

If you happen to fall into the category of devices that aren’t officially supported, you can still install Windows 11 with a bit of software sleuthing. Either keep your version of Windows 11 on the Windows Insider Program or create a Windows 11 ISO file and install it manually. But take into consideration Microsoft’s warnings on how the system might perform.

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Microsoft explained it settled on the minimum system requirements to prioritize support for things like modern DCH drivers and the aforementioned TPM security. It’s part of a larger move on Microsoft’s end to modernize its long-standing legacy software. The consolidation should help improve the overall reliability of the Windows platform.

Before you plan to update, Microsoft will release a new version of its PC Health Check app to help guide you toward whether your device is ready for Windows 11. The app is currently in testing with Windows Insiders users, though it should be rolling out in the coming weeks.

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What You Need to Know

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Windows 11 is coming later this year.
Image: Microsoft

Between TPMs, CPUs, and UEFIs, the system requirements for upgrading to Windows 11 haven’t been the easiest to figure out. Microsoft changed them only hours after pushing out the first Insider Preview Build for early adopters. If you’re wondering exactly what you’ll need to run Windows 11, we’re here to make some sense of it for you.

Let’s start with the Central Processing Unit (CPU), the brain of your computer that goes a long way to determining how fast it can run (or at least how quickly it can get through key calculations). Originally, only 8th-gen Intel Core processors (launched in 2017), AMD Zen 2 processors (launched in 2019), and anything later were given the official thumbs up for Microsoft’s next-gen operating system, as well as Qualcomm Series 7 and 8 silicon.

That left a lot of devices out—not least the rather expensive Microsoft Surface Studio 2—so Microsoft now says it’ll also test 7th-gen Intel and AMD Zen 1 chips during the preview stage to see how well they hold up. In fact, it’s now putting off any detailed recommendations in terms of processors for the time being. What’s more, the Insider Preview Builds don’t need to meet any CPU requirements, at least not yet.

Microsoft’s argument is that for Windows 11 to be as reliable, secure, and compatible as it needs to be, certain older hardware technologies need to be left behind—it’s not necessarily a pure performance issue, but it’s more to do with enabling features such as Windows Hello for logging into your PC with biometric authentication.

You can try out an Insider Preview Build now.
Image: Microsoft

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Right now, the updated system requirements for Windows 11 list a 64-bit CPU with two or more cores running at 1 GHz or faster. You’re also going to need at least 4GB of RAM—the thinking space where your computer manages open apps and files—as well as a minimum of 64GB of storage for your operating system and applications.

Windows 11 is also going to need support for the latest DirectX 12 graphics standard—which actually launched alongside Windows 10 in 2015, so you should be fine—and a display bigger than 9 inches in size with at least a 720p resolution. On top of that, you’re going to have to have a Microsoft account to use Windows 11, and you’re also going to need an internet connection.

At the very basic level, your PC needs to support UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) Secure Boot to ensure the integrity of the start-up experience. A replacement for the older BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) to manage interactions between hardware components and the operating system, UEFI has been around for a couple of decades at this point, so this shouldn’t cause you any headaches.

The other key system requirement spec that has been causing the most confusion is the need for a version 2.0 TPM or Trusted Platform Module—although it’s worth pointing out that, like the Intel and AMD CPU requirements, this has been waived for the Insider Preview Build stage.

Simply put, TPM is an extra security feature. In physical terms it’s a chip attached to the CPU or the motherboard of a computer, and one of its jobs is to look out and guard against suspicious behavior. That could be a ransomware attack, for example, or malware that’s trying to install itself on your PC. It adds a hardware level of security on top of existing software levels (like an antivirus scanner), and works a bit like a burglar alarm that can alert you to intruders.

The other main role of a TPM is to securely store sensitive information: passwords, encryption keys, and so on. As it’s separate from the hard drive, it means the data on that drive is harder to access without authorization. Encrypted data couldn’t be read by removing the drive from the computer, for example, because the TPM wouldn’t be present to enable it.

Windows 10 will tell you most of your PC’s specs.
Screenshot: Windows 10

TPMs have been included on PCs for five or six years now, so unless you’re running an older machine then it’s likely that you’ve already got one—though confusingly, it might not be switched on. The best way to check is to run a web search for the CPU you’ve got inside your PC, see if there is a TPM on board, and check how to enable it (it’s given different names by different manufacturers, which isn’t all that helpful). TPM chips can also be fitted manually, though it’s quite an involved process.

It’s partly the confusion over TPM 2.0 that has led to Microsoft pulling the PC Health Check app that was originally here, and which was released to look for Windows 11 compatibility. Rather than giving users a detailed breakdown of which components did and did not meet the requirements—or saying anything useful like whether or not a disabled TPM 2.0 chip was present—the app simply gave a pass or fail.

A new and improved PC Health Check app will be out before Windows 11 gets pushed to the masses, Microsoft says. In the meantime, you can give the open source WhyNot11 a go, which will go into detail in terms of each of the requirements and tell you if your Windows 10 computer reaches the necessary standard or not.

As far as the diagnostics tools already built into Windows 10 are concerned, you can choose Settings from the Start menu, and then click System and About to see some of the specs of your machine, though you may have to do some extra research to find out what generation your CPU is. If you’re eager to get started with Windows 11 at the earliest opportunity and you can run it, Microsoft has details of what’s involved here, and you can also check out our guide to upgrading.

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Another Dodgy Windows 10 Update Has Been Pulled

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Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Windows 10 issued a new update, and not long after it hit public release, Microsoft had to pull it back.

The latest offender was “Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. – SCSIAdapter – 9.3.0.221”, a Windows-recommended driver for AMD users. The problem? The driver was stopping some users’ PCs from booting, and the patch has since been pulled from the Windows Update list.

But the real problem here, as noted by Windows Latest, is that Windows Insider users had already flagged the driver as being dodgy. It was bad enough that users had to resort to some command line kung fu to nuke the update, which is a whole nightmare that nobody should have to go through.

Not all AMD users had the patch pushed to them, as is customary with the staggered nature of how Windows rolls out updates these days. Even though AMD are the ones responsible for making the driver, Microsoft’s responsible for pushing it out to users — and they’re doubly responsible for pushing out a patch from the insider branch to a wider release, after users called it out as problematic.

If you see the driver in your Windows Update list as pending for download, here’s how to make sure you won’t install it by accident:

  • Open the Show or Hide Updates Troubleshooter tool — you’ll have to download this separately. Microsoft doesn’t appear to host this tool directly anymore, but some other forums (like Tenforums) have it saved here.
  • Click next
  • Select “Hide Updates”
  • Uncheck the AMD SCSIAdapter – 9.3.0.221 update
  • Close

This will ensure the update doesn’t even appear as an “optional” patch within Windows Update, so there should be no risk going forward.

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If your AMD system has been stuck in a boot loop recently because of the patch, however, you might want to reinstall Windows 10 via a USB stick. The Media Creation Tool, which you can download here, will create a Windows 10 image on any USB stick that’s 8GB or larger: just run the tool, boot from the USB drive and then run the repair process to get back to normality. And if you have downloaded any major Windows 10 updates recently, you might want to check your GPU drivers as well.

This story originally appeared on Kotaku Australia.

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RTX 3060 Is the First Nvidia Graphics Card to Get Resizable BAR

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Image: Nvidia

Those who were able to purchase one of Nvidia’s new RTX 3060 graphics cards yesterday now have access to the company’s long-awaited Resizable BAR support, which is the feature PC users can enable at the BIOS-level to let the CPU and GPU talk directly to one another. This is a big deal, because that instantly helps boost game frame rates.

Support for this feature rolled out with Nvidia’s latest driver update yesterday, but only affects the RTX 3060 at this time. Nvidia said Resizable BAR support for the rest of the 30-series crew will follow in late March.

However, like AMD’s Smart Access Memory (SAM), which is just another way of saying Resizable BAR, compatibility is limited to specific CPUs and motherboards. Not everyone with an RTX 3060 will be able to enable the feature just yet.

At the moment, Nvidia’s Resizable BAR is only compatible with AMD 500-series chipsets and AMD 400-series chipsets on motherboards with AMD Zen 3 Ryzen 5000-series CPU support. Additionally, you’ll need to have an AMD Ryzen 5000-series processor to use Resizable BAR with an Nvidia graphics card. It’s not compatible with older AMD processors at the moment.

On the Intel side, compatibility includes 400-series chipsets, as well as all 11th-gen chipsets available as of Feb. 25. However, because Nvidia has been working closely with Intel to get this up and running, it seems likely that Resizable BAR will be ready to go whenever Intel releases its 11th-gen desktop CPUs and the next chipset generation; Nvidia lists the 11th-gen Core i9, i7, and i5 as being compatible, as well as Core i9, i7, i5, and i3 10th-gen CPUs.

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Resizable BAR will also be compatible with motherboards from all major manufacturers, including Asus, ASRock, Colorful, EVGA, Gigabyte, and MSI. Nvidia did not say which ones specifically, but each manufacturer would have more information on their websites. Considering that 400-series chipsets are compatible, all 400-series motherboards should be compatible as well (Z490, H470, B460, and H410), but each manufacturer could decide to only enable it on certain models. Always best to double check!

I wouldn’t hold your breath for Resizable BAR to come to 300-series Intel chipsets anytime soon, either. That chipset, which supports 8th and 9th-gen CPUs, will reach its end of life by January 2022, so it’s likely Intel won’t focus on compatibility for that generation.

RTX 30-series gaming laptops also support resizable bar with Intel and AMD processors. Again, you’ll need to check with the laptop manufacturer to see if it’s supported on a certain model. The MSI GP66 Leopard, for instance, does support it.

But even if your PC checks off all those boxes, you won’t see a frame rate boost in every game, as is the case with AMD’s SAM. Right now, there are only a handful of games that support Resizable BAR with an Nvidia GPU, which include Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Borderlands 3, Metro Exodus, and several others.

As always, don’t forget to update your drivers, BIOS, and VBIOS so this new feature will actually work on your supported PC.

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