Nein, Zeneration 3 is best
Subject: General Tech | December 6, 2018 - 01:14 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: amd, Zen 2, Ryzen 5 3600, Ryzen 3 3300, Ryzen 9 3800, leak, Ryzen 7 3700, Ryzen 3000
If the rumours The Inquirer are helping spread are true then AMD really does believe the third time's the charm. The new series of Ryzen 3000 chips will use Zen 2 cores and will follow Intel's addition of a 9 series, though the quoted price of £400 for the Ryzen 9 3850X is a lot more attractive than Intel's pricing. That chip will sport a 5.1GHz peak clock on its pair of Zen 2 dies with eight cores apiece, though the 135W TDP will need some taming.
Check out the variety of other chips in the Ryzen 3, 5, and 7 families which have leaked out.
"The upcoming third-generation Ryzen chip, slated for release next year, will be based on Team Red's Zen 2 architecture, the successor to its rather successful Zen architecture found in Ryzen 1 and 2 CPUs and EPYC server processors."
Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
- Adobe Flash zero-day exploit... leveraging ActiveX… embedded in Office Doc... BINGO! @ The Register
- Qualcomm Details Snapdragon 855 Mobile Platform Performance And Features @ Techgage
- Now you, too, can snoop on mobe users from 3G to 5G with a Raspberry Pi and €1,100 of gizmos @ The Register
- OCC Reviews the Logitech Circle 2 Security Camera
Which is the most exciting Radeon RX 590?
Subject: Graphics Cards | December 3, 2018 - 04:48 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: rx 590, amd, xfx, powercolor, sapphire, RX 590 Fatboy, RX 590 Special Edition, Red Devil AXRX 590
There are some who were completely unimpressed with the launch of the RX 590, but for those gaming at 1080p with about $300 in the bank, this is a decent upgrade path from a previous generation. Legit Reviews put together a look at three different implementations of this card, from XFX, PowerColor and Sapphire. Upgrading to one of these cards will allow you decent performance up to 1440p, if you have dreams up upgrading your display as well.
Which offers the best value for your money? Read on to find out.
"The Radeon RX 590 is the latest and greatest mainstream graphics card from AMD and is targeted at targeted to 1080P gamers that want to play every game on the market today at respectable frame rates for under $300. You also get three PC games for free when you purchase the RX 590 (Devil May Cry 5, The Division 2, and Resident Evil 2) to help sweeten the deal. In our launch day review we looked at the XFX Radeon RX 590 Fatboy and have since gotten in the PowerColor Red Devil AXRX 590 as well as the Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 590 Special Edition."
Here are some more Graphics Card articles from around the web:
- XFX RX 590 Fatboy 8GB @ Kitguru
- GeForce 416.94 Driver Performance Analysis featuring the RTX 2070 FE and the EVGA GTX 1060/6 SC @ BabelTechReviews
- MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Gaming X TRIO 8G @ Guru of 3D
- Palit GeForce RTX 2070 Super JetStream 8G @ Guru of 3D
- Zotac GeForce RTX 2080 AMP Extreme 8 GB @ TechPowerUp
Podcast #523 - RX 590, 860 QVO, Drobo 8D
Subject: General Tech | November 29, 2018 - 12:32 PM | Jim Tanous
Tagged: Z390, windows 10, Samsung, rx 590, podcast, gigabyte, EVGA SuperNOVA, evga, ECS, drobo, amd, 860 QVO
PC Perspective Podcast #523 - 11/28/18
Our podcast this week features reviews for the new AMD Radeon RX 590, Drobo 8D, the Samsung 860 QVO, a new fanless mini PC, and more!
You can subscribe to us through iTunes and you can still access it directly through the RSS page HERE.
The URL for the podcast is: http://pcper.com/podcast - Share with your friends!
- iTunes - Subscribe to the podcast directly through the iTunes Store (audio only)
- Google Play - Subscribe to our audio podcast directly through Google Play!
- RSS - Subscribe through your regular RSS reader (audio only)
- MP3 - Direct download link to the MP3 file
Hosts: Jim Tanous, Allyn Malventano, Sebastian Peak, Josh Walrath, Jeremy Hellstrom
Peanut Gallery: Alex Lustenberg, Ken Addison
Program length: 2:15:34
Podcast topics of discussion:
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Merch! http://joshtekk.com/
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Week in Review:
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For a limited time, get 3 months of Audible for just $6.95 a month: audible.com/PCPER or text PCPER to 500500.
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News items of interest:
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Picks of the Week:
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Jeremy: It’s better than bad, it’s Alexa on Big Mouth Billy Bass
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Allyn: Ring Alarm deals on Amazon (8 piece kit cheaper than 5 piece kit)
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Sebastian: Make all of your pixels perfect
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Closing/Outro
ARM, AMD, AWS and Annapurna Labs
Subject: General Tech | November 28, 2018 - 01:46 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: arm, amd, AWS, Annapurna Labs, graviton
You may have never heard of Graviton before, but chances are you've interacted with one on Amazon. The current chip which powers many AWS instances is based on a Cortex-A72 design and runs 2.3GHz and was almost designed by AMD. Instead, AMD was focusing on Zen design and were not able to commit enough resources to the development of the ARM chip, which is why Amazon chose to buy Annapurna Labs outright and have the chip designed in house. We did see that AMD ARM chip, the A1100, which did not see much market success.
There is quite a story behind this, catch up on it over at The Register.
"Up until early 2015, Amazon and AMD were working together on a 64-bit Arm server-grade processor to deploy in the internet titan's data centers. However, the project fell apart when, according to one well-placed source today, "AMD failed at meeting all the performance milestones Amazon set out."
Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
- Sci-Hub: Breaking Down The Paywalls @ Hackaday
- Windows To Go: How to Install and Run Windows 10 from a USB Drive @ Techspot
- Microsoft Warns Of Two Apps That Installed Root Certificates Then Leaked the Private Keys @ Slashdot
- Sennheiser's HeadSetup software is vulnerable to MITM attacks @ The Inquirer
- AKRacing Summit Desk @ Kitguru
H2O Captain, my Captain we are Ryzen from the Deepcool
Subject: Cases and Cooling | November 22, 2018 - 03:50 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: Deepcool, AIO, watercooling, Captain 240 EX, amd, Intel
The DeepCool Captain 240 EX White is an AiO watercooler, with a 240mm radiator which is available in both RGB and non-RGB models. It is designed to cool most modern chips, apart from ThreadRipper, and [H]ard|OCP tested it with a Ryzen 7 1700 overclocked to 3.9 GHz @ 1.475V. The results were interesting, to say the least, so make sure to drop by before falling in love with this particular cooler.
"Deepcool states its mission is to provide "the best and personalized thermal solutions." Its Captain EX series of AIO CPU coolers has what it calls a "Steam Punk" look with visible liquid flow, but what we are most concerned with is just how well it cools our overclocked and over-volted Ryzen 7 processor. And it has "anti-explosion" rubber material."
Here are some more Cases & Cooling reviews from around the web:
- Deepcool CASTLE 240RGB AIO Liquid CPU Cooler Review @ NikKTech
- Cooler Master MasterAir G100M @ Overclockers Club
- Neo Mini mITX Case @ Modders-Inc
- The Best Computer Cases @ Techspot
Hey Fatboy, way to take on that GTX 1060!
Subject: Graphics Cards | November 15, 2018 - 01:37 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: amd, gtx 1060, nvidia, Polaris, rx 590
AMD released an interesting update to the RX 580 today, the aptly named RX 590. It sports the same internals as the current card, with one significant difference which are the clocks. The new RX 590 sports frequencies of 1469 MHz Base, 1545 MHz Boost which is a hair over 200MHz higher than the 580 and [H]ard|OCP were able to push it up to 1670MHz with a bit of extra juice. Their findings matched Ken's, in that this new card makes NVIDIA's GTX 1060 obsolete as it outperforms it and at a better price point. The only drawback to the XFX Fatboy model reviewed is given away in the name; the card is a wee bit over 2 slots in height.
[H]'s suite of games incorporates different titles than ours so make sure you do pay them a visit.
"AMD is launching the new Radeon RX 590 GPU today, and we have a custom XFX Radeon RX 590 Fatboy OC+ video card to evaluate. With a high factory overclock, and potential for overclocking, we will compare this video card with the EVGA GTX 1060 SSC overclocked and test at 1080p and 1440p gaming."
Here are some more Graphics Card articles from around the web:
- Radeon RX 590 @ The Tech Report
- AMD Radeon RX 590 1440p, 1080p & Ultrawide Gaming Performance @ Techgage
- XFX Radeon RX 590 Fatboy Video Card Review @ Legit Reviews
- PowerColor Red Devil Radeon RX 590 8G @ Guru of 3D
- The PowerColor Red Devil RX 590 takes on the EVGA GTX 1060 SC @ BabelTechReviews
- AMD Sapphire Nitro+ RX590 @ Kitguru
- Radeon RX 590 vs. RX 580 vs. GeForce GTX 1060 @ Techspot
- XFX Radeon RX 590 Fatboy 8 GB @ TechPowerUp
- Sapphire Radeon RX 590 Nitro+ Special Edition 8 GB @ TechPowerUp
- ASUS ROG GeForce RTX 2070 STRIX @ Guru of 3D
- ZOTAC GeForce RTX 2070 AMP Extreme 8 GB @ TechPowerUp
- Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Founders Edition Review – Turing at $599 @ Bjorn3d
- The RTX 2080 vs. the GTX 1080 Ti in VR @ BabelTechReviews
- ASUS ROG RTX 2080 Ti Strix OC @ Kitguru
That is not dead which can eternal lie; Spectre rises again
Subject: General Tech | November 15, 2018 - 12:29 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: meltdown, spectre, amd, arm, Intel
Happy Thursday, here's some new Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities to cheer you up, including the first Meltdown flaw to which AMD chips are vulnerable to delayed exception handling. That brings the tally to seven Meltdown and 14 Spectre flaw variants which effect modern processor architecture; the only good news is not all chips are vulnerable to all flaws. Intel told The Register that these flaws can be mitigated with software while the researchers pointed out that these vulnerabilities were successfully carried out on patched systems; AMD declined to comment.
Of course, that doesn't matter if you choose not to install the software patches due to the performance hit which is a side effect to many of those mitigations.
"Computer security researchers have uncovered yet another set of transient execution attacks on modern CPUs that allow a local attacker to gain access to privileged data, fulfilling predictions made when the Spectre and Meltdown flaws were reported at the beginning of the year."
Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
- NVIDIA on the Cause of RTX 2080 Series Card Failures @ [H]ard|OCP
- Indiegogo 'Guaranteed Shipping' Will Ensure Refunds If Campaigns Fail @ Slashdot
- Microsoft Office data telemetry breaches GDPR, Dutch investigators rule @ The Inquirer
- Intel to scale down processor shipments to DIY distributors in 4Q18 @ DigiTimes
- Samsung unveils next-generation 8nm Exynos silicon @ The Register
Overview
While 2018 so far has contained lots of talk about graphics cards, and new GPU architectures, little of this talk has been revolving around AMD. After having launched their long-awaited Vega GPUs in late 2017, AMD has remained mostly quiet on the graphics front.
As we headed into summer 2018, the talk around graphics started to turn to NVIDIA's next generation Turing architecture, the RTX 2070, 2080, and 2080 Ti, and the subsequent price creeps of graphics cards in their given product segment.
However, there has been one segment in particular that has been lacking any excitement in 2018—mid-range GPUs for gamers on a budget.
AMD is aiming to change that today with the release of the RX 590. Join us as we discuss the current state of affordable graphics cards.
RX 590 | RX 580 | GTX 1060 6GB | GTX 1060 3GB | |
---|---|---|---|---|
GPU | Polaris 30 | Polaris 20 | GP106 | GP106 |
GPU Cores | 2304 | 2304 | 1280 | 1152 |
Rated Clock | 1469 MHz Base 1545 MHz Boost |
1257 MHz Base |
1506 MHz Base 1708 MHz Boost |
1506 MHz Base 1708 MHz Boost |
Texture Units | 144 | 144 | 80 | 80 |
ROP Units | 32 | 32 | 48 | 48 |
Memory | 8GB | 8GB | 6GB | 6GB |
Memory Clock | 8000 MHz | 8000 MHz | 8000 MHz | 8000 MHz |
Memory Interface | 256-bit | 256-bit | 192-bit | 192-bit |
Memory Bandwidth | 256 GB/s | 256 GB/s | 192 GB/s | 192 GB/s |
TDP | 225 watts | 185 watts | 120 watts | 120 watts |
Peak Compute | 7.1 TFLOPS | 6.17 TFLOPS | 3.85 TFLOPS (Base) | 2.4 TFLOPS (Base) |
Process Tech | 12nm | 14nm | 16nm | 16nm |
MSRP (of retail cards) | $239 | $219 | $249 | $209 |
Click here to continue reading our review of the AMD RX 590!
Meet the i9-9980XE
Subject: Processors | November 13, 2018 - 03:36 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: x299, Threadripper, skylake-x, Intel, i9-9980XE, i9-7980XE, HEDT, core x, amd, 2990wx
The new ~$2000 i9-9980XE is a refreshed Skylake chip, using Intel's 14-nm++ process, with 18 multithreaded cores running at 3GHz with a Boost clock of 4.4GHz. If you were to lift up the lid, you would find the same Solder Thermal Interface Material we saw in the last few releases so expect some brave soul to run delidding tests at some point in the near future. As it stands now, The Tech Report's overclocking tests had the same results as Ken, with 4.5GHz across all cores being the best they could manage. While the chip does offer new features, many of them are aimed specifically at production tasks and will not benefit your gaming experience.
Check out the performance results here and below the fold.
"Intel is bolstering its Core X high-end desktop CPUs with everything in its bag of tricks, including 14-nm++ process technology, higher clock speeds, larger caches, and solder thermal interface material. We put the Core i9-9980XE to the test to see how those refinements add up against AMD's high-end desktop onslaught."
Here are some more Processor articles from around the web:
- Intel Core i9-9980XE vs AMD Ryzen Threadripper @ [H]ard|OCP
- Intel Core i9-9980XE Extreme Edition Processor Review @ Legit Reviews
- Intel Core i9-9900K @ Techspot
- Raptor Talos II POWER9 Benchmarks Against AMD Threadripper & Intel Core i9 @ Phoronix
- The Best Entry Level Gaming CPU: Athlon 200GE vs. Pentium G5400 vs. Ryzen 3 2200G @ Techspot

Overview
Shopping for a CPU in 2018 has been a bit of a moving target. Between the launch of AMD's Ryzen 2000 series processors in the beginning of the year, new AMD Threadripper X and WX-series products, and a consumer CPU refresh from Intel last month, it's been difficult to keep track of.
Now we are rounding out 2018 with new products for the last remaining platform that hasn't seen a refresh this year, Intel's Core X-series of processors, namely the Intel Core i9-9980XE.
Join us, as we talk about Intel's new 9th-generation Core X-series processors, and the current landscape of HEDT desktop platforms.
Core i9-9980XE | Core i9-7980XE | Threadripper 2990WX | Threadripper 2970WX | Threadripper 2950X | Threadripper 2920X | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Architecture | Skylake-X | Skylake-X | Zen+ | Zen+ | Zen+ | Zen+ |
Process Tech | 14nm++ | 14nm+ | 12nm | 12nm | 12nm | 12nm |
Cores/Threads | 18/36 | 18/36 | 32/64 | 24/48 | 16/32 | 12/24 |
Base Clock | 3.0 GHz | 2.6 GHz | 3.0 GHz | 3.0 GHz | 3.5 GHz | 3.5 GHz |
Boost Clock | 4.4 GHz | 4.2 GHz | 4.2 GHz | 4.2 GHz | 4.4 GHz | 4.3 GHz |
L3 Cache | 24.75MB | 24.75MB | 64MB | 64MB | 32MB | 32 MB |
Memory Support | DDR4-2666 (Quad-Channel) | DDR4-2666 (Quad-Channel) | DDR4-2933 (Quad-Channel) | DDR4-2933 (Quad-Channel) | DDR4-2933 (Quad-Channel) | DDR4-2933 (Quad-Channel) |
PCIe Lanes | 44 | 44 | 64 | 64 | 64 | 64 |
TDP | 165 Watts | 165 Watts | 250 Watts | 250 Watts | 180 Watts | 180 Watts |
Socket | LGA-2066 | LGA-2066 | TR4 | TR4 | TR4 | TR4 |
Price (MSRP) | $1979 | $1999 | $1799 | $1299 | $899 | $649 |
Click here to continue reading our review of the Intel Core i9-9980XE!