AMD is one of the world’s biggest computer chip companies, best known for its fierce competition with Intel. It’s a rivalry that really kicked off in the early 2000s when AMD’s Athlon and Opteron processors saw great success. While AMD has often struggled to keep up with Intel, its latest Ryzen CPUs are some of the most competitive chips it has produced in years. AMD also acquired ATI in 2006, a 3D graphics card company. It now produces a variety of Radeon GPUs that compete with Nvidia’s GeForce line of graphics cards. AMD also produces the chips found in the latest PlayStation and Xbox consoles, and the Valve Steam Deck, and it re-entered the server market with its Epyc brand in 2017.
AMD has accidentally revealed its Radeon RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT in a post on X / Twitter. VideoCardz spotted the post, which linked to the AMD website and shows off unannounced Radeon RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT GPUs. AMD has a Gamescom event later today, where it’s expected to announce these new GPUs.
In addition to a remastered edition of Quake II for all platforms, Bethesda just announced this Starfield limited edition AMD hardware at QuakeCon 2023.
However, unlike the $299.99 Starfield Constellation Edition that comes with a real-life watch and access to the game up to five days before its September 6th launch, you won’t be able to buy these. Only 500 were made, and apparently, you’ll only be able to get them during giveaways on the QuakeCon livestream this weekend.
Not sure how I missed this on the earnings call, but Su says “new, enthusiast-class Radeon 7000 series cards” are coming Q3 — a quarter that ends on October 1st, less than two months from today!
VideoCardz rightly points out that these “enthusiast” GPUs will almost certainly be the RX 7700, 7800 or 7800 XT, because AMD uses “ultra-enthusiast” to describe 7900, and “mainstream” to describe 7600.
AMD’s MI300 data center AI accelerator chips will ramp in the fourth quarter of this year, CEO Lisa Su just said during the company’s Q2 earnings call.
She says the company already has customers for the MI300X generative AI chip. “We expect early deployments as we go into the first half of 2024, and then we would expect more volume in the second half of ‘24 as those things fully qualify,” says Su.
AMD projects data center AI accelerators could be a $150 billion market by 2027.
AMD’s Q2 2023 earnings shows the company’s doing worse in PCs than industry slump would suggest — while Intel’s PC chips were down 12 percent, AMD’s client CPUs are down 54 percent. But AMD says its new Ryzen 7000 CPUs are actually up 35 percent sequentially — a glut of older chips is likely to blame.
Gaming rev was only down 4 percent because semi-custom (read: game consoles) actually grew — but gaming graphics (read: GPUs) are down. Overall, the company’s back to a slim profit of $27 million in Q2.
The company said in November last year that the feature, which would enable one-click performance settings optimization for its GPUs, would debut in the first half of 2023. Now that July is here, AMD has missed that window, points out VideoCardz.
The company says Hypr-RX will help players get the best performance and responsiveness without needing to fiddle endlessly with settings.
[VideoCardz.com]
Tipster Kamila Wojciechowska, who’s dropped several Google leaks this year, wrote in great detail about the Pixel 8’s Tensor G3 SoC (via 9to5Google).
She says it’s getting the ARM Immortalis GPU, a first for US phones, and that it’s tuned for AI, which makes sense, considering... the entirety of Google I/O.
Pixel leaks just keep coming lately, even from Google itself.
I wish 1440p GPUs were more mainstream after years of 1080p dominance.
OBS Studio 29 just went live today with support for real-time AV1 — letting the latest Nvidia and possibly AMD and Intel graphics cards stream way higher quality video to YouTube using the same amount of data.
The OBS changelog does note that AV1 streaming is currently only a “beta feature” for YouTube, as it has been since March. Discord has supported AV1 since January. Chrome recently improved video calls with AV1 as well.
Or so Nvidia says, promoting DLSS AI scaling technology while AMD touts the hand-coded algorithms behind FSR 2. Watch this video below to see Hardware Unboxed pit man vs. machine learning in 26 games.
Still, if you prefer more AI, check today’s Cyberpunk 2077 update — besides the new Overdrive Mode lighting, it also adds Nvidia DLAA AI-powered anti-aliasing, as well as XeSS AI scaling for Intel GPUs.
I promise I didn’t make up any of those words.
AMD’s 3D V-Cache strikes again with an impressive CPU for gaming.
AMD’s Ryzen 7000 lineup is incredibly confusing. One of the reasons is that it includes every architecture under the sun — Zen 2, Zen 3, Zen 4, and you have to be fairly familiar with the labyrinthine naming scheme to tell them apart.
But! According to new helpful partner materials (which Videocardz has obtained), Ryzen 7000 laptops featuring Zen 4 CPUs will include a bright orange sticker. Zen 4 purists, rejoice!
AMD lost out to Intel’s Core i9-13900K recently, but it’s back with its 3D V-Cache technology to challenge Intel again.
Profits dropped 98 percent — and yet it’s actually a rosy quarter since AMD is weathering reduced PC demand relatively well (client processors admittedly down 51 percent). AMD says the losses are “primarily due to the amortization of intangible assets associated with the Xilinx acquisition.”
Gaming revenue only dropped 7 percent because AMD-powered console sales (PS5, Xbox, Steam Deck) are actually up. It’s largely the same story as last quarter.
AMD briefly updated its website this week to list a release date of February 14th for its new X3D processors, but it was a mistake. “That date is incorrect,” says AMD in a statement to The Verge. “We have not confirmed a launch date at this time.” AMD’s latest CPUs are expected to outperform Intel’s i9-13900K in gaming when they launch next month.
Because judging by the state of its CES 2023 presentation and some of the related press release materials, neither can AMD, as seen in these screencaps.
If you need a refresher, we broke down the new rules of AMD’s CPU names here.
