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AMD's speed-boosting memory feature is coming to Ryzen 3000-series CPUs
With today's announcement of the RX 6700 XT, AMD is expanding support for Smart Access Memory to include its highly popular Ryzen 3000 series CPUs.
AMD's latest 3rd-gen Ryzen 3 CPUs start at $99
AMD's Ryzen 3 3100 lowers the price of its current-gen desktop CPUs to $99, while the B550 chipset brings PCIe 4.0 to a wider audience.
Microsoft unveils a ton of Xbox Series X hardware details
If you had any lingering questions about the Xbox Series X hardware, they've probably been answered. Microsoft has published a deep dive into the console's specs, including just what the company hopes to achieve with all that tech. To begin with, the semi-custom AMD Zen 2 processor runs its eight cores at a fixed 3.8GHz (3.66GHz with SMT in use), with one core set aside for basic system functions. The Xbox will also have 16GB of GDDR6 RAM, although just 10GB of that will have the full 560GB/s bandwidth games will want for GPU-friendly tasks. The remaining 6GB runs at a 'standard' 336GB/s -- 3.5GB reserved for less-demanding gaming tasks and 2.5GB for the operating system.
AMD's efficient Ryzen 9 CPUs target Intel's gaming laptop crown
While AMD is winning over the workstation market, Intel still dominates laptop gaming. However, AMD aims to change that in a hurry with the Ryzen 9 4900HS and 4900H Zen 2 mobile processors, launching soon on laptops like the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14. They pack eight cores and 16 threads, along with up to 8 cores of integrated Vega graphics, and run at overclocked speeds up to 4.4 GHz. Best of all, the 7-nanometer 4900HS chip consumes just 35 watts of power, boosting battery life for gaming and entertainment apps.
Intel is losing against AMD
When AMD launched its third-generation Zen 2 Ryzen processors earlier this year, Intel had to be sweating. Its rival had developed an all-new architecture with improvements to clock speed, core count and instructions per clock and promised performance that matched -- and even beat -- Intel's CPUs. Then, along came AMD's mainstream 12-core and 16-core Ryzen 9 3900x and 3950X CPUs, which doubled the thread count of competing i9-9900 series chips. That threatened not only Intel's gaming market but muscled in on its workstation territory. To compete, Intel was forced to launch the Cascade Lake i9-10980X at $999 -- half the price of the previous 9980XE model. Unfortunately for Intel, the 3950X still keeps pace with the i9-10980X in most tests, despite costing just $750. Reviews are now in for AMD's latest 32-core 3970X and 24-core 3960X Threadripper processors, and it's more bad news for Intel. Those high-end desktop (HEDT) chips perform better for both video and 3D rendering than Intel's latest i9-10980X CPU. Furthermore, they've even made many of Intel's high-end workstation Xeon CPUs obsolete. And the kicker is that AMD has yet to release the 64-core, Threadripper 3990X. Intel still has a lead in gaming, but only just, and given AMD's progress and recent Zen 3 announcements, is any market safe? Let's explore the state of this rivalry and how Intel might counterpunch.