Month: August 2022

AMD’s Radeon RX 6000 series of graphics cards offer a tempting next-generation gaming experience – the problem for many gamers has been stock, and as a knock-on effect, price.

While the flagship RX 6800 XT and 6900 XT are still hard to come by at RRP, AMD has just revealed a new graphics card that could circumvent most of the stock issues plaguing the market right now.

It’s called the AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT, and the entry-level 1080p gaming-focused graphics card is due for release today following a CES 2022 announcement. Here’s all there is to know right now.

When will the AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT be released?
The AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT is set to be released today, 19 January 2022, following a CES 2022 reveal. Timings are yet to be confirmed, but based on previous releases, we expect the graphics card to go on sale at around 1pm GMT/9am ET.

How much will the AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT cost?
The price of the AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT will likely excite entry-level 1080p gamers that have been neglected of late, with a price tag of just $199 (UK pricing TBC).

While it’s easy to be sceptical and speculate that the Radon RX 6500 XT will skyrocket in price as supply dwindles, there is hope for the GPU. While AMD didn’t confirm VRAM on stage, sources suggest it’s limited to just 4GB of VRAM, and that isn’t very efficient for mining cryptocurrency, so it should only be gamers buying the GPU.

Coupled with the entry-level specs, it might be easier to manufacture at scale, translating to more stock at regular prices. It won’t be an 8K gaming monster, with specs focused on 1080p gaming, but it should suffice for entry-level gamers on a budget.

It’ll likely be available from popular retailers like Overclockers in the UK and Newegg in the US, and we cover where to buy the AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT in the UK and US in more detail separately for those interested.

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Windows 11 is suffering from more performance issues, with AMD devices once again affected. Commonly reported problems include frequent stuttering and audio glitches, with affected users expressing their frustration.

The issues appear to be caused by the TPM 2.0 module, one of Windows 11’s key hardware requirements. Both Intel and AMD CPUs enable TPM via system firmware that’s independent from the rest of the OS. Intel’s implementation appears to be bug-free, but AMD users aren’t so lucky.

As Windows Latest reports, the issue seems to be caused by compatibility issues between AMD’s TPM (known as fTPM) and Windows, as opposed to a bug within the OS itself.

Judging by a Reddit post, the issue has been around for five months, since Windows 11 was officially released. But a recent deluge of comments suggests it’s a widespread problem right now. Forums on the Lenovo and Linus Tech Tips websites only serve to emphasise that.

What’s more, it’s the second AMD-specific performance problem to affect Windows 11 in just three months. Back in October, two separate issues caused performance to drop by as much as 15%, with an official fix not available for two weeks.

Until Microsoft or AMD releases a patch, there’s is an unofficial solution that works for many people, but it’s not without compromise.

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AMD’s Radeon RX 6000 Series is hugely popular, offering great performance gains compared to earlier graphics cards and allowing it to compete more directly with the Nvidia RTX 30 Series. Despite the fact that it’s still a tough task picking up an RX 6000 Series graphics card, AMD is hard at work on the next-gen Radeon RX 7000 Series behind closed doors.

We outline all there is to know about the AMD Radeon RX 7000 Series right here, including release date and pricing speculation and RDNA 3-themed leaks too.

When will the AMD Radeon RX 7000 Series be released?
While many assumed that AMD would follow its yearly release schedule for the next-gen Radeon RX 7000 Series with a reveal in late 2021, but as we now know, that wasn’t the case. In fact, sources suggest that the company has pushed back the launch by an entire year, now expected sometime in Q4 2022.

The rumour comes from Twitter leaker @Broly_X1 who has a decent track record, also correctly predicting the three main talking points at AMD’s Computex 2021 keynote in June. The leaker suggests in a now-deleted tweet that AMD is aiming for a Q4 2022 launch, and suggests that AMD’s Ryzen 7000 chipset will launch “around the same time”.

While that’ll inevitably come as a disappointment to some, it makes a lot of sense given the current issues around the worldwide semiconductor shortage affecting CPUs, GPUs and other tech of all shapes and sizes. The fact that AMD can’t produce enough of the current Radeon RX 6000 Series GPUs to keep up with demand means the company doesn’t have much of an incentive to launch the next-gen kit.

The good news is that the 2022 release seems to be on track.

In a January 2022 earnings call, CEO Dr. Lisa Su provided investors with an insight into how development is going. Dr. Su says the company is looking forward to a strong year as “we ramp our current products and launch our next wave of Zen 4 CPUs and RDNA 3 GPUs”.

The CEO is also confident that supply issues will ease this year, claiming that the company has “made significant investments in wafer capacity, as well as substrate capacity and back-end capacity” that should make it easier to buy an AMD graphics card.

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AMD achieved its highest ever share of the global CPU market in the last quarter of 2021, figures show. The US chip maker was responsible for 25.6% of all shipments between October and December, beating its previous high of 25.3% from 2006.

That’s according to data from Mercury Research, which suggests the growth was driven by strong sales of x86 chips. You’ll find these in consoles such as the Xbox Series X, which may have prioritised due to ongoing chip shortages. That may explain the slight fall in desktop and mobile market share – AMD previously admitted it has had to divert resources away from more affordable CPUs.

AMD’s market share should be bolstered by the arrival of Ryzen 6000 Series mobile CPUs, which the company revealed at CES 2022. These are expected to make their way into laptops over the next few months, but we’ll be waiting until the Ryzen 7000 Series for new desktop chips.

Of course, AMD’s slice of the CPU pie remains much lower than Intel, its main rival when it comes to processors. Given Intel also released new laptop CPUs at CES, it could be difficult for AMD to make many major inroads in 2022.

Still, it’s a remarkable rise for a company that only began making Ryzen CPUs in 2017. It also coincides with record revenue for AMD in Q4 of 2021. The company made $4.8 billion between October and December last year, a 49% year-on-year increase.

Despite a big launch at the start of the year, it looks like AMD still has big plans for the rest of 2022. The chip maker has confirmed that the Ryzen 7000 Series will launch at some point in the second half of year, using its new Zen 4 architecture.

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Four months after its first true flagship-level smartphone chips were announced, MediaTek is back for more.

At MWC 2022, the firm unveiled the Dimensity 8000 Series, pitching it as the little brother of the top-spec Dimensity 9000. But this doesn’t mean sacrifices have been made to performance. Despite returning to a 5nm process, the octa-core Dimensity 8000 and 8100 are still very much flagship SoCs (systems-on-a-chip).

Those eight CPU cores include four of Arm’s performance-focused Cortex-A78, which enable maximum clock speeds of 2.75GHz for the 8000 and 2.85GHz for the 8100. A further four cores prioritise power efficiency, for when battery life is more important than performance.

Combined with a Mali-G610 integrated GPU and support for super-fast LPDDR5 RAM, top-tier performance still feels well within reach.

With that in mind, it’s no surprise that MediaTek specifically advertises the Dimensity 8000 Series’ suitability for gaming. The company claims the 8100 can reach 170fps in GFXBench’s Manhattan graphics test, while the 8000 isn’t far behind on 140fps. However, actual in-game performance will vary by device.

The variation between the two frame rates, though, can be partially explained by some subtle differences in CPU performance and around 10% higher GPU frequency on the Dimensity 8100.

Integrated ‘HyperEngine’ tech is designed to improve power efficiency, which should increase battery life, though MediaTek didn’t offer any details on how it achieves this.

Theoretically, the Dimensity 8000 Series could power upcoming gaming phones, but only time will tell.

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