AMD hit hard with its new 32-core Threadripper processor announced at Computex. But the brand has especially benefited from this show to present its advances in GPU. And to make an overall assessment, one year after its return in force on the market.
The AMD conference given at the Computex 2018 had more vocation to make a point of step than to really present new products. The ex-founder, however, had some surprises in his sleeve, as the first model of Ryzen Threadripper second generation, containing no less than 32 active hearts.
AMD Threadripper AS / 01net.com - AMD's second-generation Threadripper will offer up to 32 cores. Yes, 32. We can also mention the new PowerColor Radeon RX Vega 56 "Nano" graphics card which, as its name suggests, is a model of the current RX Vega 56 graphics card.
Although AMD and PowerColor did not release a price or a date of availability, this card should not be too long to land commercially since, apart from the template, nothing has changed on the chip.
A second wave of Vega before Navi in 2019
Progress report and still on the graphics side, Lisa Su, CEO of AMD, announced that at the moment, the high-end cards Radeon RX Vega were 10 times more used by the players than the old Radeon (the RX400 / 500) based on Polaris. However, no concrete figures have come to support this statement. What leave us a little skeptical.
What is concrete, on the other hand, is that AMD announced that the current Vega architecture had managed to pass 7 nm (against 14 nm today) and that the first models of test cards for professionals were currently being delivered.
The final models should be available in the second half of the year without AMD being more precise.
However, to give a quick overview of the power of Vega chips with 7nm sauce, the ex-founder has made a convincing demonstration, using Ray Tracing technology, very greedy in graphics resources.
It remains to be seen if, and by what deadline, AMD plans to offer consumer graphics cards using this Vega architecture in 7 nm. Because, as announced at CES 2018 and reconfirmed this morning, the next architecture (Navi) will not arrive until next year. It is far.
Ryzen would always seduce builders
Last year, at its Computex 2017 conference, AMD surrounded itself with its PC vendor partners to show how much they believe in its solutions, the first-generation Ryzen processors.
This year, important figures from Acer, Dell, Lenovo and Asus have once again performed on stage to reiterate their confidence in AMD and present products in approach or already available. This includes a version of the all-new Acer Predator Helios 500 gaming notebook, which in some parts of the world will also be available with a full AMD platform (Ryzen 2 2700X and Radeon RX Vega 56) while Acer now only reported on the presence of Intel and Nvidia solutions. Orion 5000 and Nitro 50 will also exist in "Full AMD" version.
A new brand has also chosen AMD processors to equip one of its new laptops, Huawei. The Chinese giant has come to present the MateBook D 14, a 14-inch notebook with full HD screen, relatively thin (1.58 cm) and lightweight (1.45 kg), which has a Ryzen 5 2500U APU under his keyboard.
In all, AMD announces that 60 new PC references (portable and fixed) will be equipped with Ryzen processors (APU or CPU) by the end of the year. Hopefully many of them, starting with laptops, fall into our hands that we can finally see what these versions of AMD Ryzen 2 processors have in their stomachs!
