In some ways, AMD has become NVIDIA, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. The way new Ryzen CPUs scale is behaviorally similar to the way GPU Boost 4.0 scales on GPUs, where simply lowering the silicon operating temperature will directly affect performance and clock speeds. Under complete, full stock settings, a CPU running colder will actually boost higher now; alternatively, if you’re a glass half-empty type, you could view it such that a CPU running hotter will thermally throttle. Either way, frequency is contingent upon thermals, and that’s important for users who want to maximize performance or pick the right case and CPU cooling combination. If you’re new to the space, the way it has traditionally worked is that CPUs will perform at one spec, with one set of frequencies, until hitting TjMax, or maximum Junction temperature. Ryzen 3000 is significantly different from past CPUs in this regard. Some excursions from this behavior do exist, but are a different behavior and are well-known. One such example would include Turbo Boost durations, which are explicitly set by the motherboard to limit the duration for which an Intel CPU can reach its all-core Turbo. This is a different matter entirely from frequency/cold scale.

An Intel CPU is probably the easiest example to use for pre-Ryzen 3000 behavior. With Intel, there are only two real parameters to consider: The Turbo boost duration limit, which we have a separate content piece on (linked above), and the power limit. If operating within spec, outside of the turbo duration limit of roughly 90-120 seconds, the CPU will stick to one all-core clock speed for the entirety of its workload. You could be running at 90 degrees or 40 degrees, it’ll be the same frequency. Once you hit TjMax, let’s say it’s 95 or 100 degrees Celsius, there’s either a multiplier throttle or a thermal shutdown, the choice between which will hinge upon how the motherboard is configured to respond to TjMax.

GN just notched one of its busiest weeks ever, thanks to relentless product launches from AMD and Nvidia. We’ve recently reviewed Nvidia's RTX 2070 Super and RTX 2060 Super, in addition to AMD’s Ryzen 5 3600, Ryzen 9 3900X, and Radeon RX 5700 XT. We also have multiple videos further analyzing Ryzen 3000 boost clocks and the RX 5700 XT cooling solution.

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For mostly non-AMD related news this week, Intel has announced multiple new technologies focused on chip packaging, in addition to hiring a new CCO in Claire Dixon. MSI is updating its AM4 400-series of motherboard to include a larger BIOS chip, there’s a new PCIe 4.0 SSD coming, with a presumably cheaper 500GB capacity, and we’re expecting custom Navi cards in August. The news stories follow the video embed, per the usual.

Leading into the busiest hardware launch week of our careers, we talk about Intel's internal competitive analysis document leaking, DisplayPort 2.0 specifications being detailed, and Ubuntu dropping and re-adding 32-bit support. We also follow-up on Huawei news (and how Microsoft and Intel are still supporting it) and trade tensions.

Show notes continue after the embedded video.

Most of last week's hardware news revolved around AMD and its Navi and Ryzen product disclosures from the tech day, but plenty still happened during E3 week: Microsoft, for instance, announced its Scarlett console and rediscovered virtual memory, Comcast was caught violating the Consumer Protection Act over 445,000 times, USB 4.0 got lightly detailed for a 2020 launch, and more.

Show notes after the video embed.

AMD’s technical press event bore information for both AMD Ryzen and AMD Navi, including overclocking information for Ryzen, Navi base, boost, and average clocks, architectural information and block diagrams, product-level specifications, and extreme overclocking information for Ryzen with liquid nitrogen. We understand both lines better now than before and can brief you on what AMD is working on. We’ll start with Navi specs, die size, and top-level architectural information, then move on to Ryzen. AMD also talked about ray tracing during its tech day, throwing some casual shade at NVIDIA in so doing, and we’ll also cover that here.

First, note that AMD did not give pricing to the press ahead of its livestream at E3, so this content will be live right around when the prices are announced. We’ll try to update with pricing information as soon as we see it, although we anticipate our video’s comments section will have the information immediately. UPDATE: Prices are $450 for the RX 5700 XT, $380 for the RX 5700.

AMD’s press event yielded a ton of interesting, useful information, especially on the architecture side. There was some marketing screwery in there, but a surprisingly low amount for this type of event. The biggest example was taking a thermographic image of two heatsinks to try and show comparative CPU temperature, even though the range was 23 to 27 degrees, which makes the delta look astronomically large despite being in common measurement error. Also, the heatsink actually should be hot because that means it’s working, and taking a thermographic image of a shiny metal object means you’re more showing reflected room temperature or encountering issues with emissivity, and ultimately they should just be showing junction temperature, anyway. This was our only major gripe with the event -- otherwise, the information was technical, detailed, and generally free of marketing BS. Not completely free of it, but mostly. The biggest issue with the comparison was the 28-degree result that exited the already silly 23-27 degree range, making it look like 28 degrees was somehow massively overheating.

Let’s start with the GPU side.