While I was messing around with an older SSD test system (not benchmarking anything) I wondered why the machine's performance was SO sluggish with the NVIDIA card I just installed. Windows startup, desktop, Internet, everything in Windows would just be incredibly slow. This is an old dual-core machine, but it ran perfectly fine with the AMD Radeon card I used before.
At first I blamed NVIDIA, but when I opened Task Manager I noticed one of my cores sitting at 100%—that can't be right.


Digging a bit further into this, it looks like RadeonSettings.exe is using one processor core at maximum 100% CPU load. Ugh, but there is no AMD graphics card installed right now.
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ASRock Implements CAM (Clever Access Memory) on Intel Z490 Taichi Motherboard
ASRock has released a BIOS update for their Z490 Taichi motherboard which implements a Clever Access Memory (CAM) system (might I say that's as clever as it sounds?) CAM is basically ASRock's own marketing push based on AMD's SAM, which is in itself a marketing push based on PCIe's Resizable BAR feature (the amount of marketing names employed to describe the same set of features is becoming mind-boggling). The feature is available through the 1.72 BETA Bios for the Z490 Taichi motherboard, and WCCFTech ran some quick and dirty tests on a Z490-based system with an AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics card to verify what (if any) performance differences arose.



The tests were done at 4K resolution for Shadows of the Tomb Raider and Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, running on an Intel Core i7-10700K processor and 2x 8 GB sticks of DDR4-2666 memory. The results? 3.32% performance improvement under Shadows of the Tomb Raider, and an impressive 11.54% improvement for Assassin's Creed: Valhalla (images to the left feature CAM on, and images on the right show CAM off). It seems it's only a matter of time until this amazing feature that's been available (yet untapped) for years now brings some very considerable and widespread performance improvements to users independent of platform. Kinda like finding a $10 bill on an old pair of jeans.

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1 Hour Power Outage at Micron Manufacturing Plant Could Mean Increased DRAM Prices Throughout 2021
Semiconductor manufacturing is a risky business. Not only is it heavily capital-intensive, which means that even some state-backed would-be players can fail in pooling together the required resources for an industry break-in; but the entire nature of the manufacturing process is a delicate balance of materials, nearly-endless fabrication, cleanup, and QA testing. Wafer manufacturing can take months between the initial fabrication stages through to the final packaging process; and this means that power outages or material contamination can jeopardize an outrageous number of in-fabrication semiconductors.



Recent news as covered by DigiTimes place one of Micron's fabrication plants in Taiwan as being hit with a 1-hour long power outage, which can potentially affect 10% of the entire predictable DRAM supply for the coming months (a power outage affects every step of the manufacturing process). Considering the increased demand for DRAM components due to the COVID-19 pandemic and associated demand for DRAM-inside products such as PCs, DIY DRAM, laptops, and tablets, industry players are now expecting a price hike for DRAM throughout 2021 until this sudden supply constraint is dealt with. As we know, DRAM manufacturers and resellers are a fickle bunch when it comes to increasing prices in even the slightest, dream-like hint of reduced supply. It remains to be seen how much of this 10% DRAM supply is actually salvageable, but projecting from past experience, a price hike seems to be all but guaranteed.

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(PR) MSI to Add Resizable-BAR Feature to its Intel 400-series Motherboards
As a world-leading motherboard brand, MSI contributes to providing gamers and creators extremely pleasant experience when users choose MSI motherboards. For the sake of fulfillment of goals, MSI keeps updating the latest version BIOS for users to download and to increase performance. At the present, MSI prepares to release BIOS update for all Intel 400-series motherboards, including Z490, B460 and H410 chipsets. According to planning schedule, the first batch is expected to Z490 motherboards. All BIOS update for Z490 will be available by this week. As for B460 and H410 motherboards, the BIOS update will be completely released in the next two weeks. Please follow the product pages for the updated BIOS.
Update 10:14 UTC: One of the screenshots provided by MSI in its press release puts out some juicy info about a 11th Gen Core "Rocket Lake" processor ES. Apparently this chip has a multiplier range between 8.0 to 50.0, a nominal clock speed of 3.40 GHz, and 4.30 GHz boost. The CPU-Z screenshot also confirms AVX-512F ISA support. In all likelihood (given that this chip has Rocket Lake's maximum core-count of 8-core/16-thread), this ES could very well be the Core i9-11900.
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AMD Ryzen 3000 and Older Zen Chips Don't Support SAM Due to Hardware Limitation, Intel Chips Since Haswell Support it
AMD Ryzen 3000 "Matisse" processors based on the "Zen 2" microarchitecture, as well as older AMD processors based on "Zen+" and "Zen" microarchitectures, do not support the company's Smart Access Memory (SAM) feature being introduced with Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards. SAM is essentially a branding of the Resizable Base-Address Register (Resizable-BAR) feature developed by the PCI-SIG; which enables a processor to see a graphics card's entire video memory as a single addressable block, rather than through 256-megabyte apertures. Apparently the PCI-Express root complex of Ryzen 5000 "Vermeer" processors introduce an instruction called full-rate _pdep_u32/64, which is required for resizable-BAR to work.



It gets more interesting—Intel processors have been supporting this feature since the company's 4th Gen Core "Haswell," which introduced it with its 20-lane PCI-Express gen 3.0 root-complex. This means that every Intel processor dating back to 2014 can technically support Resizable-BAR, and it's just a matter of motherboard vendors releasing UEFI firmware updates for their products (i.e. Intel 8-series chipsets and later). AMD extensively advertises SAM as adding a 1-2% performance boost to Radeon RX 6800 series graphics cards. Since this is a PCI-SIG feature, NVIDIA plans to add support for it on some of its GPUs, too. Meanwhile, in addition to AMD 500-series chipsets, even certain Intel 400-series chipset motherboards started receiving Resizable BAR support through firmware updates.

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KeysOff Presents Cyber Week Sale on Discounted Genuine Software
KeysOff presented its Cyber Week Sale, with the store's lowest prices of the year on discounted genuine software; letting you spend more on your next-generation gaming PC hardware, by saving big on genuine software. Get Genuine Windows 10 Pro for just $7.45. Break from the shackles of annual Office 365 subscriptions by getting yourself lifetime-valid Office 2019 Professional Plus for just $28.98. Combine the Windows 10 and Office editions of your choice to save even more. Get even more attractive deals on other productivity software, including macOS versions of Office. KeysOff uses the cWalletco payment gateway which supports payments through PayPal as a payment instrument. This lets you secure your purchase.



Buy Windows 10 Pro from KeysOff for $7.45 | Buy Windows 10 Pro 2-PC for $11.45 | Buy Office 2019 Professional Plus for $28.98 | Buy Office 2016 Professional Plus for $21.80



Please use the coupon code SKK45 on the following items to avail the prices you see here.

Buy Windows 10 Home for $8.97 | Buy Windows 10 Home 2-PC for $14.93 | Buy Windows Server 2019 Standard for $17.66 | Buy Windows 10 Enterprise 2019 LTSC for $10.05



Please use the coupon code SKK58 on the following items.

Buy Windows 10 Pro + Office 2016 Professional for $27.35 | Buy Windows 10 Home + Office 2016 Professional for $27.64 | Buy Office 2016 Home and Student for $33.05 | Buy Office 2016 Home and Business for Mac for $40.69 | Buy Windows 10 Pro + Office 2019 Professional for $36.10 | Buy Windows 10 Home + Office 2019 Professional for $36.15 | Buy Office 2019 Home and Student for $34.43 | Buy Office 2019 Home and Business for Mac for $48.07

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BIOSTAR Rolls Out B550M-Silver Motherboard
BIOSTAR today rolled out the B550M-Silver, a Socket AM4 motherboard in the Micro-ATX form-factor, based on the AMD B550 chipset. The board comes with out-of-the-box support for the latest Ryzen 5000 "Vermeer" processors, in addition to Ryzen 4000 "Renoir" and Ryzen 3000 "Matisse." It draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS power connectors, conditioning it for the CPU with a 10-phase VRM that comes with heatsinks across all CPU VRM phases. Expansions slots on the BIOSTAR B550M-Silver include one PCI-Express 4.0 x16, a PCI-Express x16 (electrical gen 3.0 x4 and wired to the B550 chipset), and a PCIe 3.0 x1.



Storage connectivity includes six SATA 6 Gbps ports, and two M.2-2280 slots, from which one has PCI-Express 4.0 x4 wiring to the CPU socket; and the other PCI-Express 3.0 x4, wired to the B550 chipset. USB connectivity includes two 10 Gbps USB 3.2 ports on the rear panel (from which one is type-C), four 5 Gbps USB 3.2 ports (from which two are via headers), and six USB 2.0 ports (two on the rear panel, four via headers). Networking includes a 2.5 GbE wired interface handled by a Realtek 8125B controller, and preparation for a WLAN module (an M.2 E-key slot and mounts for antennas are provided), although one isn't included with the board. The onboard 6-channel HD audio solution is handled by a Realtek ALC1150 CODEC. The company didn't reveal pricing.

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Razer Tomahawk Modular Gaming Desktop Arrives
During CES 2020, way back in January of this year, Razer had shown off a quite interesting concept. Called a modular gaming desktop, the concept has a goal to allow users to just swap-out parts on the fly and have no trouble doing so. Today, the company has officially decided to launch the Tomahawk gaming desktop. Designed for small-form-factor computing, the case of the Tomahawk PC is coming in at just 10L volume, with measurements of 210 mm x 365 mm x 150 mm. The case is an all-black aluminium silhouette with the signature Razer logo and Chroma lighting around the base. That gives it a simple look that can blend in with any environment.



When it comes to the insides, the PC features a power supply of 750 Watts that powers one of Intel's NUC Element boards that is a house for a 45 W Core i9-9980HK Coffee Lake processor with eight cores and 16 threads. When it comes to memory, it has 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of PCIe M.2 NVMe SSD storage, paired with a 2 TB hard drive. Razer offers users to upgrade memory and storage, while the CPU is soldered to the board. You can pre-order the Razer Tomahawk PC at a price starting at $2,399.99, while if you want to equip it with something like NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 GPU, you will be paying $3,199.99. If you already have a GPU to install, then you should just order the base.

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(PR) Intel Debuts 2nd-Gen Horse Ridge Cryogenic Quantum Control Chip
At an Intel Labs virtual event today, Intel unveiled Horse Ridge II, its second-generation cryogenic control chip, marking another milestone in the company's progress toward overcoming scalability, one of quantum computing's biggest hurdles. Building on innovations in the first-generation Horse Ridge controller introduced in 2019, Horse Ridge II supports enhanced capabilities and higher levels of integration for elegant control of the quantum system. New features include the ability to manipulate and read qubit states and control the potential of several gates required to entangle multiple qubits.



"With Horse Ridge II, Intel continues to lead innovation in the field of quantum cryogenic controls, drawing from our deep interdisciplinary expertise bench across the Integrated Circuit design, Labs and Technology Development teams. We believe that increasing the number of qubits without addressing the resulting wiring complexities is akin to owning a sports car, but constantly being stuck in traffic. Horse Ridge II further streamlines quantum circuit controls, and we expect this progress to deliver increased fidelity and decreased power output, bringing us one step closer toward the development of a 'traffic-free' integrated quantum circuit."-Jim Clarke, Intel director of Quantum Hardware, Components Research Group, Intel.
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(PR) Intel Advances Progress in Integrated Photonics for Data Centers
Today, at Intel Labs Day, Intel highlighted industry-leading technological advances toward the realization of the company's long-standing vision of integrating photonics with low-cost, high-volume silicon. The advancements represent critical progress in the field of optical interconnects, which address growing challenges around the performance scaling of electrical input/output (I/O) as compute-hungry data workloads increasingly overwhelm network traffic in data centers. Intel demonstrated advances in key technology building blocks, including miniaturization, paving the way for tighter integration of optical and silicon technologies.



"We are approaching an I/O power wall and an I/O bandwidth gap that will dramatically hinder performance scaling. The rapid progress Intel is making in integrated photonics will enable the industry to fully re-imagine data center networks and architectures that are connected by light. We have now demonstrated all of the critical optical technology building blocks on one silicon platform, tightly integrated with CMOS silicon. Our research on tightly integrating photonics with CMOS silicon can systematically eliminate barriers across cost, power and size constraints to bring the transformative power of optical interconnects to server packages." -James Jaussi, senior principal engineer and director of PHY Lab, Intel Labs.
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