JULY 2019 PCWorld 35wood-clad laptops to funky multi-screen
notebooks to a radical new vision for
desktops that move beyond the boring-old
ATX form factor. And did we mention PCIe
4.0 is a thing now?
Buckle up, and be sure to hit those links
throughout to learn more about each topic.
- AMD’S CUTTING-EDGE
RYZEN ONSLAUGHT
AMD kicked off Computex with a bang (go.
pcworld.com/bang), revealing its hotly
anticipated Ryzen 3000-series processors—
culminating in a monstrous 12-core, $500
chip that marks the debut of the Ryzen 9
family. Eight-core Ryzen 7 processors were
also announced, with stupid-good power
efficiency, higher clock speeds, and a launch
date of July 7. These will be the first 7nm chips
ever to hit the streets.
They’ll also be the first processors to
support the cutting-edge PCIe 4.0 interface,
although you’ll need a new X570
motherboard to take advantage. Fortunately,
you should have plenty of options, as Asus
alone plans on launching over 30 different
X570 boards.- RADEON RX 5700
You know what else supports PCIe 4.0? The
Radeon RX 5700 (go.pcworld.com/bang),
the first consumer 7nm GPU, and one based
on AMD’s fresh “Navi” architecture, now
dubbed RDNA. AMD says the Radeon RX
5700 should go toe-to-toe with the GeForce
RTX 2070 and offer 25 percent better
performance per clock and 50 percent
better performance per watt than existing
Radeon Vega GPUs. Navi GPUs will also
advance to the speedier GDDR6 memory
that debuted alongside Nvidia’s RTX
20-series. Yes, please!