AMD has a new motherboard chipset that marks a hard cutoff in support for older processors. B550, the follow-up to the B450, will not support previous generations of Ryzen processors — notably those that use Zen and Zen+ architecture.
AMD’s policy on backwards compatibility has been very public, with the company committing to motherboards with the AM4 sockets until 2020. This commitment has lasted nearly four years and encapsulates the first era of Ryzen.
But that time has come to an end. The first movement of AMD’s Ryzen symphony has concluded, and the B550 represents the beginning of a transition toward the future of Ryzen.
B550, a new midrange motherboard chipset, supports third-generation Ryzen and beyond, but isn’t compatible with first- or second-generation Ryzen. An AMD representative explained the cutoff is aimed at making space for the wide variety of future processors the B550 will support. “The legacy burden is getting too large,” he said.
AMD confirmed that B550 would be compatible with Zen 3 processors and beyond, though the company didn’t state how many generations it would last for.
Following in the footsteps of the X570, the B550 moves up to 16 lanes of PCIe 4.0 for graphics cards and NVMe storage. The general purpose PCIe lanes have been moved from Gen 2 to Gen 3. The B550 moves up to USB 3.2 Gen 2 to double the maximum speed to 10Gbps.
The B550 now supports dual GPUs, a feature previously reserved for the X570, as well as overclocking. As always, that doesn’t mean every B550 motherboard will include overclocking capabilities, and the X570 will remain a far more robust overclocking platform.
The B550 takes the place of the B450, which launched in 2018, and should be set to launch on new motherboards starting June 16. AMD says it expects boards to start at $100, with more than 60 third-party motherboard designs in development.
To complement the new chipset, AMD has launched two new midrange Ryzen 3 processors, the Ryzen 3 3100 and Ryzen 3 3300X. These affordable quad-core processors were announced a few weeks ago and start at just $100. AMD has provided some more detail on just how powerful they are.
Judging from the specs alone, you might assume the 3300X is only a clocked-up 3100, but AMD says there’s a bigger difference under the hood. The 3300X features all four cores on a single CCX, rather than splitting the processing cores in separates clusters. AMD says this enables better cache utilization, resulting in lower core-to-core latency and better overall performance.
At the time of the announcement, the Ryzen 3 3100 sported one big advantage over its rival, Intel’s Core i3-9100. They’re both quad-core desktop chips, but the 3100 features AMD’s simultaneous multithreading for double the threads. AMD cites gains of up to 1.42x the performance over the Core i3-9100, across both gaming and content creation. AMD even boasted slightly higher single-core performance in Cinebench and PCMark.
Since AMD made these comparisons, Intel launched its own 10th-gen desktop chips, which now feature hyperthreading at the Core i3 level. That makes the Core i3-10100 and Ryzen 3 3100 equal in cores and threads.
AMD notes that the 3100 is a similar configuration to Intel’s old Core i7-7700K. That’s a $100 processor competing with a high-end $350 Intel chip from 2017, showing how far the technology has come in just a couple of years.
In other graphs, AMD pits its Ryzen 3 3300X against the Core i5-9400. Though the 3300X has just four cores, the simultaneous multithreading gives it more threads than the Core i5. The result is that it’s almost 10% ahead in some cases. Intel’s 10th-gen chips upset this advantage by also bringing hyperthreading to the Core i5-10400.
While Intel’s 10th-gen chips make the match with Ryzen a bit more equal, AMD’s selection is still far less expensive. The Core i4-10400 costs $182 compared to the $120 Ryzen 3 3300X, while the Core i3-10300 costs $143 compared to the $99 Ryzen 3 3100. We won’t know the performance difference in real terms until these chips are tested against each other, but AMD is by far the more affordable option.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.