With AMD’s new Ryzen 5000 processors snatching away Intel’s gaming performance crown, it’s a great time for gamers looking to get a new rig or upgrade any existing PC setups. If you happen to fall into the latter camp, there is even better news. Rather than having to upgrade your motherboard too, you could save some cash this holiday season by waiting for your board-maker to add support for your new CPU.
AMD had previously stated that beta firmware will be available by soon as early 2021 for 400-series boards, and it appears that some of its partners are able to deliver on that promise ahead of schedule.
One of those board manufacturers is ASRock, as reported by PC Gamer, which has pushed out a firmware update to 15 of its existing B450 series motherboards to support AMD’s latest silicon. According to the manufacturer, the B450 boards include its Steel Legend, Gaming, Pro, and HDV lines.
In addition to ASRock, Asus also confirmed on Twitter that new updates are forthcoming to support the Ryzen 5000 processors on its board.
“Asus 400-series motherboard BIOSes updates (AGESA 1.1.8.0) for AMD Ryzen 5000-series CPUs will drop in a couple of weeks,” the company stated in a tweet.
If you happen to own an AMD motherboard from another manufacturer, you may have to wait a little longer. There is no news of an update from other manufacturers yet, including big names like MSI, Gigabyte, or Biostar.
The reason this is all possible is because once again, AMD leveraged its AM4 socket for its Ryzen 5000 processors. Built on the same 7nm node found on the prior generation family of CPUs, its new Zen 3 design still manages a major uplift in performance. Early reviews confirmed AMD’s promise that upgraders to Ryzen 5000 will see about a 20% IPC increase, approximately a 25% improvement in power efficiency, and improved single-core performance when compared to Zen 2-based processors.
Though the Ryzen 5000 represents a huge generational improvement for AMD, it also allows AMD to more effectively compete — and beat — rival Intel’s Core i9 processors as the company makes inroads with enthusiasts and high-end gamers. Additionally, if you do decide to pick up an AMD processor, choosing an AMD graphics card, particularly the new Radeon RX 6000 series, over the competing Nvidia GPU solutions, you may be able to squeeze even more gaming performance by staying within the company’s ecosystem thanks to AMD’s Smart Access Memory. It’s a technology that allows system resources to be shared between the CPU and GPU, and early reviews suggested you can see a performance boost between 8% and 16%, depending on the game, by choosing AMD silicon.
It’s an exciting time to be a Team Red gamer, and it will be interesting to see how AMD will continue to drive even more performance to steal market share away from Intel and Nvidia in the future.
Nearly a month after announcing the GPT-6.1 Sol model, OpenAI unveiled GPT-6.1 Terra today. The latest addition to the family focuses on computer use, visual reasoning, coding, and professional work, while costing 50% less through the API than GPT-5.6 Terra.
OpenAI says Terra can handle everything from filling out browser forms and working inside spreadsheets to interpreting technical drawings and editing videos. The company says it can also complete computer-based tasks more than three times faster than GPT-6 Astra and GPT-6.1 Sol.
ASUS has started selling its UGen Intel Arc Pro B70 graphics card in Europe, bringing its take on Intel’s workstation GPU to customers with a hefty €1,799 recommended price. The card is available in Germany and Austria, while ASUS lists it at CHF 1,799 in Switzerland.
Intel first introduced the Arc Pro B70 in March 2026, with its own branded model starting at $949. ASUS’s version arrives several months later with the same core GPU architecture but a different cooling design and a higher power rating. The price also places it well above Intel’s original starting point, although the two prices are not directly comparable because ASUS’s European figure includes VAT.
Anthropic has officially filed to go public, and buried inside its S-1 is a blunt warning about the technology at the center of its business. The maker of Claude AI says advanced AI could cause everything from large-scale cyberattacks and geopolitical instability to catastrophic or even existential risks for humanity.
The warnings take up a surprisingly large part of the filing. Axios notes that more than 90 pages, or roughly a third of the prospectus, focus on risk factors. Many of them warn about what could happen as AI systems become more capable and autonomous.