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AMD is winning over PC gamers from Intel, suggests new report

Intel’s traditional dominance in the PC gaming market could be under serious threat if a new report is to be believed, with the results suggesting that 41% of PC gamers now use AMD processors.

The report, which is a collaboration between  Jon Peddie Research, Antikythera Intelligence and Research, and the Wccftech website, surveyed PC gamers visiting Wccftech about their current gaming hardware and their future buying plans.

The survey was launched in October 2019 and garnered 4,477 responses, and the results have now been published in a 55-page report. As the report is aimed at OEMs, shops and component suppliers, you’ll need to pay $9,000 for the full thing, but Wccftech has kindly posted some of the results on its site.

Perhaps the biggest surprise included in the report is the high percentage of PC gamers which are using AMD processors, with 41% of respondents saying they rock a chip by Team Red.

Traditionally, Intel has had a huge market lead when it comes to gamers, but if these results are accurate, it looks like AMD is catching up to Intel – and fast.

Should Intel be worried?

So, how worried should Intel be? First of all, we need to remember that these results are of a relatively small sample of a website’s visitors. Wccftech is a very techy website, which means its audience is going to be skewed towards enthusiasts, so it’s likely not representative of mainstream PC gamers.

Still, if AMD is proving to be so popular with enthusiast gamers and tech fans, then that should be cause for concern for Intel. They can be some of the loudest voices on the internet, and if AMD is getting a lot of positive word of mouth from them, that could sway other gamers when buying a new CPU.

As Windows Central reports, a Steam hardware survey from October 2019, which asked Steam users what hardware they are using, suggested that only 19.39% of Windows users who use Steam have an AMD CPU.

That certainly gives Intel a larger lead, and while it’s only surveying Steam users, the popularity of Valve’s software means the sample size will be a lot larger. However, it does show that AMD growing its market share there as well.

AMD’s certainly had a great run recently, and we’d love to see Intel respond with some truly innovative products in 2020 to make sure that PC gamers stick with its chips.

Source: Techradar

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AMD Ryzen 3000 processors get free speed boost with new update

Early versions of upcoming BIOS updates for AMD Ryzen 3000 processors have appeared online, and it looks like they bring a performance boost for AMD’s latest consumer CPUs.

While AMD’s Ryzen 3000 line, which includes the AMD Ryzen 9 3900XRyzen 7 3700X and Ryzen 5 3600, got brilliant reviews (we list them as some of the best processors money can buy), and have been huge sellers, there has been some controversy as well, with the CPUs unable to hit promised boost speeds in many cases.

This led AMD to promise a fix to increase the boost clock speeds of the CPUs, and now ComputerBase is reporting that beta BIOS updates – including AMD’s AGESA 1.0.0.4 microcode, which addresses these issues – are available for certain AsRock and Asus motherboards.

The following motherboard have early BIOS updates, hosted by German retailer JZ Electronic:

Performance gains

ComputerBase also tested out the new microcode on an AMD Ryzen 7 3800X with the ASRock Fatal1ty X470 Gaming K4 motherboard.

It found that the new firmware gave the all-core boost clock a boost. With the older microcode it hit 4,245 MHz across all cores, while with the new AGESA 1.0.0.4 microcode, it hit 4,325MHz – a 1.9% improvement.

It’s not a mind-blowing leap, but every little helps. However, ComputerBase noted that the single-core boost speeds remained the same.

If you want to try out the new BIOS updates yourself, use the links above, but there are some important things to note. To begin with, these BIOS updates are only for Ryzen 3000 processors, so only install them if you have on of those installed.

You also need to make sure you install the right one for your motherboard. If you’re not sure, don’t do it. It could cause big issues otherwise.

The final thing to note is that these are early beta versions of the updates, and as with all beta software, it means it’s not the final code – so bugs could still be present, while some features may not be included. For the vast majority of people, it’ll be better to wait until the final versions of the updates are released – no matter how tempting the speed boost is.

Via Tom’s Hardware