AMD Ryzen Category - Page 12 of 21 - CNX Software

March 21, 2022March 22, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Linux 5.17 release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linus Torvalds has just released Linux 5.17: So we had an extra week of at the end of this release cycle, and I’m happy to report that it was very calm indeed. We could probably have skipped it with not a lot of downside, but we did get a few last-minute reverts and fixes in and avoid some brown-paper bugs that would otherwise have been stable fodder, so it’s all good. And that calm last week can very much be seen from the appended shortlog – there really aren’t a lot of commits in here, and it’s all pretty small. Most of it is in drivers (net, usb, drm), with some core networking, and some tooling updates too. It really is small enough that you can just scroll through the details below, and the one-liner summaries will give a good flavor of what happened last week. Of course, this means […]

February 17, 2022June 10, 2023 by Ian W MORRISON (Linuxium) - 12 Comments

Beelink GTR5 Review – An AMD Ryzen 9 mini PC tested with Windows 11, Ubuntu 20.04

Beelink’s GTR5 is their most powerful mini PC to date and has been released as part of their ‘GT’ series of slightly larger mini PCs that are notable for expandable storage configurations together with multiple ports and characterized by the inclusion of a fingerprint scanner. Featuring an AMD Ryzen 9 mobile processor with Radeon Graphics, Beelink kindly sent one for review and I’ve looked at performance running both Windows and Ubuntu. Hardware Overview The Beelink GTR5 physically consists of a 168 x 120 x 39mm (6.61 x 4.72 x 1.54 inches) rectangular metal case. As an actively cooled mini PC, it uses AMD’s ‘Zen 3’ Ryzen 9 5900HX processor which is an eight-core 16-thread 3.3 GHz mobile processor boosting up to 4.6 GHz together with Radeon Graphics. The front panel has an illuminated power button, a ‘CLR CMOS’ button, a USB 3.1 port, a Type-C USB 3.1 port, and a […]

February 7, 2022June 5, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

CHUWI LarkBox X mini PC is powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 3700U mobile processor

CHUWI LarkBox X is an affordable mini PC based on a 15W AMD Ryzen 7 3700U mobile processor coupled with 8GB of RAM, a 256GB NVMe SSD, dual Gigabit Ethernet, 4K video output, and more. Contrary to the earlier Celeron-based LarkBox and LarkBox Pro palm-sized mini PCs, the LarkBox X comes with a larger form factor providing additional ports and possibly better cooling for the more performant AMD processor. LarkBox X specifications: SoC – AMD Ryzen 7 3700U quad-core/eight-thread processor @ 2.30GHz / 4.0GHz (Turbo) with Radeon RX Vega 10 Graphics; 15W TDP System Memory – 8GB DDR4, dual channels via 2x 260-pin DDR4 SO-DIMMs (upgradeable up to 32GB RAM) Storage – 256GB NVMe M.2 2280 SSD (PCIe 3.0) upgradable up to 2TB Video Output 1x HDMI 2.0 up to 4Kp60 1x DisplayPort up to 4Kp60 1x USB Type -C up to 4Kp30 with DisplayPort Alt. mode Three independent displays […]

January 13, 2022July 20, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

LIVA Q3 Plus pocket-sized AMD Ryzen Embedded mini PC sells for $242 and up

ECS LIVA Q3 Plus is another one of those pocket-sized mini PC’s we’ve seen in the past like the ECS LIVA Q2, Chuwi Larkbox, GMK NucBox, and others. Most of those mini PCs are based on Intel Apollo Lake or Gemini Lake mini PC, but LIVA Q3 Plus comes with a twist as it is powered by a 15W AMD Ryzen Embedded V1605B or R1505G processor making it, according to the Taiwanese company, the world’s smallest 15W AMD mini PC. ECS LIVA Q3 Plus specifications: SoC (one or the other) AMD Ryzen Embedded V1605B quad-core processor @ 2.0GHz up to 3.6GHz; TDP: 15W AMD Ryzen Embedded R1505G dual-core processor @ 2.4GHz up to 3.3GHz; TDP: 15W System Memory – 4GB or 8GB DDR4 2400 MT/s Storage – 64GB or 128GB eMMC flash, MicroSD card slot Video Output 1x HDMI 2.0 port up to 4Kp60Hz with CEC function 1x mini DisplayPort […]

December 31, 2021December 31, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 16 Comments

Year 2021 in review – Top 10 posts and statistics

As per tradition, we’ll look back at what happened during the year in the last post, and see what 2022 may have in store, plus the usual statistics from CNX Software website. The biggest story of 2021 has to be the worsening of semiconductors shortages with extremely long lead times, prices of some components going up multiple folds, constant complaints on Twitter about availability and prices. I think I even saw a website, hopefully misconfigured, showing an estimated availability of a specific STM32 MCU in 2037. This also gave rise to opportunities and board redesigns, with MotorComm Ethernet chips replacing some Realtek chips in SBCs such as NanoPi R2C and Orange Pi R1S Plus LTS, and CH9102F showing up as a replacement for CP2104 in some IoT boards. We also got some interesting Arm processors, but sadly the high-expected Rockchip RK3588 got delayed by another year, although it’s getting really […]

December 29, 2021December 31, 2021 by Ian W MORRISON (Linuxium) - 22 Comments

OS and Memory Impact on Mini PC Gaming Performance

This article looks at what the effect of running a different operating system or having more memory has on similarly spec’d Intel and AMD mini PCs when gaming. Note: This article has been updated and corrected as a result of reader feedback and additional testing. It was inspired by having built and tested a pseudo ‘Steamdeck’ running Manjaro on an AMD-based mini PC with 16GB of memory, which made me wonder what the performance would be like using Windows 11. Initial results were surprising because Windows appeared much slower. As I’d previously heard of performance improvements when using 64GB of memory I swapped out the currently installed 16GB memory and immediately saw improved results. As I’d never observed such a dramatic performance increase on Intel mini PCs just through increasing the memory I decided to explore further by testing gaming performance on similar Intel and AMD mini PCs when using […]

November 24, 2021November 24, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

AMD Ryzen V1000/R1000 Mini-ITX board is made for game arcades, slot machines

Axiomtek GMB140 Ryzen R1000/V1000 mini-ITX board

Axiomtek GMB140 is a compact Mini-ITX motherboard powered by AMD Ryzen Embedded V1000/R1000 processor and mostly designed for gaming applications, as well as medical imaging, interactive kiosks, control rooms, and video surveillance. But when we’re not talking about your kids playing games at home here, but instead slot machines, arcade systems, and electronic gaming machines (EGM) powered by the GMB140 board with a PCIe interface for gaming I/O modules, and optional support for a 9-bit serial port for the SAS 6.02 protocol. Axiomtek GMB140 mini-ITX board specifications: SoC – AMD Ryzen Embedded V1000/R1000 quad-/dual-core “Zen” processor with Radeon Vega graphics either: AMD Ryzen Embedded V1807 w/ VEGA 11 graphics AMD Ryzen Embedded V1756 w/ VEGA 8 graphics AMD Ryzen Embedded V1605 w/ VEGA 8 graphics AMD Ryzen Embedded V1202 w/ VEGA 3 graphics AMD Ryzen Embedded R1606 w/ VEGA 3 graphics AMD Ryzen Embedded R1505 w/ VEGA 3 graphics System […]

November 19, 2021December 29, 2021 by Ian W MORRISON (Linuxium) - 7 Comments

Using MangoHud to check FPS, CPU & GPU usage on a ‘hackendeck’

Previously I followed Valve’s documentation to build a ‘hackendeck’ using a mini PC to emulate their highly anticipated Steam Deck. Interestingly the ‘hackendeck’ uses a Linux OS, specifically Manjaro, as whilst Valve based their earlier version of Steam OS on Debian, they have now switched to being based on Arch. If the ‘hackendeck’ had just been Steam on Windows then to review gaming performance I’d just use MSI Afterburner. Until now, however, for Linux, I’ve always had to estimate the average FPS as I’ve not been aware of a good reliable equivalent. Fortunately several ‘commenters’ recommended using MangoHud, a Linux open-source Vulkan/OpenGL overlay for monitoring FPS, CPU/GPU usage, and temperatures similar to MSI Afterburner. So now I’ve been able to capture the average frame rate for the games I previously tested and I’ll present them below. MangoHud Installation and configuration The installation of MangoHud was extremely simple. First I installed […]