Resource Regions: Western Europe

European organizations expressed their concerns and the impact the believe they will face from Regulations in the coming years of 2023 and 2024, when asked about it in the European Enterprise Acceleration Survey (n=1500). The survey was conducted in late 2022 and we found that the top three priorities for European organizations are in the domains of Cybersecurity, Data Governance and Sustainability.

However, the perception or Regulatory impact varies within European regions, as the political and economic differences reflect in organizations’ regulatory focus for the coming years.

For instance, Western Europe and Central Eastern Europe bear significant differences as the organizations from Western Europe are more concerned about Sustainability Regulations and Safety of products (quality). Meanwhile, organizations from Central Eastern Europe see a higher impact coming from Cybersecurity and Privacy regulations.

Central Eastern Europe

Given the geopolitical context with the war on Ukraine, countries like Czech Republic, Poland and Romania have the highest concern about Cybersecurity Regulations. Those countries have already felt the geo-economic impacts of the conflict in Ukraine, and organizations can find themselves in a situation of lack of compliance with both EU and local regulations.

Particularly in the Czech Republic, there has been a push for Cybersecurity regulations by the National Cyber and Information Security Agency (NUBIK) in the last 5 years, as well as a dependency reduction from foreign parties since the war started in Ukraine. Lukáš Kintr, Director of NÚKIB, commented on the progress of the new draft legislation on high-risk suppliers assessment of technology: “The Czech Republic can have a comprehensive system for reducing the state’s dependence on untrustworthy foreign suppliers within two years. In the field of information technology, we hope to avoid the situation we are currently observing, for example, in connection with oil and gas supplies from the Russian Federation.“

Moreover, with the upcoming application of the NIS2 Directive, several industries included in the Critical Infrastructure category will be touched by the new security requirements. As the tighter Cybersecurity Regulations in the EU comes to place in the next 18 months, EU countries will need to transpose it into national laws and organizations will need to understand how to implement those.

Western Europe

Western Europe organizations hold the same pattern without great discrepancies and have a balanced Regulatory impact assessment profile. Some specificities can be found in France, Netherlands and the UK.

France

France has the highest concern with Ethical-AI Regulations in Europe. France has started to roll-out their policies about the topic from 2018 on, following the publication of the National AI strategy, and the creation of the French National Committee for Digital Ethics.

The country has been historically a leader in the Ethics of technology and AI policymaking, not only from a restriction and liability standpoint but also from a talent and skills investment perspective.

Netherlands

Netherlands is the country with the highest perceived impact of Privacy Regulations, given the high degree of awareness of their citizens and therefore the concern of Dutch organizations. Even if Germany is the leading country on the Privacy subject, Netherlands leads the Privacy Impact Assessments (an instrument for determining privacy risks of data processing in advance).

United Kingdom

The UK is the Western European country with the greatest focus on Data ownership and control regulations, hence the Digital Regulatory misalignment caused by Brexit and the harmonization needed for UK organizations to keep operating in European countries.

Nordics

On another sub-European region, the Nordics, we see yet another response to the contextual geopolitical challenges. The highest regulatory impact perceived by Nordics organizations is around Digital Sovereignty Regulations.

This is explained by the perceived risk of the geographic proximity to Russia, and the increase of the state-sponsored attacks to Nordic countries, especially after the beginning of the war on Ukraine. As the region has the highest digital maturity of European, the direct cyber response is in place (updated infrastructure, high cyber skills, security systems in place, etc.) and new concerns about business implications of the geopolitical context arise.

The Nordics has nonetheless the highest perception of impact coming from Sustainability Regulations in Europe. Historically, the sub-region has had the most relevant political push for green and environmental regulations.

Norway has a number of local regulations around the ESG dimension, such as the Transparency Act, which will required amendments to be compliant with the new Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive from the EU. Organizations in the Nordics, even if very advanced in terms of compliance with ESG-related Regulations, have to juggle with tighter requirements and uncertainty of the compatibility of the national and EU regulations.

Recommendations for Tech Providers

Geo-based sales enablement: Base your go-to-market strategy, sales message and product offerings on the regulatory priorities of organizations for the next two years, taking into consideration not only industry but specific geography (sub-region and country).
Target the top regulatory concerns across the continent: European organizations will be required to comply with many new or update regulations at the EU and local level. Target the three top areas first: Cybersecurity, Data Governance and Sustainability.
Focus on technology to help automate compliance procedures: Technology should be a facilitator of the compliance process. Provide your customers with Digital Regulatory Intelligence Solutions, the technologies for monitoring, data processing and reporting.

If you want to know more about this Research, access the report or contact Anielle Guedes.

Purpose is a word that is often talked about. But what does it mean and how does it impact your business?

Purpose is not just about what you sell, but the value you bring. Not just about the products and services you produce, but your company ethos. The impact of what you sell, how you make it and the effect your company has on the wider community.

Purpose impacts everything from buying decisions to employee productivity. Purpose, therefore, drives not only what you do but how you do it.

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A purpose gets to the why of the company. Why do your products or services exist? What value does your company bring? Beyond making a profit, what are you providing?

But why does this matter?

Customers are not just concerned with the performance of the products they buy, but who is providing them. Interest in things like a company’s carbon footprint, the working conditions of employees, even the charities a company donates to influence a customer’s decision to buy.

What you stand for is impacting if people buy from you. So you need to ensure you can demonstrate the value you bring. What your “purpose” is.

Your brand purpose is also important for your employees.

It helps build strategy and focus goals. Helps with decision making. It needs to be more than a PR statement — an ethos that can help drive the company. Something that an employee can look to and ask, does the work I am doing contribute to our purpose?

It promotes an aligned and connected organisation that delivers value. Purpose enhances performance and creates value.

Brand purpose is an important keystone for any business. Brand purpose should influence everything from your strategy to messaging to recruitment.

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Your company may already have a brand purpose. If you do, it’s good to revisit it and see if it still reflects the ethos and goals of your business.

There are key questions that you should be asking when thinking about your business that your purpose should answer.

Questions to ask when looking at brand purpose:

What does our business help people achieve?
How does our business impact the societies we operate in?
What value(s) do we have while building our products and services?

Customers are becoming more concerned about what a brand stands for. More likely to check whether your business is doing what you say it does. Performative actions without substance (such as greenwashing) will not go down well with potential customers. Purpose can be aspirational, but it must be honest.

Examples from major companies:

Coca-Cola. Our purpose: Refresh the world. Make a difference.
HP. We are a technology company born of the belief that companies should do more than just make a profit. They should make the world a better place. Our efforts in climate action, human rights and digital equity prove that we are doing everything in our power to make it so.
Nike. Our mission: Bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world. (*If you have a body, you are an athlete.)

Purpose goes beyond a slogan.

Purpose should tell whoever encounters it what your company stands for and what it provides.

Purpose is a factor in a business’ reach and awareness within a market. It can determine whether a customer buys from you, or not. A driver for success.

Act with purpose.

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AMD made major changes to its CPU and GPU portfolios in 2022. On August 29, AMD unveiled its Ryzen 7000 series of desktop processors powered by Zen 4 architecture and the new socket AM5 platform. These processors have been available globally from September 27. The flagship 16-core AMD Ryzen 9 7950X processor is presently offered at the manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP) of $699.

On November 3, AMD unveiled the Radeon RX 7900 series of graphics cards powered by RDNA 3 architecture. The cards have been available on AMD’s website from December 13, 2022. Leading AMD board partners, including ASRock, ASUS, Biostar, Gigabyte, MSI, PowerColor, Sapphire, Vastarmor, XFX, and Yeston, have offered the cards from mid-December. The Radeon RX 7900 XTX has a starting price of $999, while the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT has a $899 price tag.

AMD offered samples of the Radeon RX 7900 XTX along with the Ryzen 9 7950X processor, a socket AM5 motherboard, and a DDR5 memory kit. The samples allowed IDC to test how well AMD’s flagship technology platform performed as a completely new system or upgrade over an existing system. IDC also gauged how well the new samples performed over prior generations in terms of performance per watt and computations per U.S. dollar.

What’s New with the AMD Ryzen 7000 Series Desktop CPUs?

The core compute die of the Ryzen 7000 series processor is built on TSMC’s 5nm process node. The input/output die — which now includes basic RDNA 2 graphics capabilities for 2D workloads or diagnostic/troubleshooting purposes — is based on TSMC’s 6nm process.

AMD made a significant change by moving from the previously long-lived AM4 socket platform to the new LGA AM5 socket. Since pins have moved from the CPU to the socket, there is less risk of damage during installations or upgrades. The AM5 platform also supports dual-channel DDR5 memory up to 5200 megatransfers per second (MT/S), in line with JEDEC standards.

AMD has invested in a memory configuration standard it has branded EXPO. EXPO supports advanced pre-configured profile settings designed specifically for AMD memory controllers built into DIMM boards. These pre-configured profiles simplify overclocking for greater bandwidth and tighten timing for the fastest responses and lowest latencies.

The new socket AM5 motherboards have up to 24 PCIe 5.0 lanes and are available with AMD X670E chipsets. In addition to possessing the highest overclocking capabilities, the enthusiast-grade X670 and B650E motherboards support the PCIe 5.0 standard for graphics and storage components. However, PCIe 5.0 support is an optional feature on the mainstream B650 motherboard.

AMD has pledged to support AM5 motherboards through 2025 and at least two subsequent CPU generations. However, support may be provided even longer if the long history of the AM4 series is anything to go by.

What’s New with the AMD Radeon RX 7900 Series GPUs?

The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX and Radeon RX 7900 XT graphics cards are the first gaming cards to feature an advanced chiplet design. Like the Ryzen 7000 series, the AMD RDNA 3 generation architecture’s chiplet design combines 5nm and 6nm process nodes. The main graphics compute die (GCD) is built on TSMC’s 5nm process and provides the compute units for rasterization and ray tracing. AMD includes up to six TSMC 6nm memory cache dies (MCDs), each with 16MB of second-generation AMD Infinity Cache technology and a 64-bit wide memory interface. AMD invested in a novel interconnect to link the GCD and MCD chiplets together, enabling bandwidth of up to 5.3TB/s.

The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX has 96 compute units. Each has four texture units (for 384 in total), one ray accelerator (96 total), and two artificial intelligence (AI) units (192 total). According to AMD, the performance of the ray tracing units in RDNA 3 architecture is nearly double that of the corresponding units in RDNA 2, while the new AI instructions are nearly three times as many as those in the previous generation.

The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX features six MCDs that support 24GB of GDDR6 memory running at 20Gbps over a 384-bit bus. The Radeon RX 7900 XTX also supports USB-C, DisplayPort 2.1, and HDMI 2.1a connectivity with UHBR 13.5, allowing displays with high refresh rates to be connected (up to 480Hz refresh rates on 4K panels and 165Hz refresh rates on 8K panels). A dual media engine supports simultaneous encode or decode streams up to 8K60 for HEVC, as well as the new AV1 codec.

The Test Platform

The test PC hardware components included the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X processor, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics card, the Gigabyte X670E Aorus Master motherboard, and a G.SKILL Trident Z5 Neo 2x16GB DDR5-6000 EXPO memory kit. The Windows 11 main drive was a 1TB GIGABYTE AORUS NVMe Gen4 solid-state drive.

A be quiet! Silent Loop 2 280mm water cooler was installed for the processor, which was paired with a be quiet! STRAIGHT POWER 11 Platinum 850W power supply. A 34″ Dell Gaming S3422DWG monitor — a Quad-HD 3440×1440 display with a 144Hz refresh rate, FreeSync, 10-bit colors, and high dynamic range support — was also utilized.

The reviewer utilized the motherboard’s optimal default settings, set the memory profile to EXPO 6000, and made sure that smart access memory was enabled. No special tuning, optimization, or overclocking was carried out for the tests.

Synthetic Benchmarks and Productivity Performance

PCMark 10 is a comprehensive benchmarking tool that covers the wide variety of tasks performed in the modern workplace. Web browsing, videoconferencing, spreadsheet and word-processing workloads, photo and video editing, and rendering and visualization are some of the tasks tested by PCMark 10.

The gaming test focused on real-time graphics and physics engines of the platform hardware. The 9,186 score the platform achieved was better than 99% of all results produced by PCMark 10.

Blender Benchmark 3.4.0 was used to test the rendering performance of the graphics card. Thanks to the Heterogeneous Interface for Portability — AMD’s compute language for GPUs which Blender Benchmark uses (in contrast to OpenCL, which does not) — the Radeon RX 7900 XTX ranked in the top 10% of all benchmarks, delivering an excellent result.

IndigoBench, an OpenCL benchmark based on Indigo 4’s advanced rendering engine, was used to measure the performance of the Radeon RX 7900 XTX. The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX achieved 21.500 M samples/s in the bedroom rendering test and 49.599 M samples/s in the supercar rendering test. According to the published test results, the graphics card was 56% faster than the Radeon Pro W6800 and 51% faster than the 6900 XT.

3DMark Port Royal is a dedicated real-time ray tracing benchmark for gamers. The system’s score of 16,319 was better than 93% of all results and almost double the 8,784 score of the older AMD Ryzen 9 5900X and Radeon RX 6800 XT system.

The system’s 3DMark Time Spy Extreme 4K score of 14,242 was better than 95% of all results. The graphics score of 14,593 was 48% higher than what was achieved by the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT on the same Ryzen 9 7950X platform.

Gaming Performance

Various old and new video games were tested on the platform, including next-gen versions.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

This game ran at an average 111 frames per second (fps) at 1440p, registering a minimum of 79fps. The highest graphical settings, as well as AMD’s FidelityFX CAS package, were enabled.

FARCRY6

Far Cry 6 ran at an average 140fps at 1440p, registering a minimum of 123fps. All DirectX Raytracing (DXR) and FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) features were enabled during testing.

Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 ran at an average 67fps at 1440p, registering a minimum of 49fps. Ultra-ray tracing presets and FSR 2.1 features were automatically enabled.

The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt Next-Gen

The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt Next-Gen ran at an average 75fps at 1440p, registering a minimum of 60fps. Ultra-ray tracing presets and FSR 2.1 features were automatically enabled.

Fortnite

The latest Fortnite game runs on Unreal Engine 5.1 and makes use of several next-gen features (such as Nanite, Lumen, Virtual Shadow Maps, and Temporal Super Resolution). For example, the Lumen Global Illumination and Lumen Reflection features can exploit the Radeon GPU’s hardware-accelerated ray-tracing capabilities. The updated game ran at an average 82fps, with a 65fps minimum.

IDC Opinion and Conclusion

Ryzen 7950X Performance, Power Consumption, and Heat Considerations

With the Ryzen 7000 generation of desktop CPUs, AMD has taken a new approach to delivering maximum performance. Rather than limit power, AMD allows its CPUs to consume as much power as needed within the socket and reach their thermal throttling temperature (for the Ryzen 9 7950x, the throttling temperature is 95°C). With a much higher CPU thermal design power of 170W in comparison to 105W for the Ryzen 9 5950X, the 7950X reached much higher single threads and all core boost clocks, increasing overall performance and speeding up challenging productivity tasks.

However, enhanced cooling is needed to maintain the performance of the processor (this means increased fan noise). The system and cooler’s fans will quickly ramp up to high speeds when the processor is executing a demanding workload.

AMD provides several tools for performance and efficiency customizations. For example, Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) is a feature that has dramatic impacts on power consumption, heat, and noise as it enables users to set overall socket power. On the test system, PBO had a major impact on the power consumption of the Ryzen 9 7950X, with only minimal drawbacks in terms of performance.

For example, the Ryzen 9 7950X running at 105W delivered 93% of the performance and used just 46% of the power of a higher 230W system setting. When AMD’s suggested 65W “eco mode” setting was used, the test platform delivered 73% of the performance and used 38% of the power of the 230W setting. While this configuration flexibility is a welcome change, AMD should make it simple and easy for users to change PBO socket power profiles on the fly. AMD could work with Microsoft to enable this capability via the power management features of Windows 10 or 11.

Radeon RX 7900 XTX Considerations

On the GPU side, AMD has increased the GPU power draw to 355W. This is a 55W increase over the 300W draw of the Radeon RX 6900 XT and RX 6800 XT but only a 20W increase over the Radeon RX 6950 XT. Overclocking delivered small gains of around 200 points in 3DMARK tests and slightly boosted gaming fps, but at the expense of increased power consumption, heat, and fan noise. The RDNA 3-based Radeon RX 7900 XTX can hit frequencies of up to 3GHz, with additional power available on AIB partner cards that include a third 8-pin PCIe power connector and significantly enhanced cooling systems compared to AMD reference card designs.

As with the Ryzen 9 7950X, reducing the GPU power limit and undervolting the graphics card significantly reduces overall temperatures and noise for only a few percentage drops in gaming performance.

AMD Ryzen 7000 Series Pricing

AMD faced some criticism about the Ryzen 7000X series and AM5 platform at launch. Although the pricing of the CPUs was competitive, the initial AM5 motherboards based on the X670E chipset were limited in choice and very expensive. This was compounded by the high price of DDR5 RAM (in comparison to DDR4).

AMD has since lowered the price of the Ryzen 7000X and introduced more cost effective and lower power non-X series of CPUs (the 6-core Ryzen 5 7600, 8-core Ryzen 7 7700, and 12-core Ryzen 9 7900). AMD board partners have also introduced a wider range of AM5 motherboards based on the X670, B650E, and B650 chipsets. Volume production of DDR5 has also resulted in more cost-competitive memory options.

AMD Radeon 7900 XTX Pricing

The European street price of the Radeon 7900 XTX is around €1,130, which is higher than the American $999 MSRP listed on amd.com, due to fluctuating exchange rates and taxes (e.g., value-added tax). The cards from board partners are in some cases more expensive, chiefly due to their beefed-up coolers, uprated power systems, and the additional margins of the board manufacturers and their channel partners.

It does not make sense for AMD to lower its profit margins, especially on niche flagship products. AMD’s key competitor asks higher prices for cards in the same category. At the same time, customers may not actually benefit from lower prices in some instances due to intermediaries such as channel partners or scalpers.

It’s getting harder to find a bargain these days, but with an MSRP of $999, the RX 7959 XTX reference card is actually $100 cheaper than the previous generation RX 6950 XT, despite having more compute units, more RAM, a wider RAM interface, and a significantly better performance. This should come as good news for high-end gamers.

User Experience

There are a few user experience challenges with the AMD AM5 platform, some of which are created by partners. For example, updating the motherboard BIOS may be difficult for some users. In fact, updating the BIOS of the motherboard in the test system failed a few times — the reviewer only discovered that the older BIOS first needed to be set to a default state before an upgrade could be made after carrying out a bit of reading and research. Fortunately, new standard features (e.g., BIOS flashback) simplify the recovery process when experiments with settings make a system unbootable and clearing CMOS memory does not work.

Another example is when the reviewer found that when games such as Hell Let Loose, Fortnite or Genshin Impact were launched, a sudden surge in frame rates can dramatically bolster power and voltage consumption. Fortunately, AMD has countered this issue with safety mechanisms that turn the device off when such surges are detected. After carrying out various tests and checking the health of system components, the reviewer found that these problems can be solved by establishing a frame rate cap (e.g., of 240fps), using Radeon Software.

Casual users who encounter such issues may feel displeased with the overall experience, particularly if they have to spend hours troubleshooting with systems integrators or manufacturers. They may attribute the problem to the AMD platform, rather than a poor job from the software house, in capping the frame rates.

AMD Advantage

The AMD Advantage framework combines Ryzen 7950X processors, Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics cards, the AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition application, and smart technologies to deliver the best experiences to gamers and creators. The company works closely with prominent system integrators, including CSL, Cyberpower, eBuyer, Falcon Northwest, Maingear, Origin PC, and XIdax, to bring stable and enhanced experiences to gamers, streamers, and content creators. Customers who want to avoid the headache of troubleshooting issues during PC buildouts or upgrades will be pleased with AMD’s investments in additional testing, certification, and support.

Performance

AMD is innovating on multiple levels. The company is enhancing core architecture for inter-process communication gains, improving chiplet design for scalable manufacturing, making cache enhancements for memory intensive workloads, and supporting process and design improvements for clock speed increases. As a result of these efforts, its new products are 30–50% faster than previous generations. The company is not holding back or milking the market with small, incremental gains. Competition is one of the biggest drivers of innovation. As such, the performance improvements of AMD CPUs and GPUs are benefiting the entire market.

The move to PCIe 5 and DDR 5 will future proof the new platform. The inclusion of technologies — such as EXPO memory configuration profiles — will make performance improvements simpler and more accessible to the wider PC market.

AMD is also investing in backend software development with ISVs. AMD is collaborating with Adobe, Blender, and OBS to improve hardware acceleration across CPUs and GPUs for content creation, productivity, and encoding, decoding, and streaming use cases, thereby adding productivity value to the gaming cards.

Final Words and Conclusion

According to IDC’s monitor tracker, 1440p is the fastest-growing screen resolution. In addition, 3% of users buy 4K and higher-resolution displays. As these users are the target customers for high-end hardware, AMD is on the right track.

However, AMD has increased the power draw of its CPUs and GPUs to deliver a high level of performance. Per IDC tests, power consumption can be dropped significantly in many cases while still maintaining over 90% of peak performance. In turn, this drop can lower noise and energy bills. AMD can provide users with the best of both worlds by making it simple to switch performance profiles depending on the particular workload.

In conclusion, AMD has certainly taken a big step forward with its new generation of CPUs and GPUs. AMD’s 2023 desktop platform is taking 1440p gaming mainstream and making 120–140Hz refresh rates the norm. The new platform also makes 4K gaming possible at 60fps with the highest graphical settings achievable at native resolutions or with FSR. For this and other reasons, including AMD’s well-earned reputation for remedying challenges and aging very well, we have no issues with recommending the platform.

Read more: Review of AMD’s Flagship Workstation Graphics Card with Hardware-Accelerated Raytracing: AMD Radeon PRO W6800