I used to have one. Was it my fourth computer maybe.

Last time I checked TrustZone was only in their GFX chips, has it reached the systems CPU at some point?
It has been many years since I bought a computer but actually wanted to upgrade this year, not so sure if I want to when there's even more DRM in it now.

Review embargo is Feb 28th correct?

I wonder when they got the review copies. I'm assuming one week, but there are rumors that many outlets had it for much longer.

https://libreboot.org/faq/#amd conclusio that being said, I haven't seen any specific information wrt that topic for the Ryzen processors. But it seems very unlikely that AMD would stop following in Intels footsteps here.

My first computer was in 2004, had an AMD Athlon 64, 1 gig ram, 256 MB ATI X800 card (replaced a few years later by an nVidia 7600 GT, which I greatly disliked); first week I got it I spent many hours at my grandparents playing Pirates of the Caribbean 2003 PC game and Tomb Raider Anniversary, had DOOM 3 via my uncle also but got a bit too creeped out to go to far. :P

Anyway, hope AMD's new stuff is great, mainly for the competition angle.

Extremely unlikely, and I'd be very surprised if this problem doesn't originate with the NSA.

This is a very sad state of affairs.
Do you know of any hardware combination without this BS that is able to run current DRM-free Linux games at 60fps maxed out and can handle WinXP gaming in a virtual system?
I don't care for the latest hardware hungry Windows games at all so there must be something...

Completely forgot to link the AMD talk about the release, oopsies!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1v44wWAOHn8

The link he posted lists the supported CPU's. AMD up to 2011, Intel up to 2008, I think.

Considering most games are only released for x86 and x86_64, no. There is the Talos Workstation, which is pretty much as open as you can get (and rather expensive), but as it runs on the POWER architecture, you'll have to emulate x86 thereby limiting performance, and you're still limited in available graphics cards if you don't want binary firmwares.

as far as I understand the family 16h processors from AMD which have this BS are all low-power prcessor targeting notebooks, tablets, etc. Their latest desktop processors are still the 15h product line which were released in 2012 (-ish) and should be fine. So ipicking the latest desktop cpu before ryzen, would still be an option.
so for example the fx8350 (8-core) or fx6300 (6-core) + AM3 motherboard

i am really not that up to date with current released games, so can't really say in how far that is enough for current linux games. Never tried running WinXP games in a virtual system either.
that's pretty cool, haven't seen that before. That certainly has the power to compete with x86 (unlike ARM).
But damn, that price is really unattractive. Wish I had that kind of money laying around ... :p

Processors seem promising. But at the same time i wonder when we'll start getting 12-32 cores. The size they can shrink it is stopping, so it's either optimization or more cores. Or both.

Alternatively we might start getting more SMP motherboards that have room for like 6 cpu's (and one core set as the master/sync for larger projects that make use of it).

CPUs seems expensive to me these days, I remember picking up a brand-new Athlon 1.2Ghz for $110, a top of the line CPU at the time. Even factoring in inflation, that kind of money won't get you a mid-range CPU now. A top Geforce3 was $300, people now spend twice that much for a top GPU.