Industry
HW News - NVIDIA Crypto Self-Own, Intel Xe HPG GPU Tease, Silicon Shortage Timeline, & Google Lawsuit
By Eric HamiltonThis week, we have news from System76, makers of Linux-based workstations and servers, as the company introduces its newest Thelio Mira desktop. We’re also seeing reports that NZXT could be getting into the display market, based on the finding of an NZXT job listing.
Elsewhere, we have AMD news on a couple of different fronts: AMD unwrapped its latest Epyc server CPUs, and the company is also moving up the food chain as it relates to TSMC’s customer base. We’re also following up on a couple of previous stories involving Google and Grand Theft Auto Online.
At GN, we’ve been busy with reviews and benchmarks. First, we looked at the Intel i7-11700K memory performance, as well as covering the entire Intel 11-series lineup announcement. We also took AMD’s RX 6700 XT for a spin, and recently looked at the card’s underlying design with our RX 6700 XT tear down.
HW News - Intel Gains Market Share vs. AMD, Xbox Series X & PS5 Sales, Apple M1 vs. Intel
By Steve Burke, Patrick Lathan, Keegan Gallick, Eric HamiltonThis round of HW News mostly features a broad focus on the industry at large and PC-centric adjacent areas, such as consoles. Perhaps unsurprisingly, we have news that both the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 will remain elusive, owing in least part to overwhelming demand; however, the emerging semiconductor shortages appear to be playing an increasingly bigger role.
Moving on, Mercury Research has its CPU market share report for Q4’2020 available, and highlights some interesting points. Along the same lines, Steam’s latest hardware survey for January 2021 has also arrived with at least one interesting find. Elsewhere, we have Corsair with a PSU recall, some new developments within Google’s Stadia, and more.
At GN, we’ve spent the majority of our time investigating NZXT’s H1 case. Our coverage started with our video demonstrating how the H1 could catch fire, and after further investigation, we determined that the PCIe riser posed long term risk that NZXT was not addressing. In the time since, NZXT has formally responded to GN’s H1 coverage and has plans for recalls and PCIe riser assembly replacements.
HW News - NVIDIA-Arm Acquisition Hits Snag, Intel Back in Competition, NVIDIA Controller
By Eric HamiltonAs we settle into 2021, hardware news continues apace. Intel has remained ever in the headlines, as CEO-elect Pat Gelsinger is set to take over, and is already bringing former Intel talent back with him. Intel also disclosed full-year earnings for 2020 and offered some clarity on the future of its process technology and manufacturing plans. Nvidia is also in the news, both with a new Pascal-based GPU and updated G-Sync Ultimate marketing language.
There’s more, of course -- Seagate, Samsung, and Arctic are all in the news this week, as well. Within GN, we recently demonstrated the fire hazard that NZXT’s H1 case poses, revisited the GTX 980 in 2021, and made an appearance over at ArsTechnica.
HW News - "X590" False Alarm, RTX 3070 Delays, Zen 3 Motherboard Updates
By Eric HamiltonAt GN, we’re slowly emerging from our RTX 30-series coma, where we’ve pushed our testing and coverage perhaps as far as we ever have. We’re getting ready to slow down for a week or so to revamp and improve processes internally and get ready to do it all again with Zen 3, RDNA2, and the RTX 3070.
As ever, there’s plenty to cover outside of our reviews and testing. This week, we have news regarding NVIDIA delaying the RTX 3070 launch window to the end of October in an effort to avoid the previous RTX 3080 and 3090 catastrophe. There’s also a credible rumor suggesting that Zen 3 will come in under the Ryzen 5000-series banner, which would probably be for the best, given how convoluted CPU naming is getting.
Elsewhere, we discuss Intel’s Omni-Path being resurrected under the new Cornelis Networks, leaked Windows XP source code, an interesting new HPE-Cray built supercomputer, and more. Check out the article and video embed below.
HW News - TSMC Moving Past Silicon, RTX 3080 Official Info, Corsair Does $1B in Revenue
By Eric HamiltonAs we move ever closer towards Nvidia’s upcoming GeForce event -- scheduled for September 1st -- we’re seeing this week’s news recap highlight images of the emergent 12-pin PSU connector. The new 12-pin connector is something GN independently confirmed a few weeks ago, but it seems some legitimate images of the new connector have made their way online, including a tease from Nvidia itself. Alongside the new PSU connector, Nvidia also showed off its new cooler design for GeForce Ampere cards as well.
Aside from Nvidia and Ampere related news, TSMC detailed its future roadmap for upcoming process technologies during its Technology Symposium. And speaking of PSUs, it looks as if MSI is ready to enter that market with its first product. Elsewhere, we have a somewhat vague tease from ASUS, an IPO filing from Corsair, and some brief highlights on the GPU market from JPR.
HW News - Sony PS5 & Liquid Metal, RTX 3090 Using GDDR6X, Fortnite's War on Apple & Google
By Eric HamiltonAnother week in hardware news has come and gone, capped by a dense information dump at Intel’s Architecture Day 2020 towards the end of the week. The presentation yielded new information on the rumored Alder Lake-S, Intel’s Xe Graphics, Tiger Lake, and Intel’s news manufacturing technology, SuperFin.
We’re also covering some interesting news on Nvidia teasing Ampere gaming GPUs, further fueled by what appears to be another leak -- this time on behalf of Micron and its upcoming GDDR6X memory, which is apparently slated to be equipped on the unconfirmed RTX 3090.
For the latest at GN, check out our latest piece discussing Intel’s less than fortunate position, according to conversations we’ve had with motherboard makers. We also take on the misconception that Ryzen is smoother. HW News article and video embed follow below.
HW News - Corsair SF PSU Recall, Incognito Mode Data Logging, & Intel Afraid of Benchmarks
By Eric HamiltonAs ever, hardware news trudges on unabated. This week we have an interesting product recall from Corsair, pertaining to its SF-series of SFX PSUs. PSU recalls tend to be kind of rare in general, even more so when it’s Corsair doing the recalling. There’s also news of Google facing a massive class action lawsuit, allegedly over deceiving Chrome users into thinking that incognito mode equals Google not collecting user data. We also have coverage of Windows 10 getting hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling, the DOD’s agonizing transition to IPv6, and more.
GN’s deep dives also continue. So far, we have our heavily tuned Ryzen 5 3600 vs. i5-10400, where we look at RAM timings and overclocks, specifically. Then, we’ve been doing some investigative work on why everything is out of stock, and when we can expect a reprieve. For fun, we took the wraps off of part 1 of our Cyberpunk 2077 PC mod project, and we recently explored i5-10600K GPU bottlenecks. Speaking of the i5-10600K, we recently published our written review. It remains unchanged from our initial video review, and is intended to serve those who would prefer to read the content, rather than watch it.
Lastly, for those near a MicroCenter, we noticed AMD’s Ryzen 7 3700X is currently priced at $260 for an in-store pick up. MicroCenter will slash an additional $20 if you pair it with an eligible motherboard. Let’s get into the news, with the article and video embed below.
HW News - AMD Blackmailed by Hacker of GPU Code, DDR5 Mass Production in 2021
By Eric Hamilton & Steve BurkeHardware news this week is abuzz, largely thanks to updates from AMD and Microsoft. AMD confirmed this week that it had confidential files stolen, with the hacker demanding blackmail to stop them from leaking the files publicly. Microsoft, meanwhile, has temporarily paused non-essential updates while its teams work from home, but is also facing a zero-day exploit. In a positive story, Folding @ Home has passed the ExaFLOP threshold in its growing research efforts for COVID-19.
The show notes continue after the embedded video.
HW News - Intel CPU Recall, 7nm GPU, AMD Ray Tracing Bench, & HDD Failure Stats
By Eric HamiltonOne of the busiest weeks of the year is fast approaching: We'll soon be dealing with Threadripper 3 reviews and Intel i9-10980XE reviews, alongside the usual year-end content. In the interim, we've still got hardware news to cover, including this week's collection of industry and release topics for Intel, AMD, Crytek, Backblaze, and Corsair.
Show notes continue after the embedded video.
HW News - Ryzen 3000 Binning, CCX Overclocking, RAM Price Drop
By Eric HamiltonThis week's hardware news was filmed prior to our trip to Vancouver for LTX, which we're covering in a lot of content pieces coming up. HW News discusses CCX overclocking, 3nm and 5nm process progress, DRAM revenue dropping hard, and industry topics like Origin's sale to Corsair. We also talk about 5.2GHz 3900X overclocking results, but that'll be in the video only for this one. The rest is in the written section below, as always.
More...
We moderate comments on a ~24~48 hour cycle. There will be some delay after submitting a comment.