In this news recap, we talk about Nintendo finally announcing an updated Switch model, though the heavily rumored Switch Pro remains a mystery for now. We also have news on the Arm-Nvidia deal, this time in the form of commentary from Arm CEO Simon Segars. There’s also positive news on the right to repair, which is a topic we follow closely at GN. Additionally, we've covered the Steam Deck in a separate piece here.

In other news, Microsoft is working on its own AI-based resolution upscaling solution, and is also struggling to deal with a new critical security flaw affecting the Windows Print Spooler. There’s also news from Intel, Newegg, and more. 

At GN, we dove into a game streaming roundup, looked at Intel’s DG1 Iris Xe GPU, and reviewed our latest pre-built: The Lenovo Legion 5i.

This week, we have even more news on the ongoing developments regarding Nvidia’s proposed purchase of Arm. This time, however, we’re talking about Arm customers that actually support an Nvidia takeover, as opposed to Arm customers who object to the deal. Other big news includes Intel’s announcements at ISC 2021, where the company offered new details on its upcoming Sapphire Rapids Scalable Xeons and its Ponte Vecchio GPU. 

Other news items include some new details regarding Windows 11, such as Microsoft testing older CPUs for compatibility and hopefully a much improved PC Health Check App in the future. There’s also news from TeamGroup on the DDR5 front, mining GPUs hitting the used market, Samsung’s 3GAA process, and more. 

At GN, we took a deep dive into Noctua’s long awaited fully passive cooler, the Noctua NH-P1, and included our use of Schlieren photography. We also reviewed the Lian Li Odyssey X, and detailed EVGA’s first AMD motherboard and AMD’s Hydra overclocking tool in a special HW News video. 

The past week has been filled with RTX 3000-series coverage on the YouTube channel, including a world record-setting livestream with liquid nitrogen. Now, though, it's time to go through the hardware news over the past 10 days or so. We'll be talking about the recent Bethesda/Microsoft acquisition, NVIDIA attempting to buy ARM (and, unrelatedly, change SLI support), and 5nm capacity at TSMC. Show notes to follow, along with the embedded video.

It’s been another busy week in hardware news as we move closer towards an official GPU launch (RTX 3000). As an update, NVIDIA has moved the review embargo lift (and we're able to tell you about it) from Monday the 14th to Wednesday the 16th. RTX 3080 reviews will go live on Wednesday. The date was moved because of global shipping delays causing some other regions (outside North America) to receive cards late for reviewers; in effort to keep it fair between reviewers around the world, NVIDIA pushed its review embargo date back. On a similar note, AMD finally decided to let us know when we’ll see “Big Navi” (RDNA 2) and Zen 3. There’s also a bit of speculation on possible price changes for AMD’s upcoming GPUs, in light of Nvidia’s emerging RTX 3000 series. 

Elsewhere, Microsoft finally ended its game of chicken with Sony by revealing prices for its upcoming consoles, so the ball is firmly in Sony’s court. We also have some hardware specs on the now-confirmed Xbox Series S that will launch alongside the Xbox Series X.

Rounding-out the news for this week, there’s some interesting research being done on the possibility of embedded liquid cooling, some news surrounding Western Digital’s “5400 RPM-class” designation, and the return of Cryorig. As usual, the news article and video embed follow below.

This week’s news recap talks Microsoft’s hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling (something we’ve since benchmarked, written and run after this news piece), alongside discussion of technical documents for Alder Lake and the new LGA1700 socket. We’ll also be talking about a “new” GTX 1650 Ultra, some interesting marketing from T-Force, and the return of data caps.

At GN, we continue to expand our thermal analysis with thermal pads, as we looked at the Thermal Grizzly Carbonaut Pad Vs. IC Diamond Thermal Pad and compared them to pastes. We also looked at how AMD’s silicon has matured, comparing Old vs Original AMD Ryzen 5 3600 CPUs. 

News video embed and article below, as usual.

Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling is a feature new to Microsoft’s May 2020 update, Windows 10 version 2004, and has now been supported by both NVIDIA and AMD via driver updates. This feature is not to be confused with DirectX 12 Ultimate, which was delivered in the same Windows update. Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling is supported on Pascal and Turing cards from NVIDIA, as well as AMD’s 5600 and 5700 series of cards. In today’s content, we’ll first walk through what exactly this feature does and what it’s supposed to mean, then we’ll show some performance testing for how it behaviorally affects change.

Enabling hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling requires Windows 10 2004, a supported GPU, and the latest drivers for that GPU (NVIDIA version 451.48, AMD version 20.5.1 Beta). With those requirements satisfied, a switch labelled “Hardware-accelerated GPU Scheduling” should appear in the Windows 10 “Graphics Settings” menu, off by default. Enabling the feature requires a reboot. This switch is the only visible sign of the new feature.

Another busy week of hardware news is in the books, and there’s a lot to talk about. Perhaps most notably, AMD has performed its 180 in regards to Zen 3 support on B4xx chipsets, enabling a one-way upgrade path for those wanting to migrate to Ryzen 4000 later this year. We have an exhaustive (pt1) video (pt2) series (pt3) dedicated to the topic and the current state of BIOSes, so we won’t delve into it here.

As ever, there’s more broad industry news, such as Microsoft admitting it was on the wrong side of the open-source explosion at the turn of the century, and TSMC pulling all chip orders from Huawei thanks to ever tightening US export restrictions. We have yet to see how this will affect Huawei, but it is almost certainly going to be detrimental to its business.

Within GN specifically, we’ve completely sold out of our GN wireframe mouse mats -- thanks for the support! More mouse mats are currently on back-order for the next production run. We expect those back-orders will ship in August. Meanwhile, we’ve posted our i9-10900K review and i5-10600K review, both of which look at frequency performance, overclocking, die sanding tests, and more. It also seems AMD has dropped the price on its Ryzen 9 3900X in response to Comet Lake-S. Additionally, if you happen to live near a MicroCenter, there’s an in-store promotion that will get you the Ryzen 9 3900X for $380.

Follow below for the video embed and article.

In this hardware news episode, we're announcing our charity drive to support Australian wildlife affected by bushfires, including a special charity auction modmat, and we're also covering notable topics in the industry. Cyberpunk 2077 gets coverage, X670 / 600-series chipsets for AMD Ryzen 4000 CPUs are up for discussion, big Navi rumors are debunked, Microsoft is going carbon negative, and more.

Show notes continue after the video.

Hardware news is still rolling into the holidays, as one might expect, because this industry doesn't let its occupants sleep. We're also leading into CES 2020, which means leaks abound. Coverage today includes a few rumor topics -- the RX 5600 XT and Intel Z490, mainly -- with some other industry topics mixed-in. Kioxia (Toshiba) is developing new NAND, motherboard makers can't get rid of X299 fast enough, and Microsoft is talking about its Xbox Series X. Again.

There's nothing quite as validating as finding out that your hobby is featured in a political misspending and wire fraud case and, for many hardware enthusiasts, that day came when a US politician was found guilty of illegally spending campaign money on over $1300 of Steam games. In the meantime, though, we've got news on AMD RX 5500 XT listings in China, AMD CPU marketshare growth via Steam Hardware Survey, NVIDIA saying that more FPS = more kills, and more.