AI AI AI! AMD and Nvidia took the "consumer" out of CES with incessant AI talk
While we did get a lot of cool new tech at CES 2026, including some exciting gaming and multimedia laptops, AMD and Nvidia brought almost nothing for gamers. Aside from DLSS 4.5, Nvidia, for instance, revealed no new GPUs, not even minor refreshes like the RTX 50 Super cards. AMD did reveal the Ryzen AI 400 APUs, more Ryzen AI Max+ chips, and a Ryzen 7 9850X3D, but these CPUs bring no new CPU architectures or iGPUs to the table.
What AMD and Nvidia spent their time talking about at CES 2026, however, was AI. Per 3DCenter, AMD used the word “AI” about 214 times, 1.87 times per minute in their 114:2-minute keynote. Nvidia was equally bad, with “AI” showing up 136 times in Team Green’s 85:04-minute show, 1.6 times each minute. Intel did much better than both AMD and Nvidia, only using the word “AI” 1.33x per minute for a total of 55 times.
In stark contrast, the word “gaming” was completely absent from Nvidia's keynote and only appeared three times in AMD and Intel’s presentations.
So, AMD and Nvidia appear to have tried their best to take the “consumer” out of CES and replace it with AI. This is a sad state of affairs for companies that owe their existence to the average consumer/gamer and DIY enthusiast.
Granted, AMD, Nvidia, and Intel are businesses that need to maximize profits for their investors, and there is a lot of money to be made in the AI market. However, a side effect of this intense focus on AI is that the consumer market is suffering from obscene memory and storage prices, looming GPU price hikes, and more.
Unfortunately, it is unlikely that things will improve soon. In fact, 2026 could be even worse for consumers, as SK Hynix is also rumored to exit the consumer DRAM and NAND business.
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