Desktop

Another limited edition product has been unearthed that will be seemingly part of AMD’s 50th anniversary celebrations. A red version of the great value for money Radeon VII desktop graphics card has made an appearance, although it looks likely at the moment the only differences with the regular card will be design-based rather than performance-based.

A trio of IT researchers affiliated with Facebook have created a new method to turn a video of an individual performing a series of actions (e.g. a dance) into a 3D 'game character'. This character - and its associated movements - can then be transposed onto a new background. The researchers assert that this background could interact with said character.

AMD has posted a tweet on its Ryzen Twitter account showing what can be done with just one Ryzen Threadripper 1950X HEDT chip and four Radeon RX Vega 64 LC graphics cards. The builder of the custom desktop PC setup has called his system “RippinRed 2.0”, and it also features 32 GB RAM, a motherboard from Gigabyte, and four monitors from Dell and Acer.

Gigabyte Japan has announced the upcoming launch of the X470 Aorus Gaming 7 WiFi-50 motherboard. The board will be released domestically on April 26 for about 35,000 yen including taxes (~US$310). It’s not yet known if the Taiwanese manufacturer will be bringing the limited edition motherboard to other markets.

The new NVIDIA 1650 card is to be unleashed soon. However, it seems there is also a Ti variant of this graphics solution in the works. ASUS has apparently developed several different models of this new GPU, which have surfaced on the Russian ECC certification database.

AMD’s Radeon VII, RX Vega 64 LC, and RX Vega 64 have managed to defeat Nvidia’s top-end GeForce RTX hardware, the RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti, in a World War Z GPU benchmark. In one specific test, the Radeon VII was measured offering an eye-popping average rate of 192 FPS compared to the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti’s best effort of 160 FPS.

Two images of one of AMD’s upcoming Picasso range of desktop APUs have been leaked online. The pictures themselves don’t reveal very much, apart from the fact that AMD is likely preparing to finally release the desktop APU counterparts of the Picasso mobile APUs that were released earlier this year. The APU in question is believed to be the Ryzen 3 3200G.

The iBOX-R1000 from ASRock is the first mini PC to integrate the new Ryzen R1606G / R1505G embedded dual-core CPUs with Vega 3 iGPUs. It comes with up to 32 GB DDR4-2400 RAM and supports one 2.5-inch SATA SSD / HDD. This mini PC is designed for digital signage, arcade gaming and gambling, kiosks, IoT gateways and thin client terminals.

The Zen 2-based Ryzen, EPYC and Threadripper chipsets should make for exciting launches soon. This is because their state-of-the-art 7nm architectures should deliver performance improvements in many areas compared to their Zen+ predecessors. However, it appears that the Zen 3s of the future are shaping up to be even better already.

Recently, the gaming community has been set alight with rumors that Grand Theft Auto will get a new version soon. This has come about as a result of the discovery of an online resume belonging to a "3D game artist" who lists the heretofore unseen title among his experiences at Rockstar Games. This individual also specifically claims a role in GTA 5's DLC.

Microsoft has made the next upcoming version of Windows 10 available via its Insider Preview program. It is called 1903, or the May 2019 Update. An SDK for this build is also now ready to download.

The 6 nm node is scheduled to enter risk production in Q1 2020, almost 1 year after the 5 nm risk production, so the first 6 nm chips will probably ship in mid-2020. The only major benefit brought by the new node is the 18% transistor density increase over the original (non-EUV) 7 nm node and performance will see negligible gains since this is not a full node shrink.

An email that has supposedly come from MSI’s German-language tech support team has stated that the company will not be offering support for AMD’s upcoming line of Ryzen 3000 Matisse desktop processors on older motherboards (300-series). However, there has not been an official statement from the Taiwanese company in regard to this issue yet.
MSI has issued a press release stating there will be support for compatible 300-series motherboards.

Alleged specifications for “AMD Navi” have been posted online. The new information offered seems to correspond with existing rumors about the Radeon RX 3080 Navi 10 graphics solution. Apparently, the performance of the Navi GPU places it between AMD’s Vega 56 and Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1080, but the supposed price is much cheaper than Nvidia’s product.

AMD will soon be celebrating its 50th anniversary in business, and it seems Sapphire Technology wants to highlight the achievement by releasing a gold-colored Nitro+ Radeon RX 590 desktop graphics card. The special edition card has a boost clock rate of 1560 MHz and is fitted with 8 GB GDDR5 memory (2100 MHz clock that utilizes a 256-bit interface).

A piece of leaked marketing material purportedly from Gigabyte has led to considerable speculation about what could occur on the date mentioned on it. The image pertains to the gaming-related Aorus sub-brand, with some believing it will lead to an announcement of the X570 motherboards and possibly even a reveal of AMD’s Ryzen 3000 series.

AMD will soon be celebrating 50 years since its formal incorporation, and to celebrate this fact it appears there will be a 50th Anniversary Edition of the Ryzen 7 2700X processor. It’s not known if the special edition of the CPU will differ from the Pinnacle Ridge chip that was originally released in April of last year.

New information about Intel’s Coffee Lake T-series of processors has been posted online. The lineup runs from the Core i3-9100T right up to the Core i9-9900T. The chips are based on a 14nm manufacturing process and come with iGPUs. The T-series will have lower TDPs than their Coffee Lake counterparts and considerably lower base clock rates.

The next generation of AMD cards based on the Navi architecture could be unveiled at Computex this year. However, according to some other rumors, they could also have their own dedicated release event on July 7 this year. It would be a good choice of date, as the potential success of Navi hangs on its state-of-the-art 7nm nature.

ASRock has revealed its new mini desktop PC that features chips from Intel’s Whiskey Lake-U series. Along with the modern processor, the ASRock iBOX has a fanless design with fins covering the surface of the desktop to assist with cooling. The new product is expected to be utilized in industrial environments.

It’s a big day for Star Wars fans. The first trailer for the Episode IX, officially titled “The Rise of Skywalker,” has landed, along with the first game-play trailer for the new “Vader Immortal” VR game and leaked artwork from Respawn’s “Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.”

The future of Microsoft PCs such as the Surface Pro may yet be Qualcomm-based. A new report on the development of Windows on ARM includes references to several prototypes from this line with Snapdragon processors rather than those from Intel. Therefore, this prospect may now be more feasible than ever.

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, or PUBG for short, is one of the Korean studio Bluehole's biggest success stories. However, some state regulators seem not to like it as much as its millions of players do. Nepal is the latest country to ban the game, citing detrimental effects on children and teenagers.

The extreme edition Intel Core i9-9990XE is now available for direct sale, but it doesn’t come cheaply. German computer hardware specialist CaseKing.de has decided to make the powerful chip available to customers for a starting price of €2,999 (~US$3,384). If you want to buy a system that already has the chip installed, there is one currently available for €12,999.90 (~US$14,671).

The latest GeForce Game Ready Driver from Nvidia enables a limited set of ray tracing features for the GTX 1000-series. Compared to the new RTX 2000 cards, the Pascal ones are clearly slower and Nvidia provides a set of graphs to reflect the performance gap. The green team also provides three tech demos where Pascal users can play around with the settings.

The new Disney+ streaming service will entail a mixture of old and new shows from all of the studios under its umbrella. This, therefore, includes Lucasfilm, 21st Century Fox, Pixar and Marvel. Therefore, Netflix may indeed forfeit several lucrative series-length titles as Disney parts company with it in 2019. This year should also see much more granular detail on what this new subscription has to offer.

iTunes, the unified account by which Apple apps and services are accessed on devices such as Macs, seems to have been around forever. However, it also appears that this is no longer the case. A 9to5Mac contributor has confirmed rumors that the new protocol Marzipan is being used to make new apps (e.g. Apple TV) that do not require this old system on macOS.

YouTube has amassed a 265 million-stong user based in the Indian market. Speaking at a recent Google conference, the service's CEO, Susan Wojcicki, projected that this number would grow further to 500 million by next year. The executive attributed this to the availability of 4G in this country.

Canon has launched the EOS Rebel SL3, the latest in this line of compact DLSRs. This model is capable of 4K reconding, a first for the EOS Rebel series. It does so with its 24.1 megapixel (MP) APS-C sensor, which is compatible with EF and EF-S lenses. The EOS Rebel is capable of various autofocus settings, and has a completely adjustable LCD touchscreen.

The upcoming 9th Gen Coffee Lake Intel Core desktop processor i7-9700T has appeared in the UserBenchmark database. The chip seemed to perform very well in the tests, achieving a reasonably high place in the overall ranking. The “T” variants in the Coffee Lake lineup are distinguished by their lower TDP levels and therefore lower clock rates.

A few images of the upcoming Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 desktop graphics card have found their way online. The models from ZOTAC, Palit, and Gainward are all single-fan cards with some slight differences in connectivity. Nvidia hasn’t officially announced the latest entry to the GeForce GTX 16 series, which is expected to be released in a couple of weeks.

2019 is already shaping up to be a good year for AMD. The 7 nm chips are currently manufactured by TSMC on the new EUV lithography, and the red team has considerably increased its chip orders, as the launch dates are looming. Intel, on the other hand, is faced with weakened investor confidence and could lose important market share in the mainstream CPU and server sectors.

Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo is known for his usually accurate predictions surrounding the notoriously secretive company’s plans. After initially hinting that an all-new MacBook Pro design with a 16-inch display could arrive this year, he has now pushed the estimated arrival of this device back to the first half of 2021.

An Nvidia graphics card has turned up on UserBenchmark with the prosaic name “graphics device”. The results in the benchmarks for the hardware are somewhat surprising, as the GPU seems to land somewhere between the GeForce RTX 2070 and RTX 2080 in terms of performance average. There was mention of a GeForce RTX 2070 Ti once before, but this was eventually explained away as a typo.

According to a new report by DigiTimes, the uptake of 7nm chips from TSMC was at its lowest 2019 ebb in the first quarter of this year (1Q2019). However, the company expects its orders to push its relevant processes to their full capacity in 3Q2019. The firm has also started using the improved EUV method for the production of 7nm dies.

Initially scheduled for mid-2019, risk production for the upcoming 5 nm manufacturing process was already initiated at the end of March. TSMC also finalized the 5 nm design infrastructure and it is currently testing this process through multiple silicon test vehicles. Improvements over the current 7 nm process include 1.8X increased logic density and a 15% performance boost.

A new HWBOT World Record has just been set in 3DMark’s popular Time Spy benchmark. The score of 37,697 points was achieved with a system that featured four Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti graphics cards operating in an SLI configuration. An Intel Core i9-9980XE processor was also used in the record-breaking system.

TrendForce was predicting back in early 2019 that DDR4 RAM prices would see up to 35% cuts by Q2 2019, and this now appears to be indeed the case judging by the price trend data provided by CamelCamelCamel. These graphs also show that the DDR4 prices got halved compared to the peak prices of late 2017.

The ASUS ROG Swift PG349Q is a 34-inch, 21:9 Ultra-wide monitor with a resolution of 3440x1440. The OEM claims that these specs give 35% more desktop space compared to a WQHD panel. More to the point, however, this new monitor can be clocked between 100 and 120 hertz.

Beats has unveiled its new Powerbeats Pro on its website. These new earbuds are of the 'sports' variety, and thus have over-the-ear loops built into a completely wireless design. Like the new AirPods, they can activate Siri hands-free and have the new H1 chip for wearables.

A clock rate of 2,940.0 MHz has been recorded for a customized GeForce RTX 2080 Ti graphics card. The hardware was specially prepared as part of the Galax OC Gathering 2019. The incredible clock rate was measured as part of a GPUPI 1B benchmark test, which also resulted in the system achieving a very credible mark of 2 s 691 ms.

A new high score for 3DMark’s Fire Strike Extreme test (single GPU) has been achieved by a system featuring a customized variant of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti graphics card. The hardware in question was a Galax GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Hall of Fame OC Lab WC Edition board. A score of 23,998 points was publicly shared, although an even higher score was recorded.

SPURV is a new project by Collabora, an open source software development and integration company. SPURV can run a full instance of Android in a container, allowing the mobile OS to directly access system hardware and run apps natively on a Linux system. The process essentially runs two operating systems on a machine at the same time and can be quite resource intensive.

AMD is threatening to consolidate its position on the server market with the latest 7 nm EPYC 64-core CPUs, forcing Intel's hand to launch the Xeon Platinum 9200-series CPUs with up to 56 cores and 112 threads. These top-of-the-line chips feature a dual-die design wrapped in a BGA package, TDPs of up to 400 W, support for 1.5 TB of DDR4-2933 RAM and 4.5 TB Optane storage per chip, plus hardware-level fixes for the most Meltdown/Spectre vulnerabilities.

The new GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X 6G video card from MSI comes with the brand's Twin Frozr 7 thermal design that provides a semi-passive, dual-fan cooling solution for a noise-free environment in low-load situations. With a boost clock speed of 1,875 MHz, the Gaming X 6G also features customizable RGB LED lighting.

The codename given to an AMD engineering sample processor has been leaked online and has already sparked considerable speculation as to what it could be. A breakdown of the name seems to point at the chip being a desktop APU from the Picasso range based on the Zen+ microarchitecture. This series currently consists of just mobile processors.

The Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) has announced that AMD’s CEO, Dr. Lisa Su, will be delivering the opening keynote at Computex 2019. The keynote has been scheduled for May 27, and it seems like this could be the ideal setting for Su to show off AMD’s anticipated Radeon Navi GPU series. It’s also been speculated that she could launch the Ryzen 3000 series at the same time.

A record in SiSoftware’s Sandra benchmark database has offered up two new pieces of information in regard to AMD’s upcoming Zen 2-based products. Firstly, the entry shows that MSI is developing hardware in the form of an X570 motherboard to support the expected Ryzen desktop processors, and secondly a mysterious AMD processor was involved in the test.