Workstation

Geekbench listings of what appears to be a 32-core (16-core dual-socket) Intel Ice Lake Server processor have surfaced. Ice Lake Server appears to put up a strong show against AMD's Epyc Rome 7702P in Geekbench 4 running on Windows Server 2019 with half the number of cores. AMD, however, has the core-count advantage, which still eludes Intel owing to lower yields on the 10nm process.

A desktop PC user has spared no expense in creating the ideal rig for home use. The impressive build comes with AMD’s powerful Ryzen Threadripper 3990X, two GeForce RTX 2080 Ti graphics cards, a speedy Intel Optane SSD, and a total of 128 GB RAM. Along with an assortment of other high-end components, the builder decided to integrate a total of 47 case fans.

Two possible NVIDIA Ampere GPUs with high CUDA Cores and memory capacities were spotted on the Geekbench 5 OpenCL benchmarking site. One of the GPUs with 7,552 CUDA Cores and 24 GB RAM scored 184,096 points in OpenCL beating the Titan RTX by nearly 39%. These GPUs are likely to be datacenter parts and are specced lower than the full GA100 Ampere chip.

Not satisfied with third or fourth generation PCI Express speeds? Leapfrogging 5.0, the latest revision of PCI Express has been released for prototype designs ahead of its final launch in 2021. Featuring 4 times the bandwidth of PCIe 4.0, it may be a while before the standard reaches consumer products.

A few samples of AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper 3990X have started appearing on PassMark and the results have been outstanding. The 64-core monster unsurprisingly shot straight to the top of the CPU Mark chart, which is already dominated by AMD processors. The nearest Intel rival, the Xeon W-3275M, languishes over 20,000 points behind in eighth place.

Intel laid off 129 employees from its Data Center Group, even after excellent Q4 2019 financial performance. Could AMD's server market presence have been a factor?

If you want to get the absolute best laptop configurations, try out the new Eurocom Sky X9C with 4K 17.3-inch display, desktop-grade I9-9900K CPU, up to 128 GB DDR4-2666 DRAM, dual RTX 2080 GPU and up to 28 TB of SSD storage via 3x M.2-2282 slots + 2X 2.5-inch bays.

Some specifications for the upcoming Microsoft Surface Book 3 and Microsoft Surface Go 2 have been leaked online. The Surface Book 3 convertible can expect to sport 10th Gen Intel processors and GPUs from Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 16 series lineup. The Surface Go 2 is rumored to be getting a low-end chip that could be Pentium Gold branded or Core M.

NVIDIA has now completed its fiscal 2020, which ended on January 26 this year. It has reported revenues of just over US$3 billion for its last quarter (4FQ2020), or 41% greater compared to 4FQ2019. The company's CEO has attributed this success to its "accelerated computing" concerns.

A leaked Geekbench listing for Intel's upcoming Ice Lake server parts shows massive performance gains. The 12-core Ice Lake server ES delivers nearly the same multithreaded performance as a 24-core Cascade Lake part.

Leaked GPU and HBM clocks for the Radeon Instinct MI100 paint a grim picture: AMD's upcoming HPC contender will likely be slower than Nvidia's existing HPC parts. With Ampere arriving in a few months, the MI100 may be dead on arrival.

Today (February 4, 2020) Samsung has unveiled its latest memory solution for the high-performance computing (HPC) market. It is a form of state-of-the-art high bandwidth memory 2E (HBM2E) with 16GB of capacity per chip. This doubles the specification of its previous generation, and is owed to its new DRAM die layout.

Geekbench is the latest synthetic benchmark to experience the processing power of AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper 3990X, with the 64-core monster tearing the multi-core test to shreds. However, the incredible score of 22,045 points still left it trailing its Castle Peak brethren, the Threadripper 3970X, and the Intel workstation processor Xeon W-3175X.

The GPU Technology Conference (or GTC) 2020 has been set to begin on March 23 of this year. It will open with a keynote from NVIDIA's CEO and founder, Jensen Huang. The company also claims there will be over 1000 other speakers from various organisations across over 600 sessions at the 3-day event.

An engineering sample of an AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X has turned up on UserBenchmark and offered up huge scores that still have room for improvement. The 64-core part was a component in a system that also featured the Prime TRX40-Pro motherboard from Asus and Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 2080 Ti. Unsurprisingly, the measured 64-core score was massive.

ChargeLabs has designed the HyperDisk to be a tiny external drive housing super-fast memory. This OEM claims that it has read-speeds of up to 960 megabytes per second (MB/s) and write-speeds of 920MB/s. It comes in 512GB, 1TB and 2TB SKUs, and has attracted over US$600,000 of crowd-funded backing.

8K is the next up-and-coming thing in display-tech standards. However, devices that support it may only be so effective at showing it without compatible, high-quality cables. The company Austere has put just such a product on the market.

PNY has launched a new version of its 48GB NVIDIA Quadro RTX 8000 graphics card. This one, however, lacks a fan of any kind. Nevertheless, the OEM asserts that it is still capable of a memory bandwidth of 624 gigabytes per second (GB/s) and 14.9 TFLOPS of FP32 performance.

AMD has just announced the release of the latest version of Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition (20.1.2). It confers support for Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, as well as Vulkan 1.2. It also fixes a problem for some UE4-based games in which they could not load under its predecessor.

Intel has announced a shake-up in its line of Xeon scalable processors. The OEM will cease sales of the M variants of these server-grade SoCs (the Xeon Platinum 8280M, for example) will. However, their L (the Platinum 8280L, and so on) counterparts will take their place in this tier of chipsets.

Apple has started selling the Mac Pro in a server-friendly rack-mountable form factor. While the internals of the new model are the same as the tower Mac Pro, the rack-mount design runs an extra US $500.

The official page for the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X processor has gone live. Many of the details about the HEDT chip were already revealed at CES 2020 but now the powerful 64-core desktop CPU has its own home to boast of. AMD is advertising the Threadripper 3990X as the “One Processor to Render Them All”.

AMD has launched the 64-core 128-thread Threadripper 3990X at CES 2020. The new HEDT processor is the world's most powerful CPU for content creators and can boost up to 4.3 GHz in a 280W TDP envelope. The Threadripper 3990X will be available from February 7 for US$3,990 SEP.

Mini-LED backlighting is the next big thing in consumer TV sets and MSI will be the first to integrate the technology onto laptops with the upcoming 17.3-inch Creator 17 designed for professional users.

At CES 2020, Acer is introducing new PCs in the ConceptD lineup aimed at creative pros. The ConceptD 7 Ezel is a convertible with the Ezel hinge featuring a 10th gen Intel H-series processor, NVIDIA RTX GPU, and up to 32 GB of RAM. There is also a ConceptD 7 Ezel Pro with a choice of Intel Xeon and NVIDIA Quadro RTX GPUs. Alongside the new convertibles, Acer has also announced the ConceptD 700 desktop workstation with modern looks and specs to match that include the Intel Xeon E and NVIDIA Quadro RTX 4000.

Lenovo has new gaming peripherals to debut at CES 2020. The Legion K300 is an entry-level RGB keyboard, while the Legion M300 is an equally budget-friendly mouse. The M600, on the other hand, is a USB type C wireless mouse touted as having the same 1000 hertz (Hz) polling rate as its wired counterparts.

Dell's new line-up of UltraSharp monitors are all USB type-C this year. They are headlinded by the 43-inch U4320Q, a 4K panel that can be split between up to 4 separate devices via the OEM's Picture-by-Picture (PBP) feature. There are also 27- and 25-inch models in this year's productivity-focused screen series.

EVGA announced the SR-3 DARK LGA 3647 motherboard. Priced at $1800, it's one of only a handful of boards known to support the Intel Xeon W-3175X. The ultra-premium E-ATX board is currently available for preorder.

OWC has unveiled its 64 or 128GB RAM stick kits for the new Mac Pro. They come in 768GB to 1.5TB SKUs, meaning a user can match Apple's factory maximum with this third-party memory. However, this option may also enable some savings.

The latest firmware update for Nikon Z-series cameras allows them to use CFexpress, a new memory-card format associated with faster transfers compared to XQD. This new software also allows the Z 6 or Z 7 to record 4K UHD or full-HD video in RAW. However, this can only be done with Atomos recorders and may not be available for free.

The wPrime 1024M benchmark has a new world record holder. An AMD Ryzen 9 3900X owned by user jordan.hyde99 claimed the fastest time in the benchmark for a 12-core CPU this weekend, besting the Intel Core i9-7920X. Perhaps more impressive is the fact that the Ryzen 9 3900X was clocked 330 MHz lower than the 7920X.

LG has announced that the next generation of Signature OLED and NanoCell TVs have "exceeded" the requirements for the 8K Ultra HD designation. This new spec has been developed by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) in order to define the next-gen resolution standard. Therefore, the Korean giant may be the first to use buzzwords such as "Real 8K" when marketing new products.

Visible light communication is a form of wireless technology that uses radiation in the visible to infra-red light spectrum to transmit data. It is seen as an increasingly robust and reliable way of doing so, and needs not much more than conventional, low-power LEDs to work. Its market is now thought to be capable of being worth US$101.3 billion by the end of 2024.

Tronsmart has announced the Element T6 Max, a new speaker that, despite being wireless and intended as a portable accessory, has a striking 60 watts (W) of total sound output power. The OEM claims this is due at least in part to its new SoundPulse technology.

Apple's new Mac Pro is expensive, but most of the components seem worth the asking price (for the most part). But what about the wheels? At its asking price of $400, Apple is pushing the limits of supply and demand.

If you own a ThinkPad P1 or X1 Extreme and connect it to an external monitor on Windows 10, then the chances are that you have experienced sluggish performance with your device set to "Second screen only". Lenovo finally released an update to address the issue, but then pulled it without reason. Fortunately, we still have the download link to the package if you need it.

Get ready for what could be the most expensive cheesegrater in your life: the new Mac Pro is here. It is now available to pre-order from Apple.com and retailers such as B&H. This new PC has configurations that go from 4- to 6-figure USD prices.

Autodesk's Maya is one of the best-known applications in 3D animation. Its latest driver includes features that can be used by NVIDIA RTX graphics cards. This also extends to the latest version of Arnold, Maya's renderer.

AZIO has a new RGB mechanical keyboard up for crowdfunding on Indiegogo. This one has a less retro appearance, yet is still touted to be high-end in terms of its materials and build quality. It also has the OEM's new FOKAL spinning control, which can be used for a variety of sliding-value options and also acts as a 360-degree joystick.

Magewell is a company that makes the components that connect video and audio output with the applicable software. Its latest M.2 video capture card is of its 'Eco' line-up, and is capable of single-channel operation at up to 4096x2160 at 60 frames per second over 12G-SDI. It will be launched in 2020 at the ISE exhibition.

With the Blade 15 Studio Edition, Razer delivers a traditional 15.6-inch workstation. The laptop offers a lot of performance, a 4K OLED touchscreen display and a Thunderbolt 3 port.

IIn our review, the Lenovo ThinkPad P73 ran surprisingly quiet, as the fans were mostly turned off. While the low noise emission is great, this resulted in higher temperatures – which negatively impacted the GPU performance.

The European Hardware Association (EHA) has released the results of its latest study into user preferences for chipsets from different manufacturers. It indicates that over 60% of these customers would choose AMD for their next non-mobile PC processor. The preference for this company's graphics is also showing slow but steady growth.

Researchers at Oxford University have developed a new device that can transmit, encode, and decode information either through light or electrons. The new device should bridge the gap between traditional computers and new light computers as well as pave the way for more efficient and faster computer hardware in the future.

Lenovo has some very impressive doorbuster deals running at the moment that offer consumers savings that reach into the thousands of dollars. Various ThinkPad P53 mobile workstations have been discounted by nearly 50%, and there are hefty savings to be had on ThinkPad X1 Carbon laptops, ThinkPad X1 Extreme notebooks, and ThinkPad X1 tablets. The mind-boggling deals are time restricted and stock limited.

Dell.com's Black Friday event has kicked off with about 20% off many XPS and Inspiron models. In terms of less productivity-focused hardware, however, its banner listing may be the Alienware Area-51 desktop with a Threadripper 2950X SoC, which has been discounted by US$1020. There are also other gaming PCs from this OEM on sale.