Workstation

LG has unveiled what it calls the "best prices of the year" on its OLED TVs sold through its site and authorized dealers in the US. It includes no less than US$2000 off one 77-inch model, and a 55-inch SKU that now goes for just $1199. These deals take effect today (November 27, 2019) and last until December 2.

AMD has confirmed a 64-core Threadripper chip is coming in 2020. This chip will likely be the Threadripper 3990X, a beastly HEDT processor that will likely clobber the Intel Core i9-10980XE. AMD may be the premium choice for content creators in 2020.

With the Dell Precision 5540, an upgraded workstation with good performance and a design that is similar to that of the XPS 15 series is now available. The 4K option's display shines in our review and the OLED panel does not reduce the battery life by an unreasonable amount of time. However, there are still a few minor drawbacks that users should be aware of.

NVIDIA has a new driver update for its more recent GPUs. This version (Game Ready Driver 441.20 WHQL) makes 1 more Asus monitor and 2 more Acer displays G-SYNC compatible. It may also improve gameplay in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and the VR title Stormland.

Nvidia's latest set of Studio Drivers bring RTX support to Chaos Group's V-Ray software and Blender's Cycles rendering engine. Through RTX, both engines should see a significant bump in performance in GPU-based rendering. A slew of other content-creation software will also benefit from new features in the latest Studio Drivers.

Centaur Technologies has announced that their SoC combining eight x86 cores and a dedicated AI co-processor has posted outstanding results on the MLPerf AI inference benchmarks. This is the industry's first server-class SoC with a dedicated 20 TOPS AI processing capability and is designed to be scalable when augmented with external AI accelerators.

Lenovo now offers better GPU options and for the first time, an OLED display in its 15-inch workstation. Nvidia's Quadro RTX 5000 offers a level of performance that is usually exclusive to 17-inch models.

Microsoft has let it be known that checking for updates on Windows 10 PCs that run the stable-channel 1903 version may result in the ability to download its successor, 1909. This November 2019 replacement for that build can also now be accessed by business users and server maintainers.

With the ConceptD series, Acer has launched a completely new product lineup. The premium white multimedia system tries to appeal to creators of digital multimedia content. However, as our review shows, it comes with a few drawbacks.

The European "responsible vulnerability disclosure" specialists Swascan claim to have discovered that the popular virtual conference service GoToMeeting may be subject to various common weakness enumerations (or CWEs). They may affect the ability to set up meetings with the privacy normally expected of these online events.

NVIDIA has announced the Jetson Xavier NX that can deliver up to 21 TOPS of computing power for AI applications on the edge. The Jetson Xavier NX is powered by a 384 CUDA and 48 Tensor core Volta GPU and a 6-core Carmel ARM CPU. The entire computer is no bigger than a credit card and will be available in March 2020 for just US$399.

You don't always have to pay 2,000 Euros (~$2,213) or more for laptops with a graphics card specialized in applications. With the ThinkPad P53s and Nvidia's Quadro P520 GPU, Lenovo shows that it can be cheaper.

Canon USA has unveiled its inaugural 8K broadcast lenses, the UHD-DIGISUPER 51 and 7x10.7 KAS S attachments. The company is pitching them at the capture of live TV in this UHD resolution. They also have an image format size that could become standard for the same.

The AMD Ryzen 9 3950X has been spotted in Geekbench 4 and Geekbench 5, where it handily beat the Intel Core i9-10980XE and Core i9-9980XE, respectively. Considering the 3950X has beat these same CPUs in other benchmarks, it's likely that AMD's latest HEDT monster is more than capable of beating Intel's HEDT offerings.

The first benchmarks of the Intel Core i9-10980XE Cascade Lake-X have been published early and the processor seems to be facing tough competition from the likes of the AMD Ryzen 9 3900X. In tests such as Cinebench R20, the 10980XE seems to have posted lower scores than even the Core i9-9980XE. The 10980XE's initial data however seem to be not a very good representative of a mature platform such as Skylake.

Lenovo's mobile workstation scores points with great input devices, good battery life and a Thunderbolt 3 port. But the laptop isn't able to reach its full performance potential.

Both the MSI GF63 and WP65 are budget laptops in their respective categories. If you plan on purchasing one or the other, it'll be good to know that they share the same chassis design but with slightly different aesthetics.

Xiaomi has announced the existence of the Mi Surface via its Weibo channel. It is a 34-inch 1500R-curved monitor with a 21:9 aspect ratio. This new panel is also rated for AMD FreeSync and 121% of the sRGB color space. The Mi Surface is to be released on October 21, 2019.

The LGA 4677 platform will add support for PCIe 5.0 and 8-channel DDR5 RAM for the upcoming 10 nm+++ Sapphire Rapids and 7 nm Granite Rapids server-grade Xeon CPUs, which are supposed to compete with AMD's EPYC Milan and Genoa processors. The first 7 nm server CPUs from Intel are expected to launch in 2022, so desktop-grade CPUs supporting those new features will be released later on.

Intel announced its new Xeon W-2200 HEDT CPUs earlier this week. The Cascade Lake-X chips offer some upgrades over the current Xeon silicon, including clock speeds up to 4.8 GHz and 18-core/36 thread CPUs. Most interestingly, Intel is pricing the Xeon W-2200 family of processors significantly lower than previous Xeon CPUs.

The jump from 8-layer to 12-layer 3D TSV DRAM designs will enable AIB integrators to include as much as 96 GB of HBM2 DRAM on a single board, increasing the memory bus to 4,096-bit. The resulting increase in memory bandwidth will prove beneficial to AI, HPC and FPGA applications.

New research has shown that the market for semiconductors is estimated to grow to US$573 billion in 5 years. This may be driven by a demand for these materials in wireless communications, vehicles and online connectivity. However, the common-or-garden integrated circuit will continue to influence the market into the next decade.

The HP ZBook 15u G6 continues to offer the usual quality in terms of exteriors. However, some weaknesses that ought not to occur persist on the inside. Let's just hope the new AMD GPU can save the day.

Hewlett Packard's mobile workstation features good input devices and a great display. This is joined by a docking port, good battery life and a Thunderbolt 3 port. There are problems with performance.

Turtle Beach has released the Atlas Edge, a new USB adapter for any conventional wired headset. It is intended to enhance any headset connected to it with an in-house panel of software called Control Studio. This suite is designed to convert audio through the Atlas Edge into a "full panoramic 3D audio experience".

The latest Insider's version of Windows 10 updates the Your Phone app so that it is compatible with the Samsung Galaxy S10 series, as well as the Galaxy Fold. This allows a user to monitor battery levels, screen-mirror and sync data. However, Microsoft has stated that these new features will be available to certain regions only to start off with.

Intel has hinted that the first of its eagerly anticipated Xe discrete GPUs will launch in June 2020. The launch date has been discerned from a cryptic tweet posted by the head of the project and former AMD GPU chief Raja Koduri.

Computational photography - or imaging that depends at least as much on software as on hardware - was worth US$7.9 billion as a market in 2018. However, the latest analysis indicates that this valuation will grow to $29 billion over the next 5 years. This market is led by companies such as Qualcomm, NVIDIA, Alphabet and Apple.

The Compubench site has added a listing for a "genuine" Intel CPU that is integrated with a "Gen12 Mobile Graphics Controller". This, then, may be the integrated graphics solution that is said to launch alongside Tiger Lake chipsets. The benchmark indicates that it has 96 execution units (EUs) and goes at 1.1GHz.

The x86 architecture has been hitting something of a wall lately but AMD looks like it could be set to inject it with a fresh breath of life. According to the rumor mill, the company has finalized the Zen 3 design and it introduces a new SMT4 feature that will allow each core to execute four threads simultaneously.

Current PCBs are eating too much space and researchers think these can easily be replaced with a new silicon-interconnect fabric that would lead to more powerful devices in reduced form-factors. The use of such new fabrics would also cut production costs and improve heat dissipation. Smartphone SoCs and servers may also benefit from the more streamlined design introduced with the silicon-interconnect fabric.

AMD has officially stated that the Ryzen 9 3950X desktop processor and the next generation of Ryzen Threadripper chips will be launched in November. Although some will be disappointed about the delay of the 16-core Matisse CPU, others will be excited about the confirmation of the HEDT chips, which start with 24-core SKUs.

Curve Digital & Kuju have announced that they are bringing a title based on the Netflix show Narcos to PCs and consoles. It will allow a user to play either for the Cartel in question or against it a DEA agent. This original content will be set in the 1980s El Patron era, and is available as a digital download from now.

A 6-core Comet Lake Intel Core i7-10710U has been put through the rigors of Cinebench R15 and R20 and has apparently struggled with the multi-core testing aspects of the benchmarks. AMD’s 15 W quad-core APU, the Ryzen 7 3700U, was able to achieve better scores in R15. The Intel chip is a part of the same MSI Prestige 15 laptop that was recently spotted on Geekbench and UserBenchmark.
MSI has stated that the performance discrepancy could be down to the Creator Center mode selected.

Sony is ready to release its Crystal LED technology to home theater systems. These next-gen panels are capable of both 8K HDR and 16K resolutions. With specs such as 140% of sRGB coverage and 120 frames per second, they are also rated for extremely high color accuracy and image quality.

LG has revealed that certain 2019 OLED TVs will gain G-SYNC compatibility via a firmware update. This will apply to 55- to 75-inch C9 and 55 or 65 inch E9 variants. The OEM asserts that this development will enhance immersion in gameplay using these devices.

Much has been spoken about AMD pitching Navi 14 against the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 16 series. However, a recent patch to the AMDGPU Linux kernel DRM driver suggests that the company has other plans for the upcoming graphics chip too.

The ConceptD 9 Pro is using the same chassis as the Predator Triton 900, but comes tailor-made for demanding CG artists with Nvidia's RTX Quadro 5000 GPUs and a Wacom ERM stylus. It also packs gen 9 i9 octa-core CPUs coupled with 32 GB of RAM and dual-NVMe SSD storage in RAID 1, plus the usual host of connectors including Thunderbolt 3, DisplayPort and HDMI.

An Intel Core i7-10710U processor has been spotted being put through its paces on both UserBenchmark and Geekbench 5. The energy-efficient six-core CPU, which was tested in MSI’s new Prestige 15 laptop, particularly shines in single-core benchmarks where it manages to outclass the quad-core Ryzen competition from AMD.

Qualcomm has introduced its latest "add-on" for its 2nd-generation 5G modem, the Snapdragon X55. The QTM527 is an antenna that confers mmWave reception on the chipset. It is intended to enable the X55 to handle fiber-level connections for homes and businesses, regardless of their location.