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      After a chaotic three years, GPU sales are starting to look normal-ish again

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 4 December - 21:57 · 1 minute

    AMD's Radeon RX 7600.

    Enlarge / AMD's Radeon RX 7600. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

    It's been an up-and-down decade for most consumer technology, with a pandemic-fueled boom in PC sales giving way to a sales crater that the market is still gradually recovering from . But few components have had as hard a time as gaming graphics cards, which were near impossible to buy at reasonable prices for about two years and then crashed hard as GPU companies responded with unattainable new high-end products .

    According to the GPU sales analysts at Jon Peddie Research, things may finally be evening out. Its data shows that GPU shipments have returned to quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year growth after two years of shrinking sales. This is the second consecutive quarter this has happened, which "strongly indicates that things are finally on the upswing for the graphics industry."

    JPR reports that overall GPU unit shipments (which include integrated and dedicated GPUs) are up 16.8 percent from Q2 and 36.6 percent from a year ago. Dedicated GPU sales increased 37.4 percent from Q2. When comparing year-over-year numbers, the biggest difference is that Nvidia, AMD, and Intel all have current-generation GPUs available in the $200–$300 range, including the GeForce RTX 4060 , the Radeon RX 7600 , and the Arc A770 and A750 , all of which were either unavailable or newly launched in Q3 of 2022.

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      New chip-packaging facility could save TSMC’s Arizona fab from “paperweight” status

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Thursday, 30 November - 19:25 · 1 minute

    Apple wants to build more of its A- and M-series chips in the United States.

    Enlarge / Apple wants to build more of its A- and M-series chips in the United States. (credit: Apple)

    Late last year, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced that the company would definitely be buying chips made at Taiwan Semiconductor's new Arizona-based fab once it had opened. Apple working with TSMC isn't new; most, if not all, of the processors currently sold in Apple's products are made on one of TSMC's many manufacturing nodes. But being able to buy them from a US-based facility would be a first.

    The issue, as outlined by some TSMC employees speaking to The Information in September , is that the Arizona facility would manufacture chips, but it wouldn't be building a facility to handle packaging. And without packaging, the Arizona factory would essentially be a "paperweight," requiring any chips made there to be shipped to Taiwan for assembly before they could be put in any products.

    Today Apple announced that it had solved that particular problem, partnering with a company called Amkor to handle chip packaging in Arizona. Amkor says that it will invest $2 billion to build the facility, which will "employ approximately 2,000 people" and "is targeted to be ready for production within the next two to three years." Apple says that it has already worked with Amkor on chip packaging for "more than a decade."

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      Ars system mini-guide: Summer GPU refresh edition, aka “can it run Starfield”?

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 8 September, 2023 - 14:38

    The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT, 7800 XT, and 7600.

    Enlarge / The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT, 7800 XT, and 7600. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

    Two big things have happened since we last updated our PC build guide in the spring . First, we got a batch of late-spring and summer midrange GPU launches, including AMD's Radeon RX 7600 , 7700 XT, and 7800 XT , plus Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4060 and 4060 Ti . Second, Bethesda's Starfield finally dropped , prompting a whole bunch of people to ask "can my PC run Starfield ?"

    Starfield isn't an exceptionally demanding PC game, at least not by the standards set by buggy PC ports like The Last of Us . But it will give any PC more than 3 or 4 years old a serious workout, and it should serve as a decent yardstick for building a PC that can run this console generation's games fairly well.

    This guide will focus on just minor tweaks to our spring PC builds, since other component pricing hasn't changed much and there haven't been major CPU introductions since then (Intel's don't-call-them-14th-generation Core processors may be out within a few months, but on the desktop they'll be a mild refresh of 13th-gen, which was already a mild refresh of 12th-gen).

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      Review: AMD’s Radeon RX 7700 XT and 7800 XT are almost great

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 6 September, 2023 - 13:00

    AMD's Radeon RX 7800 XT.

    Enlarge / AMD's Radeon RX 7800 XT. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

    Nearly a year ago, Nvidia kicked off this GPU generation with its GeForce RTX 4090 . The 4090 offers unparalleled performance but at an unparalleled price of $1,600 (prices have not fallen). It's not for everybody, but it's a nice halo card that shows what the Ada Lovelace architecture is capable of. Fine, I guess.

    The RTX 4080 soon followed, along with AMD's Radeon RX 7900 XTX and XT . These cards also generally offered better performance than anything you could get from a previous-generation GPU, but at still-too-high-for-most-people prices that ranged from between $900 and $1,200 (though all of those prices have fallen by a bit). Fine, I guess.

    By the time we got the 4070 Ti launch in May, we were getting down to the level of performance that had been available from previous-generation cards. These GPUs offered a decent generational jump over their predecessors (the 4070 Ti performs kind of like a 3090, and the 4070 performs kind of like a 3080). But those cards also got big price bumps that took them closer to the pricing levels of the last-gen cards they performed like. Fine, I guess.

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      Starfield’s missing Nvidia DLSS support has been added by a free mod

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 5 September, 2023 - 19:22 · 1 minute

    A video from modder PureDark shows off the performance benefits of DLSS3 in the Patreon-only version of his mod.

    Nvidia graphics card owners can rest easy; Starfield modders have already added support for Nvidia's Deep Learning Super-Sampling (DLSS) technology (alongside the game's official support for AMD's FSR2 upscaling). But unlocking the full power of that mod will require either paying for a Patreon subscription or using cracks to get around some controversial DRM protecting the most full-featured version of the mod.

    Since its initial release on Friday, the "Starfield Upscaler" is currently the most popular Starfield mod listed on clearinghouse NexusMods. That should be welcome news to a significant portion of the PC gaming community running a newer Nvidia GPU that supports the frame-rate-enhancing upscaling technology. That's especially true for the Nvidia owners who were outraged when Bethesda announced an official Starfield partnership with AMD this summer.

    In practice, though, the practical effect of that DLSS support might be hard to notice for many players. In Ars' testing on a GTX 2080 Ti gaming rig (running at 2560×1440 resolution, Ultra quality, and 50 percent render resolution), we were able to hit 35 frames per second using both the DLSS mod and the game's built-in AMD FSR2 support (which also works on Nvidia cards). Neither upscaling technology had an apparent performance edge, even as both improved significantly on the ~25 fps frame rate when running at full resolution without any upscaling (and even as DLSS has shown superior visual quality in other tests ).

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      AMD Ryzen 7945X3D could be a fast, super-efficient choice for your new gaming laptop

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 28 July, 2023 - 01:00

    For a couple of years now, AMD has offered special versions of its desktop processors with an extra 64MB chunk of L3 cache included. This cache is layered over top of the existing CPU silicon, earning it the name "3D V-Cache," and it has proven especially successful for accelerating cache-sensitive software like games.

    Today, AMD is announcing the first 3D V-Cache processor for laptops, the Ryzen 9 7945X3D. It's a version of the regular 16-core Ryzen 9 7945HX with that same 64MB chunk of cache added in, giving it a total of 144MB of L3 cache.

    The 7945HX is essentially a version of the desktop Ryzen 9 7950X repackaged for use in laptops instead of high-end desktops; while chips like the similarly named 7940HS use one monolithic silicon die for everything from the CPU cores to the chipset to the integrated GPU, the 7950HX uses a pair of 8-core CPU chiplets and a separate I/O die.

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      AMD Radeon RX 7600 review: Another water-treading mid-range GPU for $269

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 24 May, 2023 - 13:00 · 1 minute

    AMD's Radeon RX 7600.

    Enlarge / AMD's Radeon RX 7600. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

    Earlier this month, AMD briefed the press on its first mainstream RX 7000-series card, the RX 7600. A mostly incremental upgrade over the original RX 6600 but with many of the new features from the RX 7900 XTX and XT , it would come with a price cut, from the RX 6600's $329 to $299. Nvidia then briefed the press on its new mainstream RTX 4060 series. The prices for the higher-end 8GB and 16GB RTX 4060 Ti are already set at $399 and $499. The price for the lower-end RTX 4060 was left undisclosed.

    A few days later, presumably having caught wind of AMD's pricing plan for the RX 7600, Nvidia announced the price for the RTX 4060 : also a surprisingly low $299. (This entire time, review embargoes and briefings have been shifting by a few days here and there as the companies maneuver around each other.) Then, around 36 hours before this article was published, a new update came from AMD: The RX 7600 will now be launching for $269, $30 less than the RTX 4060 and $50 less than the old RX 6600.

    This is what competition in the mid-range GPU market looks like after a years-long cryptocurrency-and-scalper-fueled shortage and many more months of Nvidia and AMD focusing on their pricey flagships. These are new, modern cards with modern features available at a price that can at least be called "literally affordable" even if they aren't quite "budget."

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      The Asus ROG Ally beats the Steam Deck at all but the most important things

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Thursday, 11 May, 2023 - 14:00 · 2 minutes

    Asus ROG Ally held in one hand, on a porch

    Enlarge / With the advent of the Asus ROG Ally, you can take Windows gaming anywhere! Should you? That is a good question. (credit: Kevin Purdy)

    Geralt of Rivia looked good, moved smoothly, and responded swiftly to commands. There was just one problem: He was constantly sucker-punching the villagers of White Orchard. Over and over again, he raised his fists against tavern keepers, kids running in the street, and detachments of Nilfgaardian soldiers. That last one begat a brutal death. Sometimes, right after taking an unprovoked swing, the camera would furiously spin around my white-haired avatar, making me feel like I, too, had caught one in the head.

    Specs at a glance: Asus ROG Ally
    Display 7-inch IPS panel: 1920×1080, 120 Hz, 7 ms, 500 nits, 100% sRGB, FreeSync, Gorilla Glass Victus/DXC
    OS Windows 11 (Home)
    CPU AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme (Zen 4, 8 core, 24M cache, 5.10 Ghz, 9-30 W (as reviewed)
    RAM 16 GB LPDDR5 6400 MHz
    GPU AMD Radeon RDNA3, 4 GB RAM (as reviewed)
    Storage M.2 NVME 2230 Gen4x4, 512 GB (as reviewed)
    Networking Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2
    Battery 40 Wh
    Ports ROG XG interface, USB-C (3.2 Gen2, DPI 1.4), 3.5 mm audio, Micro SD
    Size 11×4.3×0.8 in. (280×111×21 mm)
    Weight 1.34 lbs (608 g)
    Price as reviewed $700 (plus mini dock)

    I played the latest version of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt on Asus' new ROG Ally handheld gaming PC ($700, available June 13, preorders start today) as a personal benchmark. Having completed the game three times previously (Xbox/PC/Switch, Yennefer/Triss/neither), I was looking to spot differences on this emerging platform. Asus' new device can run The Witcher 3 —and Assassin's Creed: Odyssey , Forza Horizon 5 , and Hitman 3 —more powerfully than the Steam Deck or almost any other "portable" device around, minus questionably portable gaming laptops. The device runs Windows, so it has fewer game compatibility issues than Valve's Steam Deck (however admirably far that system has advanced). What would make The Witcher or any other playthrough different on the Ally, a Switch-sized device that boasts 7–13 times the power of that platform ? "Random violence" wasn't the answer I expected, so I dug in.

    My first thought was that the thumb sticks could be the problem, as they seem to have bigger dead zones and feel less sturdy than the ones on the Steam Deck. Or maybe it was pre-release video hardware reacting to a game known for uneven performance . I updated everything I could, recalibrated the sticks, and double-checked my in-game settings. I played the same build of the game on a Steam Deck with Windows loaded, in the same location, but couldn't recreate the problem.

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      Samsung and AMD extend Exynos GPU partnership, hope to find customers

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Thursday, 6 April, 2023 - 18:00 · 1 minute

    Samsung and AMD extend Exynos GPU partnership, hope to find customers

    Enlarge (credit: Samsung / AMD / Ron Amadeo)

    Samsung Electronics and AMD are extending their smartphone chip agreement. In a press release today, the two companies said they "signed a multi-year agreement extension to bring multiple generations of high-performance, ultra-low-power AMD Radeon graphics solutions to an expanded portfolio of Samsung Exynos SoCs." Even Samsung is reluctant to use Samsung chips these days, so it's not clear what devices these AMD GPUs will land in.

    Samsung's chip division and AMD have already done a generation of an Exynos SoC with an AMD GPU. That chip was the Exynos 2200, with its "Samsung Xclipse 920 GPU" that was co-developed by AMD. Samsung's phone division—which doesn't necessarily have a bias toward the chip division's products—shipped that chip in the S22 in some regions like Europe, while shipping the S22 with Qualcomm chips in other regions, like the US and China. Exynos chips have a bad reputation for constantly having lower performance compared to Qualcomm chips, and the Exynos 2200 was no exception. The chip didn't do well against the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 in benchmarks and power usage, and Samsung fans once again had to deal with getting " inferior phones " depending on what country they lived in.

    The one win the Xclipse GPU had over Qualcomm was in ray tracing. In today's four-paragraph press release, Samsung and AMD point out twice that "Xclipse was the industry’s first mobile GPU with hardware-accelerated ray tracing." Samsung's 2022 chip is better at ray tracing than Qualcomm's 2023 chip! The problem is, being an early adopter of ray tracing isn't really relevant for mobile gaming. Mobile games are built for a causal audience and target mass-market hardware. With the need to also balance battery life, that market doesn't value high graphics fidelity. As you can see with Lenovo killing off its gaming smartphone line, the attempts to bring hardcore gaming values to smartphones have not found a huge audience.

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