TechPowerUP NEWS

[NextPowerUP]

Apple's M-series chips frighten Intel, AMD, and Microsoft like nothing else can, as they have the potential to power MacBooks to grab a sizable share of the notebook market share. This is based squarely on the phenomenal performance/Watt on offer with Apple's chips. A user installed Windows 11 Arm on a virtual machine running on an M2-powered MacBook, opened up CPU-Z (which of course doesn't detect the chip since it's on a VM). They then ran a CPU-Z Bench session for a surprising result—a single-threaded score of 749.5 points, with a multithreaded score of 3822.3 points.

The single-thread score in particular is comparable to Intel's 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" chips (their "Golden Cove" P-cores); maybe not on the fastest Core i9-12900K, but of the mid-range Core i5 chips, such as the i5-12600. It's able to do this at a fraction of the power and heat output. It is on the backs of this kind of IPC that Apple is building bigger chips such as the M3 Pro and M3 Max, which are able to provide HEDT or workstation-class performance, again, at a fraction of the power.

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[NextPowerUP]

We're thrilled to unveil Gigantic: Rampage Edition, the definitive release of the beloved MOBA hero shooter, Gigantic, created by Motiga. Developed by Abstraction Games, this premium edition promises both veteran players and newcomers an exhilarating journey into the world of team-based multiplayer gaming. Set to launch on April 9, 2024, across PC, PlayStation, and Xbox platforms for $19.99, Gigantic: Rampage Edition amplifies the original game's thrills with dynamic gameplay, a diverse hero roster, and exciting new features. With zero microtransactions, players can unlock all content through gameplay or in-game currency.

Closed Beta Testing
Get a taste of Gigantic: Rampage Edition's Rush Mode in a Closed Beta Test on Steam, starting February 22 at 12:00pm PST / 9pm CET. Sign up on the game's Steam page for a chance to join the action-packed playtest. Gear up for Gigantic: Rampage Edition - the ultimate MOBA hero shooter adventure awaits! Stay tuned for more updates and announcements and join the discussion on our Gigantic Discord!
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[NextPowerUP]

Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 is a high performance Arm SoC designed to compete with Apple M3, with Windows 11 thin and light notebooks and Chromebooks being its main target devices. Microsoft pins a lot of hope in chips such as the Snapdragon 8cx series as they offer comparable performance and battery life to the current crop of M3 MacBooks. A lot of water has flown under the bridge since Windows RT, and the latest crop of Windows 11 for Arm has a much wider PC application support base thanks to official translation layers by Microsoft. CPUID has an Arm64 version of the popular CPU-Z utility, which correctly detects all the specs of the Snapdragon 8cx, but more importantly, has a Bench tab that can test the single- and multithreaded performance of the CPU.

A Chinese tech enthusiast wasted no time in putting the Snapdragon 8cx through this CPU-Z internal benchmark, and found surprisingly good performance numbers. The single-threaded bench, which loads one of chip's four Arm Cortex-X1C P-cores, registers a score of 543.7 points. This is roughly comparable to that of the AMD "Zen 2" or Intel "Comet Lake" x86-64 core. The multithreaded test, which saturates all four P-cores, and all four Cortex-A78C E-cores, springs up 3479.7 points, which again compares to entry/mainstream x86-64 processors from AMD or Intel. Not impressed? How about the fact that the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 is a 7 W chip that idles under 2 W for the most part, and can make do with passive cooling, posting scores comparable to 35 W x86 chips that need active cooling?

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[NextPowerUP]

Toward the end of 2024, Intel will update its client processor product stack with the introduction of the new "Arrow Lake" microarchitecture targeting both the desktop and mobile segments. On the desktop side of things, this will herald the new Socket LGA1851 with more SoC connectivity being shifted to the processor; and on the mobile side of things, there will be a much-needed increase in CPU core counts form the current 6P+8E+2LP. This low maximum core-count for "Meteor Lake" is the reason why Intel couldn't debut it on the desktop platform, and couldn't use it to power enthusiast HX-segment mobile processors, either—it had to tap into "Raptor Lake Refresh," and use the older 14th Gen Core nomenclature one last time.

All hopes are now pinned on "Arrow Lake," which could make up Intel's second Core Ultra mobile lineup; its first desktop Core Ultra, and possibly push "Meteor Lake" to the non-Ultra tier. "Arrow Lake" carries forward the Xe-LPG graphics architecture for the iGPU that Intel debuted with "Meteor Lake," but there's a key difference between the desktop- and mobile "Arrow Lake" chips concerning this iGPU, and it has not just to do with the Xe core counts. It turns out, that while the desktop "Arrow Lake-S" processor comes with an iGPU based on the Xe-LPG graphics architecture; the mobile "Arrow Lake" chips spanning the U-, P-, and H-segments will use a newer version of this architecture, called the Xe-LPG+.
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[NextPowerUP]

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is set to open its new semiconductor fabrication plant in Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan, on February 24. This facility, known as Japan Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing (JASM), represents a significant milestone for Japan's semiconductor industry. JASM spans 52 hectares and is designed to produce mature 40, 22/28, and 12/16 nm fabrication technologies in the Fab 1. The Fab 1 has an initial monthly capacity of 40,000 300 mm wafers, scalable to 50,000 wafers per month in the near term. However, TSMC is set to expand the Kumamoto facility with Fab 2, which will produce 7 nm and 6 nm nodes and is scheduled to begin operations at the end of the 2027 calendar year. The Japanese government is set to subsidize the Fab 2 expansion with around $5 billion in aid. Combining Fab 1 and Fab 2, the JASM Kumamoto facility could produce 100,000 300 mm wafers per month once the production of Fab 2 starts. According to market research firm TrendForce, JASM provides significant additional capacity for TSMC amid a global chip shortage. It also boosts Japan's domestic chipmaking capabilities, reducing reliance on imports.

JASM is the first brand-new foreign-operated fab built in Japan. The Japanese government provided grants and tax breaks to incentivize Kumamoto Fab 1 construction as part of a national strategy to re-shore more semiconductor production and is now doing it again with Fab 2. TSMC also received subsidies from customers like Sony, SSS, DENSO and Toyota. Dr. CC Wei, CEO of TSMC, stated that JASM will "shape Japan's semiconductor landscape over the next decade." TrendForce analysts echo this sentiment, noting that JASM's advanced nodes will enable cutting-edge chip designs from Japanese automotive and consumer electronics brands. The inauguration ceremony on February 24 will be attended by TSMC partners, customers, and government representatives. JASM is expected to ramp up production over the coming year. TSMC has other non-Taiwan investments, like the facility in construction in Phoenix, Arizona, which will start mass production of chips by the end of 2027 or early 2028. At that point, the global semiconductor capacity constraints will ease significantly.

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[NextPowerUP]

ASUS IoT, the global AIoT solution provider, today announced the launch of its new lineup of industrial motherboards and edge AI computers powered by the latest Intel Core (14th gen) processors. These cutting-edge solutions offer supreme computing performance, enhanced power efficiency, and accelerated connectivity, making them ideal for a wide range of industrial applications. One of the key features of these new solutions is the accelerated transfer speeds and enhanced power efficiency offered by DDR5 memory. Compared to DDR4, DDR5 memory provides 50% faster transfer speeds and 8% improved power efficiency, ensuring reliability with ECC technology.

ASUS IoT industrial motherboards also support double-speed PCI Express (PCIe) 5.0, which doubles the speed of PCIe 4.0, while maintaining full backward compatibility for system flexibility. This allows for faster data transfer and expandability, meeting the demands of modern industrial applications. The integrated Intel UHD Graphics technology in ASUS IoT motherboards supports up to 8K60 HDR video and multiple 4K60 displays, providing vivid graphics and powerful AI acceleration. This makes them ideal for various applications, including retail, healthcare and AI in smart factories.
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[NextPowerUP]

By the end of 2023, MSI unveiled its groundbreaking support for memory capacities of up to 256 GB. Now, both MSI Intel and AMD motherboards official support these capacities, with 4 DIMMs enabling 256 GB and 2 DIMMs supporting 128 GB. This advancement enhances multitasking capabilities and ensures seamless computing operations.

Intel Motherboard - 700 & 600 Series Platform, BIOS Rolling Out
The supported platforms for this memory capacity enhancement include Intel 700 and 600 series DDR5 motherboards. Gamers looking to benefit from these enhancements will need to upgrade to the own dedicated BIOS. MSI is currently diligently working on releasing the BIOS, with the first batch already available below. The rest of the models will be released in late February and March.
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[NextPowerUP]

NVIDIA is anticipating supply issues for its upcoming Blackwell GPUs, which are expected to significantly improve artificial intelligence compute performance. "We expect our next-generation products to be supply constrained as demand far exceeds supply," said Colette Kress, NVIDIA's chief financial officer, during a recent earnings call. This prediction of scarcity comes just days after an analyst noted much shorter lead times for NVIDIA's current flagship Hopper-based H100 GPUs tailored to AI and high-performance computing. The eagerly anticipated Blackwell architecture and B100 GPUs built on it promise major leaps in capability—likely spurring NVIDIA's existing customers to place pre-orders already. With skyrocketing demand in the red-hot AI compute market, NVIDIA appears poised to capitalize on the insatiable appetite for ever-greater processing power.

However, the scarcity of NVIDIA's products may present an excellent opportunity for significant rivals like AMD and Intel. If both companies can offer a product that could beat NVIDIA's current H100 and provide a suitable software stack, customers would be willing to jump to their offerings and not wait many months for the anticipated high lead times. Intel is preparing the next-generation Gaudi 3 and working on the Falcon Shores accelerator for AI and HPC. AMD is shipping its Instinct MI300 accelerator, a highly competitive product, while already working on the MI400 generation. It remains to be seen if AI companies will begin the adoption of non-NVIDIA hardware or if they will remain a loyal customer and agree to the higher lead times of the new Blackwell generation. However, capacity constrain should only be a problem at launch, where the availability should improve from quarter to quarter. As TSMC improves CoWoS packaging capacity and 3 nm production, NVIDIA's allocation of the 3 nm wafers will likely improve over time as the company moves its priority from H100 to B100.

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[NextPowerUP]

KFA2, the brand owned by Galax for specific markets in Europe, announced its GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER EX Gamer graphics card in two new trims, Pink, and White. The regular RTX 4070 SUPER EX Gamer the company launched in January comes in black. The Pink trim involves a bubblegum pink shade taking over the cooler shroud and metal backplate. Ditto with the white trim. The PCB underneath both cards remains black, but since the cooling solution dwarfs it, it most remains out of sight when installed.

Both cards feature frosted acrylic fan impellers, with addressable RGB LEDs located in the fan hubs. Besides the illuminated fans, the GeForce RTX logo on top of the card comes with RGB LED illumination. Both cards come with a mobile app-based control for the lighting. This app talks to a service installed in your PC over the Internet, which interacts with the graphics card. Much like the regular black RTX 4070 SUPER EX Gamer, the two cards stick with NVIDIA-reference clock speeds of 2475 MHz boost for the GPU, and 21 Gbps (GDDR6X-effective) for the memory. KFA2 is pricing both the Pink and White variants at 679€ including taxes, a 20€ premium over the regular black EX Gamer card.

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[NextPowerUP]

SilverStone today introduced the XE04-SP6P, a CPU cooler designed for AMD server/workstation sockets sTR5 and SP6, meant for those that use Ryzen Threadripper chips as server processors in rackmount cases as tall as 4U. The cooler is designed for thermal loads as high as 350 W, but is an aluminium fin-stack heatsink that measures 130 mm x 119 mm x 126 mm (WxHxD). This may look rather small for its thermal capacity in comparison to some desktop D-type coolers; but this is a server cooler, the desktop standards for fan noise go out the window, and a high-powered 92 mm fan is used to ventilate this thing. The cooler's capacity is mainly thanks to the high airflow.

The 92 mm high-powered fan comes pre-installed in a cavity between the fin-stack. It turns at speeds of up to 5,000 RPM, pushing 77.7 CFM of airflow at a phenomenal 10.67 mm H₂O static pressure, and a noise output of 43 dBA. The fan features double-ball bearings, and is rated for 90,000 hours. The nickel-plated copper base comes with a pre-applied thermal compound. From this base, six copper heatpipes convey heat through the fin-stack in a configuration similar to that of a D-type cooler. The cooler weighs 743 g, including its fan and factory-fitted RM. The company didn't reveal pricing.

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[NextPowerUP]

Colorful Technology Company Limited, a leading brand in gaming PC components, gaming laptops, and HiFi audio products, proudly announces the COLORFIRE MEOW R15 and MEOW R16 gaming laptops. Coming from the success and rising popularity of the COLORFIRE MEOW Series gaming desktop, the MEOW R15 and R16 gaming laptops are adorned with designs inspired by our beloved cat—Bobi. The laptop is littered with cat-inspired aesthetics from cat pawprints to the chic orange tabby cat color. The new MEOW Series gaming laptops are equipped with the latest AMD Ryzen 8000 Series processor designed for gaming, content creation, and entertainment. It also features the AMD Ryzen AI technology unlocking magical AI experiences.

Like a feline, the COLORFIRE MEOW R15 and R16 gaming laptops are fast and agile - swift in attacking enemies. Both laptops comes equipped with that new AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS processor with 8 cores and 16 threads, with a maximum boost clock of 5.1 GHz in a very efficient 45 W TDP power design. Designed for AI engine capabilities, its AMD Ryzen AI processor performance delivers up to 39 TOPS. For graphics, the MEOW R15 and MEOW R16 comes equipped with up to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 laptop GPU with up to 140 W maximum performance power.
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[NextPowerUP]

Sabrent today announced its latest flagship M.2 NVMe SSD series, the Rocket 5. Built in the M.2-2280 form-factor, the Sabrent Rocket 5 is sold as a bare drive, with an included fan-heatsink that you install if needed. This cooler comes with a tiny fins-stack, two copper heat pipes, and a 20 mm fan. At the heart of the drive is the new Phison PS5026-E26 Max14um controller, paired with Micron B58R 232-layer 3D NAND flash memory, and LPDDR4 based DRAM cache. The drive comes in 1 TB, 2 TB, and 4 TB capacity variants.

The company didn't put out capacity-specific performance or endurance numbers, but mentioned sequential read speeds of up to 14 GB/s, as is characteristic of the Max14um controller variant; up to 12 GB/s sequential write speeds, up to 1.55 million IOPS 4K random reads, with up to 1.8 million IOPS 4K random writes. The Rocket 5 replaces the Rocket 4 Plus as Sabrent's flagship SSD. The 4 TB variant is listed at $730, the 2 TB variant at $340, and the 1 TB variant at $190.

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[NextPowerUP]

Transcend, a premier manufacturer of embedded memory products and storage solutions, is proud to announce the launch of the all-new MTS570P, a Power Loss Protection (PLP) SSD aimed at enhancing storage reliability for embedded systems. Engineered with a compact form factor without compromising on performance, it is an ideal solution for edge servers, IoV systems, network switches, POS machines, and various other types of edge devices.

Power Loss Protection (PLP) stands as a critical feature in modern embedded systems, particularly when used in rugged environments. Its main purpose is to safeguard data integrity during unstable power supply or unexpected power loss/failure, ultimately enhancing overall system reliability and safety by providing a stable and secure storage solution.
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[NextPowerUP]

ASUS today introduced its custom design Radeon RX 7900 GRE graphics cards for a wider product launch outside China. These include the RX 7900 GRE DUAL OC, and the TUF Gaming RX 7900 GRE OC. Given the nearly identical 260 W total board power (TBP) and ASIC pin-map of the RX 7900 GRE to the RX 7800 XT, ASUS appears to be reusing its RX 7800 XT custom-design board designs for these cards. The RX 7900 GRE DUAL OC features a 27.9 cm length, triple-slot thickness, and 13.39 cm height, and uses an aluminium fin-stack heatsink with two 100 mm Axial Tech fans—hence the name. There is no RGB lighting or other such frills to speak of, but you get dual-BIOS. The default P-BIOS runs the card at factory-overclocked 1927 MHz Game clock (vs. 1880 MHz reference); while the quieter Q-BIOS runs it at reference speeds, with a more tame fan profile.

The TUF Gaming RX 7900 GRE features the same version of the company's DirectCU III TUF Gaming cooling solution that the company uses with its RX 7800 XT TUF Gaming product, it's 31.9 cm in length, 3-slot thick, and 15 cm tall (about a 1 cm added due to the stub toward the tail-end). The cooler features a trio of 100 mm Axial Tech fans, and as is characteristic of TUF Gaming cooler designs, is well ventilated, exposing more of the heatsink underneath; than competing cooling solutions. You get a minimal amount of RGB lighting, in the form of a diffuser near the tail-end. You also get dual-BIOS, and a more pronounced factory OC than the DUAL OC card, with the P-BIOS enabling 1972 MHz Game clocks. The Q-BIOS again sticks to reference clocks for quieter fan settings. ASUS didn't release pricing, but given that both are factory-overclocked cards, we expect the RX 7900 GRE DUAL OC to be priced around the $570-mark; and the TUF Gaming OC at $600, if not more.

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[NextPowerUP]

Intel today released the Arc GPU Graphics Drivers 101.5333 WHQL. These come with Game On (day-zero) optimization for "Last Epoch" and the new DirectX 12 update of "Sea of Thieves." The drivers also provide sweeping game DirectX 11 game performance updates for the Xe-LPG Arc iGPU powering Intel Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" processors, ranging anywhere between 6% to 155%. You can find specific performance in the list below. The company hasn't fixed any new issues with this release, but identified a handful new issues with Arc A-series GPUs, Core Ultra iGPUs, older Xe-LP based Iris Xe iGPUs, and the Arc Control application.

Among the DirectX 11 titles that get performance updates with this release at 1080p with Medium settings for "Meteor Lake" iGPUs, include "Assassin's Creed Syndicate" (+65%), "Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare" (+17%), "Divinity Original Sin 2" (+25%), "Far Cry 5" (+8%), "Halo: The Master Chief Collection" (+19%), "It takes two" (+24%), "Just Cause 3" (+18%), "Just Cause 4" (+155%), "Palworld" (+14), "Rise of the Tomb Raider" (+9%), "Rust" (+9%), "SCUM" (+6%), "Sid Meier's Civilization VI" (+27%), "Snowrunner" (+49%), "Warframe" (+7%), and "XCOM 2" (+8%).

DOWNLOAD: Intel Arc GPU Graphics Drivers 101.5333 WHQL
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