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| PC World - 5 Jun (PC World)The PlayStation 5 is the console everybody wants and for good reason — there are tons of games to play, the experience is seamless and there are loads of features to upgrade your gaming experience. The best part is that the digital version is only $399 right now, which is the best price we’ve seen for this model.
The PS5 with a disc is also on sale right now for $449, down from $500, so if you’re often buying physical copies of your games, this is the best option for you.
Otherwise, going for the digital version means you’re spending less money while getting the same quality experience and you can just take advantage of the frequent sales on games in the PS Store.
At the heart of the PS5 is its lightning-fast SSD, which means your games install and load fast, no matter what you’re playing. This sleek console features a 1TB SSD so you can install tons of games without worrying about running out of space.
The graphics are fantastic, and the console supports 4K-TV gaming, delivering vibrant and lifelike colors with HDR technology and smooth gameplay at up to 120fps with 120Hz output on compatible games.
Is there really anything extra we can say about the PS5 that you don’t know yet? Go ahead and place your order for the $399 Digital version or the $449 disc version.
Get the PS5 Digital at Walmart for $399
Get the PS5 Digital at Best Buy for $400
Get the PS5 with Disc at Walmart for $449
Get the PS5 with Disc at Best Buy for $450
Gaming Read...Newslink ©2024 to PC World | ![](/n.gif) |
| ![](/n.gif) | | PC World - 4 Jun (PC World)Lunar Lake marks perhaps the first time that an Intel PC processor wasn’t manufactured at Intel.
Intel’s Lunar Lake has four tiles, of which the key tiles — the compute tile and the controller tiles — are built at TSMC, not Intel. Intel’s Meteor Lake also used TSMC for manufacturing, but the key compute tile was built at Intel.
Meanwhile, Intel has launched its own foundry program, talked up a program to achieve five process nodes in four years, and has accepted $8.5 billion from the United States government from the CHIPS Act. So why did Intel turn to TSMC instead?
“Put simply, Lunar Lake picked TSMC as the right technology at that point in time,” Gelsinger said at a post-keynote question-and-answer session at the Computex show in Taipei. “That’s why we ended up using more of it. And obviously, with the results I talked about today, it was a good choice.”
“It’s working well, and next year when we move to Panther Lake, almost all of the tiles will be on Intel so we’ll have made a major move to take advantage of our five nodes in four years and align with 18A for Panther Lake for the client.”
Lunar Lake was supposed to be the first product from Intel built using the company’s 18A process. Instead, that will be Clearwater Forest, a server chip.
It’s still not clear why Intel didn’t have the right product at the right time, given its accelerated product roadmap. But it’s getting there, albeit a little late.
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| ![](/n.gif) | | PC World - 4 Jun (PC World)Intel launches Lunar Lake, its next entrant into its Core Ultra series of laptop processors, today at Computex, ushering in a new generation of AI-infused Copilot+ PCs that have been initially overshadowed by Qualcomm.
Stop us if you’ve heard this before: Intel is prioritizing low power, perhaps feeling the pressure from Qualcomm’s just-launched Snapdragon X Elite. Several tweaks to Lunar Lake’s design, however, resulted in power savings and performance boosts, including shifting all of the E-cores to a low-power architecture. The Xe2 GPU at the heart of Intel’s “Battlemage” is here. Oh, and hyperthreading? Gone.
But there’s a fairly major change that affects you, a potential laptop buyer: Intel is embedding the DRAM onto the chip package. Yes, the PC’s memory. For now, if you buy a Lunar Lake laptop, you’ll have a choice between 16GB and 32GB of DRAM, but with no option to upgrade it later.
We’re diving deep into Lunar Lake in this story, so feel free to jump ahead to the section you’re interested in. We’d expect Intel to eventually market Lunar Lake as the Intel Core Ultra Series 2, the unofficial 15th-gen Core chip.
Intel’s Lunar Lake chip.
Intel’s Lunar Lake chip.Intel
Intel’s Lunar Lake chip.Intel
Intel
Lunar Lake: Made in Taiwan?
First, let’s be clear: Though Intel announced Lunar Lake at Computex, this isn’t a product yet. Intel is working with early production steppings, but Lunar Lake (and presumably laptops) won’t ship until sometime in the third quarter.
IFA, the Berlin trade show that begins Sept. 6, is the projected launch venue, sources at notebooks vendors say. Arrow Lake, the next iteration of Intel’s desktop processors (and possibly mobile chips for gaming laptops), are also due this year and could launch around IFA, too.
Intel
Intel
Intel
While Intel’s Meteor Lake was a relatively complex chip with multiple tiles, Lunar Lake is a simpler design. While there are four tiles, only two matter: there is a compute tile (fabricated on TSMC’s 3nm-class N3B process) and the platform controller tile (on TSMC N6, an older 7 nm process). There is also a “filler” tile, a structural “blank” piece of silicon that’s just there to fill out the remainder of the chip and avoid it bending. It’s all mounted over a passive interposer, the “base” tile, which provides interconnections between the chips.
That’s a significant change: Intel had always targeted Lunar Lake as the first of the “angstrom” generation, fabricated on its 18A process. Meteor Lake was the first time that Intel mixed and matched tiles from its own fabs as well as TSMC. The key there, though, was that the compute tile was manufactured on Intel’s Intel 4 process, as it originally promised. With Lunar Lake, only the base tile is manufactured at Intel, according to executives, though Intel handles the assembly.
“You’ve probably heard my boss Pat [Gelsinger, Intel’s CEO] talk a little bit about 18A and we’re on track to fully utilize this process,” said Michelle Johnston Holthaus, executive vice president and general manager of the Client Computing Group at Intel. “We’re going to market on B0 silicon and we’re on track to be in production in [the third quarter] of this year.”
Following Apple: On-package memory
When you buy a laptop, a PC maker will install memory: sometimes soldered on, sometimes with slots that allow more memory to be added in the future. Now, Lunar Lake puts that memory within the chip package itself.
Apple has most recently been known for adding on-package memory with its M3-based Macs (with up to 128GB of unified memory) and the M4-based iPad, which follows suit. Now Intel is joining the crowd. Lunar Lake will mount 16GB and 32GB of LPDDR5X memory (with up to 8.5 gigatransfers per chip in two ranks), saving up to 250 sq. mm on the motherboard.
“I said, how do we build the best thin-and-light PC, and memory on package with our customers was by far the desired first step,” said Jim Johnson, senior vice president of the Client Computing Group and general manager of the Client Business Group at Intel, in an interview.
Intel
Intel
Intel
“The technical part is that we want to have an exquisite notebook that will take on ecosystem competitors,” Johnson added. “And that’s what we built. And we think 16[GB] and 32[GB] is the right matchup and yes, it’s not upgradable beyond that, but this is the cornerstone of our architecture moving forward and we will offer those options in the future.”
If you don’t like the idea of not being able to upgrade your memory, or if you want more memory configurations, it sounds like they might be coming. “I would just say that the next turn of the roadmaps are going to offer more traditional options,” Johnson said, which other Intel executives said referred to Lunar Lake’s successor, Panther Lake.
Low-power DDR DRAM needs to be soldered as close to the CPU as possible, so Intel’s decision makes sense — if weren’t for the recent introduction of LPCAMM2, an upgradable module which actually allows you to replace the memory, too.
Lunar Lake e-core are all low power now
Intel’s Lunar Lake makes two major changes to the CPU designs that you’re familiar with. First, what’s known as the “Skymont” efficiency core no longer has the low-power E-core that its predecessor, Meteor Lake, shipped with — all of the Skymont E-cores are essentially low-power E-cores, period.
But there’s a bigger twist: hyperthreading has been completely disabled across the board. All cores simply have a single thread associated with them for performance reasons. Even the performance cores, known as “Lion Cove,” are single-threaded. More on that later.
Intel’s Skymont E-cores offer substantive performance and power gains over Meteor Lake, Intel says.
Intel’s Skymont E-cores offer substantive performance and power gains over Meteor Lake, Intel says.Intel
Intel’s Skymont E-cores offer substantive performance and power gains over Meteor Lake, Intel says.Intel
Intel
Lunar Lake has four E-cores and four P-cores. Stephen Robinson, an Intel fellow and the lead architect for the new Skymont E-core, explained that at least for this generation, the E-cores should be thought of as a “brick,” which implies that Lunar Lake products will have blocks of four E-cores each — so a Lunar Lake chip with six E-cores sounds highly unlikely.
Lunar Lake’s E-core has a number of substantial architectural enhancements — wider machine decoding and out-of-order engines, a 4MB level-2 cache shared among all four cores — but the improved performance is startling.
Lunar Lake’s E-cores make the now-familiar tradeoff: they can either be run at lower power or at substantially higher performance for the same power. Here, the low-power cores can either be run at one-third the power of Meteor Lake’s E-cores, or else offer a substantial 1.7X performance improvement.
Intel is even claiming that its E-cores outperform the 13th-gen Core’s performance CPU, Raptor Cove.
Intel is even claiming that its E-cores outperform the 13th-gen Core’s performance CPU, Raptor Cove.Intel
Intel is even claiming that its E-cores outperform the 13th-gen Core’s performance CPU, Raptor Cove.Intel
Intel
At peak load, Lunar Lake’s E-core performance is basically double that of Meteor Lake, Robinson said. In multithreaded performance (where the four E-cores in Lunar Lake double the two low-power E-cores in Meteor Lake) multithreaded performance reaches 2.9X or 4X at peak clock speeds.
If put in a desktop compute tile, the Skymont E-cores actually outperform Raptor Cove, the 13th-gen Core CPU tile by about 2 percent in both fixed-point and floating-point operations, with some variation. Lunar Lake is not a desktop architecture. Instead, that’s a tip that may point to how the next-gen Intel desktop chip, Arrow Lake, performs.
Intel is not saying how fast that Lunar Lake will be clocked, unfortunately. For now, it’s just talking about the design of the chip itself.
Intel Thread Director gives Windows more control
Intel’s Thread Director has thankfully been simplified within Lunar Lake, too. Thread Director interacts with the Windows operating system, determining where and when to send tasks on to which cores. On Lunar Lake, it’s simple: tasks are assigned to the E-cores first. If they’re full or the workload exceeds their capabilities, then they’re routed to the P-cores.
As you might expect, there is a wrinkle: the creation of “OS containment zones.” Users have been asking for years for controls to specify playing a game, for example, on all of the chip’s P-cores. It’s not quite clear whether users will be granted this sort of specificity, but the OS will. For example, Microsoft Teams has been granted an OS containment zone so that the app will run only on the E-cores, and won’t touch a P-core, according to a presentation by Rajshree Chabukswar, an Intel fellow.
As a result, Teams power was cut by 35 percent, Chabukswar said.
Lunar Lake’s P-cores kill hyperthreading
The performance core within Lunar Lake, Lion Cove, is 14 percent faster than the P-core within Meteor Lake, known as Redwood Cove. And that’s with a huge change: Intel has turned off hyperthreading across Lunar Lake. Yes, hyperthreading, the SMT technology that’s been a staple of Intel’s chips for about twenty years.
Intel is making the case that hyperthreading is just too expensive in terms of power and cost.
Intel is making the case that hyperthreading is just too expensive in terms of power and cost.Intel
Intel is making the case that hyperthreading is just too expensive in terms of power and cost.Intel
Intel
So why get rid of hyperthreading? According to Ori Lempel, the senior principal engineer of Intel’s P-Core, Intel’s goals were to optimize single-threaded performance, with an eye toward maximizing the performance per watt per area on the chip — low performance per watt costs battery life, and low performance per area essentially costs Intel money in manufacturing costs.
Hyperthreading does make sense for performance parts and datacenters, Lempel noted. But it requires physical space for the hyperthreading logic and the associated silicon. But in thin-and-light laptops, the target for Lunar Lake, Intel engineers discovered that they achieved 15 percent more performance per watt and 10 percent more performance per area with hyperthreading turned off than a hyperthreading-enabled processor.
Intel’s Lion Cove, and its relative performance.
Intel’s Lion Cove, and its relative performance.Intel
Intel’s Lion Cove, and its relative performance.Intel
Intel
There are two other key changes in the P-Core. First, if a Lunar Lake needs to add or subtract performance, it will do so more gradually. Intel processors currently increase and decrease in 100MHz increments; Lunar Lake will step up and step down at 16.67MHz intervals. Second, Intel has added a small “AI” controller, which will monitor and watch the system in real time. The idea is that Lunar Lake systems will make small, incremental adjustments to power and speed, maximizing performance and battery life for users.
From a security standpoint, Intel has added a “partner security engine” to the Intel silicon security engine and the Intel graphics security controller. That partner security engine is Pluton, the Microsoft-AMD security engine that has successfully protected the Xbox.
It’s time for Xe2 to debut
Intel has steadily increased the performance of its integrated GPU in successive generations, but Lunar Lake marks a sharp leap: this is the debut of the Xe2 graphics architecture. Tom Petersen, an Intel fellow, confirmed that Xe2 is inside Lunar Lake, and this is the same architecture that will debut later in a discrete GPU for desktops, code-named “Battlemage.”
intel’s Xe2 architecture: Lunar Lake on the left, Battlemage on the right.
intel’s Xe2 architecture: Lunar Lake on the left, Battlemage on the right.Intel
intel’s Xe2 architecture: Lunar Lake on the left, Battlemage on the right.Intel
Intel
Again, Intel isn’t talking specifics, including Xe2’s clock speeds, memory, or details of the Lunar Lake implementation. But Intel provided a more general overview of how Lunar Lake’s Xe2 implementation compares to the integrated GPU within Meteor Lake.
Petersen described the Xe2 architecture as “more compatible with games and with a higher utilization.”
Intel isn’t providing actual performance numbers yet, but it providing some comparisons to the first-gen architecture.
Intel isn’t providing actual performance numbers yet, but it providing some comparisons to the first-gen architecture.Intel
Intel isn’t providing actual performance numbers yet, but it providing some comparisons to the first-gen architecture.Intel
Intel
Intel’s Xe2 core has been redesigned, with eight 512-bit vector engines accompanied by eight 2048-bit Xe Matrix Extension (XMX) engines capable of 2,048 FP16 operations per clock and 4,096 8-bit integer operations per clock — both tools that can be used for traditional graphics as well as AI. There’s an improved ray tracing unit, too.
In Lunar Lake, Intel has set up the GPU to offer eight Xe cores, with 64 vector engines and two geometry pipelines. All told, Intel believes it will offer 1.5X the performance of the previous generation, at the same power.
Here’s how Intel’s Xe2 will be configured within Lunar Lake.
Here’s how Intel’s Xe2 will be configured within Lunar Lake.Intel
Here’s how Intel’s Xe2 will be configured within Lunar Lake.Intel
Intel
“I don’t think I’m allowed to tell you the performance at higher power,” Petersen added.
The Lunar Lake display engine will offer 3 display pipes, with HDMI 2.1 (up to 8K60 HDR 10-bit), DisplayPort 2.1 (three 4K60 displays) and a new eDP 1.5 connection, which will allow for 360Hz 1440p displays for gaming.
Intel also has a technology called “panel replay,” which is an evolution of how the display panel can self-refresh. Adaptive sync displays adjust the panel’s frame rate to match the content coming in, eliminating judder or screen tearing. Panel replay does something similar. The example shown was a movie, where the panel has to self-adjust its timing to account for the 24fps movies are broadcast in, as opposed to the native 60Hz (or higher) of the panel.
What panel replay does is understand that certain frames may need to be repeated. If this happens, though, the display engine can turn off the CPU cores and in some cases the memory when they aren’t needed. The GPU just queues the needed frames in place.
There’s also something new in the video codec front. While Lunar Lake performs coding and decoding of the AV1 video codec, it has added decoding support for VVC (H.266), an advanced video codec. AV1 shrinks file size by about 40 percent compared to the older HEVC file format, and VVC file sizes will be about 90 percent of a AV1 file, Petersen said. However, VVC’s file complexity is substantially more.
Lunar Lake’s NPU: It’s finally time for Copilot
Naturally, a key focus for Lunar Lake is AI, which features a significantly improved “NPU 4” core.
We live at a weird intersection of AI capabilities, which Lunar Lake lands in. Most people have only used AI in the cloud, through Windows Copilot, Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT, or some other service. Chipmakers would love for you to use local AI, and Copilot+ PCs with native AI capabilities will start shipping later this month — but only initially with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite chips inside.
Intel is making the case that whatever the platform — CPU, NPU, or GPU — it can deliver.
Intel is making the case that whatever the platform — CPU, NPU, or GPU — it can deliver.Intel
Intel is making the case that whatever the platform — CPU, NPU, or GPU — it can deliver.Intel
Intel
Customers who bought into Intel’s initial vision of an AI PC may feel a little jilted; current Meteor Lake laptops only generated 11.5 TOPS from the NPU, significantly under the 40 TOPS that Microsoft’s Copilot+ program requires. The new “NPU 4” inside Lunar Lake produces 48 TOPS all by itself. That means Lunar Lake PCs will be Copilot+ capable, when they ship. Meteor Lake AI PCs are not.
Further reading: Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC push leaves existing ‘AI PCs’ behind
What’s new? Meteor Lake had a pair of inference pipelines in the NPU. Lunar Lake has six, each of which triples the amount of multiply-accumulate (MAC) engines that are fundamental to AI processing. That basically works out to double the performance in the same power envelope. AI processing is essentially a ton of specific matrix and vector mathematics, and Intel has begun adding in specialized blocks. What it calls the SHAVE DSP is one vector engine, which provides 12 times the vector performance. Basically, Intel is saying that SHAVE will boost the performance of LLMs, or AI chatbots, running locally on your PC.
Intel believes that Lunar Lake offers a potent combination of AI capabilities, with 120 TOPS spread over the CPU (5 TOPS), GPU (67 TOPS), and NPU (48 TOPS). But that unfortunately ignores the broader point: most applications pick one chip, and don’t use all three at once.
Not all, though. In a demo, Intel showed how running 20 iterations of Stable Diffusion could be achieved in about a quarter of the time of Meteor Lake, and at lower power, too, using the NPU and GPU in concert.
Intel NPU4 on Lunar Lake in action.,
Intel NPU4 on Lunar Lake in action.,Intel
Intel NPU4 on Lunar Lake in action.,Intel
Intel
Lunar Lake’s communications technology: using Wi-Fi as a sensor and more
Surprisingly, Lunar Lake will not be the debut platform of Thunderbolt 5, as you might have expected. But it will integrate Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4, and provide an enhanced multi-link single-radio (eMLSR) technology that should improve throughput by hopping back and forth between wireless channels. And there’s a wild new technology, called Wi-Fi Sensing, that uses a Wi-Fi radio as essentially a type of radar.
According to Carlos Cordeiro, an Intel fellow the wireless CTO of Intel’s Client Computing Group, Intel is strongly encouraging laptop makers to cluster all of the Thunderbolt ports on one side of a laptop, stop mixing and matching Thunderbolt and USB-C ports, and properly label all Thunderbolt ports — all things that should have happened long ago. (Lunar Lake will also support three Thunderbolt ports, up from two, and the Thunderbolt Share sneakernet will be featured.) Cordeiro indicated that Thunderbolt 5 will be in Intel silicon later this year, which likely means Arrow Lake.
Interestingly, you will see higher throughput with Thunderbolt 5. Thunderbolt 5 SSDs will actually deliver 25 percent more performance on a Lunar Lake PC with a Thunderbolt 4 port, Cordeiro said.
Wi-Fi 7 was in Meteor Lake, too, but now it’s been more fully integrated, saving power. Intel built in a small 11Gbps interface between the Lunar Lake platform controller tile as well as the wireless, future-proofing the connection.
Though the Intel WiFi radio can talk on the three bands — 2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz — those bands can still become congested, slowing data throughput. Intel built a technology called enhanced multi-link single operation to solve that problem. Essentially, eMLSO concentrates on a single frequency, but periodically listens to others, especially if the frequency becomes congested. The technology will then shift the radio’s communication over to the uncongested frequency.
And did you know that DDR memory itself can cause Wi-Fi interference? Intel uses a technology called RF Interference Mitigation to dynamically adjust the clock frequency of the memory to prevent interference.
Intel can adjust the frequency of its DDR memory to avoid interference with your laptop’s WiFi radio.
Intel can adjust the frequency of its DDR memory to avoid interference with your laptop’s WiFi radio.Intel
Intel can adjust the frequency of its DDR memory to avoid interference with your laptop’s WiFi radio.Intel
Intel
WiFi Sensing uses both antennas, one broadcasting and one receiving. The laptop essentially broadcasts radio data out, then uses the other antenna to “listen” for a bounce off various objects — specifically you. If the WiFi Sensing technology detects you’re walking away, it locks your computer and shuts off the display. If you then approach, it wakes the displays (but doesn’t unlock the computer.)
“You can be a kid, a big person — that’s the other type of magic,” Cordeiro said. “We can retrain the model so that we know the size of the person that’s approaching.”
It’s a little scary! Intel has bigger plans for Wi-Fi Sensing, though it’s unclear whether they’ll come to market. “Future PCs will be able to detect user movements and gestures, monitor heartbeat and breathing rate, whether accessories are to the left or right, how many there are, etc.,” Intel said.
Intel’s Unison is getting beefed up, too, with tablet control, a quick connect to phones that don’t have access to Unison, and a universal hotspot. The latter functionality is already in Windows, so it’s unclear what Unison will deliver.
Intel
Intel
Intel
Finally, Lunar Lake can run Bluetooth over PCIe, which Cordeiro said will save time accessing the Bluetooth device.
In all, Lunar Lake is yet another substantive rewriting of the mobile PC processor. But with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite and AMD’s Ryzen AI 300 waiting in the wings, can it maintain its traditional laptop leadership? We’ll see.
CPUs and Processors, Laptops Read...Newslink ©2024 to PC World | ![](/n.gif) |
| ![](/n.gif) | | ITBrief - 4 Jun (ITBrief)![NZ Located](/pimages/nzsmall.gif) Aspen Technology has launched V14.3 of its aspenONE portfolio, featuring Industrial AI and enhanced data integration to optimise operations and sustainability for asset-intensive industries. Read...Newslink ©2024 to ITBrief | ![](/n.gif) |
| ![](/n.gif) | | ITBrief - 4 Jun (ITBrief)![NZ Located](/pimages/nzsmall.gif) Tech Data, a part of TD SYNNEX, has acquired Orca Technology, an IT security distributor in ANZ. The move boosts Tech Data`s IT security arsenal. Read...Newslink ©2024 to ITBrief | ![](/n.gif) |
| ![](/n.gif) | | PC World - 4 Jun (PC World)Yes, it’s true: That old AI gaming assistant April Fools’ joke that Nvidia made all the way back in 2017 is now reality. Well, kinda. And if Nvidia’s plans come to fruition, it could make your favorite PC gaming forums and wikis obsolete.
During its Computex keynote, Nvidia revealed “Project G-Assist” for the creation of customizable AI assistants for PC gamers, running on GeForce graphics cards. These AI assistants can be tuned to help you in specific games, providing detailed information about your personal adventures while reacting to on-screen events. They can also analyze and tune your entire gaming PC on the fly.
Ever wondered “What the hell is that??!!” when confronted by a snarling new alien menace in a game? G-Assist can tell you—and not just that, but also the optimal build for your character path if you’d like. It can then overclock your GPU to speed up performance, all without ever needing to leave your game.
G-Assist is the first AI assistant I’d actually want to install on my gaming PC. Let’s dig in.
Nvidia’s Project G-Assist is the ultimate gaming sidekick
Nvidia
Nvidia
Nvidia
Project G-Assist is the codename for a series of AI technologies and frameworks provided by Nvidia, with several new tools revealed for developers at the show. These capabilities monitor your gaming inputs (including on-screen information), process those inputs through a large language model (AI) with specifically trained data sets helped by other tools, then feed you the information you’re looking for in real time.
Anyone can use these tools however they see fit to create their own gaming assistants. The sky is the limit here. Nvidia provided two AI assistant concepts to show off G-Assist’s potential in eye-opening ways.
First, Nvidia created an Ark: Survival Ascended demo that shows how powerful these tools can be when they’re integrated by game developers and trained on a deep data set for that specific game.
It’s actually remarkable. Via a floating text field, you can ask the AI assistant what the best early weapons are, skill recommendations for your particular character build, help with problems, and more. It’s like having the world’s most knowledgeable wiki author riding shotgun with you, and you never have to alt-tab out to find the crucial info you need.
Nvidia
Nvidia
Nvidia
It’s a compelling vision—and it’s aided by computer vision, remember. In the demo, the protagonist asked “What is that thing?” while looking at a dinosaur and was promptly told that it’s most likely a titansaur, “[which] can be identified by its massive size and long neck.”
It’s easy to imagine enthusiast communities training their own AI assistants to provide tailored experiences for their favorite games, or developers providing help bots for new players, or an all-encompassing assistant trained on the top wikis to help in any game.
We’ll have to see if that dream winds up being reality, though. This all looks fantastic in theory, but Nvidia releases a lot of impressive tech demos and not all of them wind up being embraced by the community.
HAL, overclock my PC
But G-Assist’s potential isn’t limited to the act of playing games alone. Nvidia also showed off another G-Assist bot designed to help PC players tune their settings on the fly while tooling around in Cyberpunk 2077.
Nvidia
Nvidia
Nvidia
It was able to change options when asked to optimize the settings for image quality. It also suggested enabling Nvidia Reflex to reduce latency due to the system’s measurements at the time.
And when asked to provide a latency graph for the last 60 seconds, it popped one up immediately. That’s potentially a very helpful capability when you’re troubleshooting problems or trying to improve your responsiveness in-game.
Heck, it even initiated Nvidia’s one-click overclocking feature on command, complete with information about the GPU’s old and new clock speed measurements.
RAMMING SPEED
RAMMING SPEEDNvidia
RAMMING SPEEDNvidia
Nvidia
There’s a lot of promise here, and G-Assist showcases what’s possible with AI when you have a full-fat graphics card by your side. You won’t see GPU-less Copilot+ laptops pulling off capabilities like this, this fast, while actively gaming, on an NPU anytime soon. There’s a reason why Nvidia is pushing GeForce-equipped hardware as “Premium AI PCs” behind closed doors.
Separately, Nvidia is also working to introduce generative AI-powered NPCs in games via its Avatar Cloud Engine technology, which looks better and better every time we see it. Nvidia’s Seth Schneider recently joined our Full Nerd podcast to show off the ACE-powered Covert Protocol demo revealed at GDC this spring. Look for new ACE demos to be out in force during Computex 2024.
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| ![](/n.gif) | | PC World - 4 Jun (PC World)Backing up your essential data is the only way to be sure it’s safe. And while there have been no major online storage disasters to date, it behooves you to maintain a local backup of your digital stuff even if you work exclusively in the cloud.
Some data, such as multimedia collections are definitely better stored locally, and should be backed up as well. As Murphy has proven time and again, redundancy is your friend.
There are many free and pay-to-play contenders to take hold of your backup operations, but not all are created equal. Here’s what we look for in our quest for the back backup software and how we evaluate backup programs.
What are the main features we look for in backup programs?
There are a host of programs, services, storage repositories, and methods for backing up your system and data. Hence, a good portion of our initial evaluation is devoted to perusing the methods a program supports.
The more types of backup a product supports, the more versatile it is and, generally speaking, the better a value it is. Value contributes to our rating though not as significantly as reliability. How bullet-proof a backup program makes backing up and restoring data reigns supreme in our ratings.
There are two primary types of backup: system backup, where everything, including your operating system, applications, and data are backed up; and data-only backup, where only your essential files are saved to safe locations. (Plural because you should have an original copy, a local copy, and a copy off-site).
System backup
The advantage of a system backup is that, in case of a system or drive failure, you can use it to quickly restore your operating system, applications, and data to the state they were in when you backed them up, in one fell swoop. This is also known as disaster recovery.
The disadvantage to a system backup is that the backups themselves are generally more time consuming. At least initially.
R-Drive Image is our favorite system-recovery and imaging software.
R-Drive Image is our favorite system-recovery and imaging software.
R-Drive Image is our favorite system-recovery and imaging software.
There are programs that perform only system backup such as the free Backup and Restore (Windows 7), but more common are products such as Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office (nee True Image), Aomei Backupper, and R-Drive Image that offer both system backup and data-only backup.
System backup programs generally use images (byte-for-byte copies of a disk or file system), or large proprietary container files. During the restore phase, these are read off the backup media and written back to your computer after you boot to the program that created them, using recovery media — CD, USB stick, etc.
best backup software overall
R-Drive Image
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Data backup
The advantage to backing up only your data is speed. Corollary to speed is the ability to back up more frequently. With some programs this happens in real time — meaning as files change. The more frequent the backup, the less chance of you losing work.
Shown below is Windows File History, which is a bit hard to configure if you want to include folders from other locations, but a great and very free way to keep your data backed up. That’s right, you don’t really need third-party solutions, though you may want them as some are demonstrably better.
Windows File History is free, data-only backup software that comes with the operating system.
Windows File History is free, data-only backup software that comes with the operating system.
Windows File History is free, data-only backup software that comes with the operating system.
The downside to data-only backup is that, in the case of a system crash, you’ll have to reinstall the operating system and applications (possibly including the program used for backup) before you can restore your data. Then you’ll have to reconfigure everything to your liking. Re-configuration can actually be the most time-consuming part of the operation in this age of super-fast SSDs.
Sync
Sync, in its purest form, is mirroring data across multiple locations. It’s not true backup as files can be changed in any location and those changes reflected throughout the ecosystem. Want to revert to an older version? Sorry, outta’ luck.
However, many sync programs offer one-way sync (source to destination) with version retention, which is functionally the same as pure data backup. It all depends on how many older versions are retained and for how long. It’s not always permanent.
Sync is not necessarily backup, but it can be depending on the options.
Sync is not necessarily backup, but it can be depending on the options.
Sync is not necessarily backup, but it can be depending on the options.
The broader the support for these three types of backup, the better you can tailor your backup plan to your specific needs and the higher we’ll rate this aspect of the product.
The more granular features we look for in backup programs
After weighing how many backup MOs a program supports, we then peruse the finer aspects of each, such as…
System backup types
To save space, system backups back up everything the first time (full), then either use incremental (fast backup/slower restore — all changes since the last backup) or differential (slower backup/faster restore/easier to manage — all changes since the first backup) after that to save space. Incremental is a must, but offering both incremental and differential is a plus. There are many others that would take quite a while to explain, as you can see below.
Acronis offers a host of backup schemes that cover creation and management.
Acronis offers a host of backup schemes that cover creation and management.
Acronis offers a host of backup schemes that cover creation and management.
Space management
Most users have only a finite amount of space for backups, and action is required when it starts to fill up. This can be anything from a simple message telling you it’s time to start over or change media, to the ability to automatically cull older backups. Another advantage of differential backup is that the first and latest backups contain all current data you need and you can delete everything in between.
Scheduling
This runs the gamut from the aforementioned real time (files are backed up as they change), to continuous (every few minutes or so — sometimes better as it can grab temporary files), hourly, daily, weekly, monthly. The more options the better.
Buddha Backup’s options and scheduling dialog.
Buddha Backup’s options and scheduling dialog.
Buddha Backup’s options and scheduling dialog.
Compression and containers
The way data is stored in the destination of a backup can range from uncompressed plain files, to a compressed ZIP archive or other container file, to image files and virtual hard drives. Again, the more choice the more brownie points.
Data security
We like to see options for both encryption and/or password protection. The former actually requires the latter, or a separate key.
Boot/recovery media
Restoring a system backup requires booting from removable media, most often a USB stick these days, but optical as well. We like programs to support both Windows PR (Pre-install Environment — the disc Windows itself installs from) and Linux-based boot media.
Nova Backup’s boot media creation page.
Nova Backup’s boot media creation page.
Nova Backup’s boot media creation page.
Why both? Because we’ve had better luck with Linux recovery media over the last decade. Some programs seemingly have a difficult time correctly creating Windows PE media.
Network support
If you have a NAS box or other computer on your network it’s a great place to store backups, or data. We favor programs that allow you to back up to and from a network location. Quite a few freebies do not support backing up from network locations.
Device and operating system support
With so many phone-centric users these days, support for Android and iPhone is important, even if they’re being backed up to Google Drive or iCloud. Linux and macOS compatibility is down the list, but still nice perks.
Online storage support
Some backup programs such as Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office connect to their own proprietary cloud storage, some connect to the more common services such as Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive, but very few support the myriad other, often cheaper services such as Amazon S3.
Backup4All has one of the widest selections of online destinations.
Backup4All has one of the widest selections of online destinations.
Backup4All has one of the widest selections of online destinations.
Online storage support garners points, but the advent of cloud storage managers that will integrate many services, including cheap S3-compatibles, into Windows Explorer has lessened our emphasis on this feature.
Cloud storage managers not only let you work with online files as if they were stored locally, they allow you to use any backup software you choose. Want to use the command line with xcopy or Windows File History to backup online? With a cloud storage manager, you can.
ExpanDrive is just one of many cloud managers that allow you to use any backup software with your online storage.
ExpanDrive is just one of many cloud managers that allow you to use any backup software with your online storage.
ExpanDrive is just one of many cloud managers that allow you to use any backup software with your online storage.
Note that many online storage vendors offer backup services and clients, but we generally review these under the heading of online backup or storage services, not backup software. The distinction is growing fainter by the day.
Further reading: Best online backup services
Other options
There are myriad other small options, conveniences really, that we like to see. These include the ability to run other programs pre- (disk checkers, etc.) and post-backup (cleanup utilities, etc.), notification upon completion of tasks or errors (generally email), system shutdown post-completion (so you can run a backup last thing and save electricity by shutting down the system), etc.
Best backup software with malware protection
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office
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There can also be added security features like malware protection (Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office) or ransomware protection (Retrospect Solo), which could be a nice value-add for someone who lacks that protection otherwise.
Interface and ease of use
No matter the breadth of features, if a backup program isn’t easy to use, users won’t take to it. If users don’t take to it, data doesn’t get backed up. That’s a bad thing.
Sadly, there’s nothing available for Windows that’s as easy and slick as macOS’s Time Machine. Vendors try, but it’s sometimes apparent that the interfaces are designed by programmers. Being a former programmer who designed his own interfaces, I know that skill in one discipline doesn’t directly translate to the other.
R-Drive Image was never hard to use, but the interface has certainly evolved. That said, it’s the program’s reliability that makes it our favorite.
R-Drive Image was never hard to use, but the interface has certainly evolved. That said, it’s the program’s reliability that makes it our favorite.
R-Drive Image was never hard to use, but the interface has certainly evolved. That said, it’s the program’s reliability that makes it our favorite.
Equally sadly, the genre is infamous for user experiences that suffer from needlessly abstracted concepts, terse language, poor organization, poorly written help files, etc. Some assume far too much knowledge on the part of users, and a few are, I hate to say it, just plain ugly.
Because we don’t want users baffled or making mistakes, the GUI, workflow, and documentation are areas that we place more emphasis on than you might think.
It had better work all the time (operational reliability)
Having witnessed the emotional distress that data loss can invoke, the ability to create a backup and restore it without issue is the number-one factor in our ratings. Nothing else comes particularly close. With some of backup programs being decades old, and the basic functionality a well-worn concept, you might think backup would be dead compatible and reliable. Alas, such is not always the case.
Part of the issue is Windows itself. It’s less than optimally programmed and documented, throws a lot of hurdles at developers seeking low-level file and disk access, and must support a huge variety of hardware. Poorly written drivers for this hardware can ruin any program’s day.
Successful completion of tasks is the number one requirement of any back up software.
Successful completion of tasks is the number one requirement of any back up software.
Successful completion of tasks is the number one requirement of any back up software.
But we’ve seen errors from a number of backup programs that were obviously self-inflicted. More than we’d like. Even reliable programs such as R-Drive Image can have issues when they introduce new features.
Additionally, picayune as it might seem on the surface, we look for interface glitches. If an interface is sloppily programmed, that sloppiness might affect something important, like the backup itself.
How PCWorld tests backup software
Testing backup software is like testing any other software, we try all the features and see if and how well they work. Seems simple, but media complicates the issue. We back up and restore from local SSDs, external SSDs, network locations, and if the program supports it — online storage and optical media (DVD+RW).
As speed is invariably reliant upon, and will vary drastically according to the type of media involved, it’s a second-tier criteria in our evaluation. We tend to report only glitches, stalls, or something unusually slow, as backing up to an internal PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD will obviously be faster than to a network location (our test network is only 2.5Gbps), 10Gbps SSD, or DVD+RW.
What we do check is that the program doesn’t slow your computer or other operations down, something almost unheard of with modern computers and devices. Even Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office with it’s dozen background processes doesn’t adversely affect the subjective performance of our test beds.
Even this many background processes won’t slow down a modern computer.
Even this many background processes won’t slow down a modern computer.
Even this many background processes won’t slow down a modern computer.
Boot media is also created and tested, because if you can’t boot to the program that created your system backup, you might as well have never backed up.
Note also that as we’ve been testing for well over two decades, we do count a program’s historical reliability (or lack thereof) in our evaluation.
How PCWorld rates backup software
While more features are generally better, we reiterate that by far the most important aspect of backup software is how reliably it works. Followed by how easy it is to use. A dead-reliable, one-trick pony is better than an umbrella suite that misfires.
All backup software is awarded a verdict of between 0 and 5 stars, with the top-rated programs being considered for our list of best backup software. Backup is about trust and we recommend the programs that have earned that.
Backup Software Read...Newslink ©2024 to PC World | ![](/n.gif) |
| ![](/n.gif) | | PC World - 4 Jun (PC World)AMD’s Zen 5 is here! AMD launched its next-generation Ryzen 9000 series of desktop PC processors on Monday morning local time at Computex, kicking off the next round of processor competition between AMD, Intel, and (now) Qualcomm.
If you recall our Ryzen 7950X review, you’ll remember that that chip was accompanied by three others. That’s still the case: AMD launched the flagship Ryzen 9 9950X, plus the Ryzen 9 9900X, the Ryzen 7 9700X, and the Ryzen 5 9600X as well. This is AMD’s “Granite Ridge” architecture, supported by new X870 motherboards.
There’s a treat for existing customers, too: AMD is formally extending the lifespan of its AM5 socket through 2027, up from the previously pledged 2025, and is adding the Ryzen 9 5900XT and Ryzen 7 5800XT too on the AM5 platform. (AMD continues to show the older AM4 platform existing through 2024, too.)
Recall Intel’s new strategy: chasing Qualcomm into the low-power, all-day computing space while trying to maintain performance. AMD has leaned harder into outperforming its competitors, and is capitalizing on that. But there is no AI in these parts, unlike the AMD Ryzen 8000G series of APUs.
“This is the world’s most powerful consumer desktop processor,” said Donny Woligroski, senior technical marketing manager of consumer processors at AMD.
AMD Ryzen 9000: Speeds and feeds
From a product standpoint, the Ryzen 9 9950X looks very familiar: with 16 cores, 32 threads, and a 170W TDP, the 9950X looks the same on paper as the 7950X. (The Ryzen 8000 desktop APUs launched last fall are much more modest.) The difference? A significant IPC (instructions per clock) improvement. AMD is citing a 16 percent IPC improvement gen-over-gen on top apps and games, when comparing the Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 7 7700X.
FOur new Ryzen 900 chips wil be launched today at Computex.
FOur new Ryzen 900 chips wil be launched today at Computex.Mark Hachman / IDG
FOur new Ryzen 900 chips wil be launched today at Computex.Mark Hachman / IDG
Mark Hachman / IDG
The lower-end Ryzen 9000 chips benefit from the same performance boost, too. But there are even more hidden benefits there, albeit more understated.
Both the Ryzen 7 9700X and the Ryzen 5 9600X maintain the same core and thread count as their predecessors. But clock speeds have been nudged up a bit, and there’s a been significant drop in power: the older Ryzen 7 7700X and Ryzen 5 7600X were 105W parts. The new Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 5 9600X consume just 65W, which will save some money on utility bills. They’re about on par with the slower turbo power settings of Intel’s H-series Meteor Lake parts, too, at 64W. (Qualcomm hasn’t cited TDP numbers for the Snapdragon X Elite.)
The lower power is a result of a combination of the chip’s process technology, firmware, and power optimizations an AMD spokesman said via email. The Ryzen 9000 chiplets are built on an optimized high-performance TSMC 4nm process node alongside a 6nm I/O die with integrated AMD RDNA 2 graphics and DDR5 memory and PCIe 5.0 controllers, he added.
Ryzen 9000 under the hood.
Ryzen 9000 under the hood.Adam Patrick Murray / Foundry
Ryzen 9000 under the hood.Adam Patrick Murray / Foundry
Adam Patrick Murray / Foundry
All of the new Ryzen 9000s hide a small integrated GPU with 2 CUs similar to the Ryzen 7000 series, an AMD spokesman said.
None of the new Ryzen 9000 processors are here yet; they’ll arrive in July. Unfortunately, we don’t know the answer to a key question: how much does Ryzen 9000 cost? We also don’t know the base clock speed of these new chips, either, nor specifically which process technology they’re being fabricated upon.
AMD didn’t address why it skipped the Ryzen 8000 naming scheme for its new desktop parts, but I assume it was to avoid confusion with the Ryzen 8000 laptop family, the same rationale it used in launching the Ryzen 5000 desktop processors.
AMD Ryzen 9000: how fast is it?
Zen 5 delivers improved branch prediction accuracy and latency, higher throughput, and more parallelism. Specifically, the performance uplift AMD cited includes up to a doubling in the front-end instruction bandwidth, the data bandwidth between caches, and the AI performance in both AI and AVX512 throughput. All of these contribute to the Ryzen 9000’s performance.
These desktop processors do not contain dedicated NPUs, though the Ryzen 8000 series did. (AMD is also launching new mobile processors, the Ryzen AI 300 series, with a more advanced NPU.)
Will AMD’s Ryzen 9000 wipe the floor with Intel? We’ll have to test them to see.
Will AMD’s Ryzen 9000 wipe the floor with Intel? We’ll have to test them to see.Mark Hachman / IDG
Will AMD’s Ryzen 9000 wipe the floor with Intel? We’ll have to test them to see.Mark Hachman / IDG
Mark Hachman / IDG
AMD hasn’t said how many PCIe lanes hang off the processor and chipset, but it is also saying you’ll get double the PCIe 5 bandwidth of an Intel Core i9-14900K. (“Intel’s Meteor Lake has sixteen PCIe 5 lanes to divide,” an AMD spokesman said via email. “If you run a CPU+GPU that usually drops to 8x/4x. On our CPU we have 20 lanes. You can run full 16x/4x.)”)
Separately, AMD is implying that the older 5900XT meets or exceeds the frame rates you’d get while gaming on an Intel Core i7-13700K, and the 5800XT will do the same for a PC powered by an Intel Core 13600KF — at least in some games.
Mark Hachman / IDG
Mark Hachman / IDG
Mark Hachman / IDG
Naturally, we’ll have to wait until July to test AMD’s claims for ourselves. And from there, it’s probably on to Intel’s next desktop chip, Arrow Lake, in the fall.
New X870 motherboards, new Ryzen 5000, and the importance of long-lived sockets
The spectacular launch of the Ryzen 5000 seems long ago in 2020, but AMD is celebrating the continuation of the AM4 socket and Zen 3 architecture with the launch of the Ryzen 9 5900XT as well as the Ryzen 7 5800XT. Do these chips seem familiar? They should. But they’ve also been tuned for additional performance and core count.
AMD launched the 5900X in 2020 as a 12-core/24-thread chip with a 3.8GHz base clock and a 4.8GHz turbo clock. The 5800X is an 8-core, 16-thread chip with 3.8GHz base clock and a 4.7GHz turbo clock.
AMD
AMD
AMD
The 5900XT and the 5800XT (the “T” denotes a bit more performance, Woligroski said) add cores: 16 cores/32 threads for the 5900XT, at up to 4.8GHz speeds; the 5800XT is a 8-core, 16-thread part, also with a 4.8GHz turbo clock. And for these, AMD has released pricing: $359 for the 5900XT and $249 for the 5800XT.
“It should be comforting for someone who wants to invest in something new, that they don’t have to invest in a new platform in the near future,” Woligroski said.
Adam Patrick Murray / Foundry
Adam Patrick Murray / Foundry
Adam Patrick Murray / Foundry
AMD’s commitment to socket consistency means that you’ll have an easy time understanding how AMD’s two new supporting chipsets, the AMD X870 and AMD X870E, fit in. Both are designed for the AM5 socket, which means that they’ll work with older Ryzen 7000 processors, for example. Likewise, you can insert the new Ryzen 9000 processors into older 600-series boards, Woligroski said.
The new chipsets include three key features: USB4 is now standard on motherboards designed for both chipsets; PCIe Gen 5 is also standard for both graphics and NVMe SSDs, too — even though PCIe 5 SSDs are rolling out with some caveats and PCIe5 GPUs have yet to materialize. Finally, AMD has added support for faster memory speeds for its EXPO technology, which is billed as AMD’s easy yet aggressive way to allow memory overclocking on AM5 systems for higher framerates in games.
CPUs and Processors Read...Newslink ©2024 to PC World | ![](/n.gif) |
| ![](/n.gif) | | PC World - 3 Jun (PC World)AMD’s Zen 5 is here! AMD launched its next-generation Ryzen 9000 series of desktop PC processors on Monday morning local time at Computex, kicking off the next round of processor competition between AMD, Intel, and (now) Qualcomm.
If you recall our Ryzen 7950X review, you’ll remember that that chip was accompanied by three others. That’s still the case: AMD launched the flagship Ryzen 9 9950X, plus the Ryzen 9 9900X, the Ryzen 7 9700X, and the Ryzen 5 9600X as well. This is AMD’s “Granite Ridge” architecture, supported by new X870 motherboards.
There’s a treat for existing customers, too: AMD is formally extending the lifespan of its AM5 socket through 2027, up from the previously pledged 2025, and is adding the Ryzen 9 5900XT and Ryzen 7 5800XT too on the AM5 platform. (AMD continues to show the older AM4 platform existing through 2024, too.)
Recall Intel’s new strategy: chasing Qualcomm into the low-power, all-day computing space while trying to maintain performance. AMD has leaned harder into outperforming its competitors, and is capitalizing on that. But there is no AI in these parts, unlike the AMD Ryzen 8000G series of APUs.
AMD chief executive Dr. Lisa Su launches the new Ryzen 9000 processor at Computex.
AMD chief executive Dr. Lisa Su launches the new Ryzen 9000 processor at Computex.Mark Hachman / IDG
AMD chief executive Dr. Lisa Su launches the new Ryzen 9000 processor at Computex.Mark Hachman / IDG
Mark Hachman / IDG
“This is the world’s most powerful consumer desktop processor,” said Donny Woligroski, senior technical marketing manager of consumer processors at AMD.
AMD Ryzen 9000: Speeds and feeds
From a product standpoint, the Ryzen 9 9950X looks very familiar: with 16 cores, 32 threads, and a 170W TDP, the 9950X looks the same on paper as the 7950X. (The Ryzen 8000 desktop APUs launched last fall are much more modest.) The difference? A significant IPC (instructions per clock) improvement. AMD is citing a 16 percent IPC improvement gen-over-gen on top apps and games, when comparing the Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 7 7700X.
FOur new Ryzen 900 chips wil be launched today at Computex.
FOur new Ryzen 900 chips wil be launched today at Computex.Mark Hachman / IDG
FOur new Ryzen 900 chips wil be launched today at Computex.Mark Hachman / IDG
Mark Hachman / IDG
The lower-end Ryzen 9000 chips benefit from the same performance boost, too. But there are even more hidden benefits there, albeit more understated.
Both the Ryzen 7 9700X and the Ryzen 5 9600X maintain the same core and thread count as their predecessors. But clock speeds have been nudged up a bit, and there’s a been significant drop in power: the older Ryzen 7 7700X and Ryzen 5 7600X were 105W parts. The new Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 5 9600X consume just 65W, which will save some money on utility bills. They’re about on par with the slower turbo power settings of Intel’s H-series Meteor Lake parts, too, at 64W. (Qualcomm hasn’t cited TDP numbers for the Snapdragon X Elite.)
The lower power is a result of a combination of the chip’s process technology, firmware, and power optimizations an AMD spokesman said via email. The Ryzen 9000 chiplets are built on an optimized high-performance TSMC 4nm process node alongside a 6nm I/O die with integrated AMD RDNA 2 graphics and DDR5 memory and PCIe 5.0 controllers, he added.
Ryzen 9000 under the hood.
Ryzen 9000 under the hood.Adam Patrick Murray / Foundry
Ryzen 9000 under the hood.Adam Patrick Murray / Foundry
Adam Patrick Murray / Foundry
All of the new Ryzen 9000s hide a small integrated GPU with 2 CUs similar to the Ryzen 7000 series, an AMD spokesman said.
None of the new Ryzen 9000 processors are here yet; they’ll arrive in July. Unfortunately, we don’t know the answer to a key question: how much does Ryzen 9000 cost? We also don’t know the base clock speed of these new chips, either, nor specifically which process technology they’re being fabricated upon.
AMD didn’t address why it skipped the Ryzen 8000 naming scheme for its new desktop parts, but I assume it was to avoid confusion with the Ryzen 8000 laptop family, the same rationale it used in launching the Ryzen 5000 desktop processors.
AMD Ryzen 9000: how fast is it?
Zen 5 delivers improved branch prediction accuracy and latency, higher throughput, and more parallelism. Specifically, the performance uplift AMD cited includes up to a doubling in the front-end instruction bandwidth, the data bandwidth between caches, and the AI performance in both AI and AVX512 throughput. All of these contribute to the Ryzen 9000’s performance.
These desktop processors do not contain dedicated NPUs, though the Ryzen 8000 series did. (AMD is also launching new mobile processors, the Ryzen AI 300 series, with a more advanced NPU.)
Will AMD’s Ryzen 9000 wipe the floor with Intel? We’ll have to test them to see.
Will AMD’s Ryzen 9000 wipe the floor with Intel? We’ll have to test them to see.Mark Hachman / IDG
Will AMD’s Ryzen 9000 wipe the floor with Intel? We’ll have to test them to see.Mark Hachman / IDG
Mark Hachman / IDG
AMD hasn’t said how many PCIe lanes hang off the processor and chipset, but it is also saying you’ll get double the PCIe 5 bandwidth of an Intel Core i9-14900K. (“Intel’s Meteor Lake has sixteen PCIe 5 lanes to divide,” an AMD spokesman said via email. “If you run a CPU+GPU that usually drops to 8x/4x. On our CPU we have 20 lanes. You can run full 16x/4x.)”)
Separately, AMD is implying that the older 5900XT meets or exceeds the frame rates you’d get while gaming on an Intel Core i7-13700K, and the 5800XT will do the same for a PC powered by an Intel Core 13600KF — at least in some games.
Mark Hachman / IDG
Mark Hachman / IDG
Mark Hachman / IDG
Naturally, we’ll have to wait until July to test AMD’s claims for ourselves. And from there, it’s probably on to Intel’s next desktop chip, Arrow Lake, in the fall.
New X870 motherboards, new Ryzen 5000, and the importance of long-lived sockets
The spectacular launch of the Ryzen 5000 seems long ago in 2020, but AMD is celebrating the continuation of the AM4 socket and Zen 3 architecture with the launch of the Ryzen 9 5900XT as well as the Ryzen 7 5800XT. Do these chips seem familiar? They should. But they’ve also been tuned for additional performance and core count.
AMD launched the 5900X in 2020 as a 12-core/24-thread chip with a 3.8GHz base clock and a 4.8GHz turbo clock. The 5800X is an 8-core, 16-thread chip with 3.8GHz base clock and a 4.7GHz turbo clock.
AMD
AMD
AMD
The 5900XT and the 5800XT (the “T” denotes a bit more performance, Woligroski said) add cores: 16 cores/32 threads for the 5900XT, at up to 4.8GHz speeds; the 5800XT is a 8-core, 16-thread part, also with a 4.8GHz turbo clock. And for these, AMD has released pricing: $359 for the 5900XT and $249 for the 5800XT.
“It should be comforting for someone who wants to invest in something new, that they don’t have to invest in a new platform in the near future,” Woligroski said.
Adam Patrick Murray / Foundry
Adam Patrick Murray / Foundry
Adam Patrick Murray / Foundry
AMD’s commitment to socket consistency means that you’ll have an easy time understanding how AMD’s two new supporting chipsets, the AMD X870 and AMD X870E, fit in. Both are designed for the AM5 socket, which means that they’ll work with older Ryzen 7000 processors, for example. Likewise, you can insert the new Ryzen 9000 processors into older 600-series boards, Woligroski said.
The new chipsets include three key features: USB4 is now standard on motherboards designed for both chipsets; PCIe Gen 5 is also standard for both graphics and NVMe SSDs, too — even though PCIe 5 SSDs are rolling out with some caveats and PCIe5 GPUs have yet to materialize. Finally, AMD has added support for faster memory speeds for its EXPO technology, which is billed as AMD’s easy yet aggressive way to allow memory overclocking on AM5 systems for higher framerates in games.
CPUs and Processors Read...Newslink ©2024 to PC World | ![](/n.gif) |
| ![](/n.gif) | | PC World - 3 Jun (PC World)Yes, it’s true: That old AI gaming assistant April Fools’ joke that Nvidia made all the way back in 2017 is now reality. Well, kinda. And if Nvidia’s plans come to fruition, it could make your favorite PC gaming forums and wikis obsolete.
During its Computex keynote, Nvidia revealed “Project G-Assist” for the creation of customizable AI assistants for PC gamers, running on GeForce graphics cards. These AI assistants can be tuned to help you in specific games, providing detailed information about your personal adventures while reacting to on-screen events. They can also analyze and tune your entire gaming PC on the fly.
Ever wondered “What the hell is that??!!” when confronted by a snarling new alien menace in a game? G-Assist can tell you—and not just that, but also the optimal build for your character path if you’d like. It can then overclock your GPU to speed up performance, all without ever needing to leave your game.
Nvidia’s Project G-Assist is the ultimate gaming sidekick
Nvidia
Nvidia
Nvidia
Project G-Assist is the codename for a series of AI technologies and frameworks provided by Nvidia, with several new tools revealed for developers at the show. These capabilities monitor your gaming inputs (including on-screen information), process those inputs through a large language model (AI) with specifically trained data sets helped by other tools, then feed you the information you’re looking for in real time.
Anyone can use these tools however they see fit to create their own gaming assistants. The sky is the limit here. Nvidia provided two AI assistant concepts to show off G-Assist’s potential in eye-opening ways.
First, Nvidia created an Ark: Survival Ascended demo that shows how powerful these tools can be when they’re integrated by game developers and trained on a deep data set for that specific game.
It’s actually remarkable. Via a floating text field, you can ask the AI assistant what the best early weapons are, skill recommendations for your particular character build, help with problems, and more. It’s like having the world’s most knowledgeable wiki author riding shotgun with you, and you never have to alt-tab out to find the crucial info you need.
Nvidia
Nvidia
Nvidia
It’s a compelling vision—and it’s aided by computer vision, remember. In the demo, the protagonist asked “What is that thing?” while looking at a dinosaur and was promptly told that it’s most likely a titansaur, “[which] can be identified by its massive size and long neck.”
It’s easy to imagine enthusiast communities training their own AI assistants to provide tailored experiences for their favorite games, or developers providing help bots for new players, or an all-encompassing assistant trained on the top wikis to help in any game.
We’ll have to see if that dream winds up being reality, though. This all looks fantastic in theory, but Nvidia releases a lot of impressive tech demos and not all of them wind up being embraced by the community.
HAL, overclock my PC
But G-Assist’s potential isn’t limited to the act of playing games alone. Nvidia also showed off another G-Assist bot designed to help PC players tune their settings on the fly while tooling around in Cyberpunk 2077.
Nvidia
Nvidia
Nvidia
It was able to change options when asked to optimize the settings for image quality. It also suggested enabling Nvidia Reflex to reduce latency due to the system’s measurements at the time.
And when asked to provide a latency graph for the last 60 seconds, it popped one up immediately. That’s potentially a very helpful capability when you’re troubleshooting problems or trying to improve your responsiveness in-game.
Heck, it even initiated Nvidia’s one-click overclocking feature on command, complete with information about the GPU’s old and new clock speed measurements.
RAMMING SPEED
RAMMING SPEEDNvidia
RAMMING SPEEDNvidia
Nvidia
There’s a lot of promise here, and G-Assist showcases what’s possible with AI when you have a full-fat graphics card by your side. You won’t see GPU-less Copilot+ laptops pulling off capabilities like this, this fast, while actively gaming, on an NPU anytime soon. There’s a reason why Nvidia is pushing GeForce-equipped hardware as “Premium AI PCs” behind closed doors.
Separately, Nvidia is also working to introduce generative AI-powered NPCs in games via its Avatar Cloud Engine technology, which looks better and better every time we see it. Nvidia’s Seth Schneider recently joined our Full Nerd podcast to show off the ACE-powered Covert Protocol demo revealed at GDC this spring. Look for new ACE demos to be out in force during Computex 2024.
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