AMD made its upcoming Ryzen 8000 CPU series official earlier this week during a "Meet the Experts" presentation - a roadmap demonstrates that this next-generation "Zen 5" + "Navi 3.5" mainstream desktop processor lineup is expected to arrive in 2024. Leaked information (from last month) points to "Granite Ridge" being AMD's codename for the upcoming processor product range, with high-end examples maxing out at 16 CPU cores across two CCDs. Benchleaks has recently spotted a pair of curious looking AMD engineering samples - entries have appeared on the einstein@home and LHC@home distributed computing platforms.

The mystery SKU seems to be a prototype CPU model that sports 8 cores and 16 threads - the AMD product number (OPN) for this unit is "00-000001290-11_N" which does not correspond to anything currently on the market. A Family ID of 26 is specified - Benchleaks theorizes that this number assignment is "Zen 5" specific - given that the existing Family 25 (19H) identifier was assigned to Zen 3 and 4. It should be noted that one of AMD's alleged test systems appears to have been running unreleased graphics hardware - a non-specific Radeon unit (with 12 GB of VRAM) is mentioned within einstein@home's information dump, this could be a potential mid-range RX 7000-series card. A Radeon RX 7900 GRE GPU with an unusually low video memory allocation of 16 GB is listed in LHC@home's entry.

IGN has been informed by inside sources that Electronic Arts is in negotiations to "offload" ongoing development and support of BioWare's long running MMORPG "Star Wars: The Old Republic" to a third party studio. In a news article published yesterday speculation points to Broadsword Online Games being the prime candidate to takeover a franchise that has been kept alive since December 2011. Broadsword was established about a decade ago by Rob Denton - a former BioWare Vice President and co-founder of Mythic Entertainment - his team currently oversees the running of Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot. The IGN news piece notes that Denton previously worked on Star Wars: The Old Republic during its incubation period.

Electronic Arts has since caught wind of IGN's report and provided the news site with their own statement today: "Almost 12 years after launch, Star Wars: The Old Republic remains a success and continues to grow its dedicated and passionate community. We're so proud of the work the team has done, and the future of the game and the community continues to be very bright. We're evaluating how we give the game and the team the best opportunity to grow and evolve, which includes conversations with Broadsword, a boutique studio that specializes in delivering online, community-driven experiences. Our goal is to do what is best for the game and its players." The spokesperson's wording on the matter does not fully confirm that Broadsword is fully confirmed to takeover, but IGN's inside information posits that Electronic Arts will remain as the franchise publisher, while BioWare will concentrate on the development of its single-player intellectual properties (Dragon Age and Mass Effect).

CD Projekt has responded to this weekend's rumors of a possible takeover bid by Sony's gaming division (Interactive Entertainment) - a leaker well known within the Destiny 2 community suggested that the (publicly traded) Polish games publishing and development group was on the cusp of signing up as first party entity. CD Projekt president and CEO Adam Kiciński addressed this matter in a company earnings meeting, he affirmed that no change in operations was incoming: "Nothing has changed in our end...So, I can repeat what we have been saying throughout the years - CD Projekt is not for sale. We want to remain independent. We have, I believe an excellent strategy. Not easy to execute, for sure, but it's very exciting to follow our own path. So it's a pure rumor." One of the company's PR representatives, Ola Sondej, also denied (on Twitter) that acquisition negotiations were in-progress: "Yah, we're not in such talks with Sony."

The earnings call also resulted in an announcement of The Witcher 3 selling more than 50 million copies - pointing to it being the ninth highest-selling game of all time. The Witcher franchise (consisting of three main line titles) has achieved lifetime sales of more than 75 million units. Despite this good news, CD Projekt has experienced a decline of 20% in net sales (for Q1 2023) - it seems that a reliance on continued revenue from older games can only go so far. Half of the main development team is committed to supporting Cyberpunk 2077, and finalizing a DLC campaign - Phantom Liberty, although CD Projekt has not yet set a firm release date for this extra content. Preview code is destined to make an appearance at this year's Summer Game Fest (June 9 to 10). Multiple Witcher games are in the pipeline, as well as a Cyberpunk sequel.

AMD is reported to be forming plans for its Instinct MI400 Accelerator series, according to a leaked internal email. This information was shared by a hardware tipster (HXL/@9550Pro) on Twitter, but their post has been deleted as some point today. Wccftech was quick enough to note down the details, and their report suggests that AMD is already making plans for an APU range that is set to succeed the unreleased Instinct MI300 lineup (expected later in 2023). Instinct MI400 accelerators are touted to drive next generation data center and cloud platforms.

The leaked email email contained information about three upcoming products: Weisshorn, MI450 and XSwitch. Kepler's recent tweet posits that Weisshorn is AMD's in-house moniker for Zen 6 "Morpheus" architecture-based Venice CPUs - these are alleged to form part of an upcoming EPYC lineup (slated for 2025 or 2026). Hardware experts reckon that AMD will introduce a new interconnect fabric with the MI400 series - "XSwitch" is speculated to be the company's main technological answer to NVIDIA's NVLINK.

The fate of Intel's Meteor Lake-S desktop CPU lineup has been the topic of much debate since the end of last year - at the time, industry tipsters proposed that part of the product range had been disposed of entirely, but several leaks throughout the course of 2023 have indicated that MTL-S processors were on-track for a launch later in the year - albeit restricted to i3 and i5 offerings. An Intel employee has also confirmed that a new SKU naming system will be implemented as part of the upcoming Meteor Lake lineup - although he did not clarify whether this would encompass both mobile and desktop variants.

An alleged Intel client CPU roadmap has made its way onto the internet, and tipsters think that the information on hand shows that Team Blue has pulled the plug on its Meteor Lake-S (6 Performance and 8 Efficiency cores) desktop processors. The presentation slide was likely authored earlier this month - so these developments are relatively fresh, with provisions for Core S, H, PX, M, U & N series. The heavily redacted infographic maps out product release windows going as far forward as Q4 2026. OneRaichu posits that an Arrow Lake-S (6P + 8E) CPU lineup will replace MTL-S. It is possible that Intel's Raptor Lake-S refresh could serve as an interim release this year, since the Arrow Lake generation is expected to arrive in 2024.

Self-described mixed reality nerd, Brad Lynch, has tweeted out several interesting details about Apple's yet-to-be announced VR/AR headset. He has managed to compile information from several sources - mostly reports produced by hardware analysts based in China. His summation of the leaked info states: "The Apple HMD's Bill of Materials (BoM) cost to be about $1500-1600 (USD). This is about double the reported BoM for the (Meta) Quest Pro (which was 800 dollars including the controllers and charging pad)."

Minsheng Electronics's article suggests that 400,000 - 500,000 headset units are set for production in the second half of this year. An operating system with the codename "rOS" is reportedly clashing with Apple's traditional iOS mobile platform, but the author does not provide further information about these compatibility issues. The headset's operating system is supposedly capable of supporting a wide range of games, productivity applications and methods of video communication.

A Taiwanese PC hardware news outlet, Benchlife, has been talking to insider sources positioned within several of NVIDIA's add-in-board (AIB) partners - the author reports that these organizations are experiencing significant changeovers. The AIB informants indicate that production of GeForce RTX 4060 and 4060 Ti models is accelerating, following rumors of the older Ampere-based RTX 3060 Ti card being discontinued. The article's author was seeking further clarification and confirmation from industry insiders, given that most of the recent leaks have emerged from Chinese technology discussion boards. Forumites have posited that NVIDIA has stopped supplying its AIB partners with RTX 3060 Ti silicon. It is difficult to tell whether (via translation) the AIB tipsters have concluded that the older card is totally done for, but NVIDIA is prioritizing the launch of new products.

It would make sense for Team Green to clear the way for the much newer Ada Lovelace-based lineups, but their entry level RTX 3060 cards have remained firm favorites with PC hardware buyers, so it could be quite tricky to play catch up with succeeding product lines. NVIDIA's component suppliers have stated (back in mid-April) that RTX 4000-series GPU production was not ramping up, due to a possible slow uptake of existing cards - in particular the recently released RTX 4070. Given the vast popularity of budget graphics card models, it seems that NVIDIA is preparing to embrace that market segment once again with its latest offerings - due for launch at the end of this month.

Earlier today Nintendo released its financial/earning reports for the fiscal year ending March 2023, and company president Shuntaro Furukawa has briefed investors about sales forecasts, according to a report published by Bloomberg. Furukawa-san predicts that the Switch gaming console will only sell 15 million units over the next fiscal year - sales have been slowing down for a while according to Nintendo's figures, with almost 18 million units purchased throughout 2022-23. The numbers are still very impressive when you consider that Nintendo's flagship gaming platform has been on the market for just over six years - across that span of time, total unit sales have hit the 125.62 million mark.

Furukawa also informed shareholders about the prospect of a Switch console successor arriving within the next fiscal period - Bloomberg's article brings the bad news at this point - it seems that Nintendo is not anticipating a new hardware launch within that time frame. Nintendo's software release schedule - especially in regards to first party titles - looks very threadbare for the rest of the year. The much anticipated Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrives on Friday (May 12) followed by Pikmin 4 in July, but things look to be quiet after that - unless Nintendo has a few surprises lined up for June's preview event season. Rumors of a next generation Switch have been doing the rounds since 2020, back then a "Pro" model was often touted - fans later found out that Nintendo had simply refreshed the system with an OLED panel, some tweaks to chipset efficiency, and updated the docking system to modern output standards - this premium model hit the market in late 2021.

A couple of TPU readers will be happy to learn of more rumors relating to Sony's "in the works" PlayStation 5 Pro model - following on from last week's news about about a possible interim modular model - and curious commenters asking for additional information. Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson has been a notorious source of PS5-related leaks for a while - the aforementioned modular console variant has been leading topic for the guy and today he provides a small update on the matter: "You're probably already sick of hearing about the new PlayStation 5 with a detachable disc drive that should release later this year. Although reports have dubbed the new PlayStation 5 as the PS5 Slim, Insider Gaming understands that the console will be almost identical to the PlayStation 5 but feature a detachable disc drive. In fact, it's understood that the new PlayStation 5 will completely phase out the old design within a year."

His newly reformed and theorized PlayStation future timeline also contains an update about the PlayStation 5's "Pro" refresh - Sony is rumored to preparing this more powerful hardware variant for a Q4 2024 launch and Henderson insists that his past findings have been consistent and on point: "Our report in March was dismissed as being inaccurate by many when it was first reported and although the PlayStation 5 Pro could be canceled at any given time, Insider Gaming can report with a 100% degree of certainty that the PlayStation 5 Pro is currently in development." He claims that his industry sources have provided him with fresh batches of evidence: "Whilst we cannot report on any more specifics at this time, we understand that the first dev kit prototypes will be going to 1st party developers within the next couple of months, with 3rd party developers receiving them by the end of the year." Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are normally very guarded about development and prototype hardware, so very few developers (with access to these bits of kit) have been brave enough to break signed NDAs. Sony has once again chosen to be extremely secretive - no official information has been released about upcoming refreshed PS5 consoles or related accessories.

Sony Interactive Entertainment has filed a patent that is now viewable to the public - as spotted by SegmentNext today - and the newly registered device could be designed to function as part of an updated variant of the PlayStation 5 home video game console. The 2020-era patent document showcases a type of detachable optical disc drive, and industry experts reckon that this mountable media reading device is destined, following past rumors, to feature in an upcoming PlayStation 5 hardware revision.

No reference is made to Sony's popular gaming console within the patent filing, but it is highly likely that the new optical drive will factor into the refreshed console's modular makeup - its overall shape shares design aesthetics with the PS5. Sony currently offers customers two variants of the PlayStation 5 - the more advanced model is fitted with an internal 4K Blu-Ray compatible disc drive, while the other one functions as a purely digital download device. The modular revamp is expected to arrive later this year, in a more compact form factor that industry insiders have called "D chassis" - it is not known whether this variant will outright replace the older models. A more powerful PlayStation 5 "Pro" model is expected to arrive after the modular redesign, with tipsters pointing to a launch window in mid-to-late 2024.

Samsung's unannounced Exynos 2400 mobile chipset has been linked to the upcoming Galaxy S24 smartphone family, but internet tipsters have speculated that the in-house SoC will be reserved for the baseline model only. The more expensive Plus and Ultra variants could be the main targets for flagship smartphone fetishists - it is possible that Qualcomm's upper echelon Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset is set to feature within these premium devices. Samsung's Exynos processors are not considered to be fan favorites, but industry insiders reckon that the latest performance figures indicate that Samsung's up-and-comer has the potential to turn some heads. Exact specifications for the Exynos 2400 are not public knowledge - one of the tipsters suggests that a 10-core layout has been settled on by Samsung, as well as a recent bump up in GPU core count - from 6 to 12. The company's own 4 nm SF4P process is the apparent choice set for production line.

A leaker has posted benchmark scores generated by an unknown device that was running an Exynos 2400 SoC - the Geekbench 5 results indicate an average single-core score of 1530 with a peak of 1711. The multi-core average score is shown to be 6210, and the highest number achieved is 6967. Therefore the Exynos 2400 is 31% percent faster (in multi-core performance) than the refreshed Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 variant currently found in Galaxy S23 Ultra smartphones, but the divide between the two in terms of single-core performance is not so great. The 2400 manages to outpace (by 30%) Apple's present generation Bionic A16's average multi-core score, although the latter beats the presumed engineering sample's single-core result by 20%. The Exynos 2400 will face a new lineup of rival mobile processors in 2024 - namely Apple's next generation Bionic A17 and Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, so it is difficult to extrapolate today's leaked figures into a future scenario.

Conflicting reports are flying around about Apple's next generation MacBook Air lineup, mostly surrounding suggestions of a firm release date or debut reveal at WWDC 2023. 9to5Mac claims that its insider sources have pointed to a new range of M3 chipset powered MacBook Air extra thin laptops offered up in two different screen sizes: 13-inch and 15-inch. An insider claimed last month that Apple's upcoming laptop lineup was in an advanced stage of production, and was far along enough to warrant an "imminent" launch window. A Taiwanese publication has presented new evidence this week, and it posits that Apple could drop M3 chipset-based laptops from announcement presentations organized for this year's Worldwide Developers Conference, which is set to take place from June 5 to 9.

According to the financial section of Taiwan's UDN news site, Apple's key decision makers could be in favor of fielding laptops based on its current generation M2 SoC, instead of an entry-level M3-based range, due to delays and changes in priority for the N3B node at TSMC foundries. This is seen as an odd move given reports from earlier this month of Apple requesting a reduction in factory output for its M2 chips, following a slump in demand. Apple could be changing its strategy with regards to the alleged surplus of M2 silicon - the article theorizes that the company will spend more time fitting the older generation chipsets into a new range of laptops and desktop computers. An M3-based product line could be delayed into late 2023, and it is alleged that TSMC has been instructed to concentrate mostly on manufacturing Apple's Bionix A17 mobile chipset via the cutting edge 3 nm FinFet technology process (N3B) - earmarked to debut on the iPhone 15 Pro in autumn 2023.

Smartphone specialists Oppo and OnePlus have responded to the rumors of both companies exiting several European markets, as well as the UK. In a joint statement provided to Android Authority the message was a promise to stay put in 2023: "OPPO and OnePlus are committed to all the existing European markets. We had a great start in 2023 with the successful launches of several products in Europe and have a line-up of upcoming products for the rest of the year. As always, OPPO and OnePlus will continue to provide more innovative products and the best-in-class service for users moving forward."

Starting yesterday, industry tipsters issued posts about Oppo and OnePlus withdrawing from markets in Europe, with more immediate exits from key territories - France, Germany, Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The cited reasons for exiting the aforementioned markets include a massive slowdown in regional sales and legal cases levied by competitors in regard to patent infringements on Oppo's part. The lawsuits that were levied by Nokia have resulted in a number of Oppo and OnePlus devices being banned from sale in Germany.

MSI was conspicuous with its lack of Radeon RX 7900 series graphics cards at launch, with neither product announcements, nor even placeholder product pages on its website as of this writing. Rumors started to fly on social media that the company is skipping the RX 7900 series, and that all is not well between MSI and AMD Radeon group. MSI last week laid many of these rumors to rest, with its MSI Gaming Twitter handle quote-tweeting an AMD Radeon handle with the message "Available Soon."

Andreas Schilling of HardwareLuxx.de added more clarity on the issue with some first-hand info: although MSI skipped the December 12/13 launch dates, the company is preparing to release some custom-design RX 7900 series cards, and will present them in Q1-2023. The company is however skipping the launch of reference-design MBA (made by AMD) cards under its own brand—something most other AMD add-in board (AIB) partners did release on December 12. Although AMD directly sells reference-design cards, it also sells them through its AIB partners, by allowing them to use their own brand identity, custom packaging, inclusions, and product warranty specific to the brand.

An alleged AMD client product roadmap slide leaked to the web confirms the Ryzen 7000X3D series. This also builds on a confirmation by Robert Hallock that 3DV Cache technology remains a continued part of the company's client processor roadmap. The 3DV Cache tech played in instrumental role in shoring up gaming performance of AMD's previous-generation "Zen 3" microarchitecture to levels matching or exceeding those of the Intel "Alder Lake," with a performance uplift in the range of 10 to 25 percent. The expectations for 3DV Cache to work a similar miracle with "Zen 4" are set rather high.

While "Zen 4" has achieved gaming performance parity with "Alder Lake," Intel's next-generation "Raptor Lake" is right around the corner, with the company claiming 10-15% single-threaded performance uplifts that should restore the its gaming performance leadership over AMD. The alleged AMD roadmap does not specify when exactly the Ryzen 7000X3D comes out, but is part of the block that spans Q3-2022, deep into 2023. Rumors are abuzz that the company could unveil the 7000X3D in the first half of 2023.

Intel's accelerated computing group head Raja Koduri, who heads the team behind the Arc "Alchemist" graphics, on late-Sunday, refuted rumors about the company shutting down the Arc graphics product line. Responding to a question to that effect on Twitter, Koduri tweeted "we are shrugging about these rumors as well. They don't help the team working hard to bring these to market, they don't help the PC graphics community..one must wonder, who do they help?..we are still in first gen and yes we had more obstacles than planned to overcome, but we persisted."

Rumors about Intel dropping the axe on Arc have been around for some time now, after repeated delays in getting the products to market, limited regional launches; and gathered steam as Intel closed down the Optane Memory business last quarter. Last week, after Intel presented a less-than-perfect outlook for its processor business hinted that it could exit "other" unprofitable businesses.

Nintendo Switch is one of the most successful gaming console launches in the past few years. It has seen massive consumer adoption, and Nintendo is even expanding its production. The only logical thing for other companies watching this would be to step in the game and launch their console. That is exactly was the latest rumor suggests about Apple. According to a rumor coming from the South Korean forum, Apple could be preparing a Switch-like design, just with its custom Apple ecosystem surrounding it. As the rumors suggest, the fruit company could get into the console gaming market by launching a product based on custom hardware. Rumors suggest that Apple could use a custom processor to power the console, which wouldn't be like M or A versions the company currently uses. Of course, this is just a rumor and it should be treated as such.

Rumors of AMD refreshing its 3rd generation Ryzen desktop processor family are growing louder. On Friday (22/05), reports of the "Matisse Refresh" processor family surfaced, with talk of "Ryzen 7 3850X" and "Ryzen 7 3750X" processors headed for a June 2020 announcement followed by July availability. Turns out AMD has a different naming scheme in mind, targeted at wooing gamers. The company is reportedly bringing its "XT" brand extension over from its Radeon graphics card family over to the Ryzen line.

There are three SKUs AMD is developing, the Ryzen 9 3900XT, the Ryzen 7 3800XT, and the Ryzen 5 3600 XT. All three are likely to retain core counts of the SKUs they are displacing from current price points - with the 3900XT likely being a 12-core/24-thread part; the 3800XT an 8-core/16-thread part, and the 3600XT a 6-core/12-thread part. AMD is likely to give the three a major clock speed increase to shore up gaming performance. It won't surprise us if AMD tinkers with boost algorithms, either. GIGABYTE has already referenced "Matisse Refresh" in its motherboard product roadmaps, which adds plenty of credibilty to this rumor. With "Zen 3" based 4th gen Ryzen processors unlikely to relieve the embattled 3900X, 3800X, and 3600X in the wake of Intel's 10th gen Core "Comet Lake" launch until Q4-2020, it makes sense for AMD to plan a product stack refresh to bolster its competitiveness. AMD is reportedly planning a June 16 product announcement, followed by July 7 availability.

AMD is planning to immediately update its product stack to counter the Intel 10th gen Core "Comet Lake-S" desktop processor family. Codenamed "Matisse Refresh," the processor will use existing IP, based on the 7 nm "Zen 2" microarchitecture, but could improve in areas such as clock-speeds. As it now stands, the Ryzen 9 3900X appears unfazed by the i9-10900K and i7-10700K at its new $410 price, however, competitiveness of the 3800X and 3700X could buckle under pressure from the i7-10700 series (K, KF, non-K, and F), as well as the Core i5-10600 series. To this effect, we're hearing rumors of a "Ryzen 7 3750X" and "Ryzen 7 3850X" seeing the light of the day soon, with an early-June announcement, and early-July market availability. References to the 3750X date back to October 2019.

Rumors of "Matisse Refresh" gained traction when WCCFTech editor Hassan Mujtaba tweeted a slide from a GIGABYTE AMD B550 motherboard series pre-launch presentation, which references GIGABYTE's own interpretation of AMD's roadmap. It lists out every CPU microarchitecture for the AM4 platform, and right next to "Matisse" is "& Refresh," confirming that "Matisse Refresh" is real. A microarchitecture "refresh" needn't even involve any physical changes to the processor design, core-counts, or architecture, and can sometimes even indicate something as simple as a second major wave of SKUs that replace existing SKUs in the market, leading to their phase-out (eg: Intel "Haswell Refresh" retaining the 4th gen Core model numbering). The slide also adds weight to the theory that desktop "Renoir," like its mobile counterpart, lacks PCIe gen 4.0. The slide also talks about AMD introducing the entry-level A520 desktop chipset in August, which will support PCIe gen 4 when paired with a capable processor.

PC hardware focused YouTube channel Moore's Law is Dead published a juicy tech-spec reveal of NVIDIA's next-generation "Ampere" based flagship consumer graphics card, the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, citing correspondence with sources within NVIDIA. The report talks of big changes to NVIDIA's Founders Edition (reference) board design, as well as what's on the silicon. To begin with, the RTX 3080 Ti reference-design card features a triple-fan cooling solution unlike the RTX 20-series. This cooler is reportedly quieter than the RTX 2080 Ti FE cooling solution. The card pulls power from a pair of 8-pin PCIe power connectors. Display outputs include three DP, and one each of HDMI and VirtualLink USB-C. The source confirms that "Ampere" will implement PCI-Express gen 4.0 x16 host interface.

With "Ampere," NVIDIA is developing three tiers of high-end GPUs, with the "GA102" leading the pack and succeeding the "TU102," the "GA104" holding the upper-performance segment and succeeding today's "TU104," but a new silicon between the two, codenamed "GA103," with no predecessor from the current-generation. The "GA102" reportedly features 5,376 "Ampere" CUDA cores (up to 10% higher IPC than "Turing"). The silicon also taps into the rumored 7 nm-class silicon fabrication node to dial up GPU clock speeds well above 2.20 GHz even for the "GA102." Smaller chips in the series can boost beyond 2.50 GHz, according to the report. Even with the "GA102" being slightly cut-down for the RTX 3080 Ti, the silicon could end up with FP32 compute performance in excess of 21 TFLOPs. The card uses faster 18 Gbps GDDR6 memory, ending up with 863 GB/s of memory bandwidth that's 40% higher than that of the RTX 2080 Ti (if the memory bus width ends up 384-bit). Below are screengrabs from the Moore's Law is Dead video presentation, and not NVIDIA slides.

Apple released the third developer preview of its OS X "Mountain Lion" operating system for Macs and Macbooks. The Developer Preview 3 (Build 12A178q) was released to members of the Mac Developer Program. While a change-log is not listed, a number of new known issues with the build were listed, which Apple, along with its MDP partners are working on. OS X "Mountain Lion" is Apple's next major operating system for Macs, Macbooks, Mac Pro, and Mac Servers. It is slated for late Summer, 2012.

To capitalize on its dominant iPad brand, and offer devices at untapped price-points, Apple is said to be working on a smaller variant, so far referred to as "iPad Mini". This little fellow will pack a smaller 7.85-inch screen compared to the 9.7-inch screen on standard-sized iPad. The fresh round of rumors were supported by sources in the video games industry, who tend to be aware of upcoming iPad products, since it's a gaming platform with sizable reach. The iPad Mini could start at a staggering price of US $199, and is headed for a Q3, 2012 release.

Finally, next generation gaming consoles are around the corner. It will have an uplifting effect on the entire gaming industry as it will raise the bar for visual and technical detail in games. Many of today's games are designed keeping consoles in mind, and so their PC platform versions don't look much more than what has come to be known as "console-ports". There are a few exceptions to this, but it would be refreshing to see most game developers move on to creating games that take advantage of today's insanely powerful PC platform, because the console platform will have caught up technologically.

Rumors have it, that Microsoft will be developing not one, but two product lines that succeed the Xbox 360, and we're not talking about product variants here, but two distinct lines. The first of the two will be an entry-level console designed more like a set-top box, designed around the Kinect controller (perhaps something to compete against Nintendo Wii U). The second product line will be the one that will be supercharged with the latest technologies that will raise the bar in graphics. It will compete with whatever succeeds the Playstation 3. There is talk that it will pack a 6 core processor, an AMD-made GPU, and 2 GB of fast DDR3 memory. This console could be unveiled to the world (although not launched), at the CES event held in January. Meanwhile, Microsoft is allowing TSMC some time to refine its 28 nm bulk process.

AMD is attempting to revive its competitiveness that took a beating with NVIDIA's introduction of 55 nm G200b-based graphics accelerators. The method AMD seems to be adopting is by giving its existing flagship GPU, the RV770, a series of design improvements that facilitate higher clock-speeds, in turn, better performance on offer.

A lot has been said about RV790 till date, with each commentator coming up with a new version of the story. It has been more or less established that the RV790 will be a improvement over the RV770, though not a revolutionary one. Fresh information gathered by PC Games Hardware places a realistic estimate on up to where RV790 is going to push the performance envelope for AMD.

Intel is planning on serving a heaping pile of pain to AMD's revenue/stock figures again in a few months, by developing a six-core juggernaut. While AMD is still tweaking on a way to merely get four cores to work in tandem, Intel is hard at work shoving two more cores on one die. This six-core monstrosity will be succeeded by the even beefier Nehalem micro-architecture, which could have up to eight cores on one die. Most of the Dunnington project is still top-secret, but some say that Intel already has most of the hard work done.

Intel has already put together a die, the size of a postage stamp, with three dual-core 45nm Penryn chips on it sharing a 16MB L3 cache. Allegedly, we'll see the Dunnington in either Q2 or Q3, this year

.