As we get closer to a possible late summer/early autumn release window for mid-range AMD Radeon RX 7000-series gaming graphics cards, more leaks have emerged from sources in Asia. Benchlife believes that "in addition to Radeon RX 7900 GRE, AMD and its AIB partners are also preparing two Navi 32 chip graphics cards such as Radeon RX 7800 XT and Radeon RX 7700 XT, which are expected to be available in early September." Previous leaks have indicated that a September launch is planned, albeit with the RX 7800 XT SKU being based on a heavily modified Navi 31 GPU.

Two non-XT units have recently emerged via leaked benchmark results, so there could be a good number of options lined up for a third quarter 2023 launch. Jon Peddle Research (JPR) has added their two cents, by reconfirming that Team Red could be showcasing mid-range models at a late summer trade fair: "AMD is rumored to announce two new 7000-series AIBs at Gamescom in late August. The leaks suggest that AMD is behind NVIDIA in terms of AIBs and has open slots in its SKU lineup. The leaked benchmark data (see below) indicates that the RX 7800 and RX 7700 may compete with the RTX 4070 and RTX 4060 Ti, respectively." JPR proposes that AMD is preparing at least two mid-range models for launch, although this could increase to five. If a mysterious fifth candidate does exist outside of the oft mentioned RX 7700, RX 7700 XT, RX 7800 and RX 7800 XT SKUs, where would it be placed in the hierarchy? We can exclude the RX 7900 16 GB GRE GPU since it seems to be a Chinese market exclusive, with performance estimated to be just below RX 7900 XT standards.

A flurry of DMCA take down notices, on Activision's part, have brought even more attention to an alleged Call of Duty internal alpha test. Leakers have been talking about Modern Warfare III being the likely candidate for a new CoD release this year, following a planned premium expansion for MW II morphing into a full-fledged sequel. Activision has been busy scrubbing the internet clean of screenshots sourced from the alleged "Hailström" test build, but issued copyright strike messages contain references to the next entry in the series. Targeted tipsters have been warned about activity that has resulted in: "leaked content from unreleased video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3" appearing on social media and other gaming community hubs.

The publisher has semi-acknowledged that the cat is out of the bag, and yesterday addressed the fan base with a simple query: "Let's get this out of the way...Should MW II Operators, Weapons and Bundles carry forward into Call of Duty 2023?" This official tweet was shared by the Sledgehammer Games account—this Activision-owned studio is rumored to be the primary development house working on Modern Warfare III, with other Call of Duty-oriented outfits providing additional support. Call of Duty: Vanguard (2021) was Sledgehammer's third fully developed entry in the blockbuster (and highly contested) series.

A set of intriguing 3DMark Time Spy benchmark results have been released by hardware leaker All_The_Watts!!—these are alleged to have been produced by prototype Radeon RX 7700 and Radeon RX 7800 graphics cards (rumored to be based on variants of the Navi 32 GPU). The current RDNA 3 lineup of mainstream GPUs is severely lacking in middle ground representation, but Team Red is reported to be working on a number of models to fill in the gap. We expect a number of leaks to emerge as we get closer to a rumored product reveal scheduled for late August (to coincide with Gamescon).

The recently released 3DMark Time Spy scores reveal that the alleged Radeon RX 7700 candidate scored 15,465 points, while the RX 7800 achieved 18,197 points—both running on an unspecified test system. The results (refer to the Tom's Hardware-produced chart placed below) are not going to generate a lot of excitement at this stage when compared to predecessors and some of the competition—evaluation samples are not really expected to be optimized to a great degree. We hope to see finalized products with decent drivers putting in a good appearance and performing better later on this year.

A reference to an unreleased Radeon RX 7900 GRE GPU specced with 16 GB of VRAM appeared on distributed computing platforms last month. The unusual GRE acronym was a little bit puzzling, but ITHome has recently discovered that this could be the successor to an older GME (Golden Mouse Edition) card. AMD's Radeon RX 590 GME design was released back in March of 2020 to celebrate the year of the Rat or Mouse.

The Chinese zodiac sign for 2023 is the rabbit, hence AMD preparing a Golden Rabbit Edition (GRE) for that territory. ITHome proposes that this Radeon RX 7900 non-XT model could field a cut-down version of Team Red's Navi 31 GPU—with its Compute Unit count possibly reduced slightly below the standard 84 CUs, while an allocation of 16 GB of GDDR6 video memory gets coupled to a 256-bit interface (down from the XT's 20 GB and 320-bit). The short report does not provide any release date information or detailed specifications/features, but we can assume that the GRE is highly likely to arrive within the year it is intended to commemorate.

As reported by Phoronix—references to GFX1150 & GFX1151 targets have been added to the AMDGPU LLVM backend/compiler, which seems to indicate that these are upcoming AMD APU models. AMD engineers have made to reference to GFX1150 as "Strix1" (full codename: Strix Point) in the past according to several sites, but the recent leak has GFX1151 mentioned for the first time.

Previous reports suggest that Team Red could be developing two Strix/Zen 5/RDNA 3.5 APUs with AI engine enhancements for laptops—a discovery of two separate GFX targets suggests that we are likely looking at different 12-core and 16-core models. The former is said to be a monolithic design with a TDP going up to 54 W. The 16-core "Strix Halo" (also known as "Starlak") is a very different type of product with leaks suggesting that it will have a maximum TDP of 120 W, and be based on a chiplet design. Zen 5 processor products are expected to arrive in the second half of 2024—with Granite Ridge filling in the desktop platform segment.

NVIDIA could be adjusting its enterprise-grade GPU production strategies for the Chinese market, according to an article published by MyDriver—despite major sanctions placed on semiconductor imports, Team Green is doing plenty of business with tech firms operating in the region thanks to an uptick in AI-related activities. NVIDIA offers two market specific accelerator models that have been cut down to conform to rules and regulations—the more powerful and expensive (250K RMB/~$35K) H800 is an adaptation of the western H100 GPU, while the A800 is a legal market alternative to the older A100.

The report proposes that NVIDIA is considering plans to reduce factory output of the A800 (sold for 100K RMB/~$14K per unit), so clients will be semi-forced into purchasing the higher-end H800 model instead (if they require a significant number of GPUs). The A800 seems to be the more popular choice for the majority of companies at the moment, with the heavy hitters—Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent, Jitwei and ByteDance—flexing their spending muscles and splurging on mixed shipments of the two accelerators. By limiting supplies of the lesser A800, Team Green could be generating more profit by prioritizing the more expensive (and readily available) model.

YouTuber RedGamingTech has put together a list of leaked Intel 14th Gen Core SKUs—they claim that this information was compiled from various tipsters and inside sources. Raptor Lake Refresh is perhaps not a very exciting prospect—i.e. a mild upgrade—for current owners of 13th Gen Core CPUs on the LGA 1700 platform, but upcoming mid-range SKUs could offer a nice performance uplift for those still on 12th Gen silicon (or older) thanks to higher core counts. According to RedGamingTech's list, the refreshed Core i7 series (14700, -K &-F) sports 20 cores and 28 threads, while Core i5 14600 SKUs are rumored to feature 16 cores and 24 threads. Prospective budget-conscious customers are likely to be enthused by Core i3 SKUs getting a refresh with new 6-core/12-thread configs.

Several big players in the industry have (reportedly) presented themselves as potential anchor investors in Ltd. Japan's SoftBank Group Corp, the owner of the British semiconductor and software design company is preparing an initial public offering (IPO) in the USA, with a likely kick-off date in September. The Financial Times has today claimed that NVIDIA was invited (by Softbank) to actively negotiate with Arm leadership with the aim to join a group of prospective IPO anchor investors. Citing insider sources who have been briefed about ongoing deliberations—Team Green could be proposing an investment of roughly $35 billion to $40 billion.

The report suggests that SoftBank would prefer an offer closer to $70 - 80 billion—it seems that more haggling is on the cards. NVIDIA is a longtime partner and client of Arm, with the former attempting to buyout the latter over a year ago—but their agreement was terminated due to "significant regulatory challenges" in regions including the US, UK and China. At the time, the scuppered deal's estimated value was widely reported being $66 billion.

Chinese tech tipster Golden Pig Upgrade has turned its attention to Intel's Meteor Lake processor series—they believe that hardware partners are putting qualification samples (QS) through the ringer. The short Bilibili social media post proposes that these laptop-oriented prototypes sport six high-performance Redwood Cove cores running at 4.80 GHz, eight energy-efficient Crestmont cores, as well as two low-power Crestmont cores. Apparently the unit's TDP can be adjusted—starting at 20 W, and going up to 65 W. Golden Pig Upgrade was also informed about a Core Ultra 9 model capable of hitting 5.0 GHz (or greater) maximum CPU clocks.

The qualification sample's integrated graphics processing unit is reportedly based on the Xe-LPG architecture—some experts reckon that this could offer performance (4.5 FP32 TFLOPS) comparable to Arc A380 or A370M discrete solutions. The sampled iGPU could feature up to 128 execution units (so equivalent to 1024 stream processors, as well as 8 Xe clusters)—insider sources allege that units can boost to a maximum of 2.2 GHz. It will be interesting to observe how this will stack up against AMD's Radeon 780M iGPU—which is theoretically in a similar ballpark (4.3 FP32 TFLOPS).

The AMD Ryzen 5 7500F CPU has been popping up via various leaks—with no official announcements made despite photos, basic specifications and benchmark results appearing online. Tom's Hardware could not extract a comment directly from Team Red, so it pivoted to inside sources instead to find out more about the mysterious Zen 4 iGPU-less processor. The news site discovered that this model is very likely going to be a Chinese market exclusive—insiders reckon that it will be released closer to the end of this month. Retailers and e-tailers in the region are getting first dibs, with the Ryzen 5 7500F also made available to SIs (system integrators), so pre-built computers featuring this AM5 CPU could be released soon after.

Tom's Hardware believes that the: "Ryzen 5 7500F is very similar to the Ryzen 5 7600 and will operate with a 65 W TDP, and thus have slightly lower boost clock speeds than the 7600." It suspects that a recently published benchmark showing that single-core performance edges past the Ryzen 5 7600X (105 W TDP) is not all that accurate—these results should be "taken with a grain of salt." According to their verified sources, the Ryzen 5 7500F should "perform slightly slower than the regular 65 W Ryzen 5 7600 (non-X)." The article presents some hope that AMD is simply market testing the CPU prior to a possible USA rollout, but insiders indicate that company plans have the Ryzen 5 7500F marked for launch in China only.

Golden Pig Upgrade, a Chinese PC hardware content creator, has issued more Intel-related insider info via their Bilibili page. Their short post claims that the Intel 14th Gen Core-HX series (aka enthusiast grade laptop Raptor Lake Refresh SKUs) will be based on 8P+16E die configurations, said to replace all previously reported 8P+8E and 6P+0E setups. This improved HX lineup could provide a nice upgrade over equivalent 13th Gen Core units, with larger L2 cache allocations and increased core counts.

A few examples are mentioned—the upcoming Core i7-14650HX sports an 8P+8E configuration, granting two extra performance cores when compared to the current gen equivalent 13650HX (6P+8E). The Core i5-14500HX could stick with the same configuration (6P+8E) as seen on the older 13500HX, but Golden Pig Upgrade believes that the former will be upgraded with a larger pool of L2 cache. Previous leaks have already pointed out higher-end 14th Gen Core i9 SKUs being based on the 8P+16E die configuration, with the possible offering of higher clocks and support for faster memory speeds. The Raptor Lake Refresh desktop lineup is expected to debut around mid-October, but insider information regarding HX has not yet pinpointed a firm launch period for high-end 14th Gen Core laptop/mobile SKUs.

Chinese tech tipster Enthusiast Citizen (ECSM) has once again posted about upcoming Intel CPU product launches—according to an inside info post (published via Bilibili), Team Blue has possibly scheduled their Raptor Lake Refresh/14th Gen Core K-series for a release window around the 42nd week of 2023 (October 17 - 23). ECSM posits that non-K models will arrive during the first week of 2024, coinciding with January's CES trade event. The Core i7-14700K model is said to feature a new configuration of 8 Performance and 12 Efficiency cores, and current LGA1700 motherboards will most likely require a firmware upgrade to run this specific SKU.

ECSM also seems to have insider information regarding motherboard chipsets for desktop Arrow Lake/15th Gen Core, although they cannot determine an accurate time frame for the (fully new) product launch. Intel Z890, B860 and H810 chipsets are named as possible upcoming candidates for proper next generation CPUs, with H870 allegedly dropped from development. ECSM claims that a competing AMD Zen 5 lineup is not arriving this year—prior insider information was perhaps fabricated. They believe that Storm Peak (Zen 4 Threadripper) is scheduled for Q4 2023, with two unnamed chipsets lined up to accompany this next-gen HEDT platform.

A tipster/YouTuber familiar with goings-on at Spanish development studios believes that next generation Nintendo development kits have arrived in the southern European country. Nash Weedle is reported to have a good track record with their predictions—most notably outing Madrid-based MercurySteam as a contract developer on the high profile Metroid Dread project. Weedle did not implicate this particular team with his social media declaration, but it is the only organization in the region that has assisted Nintendo EPD on multiple first-party titles.

A translation of Weedle's tweet states: "The Switch 2 development kit has arrived in Spain. The fact that a Spanish studio already has the kit, given Nintendo's private/secrecy policy, is a boost in their relations and indicates that we are in the last stages before the console's presentation." The relationship between the two companies could sour following these emerging leaks—Nintendo is notorious for its extremely guarded approach to software and hardware reveals. Company president, Shuntaro Furukawa, told shareholders (two months ago) that a Switch successor is marked for a vague launch somewhere in FY2024 - 2025.

Another next-gen Intel Xeon processor has been leaked by momomo_us via Twitter—the subject of the photograph appears to be a Granite Rapids-SP, alongside a new socket type; LGA 4710. These should not be confused with the recent appearance of a Granite Rapids-AP CPU plus LGA 7529 socket. The latest photo showcases two Intel CPUs with new integrated heat spreader (IHS) designs, both housed in carrier frames labeled "LGA 4710-2." The unit on the left seems to be similar in appearance to current-gen Sapphire Rapids-SP units, but the Xeon sitting on the right is getting most of the attention.

YuuKi_AnS (the leaker of last week's larger GNR-AP) pointed out that the smaller socket type is for a platform codenamed "Beechnut City," that is alleged to support Xeon GNR-SP CPUs. They provided a presentation slide of Intel's Beechnut City Main Validation Vehicle (MVV)—this mainboard appears to sport a dual-socket (2S) setup that can house Granite Rapids-SP Xeon CPUs (compatible with the LGA 4710-2 standard) with a maximum 350 W TDP. The spec sheet indicates that the board can support 8-channel DDR5 memory across 32 DIMM slots (DDR5-6400 1DPC / DDR5-5200 2DPC), as well as 88 PCIe Gen 5.0 lanes. The sixth generation Granite Rapids-SP & AP CPUs (based on "Intel 3" process node) are expected to launch in 2H 2024—following the Sierra Forest lineup.

Stephen Totilo, a writer for the gaming section of Axios, has uncovered an intriguing tidbit from Microsoft's Federal Trade Commission (FTC) court documents. He injected some humor into this finding and posted on Twitter: "Microsoft's lawyers with some Project Q hype." According to the legal team's footnotes: "Sony is also anticipated to release a handheld version of PlayStation 5 later this year for under $300." The handheld gaming device was first revealed during late May's PlayStation Showcase, but teaser material only revealed a small number of details.

Sony indicated that Project Q will feature a 1920 x 1080 display (with a max. 60 Hz refresh) and in-built WiFi connectivity that allows the user to stream games from a host PlayStation 5 system. Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson has gathered information from company sources since that showcase, and proposed that the device can only sustain 3-4 hour play times. He also proposed that Sony should seriously consider launching the device at a low price of $200, given the handheld's alleged limited function as Remote Play-only. It is odd that Microsoft's legal representatives think that Project Q will act as a highly portable PlayStation 5 console, but they likely did not pay attention to the limited details available to them.

Gematsu - a Japanese news site - has discovered that the Game Rating and Administration Committee of Korea uploaded its rating of an announced remake of Quake II (1997) on May 31—apparently "not suitable" for youths. This could repeat a pattern from 2021, where the same committee registered the original Quake's remastered version prior to an official unveiling at that year's livestreamed QuakeCon event.

QuakeCon 2023 is heading back to its roots—with a return to an in-person format "at the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center in Grapevine, Texas from Thursday, August 10 through Sunday, August 13." It is quite possible that Quake II Remastered will get an unveiling at the late summer convention. It will be interesting to see how the upcoming remaster will sit beside the existing RTX version—the South Korean rating info mentions new online multiplayer options, 4K resolution plus widescreen support, as well as support for community modification.

Renders and basic specifications for Sony's rumored WF-1000XM4 successor were leaked earlier this month, with some sources theorizing that Sony would be unveiling the next-generation TWS earbuds within days. An official announcement did not come to pass, but details and a (top-down view) photo of the WF-1000XM5's charging case have emerged from an independent testing database—the Wireless Power Consortium (WPC). Tipsters reckon that the WF-1000XM5 buds will be smaller and lighter than predecessors—perhaps closer in size to Sony's cheaper TWS offering, the WF-C700N—and leaked specifications indicate that the new model is not a massive departure from the XM4, although multi-point connectivity looks to be standard at launch.

The WPC's online certification page lists model number YY2963, which is identical to an FCC registration from February. The June 9th entry states that it is a "wireless stereo headset," with a carry/charging case classed as a "Power Class 0 Receiver" offering 2 W maximum input. A low quality photo of this earbud cradle is included on the WPC web page—Sony's new unit looks almost identical to the WF-1000XM4 enclosure. Qi wireless charging is very likely part of the package, but the next-gen solution might not be much of an upgrade. Insiders have reassessed the situation, and now propose that Sony is planning on a July or August reveal for the the 1000XM5.

Industry insiders in South Korea have informed news publications that NVIDIA has requested that SK hynix submit samples of next-generation high bandwidth memory (HBM) for evaluation purposes—according to Business Korea's article, workers were preparing an initial batch of HBM3E prototypes for shipment this week. SK hynix has an existing relationship with NVIDIA—it fended off tough competition last year and has since produced (current gen) HBM3 DRAM for the H100 "Hopper" Tensor Core GPU.

The memory manufacturer is hoping to maintain its position as the HBM market leader with fifth generation products in the pipeline—vice president Park Myung-soo revealed back in April that: "we are preparing 8 Gbps HBM3E product samples for the second half of this year and are preparing for mass production in the first half of next year." A new partnership with NVIDIA could help SK hynix widen the gulf between it and and its nearest competitor - Samsung - in the field of HBM production.

Polish development studio, People Can Fly, announced yesterday that it has signed a production and publishing agreement with Microsoft's Xbox Game Studios. The teased future title goes under the moniker "Project Maverick," and the company press release reveals a "total production budget for the Game" of $30-50 million. The terms agreed upon include: "The development of the Game by the Company will be performed under the work for hire model, based on the intellectual property rights owned by the Publisher and will be entirely financed by the Publisher when advancing by the Company of the development works under the milestones." Industry insiders reckon there is a good chance that People Can Fly are set to work on Microsoft's Gears IP. The Coalition, an Xbox first party studio (located in Vancouver, Canada) is said to be working on the next mainline Gears title, but a diversified lineup could include more side projects. Splash Damage's Gears Tactics was a previous example of this—a turn-based title that arrived on PC in April 2020, followed by Xbox console versions later that year.

The team has prior experience of developing older Gears of War series entries on Unreal Engine 3—the PC port of the original 2007 game and 2013's spin-off GoW: Judgement (an Xbox 360 exclusive). People Can Fly has had a difficult time lately with the release and support of its online-only cooperative action role-player "Outriders" (with Square Enix), and a terminated Take-Two Interactive publishing deal. Company investor information has recently revealed that Outriders (2021) has not yet become a profitable property for the independent studio: "The Group received no royalties from the publisher (Square Enix) for the period to March 31st 2023, which means that as at the reporting date net proceeds from the sale of Outriders were insufficient to recover the costs and expenses incurred by the publisher to develop, distribute and promote the title." People Can Fly confirms elsewhere in the investment document that Gearbox Publishing holds an exclusive license for Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition (a 2019 remaster of the original 2011 base game).

A recent report published by BoardChannels points to Galax possibly implementing a broad set of price cuts across its range of NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 and 30-series custom graphics card models. Insider information originating from sources within a pool of NVIDIA and AMD board partners suggests that Galax could be shaving off up to 1000 RMB (around $140) from certain Ampere and Ada Lovelace products - effective later this month in its native Hong Kong market as well as mainland China.

The article posits that GeForce RTX 4080 cards could end up becoming 1000 RMB cheaper, and popular RTX 3060 models receiving cuts of around 250 RMB (≈$35). Galax is reported to have already offered entry-level desktop GeForce RTX 3050 cards at lower prices in the latter half of May - with 140 RMB (≈$19.50) reductions. The RTX 4070 series is supposedly set to receive a measly discount of around 150 to 200 RMB (≈$21 to $28), which is likely not doing it many favors given slow worldwide uptake since the product range's launch in mid-April. Galax could be making adjustments to fall in line with rivals (in the region) who have already reduced asking prices for NVIDIA gaming hardware.

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.

Insider Gamer's past predictions about a Remote Play-enabled PlayStation handheld rang true last week when Sony announced Project Q - teaser material points to this fancy accessory integrating into the PS5 ecosystem. Technical details were not explored in any depth during last week's Sony showcase, but it is clear that the controller and 8-inch screen combo will be capable of streaming content via WiFi from a host PS5 console.

Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson has gathered more details from his inside sources, and released leaked information about the remote play device's operation time on a single charge (late last week): "Prepare yourselves, because Insider Gaming understands that the Project Q battery life will be around 3-4 hours. Yup, you read that right. At least Project Q is on brand with the DualSense having a short battery life, I guess. If the retail version of Project Q does indeed have a 3-4 hour battery life, then the handheld might be a hard sell for Sony. Already people are skeptical of its success, with the handheld only being used with Remote Play." Henderson has been informed that the accessory is slated for a November launch, but he opines that Sony should carefully consider their pricing strategy in the interim: "Ultimately though, I think the success of Project Q will depend on its price. A $200 or less price tag could see the accessory sell in strong numbers, but PlayStation has been notorious for having high price tags on its products."

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.

According to brand new information sent to the press and influencers yesterday, AMD has likely made a last minute change to its pricing strategy - VideoCardz has communicated with insider sources and confirms that an official email contains this message: "The Radeon RX 7600 will now be available starting at an SEP of $269 USD, beginning on May 25."

Industry experts were predicting a $299 MSRP for the upcoming Radeon RX 7600 graphics card lineup, based on possible earlier communications (under embargo) from AMD, but the company has seemingly decided to change its pricing strategy ($269/€299) only three days before the May 25 launch. Its monolithic RDNA 3 Navi 33 XL GPU (6 nm) is set to go head-to-head against NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4060 Ti graphics card range later this week - the latter's specifications look to be superior according to leaked info - so Team Red could be making adjustments in order to stay competitive in the lower-end gaming-oriented GPU market.

MediaTek is rumored to have partnered up with NVIDIA in a new joint effort to create graphically powerful mobile chipsets. DigiTimes Asia reports that the two fabless companies are collaborating on a flagship-level smartphone SoC that could arrive in early 2024. MediaTek is hoping that this tech union will help advance its application processors with AI enhancements and greater gaming functionalities. Insider sources also claim that the partnership extends to the development of WOA (Windows on Arm) platform products for notebook applications.

DigiTimes believes that NVIDIA is seeking new market scope - outside of its normal staple of gaming and enterprise GPUs - opportunities within the smartphone and notebook market are part of an overall expansion strategy, including the teaming up with MediaTek. Arch rival AMD has been working with Samsung for a number of years on RDNA-based "Xclipse" iGPUs, as featured in several existing and upcoming flagship Exynos mobile chipsets, and Team Green is seemingly interested in doing something similar. MediaTek is keen to expand its processor presence in the notebook world - its current offerings only target the entry-level segment - and the alliance with NVIDIA could result in forthcoming mid-range and high-end WOA platform products.