Details of what is claimed to be Google's upcoming Tensor G5 and G6 SoCs have popped up over on Notebookcheck.net and the site claims to have found the specs on a public platform, without going into any further details. Those that were betting on the Tensor G5—codenamed Laguna—delivering vastly improved performance over the Tensor G4, are likely to be disappointed, at least on the CPU side of things. As previous rumours have suggested, the chip is expected to be manufactured by TSMC, using its N3E process node, but the Tensor G5 will retain the single Arm Cortex-X4 core, although it will see a slight upgrade to five Cortex-A725 cores vs. the three Cortex-A720 cores of the Tensor G4. The G5 loses two Cortex-A520 cores in favour of the extra Cortex-A725 cores. The Cortex-X4 will also remain clocked at the same peak 3.1 GHz as that of the Tensor G4.

Interestingly it looks like Google will drop the Arm Mali GPU in favour of an Imagination Technologies DXT GPU, although the specs listed by Notebookcheck doesn't add up with any of the specs listed by Imagination Technologies. The G5 will continue to support 4x 16-bit LPDDR5 or LPDDR5X memory chips, but Google has added support for UFS 4.0 memory, something that's been a point of complaint for the Tensor G4. Other new additions is support for 10 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2 and PCI Express 4.0. Some improvements to the camera logic has also been made, with support for up to 200 Megapixel sensors or 108 Megapixels with zero shutter lag, but if Google will use such a camera or not is anyone's guess at this point in time.

Microsoft provided a detailed view of Maia 100 at Hot Chips 2024, their initial specialized AI chip. This new system is designed to work seamlessly from start to finish, with the goal of improving performance and reducing expenses. It includes specially made server boards, unique racks, and a software system focused on increasing the effectiveness and strength of sophisticated AI services, such as Azure OpenAI. Microsoft introduced Maia at Ignite 2023, sharing that they had created their own AI accelerator chip. More information was provided earlier this year at the Build developer event. The Maia 100 is one of the biggest processors made using TSMC's 5 nm technology, designed for handling extensive AI tasks on Azure platform.

Maia 100 SoC architecture features:

• A high-speed tensor unit (16xRx16) offers rapid processing for training and inferencing while supporting a wide range of data types, including low precision data types such as the MX data format, first introduced by Microsoft through the MX Consortium in 2023.
• The vector processor is a loosely coupled superscalar engine built with custom instruction set architecture (ISA) to support a wide range of data types, including FP32 and BF16.
• A Direct Memory Access (DMA) engine supports different tensor sharding schemes.
• Hardware semaphores enable asynchronous programming on the Maia system.

ZOTAC, best known for its graphics cards and to some extent its Mini-PCs, is going to present a new handheld gaming device - ZOTAC ZONE. Videocardz somehow managed to get their hands on an almost complete spec sheet just to find out that it will be powered by an 8-core AMD Ryzen 7 8840U processor. From this we can also get to know that it will use Radeon 780M integrated graphics with 12 RDNA3 Compute Units (15 W Default, 28 W Max). ZOTAC ZONE will feature a 7-inch 120 Hz AMOLED, 1080p, 120 Hz display with up to 800 nits maximum brightness.

The device specs include 16 GB of LPDDR5X memory, 512 GB dedicated storage and support for M2.2 2280 SSDs. The 48.5 Wh battery with an estimated 1.25 hours of runtime seems a bit weak, thus the lower 700 g weight, but that could change since the display/demo unit that will be available during Computex next week is a non-final prototype model. As confirmed by ZOTAC, ZONE is expected to be launched in the next quarter, with no details about the price.

AMD's next-gen EPYC Zen 5 processor family seems to be nearing launch status—late last week, momomo_us uncovered an unnamed motherboard's datasheet; this particular model will accommodate a single 9000-series CPU—with a maximum 400 W TDP—via an SP5 socket. 500 W and 600 W limits have been divulged (via leaks) in the past, so the 400 W spec could be an error or a: "legitimate compatibility issue with the motherboard, though 400 Watts would be in character with high-end Zen 4 SP5 motherboards," according to Tom's Hardware analysis.

AMD's current-gen "Zen 4" based EPYC "Genoa" processor family—sporting up to 96-cores/192-threads—is somewhat limited by its DDR5 support transfer rates of up to 4800 MT/s. The latest leak suggests that "Turin" is upgraded quite nicely in this area—when compared to predecessors—the SP5 board specs indicate DDR5 speeds of up to 6000 MT/s with 4 TB of RAM. December 2023 reports pointed to "Zen 5c" variants featuring (max.) 192-core/384-thread configurations, while larger "Zen 5" models are believed to be "modestly" specced with up to 128-cores and 256-threads. AMD has not settled on an official release date for its EPYC "Turin" 9000-series processors, but a loose launch window is expected "later in 2024" based on timeframes presented within product roadmaps.

HXL (@9550pro) has highlighted an intriguing pinned post on the Chinese Zhihu community site—where XZiar, a self described "Central Processing Unit (CPU) expert," has shared a very fuzzy/low quality screenshot of a Windows Task Manager session. The information on display indicates that a "Genuine Intel(R) 0000 1.0 GHz" processor was in use—perhaps a very early Lunar Lake (LNL) engineering sample (ES1). XZiar confirmed the pre-release nature of the onboard chip, and teased its performance prowess: "It's good to use the craftsmanship that others have stepped on. It can run 2.8 GHz with only A1 step, and it is very smooth."

The "A1" designation implies that the leaked sample is among the first LNL processor prototypes to exit manufacturing facilities—Intel previewed its "Lunar Lake-MX" SoC package to press representatives last November. XZiar's followers have pored over the screenshot and ascertained that the leaked example sports a "8-core + 8-thread, without Hyperthreading, 4P+4LPE" configuration. Others were confused by the chip's somewhat odd on-board cache designations—L1: 836 KB, L2: 14 MB and L3: 12 MB—XZiar believes that prototype's setup "is obviously not up to par," when a replier compares the spec to an N300 series processor. It is theorized that Windows Task Manager is simply not fully capable of detecting the sample's full makeup, but XZiar reckons that 12 MB of L3 cache is the correct figure.

In Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, you play as a Na'vi learning to reconnect with your own homeland while reckoning with the human militaristic corporation known as the RDA. Ahead of launch, check out the recently unveiled PC specs, and catch up on some of the PC-specific features you can expect when Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora drops on December 7.

Ray tracing and Extended Graphic Settings
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora will include raytraced reflections and shadows for more immersive environmental exploration, and extended graphic settings that allow for granular tweaks to a multitude of visuals such as environment reflection quality, and distant shadows.

Benchlife claims to have obtained full specifications of Intel's upcoming 14th Gen Core series—the site kicked things off by releasing details of a trio of Raptor Lake Refresh K-series SKUs earlier today. Insiders have seemingly divulged fairly comprehensive specs for i9-14900K, i7-14700K, and i5-14600K desktop CPUs. The expected lineup-wide implementation of greater clock speeds (+200 MHz) is present on these examples according to the leaked info—i9-14900K is reportedly capable of boosting up to 6.0 GHz (via Thermal Velocity tech), while its Core i7 and Core i5 siblings are said to be hitting 5.6 GHz and 5.3 GHz (respectively).

The Core i7-14700K seems to be the only rumored model to receive a core count increase—the listed 8P+12E configuration is decked out with more Gracemont efficiency cores when compared to the 13th Gen equivalent's makeup (i7-13700K, 8P+8E). This grants a slightly increased pool of Intel's "Smart Cache"—33 MB instead of the previous gen model's 30 MB. These 125 W TDP "K" SKUs are expected to arrive mid-October alongside "KF" models (lacking iGPUs). The 65-W non-K lineup could be presented at the next CES, and launched in January 2024.

Here are the final specifications of the Radeon RX 7600 RDNA3 graphics card, bound for launch later this month. The specs list springs up some surprises. To begin with, while the GPU at the heart of the RX 7600 is based on the latest RDNA3 graphics architecture, it is built on the older 6 nm (DUV) silicon fabrication process—the same one on which the previous "Navi 24" was based. The silicon has a transistor count of 13.3 billion, about 2 billion more than the 7 nm "Navi 23" Powering the RX 6600 series, but a die-size of 204 mm². The GPU has a PCI-Express 4.0 x8 host interface, and a 128-bit GDDR6 memory interface. As the RX 7600, it has a TBP (total board power) value of 165 W, which is over 30 W more than the RX 6600.

At this point, it's not known whether the RX 7600 maxes out the silicon it is based on. It gets 32 RDNA3 compute units (CU), which work out to 2,048 stream processors (with the same dual-issue instruction rate feature as the RX 7900 series); 32 Ray Accelerators, and 64 AI Accelerators. The GPU has 128 TMUs, and 64 ROPs. The GPU has 32 MB of second-generation Infinity Cache memory. The 8 GB of GDDR6 memory ticks at 18 Gbps, which over the 128-bit memory bus works out to 288 GB/s of memory bandwidth. AMD claims that when coupled with the on-die cache, the "effective bandwidth" is 476.9 GB/s. NVIDIA is putting out similar "effective" figures for its RTX 4060 series, so this could become a norm. The RX 7600 comes with a game frequency of 2250 MHz, and 2625 MHz boost. AMD is making 550 W as its PSU recommendation, compared to the 450 W it did for the RX 6600. The company considers the RX 7600 to be the logical successor of the RX 6600 (and neither the RX 6600 XT nor the RX 6650 XT).

Following on from yesterday's news of Meteor Lake's "Adamantine" L4 cache another leaky bit of information has popped up. A tipster on Twitter, Bionic_squash, has uploaded a slide from a supposedly official Intel presentation document, and it shows a small selection of Meteor Lake-S and Arrow Lake-S desktop CPUs, as well as the refreshed Raptor Lake-S series. The majority of recent leaks have pointed to laptop variants of Intel's fourteenth generation Core lineup, and not much has emerged about a desktop-dedicated range in a while - prompting further murmurs about Team Blue canning that side of things. The Meteor Lake-S family is still in the works according to the leaked chart and industry experts reckon that a product launch is due later in the year.

By looking closely at the chart, it shows that the Meteor Lake-S desktop processors are limited to 35 and 65 W TDPs, meaning that Core i3 and i5 lines are the only offerings within the 14th generation desktop lineup. Performance enthusiasts will need to look at the 15th gen Arrow Lake-S lineup - where the big i7 and i9 CPUs (up to 125 W) sit, or the refreshed Raptor Lake lineup which also offers a wide range of options - from i3 up to i9. Industry experts are a bit puzzled about Meteor Lake's prospects in the desktop processor sector - when considering a (speculated) skew to more entry-level and mid-range minded customers. Will Intel lose out by not offering more powerful variants, or are they working on a refreshed 14th generation product lineup for 2025?

With less than a week to go until the official launch of the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti, NVIDIA France has gone and spoiled things by revealing the official specs of the upcoming GPU. The French division of NVIDIA appears to have posted the full product page, but it has since then been pulled. That didn't prevent Twitter leaker @momomo_us from snapping a couple of screenshots, including that of the official performance numbers from NVIDIA.

There aren't any real surprises here though, as we already knew the CUDA core count and the memory size, courtesy of the RTX 4070 Ti having been the RTX 4080 12 GB, until NVIDIA changed its mind. It's interesting to see that NVIDIA compares the RTX 4070 Ti to the RTX 3080 12 GB in the three official benchmarks, as it makes the RTX 4070 Ti look a lot better than it is in reality, at least based on the rumoured MSRP of US$800-900. One of the three benchmarks is Cyberpunk 2077 using Raytracingl, where NVIDIA suggests the RTX 4070 Ti is around 3.5 times faster than the RTX 3080, but it's worth reading the fine print. We'll know next week how the RTX 4070 Ti actually performs, as well as where the official pricing and actual retail pricing ends up.

It's pretty clear that we're getting very close to the launch of AMD's AM5 platform and the Ryzen 7000-series CPUs, with spec details and even pricing brackets tipping up online. Wccftech has posted what the publication believes will be the lineup we can expect to launch in just over a month's time, if rumours are to be believed. The base model is said to be the Ryzen 5 7600X, which the site claims will have a base clock of 4.7 GHz and a boost clock of 5.3 GHz. There's no change in processor core or thread count compared to the current Ryzen 5 5600X, but the L2 cache appears to have doubled, for a total of 38 MB of cache. This is followed by the Ryzen 7 7700X, which starts out a tad slower with a base clock of 4.5 GHz, but it has a slightly higher boost clock of 5.4 GHz. Likewise here, the core and thread count remains unchanged, while the L2 cache also gets a bump here for a total of 40 MB cache. Both these models are said to have a 105 W TDP.

The Ryzen 9 7900X is said to have a 4.7 GHz base clock and a 5.6 GHz boost clock, so a 200 MHz jump up from the Ryzen 7 7700X. This CPU has a total of 76 MB of cache. Finally the Ryzen 9 7950X is said to have the same base clock of 4.5 GHz as the Ryzen 7 7700X, but it has the highest boost clock of all the expected models at 5.7 GHz, while having a total of 80 MB cache. These two SKUs are both said to have a 170 W TDP. Price wise, from top to bottom, we might be looking at somewhere around US$700, US$600, US$300 and US$200, so it seems like AMD has adjusted its pricing downwards by around $100 on the low-end, with the Ryzen 7 part fitting the same price bracket as the Ryzen 7 5700X. The Ryzen 9 7900X seems to have had its price adjusted upwards slightly, while the Ryzen 9 7950X seems to be expected to be priced lower than its predecessors. Take these things with the right helping of scepticism for now, as things can still change before the launch.

Although it hasn't been verified, it would appear that Intel might have let slip some details of its upcoming Arc A780 desktop GPU in a video where the company was showing off its Arc Control graphics card control and monitoring software. For a brief second or two, the Live Performance Monitoring part of Arc Control was shown in the video, displaying GPU and VRAM clocks for one of its upcoming GPUs, alongside the GPU power of the same card. As to the exact product, that is now being discussed on the internet, but the current consensus based on all the specs, is that it could be the Arc A780.

The reasoning behind this, is that the Arc A350M, which could in theory boost to 2,250 MHz, doesn't meet the listed GPU power of 175 W, nor does the much slower clocked Arc A770M mobile part. The VRAM clock at 1093 MHz also suggests an effective memory throughput of 17.5 Gbps, which is faster than the fastest mobile GPU according to the specs available so far. It also means that Intel is going for high-performance memory on its high-end parts, as this GPU has higher memory bandwidth than a GeForce RTX 3070, which sits at 14 Gbps. It's also possible that we're looking at a development card here and that these specs won't make it into a final product, so we'll just have to wait until this summer to see what Intel has in store for us.

It seemed has if NVIDIA was dropping the Max-P and Max-Q differentiators for their mobile graphics card, which would throw consumers into disarray and confusion as to what exactly was the performance of the graphics card built into their RTX 30-series laptop. In essence, due to the RTX 30-series configurable TGP (Total Graphics Power), as well as each laptop's own capability of supplying power and cooling to that chip, users might see themselves in situations such as their mobile RTX 3080 offering lower performance than a mobile RTX 3070, configured for a higher TGP. This meant that more attentive users would have to hunt for reviews of the laptops they were eyeing, or to be forced to count on system manufacturers to actually list specifications for the included graphics solution in their laptops. This would mean, more often than not, something akin to chaos, and could in truth impact NVIDIA's brand recognition and consumer confidence in expected performance.

NVIDIA, as a way to circumvent this, has decided to not only encourage, but actually require that manufacturers list their graphics cards' TGP as well as specific clock speed stats on their online product pages. Some manufacturers, such as Asus, Acer, Razer, Origin, MSI, Alienware, and Gigabyte have already updated some product pages - but not all. An NVIDIA spokesperson clarified to The Verge that "We're requiring OEMs to update their product pages to the Max-Q technology features for each GeForce laptop, as well as clocks and power — which communicates the expected GPU performance in that system." Perhaps that will help consumers make a more informed decision.