AGON by AOC - one of the world's leading gaming monitor and IT accessories brands - expands its professional gaming arsenal with the AGON PRO AG276FK, a 27-inch (68.6 cm) Full HD gaming monitor with a Fast IPS panel, featuring an impressive 520 Hz refresh rate. This latest addition to AGON PRO's ultra-high refresh rate family complements the high-performance esports models AG246FK (540 Hz) and AG256FS (390 Hz), providing competitive gamers with another powerful tool in their quest for victory.

Engineered for tournament excellence
The AGON PRO AG276FK showcases a state-of-the-art Fast IPS panel, delivering Full HD resolution (1920x1080). With its remarkable 520 Hz refresh rate and swift response times of up to 0.5 ms GtG and 0.3 ms MPRT, the AG276FK ensures crystal-clear motion clarity and minimal input lag - essential features for professional esports players who compete at the highest levels. The Full HD resolution is strategically chosen to enable competitive players to achieve and maintain the ultra-high frame rates needed to fully leverage the 520 Hz refresh rate with current-gen GPUs.

A new forecast from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker shows shipments of personal computing devices are expected to grow 2.6% year over year in 2024 to 398.9 million units. The traditional PC market will remain flat in 2024 with 261 million units shipped while the tablet market is forecast to grow 7.2% year over year as a refresh cycle and project investments are expected to drive the market.

For traditional PCs, the global market excluding China is expected to grow 2.8% in 2024 as China continues to suffer through a confluence of macroeconomic challenges, including high youth employment, deflation, and a tumultuous real estate market. However, China's economic concerns have largely impacted just the PC market as tablet demand has proven to be more resilient thanks to Huawei's efforts.

The PC market gathered momentum in Q2 2024, with worldwide shipments of desktops and notebooks up 3.4% year-on-year, reaching 62.8 million units. Shipments of notebooks (including mobile workstations) hit 50 million units, growing 4%. Desktops (including desktop workstations), which constitute 20% of the total PC market, experienced a slight 1% growth, totaling 12.8 million units. The stage is now set for accelerated growth as the refresh cycle driven by the Windows 11 transition and AI PC adoption ramps up over the next four quarters.

"The PC industry is going from strength to strength with a third consecutive quarter of growth," said Ishan Dutt, Principal Analyst at Canalys. "The market turnaround is coinciding with exciting announcements from vendors and chipset manufacturers as their AI PC roadmaps transition from promise to reality. The quarter culminated with the launch of the first Copilot+ PCs powered by Snapdragon processors and more clarity around Apple's AI strategy with the announcement of the Apple Intelligence suite of features for Mac, iPad and iPhone. Beyond these innovations, the market will start to benefit even more from its biggest tailwind - a ramp-up in PC demand driven by the Windows 11 refresh cycle. The vast majority of channel partners surveyed by Canalys in June indicated that Windows 10 end-of-life is likely to impact customer refresh plans most in either the second half of 2024 or the first half of 2025, suggesting that shipment growth will only gather steam in upcoming quarters."

Intel's upcoming Arrow Lake "S" Desktop and "HX" laptop CPUs are reported to launch without dedicated NPU hardware. NPUs will be limited to Arrow Lake-H/U and Lunar Lake chips, with Core Ultra 200V chips offering up to 48 TOPS of AI performance. Currently, AMD is the only manufacturer offering desktop chips with dedicated NPUs in their Ryzen 8000G "Hawk Point" series for the AM5 platform. However, according to Jaykihn, an active Intel-related leaker, Intel may be planning to incorporate NPUs in future Arrow Lake-S and Arrow Lake-HX refreshes.

The potential refresh could include an NPU within the SOC tile, possibly increasing the die size by 2.8 mm compared to current Arrow Lake designs. The package size is expected to remain unchanged, maintaining socket compatibility, however, motherboard manufacturers would need to enable Fast Voltage Mode (FVM) on VccSA rails to support the NPU functionality. While it's early to discuss an Arrow Lake refresh before the initial launch, this development could impact Intel's roadmap and the "AI PC" market segment. Also, it could have possible implications for the release schedule of future architectures like Panther Lake.

NEO Semiconductor, a leading developer of innovative technologies for 3D NAND flash and DRAM memory, today announced a performance boosting Floating Body Cell Mechanism for 3D X-DRAM. Andy Hsu, Founder & CEO presented groundbreaking Technology CAD (TCAD) simulation results for NEO's 3D X-DRAM during the 16th IEEE International Memory Workshop (IMW) 2024 in Seoul, Republic of Korea.

Neo Semiconductor reveals a unique performance boosting mechanism called Back-gate Channel-depth Modulation (BCM) for Floating Body Cell that can increase data retention by 40,000X and sensing window by 20X.

Intel's CEO, Pat Gelsinger, has confirmed that the upcoming 18A process of the Panther Lake CPU generation is on schedule for a mid-2025 release, which aligns with the initial projection. This development marks a significant milestone in the company's ongoing efforts to integrate AI capabilities into its processors. The mid-2025 release date is expected to follow the debut of Intel's Arrow Lake process in late 2024 or early 2025, a release that holds the promise of significant advancements in AI computing. During Intel's Q1 2024 Quarterly Results, Gelsinger expressed confidence in the company's AI capabilities, stating that the Core Ultra platform currently delivers leadership AI performance and that the next-generation platforms, Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake, will launch later this year, tripling AI performance. He also mentioned that the Panther Lake generation, set to release in 2025, will grow AI performance up to an additional 2x.

The Panther Lake generation represents the culmination of three generations of work in a short time and is expected to continue Intel's iterative approach. This transition is marked by a shift from a hybrid architecture, a combination of different types of processors, to a disaggregated die, where different components of the processor are separated, as AI computing becomes increasingly prominent. This strategic move is aimed at optimizing AI performance and flexibility. This marks the third generation of the Intel Core Ultra series, following Ultra 100 (Meteor Lake), Ultra 200 (Arrow Lake), and Lunar Lake (200V). Intel's release strategy mirrors the pattern set by the Hybrid Architecture, with Alder Lake debuting in 2021, followed by Raptor Lake in 2022, and a refreshed Raptor Lake released last year to bridge the gap until LGA 1851 was ready. However, Intel's roadmap has seen adjustments in the past, such as the initial promise of an Arrow Lake release before the end of 2024, which was later retracted. The mid-2025 release of Panther Lake aligns with rumors of Arrow Lake's late 2024 or early 2025 debut, suggesting that the 18A process CPU generation could debut several months after Arrow Lake.

Intel has decided to discontinue its entire 13th Gen Raptor Lake lineup of overclockable "K-series" CPU SKUs. According to an official product change notice, the company will stop accepting orders for chips like the Core i9-13900KS, Core i9-13900K, Core i9-13900KF, Core i7-13700K, Core i7-13700KF, Core i5-13600K, and Core i5-13600KF after May 24th, 2024. Final shipments to vendors are targeted for June 28th. After those dates, availability of the unlocked Raptor Lake processors will rapidly diminish as the remaining inventory gets sold off, possibly at inflated prices due to shortages. This discontinuation comes just over a year after Raptor Lake's launch in late 2022, which delivered additional performance improvements over the previous Alder Lake generation.

Raptor Lake brought higher clocks, more cache, additional efficiency cores, and enough muscle to compete with AMD's Ryzen 7000 CPUs in many workloads. Interestingly, Intel has not yet discontinued Alder Lake, suggesting those 12th-generation chips may still be available for some time. While the death of the overclockable Raptor Lake K-series CPUs is unfortunate for enthusiasts, there is an upside—it paves the way for Intel's current generation Raptor Lake refresh, 14th generation Core processors, to clear inventory before the next-generation processors arrive. The 15th generation "Arrow Lake" Core Ultra 2 series of processors could be teased at the upcoming Computex event in June.

The recent PlayStation 5 Pro specification leak has caused quite a stir—even games development studios were surprised by some of these details. Chris Dring (Head of GamesIndustry.biz) attended last week's GDC industry event, where he met many developers who "did not understand the point" of Sony's upcoming mid-generation console refresh. The most hardcore segment of the current PS5 userbase will likely enthusiastically embrace a more powerful variant, but Dring's observations indicate that development studios are not expressing as much excitement—over a refreshed model—as the gaming community. This topic was discussed during yesterday's GamesIndustry.biz Microcast—industry figures believe that the base PlayStation 5 model's full potential remains untapped.

This mirrors a debate over a possible upgraded Xbox Series variant—gaming fans have complained about restrictive 30 FPS performance, even on the more potent Series X console; but experts believe that developers need to spend more time optimizing their software or produce "truly next-gen" experiences. Dring's sources expressed doubt about the PS5 Pro's predicted ability to "grow the market" or "move the needle"—ultimately, Sony will make some more money and gain headline coverage post-launch. The refreshed variant is expected to reach retail later this year, but industry watchdogs reckon that momentum will be lost due to the absence of a system-selling title around launch time. Grand Theft Auto VI would be the ideal "killer app," but insider murmurs posit a delay into 2026.

NVIDIA completed its last round of GeForce NVIDIA RTX 40-series GPU refreshes at the very end of January—new evidence suggests that another wave is scheduled for imminent release. MEGAsizeGPU has acquired and shared a tabulated list of new Ada Lovelace GPU variants—the trusted leaker's post presents a timetable that was supposed to kick off within the second half of this month. First up is the GeForce RTX 4070 GPU, with a current designation of AD104-251—the leaked table suggests that a new variant, AD103-175-KX, is due very soon (or overdue). Wccftech pointed out that the new ID was previously linked to NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER SKU. Moving into April, next up is the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti—jumping from the current AD106-351 die to a new unit; AD104-150-KX. The third adjustment (allegedly) affects the GeForce RTX 4060—going from AD107-400 to AD106-255, also timetabled for next month. MEGAsizeGPU reckons that Team Green will be swapping chips, but not rolling out broadly adjusted specifications—a best case scenario could include higher CUDA, RT, and Tensor core counts. According to VideoCardz, the new die designations have popped up in freshly released official driver notes—it is inferred that the variants are getting an "under the radar" launch treatment.

Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft Gaming, has insisted (on multiple occasions) that leaked Xbox product roadmaps are not a true representation of currently in-progress hardware at the company's Redmond, Washington headquarters. Internal documentation (from 2022) suggested that Microsoft had long term plans for physical media-less next-gen Xbox consoles, as well as a 2024 launch of an "adorably all-digital" Xbox Series X refresh. Early February news reports suggested that a few retail outlets had stopped selling Xbox physical media, due to low sales and a perception that Microsoft's console ecosystem prioritizes digital purchases. Spencer addressed ongoing rumors during a discussion with Game File: "We are supportive of physical media, but we don't have a need to drive that disproportionate to customer demand...We ship games physically and digitally, and we're really just following what the customers are doing. And I think our job in running Xbox is to deliver on the things that a majority of the customers want. And right now, a majority of our customers are buying games digitally."

Exputer's eXtas1s—a tipster specializing in all things Xbox, Bethesda and Activision Blizzard—reckons that the aforementioned Xbox Series X refresh is due to launch this summer: "Microsoft is currently working to release a white-colored Xbox Series X with no disc reader, sources close to eXputer have revealed...This all-digital console is expected to be released sometime between the upcoming months of June and July, but there are chances for a slight delay on that front as well." Allegedly, confidential footage has been distributed within insider networks. The Exputer report suggests that the proposed digital refresh could be "$50 to $100" cheaper than the current MSRP of $499.99 for an Xbox Series X 1 TB model. An improved heatsink and modernized wireless network card are mentioned as possible internal upgrades. Games industry watchdogs reckon that Microsoft is attempting to compete with Sony's digital-only PlayStation 5 models—the Xbox Series S is not considered to be a direct competitor here, due to its lesser specifications.

NVIDIA today launched the third and final high-end GPU in its GeForce RTX 40-series SUPER refresh. The new GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER is being launched at an attractive $999 price, compared to the $1,199 that the RTX 4080 originally launched at. Besides this huge 20% cut in pricing, there's also more performance on offer, as the company chose to max out the 5 nm AD103 silicon that it's based on. If you recall, the RTX 4080 has 76 out of 80 streaming multiprocessors of the AD103 enabled, and its memory runs at an odd 22.4 Gbps speed. The RTX 4080 SUPER gets all 80 SM, and a well rounded 23 Gbps memory speed.

With 80 SM on tap, you get 10,240 CUDA cores, 320 Tensor cores, 80 RT cores, 320 TMUs, and 112 ROPs. The memory size is unchanged at 16 GB, across the 256-bit wide memory interface of the AD103; as is the total graphics power (TGP), at 320 W. All cards will include an NVIDIA-designed adapter that converts three 8-pin PCIe power connectors into a 12VHPWR that's capable of delivering 450 W of power. The target audience for this card is the same as that of the RTX 4080—maxed out 4K Ultra HD gaming with ray tracing. At $999, the RTX 4080 SUPER allows NVIDIA to better compete with the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX that's sometimes spotted for prices as low as $900. Don't forget to catch our exhaustive review coverage from the links below!

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER Founders Edition | ASUS ROG Strix RTX 4080 SUPER OC | ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 4080 SUPER OC | MSI RTX 4080 SUPER Expert | Gigabyte RTX 4080 SUPER Gaming OC | PNY RTX 4080 SUPER Verto | Galax RTX 4080 SUPER SG 1-click OC | Palit RTX 4080 SUPER GamingPro OC | Zotac RTX 4080 SUPER AMP Extreme AIRO

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40-series SUPER lineup is real, and is coming this January, Chinese tech site IT Home reports. The publication released the exact dates on which NVIDIA is announcing the series, along with their market availability dates. The lineup refreshes the higher end of the RTX 40-series, and consists of three SKUs—the GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER, the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER, and the GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER.

According to the IT Home report, NVIDIA in a GeForce RTX event along the sidelines of the 2024 International CES, will announce all three SKUs on January 8. This will be followed by a January 17 release for the GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER. This is when you'll be able to buy the card. A week later on January 24, the company will make the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER available. Wrapping things up will be the January 31 availability of the GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER.

According to the latest Canalys forecasts, worldwide PC shipments are on the verge of recovery following seven consecutive quarters of decline. The market is expected to return to growth of 5% in Q4 2023, boosted by a strong holiday season and an improving macroeconomic environment. Looking ahead, full-year 2024 shipments are forecast to hit 267 million units, landing 8% higher than in 2023, helped by tailwinds including the Windows refresh cycle and emergence of AI-capable and Arm-based devices.

"The global PC market is on a recovery path and set to return to 2019 shipment levels by next year," said Canalys Analyst Ben Yeh. "The impact of AI on the PC industry will be profound, with leading players across OEMs, processor manufacturers, and operating system providers focused on delivering new AI-capable models in 2024. These initiatives will bolster refresh demand, particularly in the commercial sector. The total shipment share of AI-capable PCs is expected to be about 19% in 2024. This accounts for all M-series Mac products alongside the nascent offerings expected in the Windows ecosystem. However, as more compelling use-cases emerge and AI functionality becomes an expected feature, Canalys anticipates a fast ramp up in the development and adoption of AI-capable PCs."

Valve has announced an updated version of the Steam Deck and the headline feature is the new 7.4-inch OLED display. That's a mere 0.4-inches bigger than the original Steam Deck LCD display and it retains the same 1280 x 800 resolution. However, everything else related to the display has been improved and the refresh rate is now 90 Hz rather than 60 Hz. The display is also a lot brighter, with an SDR rating of 600 nits and an HDR rating of 1000 nits. Valve also claims a 110 percent P3 colour gamut, a one million to one contrast ratio and a sub 0.1 ms response time. On top of that, Valve has added what the company calls "high performance touch" which is said to improve the responsiveness of the display.

It's not just the display that has been improved, as Valve has moved to a 6 nm AMD Zen 2 based SoC which seems to allow the GPU to run at 1.6 GHz at all times, as Valve no longer lists a frequency range for the GPU. The power envelope remains the same though, with a range of 4-15 Watts. Paired with the new SoC is faster LPDDR5 memory at 6400 MT/s, up from 5500 MT/s, which should provide a small boost in gaming performance. An improved cooling solution is also part of the package, which is also likely a reason for the more constant GPU clocks. Gone are the entry level storage SKUs and the OLED version of the Steam Deck only comes with 512 GB or 1 TB of internal storage. The WiFi and Bluetooth module has also been overhauled and now supports WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3. The battery has also been boosted from a 40 Whr pack to a 50 Whr pack and Valve now claims three to 12 hours of battery life during gaming, as well as faster charging times. Finally the weight has dropped by 29 grams, which might not be much, but still impressive considering the larger battery pack. The downside you ask? That would be the price, as Valve is asking for US$549/€569 for the 512 GB version, with the 1 TB coming at US$649/€679 when it becomes available on the 16th of November.

The colors of the illustrations look serene and dreamy on paper, leading us into a realm of fantasy. Such experience can hardly be replicated on LED screens. However, thanks to the advances in ePaper technology, it's now possible for us to relive such wistful reverie in a digital way. And what makes it happen is Kaleido 3.

What is Kaleido 3？
Kaleido 3 is E Ink's latest generation of print color display technology for ePaper products. Compared with conventional black-and-white E INK displays, Kaleido uses an RGB Color Filter Array (CFA) to present colors on the screen. With a color filter on top, red, green, and blue can be mixed or with black and white to create a total of 4,096 colors.

In recent developments, Linux's open-source graphics ecosystem is making significant strides to accommodate AMD's upcoming RDNA3.5 architecture, also known as RDNA3+ or GFX11.5. Mesa 23.3, a library in the Linux graphics software stack, is now being updated for RDNA3.5, marking a substantial milestone. This upcoming update is particularly tailored for the impending Ryzen 8000 "Strix Point" APU series, which will incorporate the Navi 3.5 architecture. While AMD has maintained secrecy regarding specific enhancements accompanying this refresh, we expect decent performance improvements. This includes the anticipation that the Ryzen 8000 APUs will feature an increased number of Compute Units (CUs), where the current highest number is 12 CUs, and the increase could bump that figure to 16 CUs. The official announcement of the Ryzen 8000 series is expected in early 2024 when we will learn more about its GPU configuration and performance.

Fans of Team Blue's Alchemist graphics architecture were slightly disappointed by no new discrete Arc GPU products showing up at this week's Innovation event—where product presentations focused heavily on the CPU-side of things. There was a small hope of Intel's Arc A580 GPU making an appearance at Intel's California gig, following alleged pre-release samples getting benchmarked over the summer. This was the first sign of activity in a year—the three other first generation Alchemist SKUs (A380, A750 and A770) have been released into the wild.

The whole series suffered numerous delays, and launched to a mixed reception late last year. Intel engineers have produced plenty of driver updates and software improvements at an admirable rate throughout 2023. We have not heard much about Alchemist+ since springtime—leaked presentation slides indicated that a refreshed generation was marked for launch around the third and fourth quarters of this year. Given that Team Blue did not showcase Arc "1.5" cards during their Innovation show, we can assume that deadlines have been missed yet again. Battlemage has been spotted most recently—in the form of a BMG G10 GPU sitting in plain sight during a press tour of Intel's Malaysian facility. It will be interesting to find out whether this fully next-generation series has been prioritized.

An interesting official Intel support document has been uploaded for public viewing—a PDF with the title of "Intel Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel VROC) for Windows" mentions Fishhawk Falls Refresh (FHF-R) within its August 2023 release notes. FHF-R seems to make reference to an upcoming platform revision, rather than a refresh of a CPU lineup. The codename "Fishhawk Falls" was linked to 4th Gen HEDT Sapphire Rapids workstation counterparts late last year. The notes do refer to "Sapphire Rapids workstation-based platforms" in two places, so this could align with previous rumors of SR-R arriving early next year.

The latest discovery perhaps has Fishhawk Falls Refresh associated with 5th Generation Xeon Scalable "Emerald Rapids" processors. These workstation-oriented CPUs are predicted to launch as part of new Xeon W-2500 and Xeon W-3500 products lines. Intel and its board partners could be working on a revision of associated W790 chipset motherboards. Mainboard leaks have AMD's Threadripper 7000-series of workstation processors placed as the main competition going into 2024.

According to VideoCardz, we can look forward to Intel launching its next gen Core processor in the middle of next month, or at least some of them will launch then. As always when it comes to Intel and product launches, it appears to be a staggered launch, but this time around it's getting a bit strange. We checked with our sources to see if the proposed date by VideoCardz was indeed correct and were told that motherboards should be available later this month, largely due to Intel not offering a new chipset for the 14th Gen Core processors. This means the motherboard makers are free to launch their refreshed board for the the 14th Gen Core processors pretty much as they please.

The first CPUs that should launch are said to be the Core i9-14900K, Core i7-14700K and Core i5-14600K, as well as their KF counterparts. Advertising for these CPUs will kick off on the 16th of October followed by sales and reviews on the 17th of October, according to VideoCardz. The remaining Raptor Lake refresh CPUs are said to launch sometime in early 2024, most likely with a CES announcement followed by availability sometime in the first quarter. However, it appears that Intel will officially announce the Raptor Lake refresh processors during Intel Innovation 2023, which kicks off next week, on the 19th of September. Early performance leaks suggest that those with a recent CPU won't be overly tempted by these new chips from Intel and most consumers are better off waiting for Intel's move to a new socket next year, if they're looking at getting a new Intel based system.

In a recent interaction with the community on Chinese social platforms, Tony Yu, better known as Uncle Tony and serving as the General Manager of ASUS China, shed light on several questions concerning ASUS's products. One question that captured attention was about the ROG Z790 APEX motherboard, a premium offering from ASUS designed explicitly for overclocking. Tony clarified that the motherboard is currently out of production as ASUS gears up to unveil an updated version. This move is in line with industry trends, with rivals like Gigabyte and MSI also refreshing their respective Z790 lineups. The updated motherboards from ASUS are expected to align with Intel's next-generation Core series known as Raptor Lake Refresh, featuring incremental improvements such as WiFi-7 standard integration, new color options, enhanced power delivery mechanisms, and advancements in memory overclocking capabilities.

Launched initially in November of the previous year with a price tag of $699, the ROG MAXIMUS Z790 APEX motherboard stood out for its superior features aimed at overclocking enthusiasts. These include 24 power supply modules, dual 8Pin power connectors, AI-driven overclocking technology, and support for DDR5 memory with speeds exceeding 8000 MT/s. It also offers a plethora of connectivity options, like five M.2 interfaces, a 2.5G network card, WiFi 6E, and USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 Type-C, along with 60 W QC 4+ fast charging. This motherboard gained popularity in December when it was used to set a world record CPU frequency of 9008.82 MHz using an Intel i9-13900K processor. Looking forward, the next generation of Intel Core processors could enable even higher overclocking frequencies. Apart from this, Tony tantalizingly hinted that ASUS is experimenting with innovative design changes, such as introducing connectors on the reverse side of motherboards, although this feature may not debut in the APEX series.

MSI has done it yet again, that is to leak Intel confidential information about upcoming products. In a live stream earlier today, the company put on a slide clearly marked "NDA, do not share!" which confirms the specs of some of Intel's upcoming 14th Gen Core CPUs, also known under the Raptor Lake-S Refresh code name. That said, the only thing that really needed confirmation that is on the slide is that the Core i7-14700K is getting an additional four E-cores.

That said, MSI does provide some insight on what to expect in terms of performance gain over the 13th Gen Core processors and it's not a whole lot. According to MSI, we should expect an average performance boost of around three percent compared to the same SKU from the previous generation. That's possibly one of the worst performance gains ever from Intel, generation to generation, although it is only a refresh, but the question is, why did Intel even bother? The Core i7-14700K does on average get a 17 percent performance boost in multi-threaded applications thanks to the extra E-cores, but this is hardly going to make anyone with a Core i7-13700K going to want to upgrade. Note that the video has been taken down by MSI as of the time of this article being posted.

We have been gathering rumors of next-generation Intel desktop silicon. However, thanks to the latest software version of AIDA64, it can now identify Intel Core i3/i5/i7 and i9 processors from the coming Raptor Lake silicon refresh, also referred to as 14th Gen Core or 14000 series. AIDA64 cannot yet distinguish between specific models, as Intel has not officially disclosed these, nor have any documents been leaked. Nevertheless, the software should now be capable of displaying whether the current 13th Gen chip or the refreshed 14th model is in use.

Speculation indicates that Intel plans to launch its 14th Gen Core desktop CPUs in October, with an announcement scheduled at the Innovation event a month before. There is no concrete information regarding individual SKUs; however, expectations are that the new range will feature more cores for mid-range and entry-level segments, along with a minimum of 200 MHz higher clock speeds for Core i9 models. The AIDA64 software also adds support for some already launched hardware like AMD's Navi 24, which includes Radeon RX 6450M and Radeon RX 6550M. The complete list of changes can be found below.

The Eurasian Economic Commission or the EEC for short, has become something of a source when it comes to upcoming product leaks, at least as far as the model names goes and now a range of upcoming motherboards from Gigabyte has made an appearance on its site. What we're looking at is a range of refreshed boards, some that were on display at Computex, but most of them haven't been officially announced as yet. On the Intel side, all the new models have an X somewhere towards the end of the model names to reflect them being part of the refresh and at least some SKUs are getting WiFi 7 support, All except one model is based on the Z790 chipset, at least as far as most of us are concerned, as there's one custom SKU that's said to be for a Chinese system integrator that won't be available outside of China. As the China specific SKU is already listed on Gigabyte's Chinese website, we've included a picture of the B70M YT Pioneer WiFi below.

On the AMD side of things, Gigabyte is adding a more affordable X670E SKU with the X670E Aorus Elite AX. Here, AMD has stuck with a simple V2 to reflect the refreshed boards, but it's unclear what has changed on these models. Gigabyte has also added a few new MicroATX B650 boards, with the B650M Aorus Elite AX Arctic which will be a white and/or silver motherboard with matching design elements. This board will have limited availability and although it might be found in retail in some countries, it's largely intended for system integrators. The other two new boards are the B650M A Elite AX Arc—we were told by a source that this is a mistake in the filing—and the B650M Gaming WiFi, which should be a cheaper alternative to the B650M Gaming X models the company is currently offering. These boards should start arriving in the autumn some time, at least based on the boards Gigabyte was showing at Computex.

According to main members of the Digital Foundry team, Microsoft had informed them during Xbox Series console preview sessions (prior to the November 2020 launch) that plans for the more powerful variant had changed. Richard Leadbetter, John Linneman and Alex Battaglia discussed this puzzling notion during yesterday's DF Direct Weekly videocast (episode number #116): "Microsoft told us this back when we saw the Series X for the first time that the Series X is their mid-gen refresh. They just decided to do it, ahead of time, I guess you could say...The Series S is what they consider the standard machine and then Series X is, you know, that's getting ahead of the cart there and this is what you might get from a mid-gen console." They compare the current offerings to predecessors, and propose that Microsoft simply "transplanted" and repeated model hierarchy from the past, albeit with a simultaneous launch—Series S is the newer answer to Xbox One S, and Series X is a current-gen equivalent to the One X.

The debate touches upon (Xbox Chief) Phil Spencer's recent declaration that a more powerful Xbox Series console is not necessary, despite Sony allegedly working on a PlayStation 5 "PRO" model. The DF team reckons that game developers are yet to extract the most from current offerings—Battaglia agrees with Spencer's observation and suggests that only a loud minority of hardcore console gamers are demanding more powerful refreshes. Linneman thinks that the Series X is still a "great box" despite headlines focusing on restrictive 30 FPS performance, and its full potential has not been unleashed. Games running on Unreal Engine 5 are still a rarity on home consoles, but the guys acknowledge that AAA development is taking longer and becoming more expensive, so truly next-gen visuals are not arriving soon. Leadbetter estimates that it takes about four years to hash out console hardware, so the current generation's lifespan could be extended if refreshed hardware turns up.

Momomo_us posted on Twitter about their finding of a BIOS firmware update for an Intel chipset motherboard from AsRock, others soon pointed out that ASUS had quietly revised a higher-end model as well. Both boards share the same socket platform - LGA 1700 - and currently support Team Blue's 13th Gen Raptor Lake CPU series, but new details presented on pages for the ROG Maximus Z790 APEX and B760M PG Sonic WiFi suggests that these models are pre-prepared for the (still heavily rumored) launch of Raptor Lake Refresh. The changelogs for their respective BIOS updates mention "compatibility for the next-gen" and "support for next-generation" processors. TPU community member, Nater, has pointed out that his ASUS ProArt Z790-CREATOR WIFI board is also eligible for 14th gen support.

Leaks suggest that the Intel 14th Gen Core lineup is expected to launch around October time this year. Raptor Lake Refresh is likely going to serve as a sort of interim release, since insiders think that desktop Meteor Lake-S SKUs are no longer on the menu, and a full-fledged next-gen upgrade - Arrow Lake-S - is not due until Q4 2024 or Q1 2025. Not much is known about how much more performant the RPL refresh will be when compared to the existing range, but more leaks are expected in the coming months. Mobile Meteor Lake examples have been spotted in the wild recently, in official and less official capacities, so keep your eyes peeled.