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.

Intel's 14th Generation "Raptor Lake Refresh" processor series debuted in "enthusiast" SKU form last October—Team Blue's official product unveiling was less than surprising, since multiple SKUs and specifications had been leaked throughout mid-to-late 2023. The true top-of-the-pile Intel Core i9-14900KS SKU was first linked to a possible announcement at January's CES trade show, but did not appear in any of last year's leaked product lists. Team Blue proceeded to introduce its 14th Gen "mainstream" 65 W SKUs to the crowd in Las Vegas, but the leaked Core i9-14900KS model did not pop up, contrary to tipster claims—Intel had a history of presenting "KS" variants during January showcases.

Industry experts reckon that the current Raptor Lake Refresh flagship—Core i9 14900K—is getting some extra time in the spotlight, before its inevitable dethroning courtesy of a "Special Edition" sibling. BenchLife has reached out to its cadre of insiders, following yesterday's reports of a "gargantuan 409 W maximum package power draw." The alleged top dog 14th Gen Core part is perhaps only a month away from launch, as leaked by industry moles: "According to our reliable sources, Intel plans to launch the Intel Core i9 in mid-March 2024. 14900KS is a limited edition processor with a clock speed of 6.2 GHz, but we cannot confirm whether it will be sold to a specific system vendor or a specific channel."

An interesting Intel document leaked out last month—it contained detailed pre-release information that covered their upcoming 15th Gen Core Arrow Lake-S desktop CPU platform, including a possible best scenario 8+16+1 core configuration. Thorough analysis of the spec sheet revealed a revelation—the next generation Core processor family could "lack Hyper-Threading (HT) support." The rumor mill had produced similar claims in the past, but the internal technical memo confirmed that Arrow Lake's "expected eight performance cores without any threads enabled via SMT." These specifications could be subject to change, but tipster—InstLatX64—has uprooted an Arrow Lake-S engineering sample: "I spotted (CPUID C0660, 24 threads, 3 GHz, without AVX 512) among the Intel test machines."

The leaker had uncovered several pre-launch Meteor Lake SKUs last year—with 14th Gen laptop processors hitting the market recently, InstLatX64 has turned his attention to seeking out next generation parts. Yesterday's Arrow Lake-S find has chins wagging about the 24 thread count aspect (sporting two more than the fanciest Meteor Lake Core Ultra 9 processor)—this could be an actual 24 core total configuration—considering the evident lack of hyper-threading, as seen on the leaked engineering sample. Tom's Hardware reckons that the AVX-512 instruction set could be disabled via firmware or motherboard UEFI—if InstLatX64's claim of "without AVX-512" support does ring true, PC users (demanding such workloads) are best advised to turn to Ryzen 7040 and 8040 series processors, or (less likely) Team Blue's own 5th Gen Xeon "Emerald Rapids" server CPUs.

MSI presented a massive table of GeForce RTX 40 SUPER series custom design graphics cards at CES 2024—TPU spent a lot of time photographing and documenting everything GPU-related at the tech company's booth. The kind-of mysterious GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER 16G EXPERT model seemed to get a lot of attention from online PC hardware communities. The brand new and very substantial EXPERT shroud design integrates a Zero Frozr cooling solution, but folks were quick to link its aesthetic (and vapor chamber setup) to NVIDIA's dual fan Founders Edition cooling solution. MSI has not yet published a dedicated GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER 16G EXPERT product page, while all of the other models from CES are uploaded and active.

A tipster on social media has posted a screenshot of the 16G EXPERT's specification sheet—wxnod has uncovered alleged factory settings ahead of review and launch day embargos, although pricing is still unknown at the time of writing. The leaked core figures include a boost clock of 2610 MHz in GAMING and SILENT modes (60 MHz above reference), while the MSI Center software suite can activate an Extreme Performance mode: 2625 MHz. These figures align with the SUPER SUPRIM model's core clock specs—the SUPRIM X sits above everything else as the fastest card in MSI's RTX 4080 SUPER stable. MSI's official introduction stated that the 16G EXPERT: "features a push-pull airflow design for enhanced cooling efficiency. The enclosure is constructed with aluminium Die-Casting for structural strength, while Core Pipe and a Vapor Chamber work to efficiently dissipate heat. Lastly, a patented fan design provides quiet yet reliable airflow." We hope to see the MSI GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER 16G EXPERT's addition to the TPU GPU database.

Today, The Khronos Group, an open consortium of industry-leading companies creating advanced interoperability standards, announced the latest roadmap milestone for Vulkan, the cross-platform 3D graphics and compute API. The Vulkan roadmap targets the "immersive graphics" market, made up of mid- to high-end smartphones, tablets, laptops, consoles, and desktop devices. The Vulkan Roadmap 2024 milestone captures a set of capabilities that are expected to be supported in new products for that market, beginning in 2024. The roadmap specification provides a significant increase in functionality for the targeted devices and sets the evolutionary direction of the API, including both new hardware capabilities and improvements to the programming model for Vulkan developers.

Vulkan Roadmap 2024 is the second milestone release on the Vulkan Roadmap. Products that support it must be Vulkan 1.3 conformant and support the extensions and capabilities defined in both the 2022 and 2024 Roadmap specifications. Vulkan roadmap specifications use the Vulkan Profile mechanism to help developers build portable Vulkan applications; roadmap requirements are expressed in machine-readable JSON files, and tooling in the Vulkan SDK auto-generates code that makes it easy for developers to query for and enable profile support in their applications.

GPD has disclosed to ITHome that a specification refresh of its Win Max 2 handheld/mini-laptop gaming PC is incoming—this model debuted last year with Ryzen 7040 "Phoenix" APUs sitting in the driver's seat. A company representative provided a sneak peek of an upgraded device that sports a Team Red Ryzen 8040 series "Hawk Point" mobile processor, and a larger pool of system memory (32 GB versus the 2023 model's 16 GB). The refreshed GPD Win Max 2's Ryzen 7 8840U APU was compared to the predecessor's Ryzen 7 7840U in CPU-Z benchmarks (standard and AX-512)—the results demonstrate a very slight difference in performance between generations.

The 8040 and 7040 APUs share the same "Phoenix" basic CPU design (8-cores + 16-threads) based on the prevalent "Zen 4" microarchitecture, plus an integration of AMD's Radeon 780M GPU. The former's main upgrade lies in its AI-crunching capabilities—a deployment of Team Red's XDNA AI engine. Ryzen 8040's: "NPU performance has been increased to 16 TOPS, compared to 10 TOPS of the NPU on the 'Phoenix' silicon. AMD is taking a whole-of-silicon approach to AI acceleration, which includes not just the NPU, but also the 'Zen 4' CPU cores that support the AVX-512 VNNI instruction set that's relevant to AI; and the iGPU based on the RDNA 3 graphics architecture, with each of its compute unit featuring two AI accelerators, components that make the SIMD cores crunch matrix math. The whole-of-silicon performance figures for "Phoenix" is 33 TOPS; while 'Hawk Point' boasts of 39 TOPS. In benchmarks by AMD, 'Hawk Point' is shown delivering a 40% improvement in vision models, and Llama 2, over the Ryzen 7040 "Phoenix" series."

The TechPowerUp team visited the EK water blocks booth at the CES 2024 international show. We previously covered the company's latest direct-die all-in-one (AIO) water cooler, but many more products were on display. First in line is EK's Quantum-X NoCase chassis, which contradicts traditional PC enclosures with its open, no outer shell design. This radical departure from convention results in a nearly invisible frame crafted from aluminium for a featherlight weight of approximately 3 pounds. Its design is meticulously engineered to be as airy and lightweight as possible without compromising the support needed for essential hardware and liquid cooling components. The case integrates the advanced Reflection² distro plate, equipped with dual D5 pumps to facilitate separate cooling loops for both the CPU and GPU, ensuring optimal thermal management in a minimalist aesthetic.

The Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) today announced that it has published the latest update to DisplayPort, version 2.1a. This update replaces the VESA certified DP40 ultra-high-bit-rate (UHBR) cable specification with a new VESA certified DP54 UHBR cable spec to enable up to four-lane UHBR13.5 link rate support (a maximum throughput of 54 Gbps) over a two-meter passive cable. As a result, the DisplayPort 2.1a update effectively doubles the passive cable length for UHBR13.5 GPU-to-display connections—which previously could only be supported through a DP80 UHBR cable—providing consumers with greater flexibility in their gaming or workstation setup.

VESA also announces it has published a new Automotive Extension Services protocol specification for both DisplayPort 2.1a and the latest version of VESA's Embedded DisplayPort (eDP) specification, version 1.5a. This new protocol extension provides support for automotive display functional safety as well as secure integrity and authentication for up to 16 display regions of interest. With the VESA Automotive Extension Services protocol, VESA has for the first time established a standard for vehicle displays that can enable display safety engineers to achieve ISO 26262 ASIL-D* - the holy grail of electronic safety integrity. Silicon manufacturers are already adopting VESA's Automotive Extension Services protocol today for chipsets that will be integrated in future vehicles.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is a fast-paced action-adventure that challenges players with a wide variety of lethal monsters and traps, most of which take speed and precision to conquer—which means that smooth, responsive performance is especially important. To that end, Sargon's adventure through Mount Qaf will target at least 60 frames per second on all platforms when it launches on January 18 (or on January 15 for Ubisoft+ subscribers and owners of the Digital Deluxe Edition), whether you're playing on PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, or Amazon Luna. First, let's take a look at the PC specs below.

The Story of Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
Sargon, trained as a weapon to serve Persia, is on a mission to save its heir to the throne, Prince Ghassan. This perilous journey is sending him to Mount Qaf, where time no longer flows swift and sure in one direction. Sargon along with the other Immortals head to Mount Qaf to save the Prince, but it doesn't take long before he finds himself splitting paths, with some of the Immortals on a conflicting trajectory. Maybe that's because time seems to be mysteriously intertwined here and sometimes the past can happen after the present. No matter the cost, Sargon continues to strive when all odds are against him, gaining strength along the way.

Alibaba's T-Head unit, responsible for the design and development of in-house IC design, has announced the first domestic SSD controller based on the PCIe 5.0 specification standard. Called the Zhenyue 510, the SSD controller is aimed at enterprise SSD offerings. Interestingly, the Zhenyue 510 is powered by T-Head's custom Xuantie C910 cores based on RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA). Supporting the PCIe 5.0 standard for interfacing, the SSD controller uses DDR5 memory as a cache buffer. Regarding the performance, there are no official figures yet, but the company claims to have 30% lower input/output latencies compared to competing offerings. T-Head claims the SSD has an IO processing capability of "3400 Kilo IOs per second, a data bandwidth of 14 Gbytes/s, and an extremely high energy efficiency of 420 Kilo IO per second for every Watt".

This is an essential step towards Chinese self-sufficiency as T-Head has designed various ICs for processing different tasks. Still, now Alibaba's chip design unit has a domestic design for storage as well. Claiming low latency figures, the Zhenyue 510 is suitable for enterprise workloads like big data analysis, as well as AI inference/training systems workloads. The development of Zhenyue 510 started in 1H 2021, and it took the company more than two years to complete the design and validation of the chip to prepare it for deployment. This is the second Chinese-made SSD controller after Yingren Technology (InnoGrit) announced their chip in September.

The wait is almost over. We are days away from the launch of EA Sports WRC, the biggest rally game Codemasters has made to date. EA Sports WRC is out November 3, let's go through everything you need to know before the big day. Jump straight into the action as soon as the game launches. Pre-load on the dates below.

November 3, the worldwide launch of EA SPORTS WRC at 04:00am UTC across all platforms. Get into the game earlier by, pre-ordering the digital version for up to 3 days early access starting on October 31 at 07:00 UTC across all platforms and EA Play Pro.

Realizing the full potential of next-generation deep learning requires highly efficient AI infrastructure. For a computing platform to be scalable and cost efficient, optimizing every layer of the AI stack, from algorithms to hardware, is essential. Advances in narrow-precision AI data formats and associated optimized algorithms have been pivotal to this journey, allowing the industry to transition from traditional 32-bit floating point precision to presently only 8 bits of precision (i.e. OCP FP8).

Narrower formats allow silicon to execute more efficient AI calculations per clock cycle, which accelerates model training and inference times. AI models take up less space, which means they require fewer data fetches from memory, and can run with better performance and efficiency. Additionally, fewer bit transfers reduces data movement over the interconnect, which can enhance application performance or cut network costs.

In an extraordinary leap forward for the chiplet industry, the groundbreaking collaboration between the Open Compute Project Foundation (OCP) and JEDEC is set to usher in a new era of innovation. By merging the capabilities and open standards of OCP's Chiplet Data Extensible Markup Language (CDXML) and JEDEC's JEP30 PartModel Guidelines, this partnership, initiated in late 2022, promises to revolutionize chiplet design, manufacturing and integration. The result will be a unified structure that supports both chiplets and general electronic parts within the overarching purview of JEDEC.

In a significant development, the integration of OCP CDXML into JEP30 has reached a critical milestone, enabling chiplet builders to provide standardized chiplet part descriptions to their customers electronically. This advancement opens the door to automating System in Package (SiP) design and assembly using chiplets. The chiplet descriptions encompass crucial information for SiP builders, including thermal properties, physical and mechanical requirements, behavior specifications, power and signal integrity properties, testing in-package and security parameters.

Assassin's Creed Mirage launches on October 5 - and if you're looking forward to exploring ninth-century Baghdad on a PC, we've got a rundown of specifications to help you figure out the right settings to get the best possible experience out of your machine, as well as a list of additional features you can take advantage of provided you've got the right hardware.

As you experience the journey of Basim to become a Hidden One and undertake elaborate investigations and assassinations, you'll be able to immerse yourself in his world with an uncapped frame rate, even in 4K; simultaneously use a keyboard, mouse, and controller (or other inputs); and get a dazzling panoramic view with HDR as well as multi-monitor and widescreen support. You'll also be able to leverage features like Intel's AI-assisted XeSS Super Sampling, which upscales resolution while enabling hardware to pump out more frames per second; optimization for Intel Arc GPUs and 13th-generation CPUs; synchronize ambient lighting with the game's action using MSI's Mystic Light products; and even experience upper-body haptic feedback with the OWO Haptic Gaming System vest (which is also supported on consoles).

Intel recently updated its website to highlight interposers used for testing upcoming chips before their actual product integration. A specific webpage now showcases components used by various tools, notably the "Gen5 VR," which stands for CPU Voltage Regulator in this context. The highlight of the update reveals at least four yet-to-be-announced products: Battlemage (BMG), Arrow Lake (ARL), and Lunar Lake (LNL), slated for launch in 2024. Particularly interesting are the two Battlemage interposers: BGA2362-BMG-X2 and BGA2727-BMG-X3. This hints that a Battlemage GPU could have more pins than Intel's current top-tier GPU from the Alchemist series, known as DG2, which features 2660 pins (BGA2660-DG2-512EU).

This unveiling could indicate Intel's plans to introduce two GPUs in its new series or potentially two different package sizes. Manufacturers often use consistent package sizes for multiple GPUs, granting flexibility to interchange processors with similar specifications and presenting a feasible production strategy. Another notable mention is the Arrow Lake-HX, intended for premium desktop/laptop hybrids.. While there was some buzz about the ARL-HX series before, this update provides clear confirmation from Intel. Lastly, the reveal includes an interposer for the Lunar Lake-M series (LNL-M), which is expected to be Intel's most energy-efficient line. Drawing parallels from the Alder Lake series, such chips were designed for tablets with power consumption between 5 to 7 watts.

Teledyne LeCroy, the worldwide leader in protocol test solutions, announced that it has received Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) approval for testing DisplayPort 2.1 Link Training Tunable PHY Repeater (LTTPR) and Display Stream Compression (DSC) compliance with the quantumdata M42de Video Analyzer and Generator. These tests underwent extensive testing during industry workshops to ensure their accuracy and reliability and are now considered mandatory for compliance certification of DisplayPort 2.1 Ultra High Bit Rate (UHBR) capable devices.

The DisplayPort specification was updated to version 2.1 in October of 2022 and brought significant changes to link training and LTTPR operation. Design and test engineers are faced with incrementally more testing as DisplayPort chipsets add support for the new link training and other advanced features. "The need to drive higher video resolutions and frame rates raises the bar for vendors seeking VESA logo approval. Compliance testing is a key factor in delivering a robust DisplayPort technology ecosystem and outstanding customer experiences," said Bill Lempesis, executive director of VESA, which develops and administers the DisplayPort standard and compliance logo program. "Reaching this level of comprehensive test coverage so quickly after the DisplayPort 2.1 specification was released is only possible due to the close collaboration between test vendors like Teledyne LeCroy and our VESA member companies."

Next week, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is launching on PC! Many of you have asked for details about the technologies used and system requirements. Today we are answering those questions, and on top of that, we have some exciting new feature announcements. To ensure a smooth dimension-hopping experience, our team implemented DirectStorage 1.2 in Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart on PC, including GPU decompression.

Richard van der Laan, Senior Lead Programmer at Nixxes Software, explains: "To enable quick loading and instant transition between dimensions, the game needs to be able to load assets quickly. DirectStorage ensures quick loading times, and GPU decompression is used at high graphics settings to stream assets in the background while playing. Traditionally, this decompression is handled by the CPU, but at a certain point, there is an advantage to letting the GPU handle this, as this enables a higher bandwidth for streaming assets from storage to the graphics card. We use this to quickly load high-quality textures and environments with a high level of detail."

Nixxes and Insomniac yesterday published their official PC specification requirements for the Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart port (arriving on July 26). The announcement was made via a post on the game's Steam store page, but the two teams decided to remove it soon after (perhaps the information was released too early). Several news sites were quick enough to note that the PC version of Ratchet & Clank: Rift will be the first DirectStorage 1.2 game with support for GPU decompression. Senior Lead Programmer Richard van der Laan stated (in the now deleted update): DirectStorage ensures quick loading times and GPU decompression is used at high graphics settings to stream assets in the background while playing. Traditionally, this decompression is handled by the CPU, but at a certain point there is an advantage to letting the GPU handle this, as this enables a higher bandwidth for streaming assets from storage to the graphics card. We use this to quickly load high-quality textures and environments with a high level of detail.

His colleague, Principal Programmer Alex Bartholomeus, also chipped in with: "For Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart on PC, we added adaptive streaming based on live measurement of the available hardware bandwidth. This allows us to tailor the texture streaming strategy for the best possible texture streaming on any configuration." The most surprising aspect gleaned from the PC specification sheet is the minimum performance requirement (720p @ 30 FPS) of a hard disk drive (HDD) acting as the main storage device, although they would prefer that you go with a more modern storage option. A solid-state drive (SSD) is deemed necessary for the "Recommended" tier at 1080p/60 FPS. This is quite amusing considering that Insomniac's creative director, Marcus Smith, once said (in an official PlayStation showcase video) that Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart's dimensional rift hopping "would not have been possible without the Solid State Drive of the PlayStation 5."

According to Igor's Lab, who has gotten their hands on a PCI-SIG draft engineer change notice, it looks like the not entirely uncontroversial 12VHPWR connector won't be long lived. The PCI-SIG is getting ready to replace it with the 12V-2x6 connector, which will be part of the ATX 3.1 spec and the PCI Express 6.0 spec. The new connector doesn't appear to have any major physical changes though, but there have been mechanical modifications, such as the sense pins having been recessed further back, to make sure a proper contact is made before higher power outputs can be requested by the GPU. The good news is that at least in the draft spec, the 12V-2x6 connector will be backwards compatible with 12VHPWR connectors.

One of the bigger changes, at least when it comes to how much power the new connector can deliver, is that there will be new 150 and 300 Watt modes in addition to the 450 and 600 Watt modes for the sense pin detection. The 12V-2x6 connector is rated for at least 9.2 Amps per pin and the new connectors will carry a H++ logo, with th older 12VHPWR connectors getting a H+ logo. The PCI-SIG has also added stricter requirements when it comes to the cable design and quality, which should hopefully prevent some of the issues the 12VHPWR implementations have suffered from. We should find out more details once the PCI-SIG has finalised the 12V-2x6 connector specification. In the meantime, you can hit up the source link for more technical drawings and details.

NVIDIA receives a lot of questions about graphics memory, also known as the frame buffer, video memory, or "VRAM", and so with the unveiling of our new GeForce RTX 4060 Family of graphics cards we wanted to share some insights, so gamers can make the best buying decisions for their gaming needs. What Is VRAM? VRAM is high speed memory located on your graphics card.

It's one component of a larger memory subsystem that helps make sure your GPU has access to the data it needs to smoothly process and display images. In this article, we'll describe memory subsystem innovations in our latest generation Ada Lovelace GPU architecture, as well as how the speed and size of GPU cache and VRAM impacts performance and the gameplay experience.

AMD Radeon RX 7600 GPU-related leaks continue to trickle out as we get closer to the late May launch window, when AMD's entry-level model is predicted to take on the upcoming NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 graphics card. Details of Sapphire and MSI RX 7600 (non-XT) custom cards have appeared online over the past week and a half, with basic GPU specifications spotted on retail packaging. VideoCardz has received yet another tip-off and has today released a screenshot from a GPU-Z session. We cannot confirm the accuracy of the specs due to our own NDA with AMD, but we can confirm that GPU-Z since version 2.53.0 does have early support the Navi 33 GPU.

The listed details of a "Navi 33 XL GPU" correlate with leaked information from the past week or two, confirming the presence of 32 Compute Units and 2048 Stream Processors. The standard allocation of 8 GB GDDR6 memory is verified once more, complete with a 128-bit wide memory interface. VideoCardz notes that the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti is quite similar in terms of memory technicalities - with a maximum bandwidth of 288 GB/s (Gen 4 PCIe interface restricted to 8 lanes). GPU-Z states that the Navi 33 XL/RX 7600 GPU has the following core clock speeds: 1720 MHz (base), 2250 MHz (performance game mode) and 2655 MHz (boosted) - tipsters have suggested that the chip is capable of hitting a maximum threshold of 2850 MHz.

We would like to address the recent media reports regarding the SOC Voltage exceeding 1.3 V on GIGABYTE's AMD AM5 motherboards especially when EXPO is enabled in the latest beta BIOS.

GIGABYTE respects and appreciates media's support and favor to GIGABYTE motherboards for long time. In terms of the SOC Voltage measurement, the authentic measurement point and method is critical since the SOC Voltage will differ by that. The CPU internal SOC Voltage (SVI3 interface) is the most crucial indicator to motherboards, and, in general, the PWM Output Voltage will be higher than the CPU internal SOC Voltage (SVI3 interface) due to various physical factors.

VideoCardz has today received a tip-off from an anonymous source about a batch of Sapphire Radeon RX 7600 PULSE graphics cards - boxed products have been photographed sitting in a hardware store located "somewhere" in Asia. It is not immediately clear whether the Sapphire cards were pictured in a store-front setting, or an employee has taken a snap of stock stored in a backroom and shared it with their internet buddies. Previous leaks relating to AMD Radeon RX 7600 and 7600 XT cards have pointed to a May 25 launch day - so today's tip indicates that products have been readied well in advance of the anticipated release window.

The insider source claims that the Sapphire Radeon RX 7600 PULSE graphics card will be sold for about $249 in that particular territory. Specifications on the outer packaging can be read (if you zoom in enough) - the Pulse custom variant is labeled as being overclocked out-of-the-box, so it is highly likely that it will be fitted with a custom cooling solution. The packaging's blurb lists the presence of 32 RDNA3 CUs - indicating a full configuration of AMD's Navi 33 GPU die, consisting of 2048 stream processors. The Pulse card gets an Infinity Cache allocation of 32 MB, and a specification of (now typical) 8 GB GDDR6 video memory is confirmed.

Apple announced a joint partnership with Google in submitting a new industry specification to curtail unwanted tracking via Bluetooth location-tracking devices currently on the market. The new standard would provide tracker detection across both iOS and Android, regardless of the brand of the tracker being used. The proposal addresses the concerns surrounding the ease in which a person can be tracked by a sneaky location-tracker stuck to their person, possession, or vehicle by bad-faith actors using the technology to stalk individuals. Apple has previous released updates to their Find My service which will alert the victim if they are being tracked by an unknown AirTag, but this tech relies on the person having an iPhone. Third party detection apps exist on Android, but they're far from perfect and aren't currently officially supported by any of the parent companies making Bluetooth location trackers.

The proposal has received industry wide support from other manufacturers such as Samsung, Tile, Chipolo, eufy Security, and Pebblebee. Advocacy groups such as The National Network to End Domestic Violence and the Center for Democracy & Technology have also contributed to the specification draft. The draft has been submitted via the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) with a three month review and comment period open to interested parties that would like to weigh in on the proposed specification. After this period Apple and Google will work to address concerns and feedback before putting the specification into production by the end of 2023, unifying a tracking alerts system on all future versions of iOS and Android.

AMD is late in releasing its Phoenix Zen 4 lineup of mobile APUs - the original April launch has been missed, and laptops bearing Ryzen 7000HS & H-series are expected to arrive at some point this month. Preview hardware has made its way into the hands of testers, and one particular outlet - Golden Pig Upgrade, a content creator on the Chinese Bilibili video site - has performed benchmark tests. He seems to be the first reviewer to get hands-on time with AMD Ryzen 7040 Phoenix APUs, and his findings point to class leading performance results in terms of graphical capabilities - the 7840HS (packing a Radeon 780M RDNA3 iGPU) is compared to the Rembrandt-based 7735H, as well as a pair of Intel Raptor Lake CPUs - the 13700H and 13500H models.

AMD's newest Phoenix APU is the group leader in GPU performance stakes, but the jump up from the last-gen Rembrandt (RDNA2 iGPU) chip is not all that significant. VideoCardz reckons that the Radeon 780M integrated GPU is roughly equivalent to an NVIDIA GeForce MX550 dGPU and not far off from a GeForce GTX 1650 Max-Q graphics card (in terms of benchmark performance). According to AMD's internal documentation the RDNA 3 core architecture utilized in Phoenix APUs is referred to as "2.5" so this perhaps explains why the 780M is not doing laps around its older silbing(s).