Author: PC Central
AMD has introduced its entry-level A620 platform for AM5 processors. The new platform is designed to power inexpensive PCs that use AMD's CPUs in AM5 packaging based on the Zen 4 microarchitecture and to cut down costs; it omits support for overclocking, PCIe Gen5 connectivity of any kind, and USB 3.2 Gen2x2. Most importantly, base AMD A620-based motherboards will not support higher-wattage CPUs. Disabling some connectivity is meant to simplify testing and validation procedures and the design of actual motherboards. On the platform hardware side of matters, the AMD A620 chipset uses the same Promontory 21 silicon as the more…
HP on Monday announced new versions of its Envy AIO systems with 27-inch displays. The latest all-in-ones are upgraded across-the-board with the newest six-core Coffee Lake CPUs as well as NVIDIA’s Pascal GPUs. On the outside, the 2018 Envy AIO 27 retained design of the previous-generation systems along with 4K and QHD IPS display options from its predecessor, but internally it is a brand-new system and platform. The hardware is centered around Intel’s six-core Core i7-8700T CPU, accompanied by NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1050 GPU with 4 GB GDDR5 memory. This is a significant upgrade from the quad-core Kaby Lake+Maxwell GPUs used in the previous…
Initially teased by Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger during their Innovation 2022 opening keynote, Intel has unveiled its highly anticipated 6 GHz out-of-the-box processor, the Core i9-13900KS. The Core i9-13900KS is a special, highly clocked bin of the regular i9-13900K, offering the same 24-core (8P+16E) hybrid architecture, but with an impressive P-core maximum turbo clockspeed of up to 6 GHz. Based on Intel's existing Raptor Lake-S desktop silicon, Intel claims that the Core i9-13900KS is the first desktop processor to reach 6 GHz out of the box without overclocking. With normal chips hitting up to 5.8GHz, the i9-13900KS is an even more extreme bin of that silicon,…
AMD has cornered the x86 console market with its handy semi-custom mix of processors and graphics. While we slowly await the next generation of consoles from Microsoft and Sony, today AMD and Zhongshan Subor announced that a custom chip has been made for a new gaming PC and an upcoming console for the Chinese market. The announcement states that a custom chip has been created for Subor that is based on four Zen cores running at 3.0 GHz and 24 compute units of Vega running at 1.3 GHz. The chip is supported by 8GB of GDDR5 memory, which the press…
The Last of Us Part 1, a remaster of the original Playstation-hit, is making its way to the PC on March 28. To celebrate the feat or to let gamers relive the TV series, AMD has kicked off a new game bundle offer for Radeon RX 6000 and RX 7000 video card purchases. The promotion also applies to pre-built gaming desktops that leverage one of the eligible Radeon cards. AMD's The Last of Us Part 1 bundle, which starts today and runs until April 15, 2023, arrives just in time now that the previous Radeon bundle with The Callisto Protocol…
In our series of Best CPU guides, here's the latest update to our recommended Gaming CPUs list. All numbers in the text are updated to reflect pricing at the time of writing. Numbers in graphs reflect MSRP. CPU Market Overview, March 2023 Moving into the warmer and more picturesque spring season, the weather isn't the only thing hotting up. The CPU market towards the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023 has been topsy-turvy, to say the least, with many viable options available for users to build a new system. Depending on the task at hand, Intel and AMD have…
At CES this year, Intel officially announced its expanded Alder Lake processor lineup, including the performance-laptop focused H-Series chips, which traditionally fit in the 45-Watt range. For the last several processor generations, Intel has started their roll-outs with the low-power laptop parts, and then expanded the range up to and including desktop processors; but for Alder Lake they have flipped this on its head. Instead, Intel first launched desktop processors, such as the Core i9-12900K, and then moved down the range, with the performance notebook processors coming second, and the low-power processors coming later. Intel 12th Gen Core Alder Lake-H…
When ASUS emailed a couple of weeks before CES announcing that they had cancelled their press event for the show, we had a few question marks. Previous shows involve Chairman Jonney Shih’s rapid fire but succinct delivery, announcing up to 10 products in an hour. ASUS’ remit is large, so not having a press event seemed odd. It turns out that for 2016, Computex will be their show, and rather than announce the next level of stuff half-a-year early, CES will be a show for updates to current lines. Or so I was lead to believe – their booth at…
One of the unfortunate outcomes of Apple's desire to build their own top-to-bottom software ecosystems is that the company has gradually pulled away from supporting common APIs, particularly in graphics. Whereas early this decade Apple happily supported OpenGL ES up to 3.0, that's as far as the company ever went, skipping future OpenGL ES versions and OpenGL's successor, Vulkan. Instead Apple has relied on their own similar low-level API, Metal. As a result the widespread ability to use a single graphics API and target everything from PCs to Macs to smartphones has gradually been lost as old software and APIs grow…
One of the biggest running gags on social media and Reddit is how hot and power hungry CPUs have become over the years. Whereas at one time flagship x86 CPUs didn't even require a heatsink, they can now saturate whole radiators. Thankfully, it's not quite to the levels of a nuclear reactor, as the memes go – but as the kids say these days, it's also not a nothingburger. Designing for higher TDPs and greater power consumption has allowed chipmakers to keep pushing the envelope in terms of performance – something that's no easy feat in a post-Dennard world – but it's…