The competition in graphics cards keeps escalating, and the attacks come from both AMD and Nvidia. According to a recent interview with AMD’s Vice President and General Manager of the Radeon Business Unit, Scott Herkelman, it appears that the chip OEM intentionally issued fake prices for its latest line of GPUs in order to edge out its graphics hardware rival Nvidia.
In the interview, Herkelman notes that AMD had a keen sense of the effects that Nvidia’s hardware and cost constraints would have on the price points it could offer, and that AMD sought to take a more aggressive tack in this year’s GPU race. In light of the unexpected price reduction of AMD’s Radeon RX 5700 and 5700 XT between announcement and launch, Herkelman’s comments seem to confirm that AMD pulled off exactly that kind of bait-and-switch, and that it paid off.
In fact, the lead that AMD’s new GPU line has over the freshly unveiled RTX Super series from Nvidia is predominantly in terms of price. While the RTX 2080 Super can just outperform the Radeon RX 5700 XT, it costs 75 percent more than AMD’s competing chip. On the one hand, Nvidia may justify absorbing this blow because their Super line serves as a refresh between generational GPU releases whereas AMD is meeting it with its new generation of hardware. On the other hand, though, AMD was able to orchestrate a massive price advantage only weeks after an E3 filled to the brim with a hotly anticipated wave of games.
The one area where AMD falls short against its primary competitor is in ray tracing, which even AMD’s newest offering still can’t easily or efficiently handle. Considering how few ray tracing-optimized games are currently available, though, gamers may opt for the most bang for their buck in AMD than invest in Nvidia to ride a trend that still hasn’t quite caught on yet.
This brilliant tactical flourish by AMD also reveals an interesting, more aggressive strategic approach for the company. One of the advantages that Herkelman pointed out was the smaller die size at which AMD could fabricate their GPUs compared to Nvidia, an advantage AMD also touted in CPUs against its perennial nemesis, Intel. It seems clear, then, that AMD’s battle plan going forward will be to offer purely smaller and cheaper chips than the competition, even if they don’t win out on performance. Beyond that, the fact that the company is taking the fight to two massive competitors in two product areas at the same time illustrates just how confident AMD is. But with Intel working on its own graphics cards in the intermediate term, AMD has a long way yet to go to reach complete ascendancy.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.