Remember when AMD’s graphics chief left for Intel? AMD has announced the appointment of two new Senior Vice Presidents to take over and assuage fears that Radeon’s development might suffer such a high-profile loss. The two new Radeon heads will both be taking on Senior Vice President roles at AMD’s Radeon Technologies Group. Mike Rayfield is the new Senior Vice President and General Manager, while David Wang is Senior Vice President of Engineering.
“Mike will be responsible for strategy and business management for RTG, including consumer and professional graphics as well as our semi-custom products,” the press release reads. “[David’s] past roles at AMD included the position of corporate vice president responsible for SOC development of processor products, including GPUs, CPUs and APUs.”
In short, it’s good news for AMD, and very good news for anyone worried about the Radeon group’s future. With the departure of such a high-profile figure like Raja Koduri — to competitor Intel, no less — the Radeon group could have been left in a precarious position with regards to its ongoing development efforts. These two new hires — well, one hire, and one promotion — make it clear that AMD has no intention of losing ground to Nvidia or other competitors in the graphics market.
“Mike and David are industry leaders who bring proven track records of delivering profitable business growth and leadership product roadmaps,” said AMD President and CEO Dr. Lisa Su. “We enter 2018 with incredible momentum for our graphics business based on the full set of GPU products we introduced last year for the consumer, professional, and machine learning markets. Under Mike and David’s leadership, I am confident we will continue to grow the footprint of Radeon across the gaming, immersive, and GPU compute markets.”
The press release goes on to describe how Mike Rayfield and David Wang will help usher in a new era for the Radeon group and it’s not wrong. The market for graphics cards is currently getting a little weird. With cryptocurrency miners crowding out enthusiasts, and prices skyrocketing, the development of new and innovative GPU solutions is something every PC enthusiast should keep an eye on.
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.