Despite the fact that AMD had barely just announced its Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards at the end of 2020 and the GPUs are still hard to find because of supply issues, innovation isn’t stopping. AMD is already rumored to be working on its next-gen GPU that uses the company’s RDNA 3 microarchitecture, which could give the graphics cards a performance lift of 2.5 times what is currently capable on the company’s high-end Radeon RX 6900 XT today. The Radeon RX 6900 XT uses the same RDNA 2 architecture found on AMD’s chips for the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 consoles.
The RDNA 3 microarchitecture is also known by Navi 31. Previously, it’s been speculated that AMD could be adapting its use of chiplets from its Ryzen processors to its Radeon graphics chips to get more performance. This would be the first time that AMD would use chiplets on a graphics card, if these rumors prove accurate. The chiplet design is known as MCM, or multi-chip module.
Twitter user @Kepler_L2 speculated that RDNA 3 could arrive with a total of 160 compute units as a result of that design change. That means that AMD’s use of MCM could result in two chiplets, each containing 80 compute units. And according to Hot Hardware, if the ratio of compute units and stream processors remain the same, the new RDNA 3-powered graphics cards could result in a total of a whopping 10,240 stream processors, roughly double what is available with Navi 21 on the Radeon RX 6900 XT.
The upgraded hardware would result in a performance uplift of 2.5x, according to Twitter user @_rogame. Hopefully, the new architecture will allow the future Radeon RX graphics cards to perform better at ray tracing, which would allow AMD to remain competitive with rival Nvidia’s latest RTX 3000 series GPUs that are based on the Ampere architecture. While the Radeon RX 6000 series is a strong competitor to the RTX 3000 series, early reviews suggest that ray tracing performance isn’t as strong on the AMD card.
In addition to changes to the overall chip design, AMD could squeeze more performance out of its GPUs by using a larger Infinity Cache and higher IPC on RDNA 3. On desktop, the RDNA 3-powered graphics card could likely be called the Radeon RX 7000 series if AMD follows its current naming convention. A launch date is not yet known for when RDNA 3 will debut.
AMD is believed to once again turn to partner TSMC to fabricate its RDNA 3 graphics silicon, which could be based on a new 5nm design. This would make the chipset competitive with Intel’s next-gen Xe and Nvidia’s unannounced Hopper GPU, both of which are rumored to also be manufactured using TSMC’s 5nm node, according to Tweaktown. AMD’s next-gen Zen 4 processors are also rumored to move from a 7nm node to a smaller 5nm node, a move that will allow AMD to pack in more transistors to get more processing performance.
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.