Waiting for the arrival of AMD’s next-gen best graphics cards has been a lesson in managing expectations. Early leaks about RDNA 4 pointed toward a beastly flagship GPU, but for months now, it’s been clear that AMD is not going in that direction. Instead, the company is aiming for the mainstream market, which suggests GPUs along the likes of the RTX 4070. However, the next-gen flagship might be a lot more powerful than we thought — and we now know which GPUs are coming, as well as when to expect them to arrive.
Let’s start with the “when.” Jack Huynh, AMD’s senior vice president and general manager of computing and graphics, shared on X that the company is set to hold a press event during CES 2025.
That, in itself, isn’t unexpected — the rumor mill has been convinced about an upcoming GPU announcement during the event. However, we now have an exact time and date: 11 a.m. PT on January 6. Huynh also confirmed that AMD will unveil its “next generation of innovation across gaming, AI PC, and commercial.” AMD is also likely to talk about RDNA 4 for laptops and new additions to its list of best processors, such as the 12-core and the 16-core Ryzen 9000X3D CPUs.
Join us for the @AMD Press Event on Monday, January 6, at 11 AM PT.
Excited to share the stage with some incredible special guests as we unveil our next generation of innovation across gaming, AI PC, and commercial. You won’t want to miss it! 🎮💻✨
Catch the… pic.twitter.com/IadsTDZfTx
— Jack Huynh (@JackMHuynh) December 3, 2024
Coincidentally, AMD has also (kind of) confirmed the two GPUs that are likely to make an appearance during the event. As shared by VideoCardz, the names of two new AMD graphics cards popped up in code updates for AMD’s ROCm library. The two GPUs in question are the RX 8800 and the RX 8600.
This is mostly in line with previous leaks, which told us that AMD’s next-gen cards will come in two flavors, the flagship Navi48 GPU and the budget-oriented Navi44, and that’s what we’re most likely seeing here. While this isn’t an official announcement and everything is subject to change, it feels like a safe bet that we’re getting an RX 8800 and an RX 8600 in January or soon after. There might also be an RX 8800 XT in the works, according to Seasonic’s power consumption calculator.
Lastly, another round of leaks just dropped some guesses as to the performance of the RX 8800 (with or without the XT moniker), and I’m not going to lie — those predictions sound good. According to prolific leaker zhangzhonghao on Chiphell (via VideoCardz), the RX 8800 XT will provide a massive improvement in ray tracing.
The leaker predicts that the GPU will offer similar rasterization and ray tracing performance to Nvidia’s RTX 4080, which is a $1,000 GPU in its Super iteration. When measured in Resident Evil 7 Biohazard, the ray tracing performance is actually said to be up to 45% better than in the RX 7900 XTX. Another leaker adds that the RX 8800 XT will reportedly require 25% less power than the current-gen flagship, which could end up being around 270 watts.
More performance at less power sounds like good news all around. If this turns out to be true, the key will lie in the price of this GPU. We’ll most likely find out more during AMD’s press event in January.
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.