A new line of Studio laptops have been announced at Nvidia’s CES 2022 press conference. According to Jeff Fisher, Nvidia Senior Vice President of GeForce, they are seven times faster than Apple’s latest MacBook Pro in specific 3D design workflows.
That’s quite a hefty claim, considering how powerful Apple’s new M1 Max MacBook Pros are. However, based on what was revealed, these new laptops will certainly pack a powerful punch and give Apple a run for its money.
The new Studio laptops will come with either the RTX 3080 Ti or 3070 Ti. The 3080 variants will have 16GB of GDDR6 memory, which is some of the fastest memory launched with a laptop. According to Nvidia, it even outperforms the desktop Titan RTX.
The RTX 3070 Ti option is no slouch either, delivering up to 70% faster performance over RTX 2070 SUPER laptops.
Nvidia spoke at length about the importance of 3D designers and modelers in the future, and how its Studio laptops specifically address that type of creative professional.
In the graph above, Nvidia compares an RTX 3080 Ti laptop against the M1 Max MacBook Pro, as well an RTX 3060 laptop. Popular 3D modeling applications such as Blender Cycles and Autodesk Arnold show just how large of a leap ahead Nvidia is referring to.
Of course, unlike Apple and Microsoft’s pro-oriented laptops, Nvidia’s Studio laptops are not manufactured by the company. Asus, MSI, and Razer are all launching Nvidia laptops in the Studio range starting in February. That means official performance will vary between manufacturers and other components used in the build. Nvidia didn’t specify what specific laptop it was testing, nor how thick or heavy it was.
While these devices will certainly do well for gaming, they are more aimed at creative professionals. This announcement comes alongside the announcement of Nvidia Omniverse becoming widely available. Omniverse is the company’s free design program for augmented reality.
For general PC enthusiasts, Nvidia also announced an entry-level RTX 3050 GPU for desktops. It offers all the benefits of the top-tier cards (real-time ray tracing, A.I., and video acceleration), but starts at just $279. It should generate some hype given the ongoing component shortage of the past few years, and it is set to release worldwide on January 27.
Nvidia is starting the year strong with these announcements, and with the Studio laptops only weeks away, it will be interesting to see if the company’s comparisons to M1 live up to the hype. We called the Apple 2021 MacBook Pros the best MacBooks in years in our review and praised the video playback and performance in GPU-intensive applications.
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.