AMD seriously underestimated the competition... - Tech News Jan 28

Summary

This week's tech news covers the launches of Nvidia's RTX 4070 Ti Super and AMD's Radeon RX 7600 XT GPUs, receiving a middling reaction. Intel may be doing away with hyperthreading in next-gen CPUs for efficiency. The hit game 'Palworld' sold 8 million copies quickly but is under scrutiny for similarities to Pokémon. Microsoft laid off 1,900 Activision Blizzard employees after acquiring them. AMD delivered its first AI accelerator shipments to compete with Nvidia. Data center power usage is rapidly increasing, potentially resulting in more coal power.

Takeaways

• 😊 Nvidia launched the RTX 4070 Ti Super GPU, offering modest performance gains over the standard 4070 Ti.
• 📈 The RX 7600 XT GPU from AMD debuted, but may struggle to justify its $330 price tag.
• 🔎 Leaked Intel slides suggest doing away with hyperthreading in next-gen CPUs to improve efficiency.
• 😢 Microsoft laid off 1,900 employees from Activision Blizzard as part of acquisition fallout.
• 👍 AMD delivered its first Instinct MI300X accelerators for AI workloads, competing with Nvidia.
• 🔌 Data center power demand growing rapidly, could lead to increased coal power usage.
• 😠 HP CEO wants to make printing a subscription service, draws anti-consumer criticism.
• 🤑 Game 'Palworld' sold 8 million copies in 6 days, but faces potential legal issues for similarities to Pokémon.
• 🏆 Nvidia's upcoming RTX 4080 expected to appeal more to high-end builders than 4070 Ti Super.
• 👽 Intel teasing innovations like RibbonFET transistors and 'Power Via' for next-gen Arrow Lake CPUs.

Q & A

What new GPUs were announced by Nvidia and AMD?

Nvidia announced the RTX 4070 Ti Super and AMD announced the Radeon RX 7600 XT 16GB.

How did reviewers react to the RTX 4070 Ti Super launch?

The reaction was okay but middling, as the 4070 Ti non-Super was already tough to justify at $800. The new 16GB VRAM didn't excite reviewers.

What issue did some reviewers face with MSI's RTX 4070 Ti Super samples?

Early versions had an incorrectly tuned VBIOS which resulted in performance 5% lower than expected. MSI has since released a new VBIOS to fix it.

Why is the RX 7600 XT 16GB facing criticism?

At $330, it doesn't offer much performance uplift over the 8GB 7600 XT. Better options exist at the same or slightly higher price points like the RX 6700 XT.

What does Intel potentially doing away with hyperthreading in next-gen CPUs indicate?

It indicates Intel's focus on efficiency, as hyperthreading isn't always the most efficient. The hybrid P and E cores don't use hyperthreading either.

What are some of the key architectural changes coming in Arrow Lake-S?

It will use Intel's 20A 2nm process, ribbonFET transistors, Power Via backside power delivery, and the new LGA1851 platform.

How many Microsoft employees were laid off after the Activision Blizzard acquisition?

Around 1,900 employees, approximately 9% of the gaming division's headcount.

What concern is being raised about data center power usage?

It could triple in the next 5 years, driving the fastest increase in nationwide electricity demand since the 1990s.

Why did the CEO of HP make controversial remarks about printing?

He said HP wants to make printing subscription-based and require approved ink cartridges, which is anti-consumer.

What led to the runaway success of the game Palworld?

Its gameplay reminiscent of Pokemon games but with added guns, leading to 8+ million sales in 6 days.

Outlines

00:00

😄 Paul introduces the tech news topics

Paul greets the viewers and introduces the main tech news topics to be covered, including new GPU launches from Nvidia and AMD, rumors about Intel removing hyperthreading from future CPUs, and the viral success of the Pokémon-like game Palworld.

05:05

📈 Details on Nvidia's new RTX 4070 Ti Super GPU

The new RTX 4070 Ti Super GPU offers moderately better performance than the standard 4070 Ti for $800. It gets mixed reactions as it doesn't provide a compelling value proposition. The GPU launch was also marred by early review samples having incorrect VBIOS resulting in lower performance.

10:10

🤔 Intel rumored to drop hyperthreading in next-gen CPUs

Leaked slides indicate Intel may remove support for hyperthreading in next-gen Arrow Lake desktop CPUs to improve efficiency, instead relying more on the hybrid efficiency cores. This would lower thread counts compared to current-gen CPUs which could concern some customers.

Keywords

💡GPU

GPU stands for graphics processing unit. It is a specialized electronic circuit designed to rapidly process and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. In the video, new GPU models like Nvidia's RTX 4070 Ti Super and AMD's Radeon RX 7600 XT are discussed, including benchmarks and comparisons of their performance and value.

💡VRAM

VRAM stands for video RAM, which is specialized RAM dedicated to handling graphics operations in a computer. The amount of VRAM affects gaming performance, especially at higher resolutions. In the video, the new AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT is highlighted for having 16GB of VRAM, compared to 8GB in the regular RX 7600.

💡Hyperthreading

Hyperthreading is an Intel technology that allows each CPU core to act as two virtual cores, improving multitasking performance. The video mentions a rumor that Intel may be doing away with hyperthreading in future CPUs like Arrow Lake-S, which could mean lower thread counts but potentially better efficiency.

💡Nanometer

Nanometer refers to the size of transistors on a CPU die, with lower nanometer numbers meaning higher density and efficiency. Intel's upcoming Arrow Lake-S CPUs will use 2nm transistors, a big leap from the current 10nm on 14th gen Core chips, allowing more transistors per chip.

💡AI

AI stands for artificial intelligence, and the video discusses the AI hardware arms race between Nvidia and AMD. With growing demand, AMD has released its first AI accelerators like the Instinct MI300X to compete with Nvidia in data centers, but increased AI usage may also drive up power consumption.

💡Early access

Early access refers to a business model where consumers can purchase and play a video game before its official release. The indie game Palworld sold 8 million copies in early access, but its similarities to Pokémon have led to legal threats.

💡Driver

A driver is software that allows an operating system to communicate with a hardware device like a GPU or printer. The video mentions Nvidia providing an updated driver to fix performance issues with the RTX 4070 Ti.

💡Embargo

An embargo is a hold period before journalists can publish reviews of a new product. The video discusses the 4070 Ti embargo lifting and last minute driver fixes, creating stress for reviewers.

💡Clone

A clone refers to one game copying gameplay elements or visuals from another. Palworld is described as a Pokémon clone with guns, leading to its viral success but potential IP issues.

💡Subscription

A subscription business model involves recurring payments from consumers to access products/services. The video criticizes HP's printer CEO wanting to require subscriptions for printer ink.

Highlights

Nvidia launched the RTX 47 TI super and AMD launched the Radon RX 7600 XD GPUs this week

Intel might be doing away with hyperthreading for their next gen CPUs

The game pal world blew up this week, breaking records and possibly intellectual property rights

The RTX 470 TI super provides a 4-8% performance boost over the non-super version

The RX 7600 XT with 16GB VRAM leans on the extra VRAM to justify its $330 price

Intel Alder Lake-S CPUs may not have hyperthreading and move to the 20A process

Microsoft laid off 1,900 employees this week, about 9% of the Activision Blizzard team

AMD delivered its first Instinct MI300X AI GPU shipments to compete with Nvidia

Data center power usage could triple in the next 5 years, increasing electricity demand

HP's CEO wants to make printing a subscription service, prompting backlash

Palworld sold 8 million copies in 6 days, but faces scrutiny for similarities to Pokemon

The RTX 480 super launching next week will appeal more to high-end builders

The RX 7600 non-XT remains a better value than the new 7600 XT

Alder Lake-S will use DDR5 memory and feature Thunderbolt 4 support

Bloomberg reports nationwide electricity demand could rise 1.5% yearly

Transcripts

[Music] welcome back to Paul's Tech news!  witness me my brethren for the hour has  

come which was long foretold I shall recall for  you now the very essence of the past week's Tech  

News Made pure by being naturally filtered  through my brain matter so that all the dumb  

parts are left out and most importantly so  you can face the coming week armed with the  

most lethal weapon at your disposal knowledge  careful it's sharp we had a double serving of  

GPU launches with nvidia's RTX 47 TI super  and amd's radon RX 7600 XT 16 gig making  

their debut Intel might just be doing away  with hyperthreading for their next gen CPUs  

and The Runaway hit game pal world that blew  up this week has been breaking records and  

possibly also some intellectual property  rights along the way it's time for Tech

news excellent today's video is brought to you  by the Tower 200 series cases from thermaltake  

featuring a vertical Tower design with a 90°  rotated motherboard and two pre-installed ct40  

fans the Tower 200 can support huge gpus including  the RTX 490 without compromising air flow thanks  

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takes the Tower 200 series cases click the sponsor  Link in the video description I was able to join  

the motley crew of tech reviewers who posted RTX  470 TI super performance reviews on Tuesday when  

the Embargo lifted and the overall reaction can be  summed up as okay I guess okay Nvidia the reviews  

seemed to say it's a faster video card than the  4070 Ti non super by about 4 to 8% at 1080 and  

1440 closer to 5 to 10% at 4K depending on the  games tested of course so while that combined  

with the vram bump from 12 GB to 16 GB are welcome  the middling reaction to the 4070 Ti super launch  

at $800 is mostly due to the fact that the 4070  Ti non super was already pretty tough to stomach  

for the same amount there will undoubtedly be  buyers for these new cards but I think that the  

$600 RTX 470 super that debuted last week will  do a better job at enticing mid-range Builders  

and the $1,000 480 super that should be out  on Wednesday will be favored for higher-end  

builds that can't quite reach the RTX 490 level  the 4 70 TI sup middle child situation wasn't  

helped by the MSI Ventus 3x sample units that  went out to some reviewers either per Nvidia  

it was discovered that early versions of the  card shipped with an incorrectly tuned vbios  

that resulted in performance results that were 5%  or so below what they should be Outlets like The  

Verge PC Gamer and Hardware unbox were notified of  this less than 24 hours before the Embargo lifted  

which is kind of a worst case scenario as a  hardware reviewer that stressful pre-launch  

day not withstanding the good news is that MSI  already has a new V bios available for the card  

that takes less than a minute to install and Steve  from Hardware unboxed already posted a follow-up  

review that provided more accurate data while  also verifying that while his original numbers  

were off the difference was generally 4% or less  which doesn't impact the card's positioning or  

his initial reviews overall verdict AMD also  announced a new GPU at CES if you recall the  

RX 7600 XD outfitted with 60 GB of vram which was  also launched this week on Wednesday for $330 MSRP  

in the US if you're like kit Guru and you throw  in some Benchmark titles that actually use more  

than 8 gigs of vram the performance uplift is  a decent 12% or so on average compared to the  

RX 7600 NXT which has 8 GB of vram but otherwise  it's more like 5 to 8% which means AMD is once  

again competing with themselves by pricing the  7600 XT at 33 $30 $60 more than the regular RX  

7600 Savvy buyers will note that the RX 6700  XT is comparably priced around $340 still has a  

decent 12 gig vram buffer and typically provides  more than 10% better performance the RX 6800 is  

also a significant upgrade for about $100 more  currently so along with the regular 7600 that's  

three viable and likely preferable alternatives  to the RX 7600 XT for less money the same amount  

of money or a bit more money and we're not even  including Nvidia GeForce and Intel Arc options it  

seems like the RX 7600 XT 16 gig is really leaning  on its extra vram to justify its price but unless  

you're looking specifically at running workstation  or AI tasks that benefit from that vram it is not  

going to do you a whole lot of good for now but  who knows perhaps just as the venerable RX 580  

8 gig from 2017 aged quite well versus its 4 gig  version which did not the RX 7600 XT 16 gig will  

find its new as time passes but what it really  needs right now is a price drop to like 300 bucks  

Intel's 14th gen desktop CPUs are a known quantity  at this point and their Arc battle mage gpus are  

still a ways off so we must look elsewhere if  we want some news about big blue that Peaks our  

interest and so we will consider these now deleted  posts from Twitter Hardware leaker yuki_ANS who  

shared slides allegedly from Intel the detail AOL  Lake s the successor to the 14th gen Raptor Lake  

refresh CPU currently on the market most notably  thread counts indicate that Intel might be doing  

away with hyperthreading which has been rumored  for some time but never confirmed and it's still  

not confirmed these are leaks so use your best  judgment but speculators are speculating that  

Intel's focus on efficiency is the reason why  hyperthreading isn't always the most efficient  

technology and it's true that their CPU team has  had success with the hybrid e cores that they've  

been using for a few Generations now which do not  support hyperthreading either it's the PE cores  

that might only have one thread per core now too  with AOL Lake meaning Intel will need to clearly  

and effectively communicate to customers why  thread counts are down with 15th gen CPUs versus  

14th gen which we all know Intel is very good at  never AEP made by their PR department no way there  

were three CPU configurations shown in the slides  a 24 core with eight P cores and 16 e cores,  

a 22 core with 6+ 16, and a 14 core with 6  Plus 8 and whatever happened to computer things  

increasing by a factor of two anyway and it looks  like the new LGA 1851 platform will be ddr5 only  

with a baseline speed of ddr5 6400 there's also a  block diagram for the new 800 series motherboard  

chipset likely z890 which seems pretty standard  although it does list Thunderbolt 4 support but  

I'm more excited about some of the architecture  changes intel will be making - arrow lake s  

will be produced on Intel's 20A node which is 2  nanometer class in terms of transistor density  

a big leap from the current Intel 7 process which  is 10 nm class and it will also feature ribbonfet  

gate all-around transistors and the new Power  via backside power delivery design allegedly  

hopefully we'll be seeing these new CPUs debut  at the end of this year and they should be easy  

to sell Intel the marketing copy is right there  Intel has a delivery for your backside or is your  

backside ready for the power of Intel those need  some Polish but we can work on it speaking of a  

swift kick in the ass it's time for Tech briefs  which are mercifully short especially for this  

first story just shy of 2,000 workers were told  to pack up their cubicles and hit the road this  

week by Microsoft as part of the culling process  that often follows large business Acquisitions  

it's only been about 3 months since Microsoft  purchased Activision Blizzard for $69 billion  

(giggity) adding those employees to their gaming  unit But Thursday's news that 1900 employees from  

that team were going to end their week jobless was  still a bit of a shock it represents about 9% %  

of Microsoft's current 22,000 person headcount  and it was also announced that co-founder and  

design leader at blizzard Alan Adam is departing  as well as the current blizzard president Mike  

Ibara although the vibe I get from people who  are actually fans of Blizzard games is that Mike  

leaving might be a good thing our hearts go out  to those who lost their jobs we hope they can find  

new jobs soon but you know who didn't get laid off  employees who were members of the communications  

workers of America Union just saying AMD made good  on its promise to be a thorn in nvidia's side when  

it comes to the AI arms race as they have now  delivered their first shipments of instinct Mi  

300X AI gpus as verified by Sharon Zhao chief  executive at Lam AI who shared some images last  

weekend of both the AI accelerators apparently  being protected by some sort of cage like they  

keep Velociraptors in as well as green console  readout text which always makes you feel like a  

hacker 2023 saw the AI generated floodgates open  drowning or consuming thousands of AI villages  

and families but more importantly AI hardware  sales are insanely lucrative right now and AMD  

wants a slice of that pie in 2024 and Beyond it's  still too early to verify if amd's chips actually  

outperform Nvidia as they claimed and it will  likely vary based on application but competition  

in the market is good right I mean what could go  wrong ah well there is that apparently data center  

power usage is scaling Upward at a rapid pace and  while data centers aren't all AI inference Farms  

they're certainly not help the problem according  to Bloomberg data center power use could triple  

and Nationwide electricity demand is projected to  rise by 1.5% per year I assume I'm not going to  

pay for a stupid Bloomberg subscription to find  out over the next 5 years that's the fastest  

rate of growth since the '90s back when life  was simple and there were no problems in the  

world if I recall correctly this could lead to  a Resurgence in Coal Power Plant usage because  

what else are these entrepreneurs going to do  turn their data centers off don't be ridiculous  

how else will people continue to make their hot  dog even hotter it's pretty hot hot dog hot dog  

could be hotter still volcano Supernova center of  the Big Bang can't get hotter than that actually  

no two big bangs this is the best Reddit post  I've ever read you see my point how else are  

we going to have hot dogs Illustrated at the  center of a Multiverse configuration where  

multiple Big Bangs are converging creating an  unimaginable level of heat and energy so much  

power and obviously they must also have these  AI Farms working on an AI generated solution to  

this problem right now now we should be just  fine speaking of things that could easily be  

replaced with AI the CEO of HP Enrique lores did  an interview with CNBC last week to demonstrate  

his complete Detachment from the regular world  and normal people printers often suck but HP  

seems determined to make them worse and the CEO  would also like you to pay a monthly fee for the  

privilege of using their approved ink cartridges  our long-term objective is to make printing a  

subscription says lores seemingly without even  the briefest moment of self-reflection this this  

was in response to HP getting sued for their  anti-consumer efforts to prevent people from  

using third-party ink cartridges as they should  be able to but personally I can't seem to wrap my  

brain around these Executives who get so excited  about an idea that is blatantly anti-consumer with  

upsides only for their business and then they try  to sell us on it because apparently they think  

we're stupid get a laser printer people if you  really need one and I would suggest not buying  

HP until Enrique clears the paper jam in his ass  that's being caused by his head finally you might  

never have heard of the game called pal world but  it's likely that you did hear about it this week  

if you even glanced at the internet riding a viral  wave the game sold 8 million copies and counting  

in just 6 days apparently by virtue of basically  being a Pokemon game that's actually quite fun  

compared to other recent officially licensed  titles in that category from my understanding  

adding guns helped quite a bit not bad for a game  that is still in Early Access mode and was just  

made available January 19th but palworld is not an  official Pokémon game and with great success often  

comes great scrutiny starting with miffed actual  Pokemon fans pointing out many of the remarkable  

similarities between certain character designs  and then continuing Thursday with an official  

statement from the Pokemon company that they'll  be investigating to see just how friendly pal  

World got with their designs sounds like a drawn  out legal battle is brewing fun but my friends  

there you have it Tech news for the week and if  you liked it click that like button or leave me  

a comment down below while you're down there all  the articles I talked about today are linked in  

the video's description if you're interested  in Reading More and you can check out my store  

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my channel is always a good call too thanks again  everyone and we'll see you next week. [Music]