graphics

After what may be considered a hibernation period for AMD, Intel's eternal rival has returned kicking and brandishing an impressive arsenal of new chips under its new Zen CPU architecture and equally new Radeon RDNA2 graphics technology. Unsurprisingly, those took aim at the desktop PC market first but now AMD is bringing the same technologies to a more mobile form factor. At this year's Computex, it unveiled not only the newest Radeon RX 6000M series of graphics chips for laptops but also a new certification program for gaming laptops to rival Intel's Evo.

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AMD has announced its Ryzen 5000 G-Series desktop processors that feature built-in graphics, though you can't get ahold of one quite yet. Featuring 7nm processor core tech, the new hardware lineup is first being made available to OEMs with plans to open availability to the consumer level later this year.

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It hasn't been approved yet but NVIDIA has just made it known that it is very intent on investing in the Arm computing ecosystem. The company, which does use Arm technology for a few of its own products, just made a rather big announcement of new processors and partners geared towards expanding that ecosystem, from the usual culprits like the DRIVE Atlan for autonomous vehicles to game streaming utilizing AWS's own Arm-based Graviton2 processor. Also lurking in that announcement, however, is NVIDIA's first step into the Chromebook space that will attempt to match its powerful RTX GPUs with MediaTek's CPUs.

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Almost half a year ago, NVIDIA introduced a new technology that went beyond just displaying breathtaking graphics. Although it still had something to do with what you do see in the end, NVIDIA Reflex is more focused on reducing the gap between clicking a mouse button and seeing its effect on the screen. This latency-reducing technology, however, needs more than just NVIDIA hardware. It also needs games to actually support Reflex and Overwatch is just the latest to join that exclusive club.

Display technologies are naturally concerned about things like refresh rates, response rates, tearing, and the like but, in the world of competitive esports, there are other factors that could mean the difference between glorious victory and embarrassing defeat. NVIDIA Reflex tries to solve the problem of system latency, also called input lag, that sometimes makes enemies seem almost invincible just because your god-like bullet missed your opponent's head.

Unlike with other NVIDIA technologies like G-SYNC, it takes more than just hardware to see Reflex in action. Games have to actually integrate the tech and support it, which is why there were only 14 games that supported it. Now there are fifteen, with Overwatch jumping into the fray, guns a-blazing.

With NVIDIA Reflex enabled on Overwatch, the game is advertised to be 50% more responsive, a critical increase for a fast-paced, twitch-based competitive shooter. It's even better if you have a "Reflex Latency Analyzer-compatible Monitor", one that can raise the response rate up to 360 Hz. At that point, you might as well invest in a Reflex-compatible mouse while you're at it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsFhdr5jGEE

NVIDIA Reflex is compatible with GPUs as old as the GeForce GTX 900. Users will need to get the latest Game Ready Driver and update Overwatch before they see the switch to toggle it in-game.

Intel has long been trying to convince both users and manufacturers that its graphics tech is all you need but that spiel has always fallen flat when it came to gaming and graphics-extensive applications. It wasn't until its most recent Intel Xe graphics architecture that that claim actually started to finally show some promise. That said, Intel's new graphics tech is still missing one critical market but that might change next week when the chipmaker finally reveals its Intel Xe HPG discrete graphics card made especially for gaming.

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This week AMD revealed the new RX 6700 XT graphics processor for the masses. This machine works with 12GB GDDR6 with AMD Infinity Cache, 40 compute units, and everything a gamer needs to roll with 1440p resolution gaming and "ultra-high frame rates." This card rolls with AMD FidelityFX, Radeon Image Sharpening, DirectX 12 Ultimate, Radeon Boost VRS, and both Radeon Anti-lag and AMD FreeSync tech.

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The future of the POCO phone brand is sort of Mad, but with a "sense of goodness." According to documentation for their brand update this week, their new logo is a bit of a mashup of elements, some good, some bad, some witty. You'll find the icon here, complete with antennae, a halo, mad eyes, and a triangle mouth.

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Epic just revealed an Unreal Engine-related piece of software and system called MetaHuman Creator. This system allows users to create "truly convincing digital humans." This software is cloud-streamed and designed to "take real-time digital human creation from weeks or months to less than an hour."

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While Intel still holds the lion's share of the CPU market, it has never really been known to have any solid footing when it comes to the graphics department. Sure, its integrated GPUs power many a laptop or tablet but those still pale in comparison to even the mobile versions of NVIDIA's and AMD's chips. Intel has been making strides and heavily pushing its new Iris Xe architecture and now its first-ever discrete graphics cards for desktops have arrived, but you won't be able to buy them just yet.

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Samsung's Exynos has been the subject of much controversy and drama in the past months, especially as its performance gap with Qualcomm's equivalent Snapdragon chips became more prominent. The company's semiconductor business has been trying to turn that ship around quickly, especially with a favorable outlook for the new Exynos 2100. That said, the real highlight might still be coming later this year, especially if the combined powers of Samsung and AMD are indeed able to run circles around Apple's 2019 A12 Bionic chip.

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Today NVIDIA revealed the GeForce RTX 3060 desktop GPU with a starting price of $329 USD. This device should allow the masses to get ahold of a variety of next-generation features released in the RTX 30 family, here for a significantly lower price. The RTX 3060 works with 13 shader TFLOPs, 25 RT-TFLOPs for ray tracing, and 101 tensor-TFLOPs (ready to roll for NVIDIA DLSS). This next-gen GPU works with a 192-bit memory interface and 12GB of GDDR6 memory right out the gate.

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When I saw the two colors Pantone chose for their annual "Pantone Color of the Year", I was shocked. One is "Ultimate Gray," an eponymous representation of the color half way between white and black. The other is a very, very bright yellow - Illuminating! We suspected this yellow was chosen due to the launch of the most hyped-up video game launch of the year, Cyberpunk 2077. But it wasn't. This yellow is ever-so-slightly different from the one used by the future product powerhouse.

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