143686174
submission
MojoKid writes:
Some may think it strange to design and build an entire PC and custom enclosure, dedicated to running a 20-year-old screensaver, but retro computing fans and well-seasoned enthusiasts may remember the Serene Screen Marine Aquarium. This classic screensaver from the late 90s was created by the legendary artist of Defender of the Crown and more, Jim Sachs. Serene Screen's combination of beautiful fish and technology is still mesmerizing, so why not build a miniature, 3D printed aquarium and power it with a single board computer like the Rock Pi X and a 1920X480 resolution IPS LCD display? That's just what product developer Colton Westrate did. Searching for an x86 PC in a Raspberry Pi-sized form factor, Westrate chose the Rock Pi X that purportedly packs the perfunctory punch to push the Windows OS and aquarium screen saver's pulsating pixels. The Rock Pi X is based on a circa 2016 Intel x5-Z8350 processor, which is a 2 watt quad-core Cherry Trail Atom chip. From there, with a little Fusion 360 parametric modeling, a clear acrylic napkin holder and some serious skills, Westrate created this adorable pint-sized digital fish tank. There's a full parts list and how-to guide on HotHardware, along with links to the CAD files up on Thingiverse, so you can build yourself one too, if you're feeling inspired.
143292796
submission
MojoKid writes:
AMD announced a new member of its Radeon RX 6000 series graphics card line-up today, dubbed Radeon RX 6700 XT. Based on AMD's RDNA 2 GPU architecture, the Radeon RX 6700 XT targets high frame rate 1440p gaming at max image quality with an MSRP of $479. The new GPU has 40 Compute Units (CUs) with 40 Ray Tracing Accelerators, 96MB of on-chip Infinity Cache, and 12Gb of GDDR6 memory. Game Clocks of up to 2424MHz will be possible and board power is rated for 230 watts. Versus NVIDIA's current competitive offerings, AMD is claiming wins for the Radeon RX 6700 XT across many titles at 1440p / max settings versus the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3070, but with the added benefit of a larger 12GB frame buffer, which should add a measure of future-proofing as games get more graphically complex. Finally, AMD also revealed that it will be doing something a bit different with the launch of the Radeon RX 6700 XT. AMD-built refence cards will be available directly from AMD.com and numerous partner boards will be available from etailers and system builders, all on March 18th.
143019866
submission
MojoKid writes:
NVIDIA is launching its latest mainstream Ampere-based GPU today, targeting a $329 sweet-spot of the PC gaming market, dubbed GeForce RTX 3060. All of the GeForce RTX 3060 series cards that hit store shelves today will come by way of NVIDIA's board partners, however, rather than Founders Edition reference card versions. EVGA's GeForce RTX 3060 XC Black Gaming card was put through its paces at HotHardware. The GPU is comprised of 3584 CUDA cores with a 1777MHz boost clock and 12GB of GDDR6 memory at 7501MHz, along with 28 second generation RT cores for ray tracing workloads. What this translates to in the benchmarks, is that a GeForce RTX 3060 is roughly on-par or slightly ahead of NVIDIA's previous-generation RTX 2060 Super cards, offering solid 1440p gaming performance with and without ray tracing enabled. So, if you haven't upgraded for a few generations and are still running anything below a GTX 1660-class GPU, the GeForce RTX 3060 will offer a big performance and feature boost. However, if you've already got an RTX 20-series card, the RTX 3060 will be less appealing since it trades blows with the GeForce RTX 2060 Super. Spending a few extra dollars on an RTX 3060 Ti (when street prices come back to reality), will net significantly better performance.
141704560
submission
MojoKid writes:
This morning, NVIDIA lifted its embargo on the performance and experiences of new GeForce RTX 30 Series-powered gaming laptops. Thinner, higher-performance form factors aren't the only features NVIDIA is touting with this launch. A number of new laptops will also sport 1440p, high refresh rate IPS displays like the MSI GS66 Stealth with a GeForce RTX 3080 mobile GPU tested at HotHardware. This machine features a 15.6-inch IPS, 1440p panel with a 240Hz refresh rate and G-Sync support. However, the biggest difference between these new laptop GeForce RTX 30 series GPUs and their desktop counterparts, are their core counts. Desktop GeForce RTX 3080, 3070, and 3060 series GPUs have 8,704, 5,888, and 3,584 CUDA cores, respectively, whereas these new laptop offerings have 6,144, 5,120, and 3,840 — it is only the RTX 3060 laptop GPU that has more cores than its similar-branded desktop counterpart. In the benchmarks, with a retail-ready Alienware m15 R4 gaming laptop powered by a GeForce RTX 3070 mobile GPU, the new platform offered sizable performance gains of 15 — 25% over the previous generation RTX 20 series mobile offering, and an even stronger performance lift with ray tracing enabled, sometimes in excess of a 40%. NVIDIA GeForce 30 Series laptops are in production now and available in the next few weeks from major OEMs like Alienware, ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte and others.
140839732
submission
MojoKid writes:
At its virtual CES 2021 event today, Intel's EVP Gregory Bryant unveiled an array of new processors and technologies targeting virtually every market, from affordable Chromebooks, to enthusiast-class gaming laptops and high-end desktops. Intel's 11th Gen Core vPro platform was announced, featuring new Intel Hardware Shield AI-enabled threat ransomware and crytpo-mining malware detection technology. In addition, the Intel Rocket Lake-S based Core i9-11900K 8-core CPU was revealed, offering up to a 19% improvement in IPC performance and the ability to out-pace AMD's Ryzen 9 5900X 12-core CPU in some workloads like gaming. Also, a new high-end hybrid processor, code-named Alder Lake was previewed. Alder Lake packs both high-performance cores and high-efficiency cores on a single product, for what Intel calls its "most power-scalable system-on-chip" ever. Alder Lake will also be manufactured using an enhanced version of 10nm SuperFin technology with improved power and thermal characteristics, and targets both desktop and mobile form factors when they arrive later this year. Finally, Intel launched its new 11th Gen Core H-Series Tiger Lake H35 parts that will appear in high-performance laptops as thin as 16mm. At the top of the 11th Gen H-Series stack is the Intel Core i7-11375H Special Edition, a 35W quad-core processor (8-threads) that turbos up to 5GHz and supports PCI Express 4.0, and is targeted for ultraportable gaming notebooks. Intel is claiming single-threaded performance improvements in the neighborhood of 15% over previous-gen architectures and a greater than 40% improvement in multi-threaded workloads. Intel's Bryant also announced an 8-core mobile processor variant leveraging the same architecture as the 11th Gen H-Series that is slated to start shipping a bit later this quarte at 5GHz on multiple cores, with 20 lanes of PCIe Gen 4 connectivity.
140479290
submission
MojoKid writes:
Boston Dynamics made news recently when 80% of the company was acquired by Hyundai. The company's family of robots is always impressive and now it appears they're having some fun to celebrate the close of 2020. Boston Dynamics' robot dog, Spot and its humanoid-like Atlas bot friend, were joined by their oddball sibling Handle to shake their booties on the dance floor to "Do You Love Me" by The Contours. The video starts off impressive enough with just a single Atlas showing its incredible dexterity while busting out some sweet moves that would leave even the late Patrick Swayze envious. However, as the routine progresses, the camera pulls back to show that another twin Atlas is dancing along with the first one as they show off their synchronized and fresh rug-cutting ways. As this robotic soul train continues to roll, Spot the dog saunters in to join in on the fun with the distinct flare that only rover can bring. The entire 3 minute clip is really a marvel to behold, and maybe even slightly unsettling for some that might not fully welcome our robot overlords.
139714398
submission
MojoKid writes:
AMD launched its highest end Radeon gaming graphics card today, dubbed the Radeon RX 6900 XT. At a $999 MSRP, the product is a competitive answer to NVIDIA's pricey, $1499 GeForce RTX 3090 in the very top end of the GPU market for PC gamers. The Radeon RX 6900 XT built around a fully-enabled AMD Navi 21 RDNA 2-based GPU, which is manufactured on TSMC's 7nm process node. The GPU is comprised of roughly 26.8 billion transistors and sports 80 Radeon Compute Units (CUs) and 80 ray accelerators with a 2250MHz core boost clock. Like other members of the Radeon RX 6000 family, the 6900 XT also has 16GB of GDDR6 memory on board but maintains a 300 Watt board power rating like the lower end Radeon RX 6800 XT. In the benchmarks, with traditional rasterization, the Radeon RX 6900 XT and GeForce RTX 3090 are fairly nip and tuck, trading victories depending on game title, though the RTX 3090 does have the overall edge. Turn on AMD's Rage Mode overclocking and things tighten up a bit. With ray tracing enabled, however, NVIDIA's high-end GeForce RTX 30 series cards have a clear advantage currently.
139582486
submission
MojoKid writes:
Apple's M1-based (Apple Silicon) Mac mini, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air spelled the end of Boot Camp, the company's solution for booting into Windows natively on its Intel-based hardware. However, one very innovative developer worked up a new feature to use QEMU to boot the Hyper-V image of Windows 10's Insider Preview build straight from Microsoft. Now that those changes have made their way into the wild, we can see just how Apple's new hardware handles while running Windows 10. In a word, the Mac mini's virtualized performance was excellent. In GeekBench, it flat-out doubled up on the Snapdragon 8cx in Samsung's Galaxy Book S in the single-threaded test, and Apple Silicon outscored Qualcomm by 80%, despite not having its four low-power cores along for the ride. Meanwhile, the Tiger Lake Core i7-1165G7 in the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 won both contests by relatively significant margins, though the M1 Mac mini was in striking distance. Regardless, the M1's performance is outstanding and its Speedometer and JetStream scores outclass even the previous-generation Mac mini with an Intel Core i5-8500B processor.
139342250
submission
MojoKid writes:
NVIDIA expanded its line-up of Ampere-based graphics cards today with a new lower cost GeForce RTX 3060 Ti. As its name suggests, the new $399 NVIDIA GPU supplants the previous-gen GeForce RTX 2060 / RTX 2060 Super, and slots in just behind the recently-released GeForce RTX 3070. The GeForce RTX 3060 Ti features 128 CUDA cores per SM, for a total of 4,864, 4 Third-Gen Tensor cores per SM (152 total), and 38 Second-Gen RT cores. The GPU has a typical boost clock of 1,665MHz and it is linked to 8GB of standard GDDR6 memory (not the GDDR6X of the RTX 3080/3090) via a 256-bit memory interface that offers up to 448GB/s of peak bandwidth. In terms of overall performance, the RTX 3060 Ti lands in the neighborhood of the GeForce RTX 2080 Super, and well ahead of cards like AMD's Radeon RX 5700 XT. The GeForce RTX 3060 Ti's 8GB frame buffer may give some users pause, but for 1080p and 1440p gaming, it shouldn't be a problem for the overwhelming majority of titles. It's also par for the course in this $399 price band. Cards are reported to be shipping in retail tomorrow.
138693342
submission
MojoKid writes:
AMD officially launched its Radeon RX 6800 and Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics cards today, previously known in the PC gaming community as Big Navi. The company claimed these high-end GPUs would compete with NVIDIA's best GeForce RTX 30 series and it appears AMD made good on its claims. AMD's new Radeon RX 6800 XT and Radeon 6800 are based on the company's RDNA 2 GPU architecture, with the former sporting 72 Compute Units (CUs) and 2250MHz boost clock, while the RX 6800 sports 60 CUs at a 2105MHz boost clock. Both cards come equipped with 16GB of GDDR6 memory and 128MB of on-die cache AMD calls Infinity Cache, that improves bandwidth and latency, feeding the GPU in front of its 256-bit GDDR6 memory interface. In the benchmarks, it is fair to say the Radeon RX 6800 is typically faster than an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 just as AMD suggested. Things are not as cut and dry for the Radeon RX 6800 XT though, as the GeForce RTX 3080 and Radeon RX 6800 XT trade victories depending on the game title or workload, but the RTX 3080 has an edge overall. In DXR Ray Tracing performance, NVIDIA has a distinct advantage at the high-end. Though the Radeon RX 6800 wasn't too far behind and RTX 3070, neither the Radeon RX 6800 XT or 6800 card came close the GeForce RTX 3080. Pricing is set at $649 and $579 for the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT and Radeon RX 6800, respectively and the cards are on sale as of today. However, demand is likely to be fierce as this new crop of high-end graphics cards from both companies have been quickly evaporating from retail shelves.
138262490
submission
MojoKid writes:
AMD made bold claims when the company unveiled its new Zen 3-based Ryzen 5000 series processors early last month. Statements like "historic IPC uplift" and "fastest for gamers" were waved about like flags of victory. However, as with most things in the computing world, independent testing is always the best way to validate claims. Today AMD lifted the embargo on 3rd party reviews and, in testing, AMD's new Ryzen 5000 series CPUs set a new performance bar virtually across the board, and one that Intel currently can't touch. There are four processors in the initial Ryzen 5000 series lineup, though it's a safe bet more will be coming later. The current entry point is the Ryzen 5 5600X 6-core / 8-thread processor, followed by the 8-core / 16-thread Ryzen 7 5800X, 12-core / 24 thread Ryzen 9 5900X, and the flagship 16-core / 32-thread Ryzen 9 5950X. All of these new CPUs are backwards compatible with AMD socket AM4 motherboards. In comparison to Zen 2, Zen 3 has a larger L1 branch target buffer and improved bandwidth through multiple parts of its pipeline with additional load/store flexibility. Where Zen 2 could handle 2 load and 1 store per cycle, Zen 3 can handle 3 load and 2 stores. All told, AMD is claiming an average 19% increase in IPC with Zen 3, which is a huge uplift gen-over-gen. Couple that IPC uplift with stronger multi-core scaling and a new unified L3 cache configuration, and Zen 3's performance looks great across a wide variety of workloads for both content creation and gaming especially. AMD's Ryzen 9 5950X, Ryzen 9 5900X, Ryzen 7 5800X and Ryzen 5 5600X will be priced at $799, $549, $449 and $299, respectively and should be on retail and etail shelves starting today.
137951026
submission
MojoKid writes:
AMD just unveiled its new line up of Radeon RX 6000 Series "Big Navi" graphics cards and, based on what the company just disclosed and claims that were made, it appears AMD is back in the high end of the gaming graphics card market once again versus its rival NVIDIA. AMD's new Radeon 6000 Series will be comprised of three graphics cards to start, the $579 Radeon RX 6800, the $649 Radeon RX 6800 XT and the $999 Radeon RX 6900 XT. AMD claims its new RDNA 2 GPU architecture offers 30% better power efficiency coupled with 30% higher clock speeds for a greater-than 54% uplift in performance-per-watt. AMD achieved this by rebalancing the graphics pipeline and plumbing it with redesigned, high-bandwidth, more energy-efficient data paths, while incorporating fine-grain clock gating throughout. It was also disclosed that RDNA 2 will feature a 128MB pool of cache memory, dubbed "Infinity Cache". According to AMD, when leveraging Infinity Cache alongside a 256-bit GDDR6 memory interface, bandwidth delivered to the GPU is more than doubled. As far as performance goes, AMD claims its Radeon RX 6800 will best NVIDIA's latest GeForce RTX 3070 by a healthy margin across virtually all game titles, while its Radeon RX 6800 XT will trade blows with a GeForce RTX 3080 and its Radeon RX 6900 XT will meet or beat a $1499 GeForce RTX 3090 for hundreds less. AMD Radeon RX 6800 and 6800 XT card will ship on November 18th, with Radeon RX 3090 to follow on December 8th.
137901698
submission
MojoKid writes:
NVIDIA officially launched a new upper-midrange graphics card for gamers this morning, with the embargo lifted on the new GeForce RTX 3070. NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition card is built around a different NVIDIA Ampere GPU derivative and targets lower price points starting at $499. On board are a total of 5,888 CUDA cores, or more than double that of the previous gen GeForce RTX 2070. The GPU has a typical Boost clock of 1,725MHz and it is linked to 8GB of standard GDDR6 memory via a 256-bit memory interface. There are also significantly more 2nd gen RT (ray tracing) cores at 46 versus 36 in the previous gen, but fewer tensor cores for machine learning and NVIDIA's DLSS image quality enhancement technology. NVIDIA notes these 3rd gen tensor cores are, however, twice as powerful as the previous gen. Board power was only increased a few Watts to 220, but what's perhaps more impressive is that the GeForce RTX 3070 actually performs on par with a much more expensive GeForce RTX 2080 Ti that also consumes a lot more power under load. NVIDIA notes GeForce RTX 3070 Founder's Edition cards will be shipping starting on 10/29, with custom OEM partner cards available as well.
137433970
submission
MojoKid writes:
Apple has repeatedly asserted its dominance in terms of performance versus competitive mobile platforms. And it has been historically true that, in cross-platform benchmarks, iPhones generally can beat out Android phones in both CPU and GPU (graphics) performance. However, a new benchmark recently released from trusted benchmark suite developer UL Benchmarks, sheds light on what could be the iPhone's Achilles' Heel in terms of performance, or more specifically performance over extended duration. The new benchmark, 3DMark WildLife, employs Apple's Metal API for rendering and Vulkan on Android devices. In testing at HotHardware, for basic single run tests, again iPhones trounce anything Android, including flagship devices like the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra, ASUS ROG Phone 3 and OnePlus 8. However, in the extended duration WildLife Stress Test, which loops the single test over and over for 20 minutes, the current flagship iPhone 11 Pro and A13 Bionic's performance craters essentially to Snapdragon 865/865+ performance levels, while Android phones like the OnePlus 8 maintain 99+% of their performance. Though this is just one gaming benchmark test that employs the latest graphics technologies and APIs, it's interesting to see that perhaps Apple's focus on tuning for quick bursty workloads (and maybe benchmark optimization too?) falls flat if the current class of top-end iPhone is pushed continuously.
136332742
submission
MojoKid writes:
NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3090, which just launched this morning, is the single most powerful graphics card money can (almost) buy currently. It sits at the top of NVIDIA's product stack, and according to the company, it enables new experiences like smooth 8K gaming and seamless processing of massive content creation workloads, thanks in part to its 24GB of on-board GDDR6X memory. A graphics card like the GeForce RTX 3090 isn't for everyone, however. Though its asking price is about a $1,000 lower than its previous-gen, Turing-based Titan RTX counterpart, it is still out of reach for most gamers. That said, content creation and workstation rendering professionals can more easily justify its cost. In performance testing fresh off NDA lift, versus the GeForce RTX 3080 that arrived last week, the more powerful RTX 3090's gains range from about 4% to 20%. Versus the more expensive previous generation Titan RTX though, the GeForce RTX 3090's advantages increase to approximately 6% to 40%. When you factor in complex creator workloads that can leverage the GeForce RTX 3090's additional resources and memory, however, it can be many times faster than either the RTX 3080 or Titan RTX. The GeForce RTX 3090 will be available in limited quantities today but the company pledges to make more available directly and through OEM board partners as soon as possible.
