No real videocards news from CES

[Stoly]

So people waiting for the next big thing from intel, nvidia and AMD came empty handed.

The "most exiting news" was the RTX3090Ti teaser. No Lovelace (albeit no one was really expecting that), no RDNA3, but also no ARC desktop announcement which was probably the most expected.

One thing though. Things seem to be getting pretty exiting on the mobile front with RDNA2 vs ARC. From the RDNA2 specs it would seem it might not be up to PS5 level performance. But not bad none the less.

 

[LazyGamer]

One thing though. Things seem to be getting pretty exiting on the mobile front with RDNA2 vs ARC

ARC isn't, until it is - but RDNA2 is known. More interesting to me was the updated transcoding engine being included. This is where Intel and Nvidia hold a real advantage, and Apple leads by a long shot.

That's one question that everyone considering a laptop without an M1 or successor CPU will be asking: will this Intel / AMD / Nvidia GPU turn my laptop into a jet engine and torch the battery if I try to edit 'high resolution' video on it?

All three companies need to have a solid answer for that one.

From the RDNA2 specs it would seem it might not be up to PS5 level performance. But not bad none the less.

PS5-level performance would be highly unexpected, wouldn't it?

We're talking mobile parts with a fraction of the TDP? Even on a slightly smaller node, I don't see the two as potentially comparable. Not that it couldn't be done, but that 'being a PS5' isn't what the mobile APUs are meant to do.

However, the implication that gaming and other tasks have been significantly enhanced with respect to integrated graphics is definitely on the table and welcome!

 

[Stoly]

ARC isn't, until it is - but RDNA2 is known. More interesting to me was the updated transcoding engine being included. This is where Intel and Nvidia hold a real advantage, and Apple leads by a long shot.

That's one question that everyone considering a laptop without an M1 or successor CPU will be asking: will this Intel / AMD / Nvidia GPU turn my laptop into a jet engine and torch the battery if I try to edit 'high resolution' video on it?

All three companies need to have a solid answer for that one.


PS5-level performance would be highly unexpected, wouldn't it?

We're talking mobile parts with a fraction of the TDP? Even on a slightly smaller node, I don't see the two as potentially comparable. Not that it couldn't be done, but that 'being a PS5' isn't what the mobile APUs are meant to do.

However, the implication that gaming and other tasks have been significantly enhanced with respect to integrated graphics is definitely on the table and welcome!

Unexpected, but desirable. I don't think its a matter that they can't do it, but more like Sony/MS wouldn't be very happy having a PC/laptop with similar specs as their top end consoles.

 

[Brian_B]

Unexpected, but desirable. I don't think its a matter that they can't do it, but more like Sony/MS wouldn't be very happy having a PC/laptop with similar specs as their top end consoles.

I don't know that they would care honestly - so long as it doesn't run their OS, they still have their lock-in on the console. There have been console-equivalent PC builds for a while now.

 

[LazyGamer]

Unexpected, but desirable. I don't think its a matter that they can't do it, but more like Sony/MS wouldn't be very happy having a PC/laptop with similar specs as their top end consoles.

I do think that the spec could easily be matched - it just doesn't make sense to do that with an APU, as such a part would inherently be rather niche and would thus have limited market appeal.*

That is unless of course they could widen the appeal by putting that extra compute grunt to other work!


*[my opinion on this: the performance can be obtained using a discrete mobile GPU - so this is the 'preferred' route as opposed to having to produce a boutique APU - but there are certainly advantages to a converged design ranging from heat management, power draw optimization, and even latency reduction, so I'm not about to write it off]

 

[ViewPort]

I don't know that they would care honestly - so long as it doesn't run their OS, they still have their lock-in on the console. There have been console-equivalent PC builds for a while now.

For the same reason they (in that case Epic) went into "damage control" mode after the Unreal Engine 5 demo was demonstrated on the PS5...and then an engineer leaked higher resolution/better FPS...on a laptop with a last-gen GPU.

Cannot have "next-gen" consoles being beaten by a last-gen laptop...bad PR:
https://cogconnected.com/2020/05/unreal-engine-5-runs-better-laptops/

Consoles are very much politics these days.