September has just begun, but we are already swimming deep in massive announcements that have reverberated within the tech landscape.
With more news imminent from the likes of companies like Apple, we thought it best to round-up each of the big announcements that have come out this past two weeks to help you catch up before the next onslaught of news.
Next-level power with the new NVIDIA RTX 30-series
September started with a bang when NVIDIA opened the month with the announcement of their latest upcoming GPU line-up, the RTX 3000-series.
The RTX 30-series represents the next step for NVIDIA, with the company moving on from the current Turing architecture that is powering their 2000-series GPUs to the new Ampere architecture; made with the help of Samsung’s 8nm (8N) process technology. NVIDIA President and CEO Jensen Huang introduced the new RTX 3000-series GPUs with their flagship model, the RTX 3080.
The RTX 3080 is looking to be a powerhouse in performance, producing a massive 29.8 TFLOPS worth of performance power. To put that into perspective, the RTX 3080 is double the performance of its predecessor, the RTX 2080 — quite the performance leap for a card that will sell for the same US$699 price.
Next up is the mid-to-high range RTX 3070 GPU, but it is no slouch in the performance department. It is capable of getting 20TFLOPs of performance — more than the current highest performing GPU available, the RTX 2080 TI. The real kicker here is the cost: US$499. Compared to the RTX 2080 TI which retails at US$1200, this is a steal.
Finishing the line-up is an absolute monster of a GPU. Lovingly nicknamed the “BFGPU”, the high-end RTX 3090 is the ultimate future-proof device. With NVIDIA’s inbuilt DLSS tech, you can game at 8K resolution at 60 fps with the RTX 3090. That performance comes at a pretty penny though, with the GPU coming in at US$1499.
And it looks like you don’t have to wait long to experience the new 3000-series GPUs. Both the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 will be out this month, on September 17 and September 24 respectively. The RTX 3070 still does not have a definitive date but will come out sometime in October.
Levelling up your thin and light laptops with the new 11th Gen Tiger Lake CPUs
Following closely along NVIDIA’s announcements is Intel, who also have a line-up refresh of their own — the new 11th Gen Tiger Lake CPUs.
Going forward, you should be seeing upcoming laptops be equipped with these processors, featuring a range of improvements all-round, reporting a 20% increase in both speed for daily productivity tasks and “system-level power” which can garner an additional hour in battery life for the laptop.
The new integrated Xe graphics featured within these processors will also bring about up to twice the graphic capability of its predecessor. Additionally, there will be further support for 8K HDR displays or the ability to use up to four 4K HDR displays simultaneously.
Finally, a new certification standard, called “Intel Evo.” will be prominently featured on 20 verified laptop designs to help inform consumers on the best devices to choose to do their work. This will guarantee that their laptop will be capable of performances like waking from sleep in less than a second, at least nine hours of “real-world usage” battery life for FHD (1080p) displays and fast charging, with 30 mins of charge gaining four hours of use.
Entering next-gen gaming with the Xbox Series
Though it has probably come earlier than anticipated thanks to a leak, Microsoft has finally lifted the lid on its next-generation gaming consoles, the Xbox Series.
We’ve already known about the Xbox Series X. Now, Microsoft has officially unveiled a second console to feature alongside it, the Xbox Series S. The white Xbox Series S is set to be a more affordable alternative to the Xbox Series X — coming in at US$299 (S$459) — but still claims to offer the next generation gaming experience that people have been craving.
Xbox Series S is 60% smaller than the Xbox Series X but still offers some of the same benefits such as ray-tracing support, 4K game upscaling, 4K media playback and variable refresh rate. It is also targeting to deliver 1440p gaming at 60 fps with the 4TFLOPs of GPU power that it has.
The main difference between the two consoles besides the GPU power is that the Xbox Series S does not feature a disk-drive, meaning that it is a digital-only device. It will also only have 10GB GDDR6 RAM and 512GB of SSD storage, compared to the Series X’s 16GB GDDR6 RAM and 1TB SSD storage.
Microsoft has also subsequently revealed the cost of the Xbox Series X — US$499 (S$699) — and that it will be released on November 10, 2020. Those wanting to purchase any of the consoles can start pre-ordering come September 22.
AMD enters the ring with Ryzen and Radeon
Not looking to be upstaged by NVIDIA, AMD has announced that they will be holding an unveiling of their own, two of them, in fact.
While this hasn’t exactly happened yet, it does confirm that AMD will be talking about their newest line-up for their desktop processors and their GPU slate.
The desktop processors, which is the Ryzen brand, will be utilising their new “Zen 3” architecture and, as AMD is claiming, look to take PC gaming and content creation to new heights.
It’s GPU line, Radeon, will also be leaping into next-generation gaming with the new RDNA 2 architecture. This architecture is already featured in the new PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles, but now we will be able to see what it can do PC gaming. On the agenda will be the Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards and what collaborating developers will be able to conjure up.
The new desktop processors and GPUs will be unveiled officially on 10 October and 28 October respectively — be sure not to miss it!
Visuals courtesy of ZOTAC, Intel, Microsoft and AMD.
