Month: June 2019

“You’re probably asking, ‘what is a gaming browser?,’ ” Opera PM Maciej Kocemba says in the opening of the Opera GX introduction video. Fair enough. My first thought when the Norwegian browser company mentioned the concept to me was something akin to Google Stadia, with remote game streaming.

Turns out a gaming browser — in this instance at least — is more about providing a custom browser for PC gamers, rather than a browser that does the heavy lifting for gaming itself. Instead, the system is more interested in minimizing system requirements as gamers game.

The browser’s central feature is the GX Control panel, which lets users determine how much of the system’s CPU and RAM are allotted to the browser. The idea being that gamers can, say, stream content from Twitch while playing, without slowing their computer to a crawl.

“Running a game might require a lot of effort from your machine. Even more so if you are streaming while you play,” says Kocemba in a release tied to today’s E3 announcement. “Before Opera GX, gamers often shut down their browsers in order to not slow down their gaming experience. We came up with the GX Control feature to make people’s games run more smoothly without requiring them to compromise on what they do on the Web.”

The other big piece here is Twitch integration, letting users log in to the service directly from the browser sidebar. They’ll also get notifications when streamers they follow go live. There are various other touches through out, including “sounds and animation inspired by gaming consoles” and other customizable design features.

You probably think this is all pretty gimmicky, and honestly, you’re not really wrong. Those who are interested can check out early access to the browser at E3 this week.

AMD took the stage at E3 to announce its “Navi” family of GPUs. The company’s new graphics cards are officially the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT and Radeon RX 5700. The 5700 series is launching July 7, making the GPUs a one-two punch alongside AMD’s Ryzen 3000 series CPUs.

AMD isn’t tackling the flagship GPU market with the 5700 series. Instead, the company is aiming for more mainstream pricing with mainstream performance: the 5700XT is $449, while the 5700 is $379. AMD is positioning the cards against Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 2070 ($499) and 2060 ($349), respectively, and claims performance wins in each comparison.

The cards introduce AMD’s new “RDNA” architecture, which AMD says has 1.25x performance-per-clock and 1.5x performance-per-watt over the previous generation. The chips are built on TSMC’s 7nm manufacturing process, a significant shrink from the 12nm process used on the Radeon RX 590, and on Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 2080. The Navi die is significantly smaller than the previous-generation Vega design, with a die area of only 251mm2 compared to the 495 mm2 die area for Vega. The smaller die should make the Navi significantly cheaper to produce than Vega.

For specs, the top-end Radeon RX 5700 XT has 40 compute units with 2560 stream processors total. AMD gives three numbers for the clock rate on the XT: a 1605MHz “Base” clock, a 1755MHz “Game” clock, and a 1905MHz “Boost” clock. As usual, the cheaper 5700 disables compute units and lowers the clock rate, so you have 36 compute units for 2304 stream processor total, a base clock of 1465MHz, game clock of 1625MHz, and a boost clock of 1725MHz.

If any of these clock rates are too conservative for you, AMD is promising the 5700 XT is “overclocking ready” thanks to a power solution with room to grown. Both of AMD’s reference designs come with 8GB of GDDR6 memory.

For cooling, AMD’s reference design is a blower-style card with an aluminum shroud and back plate. A vapor chamber draws heat into the heatsink, and everything gets blown out the back of the card. Blower cooling designs have the downside of producing a lot of noise, but AMD is promising a “quiet” card thanks to an “acoustically tuned” design. If you’re unhappy with the cooler design, partner-produced cards with alternative cooling solutions should be out eventually. The cards both take a 8-pin + 6-pin power-supply connection, with AMD providing Board Power figures of 225W for the XT and 180W for the cheaper card.

If you get the whole AMD package in July (meaning a Ryzen 3000 CPU, an X570 motherboard, and a Radeon 5700 card), you’ll be all up and running with the new PCI Express 4.0 bus standard. This faster interconnect will be great for next-gen SSDs and 200Gbps (!) Ethernet controllers. But for video cards, we haven’t seen a compelling use case yet. Still, it provides room for upgrades!

All these specs are nice to know, but they don’t really tell us anything about actual performance. As always, it’s best to wait for independent benchmarks, and if you’re in the market for a GPU, it’s probably also best to see if Nvidia does anything in response.

And speaking of Nvidia’s response, the company has been teasing a “Super” GeForce product for a few weeks now. The rumors point to “Super” cards being up-clocked editions of Nvidia’s existing cards and price drops for some non-super cards, making the company more competitive with AMD’s freshly announced lineup. Again though, benchmarks will tell the real story. AMD also doesn’t have an answer this generation for the real-time raytracing technology that Nvidia introduced with the RTX 2080 Ti. But given the huge hit in performance that ray tracing causes for even Nvidia’s fastest cards (and the limited game support for raytracing), it’s not a huge loss for AMD.

Regardless of what happens between AMD and Nvidia in the PC graphics card wars, AMD GPUs promise to be almost everywhere else in the future. At the beginning of the presentation, AMD talked about the company’s design wins, pointing out that AMD is supplying graphics chips to both the next-gen Xbox and Playstation consoles, Apple’s Mac Pro, and Google’s Stadia game-streaming platform. AMD also recently inked an RDNA licensing deal with Samsung, which will build the graphics technology into its Exynos SoCs for smartphones and tablets.

Apple and Microsoft teamed up to create an iCloud Drive experience that will hopefully resolve some compatibility issues. A brand new iCloud for Windows app is available today in the Microsoft Store for Windows 10 users. The iCloud app will use the same technology as Microsoft’s OneDrive’s On-Demand feature — a very rare collaboration from tech’s two biggest rivals. Users can now easily access photos, videos, mail, calendars, files and other information from their iCloud accounts from their PC or smartphone.

Any proud Windows user who has bit the bullet and sprung for an Apple device will probably agree: the old iCloud for Windows was not great. Last fall, PCs with iCloud installed were even blocked from installing the latest Windows 10 update. While Apple eventually released an iCloud update that was compatible with Windows 10 a month later, PC users still encountered slow sync speeds and other issues.

It’s no surprise that the products from tech’s most notorious rivalry mix like oil and water. But loyalty to one brand of technology is becoming increasingly quaint as households accumulate more devices. An entirely re-designed app powered by Microsoft technology seems to suggest that Apple wants to make life easier for all users, not just its core set of iOS devotees.

The Atari VCS finally has a launch date. Pre-orders for the retro console are available now at GameStop, Walmart, and directly from Atari, with units scheduled to ship in March 2020.

Those who backed the project through the crowdfunding site IndieGoGo can expect their units later this year.

Starting at $249.99 for a console with 4 GB RAM, Atari’s new device costs quite a bit more than the NES Classic or PlayStation Classic did at launch ($59.99 and $99.99 respectively, though Sony’s console has seen several price drops). In fairness, though, it’s a much more powerful system. Rather than just sticking an emulator in a hunk of plastic and calling it a day, Atari outfitted its new device with an AMD processor and 4K and HDR support. It’s essentially a Linux PC loaded up with old Atari games.

Atari is also releasing a classic joystick and modern controller alongside the console. The base model, the Atari VCS 400 doesn’t include either gamepad, nor does the $279.99 Atari VCS 800 (with 8 GB RAM). Sold separately, the joystick is $49.99 and the controller is $59.99. Atari is offering an “All In” bundle with the VCS 800 and both the joystick and controller for $389.99.

While the stand-alone consoles only come in black, each retailer has a different exclusive color console included in the All In bundles. Walmart’s is a “Kevlar gold”, GameStop’s is the standard “onyx”, and Atari itself has the very retro-looking “black walnut”.

Atari will be showing off the new console during this year’s E3 conference, so expect hands-on impressions to start trickling out soon. In the meantime, check out more images of the console and gamepads below.

Apple is reportedly looking into acquiring Intel’s German smartphone modem business. The acquisition could help Apple’s attempts to develop its own 5G chip for the iPhone, The Information said Tuesday, citing four people briefed on the Apple-Intel discussions.

Apple had originally used modems from Germany’s Infineon when it launched the iPhone 10 years ago, before switching to Qualcomm in 2011. Intel then bought Infineon in 2011, but those chips weren’t used again until the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus in 2016 after a dispute over Qualcomm’s licensing fees.

When Apple and Qualcomm settled their legal battle and reached a multiyear 5G chip deal in April this year, Intel exited the 5G phone modem business. CEO Bob Swan confirmed to The Wall Street Journal that the decision was due to Apple and Qualcomm.

Intel told CNET it has seen “significant interest” in its 5G modem business, but did not confirm which companies have been in contact.

“We have hired outside advisors to help us assess strategic options for our wireless 5G phone business,” the emailed statement said. “We have created value both in our portfolio of wireless modem products and in our intellectual property.”

The news follows reports last month that Apple may not have a homegrown 5G modem ready for its iPhones until late 2024 or early 2025.

Chipsets are one of the most complex and expensive parts of a smartphone. By producing its own, Apple could reduce reliance on outside companies.

Even with Qualcomm’s help, Apple isn’t expected to launch a 5G iPhone until 2020, despite 5G Android phones from Samsung, Huawei, LG, OnePlus, Lenovo/Motorola, ZTE, Xiaomi and Oppo already announced or available.

Already launched in the US by Verizon, by AT&T and by Sprint, 5G is the next-generation network being used by smartphones to provide faster speeds and more capacity.

Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.