Month: November 2020

There has been a lot of hype around Intel’s upcoming 11th Generation Tiger Lake-H mobile chips, but few benchmark results to back up the excitement. That has changed since apparent Core i7-11370H (via Tum_Apisak) results emerged today in the Geekbench database to offer a sneak peek of what’s to come.

The Core i7-11370H is indeed a mysterious processor. It’s seemingly a quad-core chip with Hyper-Threading, which raises some alarms. Previous Core i7 H-series procesors typically come with six or eight cores. Geekbench 5 picked up the Core i7-11370H as a Tiger Lake-U processor, conveying that the quad-core processor could be a U-series part with a more generous thermal envelope and consequently, improved clock speeds.

Similar to other Tiger Lake-U Core i7 models, the Core i7-11370H reportedly has 12MB of L3 cache at its disposal. This particular model seems to run with a 3.29 GHz base clock and 4.79 GHz boost clock. If we round up, the clock speeds should be 3.3 GHz and 4.8 GHz, respectively.

Since AMD doesn’t have any quad-core Ryzen 4000 (codename Renoir) chips in its product stack, the Core i7-11370H would likely have to compete with the hexa-core Ryzen 5 4600H. AMD’s chip flexes six Zen 2 cores with simultaneous multithreading (SMT), 8MB of L3 cache and base and boost clock speeds up to 3 GHz and 4 GHz, respectively.

It’s apparent that the Ryzen 5 4600H has a two-core advantage over the Core i7-11370H. However, the Intel part does have a 10% and 20% higher base and boost clocks, respectively. 

Furthermore, the Core i7-11370H is based on the Willow Cove microarchitecture with a dual ring bus hence the quad-core processor shouldn’t be underestimated. Bear in mind that Intel has said in the past that the chipmaker tuned Tiger Lake processors for high clock speeds at lower power consumption, and it shows with the Core i7-11370H. The processor’s 4.8 GHz boost clock is higher than any previous Ice Lake chip.

The Core i7-11370H scored 1,420 points in the single-core test and 4,964 points in the multi-core test. At the time of writing, the Geekbench 5 database shows the Ryzen 5 4600H with an average single-and multil-core scores of 980 points and 4,808 points, respectively. Therefore, the Core i7-11370H delivered up to 44.9% higher single-core performance than the Ryzen 5 4600H.

The multi-core performance between the two rivals isn’t huge, and it’s a great achievement for the Core i7-11370H, considering that it has two fewer cores. Despite the handicap, the Core i7-11370H provided up to 3.2 percent higher multi-core performance than the Ryzen 5 4600H.

Geekbench 5 is just one benchmark, and not the preferred tool to assess processor performance for many enthusiasts, us included. At least for today, the Core i7-11370H is the winner. We’ll have to wait and see whether the performance dominance translates over to other workloads and gaming. Sadly, we don’t know when that will be since Intel has kept a tight lip on Tiger Lake-H.

It seems that Sony has at least two new Xperia smartphones in the works. According to some sleuthing by @NodSikharulidze, the Japanese company is developing one smartphone with an SM6350 chipset and another with the SM8350. Qualcomm has already confirmed that the SM6350 is the model number of the Snapdragon 690, while the company is thought to have assigned SM8350 to the Snapdragon 875.

Android Next and GSMArena believe that Sony is preparing an Xperia 10 III with the Snapdragon 690, along with an Xperia 1 III using the Snapdragon 875. This belief seemingly stems from Sony having released the Xperia 10 II and Xperia 1 II in February, so the thinking goes that successors should be arriving sometime around February 2021.

Either way, the Snapdragon 690 seems like an odd choice when other OEMs are using the Snapdragon 750G for their mid-range smartphones. The Snapdragon 750G has a 10% higher clock speed than the Snapdragon 690 does, for example, along with a 14% higher memory bandwidth. The Snapdragon 750G also has a slightly faster modem than the Snapdragon 690 does, along with an improved instruction set.

The appearance of the Snapdragon 875 in a flagship Xperia smartphone should not raise any eyebrows, though. We would expect Sony to release a successor to the Xperia L4 too, if it plans to repeat its 2020 roadmap.

Intel’s upcoming Rocket Lake CPUs prove it is in a crisis of existential proportions. The next six months will decide both its fate and the future direction of the PC as a whole. Hyperbolic? Much? Actually, no.

It’s a somewhat speculative interpretation, to be sure. But tales of Intel’s woes have become so routine of late that the very existence of Rocket Lake and what it implies has been largely overlooked. Rocket Lake says very, very bad things about the viability of Intel’s entire business model. And that, in turn, makes it very significant for the PC as a whole.

Rocket Lake, of course, is Intel’s next desktop CPU architecture. It’s essentially a 14nm backport of Intel’s 10nm Sunny Cove CPU core architecture, as seen in 10th Gen Ice Lake notebook chips. Rocket Lake won’t be released until next year, which means Intel will be launching a new CPU design in 2021 on the ancient 14nm node. Intel’s original plan was to move to 10nm in 2016. Yes, really.

Intel has sold the whole ‘backporting’ thing as a positive, a sort of groovy and inclusive approach to CPU manufacturing. “Hey guys, relax. We’re flexible, we can port from node to node. It’s freestyle. It’s all good,” Intel seems to be saying.

The reality is that there’s really no such thing as a node-agnostic CPU architecture. It’s going to cost a huge amount of money to port those Sunny Cove cores, PCI Express 4.0 I/O and Xe-based graphics to 14nm for Rocket Lake.

So, it’s not groovy or flexible. It’s a move made out of desperation because Intel’s 10nm production node still isn’t good enough for the prime time. Let’s repeat that. Rocket Lake will be launched in 2021 in 14nm because Intel’s 10nm still won’t be good enough for a desktop CPU launch.

That’s going to come at a cost. For Rocket Lake, Intel is regressing from 10 cores, as seen in the current Core i9-10900K, back to eight cores. Because those Sunny Cove cores were never intended for 14nm. And they’re big and fat and power hungry when ported to 14nm.

There are further factors that make Rocket Lake look plain odd. In September, Intel officially confirmed an eight-core ‘H’ version of its latest 10nm Tiger Lake laptop chips exists. It’s a CPU that would make Rocket Lake totally redundant. So why doesn’t Intel launch that chip on the desktop instead of Rocket Lake? The only plausible reason is that 10nm remains fundamentally broken.

As a short term stop gap, Rocket Lake probably just about makes sense, even if Intel’s marketing pitch for the step back to eight cores is almost certainly going to make your ears bleed. But further out, this ‘backporting’ shizzle surely isn’t a goer. 

Currently, Intel says its first 10nm desktop CPU will be Alder Lake, due in the second half of next year. That’s the one with the new big.LITTLE hybrid architecture and up to eight performance cores and eight efficiency cores. If backporting Ice Lake to 14nm came with compromises, backporting Alder Lake to 14nm would surely be even less appealing.

In short, Alder Lake probably has to be on 10nm to be viable. But there are no signs at all that Intel’s 10nm is going to be good enough in a little over six months. It’s worth remembering that, to date, Intel is still only selling quad-core mobile CPUs on 10nm. The launch of the 10nm Ice Lake-SP server chip, once due in 2019, has been delayed once again into early 2021. And you’d be brave to assume it’ll hit that deadline.

What’s more, earlier this summer Intel conceded that its 7nm node, once touted as the solution to all its 10nm woes, was behind schedule by what it characterised as a full year. 7nm won’t be on stream until at least late 2022. Being realistic, then, 2023 is the earliest you’ll see Intel 7nm processors. And if you had to bet, you probably wouldn’t fancy 2023 much.

Meanwhile, the Taiwanese chip foundry that powers many of Intel’s competitors, TSMC, seems to be going from strength to strength. Admittedly, direct comparisons of production nodes are tricky. Most observers agree that Intel’s 10nm node is equivalent to TSMC’s 7nm for transistor density. But you can, today, buy actual shipping consumer products powered by fairly large, complex chips built on not only TSMC 7nm but TSMC 5nm.

Fair to say, then, that TSMC 5nm looks healthier than Intel 10nm right now. Which puts TSMC not just one but two full nodes ahead. That is an awful indictment of Intel’s predicament.

Anyway, the long and short of it is that Intel is rapidly approaching a crunch point of existential proportions. It can probably just about get away with Rocket Lake. But if it can’t bend 10nm into some kind of shape in time for Alder Lake in the second half of 2021 then it’s entire future roadmap becomes non-viable and Intel will surely have to seriously consider the previously unthinkable. Namely, giving up on making its own chips and farming them out to a third party foundry. At which point it’s no longer Intel as we knew it.

Indeed, there’s a good chance Intel has either already made that call or is right in the thick of thrashing it out. It’s just possible Intel has already decided to make that fundamental strategic shift, to not invest the billions required to make 7nm happen, but to spend that money turning itself into an IP-based business like AMD rather than what it is today—a manufacturing business that needs in-house chip designs to keep those billion-dollar fabs fed.

Of course, speculation about future events is often a mug’s game. It can take years for events to unfold. But this time it’s different. Intel is approaching that existential crunch point and fast. Six months from now, we’ll know if Intel has turned things around. Or if the fundamental technological landscape that underpins the PC we love is about to go through a dramatic change.

ASRock has announced its custom-cooled Radeon RX 6800 series graphics cards. The four cards announced by ASRock are the flagship Radeon RX 6800 XT Taichi X 16G OC, the mid-range Radeon RX 6800 XT and Radeon RX 6800 Phantom Gaming D 16G OC, and the entry-level Radeon RX 6800 Challenger Pro 16G OC.

Featuring AMD RDNA 2 GPU architecture, the new ASRock Radeon RX 6800 series support the DirectX 12 Ultimate standard and hardware-accelerated raytracing. All cards have 16GB of GDDR6 memory and support PCIe 4.0. The cooling solutions of these cards use ASRock’s Striped Axial fan design for improved cooling performance, allowing them to come overclocked out-of-the-box. Additionally, all cards feature Polychrome Sync ARGB LEDs to synchronise with other compatible products.

The Radeon RX 6800 XT Taichi X 16G OC uses a triple-fan design, with the middle-fan featuring a unique ARGB Taichi halo. Besides the halo, the card also has ARGB LEDs on the side and on the metal backplate. This card features a Dual-BIOS button, allowing users to easily change between the OC and Silent mode.

The ASRock Radeon RX 6800 series Phantom Gaming cards also feature a similar triple fan design with a middle RGB fan. Just like the Taichi model, it features a reinforced metal frame and backplate to avoid bending on the PCB. The RGB LEDs of the fan and on the side can be adjusted and synchronised through ASRock Polychrome Sync.

The ASRock Radeon RX 6800 Challenger Pro 16G OC features a low-key design, with side RGB LED lighting, and an all-black design. Just like the other ASRock Radeon RX 6800 series cards, it also has three fans to handle the cooling.

Although Insiders in the Dev Channel do occasionally get to try out upcoming features in Windows 10, more often than not the new builds Microsoft rolls out focus on fixing problems and tweaking settings.

That’s certainly been the case with the previous two flights, and today’s new release, Build 20262 (FE_RELEASE) is no different.

Fixes in this release include:

Fixed an issue resulting in certain apps launching unexpectedly transparent in recent builds, with no content visible.

Fixed an issue where old SleepStudy etls were unexpectedly not being cleaned up.

Fixed an issue resulting in no response the first time a pen was clicked after being paired due to an underlying crash.

Fixed an issue resulting in touchpad scrolling no longer working on the tab in focus after closing a browser tab using CTRL+W while scrolling on a touchpad.

Fixed an issue where the some of the notifications related to block at first sight weren’t being localized.

Fixed an issue where when using Narrator in scan mode, it wasn’t possible to activate the “Sign in with pin or smart card” buttons in the authentication dialog using space or the enter key.

Fixed a recent issue where when both Wi-Fi and cellular were connected, if Wi-Fi disconnected the network flyout would say cellular was still connected, but apps wouldn’t actually be able to use the internet.

Fixed a high hitting DWM crash impacting some Insiders in the last few flights.

Fixed an issue that could result in Settings crashing when navigating to Storage Sense.

Fixed an issue resulting in app registration issues for some of the in-box apps with the previous flight after upgrading.

Known issues are:

Microsoft is looking into reports of the update process hanging for extended periods of time when attempting to install a new build.

Live previews for pinned sites aren’t enabled for all Insiders yet, so you may see a grey window when hovering over the thumbnail in the taskbar. Microsoft is continuing to work on polishing this experience.

Microsoft is working on enabling the new taskbar experience for existing pinned sites. In the meantime, you can unpin the site from the taskbar, remove it from the edge://apps page, and then re-pin the site.

Microsoft is working on a fix for an issue resulting in some users seeing error 0x80070426 when using their Microsoft account to sign into various apps. If you encounter it, rebooting your PC may resolve this.

Microsoft is investigating an issue where, in recent Dev Channel builds, no drives appear under Settings > System > Storage > Manage Disks and Volumes. As a workaround, you can manage your disks in the classic Disk Management tool.

Microsoft is investigating reports that some screens incorrectly have black text on dark backgrounds when dark theme is enabled.