Month: January 2024

Enlarge / The new Radeon RX 7600 XT mostly just adds extra memory, though clock speeds and power requirements have also increased somewhat. (credit: AMD)

Graphics card buyers seem to have a lot of anxiety about buying a GPU with enough memory installed, even in midrange graphics cards that aren't otherwise equipped to play games at super-high resolutions. And while this anxiety tends to be a bit overblown—lots of first- and third-party testing of cards like the GeForce 4060 Ti shows that just a handful of games benefit when all you do is boost GPU memory from 8 to 16GB—there's still a market for less-expensive GPUs with big pools of memory.

That's the apparent impetus behind AMD's sole GPU announcement from its slate of CES news today: the $329 Radeon RX 7600 XT, a version of last year's $269 RX 7600 with twice as much memory, slightly higher clock speeds, and higher power use to go with it.

The core specifications of the 7600 XT remain the same as the regular 7600: 32 of AMD's compute units (CUs) based on the RDNA3 GPU architecture, and the same memory clock speed attached to the same 128-bit memory bus. But RAM has been boosted from 8GB to 16GB, and the GPU's clock speeds have been boosted a little, ensuring that the card runs games a little faster than the regular 7600, even in games that don't care about the extra memory.

Enlarge / AMD's first Ryzen 8000 desktop processors are what the company used to call "APUs," a combination of a fast integrated GPU and a reasonably capable CPU. (credit: AMD)

AMD's G-series Ryzen desktop processors have always been a bit odd—a little behind the curve on AMD's latest CPU architectures, but with integrated graphics performance that's enough for a tiny and/or cheap gaming desktop without a dedicated graphics card. They're also usually updated much more slowly than AMD's other desktop Ryzens. Today, AMD is announcing a new lineup of Ryzen 8000G processors, chips that should provide a substantial boost over 2021's Ryzen 5000G chips as long as you don't mind buying a new socket AM5 motherboard and RAM to go with them.

There are three new processors releasing on January 31. The most powerful is the $329 Ryzen 7 8700G, an 8-core CPU with a Radeon 780M GPU. The next step down, and probably the best combination of price and performance, is the $229 6-core Ryzen 5 8600G, which comes with a slightly slower Radeon 760M GPU.

At the bottom of the range is the $179 Ryzen 5 8500G. It also includes six CPU cores, but with a wrinkle: two of those cores are regular Zen 4 cores, while four are smaller "Zen 4c" cores that are optimized to save space rather than run at high clock speeds. Zen 4c can do exactly the same things as Zen 4, but Zen 4c won't be as fast, something to be aware of when you're comparing the chips. The 8500G includes a Radeon 740M GPU.

Enlarge / Four new Ryzen 5000 CPUs, all riffs on existing Ryzen 5000 CPUs. (credit: AMD)

AMD announced the first Ryzen 8000 desktop processors today: a new lineup of socket AM5 CPUs that bring RDNA 3 integrated GPUs and an AI-accelerating NPU to its desktop platform for the first time. But the company also spent some time on new budget chips for its last-generation AM4 platform. The four new Ryzen 5000 processors cover everything from budget office desktops with integrated GPUs to cost-conscious gaming systems.

At the top of the range is the Ryzen 7 5700X3D, an 8-core CPU with an extra 64MB slab of L3 cache stacked on top of the main CPU die. At $249, it will be a little over $100 cheaper than the 5800X3D, but with the same core count, cache size, and a slightly lower maximum clock speed (4.1 GHz, down from 4.5 GHz). AMD compared it favorably to the Core i5-13600K in gaming workloads, a chip that currently retails for a bit over $280.

The Ryzen 7 5700 is a $175 8-core processor without 3D V-Cache that should still perform reasonably well in most workloads, though AMD's spec sheet says that it has less cache than the 5700X and only supports PCI Express 3.0 instead of PCIe 4.0. This indicates that the 5700 is actually a 5700G with the integrated graphics disabled; it will be a bit slower than the Ryzen 5700X, despite their similar names, core counts, and clock speeds. The Ryzen 5 5600GT and 5500GT are 6- and 4-core chips with Vega-based integrated graphics, both intended for lower-end systems. At $140 and $125, they essentially amount to minor clock speed bumps for the existing Ryzen 5 5600G and Ryzen 3 5300G.

Enlarge / The Big Tech groups are competing to offer new services such as virtual assistants and chatbots as part of a multibillion-dollar bet on generative AI (credit: FT)

The world’s biggest cloud computing companies that have pushed new artificial intelligence tools to their business customers are offering only limited protections against potential copyright lawsuits over the technology.

Amazon, Microsoft and Google are competing to offer new services such as virtual assistants and chatbots as part of a multibillion-dollar bet on generative AI—systems that can spew out humanlike text, images and code in seconds.

AI models are “trained” on data, such as photographs and text found on the internet. This has led to concern that rights holders, from media companies to image libraries, will make legal claims against third parties who use the AI tools trained on their copyrighted data.

Enlarge / The first Vulcan rocket fires off its launch pad in Florida. (credit: United Launch Alliance)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida—Right out of the gate, United Launch Alliance's new Vulcan rocket chased perfection.

The Vulcan launcher hit its marks after lifting off from Florida's Space Coast for the first time early Monday, successfully deploying a commercial robotic lander on a journey to the Moon and keeping ULA's unblemished success record intact.

"Yeehaw! I am so thrilled, I can’t tell you how much!" exclaimed Tory Bruno, ULA's president and CEO, shortly after Vulcan's departure from Cape Canaveral. "I am so proud of this team. Oh my gosh, this has been years of hard work. So far, this has been an absolutely beautiful mission."