quickstart
10 MAXIMU MPC APR 2022
© NVIDIA, AMD, MICROSOFT, MSITHE GRAPHICS CARD market is still in a
state of upheaval, prices are ridiculous
(although thankfully falling), and supplies
are tight. Both Nvidia and AMD have had
to adjust their designs to match what
silicon they can get hold of. Both have
released ‘budget’ cards that weren’t on
their original roadmaps—and buying any
card at the recommended retail price is
still basically impossible.
AMD brought us the RX 6500 XT
featuring 4GB of VRAM, which was
disappointing, and many reviewers have
not been kind as a result, including
ours (turn to page 80 to see the review).
Nvidia’s Radeon RTX 3050 has 8GB and
has therefore fared better (read our
review on page 74). Now it appears that
Nvidia will be following AMD’s lead by
cutting memory to try and get more
affordable cards on the shelves.
It reportedly has a 4GB version of
its RTX 3050 in the works. It will use a
smaller GA107 GPU, rather than the
GA106. The provisional specifications are
for 2,304 CUDA cores and a base clock of
1,545Hz. The price is expected to be $199,
on paper at least. The lower memory
should help deter crypto miners as well.
There’s also talk of another 8GB RTX 3050
design in the works. Getting more cards
in the market is good, for sure, but 4GB
just isn’t enough for a decent gaming rig.
That’s what we were told when cards
regularly featured 8GB, and AAA games
started to expect it. These expedient
designs aren’t perfect, but they are better
than no cards at all. Intel has promised
to help, with four million Arc Alchemist
cards due before the end of the year. –CLNvidia follows
AMD to 4GBNEW BUDGET
RTX CARDS
Monster board,
monster price
MSI has released its MEG Z
Godlike motherboards. This
$2,099 beast is the best Alder Lake
board ever, according to MSI. The
feature list is impressive, from
a 20+2 phase processor power
supply with titanium chokes,
to six M2 slots, a touchscreen
control panel, RGB lighting, black
aluminum, and tempered glass.
It’s an epic motherboard at an
epic price, but buyers also get
a free bundle of 32GB Kingston
Fury Beast DDR5 RAM, and a
CoreLiquid S360 AiO cooler.
Buying one
isn’t easy,
production is
limited, and you
have to register
an interest. –CLAMD bigger than
Intel, briefly
For the first time in its history,
AMD was worth more than Intel
by market capitalization recently.
In mid-February, AMD was worth
$197.75 billion, just topping Intel’s
$197.24 billion valuation. Quite a
milestone for the red team.
AMD’s stock received a huge
bump on completion of its $
billion acquisition of the fabless
chip company Xilinx (creators
of the first commercial field-
programmable gate array). This
deal added 428 million new AMD
shares to the existing 1.2 billion.
Meanwhile, Intel’s stock
slipped, allowing AMD to pull into
the lead. It may have only been
temporary, but the market noticed.
In the summer of 2020, AMD was
worth just a seventh of Intel. – CLIs HoloLens 3 dead?
WHEN A COMPANY FEELS the need to say a project is “doing great”, chances are all
is not well, and that seems to be the case for Microsoft’s HoloLens project. The
company came early to the world of mixed reality in 2016, and while the resulting
HoloLens won acclaim, sales have been slow. Microsoft recently partnered with
Samsung over future headsets, which has reportedly led to much internal strife,
with allegations of in-fighting and staff leaving to join rivals.
Officially, though, HoloLens is “doing great”, with Microsoft saying: “don’t believe
what you read on the internet”. There has been one decent sale; last year, the US
military signed a $22 billion deal for 120,000 customized HoloLens headsets. Even
this is starting to look shaky, with rumored issues about the “quality” of the sets.
Virtual reality, and its augmented and mixed reality cousins, have been the next
big things for so long it has become a standing joke. Meta has its metaverse and is
working on headsets. Apple is brewing its own hardware, Sony has just dropped its
next-generation VR headset, and Google has its Glass project on a back-burner.
If the virtual world takes off, nobody wants to be left behind. The trouble is, it
refuses to go mainstream. Last year, 9.8 million headsets were sold, and this year
that number is predicted to be 14.2 million. It’s growing, but those numbers are still
small compared to smartphones and game consoles. That hasn’t stopped an awful
lot of people betting that there is much more to come, and as Microsoft knows better
than anyone, this is a long game with the potential for expensive casualties. –CLMicrosoft HoloLens
looks epic, but
securing orders is
proving difficult.