JAN 2022 MAXIMUMPC 9
TRIUMPHS TRAGEDIES
GAMING FREEDOM
Windows allows you to choose
where to install games from
Windows Store or Xbox Game
Pass: no more locked folders.THROWN INTO SPACE
SpinLaunch plans to ‘throw’
satellites into space using a huge
centrifuge operating at high-
speed in a vacuum. A small test
version works, at least.THE ORIGINAL APPLE
An Apple- 1 sold at auction for
$500K complete with cassette
adapter, and koa wood case: one
of 200 hand-made machines.STOLEN RTXs
A truckload of GeForce RTX
30-series cards, including
3090s, was hijacked en route
to a warehouse in California.RECORD WITHDRAWN
A world-beating 8GHz Alder
Lake overclock by Gigabyte was
rejected due to a bug in CPU-Z
that can give the wrong clock
speed with Alder Lake chips.LOCKED FRAMES
Nvidia’s cloud gaming service
locks frame rates of 12 games
to below 60 fps, causing jitters,
even for Priority Members.A monthly snapshot of what’s good and bad in techTech Triumphsand TragediesA PREVIEW BUILD of Win1 1 has pulled a sneaky trick by
stopping a popular ‘helper’ app called EdgeDeflector from
working. This could detect the hard-coded links to Edge
that Win1 1 likes to scatter across the OS, then redirect them
to your preferred browser. The planned update kills it dead, ensuring that
Microsoft’s browser pops up instead. Trying to set a rival as your default
isn’t easy either. When you install a new browser and open a link, you have
to select “always use this app” to make your choice the default. But you only
get one chance, if you miss it you’ll have to set it as the default for all files or
link formats individually. Only Firefox manages to successfully navigate the
pitfalls to install itself as the default. You can expect Microsoft to push Edge,
but this is annoying at best. We’ve been here before, of course, back in the
days of Internet Explorer. It eventually ended in court to disconnect the OS
from the browser and it seems Microsoft is going back to its old ways. – CLNew Win11build getting obstructiveMICROSOFT PUSHES EDGE
FACEBOOK QUITS
LOOKING AT FACES
META,FACEBOOK’SPARENT company, is to end one of its most
contentious practices: facial recognition. It will also delete
the one billion ‘faceprints’ it collected from the one-third of
Facebook users who opted in. As a useful dataset, it must have
been valuable, but the move represents “one of the largest shifts in facial recognition
usage in the technology’s history,” according to the VP of the AI division. It’s not clear
what prompted the change of heart, the company has been under fire over its attitudes
to privacy, and admitted that there are ‘many concerns’ about the unrestricted use of
facial recognition. A couple of useful features will go along with it, the audio description
that names people in pictures (handy for the visually impaired), and you’ll no longer be
notified if your face appears in other people’s media.–CLYOUR FACEPRINTWILL BE DELETED
REMEMBER MATROX? How about S3 or even
3dfx? Back in the 199 0s, there were dozens
of graphics card designers and builders.
But since then, they have either run
themselves into the ground, retreated into
niche markets, or been bought out. For
years, there has effectively been a duopoly;
Nvidia and AMD control roughly 80 and 20
percent of the market respectively.
Recent times have been harsh for the
industry, losing cards to cryptocurrency
miners and a chip shortage that squeezed
supplies and raised prices. However, the
growth of cloud services, AI, and other
intensive HPC applications has fueled a
resurgence in GPU development. In 20 19,
there were 11 developers, this year it has
grown to 1 9. Most of this development
won’t find its way out of the server racks,
but the most obvious new contender is
Intel, which started developing its discrete
graphics card business in 201 7. Early next
year, we will see the first fruits: the Arc
Alchemist (the DG2 as was). There will be
four variants, the beefiest being the DG-
512EU—sporting 512 EUs, this is aimed
squarely at GeForce RTX and Radeon
RX territory. Intel has hinted at a price
comparable with a GeForce RTX 30 80, so
fingers crossed for decent numbers.
Meanwhile in China, Xindong has
previewed its Fenghua No. 1 graphics card,
and the spec sheet reads well: GDDR6X
memory, support for the latest APIs,
including Vulkan. The company is aiming
the GPU at everything from data centers
to desktops. Another Chinese company,
Zhaoxin, has demonstrated a prototype
discrete card, only a 7 5W one so far, but
it’s still early days.
Nvidia and AMD finally have competition
and it can’t come soon enough. We need
more cards now and anything that might
help push down prices is good news.–CLRivals eye the
lucrative GPUmarketGRAPHICS
DUOPOLY
ALL OVER
(^) © Could the AMD and Nvidia duopoly be over?