*CES 2019 has a lot of exciting new tech to offer
AMD
Semiconductor titan AMD has been trouncing long-time rival Intel for two straight years running. Just when everyone had started to think that Intel’s decade-long near-monopolistic stranglehold on the CPU market is here to stay, AMD floored everyone with the release of the first processors of the Ryzen series in early 2017, offering a magnificent balance of performance, thermal efficiency and price that forced Intel to sit up and take notice. However, Intel’s attempts to respond to AMD’s challenge resulted in the company making a number of unfortunate decisions that not only cost them substantially in terms of sales and market share, but also earned them a substantial amount of bad press.
At this year’s CES, AMD revealed the long-awaited third generation of the Ryzen series, and a live performance showdown revealed that a middle-order 8-core/16-thread Ryzen third-gen CPU can not only go toe to toe with Intel’s current flagship i9-9900K CPU, but also deliver superior performance, while drawing considerably less power, spelling out what appears to be another troublesome year ahead for Intel, who have been fumbling with the ball in terms of price-performance ratio and thermal performance alike for a while now. This year’s Ryzen CPUs are also delivering extremely impressive single-core performance – which was previously relatively lower compared to those offered by Intel’s ones – thus leveling the playing field even further. AMD has also announced a range of laptop-grade CPUs with integrated Vega graphics chips.
Speaking of graphics, CEO Lisa Su also unveiled a new GPU from AMD, the Radeon VII, which was demonstrated to show performance levels on par with rival Nvidia’s current penultimate GPU, the GeForce RTX 2080. Although the Radeon VII is not capable of performing real-time raytracing like the RTX series (at least for the time being), its cheaper (compared to the 2080) USD 699 price tag, 16 GB of memory and triple-fan design is definitely going to make it look like a viable option for many gamers who don’t care for raytracing. While AMD is still far winning the war against Nvidia, it is clear that it has nonetheless managed to issue a formidable challenge to its oldest competitor, because the announcement of the VII apparently bothered Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang sufficiently for him to respond with some extremely unprofessional and vitriolic comments.
Intel
While AMD has been on a consistent winning streak, Intel has not been sitting idle, and it announced an upcoming new CPU chipset by the name of Ice Lake. While it offers some interesting new additions, such as integrated Thunderbolt 3 connectivity, Wi-Fi 6, Gen 11 graphics and AI enhancements, its actual performance and metrics remain mysteriously unspoken. However, if Intel’s track record in recent years is to be used as a forecasting basis, it is safe to say that it would probably turn out to offer performance on par with or somewhat better than the third-gen Ryzen CPUs, while costing about twice as much. Intel is also working on a new series of server-grade processors built on the same chipset, but those are not expected to enter the market until 2020.
Intel is also working with various OEM partners on a new generation of ultralight laptops under the banner of what it currently calls Project Athena. The specifics are still under wraps, but Intel promises to deliver superior battery life, snappy response times and superb connectivity for all Athena machines. Simultaneously, Intel is also working on a process codenamed Lakefield, which involves vertically stacking logic chips within a processor to minimize its size while retaining a high number of cores, which is probably going to be a boon for Athena PCs as well as small-form factor desktops.
Nvidia
As mentioned earlier, Nvidia’s response to AMD’s Radeon VII has been quite acrid and pointlessly scathing (which is not a good sign, as it is almost certainly indicative of a lack of confidence regarding their own offerings), but the fact still remains that it is still the market leader in terms of GPU technology, and while people’s response toward the RTX 2070, RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti have been rather lukewarm (largely because of their exorbitant pricing and people’s derision toward real-time raytracing without realizing its merits), the arrival of the newly announced USD 350 RTX 2060 ‘budget’ GPU is expected to pull in a lot more attention. Nvidia also announced that RTX GPUs would also come to laptops in a slightly less formidable (but still quite powerful) form, at prices that can be classified as reasonable, but not readily affordable (or even really needed) by everyone.
Additionally, in a shocking twist, Nvidia announced that its GPUs (including many of its older ones, particularly those from the Pascal/1000 series) would be adding support for AMD’s FreeSync technology, which means those GPUs would be able to take advantage of variable-refresh rate displays to offer a smooth and tearing-free gaming experience on any GPU that supports FreeSync. While Nvidia has gone to great lengths to mention that it officially supports only 12 models of FreeSync-supported displays, it would still be an option available to anyone who owns a FreeSync screen.
Given everything else that has been shown in this year’s CES, 2019 promises to be an exciting year in tech, and while it is too soon to start placing bets on which companies are going to come out on top, it can safely be said that the real winners are going to be the customers.
