Intel’s CEO has recently offered up his thoughts on how the PC industry is too focused on looking at benchmark numbers, and should be considering the broader benefits which its processors deliver.

The comments came from Bob Swan, chief executive, delivered in a ‘Message to Computex’ which was uploaded to YouTube.

Swan also again confirmed that Intel’s next-gen Tiger Lake processors for laptops were still on schedule to arrive in the middle of 2020, or what he actually said was ‘later this summer’ which makes it sound like a July or August ship date, rather than this month. (Remember, though, that shipping is one thing, and it won’t be until the end of the year that laptops actually go on sale with the 11th-gen processors).

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And the CEO stirred up some controversy when he remarked that these Tiger Lake CPUs would “cement [Intel’s] position as the undisputed leader in mobile computing and PC innovation”.

Obviously, given the huge strides forward AMD has made with its latest Ryzen 4000 mobile processors, which are now making very tempting options for powerful yet competitively priced laptops, Swan’s statement seems to be tilting perilously towards arrogance more than anything else.

Granted, Intel does dominate the laptop market, with the majority of notebooks still having the company’s processors inside – so it is still the market leader when it comes to mobile CPUs, but as to innovation, well, you can’t really accuse AMD of failing in that department.

Perhaps this is pointing towards Tiger Lake coming in and being something special – after all, we’ve heard that the incoming laptop chips are set to deliver quite a performance boost over 10th-gen Ice Lake processors, at least according to the rumor mill. Certainly Intel’s Xe integrated graphics are expected to be a massive boost and twice as powerful as the previous generation, at least going by a recent benchmark leak.

Refocusing needed

Although the other main thrust of Swan’s YouTube speech, as we mentioned at the outset, is to stop focusing on benchmarks, and given the current coronavirus situation, instead look more to broader benefits

As PC Gamer spotted, Swan noted: “We should see this moment as an opportunity to shift our focus as an industry from benchmarks to the benefits and impacts of the technology we create. The pandemic has underscored the need for technology to be purpose-built so it can meet these evolving business and consumer needs.”

This has, inevitably, led to some of the more cynical online suggesting it hints that Tiger Lake might not be such a huge leap forward with its new architecture.

That aside, there’s the argument that without benchmarks, how exactly are we supposed to quantify the difference between a generation of processors anyhow? However, Swan is clearly talking in general terms, and about shifting focus away from benchmarks, rather than discarding them entirely.

Even so, one of the biggest benefits outside of CPU performance is arguably tied up in the cost of the silicon, and making processors more affordable and therefore more broadly available – and AMD has been taking the price/performance crown, with Intel’s newest Comet Lake desktop processors not making an immediate strong entrance on that front, as we’ve seen.

Will Tiger Lake push harder to be more competitive? Maybe this is an early indication that this could indeed be the case, but as ever, only time will tell.

• These are the best laptops of 2020

Windows 10 May 2020 Update comes with some big changes for Cortana, and one of those is giving users the ability to easily switch off the digital assistant – or indeed ditch the feature entirely (finally).

With the May 2020 Update, Cortana got a divorce from the taskbar, becoming a separate app and being repositioned as a ‘personal productivity assistant’ no less, along with getting more natural conversational skills, so it feels like you are chatting (sort of) with Windows 10’s assistant.

However, if the only thing you went to tell Cortana is to leave you alone, that’s easily done.

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As Windows Latest highlights, the new standalone Cortana app is still added to the programs which are automatically run by Windows 10 upon boot. So if you’d rather not have Cortana start automatically, which after all does slow down your boot time a bit, completely unnecessarily if you’re not planning on using the assistant, you can switch the feature off using the Task Manager.

To do so, open the Task Manager (press the CTRL+Shift+Escape keys together), then click on the tab labeled ‘Start-up’. In here, on the left-hand side, all the applications loaded on startup are listed by name, so obviously you’re looking for the one called Cortana. When you spot it, simply click to highlight it, and then click the ‘Disable’ button bottom-right.

That’s all you need to do to stop Cortana from loading automatically when you turn your PC on, and the assistant will now only run if you specifically start it.

Removal job

What about if you never intend to start it – is it possible to remove the Cortana app completely? Well, yes it is, although you can’t do this via the obvious route, which would be to use ‘Add or Remove Programs’ under system settings.

Rather, to completely remove Cortana, you’ll need to fire up the Windows PowerShell app.

To do this, simply type ‘PowerShell’ into the Windows search box (next to the Start button), and in the results that pop up in the right-hand side panel, click on ‘Run As Administrator’ (and answer ‘Yes’ to the pop-up question).

In the window that then appears, type (or copy and paste) the following and press enter:

That performs a removal, but do note that it doesn’t get rid of all traces of Cortana – to fully rid your Windows 10 system of the assistant, you’ll need to head into the Registry and remove some further bits there. This isn’t strictly necessary, however, and in all honesty probably isn’t worth doing for less confident users anyway, as making changes in the Registry is a somewhat perilous endeavor that can potentially go wrong.

• These are the best laptops of 2020

Apple’s new MacBook Pro 13-inch may have only just launched, but the entry-level model (with an 8th-gen CPU) have already had the price upped considerably, at least for those who want to upgrade the amount of system RAM supplied with the laptop.

Previously, specifying 16GB of memory rather than the basic 8GB would cost you $100 or £100, but that upgrade has now doubled in cost to $200 or £200. Prices have also doubled in Europe, by all accounts, and MacRumors reports that the cost of doubling up your RAM is also double in Germany (rising from €125 to €250).

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What’s the reason for this chunky increase in cost for a memory upgrade on the new MacBook Pro base model? That’s not clear, but it could possibly be supply-chain related, and the obvious guess is that it may be something to do with coronavirus disruption – although a doubling in price seems severe to say the least.

It’s certainly unusual for Apple to increase the asking price so soon after launch, because the refreshed MacBook Pro 13-inch was only revealed in May, less than a month ago.

No increase at the high-end

Perhaps what makes things worse is that Apple has not increased the price of memory with the high-end MacBook Pro 13-inch which has a 10th-gen CPU, with the cost of doubling up the RAM from 16GB to 32GB remaining at $400 in the US, as MacRumors observes.

Apple’s revamped MacBook Pro 13 comes with a new Apple Magic Keyboard and also a bump in spec including faster memory, but a crucial source of disappointment is that entry-level model still runs with an 8th-generation Whiskey Lake processor as we mentioned at the outset.

This latest move will only compound the misery for those not buying at the higher-end, who want more than 8GB of RAM, and will have to pay much more for it – as well as coping with a two-year-old CPU.

Indeed, if you want a 512GB SSD, doubling the RAM to 16GB means the entry-level model becomes almost the same price as the MacBook Pro 13 with 10th-gen processor (and the same amount of memory and storage) – so you may as well buy that, and get the faster CPU, plus an extra pair of Thunderbolt 3 ports into the bargain.

• Check out the best laptops of 2020

Intel’s Xe DG1 graphics card has been spotted in a 3DMark benchmark, or at least the rumor mill believes that result is for Intel’s first crack at a discrete GPU.

As ever, we shouldn’t read too much into this given that it is just speculation that this is DG1, although the source is a reliable one, the ever-present TUM_APISAK. But even if the leak is on the money, remember that this is an early sample GPU, and won’t reflect the exact performance Intel may achieve with the final product.

At any rate, the purported DG1 graphics cards scored 5,538 in 3DMark’s Fire Strike test (paired with an Intel Core i9-9900K processor) and hit a graphics score of 5,960.

That’s not a massively impressive result, but as we’ve already mentioned, it must be treated with caution. It’s in the ballpark of a graphics card as old as the GeForce GTX 750 Ti, albeit a bit faster than that veteran GPU (which scored 5,402 for graphics in a 3DMark result highlighted on Twitter).

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As Wccftech, which spotted this, observes, it’s a fair way behind the GTX 1050 to pick out another example from Nvidia’s line-up – that previous-gen budget card is around 500 points to 800 points better than the DG1 depending on which 3DMark result you look at.

No cause for concern?

Anyhow, you get the idea – and as with a previous Geekbench result, which showed that the DG1 wasn’t much better than Nvidia’s low-end MX250, the overall vibe thus far is that Intel’s initial product is not going to be causing either AMD or Nvidia any sleepless nights.

That said, at least this new 3DMark leak shows the Intel GPU comfortably outdoing the likes of the MX350, by around a third in terms of that graphics score in fact.

Further remember that Intel’s first GPU is likely to be a testing the waters affair, and as we’ve previously heard via the rumor mill, it’s going to be a mobile part – in other words, a graphics card for laptops, not a GPU for a desktop PC. With further development, perhaps it could start to worry Intel’s rivals at least in the notebook arena – particularly when combined with the potential of Xe integrated graphics with Intel’s Tiger Lake mobile processors.

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Minecraft Dungeons has a really serious bug whereby in certain cases it could remove a hefty chunk of other files from your PC as well as its own data – potentially even wiping the drive the game’s installed on.

As mentioned, this is only happening to some users, and the good news is that there’s now an update for Minecraft Dungeons which solves the problem.

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The bug specifically affects players who have installed the game in a custom directory, and then chose to uninstall the Minecraft Dungeons Launcher using the Add/Remove Programs facility in Windows.

In this scenario, there is a chance that the game will remove the parent directory, and if there’s anything in that, Minecraft Dungeons will take those files with it. In other words, if you’ve installed the game in C:Minecraft Dungeons, the parent folder is your actual C: drive – and that could be entirely wiped.

This problem was highlighted on Twitter by a user who had Minecraft Dungeons installed on their games SSD, and it wiped out the entire drive.

Quick hotfix

Note that this problem does not affect those who have installed Minecraft Dungeons from the Microsoft Store, and also there is now a hotfix available, as Tom’s Hardware reports. You can apply that fix simply by restarting the Dungeons Launcher, which should then grab it automatically.

Before you uninstall the game, be sure that the Microsoft Dungeons Launcher is running Bootstrap version 166 or higher. To check this, go to Settings > About > Bootstrap, and if the version number is lower than 166, restart the Launcher.

Whatever you do, don’t uninstall the game if you aren’t on version 166 or higher, as you may run the above data wipe risks otherwise.

Why on earth did this happen, then? That’s a good question, and Mojang’s Marcio Oliveira, who is Tech Lead for the Minecraft and Minecraft Dungeons Launcher, explains: “When a player selected a custom ‘Install Location’ in the Dungeons installation dialog, the Dungeons Launcher was taking that location and naively considering that only files written by the Dungeons Launcher would live there.

“Thus, when uninstalling the Launcher, the uninstall logic would simply delete that ‘Install Location’ folder, to leave no traces of program files created by the Launcher on disk.”

That’s a pretty shocking coding oversight, although sadly it’s far from a first in PC gaming. Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor, an RPG released just after the turn of the millennium, suffered from an uninstall bug which could wipe out your system files.

More recently, Realm of the Mad God Exalt – a niche Flash-based RPG mixed with twin-stick shooter – suffered from the same problem as Minecraft Dungeons exhibits here (albeit with the beta client, but still – it’s a terrible error to inflict on the player base).

• Here's how to download Minecraft Dungeons

Intel’s NUC 11 has popped up in a leak which shows a compact PC box packing a quad-core Tiger Lake-U processor with an impressive boost speed, alongside a GTX 1660 Ti graphics card.

NUC is short for Next Unit of Computing, and basically means a mini PC that can happily sit in your living room without looking like an eyesore. Intel’s Ghost Canyon has just emerged – see our full review here – and rumor has it that Phantom Canyon and Panther Canyon will follow (perhaps later this year, if a leaked roadmap is correct) using 11th-gen Tiger Lake-U (10nm+) processors.

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Hardware Leaks (well-known leaker Rogame’s new tech site) spotted a 3DMark Time Spy benchmark which is purportedly from a Phantom Canyon NUC (that’s the ‘extreme’ version targeted at enthusiasts, as opposed to the mainstream ‘performance’ model which will allegedly be Panther Canyon).

The device apparently being tested is powered by a quad-core (eight-thread) Tiger Lake-U mobile processor with a base clock of 2.3GHz and boost to 4.4GHz. Remember that the CPU is an engineering sample, or early version of the chip, so the final product will be faster still.

And that Turbo to 4.4GHz already looks impressive compared to what we see with Ice Lake mobile CPUs which top out at a boost of 4.1GHz. Rogame guesses that this chip is a 28W Core i5 Tiger Lake sample.

GPU power

The NUC in the benchmark pairs this processor with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, albeit the mobile version of that graphics card, not the full desktop GPU. Presumably there will be a higher-end configuration of Phantom Canyon with a more powerful GeForce card, that will allow it to compete better with the performance of the next-gen consoles which are, after all, also due late this year (and apparently not affected by any coronavirus-related delay – although Intel’s NUC might be).

Remember that these NUC 11 models are still in the realm of speculation, with nothing officially confirmed by Intel yet.

According to that previous rumor we heard, which spilled a lot of details, the Phantom Canyon box is expected to be 1.35 liters and will have room for that discrete GPU, whereas Panther Canyon will be smaller and rely on Intel’s integrated Xe (Gen12) graphics. PCIe 4.0 support is also expected to be on board.

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Via Tom’s Hardware

macOS Catalina 10.15.5 is now out, and the update comes with a new feature to help ensure that your MacBook’s battery remains in good health, and offers better longevity as it gets older.

The idea is that the new battery health management feature reduces the rate that the battery chemically ages, and as Apple explains: “The feature does this by monitoring your battery’s temperature history and its charging patterns. Based on the measurements that it collects, battery health management may reduce your battery’s maximum charge when in this mode.”

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It’s a mode you can turn off if you wish, so it’s not compulsory, but it can help to reduce the wear on your battery, depending on your exact usage pattern. If you keep your MacBook plugged into the mains most of the time – and don’t use it out and about much – the overall capacity that the battery is charged to is artificially cut back, to prevent this kind of use case from negatively affecting the battery in the long-term (because you don’t want it constantly being kept at 100% capacity; this is bad news for the battery).

Given that MacBook batteries aren’t user-replaceable, it’s obviously pretty handy to have this feature, as battery performance degrading over time can become something of a thorn in the side of MacBook owners.

Supported MacBooks

The catch here is that this feature is only provided to newer MacBooks that support Thunderbolt 3, although we’ve seen some anecdotal reports that some older Apple laptops which do have Thunderbolt 3 haven’t received the feature. At any rate, you should get it in these cases, but the only way to find out for sure is to upgrade to version 10.15.5.

As well as the battery health addition, macOS Catalina 10.15.5 applies a bunch of fixes, including the solution for a bug causing system crashes when large amounts of data are transferred over to RAID volumes.

• Best Mac of 2020: the best Macs to buy this year

Via The Verge

Microsoft will start work proper on the Windows 10 21H1 update – due to land in the first half of 2021 – in June, when testers will begin evaluating preview builds.

21H1 will be the next major update for Windows 10, following the imminent May 2020 Update (20H1), because the next release for 2020, which is of course 20H2, is looking very much like it will only be a service pack-style affair with no major feature additions (as 19H2 was the previous year).

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As Windows Latest spotted, a Microsoft blog post accidentally revealed that the testing currently underway in the Fast ring of preview builds is for the next 20H2 update (codenamed ‘Manganese’), but that Fast ring testers will switch to the 21H1 update – which is the next major one, according to strong whisperings from the rumor mill – in June.

Apparently 21H1 will be codenamed ‘Iron’, and testing will start in later June rather than earlier in the month, but the fact remains that Microsoft is about to flip the switch for the serious work to begin on this update.

Cat escapes bag

No details on exactly what we can expect with 21H1 were revealed, sadly, and the blog post in question has now been edited to delete the above information, showing of course that Microsoft didn’t mean to let this slip out.

We haven’t heard much about the 21H1 update yet, seeing as it’s still quite some time off – 20H1 or the May 2020 Update isn’t even out yet, although it’s expected imminently.

One of the changes we could see with the 21H1 update is the majorly revamped Start menu which there’s been a fair bit of chatter about lately. With 20H2 seemingly a minor update, the following upgrade for early 2021 makes sense for a big change like this.

• These are the best laptops of 2020

AMD’s Ryzen 3000 range of desktop processors reportedly has a ‘Matisse Refresh’ which is imminent, although the company will be taking a different approach to unleashing new CPUs – presumably to tackle Intel’s new Comet Lake chips – than was indicated in yesterday’s rumor.

We should stress that this very much remains in rumor territory, but the theory is that according to sources who spoke to Wccftech, AMD is getting ready to unleash three new Ryzen 3000 processors built on an optimized 7nm process.

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These would be the Ryzen 9 3900XT, Ryzen 7 3800XT, and Ryzen 5 3600XT, which would apparently replace the 3900X, 3800X and 3600X respectively.

The refreshed processors will allegedly keep the same core counts as the existing ‘X’ variants, but will provide a boost in terms of higher clock speeds – perhaps a 200MHz or 300MHz increase – with enhanced overclocking support to boot.

The new XT processors have better tuning in terms of their boost algorithms, as well, with a promised 5% to 10% performance improvement over the current X models. So the idea appears to be to deliver a solid performance boost, and better overclocking chops, to position these CPUs as an even more tempting proposition compared to Intel’s freshly launched Comet Lake processors.

The sources contend that these 3900XT, 3800XT and 3600XT versions are coming soon, and will be revealed on June 16 – not long away now – with the chips expected to go on sale July 7.

This all, naturally, assumes that the mentioned sources are correct, and at this point you can start chucking the salt around.

Condiments corner

Wccftech did provide a small image of purported logos for these processors in the article, presumably supplied to them by their source(s), but it’s not exactly convincing, and could easily have been faked (it’s hardly an early glimpse at a full presentation deck, as we’ve seen in the past with more concrete leaks).

So that seems shaky, and we’re not entirely convinced about the ‘XT’ product labeling either – this is used in the model names for AMD’s graphics cards, so why would the company switch a CPU to this naming scheme? Surely that might seem confusing for consumers?

On the other hand, we can’t dismiss the rumor on these points, and it does have further weight considering we’ve already heard speculation around this yesterday. As we mentioned at the outset, another rumor points to AMD having Ryzen 7 3750X and Ryzen 7 3850X chips waiting in the wings, with unveiling and release dates corresponding with the ones we just discussed.

Perhaps adding a little further weight to all this, as well, is AMD seemingly marshaling retailers to drop the price of the Ryzen 9 3900X, perhaps as another move against Comet Lake – or maybe, given this new rumor, to start clearing out stock ahead of the launch of the 3900XT?

As ever, draw your own conclusions, but if these XT processors are indeed incoming, we might see even more killer deals on the 3900X – and the other outgoing Ryzen chips – in the near future.

Finally, note that another possibility is that the launch of Ryzen 4000 ‘Renoir’ desktop APUs may be tied up with the reveal of these purported new XT CPUs in June. After all, the rumor mill has indicated that these APUs should hit the shelves soon.

• These are the best graphics cards of 2020

AMD’s Ryzen 9 3900X has reportedly been given a price cut in the wake of Intel’s new Comet Lake processors hitting the shelves, which could certainly be viewed as a reactive move following the 10th-gen desktop launch.

According to a report by TechPowerup, AMD has signaled to retailers to drop the price of the 3900X to around $410 over in the US, where it will compete with the Core i9-10900K and indeed the Core i7-10700K. If this isn’t a reaction to the launch of those Intel processors, then the timing is certainly what you’d call interesting…

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There’s a bit to unpick with this story, however. As far as the official price listed by AMD goes, the 3900X launched at $499, but is now listed at $449 on AMD’s website. As mentioned, TechPowerup contends that a drop to around $410 is being marshaled with online retailers, although prices are kind of peppered around that mark.

Furthermore, note that the 3900X has been dropped to this kind of just-over-$400 level before.

Going back to the current prices, the Ryzen 3900X might have been $410 yesterday at Amazon, but now sits at $420 there, or $432 at Newegg in the US – but as one eagle-eyed TechPowerup reader spotted, it has crashed down to $390 at Micro Center.

Now that really is a steal, given that even the Core i7-10700K has launched at around $410. That’s an 8-core Intel part, compared to the 12-core Ryzen.

3900X threat

The 10-core Intel Core i9-10900K is pegged at $510 or more, and as we pointed out in our review, it is outdone by the 3900X in most CPU-heavy workloads (and some games which hit the processor hard across multiple cores).

In the UK, the 3900X can now be had for around £410 online, at the time of writing, and the 10700K is around the same mark, with the 10900K pitched at about £530.

Looking at the value of the 3900X in the US at Micro Center, then, this AMD 12-core processor presents a highly tempting proposition for many users looking at building a beefier PC, no doubt. And remember that you get a cooler bundled with the 3900X too (although many may well want to upgrade that component, the fact is it’s still there by default).

AMD would seem to be making it clear that it’s not going to relent in the slightest with its push in the desktop CPU arena, and of course that’s not even taking into account that we have Ryzen 4000 processors on the near horizon, ready to debut in September according to the rumor mill.

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Via Videocardz, PC GamesN

Intel’s Core i9-10900K processor is now on sale, and the new Comet Lake 10-core flagship has already been overclocked to 7.7GHz, outdoing the 9900K’s record overclock.

That’s a mind-boggling speed, naturally, but not one that the average punter will even be able to think about achieving with simple air or liquid cooling, given that Elmor – who is the in-house overclocking expert for Asus – used liquid helium cooling to drive to 7.7GHz (7703MHz) across all 10 of this CPU’s cores.

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In comparison to the predecessor 9900K processor, another high-profile overclocker, Der8auer, managed to hit 7.6GHz or 7613MHz to be precise, so the 10th-gen Comet Lake flagship managed to eke out 90MHz more of an overclock (across two extra cores, of course).

As Wccftech reports, in this case the 10900K was overclocked in an Asus ROG Maximus XII Apex motherboard (at 1.194V).

Furthermore, a new world record was set in terms of overclocking system RAM with this Asus motherboard and Intel’s Core i9-10900K, with an 8GB stick of G.Skill’s F4-4000C18-8GTRG memory actually being pushed to an effective memory clock of 3332MHz, hitting 6665MHz (or 6.6GHz), a seriously impressive feat achieved by Taiwanese overclocker Bianbao.

Speed of silicon

In the past, some processors have been pushed to the giddy heights of close to 9GHz, with the likes of AMD’s FX-8350 almost hitting 8.8GHz (although that was some eight years ago now).

The FX-8350 was a notoriously good overclocker of a chip, but even at these kind of speeds, it can’t match the performance of a modern processor.

Der8auer recently conducted an experiment where he pushed an FX-8350 to 8.1GHz (on liquid nitrogen), and dropped it to 7.5GHz, then ran Cinebench R15 – but even at this level, the old processor still couldn’t match the single-core performance of modern Ryzen chips, being slightly slower than a Ryzen 5 2600X (not even a current-gen or high-end Ryzen).

This aptly illustrates that there is a lot more to a CPU than pure clock speed, and underlines the kind of advances we get from progressing through different CPU architectures – with major IPC (Instructions Per Clock) increases – as time goes on.

• See all the best gaming PCs of 2020

Intel’s Tiger Lake 11th-gen quad-core laptop chip – which could possibly turn out to be the Core i7-1165G7, rumor has it – has been spotted again in an online benchmark, and it’s looking like this CPU could boost performance considerably over Intel’s existing 10th-gen (Ice Lake) mobile chips.

This leak comes courtesy of Rogame, who has spotted the quad-core (8-thread) processor in other benchmarks in the past.

And as before, the purported Core i7-1165G7 – although it could well turn out to be a different model – is listed with a base clock of 2.8GHz. That’s a significant baseline performance increase compared to the fastest existing Ice Lake notebook processor, which has a 2.3GHz base clock (that’s the quad-core Core i7-1068NG7).

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The boost clock is reported as the same as the stock clock speed in this benchmark (and the previous one we’ve seen of this chip, for that matter), which is obviously not correct, and a reflection of this being sample silicon rather than a finished product yet. Which also means that the base clock speed could potentially be slightly higher still when it comes to the finalized CPU…

Further bear in mind that Rogame has leaked a Tiger Lake chip in the past which actually runs up to a base clock of 3GHz (this was spotted back in April via a 3DMark benchmark).

The fact that we are seeing an increasing amount of spillage relating to Tiger Lake-U mobile processors indicates that the launch could be coming rapidly nearer, which marries up with what Intel itself has indicated. The chip giant has previously stated that it expects these CPUs to ship in the middle of the year, so that could mean June.

End of 2020

That said, before you get too excited about the prospect of more powerful laptop chips from Intel arriving soon, remember that the silicon shipping to manufacturers is one thing – and laptops using these 11th-gen Tiger Lake CPUs won’t actually go on sale until the end of the year (or that’s the current plan anyway).

Tiger Lake is built around an entirely new architecture (Willow Cove) and will also be a big boost on the integrated graphics front, with Intel’s Xe graphics coming into play.

These mobile chips are a big deal for Intel, given AMD’s new Ryzen 4000 products have made quite an impression, and they’re shaping up to be a distinct threat in the laptop arena which Intel dominates – and it can’t afford to lose that crown.

• These are the best laptops of 2020

Via Wccftech

AMD’s Ryzen 7 4700G, the 8-core ‘Renoir’ APU which has been the subject of much speculation of late, is soon to be released according to the latest rumor, which is backed up with a purported image of the chip.

We’ve been hearing a lot about the 4700G recently, and the weight of evidence pointing to the existence of the alleged APU is getting pretty heavy now – and this is certainly another hefty addition to the rumor pile, coming courtesy of Videocardz which published an image of the chip.

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According to the report, this is a picture of the final product, and the source who supplied it says that it “shouldn’t be long” before we see the Renoir range of Ryzen 4000 desktop APUs on the shelves.

As per previous speculation, the Ryzen 7 4700G will run with 8-cores and 16-threads, doubling up compared to the quad-core Ryzen 5 3400G from AMD’s existing range of Ryzen 3000 desktop APUs. It’s also expected to have a base clock of 3.6GHz, plus Radeon Vega integrated graphics with 8 compute units (CUs) clocked at 2100MHz.

We’ve seen no less than three separate leaks pop up pertaining to the 4700G in just the last week: firstly from TUM_APISAK and Komachi on Twitter, then @_rogame chimed in with a leaked game benchmark, and finally Igor’s Lab published the (alleged) full Renoir APU portfolio.

Now we have this latest spillage from Videocardz and it’s worth noting that the pictured 4700G chip has the same OPN (ordering part number) as an 8-core APU presented in the portfolio details provided by Igor’s Lab (100-000000146).

All adding up?

Everything is all adding up, or so it would seem, but as ever with anything from the hardware rumor mill, we still need to be careful about getting too carried away.

If the latest source is right, though, with the launch happening soon – which certainly makes sense given the copious amount of leaking activity around the 4700G in recent times – we won’t have long to wait to find out the truth behind the purported 8-core APU.

We’ve also heard that there are potentially a couple of 8-core Renoir APUs undergoing testing, one of which was clocked slower at around 3GHz (with integrated graphics at 1750MHz). So we may even see more than one version of an 8-core Renoir APU (which again is backed up by that portfolio spilled by Igor’s Lab).

• Here are the best graphics cards of 2020

Steam will now analyze your existing library of games and tell you which title you might want to play next based on your past gaming history on the platform.

This feature is called Play Next, rather appropriately, and it uses machine learning to try to discern which games you might enjoy from your Steam collection. It’s particularly aimed at those PC gamers who have a massive library of titles bought on Steam, and therefore might be rather bewildered as to what to try next – so the theory is it should help them make a more informed decision.

• We've chosen the best Steam games of 2020
• Here are the best gaming PCs
• Or we'll show you how to build a PC

Previously, this feature was an experimental one being tested in Steam Labs, but it has now been cleared to go live with the full Steam client, so when you pick up the next update, suggested games are now highlighted in a Play Next shelf.

You can, of course, ignore the shelf if you wish, but apparently it’s got some ‘positive feedback’ from testers in the past, hence why Valve has gone ahead with fully introducing it.

Solid suggestions?

Having a quick look in our Steam account, the suggestions made seem fairly appropriate ones, although with a feature like this, there’s a good chance that mileage may vary somewhat from user to user.

If you have multiple copies of the same game, for instance, the algorithm seems to recommend games you may have already played. For instance, it recommended our computing editor the Batman Arkham City Game of the Year edition and Bioshock 2 remastered – two games they've definitely already played. 

On the whole, however, it’s something which could be a useful addition, and if you don’t want to know what Steam’s AI algorithms think about your gaming habits, then you can simply ignore the Play Next shelf.

In other recent Steam news, Valve’s big summer sale will purportedly kick off next month on June 25, or that’s the word from the rumor mill (and indeed the source it was correct about last year’s sale).

• Check out the best processors of 2020

Via Neowin

Intel’s Alder Lake 12th-gen desktop processors – expected to arrive late 2021, or early 2022 – will be the point that the chip giant brings in support for DDR5, at least according to the latest buzz from the grapevine.

This comes from the PTT forums (in China) courtesy of SharkBay (as spotted by Videocardz), and while that source is far from an unknown leaker, we would definitely still treat this rumor with a lot more caution than the norm.

• We’ve picked out all the best processors
• And check out the best motherboards of 2020
• We'll show you how to build a PC

So, grab some fistfuls of salt, but the claim is that Alder Lake will come with DDR5 support, which the report notes has been hinted at for a while; although the last we heard, rumor-peddlers were talking about this being a possibility and rather uncertain.

Still, SharkBay believes Alder Lake-S chips will indeed support the faster memory standard, and speeds are actually mentioned here, with Intel’s 12th-gen chips apparently set to support DDR5 at 4800MHz to begin with. Videocardz qualifies that this will be with one DIMM (memory stick) per channel, and when using two DIMMs per channel speeds will top out at a slower 4000MHz.

Remember of course that when DDR5 first launches – with Samsung expected to hit mass production with memory modules for the PC in 2021 – it’ll take a good while to actually bed in, and performance will likely not be much better than existing top-end DDR4 RAM. This was exactly the case with DDR4 when it was first introduced, of course, and speeds ramped up over time; the same will happen with DDR5.

DDR5 to be a dead heat?

AMD is expected to bring in DDR5 support in 2022 alongside Zen 4 processors, so if Alder Lake arrives as expected – most likely in 2022 as well – evidently that’s the year to mark in your calendar for the jump to next-gen memory in the PC arena.

Although exactly when DDR5 speeds will start to ramp up nicely, and costs will come down – initial memory modules will come with a price premium, doubtless, as with any cutting-edge tech to begin with – for the RAM to make sense in respect of price/performance, that’s another question.

From the speculation we’ve heard about Alder Lake thus far, it’ll be a major change for Intel in terms of introducing a new LGA 1700 socket, meaning the Z490 motherboards just coming into play for 10th-gen Comet Lake CPUs won’t be compatible, at least according to previous speculation.

Those boards will apparently be good for Comet Lake and 11th-gen Rocket Lake, but then everything changes again with an entirely new platform for Alder Lake.

SharkBay also divulged some purported details on the power consumption of Rocket Lake desktop CPUs, which will allegedly have chips with 95W, 80W, and 65W TDPs. That’s a good deal lower than Comet Lake, which hits 125W, so points to a sizeable move forward in terms of power efficiency – although remember that rumor also has it that Rocket Lake will step backwards to an 8-core flagship chip rather than 10-core.

Rocket Lake remains a 14nm product but it will move to an entirely new architecture which should bring a solid performance boost in itself (PCIe 4.0 support is also expected with Intel’s 11th-gen chips).

In short, we’re now getting a fuller picture of how the next couple of generations of Intel silicon will pan out – assuming that the rumor mill isn’t way off course here, naturally.

• Intel’s new CPUs go all-in on performance – but are they an open goal for AMD?