The next major Windows 10 update is set to mean big changes for PC makers concerning the versions of software they can offer.
Windows 10 May 2020 Update, which is due late in May, will drop support for the 32-bit version of the operating system on the OEM side.
In other words, as of the next big update, hardware manufacturers will no longer be offered 32-bit versions of Windows 10 to install on their devices, and any PC made going forward will have a 64-bit installation.
This isn’t a great surprise, really, and pretty much an expected move from Microsoft. If you look at the number of folks out there actually running Windows 10 32-bit, it’s an extremely small percentage (one fifth of a percent, looking at the most recent Steam hardware survey as an example). And the number of new PCs running a 32-bit version is doubtless even smaller…
Don’t panic
That said, before those with old PCs, or folks who are running the 32-bit spin on Windows 10 for legacy reasons, start to panic, Microsoft will still continue to support existing 32-bit installations of the operating system going forward.
Microsoft clarified: “This does not impact 32-bit customer systems that are manufactured with earlier versions of Windows 10; Microsoft remains committed to providing feature and security updates on these devices, including continued 32-bit media availability in non-OEM channels to support various upgrade installation scenarios.”
However, with Windows 10 32-bit being phased out as of the May 2020 Update, it’s clearly on the path to complete extinction now. And as to how long Microsoft feels it’s viable to continue providing updates for existing 32-bit systems, that’s an unknown factor – we’ll just have to see. But as we’ve already mentioned, the percentage of users out there is already vanishingly tiny, and at some point, a decision might be made about the use of resources in continuing that support.
Of course, Windows 10 32-bit is hamstrung in various ways, not least of which is the ability to only support 4GB of system RAM.
Windows 10's search function has been notoriously wonky in recent times, and now yet another problem has now cropped up – possibly related to a recent optional update for the OS – affecting some users and leaving them scratching their heads.
Worse still, the way this fresh search bug manifests itself makes it look something like a malware infection, causing folks to worry that their PC may have been compromised by a virus somehow.
When some users click on the Start menu and run a search (ie start typing to find, say, an app), they are reporting that a weird-looking screen pops up saying ‘This is taking too long to load’ with a blank background and a ‘Refresh’ button.
However, a long string of characters in the bottom right-hand corner presents itself – presumably some kind of installation version – and that looks like something Microsoft’s operating system shouldn’t be displaying, hence the worry that somehow this is the result of malware.
It certainly doesn’t present itself as a typical Windows 10 bug that you might see in the release version of the OS (a preview version, maybe), but there is nothing malicious going on behind-the-scenes (at least not looking at the cures – more on that momentarily – and reports of those who have run virus scans to check if anything is amiss, which have come up empty).
Only a limited number of users appear to be affected by this problem, but there are certainly reports of several PCs suffering from the search gremlin, as highlighted on Reddit in a couple of threads, as well as on Microsoft’s Answers.com forum and other places online (like Superuser.com).
As we mentioned at the outset, many of these incidents are being linked to the installation of a recent optional update for Windows 10, namely KB4550945, but other users are reporting that they are encountering the issue without having that particular update installed.
Another point worth bearing in mind is that if you click the ‘Refresh’ button in the odd-looking error screen, the problem will go away and your search results will appear. However, the search flaw will return, although possibly not until you next reboot your computer, and it’s a fairly annoying issue as such.
Fixing search
What can you do to get rid of the problem? Detailing any solution is slightly more complicated given that the link to KB4550945 isn’t fully demonstrated from what we’ve seen.
However, if you have installed that particular update – and you may not have done, given that it’s an optional affair – one obvious step you can try is to uninstall it. We’ve seen a couple of reports suggesting this may get rid of the issue.
The second thing to try is simply installing all the latest updates for Windows 10. Making sure the system is fully up to date has resolved the gremlin for some folks, and that includes feature updates, with some reports indicating that upgrading to Windows 10 November 2019 Update (if you haven’t already done so) can get rid of the strange error.
If none of these relatively easy to implement fixes work, then there’s something else you can try, as mentioned on Reddit and highlighted by Windows Latest, which spotted all this.
What you need to do is get Windows 10 to look for corruption errors, which can be achieved via the command prompt like so.
First, press the Windows key + ‘R’ to open the Run window. Inside this window, you need to type ‘cmd’ and then press the Ctrl+Shift+Enter keys together to open the command prompt as an admin.
Inside the command prompt window, you need to type the following and press Enter:
Then wait for the process to complete. If nothing else worked, fingers crossed that this could banish the bugbear.
Note that running the above command is done at your own risk, and alternatively, if you don’t fancy diving into the command prompt and trying this, if you hold on, we’re betting the problem will be swiftly resolved by an incoming update (assuming you’ve installed all the current ones as advised above).
We’ve contacted Microsoft for a comment on this problem – and whether a fix might be in the pipeline – and will update this story if we hear back.
Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3000 range is set to be something truly special, and could usher in a new era of 4K gaming on PC, at least if a freshly revealed graphics card leak turns out to be on the money.
This comes from the YouTube channel Moore’s Law is Dead, which we should note upfront is not one of the major hardware leakers that seem to pop up constantly. That said, the channel has been gaining traction of late, and we’ve seen some interesting details from it in recent times.
So – grab your handfuls of salt now – the YouTuber claims to have spoken to inside sources at Nvidia who have gone to great pains to eke out and share a lot of details on the firm’s next-gen graphics cards. (The other obvious major caveat being that this info pertains to the current engineering sample boards, so the info may change before launch, but should – broadly speaking – be in the right ballpark).
Much of the most interesting spillage concerns the GA102 GPU which will theoretically be Nvidia’s top-end Ampere consumer offering that’ll most likely be named the RTX 3080 Ti (assuming Nvidia logically carries on with its current generational naming scheme).
Whatever it ends up being called though, it’s set to be an out-and-out beast of a graphics card, allegedly running with hugely fast boost clocks of up to 2.2GHz, offering 21 TFlops of raw performance, and 18Gbps video memory – 864GB/s of memory bandwidth, around 40% more than the 2080 Ti (at 616GB/s). It will support PCIe 4.0, too.
A full lineup
Other lesser graphics cards in the 3000 range (GA103 and GA104) may even push those boost clocks to a mighty 2.5GHz, although that particular spec isn’t yet certain, but the Nvidia engineer who was the source of the leak expects this to be the case with the finished versions of the GPUs, apparently.
The overarching observation is that these 7nm RTX 3000 cards hit ‘massive’ CPU bottlenecks at 1080p and 1440p, and Moore’s Law is Dead argues that 4K graphics will become the mainstream standard with these new Ampere models. Yes, they will apparently be that much of a major performance leap for PC gaming.
Furthermore, he put some numbers on 4K performance, with claims that the RTX 3080 Ti will beat out its predecessor the 2080 Ti with at least a 40% frame rate boost in unfavorable (unoptimized) games – but it’s generally more like 50% faster, and even up to 70% better with certain titles. That is a massive claim, of course, and note that this pertains to performance with traditional rasterization (which most games still use, of course) rather than ray-traced graphics.
RTX On
Speaking of ray tracing, the raft of information divulged in this leak also covers that particular facet of Nvidia’s next-gen graphics cards. With Ampere, Nvidia is reportedly not increasing the amount of RT cores (which accelerate ray tracing frame rates) on the card, but it’s making them perform better – a lot better. In fact, the claim is that the Ampere RT cores can pull off processing intersections at a rate four times faster than current RTX Turing cards.
In basic terms, even low-end cards from the RTX 3000 series (presumably meaning the RTX 3060) will ‘run rings’ around flagship Turing models when it comes to ray tracing (and that’s something we’ve heard hinted at with previous rumors regarding Nvidia’s next-gen cards).
To underline this, the YouTuber observes that the RTX 3080 Ti is something like four to five times faster than a current Titan RTX in Minecraft RTX. So again, these are massive strides forward, although he does take the time to also clarify that we are still far away from a full-on implementation of ray tracing – but that Ampere will be able to handle better ray tracing effects than we have now, while upping the performance ante to maintain ‘reasonable’ frame rates.
Shrouded in mystery
As to the appearance of Nvidia’s next-gen Ampere graphics cards, at least going by the current design configurations, they have a similar cooler to the existing RTX 2000 Founders cards except with three fans (rather than two) which should obviously provide better cooling (and apparently runs quieter, too).
The YouTuber further notes that sample cards are currently using just two 8-pin power connectors, whereas at the same stage in development, Turing models were using three – which could be a hint of a decent stride forward on the power efficiency front, too.
He also mentions DLSS 3.0 which will be ‘much better’ than version 2.0, which in itself was already a big improvement over the original implementation, so that’s interesting. Although it won’t be a silver bullet applied to all games – titles will still need to be specifically coded to take advantage of DLSS, although this should be easier for game devs with this incoming version 3.0.
Nvidia’s next-gen Ampere graphics cards are expected to arrive in the third quarter of 2020, perhaps following the Turing launch schedule in terms of keeping the lowest-end RTX model (3060) waiting in the wings until a later date, according to other gossip on the graphics grapevine.
Even if a Q3 launch is intended, though, there’s a possibility that coronavirus-related disruption may still interfere. We shall have to see, and keep our fingers crossed that we might just get some kind of a teaser relating to consumer Ampere GPUs at Nvidia’s GTC keynote, which is due to air on YouTube later this week (May 14).
Doom is a fondly remembered classic shooter, and if you need any evidence of that, one enterprising fan has taken the original game and literally turned it into a custom chip.
The sole purpose of the so-called ‘Doom-Chip’, which is the brainchild of graphics and game developer Sylvain Lefebvre, is to run the first level of Doom – and that’s all.
As you can see from Lefebvre’s tweet, the game is running on an Altera Cyclone FPGA board, meaning that Doom is no longer software, but directly embedded in a piece of hardware – no CPU needed.
That said, strictly speaking, there is a little bit of coding involved (in Verilog, a hardware description language) and appropriately enough there are 666 lines of code needed with this FPGA implementation of Doom.
No monsters
As you can see from the video on Twitter, not only is the experience limited to one level (E1M1), but there are no monsters or actual shooting, so this is a pretty basic rendition. It’s not really of any practical use, but it’s interesting to see a game implemented in such a way as a demonstration of the kind of tricks you can get up to with a custom chip and some serious tech know-how.
Lefebvre observes: “Doom was released as I was learning how to code graphics. It was, and remains, an immense inspiration and motivation boost. I spent countless hours making levels, hacking the game and hex dumps of doom.exe / doom.wad. This was a good opportunity to dive back into it!”
He used the original source code for Doom in his project, naturally, as well as resources including the Doom Game Engine Black Book (which you can see in the video above) and Unofficial Doom Specs v1.666 (not that everything to do with Doom revolves around the number 666, of course).
Surface Laptop 3 owners whose notebooks have suffered a mysterious issue whereby the screen cracks for no apparent reason will have their machine repaired by Microsoft for free.
As you may recall, this problem reared its head around four months ago (or more), and Microsoft subsequently said it was investigating reports from owners of cracks appearing spontaneously, without the Surface Laptop 3 being knocked, dropped or mistreated in any way.
The results of that investigation are, as ZDNet spotted, that Microsoft announced the following: “We have investigated claims of screen cracking on Surface Laptop 3 and have determined that, in a very small percentage of cases, a hard foreign particle may cause a hairline fracture in the glass that may seem to appear unexpectedly or without visible cause.”
Those who have been hit by this issue should contact Microsoft support to have a repair carried out free of charge – at least it will be free when the device is still under warranty. Of course, all Surface Laptop 3 notebooks are still under warranty seeing as they went on sale back in October 2019, but the warranty caveat is certainly something to bear in mind going forward.
If you’ve already paid to have your Surface Laptop 3 screen repaired, then you should also contact Microsoft’s support team, in this case to discuss a reimbursement.
This all applies to the 13-inch and 15-inch versions of the Surface Laptop 3.
Very much a minority?
Microsoft is rather downplaying the issue somewhat, with the observation that only a ‘very small’ percentage of Surface Laptop 3 owners have encountered this issue.
Although there are certainly a number of reports on Reddit and Microsoft’s Answers.com forum, plus Mary Jo Foley, who wrote the ZDNet article, anecdotally observes that she knows of a few cases of folks who have suffered at the hands of the spontaneously cracking screen issue.
Reportedly this is more likely to happen to those who have a Surface Laptop 3 with an aluminum chassis, and not those with the Alcantara fabric, as was observed previously.
Regarding Microsoft’s explanation, exactly what the nature of the ‘hard foreign particle’ mentioned is, well, anyone’s guess – this could be something introduced externally, or coming from within the device itself, and if the latter, Microsoft has presumably resolved any issue with the hardware with models being produced going forward.
Theories floated on Reddit previously include that the problem might be caused by Microsoft’s decision not to use any kind of rubber seal around the edges of the display (but obviously take that as the speculation which it undoubtedly is).
We suppose the biggest worry for those who jumped on the Surface Laptop 3 bandwagon already would be that they may not feasibly encounter the problem with their device for some time, until after it’s out of warranty – and that would then be pretty frustrating to say the least.
AMD Ryzen desktop APUs are about to get a major boost and step up to 8-cores, at least going by a leaked benchmark.
The result for what speculation contends is an AMD Ryzen 4000 ‘Renoir’ desktop APU shows an 8-core, 16-thread chip which would double up on the current Ryzen 3000 APUs that are led by a quad-core part (the Ryzen 5 3400G).
As you can see, the benchmark spotted by TUM_APISAK (and Komachi – both of whom are the source of many hardware leaks on Twitter) comes from User Benchmark and shows an 8-core chip which is clocked at 3GHz with boost to 3.95GHz. The User Benchmark score itself was recorded as 86.2%.
Of course, we need to take any leak with a sizeable amount of caution, and assuming this is a genuine AMD part, the clock speeds reflect an engineering sample chip, so aren’t representative of the final performance you can expect.
The processor was benchmarked in an ASRock B550 motherboard and will reportedly support not just this and X570 boards, but also B450 and X470 products.
As Wccftech reports, _rogame (another high-profile Twitter leaker) also chimed in on this one, claiming that there are currently (at least) two Renoir APUs undergoing testing, both 8-core models, one running at 3GHz and one at 3.5GHz, with the GPU purportedly clocked at 1750MHz in both cases (he’s guessing that the Vega integrated graphics will be 8 compute units – the same as the Ryzen 9 4900HS which is also clocked at that speed).
Performance jump
Assuming all this speculation is on the mark, or at least near it, we can expect a considerable jump in performance with AMD’s Ryzen 4000 APUs compared to existing models.
While User Benchmark scores are not the first benchmark you’d turn to in an ideal world, the result of 86.2% puts this alleged sample chip roughly in line with the sort of performance you’ll get from the Ryzen 7 4800H (which averages at 86% bang on in the User Benchmark database).
For comparison, the Ryzen 5 3400G comes in at an average of 74%, and of course the jump to 8-cores will be more than welcome for those looking for a compelling APU, although obviously this alleged top-end chip will come with a price premium compared to the quad-core 3400G.
Pricing will likely be pitched some way under AMD’s Ryzen 7 3700X 8-core desktop CPU, although exactly how far under is of course a complete guessing game at this point.
It’s further expected that as well as this 8-core model, there will be a quad-core offering for those who don’t want to fork out that much for an APU. According to Wccftech’s sources, the new AMD Ryzen 4000 APUs are expected to launch in July.
The existing Ryzen 5 3400G offers a base clock of 3.7GHz with boost to 4.2GHz and the integrated GPU is Vega 11 Graphics clocked at 1400MHz, with the chip having a TDP of 65W (the latter is expected to be maintained with the incoming 8-core model).
MSI has revealed some data on Intel’s imminent Comet Lake desktop processors which sheds at least some light on how well they overclock – and the answer, apparently, is not particularly well, unless you’re forking out for a Core i9 model.
MSI’s Eric van Beurden and Michiel Berkhout revealed their findings on the overclocking potential of Intel’s silicon in a livestream, testing Core i5, i7 and i9 models from the 10th-gen Comet Lake-S range, as spotted by Videocardz.
They evaluated batches of the CPUs and then gave percentages of the processors which fell into three categories – level A, B, or C. Level A were the top-tier CPUs with lots of headroom for overclocking, whereas B-grade chips were at the level of Intel’s advertising, and C-grade were a little below that expected performance (in terms of overclocking, that is – not baseline performance, it’s important to note).
The really interesting statistic is that 27% of Core i9-10900K (and KF) chips tested were A-grade processors, but the figures were much lower with the corresponding Core i7-10700 (just 5%) and Core i5-10600 (2%) models.
So at least going by these stats from MSI, your chances of getting a Core i7 or i5 with good overclocking potential would seem to be very slim indeed. The better news is that when it came to C-grade CPUs, percentages were pretty uniform at 27%, 32% and 31% for Core i9, i7 and i5 chips respectively.
Making the grade
In other words, while you may be much less likely to get an A-grade chip with Core i7 and i5 offerings, you will likely hit B-grade, and there is no greater chance of getting a C-grade affair; at least according to these findings.
Note that even with these supposedly C-grade processors, there should be absolutely no danger that it won’t perform to its advertised base specs as mentioned – these chips are just going to be an underwhelming proposition when it comes to overclocking.
As the folks from MSI observed, those buying higher-end Comet Lake CPUs will likely find them to be a much more suitable proposition for overclocking, but that makes sense in terms of Intel using the best silicon for the most expensive chips. And of course those buying Core i9 processors are likely to be the ones going for high-end motherboards, hefty cooling solutions and big overclocks anyway.
Intel’s Comet Lake desktop processors will be on sale later in May, but Z490 motherboards which have the new LGA 1200 socket that supports the CPUs are already up for pre-order.
As you might imagine, all the major motherboard manufacturers have various Z490 products now listed at online retailers, and over 50 boards are now available at Newegg in the US, with the release date pegged at May 20 (presumably indicating that this is when Comet Lake processors will be available too – although Intel hasn’t confirmed any date).
Some of these offerings are wallet-damaging in the extreme, too, with the most expensive motherboard coming from Gigabyte.
That would be the Gigabyte Z490 Aorus Xtreme Waterforce (pictured above), which tips the scales at an eye-opening $1,300 at Newegg in the US (£1,200 in the UK at Overclockers) – more than most people will spend on their entire PC, let alone just the motherboard.
It’s a heavyweight board as you might expect, and water-cooled with lots of high-end features plus the obligatory LED fanciness (and ‘hi-fi level audio’ built-in).
A similar offering comes from ASRock in the form of the Z490 Aqua, which is priced at $1,100 over at Newegg (£999 at OCUK). Again, this features water-cooling, plus RGB lighting and an OLED display which highlights temperatures, fan speeds and the like (if anything, it looks even fancier than the Aorus, and is part of a limited production run of 999).
ASRock has produced an Aqua motherboard before, in actual fact: an X570 incarnation for Ryzen 3000 which again was a limited run of 999, but didn’t look quite as blingy, and cost a hundred bucks less.
Cheaper boards
For Comet Lake buyers with their feet very much in the realm of more conventional Z490 motherboards, there are various options from Asus, ASRock, Gigabyte and MSI, with plenty of boards pitched around the $200-$300 mark.
The most budget-friendly offerings are the Asus Prime Z490M Plus and the ASRock Z490 Phantom Gaming 4 (or Z490M Pro 4) which will set you back $150. Gigabyte and MSI’s Z490 models start at $160, so are a touch more.
It’s worth noting that in the case of the latter, MSI is offering a promotion for those upgrading from an older MSI motherboard in the US, whereby you can trade that in for up to $50 to spend on Steam (the exact amount you get depends on the Z490 motherboard you’re buying).
This comes from @momomo_us, a leaker with a considerable pedigree on Twitter, who spotted the benchmarking results on Chinese site Bilibili.
Obviously, we have to take this with the usual caution around any purported leak, but assuming these results are genuine, things are looking good for Intel’s incoming mid-range Comet Lake CPU.
The soon-to-be-released Core i5-10400 manages to pretty much keep up with the Core i7-9700F in many of the gaming benchmarks presented, and even sneaks in front of it in the occasional scenario.
To pick a few results, 3DMark Fire Strike witnessed the i5-10400 hitting 18,960 compared to the Core i7-9700F which managed 19,471. TimeSpy saw a reversal of that situation with 8,543 matched up against 8,347 for the Core i7.
GTA V produced a result of 175 frames per second (fps) for the Core i5, and almost 178 fps for the i7, a difference which won’t be realistically at all discernible. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey saw the Core i5 come out on top although the difference was again very marginal with 67 playing 65 fps.
In short, the Core i5-10400 would seem to pretty much be a match for the Core i7-9700F, even though it has two fewer cores (six rather than eight), and a slower Turbo clock at 4.3GHz compared to 4.7GHz.
Price is right?
Of course, we have to also bear in mind the pricing side of the equation, with the incoming Core i5-10400 expected to retail at $182 (around £145, AU$285) – that’s the price to manufacturers, so consumers will doubtless have to pay a little more. That contrasts sharply with the current asking price of the 9700F at around $330 (around £265, AU$515) at US retailers online (and that’s the ‘F’ non-GPU version – the 9700 with integrated graphics costs a bit more).
However, we should remember that this is just a leak, so we shouldn’t get too carried away with the info – and also away from games in multithreaded workloads, the last-gen Core i7 processor still has a predictably sizeable advantage (with those two extra cores earning their keep).
Still, this bodes well for the incoming Core i5 as an affordable mid-range Comet Lake CPU offering impressive levels of bang for buck in terms of gaming performance. The Core i5-10400 is expected to launch later in May, alongside other Comet Lake offerings.
Windows 10 is now showing adverts within the search box which are attempting to persuade people to switch to Microsoft Edge, in yet another move to promote the revamped browser which runs the risk of starting to irritate people – given how prevalent these ads are seemingly becoming.
If you’re running Windows 10 and you click on the search box now, odds are you’ll see an advert in the panel that pops up, as spotted by Windows Latest – this is certainly the case on our PC.
These promo messages contain much the same text as the ones we’ve just seen appearing in Outlook.com, Microsoft’s webmail service. On our Windows 10 PC, the search box advert was urging us to get the Edge browser as it was ‘built to bring you the best of the web’.
And in just the same way as the ads served to Outlook.com users, it’s fortunately an easy matter to get rid of them. Simply click on the ‘X’ to close it, and you will be bothered by these messages no longer.
That said, there is certainly an argument that you shouldn’t be bothered by them in the first place – or at least not in so many places across Windows.
An ad too far?
Microsoft has already implemented these kind of ads with the Start menu in Windows 10, where it was planting suggestions to Firefox users that they should switch to Microsoft Edge, and as mentioned, we’ve seen ads in Outlook.com most recently – and now the search bar. What’s next: File Explorer? (That isn’t without precedent: a few years back, we saw ads for OneDrive appear in the beating heart of the interface of Windows 10).
Of course, if Windows 10 users feel that Microsoft is starting to flood them with adverts for the new Edge, then no matter how good the revamped Chromium-based version of the web browser is – and it’s received some pretty positive feedback thus far – the danger is that folks will push back, and sentiment could turn against Edge.
In other words, the adverts could have the opposite than intended effect, particularly if this starts to remind Windows 10 users of Microsoft’s behavior in the past, not just with the aforementioned OneDrive adverts, but with the general massive – and undoubtedly intrusive – push to get Windows 7 or 8 users to upgrade in the first year after Windows 10 was released.
We’ll just have to see if more ads for Edge start popping up elsewhere in Windows 10, but Microsoft needs to tread with caution, for sure.
AMD Ryzen 4000 (codenamed Renoir) mobile chips are still very much fresh on the scene – and making a huge impact in terms of competitiveness in the laptop world – but we’ve already seen a leak for next-gen APUs apparently codenamed Cezanne (a name which has been doing the rounds in leaks for some time now).
The follow-on chips, which logically will be the Ryzen 5000 series, are shaping up to be something truly special, at least going by some details spilled on Twitter by _rogame (as spotted by TechPowerup), a hardware leaker with a considerable pedigree.
So as you can see, next-gen Cezanne APUs will be built on Zen 3 and will offer a ‘significant’ boost in performance compared to Ryzen 4000 processors, which are already proving to be excellent performers.
Perhaps even more exciting is the fact that the integrated graphics could come courtesy of Navi 23 and be RDNA 2-powered, which would be a major leap for wallet-friendly gaming laptops using these chips.
However, we have to treat that possibility with caution, because as _rogame observes, the integrated GPU is still an ‘unknown’ and this is simply what he thinks is most likely to be the case. For that matter, we have to treat this entire rumor with a healthy degree of skepticism, of course.
Dell leak
That said, it is backed up by a second rumor floating around, spotted by Notebookcheck.net and citing another Twitter leaker who uncovered details (accidentally posted on an AMD community forum) that point to Dell planning 15.6-inch laptops which will use the Cezanne-H APU.
As _rogame makes clear, these Cezanne chips are likely set to take up the battle against Intel’s incoming Tiger Lake processors with integrated Xe graphics, which as we recently reported, are set to tackle AMD’s Ryzen 4000 mobile CPUs.
However, if Tiger Lake laptops start arriving at the end of 2020 as planned, next-gen Cezanne APUs could be hot on their heels – they should arrive in a similar timeframe to Ryzen 4000, meaning this time next year, _rogame believes. The fact that they’re purportedly pin compatible with Ryzen 4000 should mean that laptop manufacturers won’t need to change motherboard designs much for Cezanne, either, which will help speed the arrival of portables with these APUs in them.
And these Cezanne chips could be something truly special, certainly if this chatter from the grapevine is on the money – there’s no understating how much impact integrated RDNA 2 graphics could potentially have in the budget gaming laptop category (for those who want to avoid the cost of a discrete GPU).
And that’s a truly worrying prospect for Intel, which absolutely must hold onto its lead in the laptop world, where it’s currently dominant (after having well and truly lost the initiative in the desktop space to AMD Ryzen processors).
Nvidia is making something using a 5nm process, according to the rumor mill, although it’s anyone’s guess what that hardware could be.
This comes from a DigiTimes report about how chipmaker TSMC is benefiting from a ramp-up in orders from Nvidia and AMD, and apparently part of Nvidia’s demands pertain to a 5nm chip.
Whatever this 5nm product might be – and any guess at this point really would be a shot in the dark – it won’t be for the near-term, of course, so you can forget the idea that, say, the GeForce 3000 series will be 5nm; Nvidia’s next GPUs will be 7nm.
Obviously this is just the word from industry sources which talked to DigiTimes (in a paywalled article), and the publication isn’t always the most reliable when it comes to rumors, so certainly treat this with a healthy amount of skepticism.
Microsoft is pushing the Edge browser to users of its online email service Outlook, using ads which extol the virtues of the revamped Chromium-powered Edge.
Windows Latest spotted that those accessing their inbox on Outlook.com are being served adverts claiming that Microsoft Edge gives you ‘speed, performance and compatibility’ (although to be fair, it doesn’t say that other browsers don’t give you the same).
A further ad claims that ‘Microsoft Edge + Outlook = Better together’, suggesting that the new browser is the best way to use the Outlook website, and another states that Microsoft Edge is ‘built to bring you the best of the web’.
On our PC, we took a quick trip to Outlook.com (using Google Chrome) and received another ad still: ‘Take control while you browse with the new Microsoft Edge.’ That one’s so generic it’s pretty much meaningless, but at any rate, it appears Microsoft has quite a number of these little promo messages floating around.
These adverts are served in a small bar just underneath the top menu, complete with a link to download Microsoft Edge for those who find themselves swayed by the messages. You can click an ‘X’ on the far side of the bar to close them, and they don’t seem to come back after that.
First Firefox, now Chrome?
This is seemingly only happening in Chrome, as Windows Latest notes it didn’t occur on Firefox. However, Microsoft has already been giving Firefox users a nudge to switch browser via ‘suggestions’ in the Start menu as we reported in February, so the software giant is on a bit of a drive to push folks to Edge, it would seem. Which is not surprising, given that a lot rides on this revamped browser ditching the image of the tired old failing Edge of the past.
Thus far, Chromium-based Edge is making good progress, and it recently overtook Firefox to become the second most popular desktop browser behind Chrome – although there’s still a long way to go to catch Google’s dominant browser.
Death Stranding was supposed to come out on PC in just over a month, on June 2, but it has now been delayed until July due to disruption caused by the outbreak of coronavirus.
The new release date for Death Stranding is July 14, as announced by Kojima Productions on Twitter.
As the tweet observes, the reason is that the developers need a bit more time due to having to work from home, as many folks are these days given the various coronavirus lockdowns across the globe.
So we now have just under two months to wait for the release of Death Stranding outside of the console world, but as is always the case, we’d rather a port was done right, than done earlier. And more to the point, we’d rather that everyone making the port did so safely, rather than taking any risks with Covid-19.
PC benefits
Death Stranding promises some nifty bonuses for PC players, including support for ultrawide monitors – which is looking tasty as we’ve seen – along with a neat Photo Mode, and some Half-Life bonus content (headcrabs ahoy). Naturally, PC gamers will also be able to benefit from higher frame-rates (depending on their exact hardware configuration, of course).
Death Stranding will come out on Steam and the Epic Games Store simultaneously on the new release date of July 14. The game emerged on PS4 in November 2019 to a generally positive reception, although there was some dissent among the reviews – we were seriously impressed, though.
Editors note: John Lewis has got in touch with us saying that this wasn't a leak, but just an internal error for the Surface Laptop 3. We've amended the original article below.
The Surface Book 3 and Surface Go 2 have been seeing a lot of rumors pointing to a possible release in the near future, and a clerical error by John Lewis was mistaken for a product confirmation.
That anonymous person claims that Microsoft has been planning a virtual event to announce the Surface Book 3 and Surface Go 2 taking place at the end of April, and that could still happen – although this online press shindig might now have been delayed until the first or second week of May.
Bear in mind that we only have the word of the source for this, so who knows if this is correct or not, but it doesn’t seem improbable given the weight of rumors of late concerning the release of these two devices.
That includes a recent FCC filing allegedly for the Surface Go 2, and as mentioned, several batches of leaked pricing details, which unfortunately make it look like the Surface Go sequel could be more expensive than the original. The leaked Surface Book 3 price tags seem pretty much in line with what we’d expect looking at the existing models.
Mistakenly advertised
As we mentioned at the outset, what seems like further evidence of the Surface Book 3 being imminent has turned up in the form of an advert from John Lewis accidentally (and only briefly) posted online which Windows Latest also spotted and screen-grabbed.
The advert simply referred to a ‘Surface Book 3 by Microsoft’ and is a brief snippet that just mentions a ‘powerful laptop with a variety of features’, but no specs.
However, John Lewis has reached out to us and clarified, saying ‘Unfortunately an error was made in the wording of a Surface Laptop 3 search terms advert. The wording was quickly corrected and the updated Laptop 3 advert was re-published'.
So far, the spilled details we have got from online retailers have been leaked by pretty minor outfits, but John Lewis is a huge UK retail presence, and would have been a more credible leak source than, say, Italian retailer Breakpoint which is where the latest alleged prices came from.
We have heard chatter about the specs of both these devices though, and rumor has it that the Surface Book 3 will have 10th-gen Intel processors (the Core i5-10210U and Core i7-10510U), with memory in 8GB, 16GB or 32GB configurations, and storage running up to 1TB. It will supposedly stick with the same design as the existing models.
Whereas the Surface Go 2 will run with the same screen, a choice of Intel Pentium 4425Y or Core m3-8100Y processors, and either 4GB or 8GB of system RAM. Storage will top out at 256GB if the speculation that has been aired is on the money.
The good news is that with this event possibly only a fortnight away, if it’s happening at the end of April and this rumor is correct, we should hear something very soon given that Microsoft will doubtless want to publicize the launch a little while in advance.
