PC Chipmakers Face Off At CES 2022

This year’s CES saw over 100 new PCs announced and PC gaming related announcements including new PC processors and new GPUs from AMD, Intel, and Nvidia. While the work- and school-from-home movements certainly drove some PC sales, PC gaming took center stage at CES. All three PC CPU and GPU chip suppliers gave addresses during the opening of CES press day that proceeds the opening of the tradeshow floor. AMD and Nvidia provided pre-recorded video streams, while Intel offered a live keynote stream, although with no live audience.

MORE FROM FORBESPC Gaming Takes Center Stage At CES 2022By Kevin Krewell

Gaming Graphics

Both AMD and Nvidia announced new mainstream GPUs for 1080p gaming. The AMD Radeon 6500 XT has an MSRP of $199 and brings the latest AMD RDNA 2 GPU architecture to a new, lower price point. With RDNA 2, AMD brings ray tracing to the entry level. Using AMD’s Radeon Super Resolution (RSR) upscaling, the graphics card is supposedly capable of robust 1080p gaming, even with only 4GB of memory and only four PCIe Gen 4 lanes. The relatively high 2.6GHz clock speed helps performance. At just over 100W, the card doesn’t require additional power plugs, making it an easy upgrade to older systems. Even though post-CES reviews have been harsh, the graphic card shortage has still driven up aftermarket prices for the card. With a small die size, AMD hopes to fill some of the market demand for moderately priced graphics cards.

AMD also announced Radeon RX 6000M and Radeon RX 6000S graphics for thin, light, and powerful laptops. The M series offers higher performance, while the S series is designed for thinner laptops. Most of the Radeon GPU designs are paired with AMD Ryzen CPUs.

Nvidia’s new entry point for 1080p gaming with ray tracing capability is the GeForce RTX 3050 with 8GB of memory at an MSRP of $249. The 3050 has Nvidia’s 2nd generation RT Cores for ray tracing and 3rd gen Tensor Cores for DLSS and AI. At 130W it does require an additional 8 pin power connector. It’s a replacement for the GTX 1650 which lacked RT cores. The RTX 3050 goes on sale worldwide on January 27th, so no reviews were available at publication time. We expect the RTX 3050 to significantly outperform AMD’s 6500 XT, but the Nvidia card will be priced higher and is likely to be harder to buy.

Nvidia also released new notebook GPUs with the 4th generation of Max-Q technology, which allows for thinner notebook designs and includes the company’s latest CPU Optimizer, Rapid Core Scaling, and Battery Boost 2.0. New notebook GPUs include the RTX 3080 Ti and 3070 Ti. The GeForce RTX 3080 Ti laptop GPU brings the company’s flagship “80 Ti” class of GPUs to laptops for the first time. Featuring 16GB of the fastest GDDR6 memory ever shipped in a laptop. The first laptops with the 3080 Ti and 3070 Ti GPU will ship February 1st from companies such as Alienware, ASUS, MSI, and Razer.

However, Nvidia is approaching gaming from not just the graphics hardware, it is also offering the latest in game streaming with its GeForce Now (GFN) streaming service, which allows gamers to stream PC quality games to smartphones, tablets, Chromebooks, Apple Mac computers, and now even smart TVs from LG and (soon) Samsung. Nvidia continues to add more games to the service on a weekly basis.

MORE FROM FORBESNvidia’s GeForce Now Cloud Gaming Service Pushes HigherBy Kevin Krewell

Intel’s new Xe discrete graphics architecture, now branded as Intel Arc, made an appearance at the company’s keynote. Intel touted over 50 design wins in OEM PCs and notebooks, but the company was not forthcoming on performance numbers or the launch of retail graphic cards. The Arc GPU includes hardware assisted ray tracing, Xe Super Sampling (XeSS) image enhancements, and Intel Deep Link Technology that balances power between the GPU and select Intel Core CPUs.

Latest CPUs

Both AMD and Intel have recently released new CPU architectures for desktop and notebook systems and rolled out significant design wins from top laptop OEMs.

AMD unveiled its new AMD Ryzen 6000 series processors and AMD’s Ryzen 6000 Series processors incorporate up to eight AMD “Zen 3+” cores, optimized for better performance-per-watt in TSMC’s 6nm process, while still offering up to 5 GHz clock speeds in a 45+W mobile processor. The on-die GPU has been upgraded to AMD’s latest RDNA 2 architecture, with graphics performance significantly faster than the last generation.

Intel revealed its 12th Gen H-series mobile processors at CES, with its high core counts and the new hybrid architecture. The H Series also has a 45-watt power envelope for high-performance laptops aimed at gaming and content creation. It’s the highest-powered Intel mobile processor. The H-Series offers up to 14 CPU cores (six performance and eight efficiency) and supports DDR5 memory.

At CES, AMD also launched the Ryzen 7 5800X3D Desktop Processor with an extra 64MB of 3D V-Cache. It’s the first AMD Ryzen processor with AMD 3D V-Cache technology, which adds significantly more cache through a dedicated, in-package cache RAM chip attached directly to the top of the processor die. The extra cache memory is especially useful for large data sets found in graphically demanding games.

Both AMD and Intel are claiming the title of fastest desktop gaming processor with their latest announced parts, but neither has been tested against each other by a third party. But the best part of the competition between the two companies is that there’s real performance competition between the two companies.

All this should be good news for PC gamers, except for one thing – there’s a shortage in supply. This is especially true in graphics cards sought after by crypto-currency miners. Both AMD’s and Nvidia’s new low-end GPUs could help fill the gap. The AMD Radeon 6500 XT with only 4GB of memory looks especially unappealing to Crypto miners.

^{Tirias Research tracks and consults for companies throughout the electronics ecosystem from semiconductors to systems and sensors to the cloud. Members of the Tirias Research team have consulted for AMD, Dell, HP, Intel, Nvidia, and other companies throughout the PC ecosystems.}