Daily Tech News 5 January 2023

• AMD's CES keynote was at a convenient time to watch in Australia so I did. (AnandTech)
  
  As much of it as I could bear. AMD CEO Lisa Su is an engineer and a good presenter who knows what her audience wants, but her guests were... Not.
  
  
  
• Probably most significant announcement was the new lineup of mobile CPUs. (AnandTech)
  
  They've made it as complicated as Intel. Even more complicated than Intel. There are two families of Zen 4 mobile chips, made at 4nm and 5nm, two ranges of existing Zen 3 mobile chips rebranded as Ryzen 7000 and made at 6nm and 7nm respectively, and for some reason Zen 2 chips respun and made at 6nm.
  
  The 7045 series is easy to explain: It's the Ryzen 7000 desktop chips in mobile format. It is literally the Ryzen 7000 desktop chips in mobile format, with the strengths and weaknesses that implies.
  
  The 7040 series is an all-new 4nm chip with 8 Zen 4 cores and 12 RDNA3 graphics cores. The 6000 series mobile chips had 12 RDNA2 cores so this doesn't sound like a big improvement, except that RDNA3 offers twice the raw compute capacity per core as RDNA2, so these will be quite capable of light to moderate gaming tasks.
  
  Unfortunately AMD has chosen to launch the 35W high-performance models first, and those will likely come with dedicated graphics, so you'll need to wait for the 15W models to get a lightweight laptop with good battery life that can also play games.
  
  Oh, and these chips have a 12 TOPS AI engine, similar to what is being included in mobile phones now. Useful for offloading tasks like image recognition.

• The 7045 family, codenamed Dragon Range, are for really high-end laptops. (AnandTech)
  
  These provide up to 16 cores and clock speeds up to 5.4GHz. They're serious mobile workstation parts, far more capable than anything we've seen in mainstream laptops before.
  
  
  
• For desktops AMD announced the Ryzen 7000 X3D lineup, with an extra 64MB cache chip. (AnandTech)
  
  I say that advisedly because there are three models - the 7800X3D, 7900X3D, and 7950X3D, and each has one extra cache chip, though the latter two models have two CPU chiplets.
  
  All the cores can still access the extra cache, though it will be a little slower for cores in the other chiplet. On the seventh hand, while the 5800X3D and 7800X3D ran at lower clock speeds than the regular models - because the cache chip stacked on top makes it harder to keep the CPU underneath cool - the 7950X3D has the same top speed as the regular 7950X.
  
  I think what's going on there is the off chiplet - the one without the extra cache on top - is delivering peak clock speeds, and the on chiplet - with the cache - gives better cache latency.
  
  We'll need to see independent benchmarks to confirm but the 7950X3D looks to be the fastest mainstream desktop CPU in every category.
  
  
  
• Finally on the graphics side AMD announced the 7600M XT mobile graphics chips. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This has 32 graphics cores compared to the 12 integrated with the mobile CPUs, plus 8GB of dedicated RAM.
  
  It's expected to be about 20% faster than the mobile 3060.
  
  Higher-end mobile GPUs will follow.
  
  
  
• OK Cloudflare I'm leaving. (Lexx)
  
  If you look at Cloudflare's pricing it seems too good to be true. If you read the terms of service you discover the catch: They will kick you off the platform without warning if you're not profitable for them.
  
  They have specialised plans that are a lot more expensive so that you're never unprofitable and never get kicked off the platform, but those plans are, well, a lot more expensive.
  
  
  
• 200 million Twitter users' email addresses have leaked online. (Bleeping Computer)
  
  This is nothing new; it's from a vulnerability that was fixed in 2021, and the data has been circulating ever since.
  
  
  
• With new miracle drugs the fat will simply melt away. (Nature)
  
  Reported side effects include strong nausea, extreme fatigue, brain fog, constipation, and spontaneous human combustion, though usually not all simultaneously.
  
  
  
• Acer's new Swift Go 14 - or possibly Swift 14 Go, I'm not sure - is a bad version of HP's Pavilion Plus 14, or possibly Pavilion 14 Plus. (Liliputing)
  
  The Swift 14 will be available in June; the Pavilion has been available for long enough that it's been on sale multiple times even in Australia and I have one.
  
  
  

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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