Daily Tech News 10 January 2023

• Some of AMD's new CPUs are here. (AnandTech)
  
  Not the high-performance X3D models, but the the low-cost and as it turns out also high-performance non-X models.
  
  These use 40% of the power of the regular version while delivering 96% of the performance in most benchmarks.
  
  And they're cheaper. And come with pretty good CPU coolers in the box so you don't need to buy one separately.
  
  They'd be dramatic wins if the existing X models weren't already selling under MSRP - the 7900 is $429 vs. $549 for the 7900X, but you can find the 7900X for around $460 now anyway.
  
  
  
• They perform very well under Linux too. (Phoronix)
  
  It's Phoronix, so that link takes you straight to page 16 of a review filled with benchmarks of every description. The 7900 is only beaten by the 7900X and 7950X and Intel's top of the line 13900K - a chip that uses three times as much power. It's comfortably faster than the previous generation's top dogs, AMD's own 5950X and Intel's 12900K.
  
  And you can still overclock it if you want to, though you'd want to add a high-end cooler for that.
  
  I think I'll go for this when I build my new main workstation in the next few months. It's very reasonably priced given the performance offered, and it uses half the power (and produces half the heat) of anything comparable from either AMD or Intel.
  
  
  
• Also, these - and a 16 core version as well - will be coming to laptops very soon.

• Need a 30TB 2.5" drive with a transfer rate of 7GBps for both reads and writes? Micron has you covered. (AnandTech)
  
  I've used some previous models of Micron drives in servers at work and they've been great except for that one time one of them dropped dead a week after we installed it. I've seen drives from every manufacturer die over the years so I won't hold one incident against them.
  
  
  
• The new Mac Pro - if it ever arrives - will have the RAM soldered in place. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  And a lot less of it than the Intel models supported. And generally be a terrible idea.
  
  Apple only have one CPU chip - or two, really. The M2 and the upcoming M2 Pro. Like AMD they glue multiple chips together to get faster models.
  
  Unlike AMD they only make APU chips with integrated graphics, and no pure CPU chips. And to make their integrated graphics work well they have to solder in laptop RAM, even when they're building a high-end workstation that every customer is going to install a graphics card anyway.
  
  
  
• Speaking of high-end workstations, Intel is getting back into the game this year. (WCCFTech)
  
  They abandoned the market to AMD five years ago, but now they might have some decent offerings: The lower-cost W-2400 range with up to 24 cores and four memory channels, and the high-performance W-3400 range with up to 56 cores and eight memory channels.
  
  Clock speeds peak at 4.8GHz so these aren't ideal for gaming but still very capable if you want to play (insert name of current game here) after a long day of computational fluid dynamics.
  
  Prices aren't mentioned at all, so we'll see if Intel manages to kill the entire lineup before it even gets out the door.
  
  (Also, this is WCCFTech, so Rule One of the Internet - Don't read the comments - applies twice as much as usual.)
  
  
  
• Old man yells at cloud. (Jon and Nic)
  
  Technology is - in many ways - getting worse. This article discusses the trend, though it doesn't analyse the causes or suggest solutions. Sometimes you just need to rant.
  
  
  
• Seattle schools sue social networks over youth mental health crisis. (Engadget)
  
  Methinks they doth protest too fucking much.
  
  
  
• Researchers were able to track the GPS location of every digital license plate in California. (Vice)
  
  If someone is collecting your data, they will lose control of it.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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