Gadgetory

welcome back to another hardware news recap for this week the major news item the anchor is that NVIDIA bought too many GPUs that's been a bit of a problem for them also GPU shipments trending downward as well as potentially profits Samsung hynix and micron the memory suppliers are facing potential antitrust fines ranging from anywhere from eight hundred million dollars to eight billion dollars a bit of a range there and then also Intel CEO resigned so it's been a week filled with drama in the hardware world before that this video is brought to you by Corsairs HS 70 wireless gaming headset which focuses on comfort with memory foam adjustable ear cups and a padded headband the headset has a 40 foot low latency range over wireless lasts for up to 16 hours of gaming use and as extra focus on build quality to ensure it lasts a long time learn more at the link in the description below for the first news item nvidia buying too many GPUs this was this has been posted by one or two news outlets at this point and it's something that we spoke with people about during the Computex timeline so we've been able to confirm basically the stories that Nvidia allegedly purchased too many GPUs in anticipation of mining to some extent for the Pascal architecture and at this point it's looking like they're delaying their launch of taurine as a result of having too many Pascal GPUs so if you're wondering why GE prices have been trending downward a bit and why some of the AIB partners have suddenly found budget to run ads for video cards when they haven't needed to for months that's probably why and from what we understand we're still on target for a next generation architecture launch probably in August it's just a question of why was it pushed to August and from everything we've seen from the people we've spoken with and from the other news stories online it does sound like Nvidia in fact bought too many Pascal GPUs and they're stuck with overstock this goes back to what we talked about when we spoke with manufacturing partners off the record previously about why they would or would not get invested in mining and the reason why not for of them was because they didn't want to be stuck in this situation where they have too many GPUs we've also heard that one of the board partners has requested to return some of their excess GPUs to Nvidia not sure if that'll go through but that does indicate that they definitely bots humanity next 1gb of shipments and profits trending downward prices could still remain high here so in another digit times report AIB partners are expected to see their shipments fall in the second half of 2018 due to a reduction in cryptocurrency mining demand as shipments and profits shift downward due to the demand shrinkage prices are still anticipated to remain somewhat high they've been a couple of cards in some market segments that have finally been brought down 1070 t is a bit of more affordable now for example but a couple of the other cards like Vega do remain far over MSRP in a lot of situations comedies such as ACS gigabyte MSI and power color told their parent company are all expected to see inflated inventories as they abandon the mining market as prices continue to normalize somewhat vendors are still maintaining their overall higher or should say the retailers are maintaining their overall higher prices of about 20 percent inflated over MSRP but this is much lower than the 40 to 50 percent inflation over MSRP that we've seen previously but still higher than the normal 8 to 10% kind of max that we saw before the mining boom according to digit times industry sources indicate that DRAM suppliers Samsung SK Hynix and micron could be facing antitrust fines up to eight billion dollars in China for price fixing the three companies collectively controlled 90% of the DRAM market and the memory prices have been rising almost exponentially since 2017 early on at this point and something that we've also covered many times now is that this is almost cyclic where if you plot it over the last five years you'll see the prices rise and fall in basically perfect unison with the stock prices of these companies Samsung notwithstanding because it makes so many things so samsung hynix and micron have all confirmed that China's antitrust regulators have visited their offices and had conversations with them as part of an ongoing investigation into potential price-fixing nothing's been publicly confirmed yet if found guilty of this the vendors could face fines ranging from 800 million up to eight billion dollars the estimated fines are based on profits in China between 2016 and 2017 as we've previously mentioned China has no small interest in memory related things they've become the world's largest consumer of DRAM and the Chinese government is currently working on becoming more self-sufficient in its own memory supply for the future next one Intel CEO has resigned so Intel's announced that Brian krzanich has resigned amidst discovering a quote past consensual relationship with another Intel employee which violates Intel's of non-fraternization policy for management Intel has appointed CFO Bob Swann as the interim CEO while they conduct a search for a permanent replacement so if you're looking for a job that pays about 21 million dollars a year they're hiring Chris an was tasked with several restructuring initiatives during his tenure as CEO and the most notable was being Intel's transition to a data centric business and evolving past the PC segment exclusively Chris anich was a decades-old employee starting with Intel in 1982 and the timing is a bit suspect as the alleged relationship wasn't a new occurrence or news in general it's just something that they finally decided to dig into now and difficulty launching 10 nanometers could we be jaded among us to assume ulterior motives next up AMD is 7 nanometer Radeon Pro Vega 20 asses of the singularity benchmarks were apparently leaked and these benchmarks point to a suspected at workstation grade GPU based on a seven nanometer Vega 20 note first however that there have been several fake leaks or faked benchmarks lately in the form of modified Cinebench or other benchmark files so we'd recommend scrutinizing the Vega 20 leaks a little more than normally Vega 20 is expected to hit the server and data center market with little word on when or if other markets can expect and these seven nanometer Vega 20 silicon and he has clearly stated that they will bring seven nanometer silicon to the gaming eventually but it's been widely speculated that it will come in the form of Navi rather than Vega early Vega 20 specs claim 4096 stream processors support for up to 32 gigabytes of HP m2 allegedly twice the density and power efficiency overall and a 35 percent performance increase compared to 14 nanometer Vega also in AMD news and the assume what quietly launched the pro-v 340 rumors have surfaced online speculating as to whether this card was a vague attend or Vega 2020 being based on 7 nanometers and it's almost certainly not 7 nanometers as bandi would have made a much larger announcement out of this additionally the pro-v 340 is supposedly a multi chip or multi-gpu solution comprised of two Vega 10 dies with a total of 32 gigabytes of HB m2 presumably split between the two GPUs and giving you 16 gigabytes per Vega GPU Vega 20 allegedly supports up to 32 gigabytes for a single solution single die and the pro-v 340 is aimed at virtualization for professional use such as oil and gas research designers media and entertainment things like that next one is AMD appealing to the cheap seats by sort of trolling Intel and Intel recently held a sweepstakes celebrating the 40th anniversary of their venerable 8086 processor and the launch of the limited edition i7 8086 K and II took this opportunity to troll Intel by offering the winners of Intel sweepstakes a chance to trade in their i7 8086 K that they just won for one of AMD's thread Ripper 1950 xcp use completely different target markets it certainly gets interest and attention in the community but it is definitely appealing to the cheap seats on that one Intel quickly responded by the way via their own official Intel gaming Twitter page and said at AMD Rison if you wanted an Intel Core i7 8086 K processor - you could have just asked us the smiley face thanks for helping us celebrate the 8086 overall a good spirited exchange between the two companies of a bit odd and unexpected next up Intel hires former Larrabee architects so this story gets a little confusing for anyone who's been covering Raja Kaduri as he was at AMD because Intel hired Raja Kaduri a while ago now and Kaduri also just hired Intel's former Larrabee GPU architects Tom forces to aid in the development of the company's new GPUs Forsyth's previously made advancements to AVX instructions processing particularly avx-512 and has been speculated as a potential player for VR development focus at Intel for the next generation Intel GPU Forsyth noted on Twitter that he will quote started Intel shortly as a chip architect in Raja kaduri's group more AMD news on this one and he's working with Coolermaster on their wraith ripper cooler this is something that was shown at Computex that we didn't cover it at the show we were focus on the cases and the announced threader for two at Computex in an official capacity and our understanding presently is that it's looking like 250 watts to upwards of potentially 300 Watts TDP for threader for two motherboard vendors are working on the x3 99 refresh to ensure they can take this amount of power and heat look at the MSI X 399 creation for example but cooling vendors have to get involved too and one of those is Coolermaster we're working on new tr4 coolers so AMD's collaborating with coolermaster for the wraith ripper mega cooler they're calling it a massive air cooler capable of dissipating 250 watts of heat as measured by andy's version of TDP they all do it a bit differently the cooler will use eight pairs of heat pipes attached to a large stack of pretty densely packed fins and wraith Ripper will purportedly guarantee memory module clearance because it's going to have several slots on either side of the socket so that's a consideration and it will also be adorned with addressable RGB LEDs because that's innovation a center mounted concealed 120 millimeter fan will handle the airflow Wraith river will be sold through Coolermaster and either coolermaster nor AMD have revealed pricing or availability details on that cooler just yet last one is about be quiet it's not the most exciting thing they've opened a us-based service center so German BAE has to be quiet has announced the opening of their first us-based service center and declared a commitment to our us-based customers and be quiet also noted that this service center will be based in Los Angeles and will be aimed at both consumer and business customers if you didn't know be quiet has had issues in the past selling their products in the u.s. because Newegg is not the easiest retailer to work with so they had to actually bypass new item list on their own on the third-party marketplace originally before new I was willing to work with them so they've had a bit of trouble getting into the US but they're trying harder now finally hardware sales for the week EVGA has got their gtx 1070 TI at 490 dollars with an included supernova 550 watt g3 power supply and we'll put a link to that in the description below there are also several other video cards that are on sale which is basically MSRP at this point but it's been a while so we'll link to one or two of those below it as well once the video goes live we'll have more updates on that and finally Corsairs @ TX 650 M is on sale for $50 after rebate normally 90 on new AG which we'll link below as well so that's it for this time is always good a store doc gamers Nexus dotnet to pick up one of our mod mats one of the GN teardown cubes that we gave to vendors as Awards during the show if you want your own or go to patreon.com/scishow and nexus to helps out directly subscribe for more i'll see you all next time