Gadgetory

welcome back to the hardware unbox news come on a final episode before Computex kicks off in a few days Steve and I are flying over there shortly it's actually not too bad of a trip for us Aziz for once considering it's not too far away from here but it certainly is a bit more punishing for those in other areas anyway enough about that let's get into some pre Computex news and rumor discussion the first story just popped up when I was riding today's show notes in video a teasing some sort of super product in a video that was published to their g4 social media channels the 16 second long teaser is titled something super is coming and then proceeds to fly over a metallic object with the word super cut out as expected not much to go on here but you'd think this would be a teaser for invidious Computex event which is said to happen in just a few days on May 27th we really don't know what to expect here but given its poster to the g-force channels did have to be related to consumer gaming focused products it could be a new Titan GPU but they already have the Titan RT X and technically Titan isn't g4 so there is a bit of crossover there and of course it could be something that's not a GPU Nvidia does like to talk extensively about their other products at these sorts of events like their car technology game streaming services shield chase ink and so on probably can rule out car tech but at least this teaser has added a bit of spice to an event that otherwise wasn't looking super exciting or aligning too well with invidious no general release strategies of course the other big stories in the lead-up to Computex around AMD in fact there have been a ton of rumors leaked stories you name it surrounding AMD and their various hotly anticipated product lines like ricin and Nafees let us talk a little bit about that one set of leaks that is obviously going to happen is for new x5 70 motherboards we've known for ages now that motherboard partners are launching x5 70 products at the show it's set to be one of the major things that Computex and we're starting to see a variety of leaks slip out not even sure if you can call this story a leak though because MSI were showing off their upcoming x5 70 boards on an insider live stream so it doesn't get more confirmed than that the interesting thing here is the active cooling the chipset it appears not just on the board they were showing off on the livestream but also on another board are spotted by video cards we'll see in the coming days where the other vendors have used active cooling on these products as well the other X 570 related leak is plausible but remains unclear whether it's accurate at this stage it's basically a diagram showing everything X 570 can do in conjunction with Rison 3000 series CPUs so we can see the CPU has native USB 3.1 gen2 1 and M got 2 capabilities plus PCIe 4.0 lanes while the x5 70 chipset handles additional PCIe 4.0 slots USB 3.1 gen2 Wi-Fi solder all the usual stuff allegedly the TDP of the x5 70 PCH has increased to 15 Watts up from 5 watts with x4 70 hence the need for active cooling again sounds plausible and the diagram looks plausible as well but we don't have any confirmation on it at this stage then the other set of rumors surrounds AMD Navi 1 comes from a deleted Komachi tweet suggesting Navi has a different streaming engine structure purely unconfirmed story at this stage and a doubt will hear any in-depth details on Nafees architecture at Amy's Computex event to confirm and salute strains of that tweet was deleted then we also got a story that seemed to ruffle a few feathers where Chinese PR rep for sapphire allegedly revealed that Navi will come in the form of at least two SKUs and RTX 2060 competitor at four hundred US dollars and a 90 X 27 t competitor at 500 us the rep also suggested no hardware level ray-tracing obviously lots of people immediately became concerned about the value proposition of these cards versus in video but this is basically an unconfirmed story at this stage we don't know if it's true and we suggest you treat the rumor the same again AMD has two big events coming up at Computex and then at e3 where we are expecting to learn more details about Navi and if AMD doesn't announce much about Navi next week it's highly likely there will be information on the show floor about aim Lee's next-gen GPU plans because the launch is supposedly not too far away another rumor / leak hit the news this week although this time it's about Intel not AMD so that's a bit refreshing a leaked roadmap from Huawei of all companies detailing their server products over the next few years has also revealed some details about Intel's upcoming server chips actually while a wants their servers to align with Intel's plans hence the info on the slide the big story here that will interest you guys is the news of PCIe 5 and ddr5 being supported in Intel's 2020 one server platform codenamed sapphire Rapids this is essentially two architectures away we're on cascade Lake right now we're set to get Cooper Lake and ice Lake in 2020 after which were then looking at sapphire Rapids and then granite Rapids according to the roadmap this is setting up sapphire Rapids as a massive platform upgrade for Intel to get a channel ddr5 also add PCIe 5 and we're only just getting chips supporting PS a 4.0 now that will be a huge improvement and it's said that this platform will coincide with the launch of Intel's next-gen a seven nanometer process node so combine all those things together and it's looking promising if this leak ends up accurate and of course Intel server platforms tend to dictate what happens on the desktop so you'd expect big Io against for desktop chips a few generations into the future as well normally I don't bother covering Apple stories but I did find this one a bit amusing Apple have refreshed their MacBook Pros and inside the company is unsurprisingly using Intel's latest ninth gen CPUs but rather than sticking to the regular six core Core i7 models Apple is offering all the way up to an eight core core I 998 agh and Cory $9.99 a thk in their systems priced across well over twenty five hundred US dollars all the other components are fairly standard stuff there's aimed a Radeon pro graphics configurable up to a Vega 20 model a 15 inch high-resolution display and so on but the inclusion of an eight core CPU is intriguing because we know that Apple's slim MacBook Pro design couldn't really handle the previous core I nine six core CPUs for that serious head and throttling issues so to add in another two cores which will need more power despite what Intel's 45 watt TDP tells you is going to stress this cooler out massively I'm interested to know just how much faster these new laptops are in the real world when people start reviewing them apple claims up to a 40% improvement but that seems a bit far-fetched unless you live in Antarctica I've got three monitor stories for you this week as well that I'll run through quickly first up is something TFT central spotted on the AMD website a new monitor from gigabyte called the aura SCADA 25f it's a 25 inch 1080p monitor with the 240 Hertz refresh rate and of course free sync support that's all the details we have right now but it sounds like the prime candidate for something to be shown at Computex next we have the AOC AG 271 F 2 Z 2 another good spot from tier 2 central this is another 25 inch 1080p 240 Hertz displays so maybe we'll get a new wave of these panels throughout the year anyway this one has a 0.5 millisecond M PRT response time which means there's some sort of backlight strobing going on there also we have variable refresh rates and factory calibration though no word on release info final monitor I wanted to talk about is the Philips 328 a 1c a nothing super exciting here but it is a 31 point five inch 4k display with the curved VA panel it's ready for K monitors using VA tech so that's why I wanted to highlight it here but it's nothing super crazy from the looks of it couple of quicker topics to round this one out as always EA has new hair technology for frostbite which they've taste in a pretty cool video developed by frostbite engineers on the physics and rendering team assisted by criterion the new frostbite strand hair technology looks like one of the best implementations yet specific attention has been paid to getting the color and volume correct for human hair it'll be interesting to see how long it takes for this tech to be implemented in games and crucially what the performance it is like Nvidia hair works for example is in effect that many people disable immediately because it causes a massive framerate drop hopefully frostbite tech isn't as intensive and lastly HP has entered the high-end gaming peripheral market with the mouse and some accessories using the omen brand which they've used previously for gaming stuff they've launched the omen photon wireless mouse which has a unique ambidextrous shape and a 16,000 dpi sensor from Pixar the wireless tech used allows a quick response time of just 0.2 milliseconds and it can be charged through a cable or HP's outpost mousepad which integrates a qi wireless charger the gaming peripheral market is absolutely loaded with competition sounds interesting HP felt now is the best time to launch new products considering what they are going up against it might be hard for them to gain any traction anyway that's it for this week's news corner we'll be coming at you with a whole bunch of news throughout next week at Computex in Taipei so be sure to subscribe to get all the it's from us on the show floor consider supporting us on patreon as well so you don't miss out on some of our cool subscribe only things we are planning at the show and I'll catch you in the next one you