These days, one could paraphrase an old joke from the communist era: artificial intelligence is everywhere, and you’re almost afraid to open a can of food in case you find it there as well. Now AI jumps out at you if you own a Radeon GPU. AMD has long been criticized for lagging behind Nvidia in artificial intelligence, and it is responding with a new “AI Bundle” that introduced into the graphics card drivers. Read more “AMD AI Bundle: Ready-made AI tools integrated into Radeon drivers”
Most hardware is getting more expensive and unfortunately graphics cards are joining the trend. According to Asian sources, major board partners are now raising GPU prices due to increasing costs of GDDR6 and GDDR7 graphics memory. In the short term, this is expected to push prices up by 15–20 %. That may not be the final outcome, however, as further increases could be driven by reduced GPU supply due to supply-and-demand dynamics. Read more “Graphics cards to get more expensive, board partners raise prices”
Recently, we reported that Nvidia has likely canceled the new GeForce RTX 5000 Super graphics cards planned for this year, and that the wait for the 6000 generation will also be long, as it is expected to arrive only in H2 2027. For gamers, the situation may get even worse, as the company is now reportedly reducing production of currently available graphics cards as well. A resulting shortage could then push retail prices higher. Read more “Nvidia to cut GPU production by 20%—RTX 5070 Ti going MIA?”
At CES 2026, AMD officially announced thew Ryzen AI 400 series processors for laptops, a refresh of the Ryzen AI 300 lineup still based on the Zen 5 architecture, and a new flagship gaming CPU, the Ryzen 7 9850X3D. As to when these products would actually go on sale, the company only referred to later part of the current quarter. Actual launch days info has leaked now though, and the good news is that the wait should not be long. Read more “Gorgon Point APUs and Ryzen 7 9850X3D launch dates revealed”
NAND flash has become significantly more expensive, while DRAM prices have surged even more dramatically. DRAM is used as cache in higher-end drives and modules and cheaper SSDs will therefore become more important than ever—especially those that do not require DRAM. “DRAMless” SSDs have improved considerably in recent years, but a new PCIe 5.0 controller from Phison could push them even further—practically to high-end levels. Read more “Phison E37T controller: Affordable Gen5 SSDs with 15 GB/s speeds”
It is widely known that the AI boom has triggered massive DRAM shortages—including GDDR6 and GDDR7. Unfortunately, it appears that one of the consequences will be the cancellation of new gaming graphics cards Nvidia had planned for this year. The so-called “Super” cards were expected to be expected at CES 2026, but that did not happen and according to sources from Asia, Nvidia has completely halted the plans. Read more “GeForce RTX 5000 Super not coming, Blackwell refresh plan shelved”
A year ago, Western Digital, who historically associated with mechanical (magnetic) HDD technology but then expanded into SSDs as well, announced the SSD business would move under the Sandisk name. WD acquired this formerly independent NAND and SSD manufacturer ten years ago. It took a while, but now this change is happening for real—all SSDs are being renamed, so let’s take a look at what names you should now be searching for. Read more “Say Goodbye to WD SSDs. You’ll find them as Sandisk products now”
AMD’s Tuesday CES 2026 keynote was entirely dominated by artificial intelligence hype. While it wasn’t completely devoid of hardware announcements, it focused mainly on servers and the enterprise market. Surprisingly, what many of you may have been waiting for—new Ryzen processors—did not happen (just like last year with the Radeon RX 9000). However, a new flagship gaming CPU was silently launched at the time: the Ryzen 7 9850X3D. Read more “Ryzen 7 9850X3D is here: 3D V-Cache for games and 5.6 GHz clock”
In December, Microsoft promised that Windows 11 would focus on performance, including in games, during 2026. One of the coming optimizations concerns disk encryption. Microsoft currently uses software algorithms for BitLocker disk encryption, which have certain performance limitations and can increase laptop power consumption. This year, Windows will gain more efficient hardware accelerated encryption—but there is a complication. Read more “Windows 11 gets hardware disk encryption on Intel Panther Lake”
Last night, Nvidia held their keynote ahead of CES 2026, which—as usually—only focused on AI, robotics and large enterprises market rather than consumer PCs and devices. Even so, the company does have something new for gamers. The company is introducing a new generation of their AI-based game rendering—DLSS 4.5. It places even greater emphasis on interpolated frame generation, but improvements go beyond that as well. Read more “DLSS 4.5 brings 6× frame generation and better image quality”
Perhaps the most popular benchmark in reviews and CPU performance measurements is Cinebench, which simulates 3D rendering in Maxon’s professional Cinema 4D software and can be used as a metrics for comparing CPUs. Since version R23, it also benchmarks Apple Arm processors. Maxon has now released a new version, Cinebench 2026, which works better with the latest processors and GPUs and also includes an interesting new mode. Read more “Cinebench 2026 is here: New benchmark especially suited to Ryzen”
Hardware market is in a dire situation—prices of DRAM have risen severalfold due to insufficient supply, a situation driven by the artificial intelligence craze and the plans of various involved companies to build massive AI server parks costing hundreds of billions. If you are wondering how long this state of affairs may last, Micron, as one of the three largest memory manufacturers, has bad news for you. Read more “Memory price hikes until 2027? Micron says shortage will persist”
Intel’s serious fab problems are well known by now. Not only having fallen behind foundry chipmakers in process technology, Intel is also being squeezed by the fact that it does not produce enough of its own chips to keep its fabs profitable. As a result, it too seeks to pivot into the foundry market and serve external customers. And yet, Intel itself is now increasingly outsourcing the production of its own chips. Read more “Intel doesn’t want to use its own fabs, makes chipsets at Samsung”
The new generation RDNA 4 architecture introduced this year has produced only a handful of Radeon GPUs so far. Another (only the sixth to date) desktop gaming graphics card is coming now. While it is based on existing die, it stands out with reduced power consumption and thus higher energy efficiency, which could be appealing for quiet and compact Mini-ITX systems (or when your power bill shoots up due to an AI data center close by). Read more “New Radeon RX 9060 XT LP quietly launched: 16 GB with lower TDP”
The artificial intelligence hype is driving up the prices of system memory and storage, including SSDs. Prices have risen significantly, so you may now be forced to look for cheaper instead of “premium” SSD when on a tighter budget. We got the opportunity to briefly test one such drive: the WD Blue SN5100 module, which represents a lower product tier but offers solid performance and the “premier-league” brands. Read more “How good can a QLC SSD be? We tested the WD Blue SN5100”
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