Month: May 2022

Enlarge / This “170W” number caused some confusion earlier this week because there are so many different numbers you need to know to understand CPU power consumption now. (credit: AMD)

AMD released some of the first details about its upcoming Ryzen 7000 processors, 600-series chipsets, and the new AM5 CPU socket earlier this week. We learned that Ryzen 7000 chips will perform at least 15 percent faster than comparable Ryzen 5000 CPUs and that they’ll require DDR5 RAM. We learned that all Ryzen 7000 chips will come with integrated RDNA2-based GPUs, though AMD still plans to offer a separate line of APUs with more capable integrated graphics for people who want to play games. And we found out some details about how PCIe 5.0 support will work for SSDs and GPUs.

Another bit of information AMD gave was about the AM5 socket’s power limits—the amount of power an AM5 socket will be able to provide to a processor. Power limits have become more important for PC builders and enthusiasts as core counts have increased and power consumption has gone up. Some of our recent Intel CPU reviews have explored how differently the same processor can perform with different power settings, though we’ve also discovered that boosting performance this way can have diminishing returns (that is to say, you can double your power use without doubling your performance).

AMD’s processors can work similarly, though the terminology is different. Intel uses different power limits, with the PL1 value determining power usage under a sustained workload and the PL2 value determining how much power the CPU can use in short bursts (a third number, Tau, defines how long the CPU will run at that PL2 limit). AMD has a few acronyms for different power figures, but the most relevant is package power tracking (PPT). PPT is the maximum power that a CPU package can draw from the processor socket.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Diyun Zhu)

Three Republican senators are proposing a law to prohibit app stores from carrying apps that accept payments using China’s digital currency. The “Defending Americans from Authoritarian Digital Currencies Act” would prohibit app stores in the US from carrying or supporting any app “that supports or enables transactions in e-CNY,” also known as the digital yuan or digital renminbi.

The app stores would also be prohibited from supporting or enabling digital yuan transactions. The bill defines an app store broadly as “a publicly available website, software application, or other electronic service that distributes applications from third-party developers to users of a computer, a mobile device, or any other general purpose computing device.”

The bill was proposed by Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), Mike Braun (R-Indiana), and Marco Rubio (R-Florida). “The Chinese Communist Party will use its digital currency to control and spy on anyone who uses it. We can’t give China that chance—the United States should reject China’s attempt to undermine our economy at its most basic level,” Cotton said in a press release on Thursday.

Enlarge / The branding on the front of an Apple Store retail location. (credit: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)

Apple plans to raise the starting pay of its hourly workers, according to a Wall Street Journal report. In the US, employees’ pay will be at least $22 per hour, which could be higher in some markets. That’s 45 percent higher than it was in 2018.

Additionally, Apple plans to increase starting salaries for corporate workers in the United States. It will also move up some employees’ annual reviews by several months to enact pay increases as soon as July.

In a statement, an Apple spokesperson said:

Enlarge / A slide from TV manufacturer TCL guesses at some details for the next micro-generation of high-end game consoles. (credit: PPE)

With the 2020 release of the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, we’ve started to see the era of console games that finally make full use of TVs capable of 4K resolutions (i.e., “Ultra HD” 3840×2160 pixels) that have become increasingly popular in the marketplace. Now, though, at least one TV manufacturer is already planning to support 8K-capable consoles (i.e., 7680×4320 resolution) that it thinks could launch in the next year or two.

Polish gaming site PPL reports on a recent public presentation by Chinese TV and electronics maker TCL. Tucked away in a slide during that presentation is a road map for what TCL sees as “Gen 9.5” consoles coming in 2023 or ’24. Those supposed consoles—which the slide dubs the PS5 Pro and “New Xbox Series S/X”—will be capable of pushing output at 8K resolution and up to 120 frames per second, according to TCL’s slide.

First off, there’s little reason to believe that a lesser-known TV manufacturer has leaked the first official word of Sony and Microsoft’s next console plans. As GamesBeat’s Jeff Grubb points out, you can tell TCL is speculating on console makers’ plans “because they put the information up in big letters on a stage. If the company knew what it was talking about, then it would be under a non-disclosure agreement.”