AAAAAND Welcome back all you glorious PCWorld fans, I know it’s been a minute since we all
got together for some updated news but, you know, the holidays and all. But while
we had a nice break it’s time to jump back into what’s going on in the PC industry!
And boy are things moving, or rather stopping if you’re Nvidia.
The company is trying to buy up Arm but the FTC has filed a lawsuit that might halt that one.
Those looking to grab a solid mid-range graphics card might have access to a new yet old SKU
from Nvidia. If you’re in the market for a gaming laptop I’ve got the skinny on why you might not
want to hold out too long for that. And for those of us excited about Valve’s upcoming Steam Deck we
got a peek at the hardware packaging. But enough teasing, let’s break open this bag and dig in!
If you’ve been following the saga of Nvidia’s attempt to acquire chipmaker Arm then you’re
already aware that it’s been a tumultuous journey. So far it hasn’t yielded anything but controversy,
and the saga isn’t over yet. Now the whole affair has hit a major roadblock thanks to a lawsuit
filed by the FTC attempting to block what they are calling
“The largest semiconductor chip merger in history”.
The FTC states that they are concerned about the merger resulting in a conglomerate
that could stifle innovation in future technologies.
Nvidia, of course, denies these claims. It believes the acquisition of Arm
would bolster the industry and is committed to preservings Arm’s open licensing model.
If you dig deeper you’ll find the real issue that the FTC has is that they believe if this
goes through Nvidia would have access to its competition’s plans. This is because of the
work those competitors have done, and may likely continue to have, with Arm. It’s easy to see
where the concern comes from, but this one will be quite interesting to watch play out in the courts.
But what about gamers, right? I mean we’re all still out here trying to shake down a retailer for
a graphics card, so what about that? Well, Nvidia is back in the spotlight of course and has slipped
in a NEW model of the now 3-year-old GeForce RTX 2060. But this time with DOUBLE the VRAM. That’s
right folks we’re talking about, a quote-unquote new GeForce RTX 2060 with 12GB of VRAM.
Nvidia has not only doubled the VRAM but has essentially given the card the same GPU core
configuration as the RTX 2060 Super resulting in, what should be, a quicker card than the original
release. The Cuda core count has been bumped from 1920 to 2176, which is a 13% increase. But,
while the memory has doubled it’s still on a 192-bit bus, so the RTX 2060 Super would still
slip past it in overall performance thanks to the 256-bit bus. So long and short, performance
will likely be dead on between an RTX 2060 6GB and RTX 2060 Super. There’s your early review.
This move is a bit odd for sure, but I would imagine that the wafer demand for
the now older 12nm process used to make the RTX 2000 Series is lower than Samsung’s 8nm,
so this might make it easier to get a large number of cards to a market
that is craving something. Obviously, this shouldn’t directly compete with the current
RTX 3000 Series but the massive VRAM pool will make it just as attractive to those at 1080p.
We’ll have to wait and see how pricing and actual reviews shake out.
Speaking of pricing, gaming laptops have been the only real sanctuary from inflated
prices of everything else. It’s been the only place you could get an entire system without
feeling absolutely hosed. Unfortunately, that might change next year if the warning
from Razer CEO turns out accurate, and right now there’s no reason to believe it won’t.
In a tweet by Min-Liang Tan, the CEO of Razer, the warning was clear:
“Looks like there are significant increases in component costs and we’ll be seeing price
increases for next-gen gaming laptops across the board”.
Now one could argue that this is a good way of setting up your customer base
to be prepared for a price hike because the company WANTS to raise prices.
But I think with the market as a whole it’s just a realistic look
at what’s to come. While it’s been nice to see laptops hold their ground for this long,
it seems that time has run out. It’s a bummer, but it’s also reality right now.
Something else big is happening next year, or
small depending on your view of the size of the Steam Deck. That’s right Valve’s Steam Deck is
back in the news since the announcement that it’ll be shipping early next year.
Thanks to Valve we now know what developers can expect in the package when dev kits ship out.
Okay, anyone else who ordered one will get it too, we’re just super excited about ours!
The Steam Deck will be shipped in quite the non-descript box,
so devs don’t have to worry about thirsty porch pirates being able to spot it from the curb.
Pop open the box and it really is like a little computer with the initial setup
guide in full view. Removing that reveals a box for the charger and the Steam Deck carry case
wrapped in holofoil adorned wrapping. Then there’s the case, and finally the long-awaited Steam Deck.
Hey, this turned out almost like a ‘virtual unboxing’ if you will so that’s cool.
And with that, I’m gonna put a lid on this one. We covered how Nvidia’s acquisition of
Arm took a serious turn and moved into the courts thanks to an FTC lawsuit. But that’s not stopping
Nvidia from releasing new/old products with the GeForce RTX 2060 12GB. And we’re all preparing
to be smacked around by more expensive gaming laptops in the coming year. BUT, we did get a
nice look at the Steam Deck packaging, now maybe we can get a tracking number to go with ours!
I want to thank you all for joining me once again for this week’s roundup, and while it may not have
been the most exhilarating, I believe it was all very important news for us PC enthusiasts.
If you enjoyed it and learned something new then let me know by hitting that thumbs up. As always
make sure you’re subscribed here at PCWorld for even more PC hardware and software goodness!