Enlarge / A now-deleted Intel presentation makes a good point, but with a side of disingenuousness.

AMD changed the way it numbers its Ryzen laptop processors last year, switching to a new system that simultaneously provides more concrete information than the old one while also partially obfuscating the exact age of the various CPU and GPU architectures being mixed-and-matched.

For instance, a knowledgeable buyer can look at the "3" in the Ryzen 5 7530U processor and determine that it uses an older Zen 3-based CPU core. But a less-knowledgeable buyer could be forgiven for looking at the "7000" part and assuming that the chip is significantly newer and better than 2021's Ryzen 5600U, when in reality the two are substantially identical.

Intel came out swinging against this naming scheme in a confrontational slide deck this week—now deleted, but preserved for posterity by VideoCardz—where it accuses AMD of selling "snake oil" by using older processor architectures in ostensibly "new" chips.

Enlarge / AMD's Ryzen 8040 series is a lot like the 7040 series but with a higher model number. (credit: AMD)

Both Intel and AMD usually have processor updates to announce at CES in January, but AMD isn't waiting to introduce its next-generation flagship laptop chips: the Ryzen 8040 series is coming to laptops starting in early 2024, though at first blush these chips look awfully similar to the Ryzen 7040 processors that AMD announced just seven months ago .

Though the generational branding is jumping from 7000 to 8000, the CPU and GPU of the Ryzen 8040 series are nearly identical to the ones in the 7040 series. The chips AMD is announcing today use up to eight Zen 4 CPU cores and RDNA 3-based integrated GPUs (either a Radeon 780M with 12 compute units, or Radeon 760M or 740M GPUs with 8 or 4 CUs). The chips are manufactured using the same 4 nm TSMC process as the 7040 series.

There's also an AI-accelerating neural processing unit (NPU) that AMD claims is about 1.4 times faster than the one in the Ryzen 7040 series in large language models like Llama 2 and ONNX vision models. Both NPUs are based on the same XDNA architecture and have the same amount of processing hardware—AMD says that the AI performance improvements come mostly from higher clock speeds.

Enlarge / AMD's Radeon RX 7600. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

It's been an up-and-down decade for most consumer technology, with a pandemic-fueled boom in PC sales giving way to a sales crater that the market is still gradually recovering from . But few components have had as hard a time as gaming graphics cards, which were near impossible to buy at reasonable prices for about two years and then crashed hard as GPU companies responded with unattainable new high-end products .

According to the GPU sales analysts at Jon Peddie Research, things may finally be evening out. Its data shows that GPU shipments have returned to quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year growth after two years of shrinking sales. This is the second consecutive quarter this has happened, which "strongly indicates that things are finally on the upswing for the graphics industry."

JPR reports that overall GPU unit shipments (which include integrated and dedicated GPUs) are up 16.8 percent from Q2 and 36.6 percent from a year ago. Dedicated GPU sales increased 37.4 percent from Q2. When comparing year-over-year numbers, the biggest difference is that Nvidia, AMD, and Intel all have current-generation GPUs available in the $200–$300 range, including the GeForce RTX 4060 , the Radeon RX 7600 , and the Arc A770 and A750 , all of which were either unavailable or newly launched in Q3 of 2022.

Enlarge / Apple wants to build more of its A- and M-series chips in the United States. (credit: Apple)

Late last year, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced that the company would definitely be buying chips made at Taiwan Semiconductor's new Arizona-based fab once it had opened. Apple working with TSMC isn't new; most, if not all, of the processors currently sold in Apple's products are made on one of TSMC's many manufacturing nodes. But being able to buy them from a US-based facility would be a first.

The issue, as outlined by some TSMC employees speaking to The Information in September , is that the Arizona facility would manufacture chips, but it wouldn't be building a facility to handle packaging. And without packaging, the Arizona factory would essentially be a "paperweight," requiring any chips made there to be shipped to Taiwan for assembly before they could be put in any products.

Today Apple announced that it had solved that particular problem, partnering with a company called Amkor to handle chip packaging in Arizona. Amkor says that it will invest $2 billion to build the facility, which will "employ approximately 2,000 people" and "is targeted to be ready for production within the next two to three years." Apple says that it has already worked with Amkor on chip packaging for "more than a decade."

Enlarge / AMD's RX 480, which got good reviews back in 2016 for its performance and budget-friendly $200 starting price. (credit: Mark Walton)

After a couple of years of cryptocurrency- and pandemic-fueled shortages, 2023 has been a surprisingly sensible time to buy a new graphics card. New midrange GPUs like Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4060 and AMD's Radeon RX 7600 haven't been huge upgrades over their predecessors, but they're at least reliable performers that you can consistently buy at or under their launch prices.

If you've been hanging on to an old AMD Radeon GPU, though, there's some bad news: According to AnandTech, AMD is beginning to pull back on driver support for some of its late-2010s-era GPUs, most notably its Polaris and Vega GPU architectures. Support for these GPUs has already been removed from the company's Linux drivers , and Windows drivers for the GPUs will be limited mostly to "critical updates."

"The AMD Polaris and Vega graphics architectures are mature, stable and performant and don’t benefit as much from regular software tuning," reads AMD's official statement. "Going forward, AMD is providing critical updates for Polaris- and Vega-based products via a separate driver package, including important security and functionality updates as available. The committed support is greater than for products AMD categorizes as legacy, and gamers can still enjoy their favorite games on Polaris and Vega-based products."

Enlarge / Unlike Intel's E-cores, AMD's Zen 4c supports all the same capabilities as Zen 4, just in a smaller package with lower clock speeds. (credit: AMD)

AMD sells a lot of 7000-series Ryzen processors for laptops, but the most advanced ones are in the 7040 family . These are the only chips that combine AMD's latest Zen 4 CPU architecture and its latest RDNA 3 graphics cores, whereas other 7000-series laptop chips mix and match various older CPU and GPU architectures.

Today, the company is announcing two new Ryzen 7040U-series chips for thin and light laptops, but with a twist: They combine regular Zen 4 CPU cores with "Zen 4c" cores that are designed to save space rather than hit high clock speeds (via AnandTech ). AMD says that a Zen 4c CPU core has the same capabilities as a Zen 4 core but takes up 35 percent less space in a silicon die.

These new chips are codenamed "Phoenix 2," denoting that they are similar to but distinct from the original Phoenix design used in earlier Ryzen 7040U chips. Phoenix 2 combines two high-performance Zen 4 cores, four high-efficiency Zen 4c cores, and a Radeon 740M integrated GPU with four RDNA3 graphics cores. They also lack the Ryzen AI neural processing unit that accelerates some AI and machine learning tasks in the regular Phoenix chips.

Enlarge / Intel's Meteor Lake laptop CPUs launch this December, and they'll be facing competition from more high-end Arm processors. (credit: Intel)

Chip companies like Qualcomm, Nvidia, and AMD are all either planning or said to be planning another attempt at making Arm chips for the consumer PC market. Qualcomm is leading the charge in mid-2024 with its Snapdragon X Elite and a new CPU architecture called Oryon. And Reuters reported earlier this week that Nvidia and AMD are targeting a 2025 release window for their own Arm chips for Windows PCs.

If these companies successfully get their chips into PCs, it would mostly come at Intel's expense. But Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger doesn't seem worried about it yet, as he said on the company's most recent earnings call ( via Seeking Alpha ).

"Arm and Windows client alternatives, generally, they've been relegated to pretty insignificant roles in the PC business," said Gelsinger. "And we take all competition seriously. But I think history as our guide here, we don't see these potentially being all that significant overall. Our momentum is strong. We have a strong roadmap."

Enlarge (credit: Intel)

Intel's new desktop processor generations haven't always come with significant generational improvements in recent years, as the company has struggled with new manufacturing tech that enables big leaps in performance and power efficiency. For every major jump—the 12th-generation CPUs, codenamed Alder Lake , come to mind—you usually get several faster but less-than-thrilling iterations.

Intel is officially launching its 14th-generation desktop processors today, and they're firmly in that iterative, non-thrilling group, even compared to last year's 13th-generation chips. The good news for price-conscious PC builders is that they'll continue to work in all current 600- and 700-series motherboards after a BIOS update, and Intel isn't launching a series of new motherboards to accompany them—there aren't many compelling reasons to upgrade from a 12th-gen setup to a 14th-gen one, but it's an available option.

Even the branding Intel is using here signifies that the processors are a throwback— next-gen Meteor Lake chips for laptops and all of Intel's other chips are losing the generational and i3/i5/i7/i9 branding in favor of "Core" and "Core Ultra." By Intel's admission, the last gasp of the 14th-generation branding here is a nod to how similar they are to the 13th-generation chips that preceded them (and, for that matter, the 12th-gen ones before that).

Enlarge / The red eyes represent the mark of VAC for Anti-Lag+ players. (credit: Valve)

AMD has taken down the latest version of its AMD Adrenalin Edition graphics driver after Counter-Strike 2- maker Valve warned that players using its Anti-Lag+ technology would result in a ban under Valve's anti-cheat rules.

AMD first introduced regular Anti-Lag mitigation in its drivers back in 2019 , limiting input lag by reducing the amount of queued CPU work when the processor was getting too far ahead of the GPU frame processing. But the newer Anti-Lag+ system—which was first rolled out for a handful of games last month —updates this system by "applying frame alignment within the game code itself," according to AMD. That method leads to additional lag reduction of up to 10 ms, according to AMD's data.

That additional lag reduction could offer players a bit of a competitive advantage in these games (with the usual arguments about whether that advantage is "unfair" or not). But it's Anti-Lag+'s particular method of altering the "game code itself" that sets off warning bells for the Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC) system. After AMD added Anti-Lag+ support for Counter-Strike 2 in a version 23.10.1 update last week , VAC started issuing bans to unsuspecting AMD users that activated the feature.