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The world’s biggest technology show may not be CES, the world’s largest technology show, appears to be in jeopardy due to rising COVID-19 cases in the United States. On Wednesday evening, exhibitor Lenovo announced that it would “suspend all on-site activity in Las Vegas,” following announcements from T-Mobile, Amazon, Meta, and others that they’d be ditching as well, and despite CES organizers’ statements today that the show would go on. So far, T-Mobile has been the most prominent exhibitor to bail. CEO Mike Sievert, one of the Consumer Electronics Show’s featured speakers, publicly announced on Tuesday that he would no longer be doing a keynote and would “significantly limit our in-person participation.” Amazon decided not to attend the show in-person entirely, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, and AT&T also dropped out on Wednesday, according to Axios’ Ina Fried. Intel also appears to be reconsidering as of Wednesday. Meta, Twitter, Pinterest, and iHeartRadio also all announced this week that they won’t attend this version of the annual Las Vegas expo in light of a new wave of COVID-19 cases in the US, as have major tech publications including The Verge, CNET, Engadget, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, TechRadar and Tom’s Guide. But T-Mobile was the first major attendee to bail, with companies like Twitter and even Meta having a far more muted presence at the show in general. “T-Mobile will continue to serve as a CES sponsor and title sponsor of the DRL Championship Race but the vast majority of our team will not be traveling to Las Vegas,” reads the company’s press release. “Additionally, T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert will no longer be offering a keynote in-person or virtually.” Lenovo typically has a medium-sized presence at CES, typically making an array of announcements, though most of its activity generally happens on the Las Vegas Strip and in private meeting rooms, rather than a public booth on the show floor. AT&T, by comparison, had a seemingly tiny presence at this year’s show. While the company’s “AT&T Business” division is listed as a featured exhibitor, the company was not expected to have a keynote. AT&T Business also only appears to have one very small booth in the Health and Wellness section of the Las Vegas Convention Center’s North Hall, with no booths for AT&T in general. Other companies that might make a sizable impact if they ditched CES 2022 include Samsung and GM, which have featured keynotes like T-Mobile, and companies that generally rent a lot of prominent space on the show floor, like LG, Panasonic and Sony. Intel typically rents a lot of prominent space as well, but this year their huge booth appears to be MIA, replaced by Canon, Razer, and other smaller companies. “We are currently revisiting our plans for CES and will provide an update as soon as possible,” an Intel rep tells The Verge. We’ve asked some key companies if they’re still committed; a Sony rep suggested to us that the company still plans to attend as of Tuesday, and LG said Tuesday that “Unless CTA says otherwise,” it’s “still on board.” CES maps show that LG has a very large booth at CES, but the company’s said it’s taking a hybrid approach, making use of QR codes and AR to show off its wares. Bloomberg reports that AMD and Samsung are still planning a limited presence, Nvidia will have a virtual-only keynote, and that Qualcomm, OnePlus and HTC still plan to attend. Sony, Samsung and Google are all listed as “monitoring local conditions,” which could be read as a meaningless platitude but also gives those companies an easy out if they decide the conditions have changed. On Tuesday morning, the Consumer Technology Association, which runs CES, stated that it still plans to host an in-person show. “At this point, we’re very much focused on having this show and doing it safely and putting the right protocols in place to ensure that people feel comfortable with it,” a CTA exec told Adweek. As of Wednesday, the CTA says it’s received 42 exhibitor cancellations, but has also added 60 new exhibitors in that time. Here is the CTA’s full statement to The Verge from Jean Foster, head of marketing and communications: CES will be in person on January 5-8 in Las Vegas with strong safety measures in place, and our digital access is also available for people that don’t wish to, or can’t travel to Las Vegas. Our mission remains to convene the industry and give those who cannot attend in person the ability to experience the magic of CES digitally. While we recently received 42 exhibitor cancellations (less than 7% of our exhibit floor), since last Thursday, we’ve added 60 new exhibitors for our in person event. Registrations for both our digital access and our Las Vegas event are continuing to show strong momentum, with thousands more registrations in the last few days. CES 2022 will go forward as important innovation for world health and safety, mobility and solving problems will be exhibited. Furthermore, thousands of smaller and medium sized companies rely on CES for their business. We have increased our official count to over 2200 exhibitors and as announced yesterday many of our top elected officials from both political parties will be at CES. Given CES’ comprehensive health measures — vaccination requirement, masking and availability of COVID-19 tests — coupled with lower attendance and social distancing measures, we are confident that attendees and exhibitors can have a socially distanced but worthwhile and productive event in Las Vegas, as well as a rewarding experience on our digital access. In the recent past, we’ve seen the question of “will they or won’t they cancel due to COVID” take a while to resolve. Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the first big tech show to go on after the COVID-19 pandemic initially hit, held out for quite some time even as partners continued to cancel. Eventually, organizers did have to cancel MWC 2020. Major tech companies ditched the in-person version of MWC 2021 as well. CES 2021, on the other hand, was all virtual. Update, 8:41 PM ET: Added additional company replies via Bloomberg. Update, 10:09 PM ET: Added information about Amazon and LG. Update December 22nd, 4:05PM ET: Added new information about AT&T, Intel, and a statement from the CTA, which organizes CES each year. Update December 22nd, 9:57PM ET: Added information about Lenovo. CES 2022 seemingly falling apart: Lenovo joins T-Mobile, Amazon, AT&T and others in bailing out

Fold, fold, and fold again Samsung is arguably leading the charge on folding phones, and even though the first Galaxy Fold got off to a rocky start, last year’s Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Z Flip 3 were impressive devices that delivered on the promise of how handy a device with a folding screen can be. But the company isn’t stopping with those form factors; at CES 2022, it showed off a bunch of prototype folding devices that could hint at foldables to come. Take the Flex S, a multi-foldable device that can stretch all the way out to a triple-wide screen. Or the Flex G, a pocket-sized device that folds inward to protect the screen. There’s a device with a right rail that slides out to add some screen real estate. And Samsung even showed off a 17-inch folding laptop that’s not unlike the one Asus announced at CES (though Asus is promising that its device will come out this year). There’s a lot to get excited about, and you can see Samsung’s latest foldable tech in this video. Samsung is showing off the foldables of the future at CES

AMD launched several products during its CES 2022 keynote presentation. And while the company went into great detail describing its upcoming Ryzen 6000 RDNA 2-based Rembrandt mobile APUs, it was rather tight-lipped about the new Radeon RX 6500 XT budget card. For example, the Red team completely skipped the fact that the card comes with only 4 Gigs of video memory. Also, the official specifications of the 6500 XT on AMD's site reveal the new budget graphics card lacks AV1 decoding and H.265/ HEVC encoding, something that other larger Navi GPUs all feature. The lack of AV1 support on the new Navi 23 RX 6500 XT and the RX 6400 essentially makes these GPUs quite ordinary as a modern Home Theatre PC (HTPC) driver as AV1 content is pretty widespread nowadays. And even as a gaming solution, these new AMD Radeon cards seem pretty gimped. German outlet 3DCenter noticed on ASRock's site that the Radeon RX 6500 XT is limited to just four channels (x4) of PCIe bandwidth. While the card does support PCIe 4.0 and that should be plenty for a GPU of this caliber, anyone running this card on a PCIe 3.0 motherboard will essentially be limited to just half the throughput, ie, 32GT/s or around 4GB/s. And in a VRAM intensive game like DOOM Eternal, the low PCIe bandwidth could lead to a very large performance loss. Source: ASRock via 3DCenter AMD's new RX 6500 XT and RX 6400 limited to just PCIe x4, lacks AV1 decode and HEVC encode

It's like a 17.3-inch OLED tablet that can fold in half. The Asus Zenbook 17 Fold OLED can take many forms. Asus/YouTube When Intel unveiled its 12th-gen mobile CPUs on Tuesday, the company pointed to the chips' suitability for use in foldable PC designs by showing unidentified concept images. It didn't take long to figure out what Intel was talking about. On Wednesday, Asus announced a foldable PC—think of it as a 17.3-inch OLED tablet that can fold in half. In addition to a 12th-gen i7 CPU, the Asus Zenbook 17 Fold OLED comes with 16GB of RAM and a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD. The components live in a device measuring 14.9 x 11.32 x 0.34–0.46 inches when open and housing an OLED touchscreen with a 2560 x 1920 resolution and a 0.2 ms GTG response time. Asus announced several OLED laptops at CES this week, but this is the only one with a bendable display. Asus The display has a 4:3 aspect ratio, making it tall when fully open. If you fold it down the middle, the screen will act as two 12.5-inch displays with 1920 x 1290 resolutions and 3:2 aspect ratios. When you're done, you can fold the device shut so that it's "smaller than a sheet of photocopier paper," measuring 11.69 x 8.27 inches, according to Asus' announcement. And if you're worried about how many times you can fold the device, Asus claims the hinge lasts for at least 30,000 cycles. Asus' foldable OLED screen can hit 350 nits brightness with SDR or 500 with HDR while covering an impressive 100 percent of the DCI-P3. OLED is known to deliver vivid colors, and Asus is touting a particularly wide range with the Zenbook 17 Fold OLED. The screen supports HDR with VESA's DisplayHDR 500 certification. The display can also use its built-in color sensor to adjust its brightness and color based on its environment. The Zenbook 17 Fold OLED joins a very new category of foldable PCs that first bent into shape when Lenovo released the ThinkPad X1 Fold in 2020. The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold came out in November 2020. Lenovo Lenovo's foldable PC was bogged down by limited CPU power, poor battery life, and, as is always the case with foldables and new tech, a high price tag. Plus, Windows 10 didn't mesh perfectly with the folding design, particularly since Microsoft had scrapped plans to create an operating system dedicated to folding devices. Over a year later, Asus is producing a foldable PC with a bigger screen, a new generation of CPU, and a bigger battery. Asus hasn't shared a price yet, however, and that will be a big part of the story. The Zenbook 17 Fold OLED stands out from the ThinkPad X1 Fold with its larger size. Lenovo's foldable has a 13.3-inch screen with a smaller resolution of 2048 x 1536. The Lenovo's size (11.8 x 9.3 x 0.5 inches when unfolded, 2.2 pounds) makes it feel more portable, though. Asus' 3.64-pound foldable is heftier. Asus' machine will use the Intel Core i7-1250U. As Intel's 12th-gen mobile chips were just announced, we haven't seen them in action, but specs-wise, the processor looks more powerful than what's in the X1 Fold. The i7-1250U is specced for a 1.1 GHz clock speed that can boost to 4.7 GHz with two performance cores, eight efficiency cores, and 12MB of cache. Lenovo's foldable uses an i5-L16G7, which has one power core, four efficiency cores, up to a 3 GHz turbo clock speed, and 4MB of cache. You can still buy it today, but with half the RAM and storage of the upcoming Zenbook. Asus is claiming up to 500 nits and 100% P3 coverage. Asus The Zenbook 17 Fold OLED also comes with a larger, 75 Wh battery than the ThinkPad Xi Fold's 50 Wh one. The foldable will run Windows 11, so it will be interesting to see how the newer OS handles foldable use cases. Asus, like Lenovo, seems to have navigability in mind. There's still no dedicated form of Windows for foldables, but Asus' announcement highlighted features like "split windows," allowing up to three windows to show on the display at once. The feature uses the Asus ScreenXpert 2 app's "intelligent window management" and the Mode Switcher app. Asus envisions people using the Zenbook 17 Fold OLED with a large on-screen keyboard (images show the keyboard taking up half the screen) or an included detachable Bluetooth keyboard, which has a touchpad and keys sporting 1.4 mm of travel, a 0.2 mm dish, a 19.05 mm pitch. If the laptop is folded, you can dock the keyboard onto the bottom half of the device. You can use a virtual keyboard, set the included keyboard in front of the laptop, or dock the keyboard to the laptop as pictured. Asus The laptop, which has a magnesium alloy chassis, also comes with a fake-leather kickstand in a shade so dark that it's hard to tell it's green. Built-in kickstand. Asus Completing the package, the foldable comes with four Harman Kardon-certified speakers and a 5MP infrared camera with Asus' brand of visual noise reduction. It comes with two Thunderbolt 4 ports and a headphone jack. Asus said the Zenbook 17 Fold OLED will be available in mid-2022 Asus takes a page from Lenovo with new foldable PC

ASUS has introduced a potential gem at CES 2022. The company is inviting people to "dive into the best tablet gaming on Windows 11" with its new ROG Flow Z13 (2022) 2-in-1 gaming tablet. While claiming to have the best gaming tablet may seem overtly ambitious, ASUS has some specs that may warrant its claim to fame. The 2022 ROG Flow Z13 packs up to an Intel Core i9-12900H as well as an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti GPU, up to 1TB SSD, and up to 16GB 5200MHz LPDDR5 memory into a relatively small form factor. ASUS is advertising the tablet to remain "incredibly quiet" even under full load due to its vapor chamber cooling solution coupled with liquid metal and 0 dB Ambient Cooling. The chassis itself is coated with a premium anti-fingerprint layer and "makes cleaning the surface a breeze." On the rear of the device is a CNC-milled window that shows the mainboard of the tablet. The tablet (without keyboard attachment) comes in at 1.1 kg and 12mm thickness, and includes a 100W adapter which supports Fast Charging Technology and juices up 50% of the battery in only 30 minutes. The tablet is propped up with 170 degrees of kickstand adjustment that looks akin to the Surface Pro line, along with a detachable full sized keyboard. The 13-inch display has a 16:10 aspect ratio and has two panel options: 4K 60Hz or FHD at 120Hz refresh rates. Speaking of refresh rates, ASUS is advertising Adaptive-Sync technology which will allow for variable refresh rates (VRR) based on the content. The advertised screen brightness goes up to 500 nits and supports Dolby Vision. The ROG Flow Z13 (2022) has Dual Smart Amp speakers with support for Dolby Atmos and Hi-Res Audio. The company even took it a step further and included a High SNR 3-mic array and AI Noise Cancellation for enhanced voice communication. In terms of ports, the ROG Flow Z13 (2022) has a USB Type-A port, a dedicated USB-Type C port with Thunderbolt 4 support, and an XG Mobile port which allows for additional input supports such as DisplayPort 1.4 and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Underneath the kickstand is a slot for a microSD card for further storage expansion. It should be noted that the usage of the proprietary XG Mobile port will allow for eGPU usage with up to RTX 3080 mobile GPU performance or the new Radeon RX 6850M XT GPU via a PCIe 3.0 x8 interface. Finally, the ROG Flow Z13 (2022) will also include support for the WiFi 6E standard for wireless connection. No official pricing has been announced and the tablet will be available in Q1 or Q2 2022. The Surface Pro may have some competition: ASUS announces the ROG Flow Z13 (2022)

At CES 2022, Dell today announced UltraSharp 32 4K Video Conferencing Monitor U3223QZ with several class leading features. This new 4K monitor features a webcam that includes a 4K HDR Sony STARVIS CMOS sensor and multi-element lens for great images during video calls. It comes with dual 14W speakers and dual echo cancelling mics for great audio experience. This new monitor is Microsoft Teams certified and you can join Teams meetings and respond to Teams notifications using the dedicated buttons. The Dell U3223QZ also features ExpressSign-in technology that will allow you to securely log you in automatically when you are close by. Dell also highlighted that this new UltraSharp 32 4K Video Conferencing Monitor is the first one its class to feature the IPS Black technology for greater color accuracy. Finally, this monitor comes with a host of posts including USB-C, HDMI 1.4 and RJ45. Tech Specs: Dell UltraSharp 32 4K Video Conferencing Monitor U3223QZ will be available in March 2022. Source: Dell.com Dell announces UltraSharp 32 4K video conferencing monitor with IPS Black Panel technology

Ryzen 5800X3D will probably be the last stop for the venerable AM4 CPU socket. AMD's Lisa Su holds up an early sample of a Zen 4 CPU. AMD AMD didn't offer much news on its desktop processors at its CES press conference this morning, but it did offer a brief preview of its next-generation Ryzen 7000 processors and its Zen 4 architecture. These chips will be released in the second half of 2022 and will require an all-new motherboard with a new AM5 processor socket. We know few details about the Ryzen 7000 CPUs, except that they'll be built on a 5nm TSMC manufacturing process and that the sample AMD demonstrated onstage was running at 5 GHz (the current 5950X tops out at 4.9 GHz). We also didn't hear anything about the AM5 socket that we didn't already know—just that it will be a Land Grid Array (LGA) socket that puts the pins on the motherboard rather than on the bottom of the processor, the same as Intel's desktop chips. We also know that CPU coolers made for AM4 motherboards should continue to work on AM5 boards. AMD has been using the physical AM4 socket since 2016, but it still has a little life left in it—the new Ryzen 7 5800X3D CPU is an 8-core, 16-thread chip that uses the AM4 socket and improves speeds by stacking L3 cache on top of the processor die, something that AMD calls "3D V-Cache technology." This both increases the cache's bandwidth and the amount of cache; the standard 5800X includes just 32 MB of cache, compared to the 5800X3D's 96 MB. AnandTech goes into more depth about the technology in this piece, but the short version is that gaming performance improves by an average of 15 percent thanks to 3D V-Cache, even though the Ryzen 7 5800X uses the same Zen 3 architecture, the same 7 nm manufacturing process, and the same 105 W TDP as other Ryzen 5000-series chips and slots into the same motherboards (presumably a BIOS update will be required). AMD didn't announce pricing for the 5800X3D or whether it had more 3D V-Cache processors to announce. But with manufacturing capacity limited by the ongoing chip shortage, a smaller selection of chips that is consistently available to buy is probably better than announcing a full refresh that no one can find. AMD was having trouble meeting demand for its 5000-series CPUs early in 2021, but it caught up to demand later in the year. And AMD didn't say whether there would be Ryzen 6000-series desktop processors—though it's looking like Ryzen 6000 will be reserved for laptop chips and APUs, like the Ryzen 4000 nomenclature was. The 5800X3D should be a decent stopgap for people who want to drop a new CPU into their existing AMD system instead of paying more money for a 12th-generation Intel Core CPU or waiting for Ryzen 7000 to roll around. But it still doesn't address the sub-$200 processor market, which Intel just made a lot more interesting with some of its new Core i5 and Core i3 chips. Whether AMD will introduce new products or drop prices to compete with these budget processors remains to be seen. AMD announces one last Ryzen 5000 CPU while teasing all-new Ryzen 7000 series

Alder Lake Core i5, Core i3, Pentium, and Celeron CPUs round out the lineup. Intel is giving its desktop processors their first top-to-bottom overhaul in years. Intel Intel released its first 12th-generation Core desktop processors a little over two months ago, and we were pretty impressed with the results; the chips still consume a lot of power, but they generally come with the performance to back it up. Today, Intel is announcing the rest of the lineup, including non-overclockable versions of its Core i9, i7, and i5 processors; new Core i3, Pentium, and Celeron chips that bring the Alder Lake architecture to lower-end PCs; and low-power versions of the processors suitable for mini PCs and other systems where space and cooling capacity are at a premium. New processors, from Core i9 to Celeron Intel is announcing a total of 22 new CPUs today, and they replace most of the company's currently available 11th- and 10th-generation desktop CPUs. Like the overclockable K- and KF-series processors that are already available, these chips will require a new motherboard with an LGA 1700 socket and can support either DDR4 or DDR5, depending on the motherboard you buy (more on those in a bit). All of these processors are built on the "Intel 7" process, formerly known as "10nm Enhanced Super Fin." Intel justifies the name change by saying that the Intel 7 transistor density is similar to 7 nm-branded manufacturing processes from competitors like TSMC and Samsung. The 12th-generation Core lineup is the first time in about six and a half years that Intel has moved beyond some version of its 14 nm process for desktop processors. Some of the new processors use Intel's hybrid processor architecture, which combines performance and efficiency cores (P- and E-cores) to improve power-efficiency when the computer isn't very busy and provide better multi-core performance when you need all the processor speed you can get. Load balancing in these hybrid chips is handled by Intel's "Thread Director" technology, which needs to be supported by your operating system for optimal performance. Right now, Windows 11 has it, Linux support is in the works, and Windows 10 doesn't have it and won't be getting it (you can use Alder Lake chips with Windows 10, but performance can be a mixed bag). But at the Core i5 level and below, most of these chips only include P-cores. This will be just fine for gaming or any other task where a few fast cores will get the job done—Tom's Hardware has run an early review of a Core i5-12400 paired with DDR4 RAM, and in gaming benchmarks, it holds its own with much more expensive Ryzen 5000-series and 11th-generation Core chips. But you might miss the E-cores for CPU-based video encoding or any kind of rendering work that can effectively use all your processor's cores at once. These processors represent the 12th-gen desktop chips that will be most common for desktop computers. As usual, T-series processors drop the clock speeds by quite a bit so they can also drop the power requirements. The images above have all the specs and prices, but here's a broad overview of everything that has been announced: Core i9 chips include eight P-cores and eight E-cores (and note that only the P-cores include Hyperthreading, which is why you have 24 threads instead of the 32 you might expect). Core i7 chips have eight P-cores but only four E-cores. Unlike their K-series counterparts, the non-K Core i5 chips include six P-cores and no E-cores. At its list price of $167, the Core i5-12400F should be especially interesting to gamers on a budget. Core i3 chips have four P-cores and no E-cores. Both the Pentium and Celeron chips only have two P-cores, but the Pentiums include Hyperthreading and the Celerons don't. F-series chips don't include GPUs. T-series chips have the same core counts as the non-T versions but with lower "base power" and much lower base clock speeds—the speeds the processors fall back to for heavy, sustained workloads that generate a lot of heat. All the processors include 20 PCI Express lanes and officially support the same DDR4 and DDR5 memory speeds, from Core i9 all the way down to the Celeron. Despite their lack of E-cores, the new Core i3, Pentium, and Celeron chips are noteworthy because Intel hasn't meaningfully refreshed these lower-end processors in two years. The low-end chips released alongside Intel's 11th-generation desktop CPUs were small speed bumps that still used 10th-generation branding and the Comet Lake architecture. Given that 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th-generation chips were all iterations on 2015's Skylake architecture and that core counts have been the same since 2017's 8th-generation Coffee Lake chips, these ought to be the best-performing budget processors we've seen in a while. (It also helps Intel that AMD has essentially ceded the $200-and-under processor space with its Ryzen 5000-series chips.) You'll notice that Intel has included a "base power" figure with all of these processors in the place of a Thermal Design Power (TDP) measurement. TDP has been less than accurate as a power-consumption figure for a long time now, and the much-higher Maximum Turbo Power figure is more in line with what you'd see if you had the entire processor working on something at once. This is where you'll see the biggest difference between the T-series low-power processors and the standard versions; the Core i9-12900 lists a Maximum Turbo Power value of 202 W, while the i9-12900T maxes out at just 106 W. That Maximum Turbo Power figure can also be customized by your computer or motherboard manufacturer, and many motherboard makers even include several power presets you can tweak to squeeze more speed out of your CPU. Though non-K-series processors technically can't be overclocked, raising (or lowering) the maximum power limits will affect how long they can stay at their max turbo clock speeds. Just know that more power generates more heat, and you'll want better CPU coolers than the ones Intel ships in the processor box. A CPU’s biggest fan Intel has redesigned the fans that come bundled with its desktop processors. Laminar RS1 is the most basic of the bunch, an all-aluminum cooler that comes with Pentium and Celeron chips. Core i3, i5, and i7 chips step up to this copper-cored Laminar RM1 cooler with a blue accent (it looks like an LED light in these photos, but leaked in-the-wild photos suggest that it isn't). The Core i9 gets the Laminar RH1, an even larger copper-cored heatsink with a customizable RGB LED ring. Intel's utilitarian bundled CPU coolers are best described as "adequate," and they haven't changed much in the last decade. The 12th-generation desktop chips come with redesigned fans. They won't be able to replace a watercooling loop with a huge radiator or a tower cooler festooned with heatpipes, but they should be OK for stock performance, and at a bare minimum, they'll look a bit better in builds with transparent side panels. The Pentium and Celeron chips include the Laminar RS1 cooler, a basic model with no lighting and a small heatsink. Core i3, i5, and i7 chips step up to the Laminar RM1, which has a blue accent (not an LED, according to leaks) around the top and a beefier heatsink with a copper core and a quieter fan. And the Core i9 chips get the Laminar RH1, which includes customizable RGB lighting and an even larger copper-cored heatsink. Whether or not the more-stylish Laminar fans were inspired by AMD's three-tiered Wraith cooler lineup, they're all being positioned similarly. New chipsets for cheaper motherboards New 600-series chipsets for 12th-gen processors. Intel With cheaper processors come less-expensive chipsets. If you don't intend to overclock, or if you buy a 12th-generation Core-equipped desktop from one of the big PC makers, you'll probably get one of these chipsets instead of the flagship Z690. Intel is introducing three new chipsets alongside the Alder Lake lineup, summarized in the image above. The H670 retains most of the features that make the Z690 chipset interesting, aside from overclocking support and a handful of PCI Express lanes and USB ports. The new chipset supports RAID arrays for NVMe SSDs, plus eight lanes of DMI 4.0 (put simply, the CPU will have more bandwidth to talk to chipset-connected SSDs and other components that aren't using the CPU's 20 PCI Express lanes). The B660 chipset halves the number of DMI lanes to four and cuts the number of chipset PCI Express lanes from 24 to 14, spread out across four PCIe 4.0 lanes and eight PCIe 3.0 lanes. In practice, this means B660 boards won't be as well-suited for tons of high-end PCIe 4.0 SSDs, though for most gaming and general-use PCs, they should still offer more than enough connectivity and speed. The H610 chipset rounds things out, and compared to the others, it has been cut to the bone: bizarrely, it only supports single-channel memory, and it offers no PCIe 4.0 lanes, memory overclocking support, or USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (read: 20 Gbps) ports. Your processor will still be able to provide PCIe 4.0 lanes for a GPU and a single PCIe 4.0 SSD, but H610 will be best-suited for office work and casual gaming. All three of these new chipsets should be capable of supporting either DDR4 or DDR5, though, as with the Z690 boards, the more budget-oriented models are likely to stick with DDR4 until DDR5 RAM becomes more widely used and affordable. Only Z690 boards paired with K-series chips are capable of true CPU overclocking, but motherboard makers are generally free to allow for power-limit tweaks that can improve performance by letting processors Turbo Boost for longer. There are still some question marks about the Alder Lake lineup—we're particularly curious to see how much lower power consumption is compared to that of the power-hungry K-series chips. It also remains to be seen whether Intel can overcome the ongoing worldwide chip shortage so that people can actually buy these CPUs at their intended prices. But at first glance, this is easily as interesting as Intel's desktop lineup has been since AMD's Ryzen chips became competitive a few years ago, especially if you want to spend less than $250 to get a competent processor. Intel’s desktop CPU lineup gets a comprehensive overhaul with new 12th-gen chips

Plus a new "dual format" monitor that switches between 1440p and faster 1080p. Nvidia's "next BFGPU." Nvidia used its CES "special address" today to tease the company's top-of-the-line RTX 3090 Ti GPU alongside other GPUs and a completely new class of "dual format" gaming monitor aimed at esports pros. The 3090 Ti, which Geforce Senior VP Jeff Fisher referred to as the company's "next BFGPU," will include a hefty 24GB of G6X memory, capable of up to 21Gbps of bandwidth (Nvidia called it the "fastest ever" in its GPUs). That will help the card push out an impressive 40 Shader-Teraflops, 78 RT-Teraflops, and 320 Tensor-Terfalops, Fisher said. Pricing and release date info weren't discussed, but more details will be available "later this month," he added. The RTX 3050 promises big frame rate boosts over older budget-minded 50-series GPUs. Nvidia / YouTube Even with ray-tracing enabled, the 3050 will be able to surpass 60 fps on recent games with DLSS on, Nvidia said. Nvidia / YouTube Elsewhere in the RTX line, Nvidia announced the RTX 3050, a $249 GPU available starting January 27. Sold in the presentation as an upgrade to the aging GTX 1050 budget workhorse, the 3050 sports 2nd-generation RT cores and 3rd-generation tensor cores using Nvidia's Ampere architecture. That will let it run AAA games like Doom Eternal and Guardians of the Galaxy at 60 fps or higher with DLSS on, even with ray-tracing enabled, Fisher said. The 3050 will be capable of 9 Shader-Teraflops and 18 RT-Teraflops and come with 8GB of G6 memory. The RTX 3050 announcement comes literally minutes after AMD's announcement of the RX 6500 XT, which is positioned in the same general performance tier for $50 less. We’ll need to see how each one performs in real-world tests, of course—and whether you can buy either of them for anything approaching their list prices in the coming months. In the laptop space, Nvidia said 160 new RTX-powered laptops will be coming soon, starting at $799. That includes RTX 3080 Ti laptops capable of 120 fps performance and RTX 3070 Ti laptops capable of 100 fps (both rated here at "1440p Ultra" settings, apparently). The 3080 Ti laptops will start at $2,499, while the 3070 Ti laptops will start at $1,499, and both will be available starting on February 1. Nvidia's new line of 27-inch monitors will support 1440p gaming at up to 360 Hz... Nvidia / Youtube ...but can switch to a 25-inch 1080p mode for situations where frame rate and latency need to be prioritized. Nvidia / Youtube Aside from graphics cards, the most surprising announcement in Nvidia's presentation was a new category of "dual-format" gaming monitors. Targeted at esports pros, these 27-inch monitors can run games at 1440p and up to 360 Hz when detail and aiming accuracy are important. Many popular esports titles can run at those resolutions these days without sacrificing the top-end frame rates that pros require. When players want to prioritize frame rate and lower latency on higher-end games, though, the monitors can switch to a 1080p mode that blacks out the edges of the screen for a 25-inch diagonal display area. AOC, Asus, MSI, and Viewsonic will all be making displays that support this new function; they will also feature G-Sync adaptive refresh rates and Nvidia's Reflex latency analyzer. There are no details on pricing or release dates for any of these models. Nvidia expands the RTX 3000 series with new high- and low-end GPUs

Company also rolls out new chips aimed at gaming on ultra-thin laptops. At a CES press conference this morning, AMD announced the RX 6500 XT, a budget version of the 6000-series line of desktop gaming GPUs launched in 2020. The new card will be available on January 19 starting at $199—if you can find it amid continuing chip shortages, that is. AMD is touting the 6500 XT's "fastest sustained GPU clock rates ever" at 2.6 GHz, the inclusion of 16 compute units with ray accelerators, and the card's 16MB of Infinity Cache, which can provide faster effective bandwidth to other components. Other 6000-series cards sport anywhere from 32 to 80 compute units and 32 to 128 MB of Infinity Cache, making the 6500 XT a decidedly low-end option (as if the price wasn't enough of a clue). Still, the card should provide frame-rate boosts of 23 to 59 percent over the aging RX 570 on popular games running at 1080p, according to AMD's presentation. AMD also announced a new line of RX 6000S chips specifically focused on "light and thin" gaming laptops (i.e., those weighing less than 4.5 pounds). The three chips in this line are being optimized with efficiency in mind and should be able to provide 80 to 100 fps gameplay at "high" detail settings for recent "AAA and esports titles," according to AMD. The existing 6000M series, for bigger laptops, is being revamped with 6 nm technology and slight boosts in memory and clock speeds. The RX 6850M XT is 7 percent faster than the existing RX 6600M, for instance, while the 6650M (and an XT variation) will deliver "up to 20 percent more performance" than the 6600M. AMD’s RX 6500 XT provides $199 entry point for desktop GPU line on Jan. 19