Cooler Master launches the 'Ultimate Mechanical Gaming Keyboard' with its new MK770

Kosta Andreadis | Peripherals | Feb 28, 2024 12:34 AM CST

The Cooler Master MK770 Hybrid Wireless Keyboard is described as a 'state-of-the-art mechanical gaming keyboard' with 'unparalleled customization' and 'outstanding gaming performance.'

Cooler Master launches the 'Ultimate Mechanical Gaming Keyboard' with its new MK770

And sure, companies love to talk up new releases. Still, with Cooler Master's mechanical keyboard track record and the fact that the new Cooler Master MK770 also comes in a stylish (and not for everyone) pastel color option, like me, you probably want to know more.

This is a premium feature-packed mechanical keyboard with a reasonable price point of $129 USD. With this, you get hot-swappable switches for that extra layer of customization, a gasket structure, pre-installed KailhBox V2 switches, silicon dampers to keep noise levels down, per-key customizable RGB lighting, double-shot PBT keycaps, stabilizers, and more.

Continue reading: Cooler Master launches the 'Ultimate Mechanical Gaming Keyboard' with its new MK770 (full post)

DROP CSTM65 mechanical keyboard features a magnetic decorative top case you can swap out

Kosta Andreadis | Peripherals | Feb 28, 2024 12:03 AM CST

The new CSTM65 Keyboard from Drop is a compact 65% mechanical keyboard that aims to take customization to new heights thanks to its interchangeable magnetic case (available in polycarbonate or aluminum) that can easily slip on or off the keyboard while covering the entirety of the board.

DROP CSTM65 mechanical keyboard features a magnetic decorative top case you can swap out

It's an excellent addition to a customization-focused keyboard, with various keycap options, switches (Gateron Brown Pro 3.0 Switches or Gateron Yellow KS3 Switches), weights, and even cables. This mix-and-match design lets users personalize theDrop CSTM65 Keyboard to suit their style. Polycarbonate cases are sold separately, in a range of colors, for $25 each, with aluminum cases available in silver or black for $59 each.

The specs here are impressive, with a gasket-mounted design, ABS keycaps, PCBA-mounted stabilizers, and 5-pin switch support. The Drop CSTM65 Keyboard is available in a barebone (MSRP $79) and fully assembled (MSRP $129). Fully assembled includes the keyboard, keycaps, switches, stabilizers, and black polycarbonate case.

Continue reading: DROP CSTM65 mechanical keyboard features a magnetic decorative top case you can swap out (full post)

GIGABYTE details AORUS FO27Q3: 27-inch 1440p 360Hz QD-OLED gaming monitor

Anthony Garreffa | Displays & Projectors | Feb 27, 2024 11:34 PM CST

GIGABYTE teased an entire new fleet of gaming monitors back at CES 2024 earlier this year, and now the company has detailed its upcoming AORUS FO27Q3 gaming monitor.

GIGABYTE details AORUS FO27Q3: 27-inch 1440p 360Hz QD-OLED gaming monitor

The new AORUS FO27Q3 gaming monitor will feature a 27-inch 1440p (2560 x 1440) QD-OLED panel, with a blistering 360Hz refresh rate. Playing games at 1440p and 360FPS won't be easy, so you'll want to team the new AORUS FO27Q3 gaming monitor with a higher-end GPU like NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4080, RTX 4080 SUPER, or RTX 4090, and on the AMD side the Radeon RX 7900 XT or RX 7900 XTX graphics cards.

GIGABYTE's new AORUS FO27Q3 with its QD-OLED panel also features anti-reflective coating, with the 10-bit panel capable of pumping out 10.7 billion colors, and certified for DisplayHDR True Black 400, with a typical brightness of 250 cd/m² and a contrast ratio of 15,000,000:1.

Continue reading: GIGABYTE details AORUS FO27Q3: 27-inch 1440p 360Hz QD-OLED gaming monitor (full post)

NVIDIA AI GPU customers 'offloading' chips, selling hard-to-buy excess AI GPU hardware

Anthony Garreffa | Artificial Intelligence | Feb 27, 2024 11:07 PM CST

NVIDIA has greatly improved AI GPU shipments over the last few months, which were swelling out to 8-11 months and now down to a better 3-4 month waiting period. But some AI GPU customers are offloading their high-end AI chips... yeah, they're selling the H100 AI GPUs they've paid for.

NVIDIA AI GPU customers 'offloading' chips, selling hard-to-buy excess AI GPU hardware

Why? Some companies purchased oodles of NVIDIA's flagship H100 Tensor Core AI GPU, noting that it's now easier to rent AI processing power from AI cloud providers like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.

A new report from The Information states that some companies are reselling their NVIDIA H100 AI GPUs or reducing their future AI GPU orders due to the scarcity of AI GPUs and the huge costs of maintaining unused hardware. If we rewind to just 6 months ago, companies were tripping over themselves trying to get as many of the most powerful AI GPUs made. Still, even though increased AI GPU availability, reduced waiting times, and next-gen AI GPU hardware are on the horizon, companies are selling their AI GPUs.

Continue reading: NVIDIA AI GPU customers 'offloading' chips, selling hard-to-buy excess AI GPU hardware (full post)

GPU shipments 6% over Q4 2023: 76 million GPUs shipped, biggest gain in over 25 years

Anthony Garreffa | Video Cards & GPUs | Feb 27, 2024 10:36 PM CST

Jon Peddie Research's latest report is on the PC GPU market, which has been doing surprisingly well over the last quarter. PC GPU shipments increased by 6% in Q4 2023, with a total of 76.2 million graphics cards shipped.

GPU shipments 6% over Q4 2023: 76 million GPUs shipped, biggest gain in over 25 years

The new report detailing 76.2 million GPU shipments over Q4 2023 is a huge 24% year-over-year increase, which JPR notes is the "biggest year-to-year increase in two and a half decades". Overall, JPR reports GPUs will have a compound annual growth of 3.6% during 2024-2026, where the outfit estimates that almost 5 billion GPUs will be in the wild by 2026.

Over the next 5 years, JPR estimates the penetration of discrete GPUs inside of PCs will hit 30%.

Continue reading: GPU shipments 6% over Q4 2023: 76 million GPUs shipped, biggest gain in over 25 years (full post)

AMD confirms ultra-fast HBM3e memory is coming to Instinct MI300 refresh AI GPU

Anthony Garreffa | Artificial Intelligence | Feb 27, 2024 10:08 PM CST

AMD has teased it's working on a refresh of its just-released Instinct MI300 AI GPU family, which will feature the latest ultra-fast HBM3e memory standard that Micron and Samsung are gearing up into.

AMD confirms ultra-fast HBM3e memory is coming to Instinct MI300 refresh AI GPU

We heard rumors of AMD's next-gen Instinct MI400 series AI GPU just a couple of days ago, along with a refreshed MI300 AI GPU with faster HBM3e memory, and now AMD's own Chief Technology Officer, Mark Papermaster, has confirmed just that. A refreshed AMD Instinct MI300 AI GPU is on the way, with HBM3e memory.

AMD Chief Technology Officer Mark Papermaster said during a presentation at the Arete Investor Webinar Conference, which Seeking Alpha reported on: "We are not standing still. We made adjustments to accelerate our roadmap with both memory configurations around the MI300 family, derivatives of MI300, the generation next. [...] So, we have 8-Hi stacks. We architected for 12-Hi stacks. We are shipping with MI300 HBM3. We have architected for HBM3E".

Continue reading: AMD confirms ultra-fast HBM3e memory is coming to Instinct MI300 refresh AI GPU (full post)

Samsung teases industry-first 36GB HBM3e 12-Hi memory stack, coming soon

Anthony Garreffa | Artificial Intelligence | Feb 27, 2024 9:36 PM CST

Samsung has just announced it completed the development of its new 12-Hi 36GB HBM3e memory stacks; on the heels of Micron's announcement, it's started mass production of its 8-Hi 24GB HBM3e memory... what an announcement.

Samsung teases industry-first 36GB HBM3e 12-Hi memory stack, coming soon

Samsung's new codename Shinebolt HBM3e memory features 12-Hi 36GB HBM3e stacks with 12 x 24Gb memory devices placed on a logic die featuring a 1024-bit memory interface. Samsung's new 36GB HBM3e memory modules feature 10GT/s transfer rates, offering next-gen AI GPUs up to 1.28TB/sec of memory bandwidth per stack, the industry's highest per-device (or per-module) memory bandwidth.

Yongcheol Bae, Executive Vice President of Memory Product Planning at Samsung Electronics, said in the press release: "The industry's AI service providers are increasingly requiring HBM with higher capacity, and our new HBM3E 12H product has been designed to answer that need. This new memory solution forms part of our drive toward developing core technologies for high-stack HBM and providing technological leadership for the high-capacity HBM market in the AI era".

Continue reading: Samsung teases industry-first 36GB HBM3e 12-Hi memory stack, coming soon (full post)

AMD's latest Radeon drivers aims to stop Helldivers 2 crashing and fix stuttering in many games

Kosta Andreadis | Video Cards & GPUs | Feb 27, 2024 9:02 PM CST

AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 24.2.1 is available now for Radeon GPU owners, and it's one to definitely check out if you've been running into issues when gaming, as it's chock full of fixes and updates.

AMD's latest Radeon drivers aims to stop Helldivers 2 crashing and fix stuttering in many games

Those playing the smash hit co-op, democracy spreading, bug squashing Helldivers 2 on PC will be pleased to know that this new driver update fixes 'intermittent driver timeout' issues on Radeon RX 7000 Series GPUs while also fixing crashing while playing. These are the sort of problems that are way more annoying when playing an online title, so kudos to AMD.

Another big fix covers those playing Counter-Strike 2, where the game would crash when enabling FSR on some Radeon GPUs. AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 24.2.1 also fixes 'excessive stutter' across a range of titles, including Battlefield 2042, Destiny 2, Overwatch 2, Monster Hunter: World, PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS, and STAR WARS Battlefront II.

Continue reading: AMD's latest Radeon drivers aims to stop Helldivers 2 crashing and fix stuttering in many games (full post)

NVIDIA is the 'GPU cartel', will delay shipments if AI GPU customers talk to AI GPU competitors

Anthony Garreffa | Artificial Intelligence | Feb 27, 2024 8:37 PM CST

NVIDIA is reportedly delaying AI GPU shipments if it finds out its customer is talking to AI GPU competitors like AMD or Intel, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal.

NVIDIA is the 'GPU cartel', will delay shipments if AI GPU customers talk to AI GPU competitors

Jonathan Ross, CEO of rival chip startup Groq, told The Wall Street Journal: "A lot of people that we meet with say that if NVIDIA were to hear that we were meeting, they would disavow it. The problem is you have to pay NVIDIA a year in advance, and you may get your hardware in a year, or it may take longer, and it's, 'Aw shucks, you're buying from someone else, and I guess it's going to take a little longer.'"

Ex-NVIDIA GeForce and ex-AMD Radeon GPU boss Scott Herkelman chimed in on X, where posted: "This happens more than you expect, NVIDIA does this with DC customers, OEMs, AIBs, press, and resellers. They learned from GPP to not put it into writing. They just don't ship after a customer has ordered. They are the GPU cartel and they control all supply".

Continue reading: NVIDIA is the 'GPU cartel', will delay shipments if AI GPU customers talk to AI GPU competitors (full post)

Intel vPro technology is coming to Core Ultra 100 'Meteor Lake' AI mobile processors

Anthony Garreffa | CPU, APU & Chipsets | Feb 27, 2024 8:01 PM CST

Intel has just confirmed that its new Core Ultra 100 "Meteor Lake" CPU family is getting vPro technology for a new business laptop series that'll be called vPro.

Intel vPro technology is coming to Core Ultra 100 'Meteor Lake' AI mobile processors

The news comes from the MWC (Mobile World Congress) that's happening in Barcelona, Spain, right now... where, over the last few years, we've seen Intel move its approach with vPro technologies. The company shifted away from physical changes to the processors to software locking. Intel's new Core Ultra 100 series "Meteor Lake" processors officially support the vPro feature set, which is split into Enterprise and Essential tiers.

Intel's new Core Ultra 100 series "Meteor Lake" CPUs will be getting vPro technology, but its recent 14th Gen Core "Raptor Lake Refresh" processors will NOT be getting vPro, at least none of the mobile processors in the wild. Intel says if you want -- or need -- vPro technology, they recommend their new Meteor Lake-powered laptops that are spreading onto the market.

Continue reading: Intel vPro technology is coming to Core Ultra 100 'Meteor Lake' AI mobile processors (full post)