Author: Computer Tech

Posted on March 6, 2025 by Computer Tech

Sapphire Radeon RX 9070 XT Nitro+ Review – Beating NVIDIA

Introduction

AMD’s next generation of gaming graphics cards is here to breathe life into a market stiflingly inflated prices, and we have with us the Sapphire Radeon RX 9070 XT NITRO+. The NITRO line of graphics cards represents the very best in graphics card design by Sapphire, one of AMD’s oldest and most important board partners, and given that the RX 9070 XT is the top-spec part from the RX 9000 series, the company has thrown everything and the kitchen sink into this product. The Radeon RX 9070 XT is a performance-segment graphics card that AMD claims is capable of 4K Ultra HD gaming. The company goes as far as to claim that this GPU has “everything you need” for that resolution, at a confidence-inspiring starting price of $600, which is slightly above that of the GeForce RTX 5070 that NVIDIA is launching today.

The Radeon RX 9070 XT is powered by RDNA 4, the fourth generation of the RDNA graphics architecture that has seen AMD’s return to competitiveness in the gaming GPU market. The RX 5000 series had enough performance to disrupt RTX 20-series Turing, causing it to launch the RTX 20 Super series; the RX 6000 RDNA 2 series was commercially a heyday for AMD, as that’s when the crypto mining boom soaked up all premium and enthusiast GPUs, while the products themselves squared off well against NVIDIA’s RTX 30-series Ampere. The RX 7000 series powered by RDNA 3 fell sightly behind in competitiveness, and AMD identified a crucial reason—naming.

While the RX 6800 XT performed in the same league as the RTX 3080 and ray tracing performance wasn’t a big differentiator, its successor, the RX 7800 XT was significantly slower than the RTX 4080, which wasn’t just faster but also priced nearly double that of the AMD card. Meanwhile, gamers began more direct comparisons between AMD and NVIDIA SKUs based on naming, and found that even the RTX 4070 Ti was a faster pick than the RX 7800 XT. AMD had to come up with the RX 7900 GRE, which offered comparable performance at a better priced, but only compounded the problem of naming—you now had an RX 7900 series product compete with an RTX 4070 series. It is to address exactly this, that AMD decided to give its gaming GPU series a significant change with product naming.

The Radeon RX 9070 XT is part of the Radeon 9000 series, and within it, is a xx70-segment product. Its name guides gamers to compare it with the RTX 5070 and the RTX 5070 Ti, although at a starting price of $600, the company aims to offer better performance than the RTX 5070 at better price-performance than the RTX 5070 Ti, which starts at $750. With the RX 9000 series, AMD is withdrawing from the enthusiast segment. It’s hard to speculate why, but this means that the company gets to flex its engineering muscle at making the RX 9070 XT at least a segment-best GPU.

The RDNA 4 graphics architecture is purpose built for two things—to pack the most performance per mm² die-area, and to allow AMD to wage price-wars against the RTX 5070 series SKUs. The company claims a significant increase in performance-per-CU over the previous RDNA 3 architecture, with which it can achieve its performance targets using 64 CU spread across 4 shader engines. The company also claims a 100% increase in ray tracing performance over RDNA 3, which should reduce the performance cost of ray tracing. There is a similar leap in AI acceleration throughput, now close to 1600 AI TOPS, paving the way for FSR 4, the biggest upgrade to the FSR suite of performance enhancements. FSR 4 uses a new AI ML-based upscaler that offers superior image quality at every performance preset.

The Radeon RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 that we’re also reviewing today, share a common silicon, the 4 nm Navi 48, which the RX 9070 XT maxes out. Unlike NVIDIA, which stuck to the exact same process node for the Blackwell generation as the Ada generation, AMD gave the Navi 48 two key process-level upgrades. Firstly, the company switched to the 4 nm TSMC N4P node, which offers clock speed and efficiency upgrades over the previous TSMC N5 node, and secondly, Navi 48 is a monolithic silicon unlike Navi 32, which was a chiplet-based GPU with a 5 nm GCD and 6 nm MCDs. The entire Navi 48 chip is made on 4 nm, including the memory controllers and Infinity Cache, and then there are power management and IPC improvements from the RDNA 4 architecture.

The Navi 48 silicon features 64 RDNA 4 compute units (CU), all of which are enabled on the RX 9070 XT. This works out to 4,096 stream processors, 128 AI accelerators, 64 RT accelerators, 256 TMUs, and 128 ROPs (an increase over the 96 ROPs than the Navi 32 came with). The card comes with 16 GB of memory across a 256-bit wide memory interface, although what’s interesting is that AMD stuck with older GDDR6 memory standard, using 20 Gbps memory speeds, which results in 640 GB/s of memory bandwidth. AMD is counting on new architecture-level features, such as out-of-order memory management, and the 64 MB Infinity Cache, to keep the RX 9070 series competitive with the GeForce RTX 5070 series.

The Sapphire Radeon RX 9070 XT NITRO+ comes with a stunning custom design that looks like it’s a piece of jewellery. The triple-slot cooling solution features a dense aluminium fin-stack heatsink, and a premium high-conductivity TIM. This is probably the only premium custom design RX 9070 XT to implement a 16-pin 12V-2×6 power input, which is neatly tucked away, more on this in the picture pages. The NITRO+ also comes with a generous amount of RGB LED lighting in the form of a large RGB diffuser that spans the length of the card. The card comes with factory overclocked speeds of 2520 MHz Game clock, a generous increase over the 2400 MHz reference. Sapphire is pricing the Radeon RX 9070 XT NITRO+ at $730, a $130 premium over the $600 starting price for the RX 9070 XT.

AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT Market Segment Analysis
	Price	Cores	ROPs	Core Clock	Boost Clock	Memory Clock	GPU	Transistors	Memory
RTX 3080	$420	8704	96	1440 MHz	1710 MHz	1188 MHz	GA102	28000M	10 GB, GDDR6X, 320-bit
RTX 4070	$490	5888	64	1920 MHz	2475 MHz	1313 MHz	AD104	35800M	12 GB, GDDR6X, 192-bit
RX 7800 XT	$440	3840	96	2124 MHz	2430 MHz	2425 MHz	Navi 32	28100M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX 6900 XT	$450	5120	128	2015 MHz	2250 MHz	2000 MHz	Navi 21	26800M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX 6950 XT	$630	5120	128	2100 MHz	2310 MHz	2250 MHz	Navi 21	26800M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 3090	$900	10496	112	1395 MHz	1695 MHz	1219 MHz	GA102	28000M	24 GB, GDDR6X, 384-bit
RTX 4070 Super	$590	7168	80	1980 MHz	2475 MHz	1313 MHz	AD104	35800M	12 GB, GDDR6X, 192-bit
RX 7900 GRE	$530	5120	160	1880 MHz	2245 MHz	2250 MHz	Navi 31	57700M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 4070 Ti	$700	7680	80	2310 MHz	2610 MHz	1313 MHz	AD104	35800M	12 GB, GDDR6X, 192-bit
RTX 5070	$550	6144	80	2325 MHz	2512 MHz	1750 MHz	GB205	31100M	12 GB, GDDR7, 192-bit
RTX 4070 Ti Super	$750	8448	112	2340 MHz	2610 MHz	1313 MHz	AD103	45900M	16 GB, GDDR6X, 256-bit
RX 7900 XT	$620	5376	192	2000 MHz	2400 MHz	2500 MHz	Navi 31	57700M	20 GB, GDDR6, 320-bit
RX 9070	$550	3584	128	2070 MHz	2520 MHz	2518 MHz	Navi 48	53900M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX 9070 XT	$600	4096	128	2400 MHz	2970 MHz	2518 MHz	Navi 48	53900M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
Sapphire RX 9070 XT Nitro+	$730	4096	128	2520 MHz	3060 MHz	2518 MHz	Navi 48	53900M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 3090 Ti	$1000	10752	112	1560 MHz	1950 MHz	1313 MHz	GA102	28000M	24 GB, GDDR6X, 384-bit
RTX 5070 Ti	$750	8960	96	2295 MHz	2452 MHz	1750 MHz	GB203	45600M	16 GB, GDDR7, 256-bit
RX 7900 XTX	$820	6144	192	2300 MHz	2500 MHz	2500 MHz	Navi 31	57700M	24 GB, GDDR6, 384-bit
RTX 4080	$940	9728	112	2205 MHz	2505 MHz	1400 MHz	AD103	45900M	16 GB, GDDR6X, 256-bit
RTX 4080 Super	$990	10240	112	2295 MHz	2550 MHz	1438 MHz	AD103	45900M	16 GB, GDDR6X, 256-bit
RTX 5080	$1000	10752	112	2295 MHz	2617 MHz	1875 MHz	GB203	45600M	16 GB, GDDR7, 256-bit
RTX 4090	$2400	16384	176	2235 MHz	2520 MHz	1313 MHz	AD102	76300M	24 GB, GDDR6X, 384-bit
RTX 5090	$2000	21760	176	2017 MHz	2407 MHz	1750 MHz	GB202	92200M	32 GB, GDDR7, 512-bit

Posted on March 6, 2025 by Computer Tech

Apple Unleashes New Mac Studio With M3 Ultra and M4 Max SoCs

The refreshed Mac Studio is here, and it appears that Mark Gurman’s reports were accurate once again. The system was updated with the M4 Max and the M3 Ultra SoCs – and once again, that is not a typo. For whatever reason, Apple refused to fit the Mac Studio with an M4-flavored Ultra SoC, instead settling for an undeniably confusing product lineup. The M4 Max, with up to 16 CPU cores and 40 GPU cores, will undoubtedly have the upper hand in single-core performance by as much as 30%, whereas the M3 Ultra will have superior multithreaded and GPU performance, courtesy of its 32 CPU cores and 80 GPU cores. Moreover, the price gap between the base M3 Ultra and M4 Max SKUs will remain the same, despite the former being based on an older generation.

However, the M3 Ultra will allow the system to be configured with up to a whopping 512 GB of unified memory, with memory bandwidth of 819 GB/s. While that number is not particularly mind-bending for a workstation-class system, the fact that the M3 Ultra’s 80-core GPU will have access to over half a terabyte of fast-enough memory is a game changer for select few ultra-high-end workloads. Of course, this amount of VRAM is not intended for the average Joe, but the Ultra SoCs were always meant to be a halo product. The M3 Ultra variant can also be equipped with up to 16 TB of storage – at Apple’s ridiculous pricing, of course. Needless to say, Apple’s performance claims are as vague as always, and interested customers will have to wait for independent reviews and benchmarks to make sense of Apple’s confusing SoC strategy with the new Mac Studio.

In terms of connectivity, the Mac Studio shines. The ports array includes dual USB-A, four Thunderbolt 5, HDMI 2.1, 10G Ethernet, and an audio jack on the rear. On the front, the M3 Ultra variant gets dual Thunderbolt 5 ports, whereas the M3 Max gets dual USB-C ports. Both variants get an SD card slot, of course. Wi-Fi 6e and Bluetooth 5.3 take care of wireless networking – no Wi-Fi 7 for either variant, which is rather disappointing. Prices start at $1,999 for the binned M4 Max variant with 36 GB of memory, and $3,999 for the binned M3 Ultra variant with 96 GB of memory. The highest-end variant with the full M3 Ultra SoC, 512 GB of memory, and 16 TB storage costs a cool $14,099. A more sensible variant would perhaps be the one with an unbinned M3 Ultra SoC, 256 GB of unified memory, and a 2 TB SSD commanding a somewhat more reasonable $7,499 price tag.

Posted on March 5, 2025 by Computer Tech

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Founders Edition Review

Introduction

We have with us the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Founders Edition graphics card. NVIDIA has had a brisk start to its new generation RTX 50-series from the top, with the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 in the enthusiast segment, and the more recent RTX 5070 Ti that sits in a gray area between performance and enthusiast. The new RTX 5070 is a more focused performance segment graphics card that brings you gaming at 1440p with maxed out settings, including ray tracing. The RTX 5070 comes in at a starting price of $550, which is significantly lower than the $750 that the RTX 5070 Ti starts at. The RTX 5070 gives you all the latest gaming technologies introduced with the Blackwell architecture it’s based on, including Neural Rendering, ray tracing that’s ready for Hyper Geometry, and DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation.

The new GeForce RTX 5070 debuts NVIDIA’s third gaming GPU silicon from the Blackwell generation, the GB205, which it nearly maxes out. The RTX 5070 comes with 12 GB of memory across a 192-bit wide GDDR7 memory interface. While the memory size hasn’t changed, there is a significant 33% increase in memory bandwidth over the RTX 4070, which should come in handy to drive some of the key features being introduced with this generation.

The GeForce Blackwell graphics architecture introduces a potentially revolutionary new technology to consumer 3D graphics, Neural Rendering. The concept taps into the incredible potential of generative AI to create photorealistic graphics. An AI model running in tandem with the graphics rendering stack creates neural objects that are combined with traditional raster 3D much like how ray traced objects are combined to it. NVIDIA even worked with Microsoft to standardize this at the API level, giving applications direct access to the Tensor cores, and for the SM-level shader execution reordering to support neural shaders. Neural Rendering capabilities are exclusive to Blackwell for now, since it relies on a specialized hardware scheduling component on the silicon, called AI Management Processor (AMP).

The new Blackwell generation CUDA core comes with generational improvements in IPC, but also concurrent FP32 and INT32 math capability on all cores in an SM. INT32 capability was only present half the cores in an SM with the previous generation Ada. The 4th Generation RT core comes with specialized hardware for even more features, including preparation for Mega Geometry, a technique with the geometry complexity of ray traced objects can be increased manyfold. The 5th generation Tensor cores come with FP4 data format support for increased throughput.

The GB205 is a lean new silicon that was given just the right specs for a product like the RTX 5070. Given the volumes of RTX 4070 NVIDIA ended up selling, the company probably realized it could do with silicon specs that are closer to those of the actual SKU specs to reduce wastage of perfectly good silicon. The GB205 physically comes with 50 streaming multiprocessors (SM) across 5 graphics processing clusters (GPCs), and the RTX 5070 nearly maxes it out by enabling 48 SM. This gives it 6,144 CUDA cores, 192 Tensor cores, 48 RT cores, and 192 TMUs. The RTX 5070 gets all 80 ROPs present on the silicon. If you recall, the previous RTX 4070 only got 64 out of the 80 ROPs on the AD104 silicon it was based on, which the RTX 4070 Ti had maxed out. There are one each of the latest NVDEC and NVENC video accelerators. The memory interface, as we mentioned, is a 192-bit wide GDDR7. Like the other chips in this generation, the RTX 5070 implements PCI-Express 5.0 x16. The GPU is clocked at speeds of up to 2512 MHz boost, while the memory ticks at 28 Gbps, yielding 672 GB/s of bandwidth. The RTX 5070 maxes out all 48 MB of L2 cache present on the silicon.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Founders Edition is a slick first-party custom design by NVIDIA that’s aimed to set design and performance standards for the company’s board partners. It implements the same Dual Flow-Through cooler architecture as the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 Founders Edition cards, but is a lot more compact, and well within NVIDIA’s SFF Ready dimensions. To support its given clock speeds, the RTX 5070 comes with a total graphics power rating of 250 W, a 50 W increase over the RTX 4070. This is probably because NVIDIA is building the Blackwell generation of GPUs on the exact same NVIDIA 4N process node that the Ada generation was built on. Whatever performance per watt gains you see are purely a function of the new architecture. The RTX 5070 Founders Edition comes in at NVIDIA’s starting price for the RTX 5070, of $550.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Market Segment Analysis
	Price	Cores	ROPs	Core Clock	Boost Clock	Memory Clock	GPU	Transistors	Memory
RTX 3080	$420	8704	96	1440 MHz	1710 MHz	1188 MHz	GA102	28000M	10 GB, GDDR6X, 320-bit
RTX 4070	$490	5888	64	1920 MHz	2475 MHz	1313 MHz	AD104	35800M	12 GB, GDDR6X, 192-bit
RX 7800 XT	$440	3840	96	2124 MHz	2430 MHz	2425 MHz	Navi 32	28100M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX 6900 XT	$450	5120	128	2015 MHz	2250 MHz	2000 MHz	Navi 21	26800M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX 6950 XT	$630	5120	128	2100 MHz	2310 MHz	2250 MHz	Navi 21	26800M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 3090	$900	10496	112	1395 MHz	1695 MHz	1219 MHz	GA102	28000M	24 GB, GDDR6X, 384-bit
RTX 4070 Super	$590	7168	80	1980 MHz	2475 MHz	1313 MHz	AD104	35800M	12 GB, GDDR6X, 192-bit
RX 7900 GRE	$530	5120	160	1880 MHz	2245 MHz	2250 MHz	Navi 31	57700M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 4070 Ti	$700	7680	80	2310 MHz	2610 MHz	1313 MHz	AD104	35800M	12 GB, GDDR6X, 192-bit
RTX 5070	$550	6144	80	2325 MHz	2512 MHz	1750 MHz	GB205	31100M	12 GB, GDDR7, 192-bit
RTX 4070 Ti Super	$750	8448	112	2340 MHz	2610 MHz	1313 MHz	AD103	45900M	16 GB, GDDR6X, 256-bit
RX 7900 XT	$620	5376	192	2000 MHz	2400 MHz	2500 MHz	Navi 31	57700M	20 GB, GDDR6, 320-bit
RTX 5070 Ti	$750	8960	96	2295 MHz	2452 MHz	1750 MHz	GB203	45600M	16 GB, GDDR7, 256-bit
RTX 3090 Ti	$1000	10752	112	1560 MHz	1950 MHz	1313 MHz	GA102	28000M	24 GB, GDDR6X, 384-bit
RTX 4080	$940	9728	112	2205 MHz	2505 MHz	1400 MHz	AD103	45900M	16 GB, GDDR6X, 256-bit
RTX 4080 Super	$990	10240	112	2295 MHz	2550 MHz	1438 MHz	AD103	45900M	16 GB, GDDR6X, 256-bit
RX 7900 XTX	$820	6144	192	2300 MHz	2500 MHz	2500 MHz	Navi 31	57700M	24 GB, GDDR6, 384-bit
RTX 5080	$1000	10752	112	2295 MHz	2617 MHz	1875 MHz	GB203	45600M	16 GB, GDDR7, 256-bit
RTX 4090	$2400	16384	176	2235 MHz	2520 MHz	1313 MHz	AD102	76300M	24 GB, GDDR6X, 384-bit
RTX 5090	$2000	21760	176	2017 MHz	2407 MHz	1750 MHz	GB202	92200M	32 GB, GDDR7, 512-bit

Posted on March 5, 2025 by Computer Tech

Another Win For Mac Gaming: Assassin’s Creed Shadows To Hit Macs on Day One of Release

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Tuesday, March 4th 2025

Gaming on Mac has been in somewhat of a weird situation lately. On one hand, there seems to be a ton of true AAA titles making their debut on macOS, but on the other hand, sales on the platform have been extremely disheartening in many of the cases. Now, it has been revealed that Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, which is set to debut on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation on the 20th of March, will also be available for Mac users on the same day. While that may sound like great news for interested folks, there is a catch – like many of the titles, AC Shadows will be available exclusively on the Mac App Store for a cool $70.

And this is exactly where we hit a major roadblock. For whatever reason, Steam will not include binaries for both Mac and Windows platforms, forcing people with both Mac and Windows PCs to buy the expensive game for both the systems – and this, in my opinion, is the major reason why adoption has been poor. There are plenty of folks with both Macs and PCs – but getting them to pull the trigger for the same game two times is a hard sell. According to the App Store, the game will be playable on Macs powered by the M1 and higher SoCs, and needless to say, support for modern ray tracing goodness will be limited to M3 onwards. It is unclear, as of this writing how the performance is going to be, but there is no denying that the GPUs found on the Pro, Max, and Ultra SoCs in recent years are more than capable of handling even the most demanding of titles with playable framerates.

Source: Apple

Posted on March 4, 2025 by Computer Tech

EIZO FlexScan EV4340X Review – A Multitasking Powerhouse

Introduction

The FlexScan EV4340X is the largest monitor currently offered by the famous Japanese manufacturer EIZO. Sporting a 42.5-inch 4K IPS panel and a host of productivity-focused features, the FlexScan EV4340X is designed for use in control rooms, financial institutions, video surveillance centers, CAD applications, and other environments where a large panel is essential. Can you use it in an office from a normal sitting distance? You absolutely can, and if you’re looking to maximize your screen real estate, the FlexScan EV4340X is a tempting proposition. Given EIZO’s stellar reputation among monitor enthusiasts, especially those who favor professional-grade monitors, I can imagine some purchasing the FlexScan EV4340X on the spot without even diving deeper into this review, despite its $2,000 price tag (around €1,600 in Europe).

According to EIZO, the FlexScan EV4340X is ideal for hot desking – the concept where an office has no strictly assigned seating, instead allowing workers to use any available space and share it among them. This monitor is a multitasking monster, not only because of its massive 42.5-inch screen but also thanks to its 4-source Picture-by-Picture (PbP) functionality with 12 different screen layouts, an integrated KVM switch, and a host of connectivity options. These include four video inputs (one of which is a USB-C input with DisplayPort Alt Mode and 94 W Power Delivery), an integrated USB hub, and a gigabit Ethernet port. You even get a handy remote control, which is primarily used to switch inputs and quickly access PbP profiles. The monitor is available in black or white; I received the former variant.

Specifications

EIZO FlexScan EV4340X
Screen Size	42.5″ widescreen
Curvature	No
Screen Coating	Matte
Native Resolution	3840×2160 (16:9), 103.67 PPI
Panel Technology	IPS
Color Palette/Look-Up Table	Over 1.06 billion color tones / 14-bit
Refresh Rate	60 Hz
Supported Adaptive Synchronization Technologies	–
Brightness	350 cd/m²
Contrast	1,000:1
Viewing Angles	178° (horizontal) / 178° (vertical)
Response Time	5 ms GtG
HDR	–
Adjustability	–
Video Inputs	1x DisplayPort 1.3, 2x HDMI 1.4, USB-C DP Alt Mode (94 W Power Delivery)
Video Outputs	No
USB Ports	1x USB-C (5 Gbps, 15 W Power Delivery), 2x USB Type-A (5 Gbps)
Other Ports	1x Ethernet (10/100/1000), 1x 3.5 mm audio output
Speakers	2x 4 W
VESA Mounting	100×100, 200×200
Extras	Picture-in-Picture and Picture-by-Picture support, remote control, Auto EcoView ambient light sensor, EcoView Optimizer 2
Available Colors	Black, white

Posted on March 4, 2025 by Computer Tech

(PR) TSMC Intends to Expand Its Investment in the United States to US$165 Billion to Power the Future of AI

TSMC (TWSE: 2330, NYSE: TSM) today announced its intention to expand its investment in advanced semiconductor manufacturing in the United States by an additional $100 billion. Building on the company’s ongoing $65 billion investment in its advanced semiconductor manufacturing operations in Phoenix, Arizona, TSMC’s total investment in the U.S. is expected to reach US$165 billion. The expansion includes plans for three new fabrication plants, two advanced packaging facilities and a major R&D team center, solidifying this project as the largest single foreign direct investment in U.S. history.

Through this expansion, TSMC expects to create hundreds of billions of dollars in semiconductor value for AI and other cutting-edge applications. TSMC’s expanded investment is expected to support 40,000 construction jobs over the next four years and create tens of thousands of high-paying, high-tech jobs in advanced chip manufacturing and R&D. It is also expected to drive more than $200 billion of indirect economic output in Arizona and across the United States in the next decade. This move underscores TSMC’s dedication to supporting its customers, including America’s leading AI and technology innovation companies such as Apple, NVIDIA, AMD, Broadcom, and Qualcomm.

“Back in 2020, thanks to President Trump’s vision and support, we embarked on our journey of establishing advanced chip manufacturing in the United States. This vision is now a reality,” said TSMC Chairman and CEO Dr. C.C. Wei. “AI is reshaping our daily lives and semiconductor technology is the foundation for new capabilities and applications. With the success of our first fab in Arizona, along with needed government support and strong customer partnerships, we intend to expand our U.S. semiconductor manufacturing investment by an additional $100 billion, bringing our total planned investment to $165 billion.”

TSMC’s Arizona fab currently employs more than 3,000 people on 1,100 acres of land in Arizona. The site has been in volume production since late 2024. This expansion will play a crucial role in strengthening the U.S. semiconductor ecosystem by increasing American production of advanced semiconductor technology. It will also complete the domestic AI supply chain with TSMC’s first U.S. advanced packaging investments.

In the United States, in addition to its latest manufacturing site in Phoenix, TSMC operates a fab in Camas, Washington, and design service centers in Austin, Texas, and San Jose, California.

Posted on March 3, 2025 by Computer Tech

This Week in Gaming (Week 10)

Welcome to the month of March and a week when almost every single new game launches on a Thursday. This week’s major release is a new 5v5 FPS shooter set in a Sci-Fi world. This is followed by alien planet colony management, a spot of museum curation, working as a car mechanic, doing battle with your best buddy in multiple imaginary worlds, with the week finally ending with some more co-op action, but puppet sized. We have four more games included at the end, but that’s only a few of the games launching this Thursday.

FragPunk / This week’s major release / Thursday 6 March
FragPunk is a fast-paced 5v5 hero shooter with powerup cards that change the rules of each round. Choose your hero, your weapons, and pick from a selection of cards that dramatically change the rules of engagement. Steam link

Deep Space Directive / Monday 3 March / Early access
Resource management without micro-management! Build, defend, and optimize your ever-growing industrial colony in a dynamic hex-tile world. Buy low, sell high to expand and upgrade your base. Even your enemies are a resource to be exploited. Profit waits for no one. Steam link Two Point Museum / Tuesday 4 March
Curate and manage incredible museums! Explore to discover amazing artifacts. Design and refine the layout, keep staff happy, guests entertained, donations plentiful… and children off the exhibits Steam link Car Mechanic Shop Simulator / Wednesday 5 March
Manage a prosperous car shop empire and enter the complex car maintenance and repair world. This simulation game offers a comprehensive, in-depth experience that combines strategic business management with the technical nuances of car maintenance. Steam link Split Fiction / Thursday 6 March
Embrace mind-blowing moments as you’re pulled deep into the many worlds of Split Fiction, a boundary-pushing co-op action adventure from the studio behind 2021 Game of the Year Winner, It Takes Two. Mio and Zoe are contrasting writers – one writes sci-fi and the other writes fantasy – who become trapped in their own stories after being hooked up to a machine designed to steal their creative ideas. Steam link Myrmidon / Friday 7 March
Invite a friend online and embark on a puzzle-platformer adventure exploring the bond between an animator and his puppet. Work together to clear obstacles across the sprawling sets of a stop-motion animation workshop and find out to what lengths the power of imagination can take you. Steam link This week’s other releases: Carmen Sandiego, Suikoden I&II HD Remaster Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars, Dragonkin: The Banished, Chernobylite 2: Exclusion Zone

Posted on March 2, 2025 by Computer Tech

Early Leak Claims AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT Might Reach NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Territory

Saturday, March 1st 2025

Judging by the current state of gaming GPUs, it might appear to some that true budget-class cards are a thing of the past. That said, it is almost certain that both NVIDIA and AMD are cooking entry-level GPUs to cater to folks who can’t shell out the astoundingly high prices that modern mid-range and high-end GPUs command, with AMD having already confirmed the launch for RX 9060 class cards sometime in Q2 of this year. Previous leaks have indicated that the RX 9060 will likely hit the scene with 12 GB of GDDR6 VRAM, whereas its XT sibling will boast an additional 4 GB. NVIDIA is also expected to drop the RTX 5060 and 5060 Ti cards sometime towards the end of this month, likely in 8 GB and 16 GB flavors of the shinier GDDR7 spec.

Now, a fresh leak by Moore’s Law Is Dead (MLID) has claimed that the Radeon RX 9060 XT will outperform the RTX 4060 Ti in performance, slotting in between the RTX 4060 Ti and the Radeon RX 7700 XT. Moreover, he added that AMD may even push clocks to bring the card closer to the RTX 4070 territory – a sweet position to hold indeed. Regarding launch date, MLID expects the card to hit the arena sometime in April. Of course, as with all leaks and rumors, accept this information with a grain of salt, especially considering that MLID’s assertions are sourced from a single party. The RTX 5060/Ti is expected to be priced in the $400-$500 range, which means the RX 9060 XT will likely have to be priced in the lower-end of that in order to make for a compelling value proposition.

Sources: Moore’s Law is Dead, Spotted by Notebookcheck

Posted on March 1, 2025 by Computer Tech

AMD Radeon RX 9070 Series Technical Deep Dive

Introduction

The next generation of AMD Radeon is here! The company today formally announced its Radeon RX 9070 series of performance-segment graphics cards, powered by the new RDNA 4 graphics architecture. These new cards aim to provide gamers with premium performance to max out any of today’s games at resolutions of up to 4K UHD; the company also claims to have made massive strides in AI acceleration, ray tracing, and energy efficiency. The series marks AMD reorienting itself as a high performance/cost gaming GPU vendor, targeting price points PC gamers are more familiar with and want their graphics cards at; rather than runaway increase in GPU prices each generation. In many ways, AMD’s strategy appears closer to that of Intel’s than NVIDIA’s. The RX 9070 XT comes at a starting price of $600, with the RX 9070 at $550.

AMD famously gave its Radeon 9000 series and RDNA 4 a skip at its 2025 International CES keynote address despite the two being part of pre-briefs to the press. Speculation was rife that the new series could fall woefully behind NVIDIA Blackwell, forcing AMD to fight for crumbs at the entry level with Intel. Then, something interesting happened—NVIDIA chose to build Blackwell on the same foundry node as the previous generation, going back to 2022, and the RTX 50-series SKUs launched so far don’t post the kind of generational performance gains we’ve come to expect from NVIDIA, which the RTX 40-series Ada did. For instance, the RTX 5080 does not beat the RTX 4090, whereas even the RTX 4070 Ti beat the RTX 3090.

With RDNA 4, AMD has made a tactical retreat from the enthusiast segment. There is not going to be a “big Navi” GPU based on RDNA 4, and the Navi 48 chip powering the RX 9070 series will be the biggest chip this generation. With this, AMD will look to throw everything it has to bringing the most amount of performance and value out of its RX 9070 series, and look to target price points undercutting NVIDIA’s performance-segment SKUs such as the recently announced RTX 5070 Ti, and the upcoming RTX 5070. It is unencumbered from the burden of beating the RTX 5090 or even the RTX 5080, which are both impossible to find at three-figure prices. Given that the real world pricing of the RTX 5070 Ti, particularly the custom OC cards are nearing $1,000, AMD has a great opportunity to disrupt the performance segment of the RTX 50-series the way the RX 5700 XT did for the RTX 20-series.

In this article, we will walk you through the new graphics cards AMD is launching soon, the RDNA 4 graphics architecture powering it, and what’s new on the software and gamer experience side of things, particularly with FSR 4 and AMD Software.

Posted on March 1, 2025 by Computer Tech

(PR) Splitgate 2 Open Alpha Build Available on Steam, PS5 & Xbox Series X|S

Friday, February 28th 2025

Hey, Splitfam. We’re doing an Open Alpha preview of the work we’ve done on Splitgate 2, available to everyone for four days from Feb. 27 to March 2. Come play with us! This is your first chance to check out our new Multi-Team Portal Warfare, 8v8v8 battles of colossal proportions set on a massive map. Plus, we’ve got new arena maps, new weapons, new gear, and hundreds of improvements based on community feedback. Anyone with a Steam account, a PS5, or an Xbox Series X|S can register and play—for free, as always. Read on for more details about what will be included in the Open Alpha.

Portals Change Everything
Portal into the action as an elite Ace in Splitgate 2, the only free-to-play shooter where you can teleport across the map to outsmart your opponents. Team up, customize weapons, and master portaling skills as you compete for glory in epic showdowns. This is the future of Splitgate, bringing fast-paced portal gunplay with objective-based game modes, distinctive new maps, and a wild collection of weapons. Dominate the competition with the ultimate tool: a portal gun. Flank your foes and turn the tide of combat by portaling across the map, or defy gravity to launch yourself for jaw-dropping aerial kills. Recruit your friends and compete for the respect of the entire galaxy. Take control of the Hotzone while your friends hold off enemies portaling in from all sides. Stand together and steamroll your opponents to win the match and claim victory.

LISTENING TO THE COMMUNITY

Thanks to all of the community feedback we’ve gotten from playtests and gameplay we’ve shared online, we’ve made a litany of improvements to every single aspect of the game.
We heard that you wanted more action, so we made respawns shorter and rounds longer.
We also heard that you wanted more portaling options, so we added more portal walls to our existing maps, and added new portal opportunities like a Launch Portal, a combination of a portal wall and a launch pad that will send you flying.
To learn more about how seriously we take community feedback, you can read more about the changes in this message from Ian Proulx, cofounder and CEO of 1047 Games, or watch this Dev Talk from Ian and our other co-founder, Nicholas Bagamian.

READY TO PLAY?

Thanks for reading, Splitfam. Remember, even with all of these new updates and features, this is just the beginning. The Open Alpha represents less than half of all of the new content we’re going to have in the full version at launch.
Again, you can find the Open Alpha on Steam, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. No need to sign up, just portal into the action on your gaming system of choice Feb 27 to March 2.
And to keep in the loop about our full launch later this year, be the first to know by staying in touch with us on our Discord or signing up for our newsletter on splitgate.com.

Play the Splitgate 2 Open Alpha now on PC (via Steam), PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.