Apple tries again to make gaming on the Mac great

The Mac is a popular family of computers for work and household tasks, but it has historically had a bad relationship with gaming.
Apple has been trying to fix it: at WWDC 2022 the company presented technologies which should make the life of game developers more convenient and the Apple platform more attractive.In brief:Apple continues to develop its own graphics API Metal, analog of Vulkan and DirectX.Metal 3 will include a scaling technology MetalFX Upscaling.
Metal 3 will have an API for loading data from the storage, so that the video system can quickly get access to high quality textures and buffers.
Apparently, this is Apple's version of Microsoft's DirectStorage.According to Apple, the new Metal features will be able to unlock the potential of iron for years to come.At the same conference Apple announced the M2, a new generation of its own processor.
Among the examples of improved performance is Baldur's Gate 3 - there MacBook Pro with the M2 chip runs about 40% faster than the MacBook Pro with the M1.
By the end of 2022 three remarkable games will be released on Apple devices:No Man's Sky (Mac and iPad).Resident Evil Village (Mac).
Capcom says the game runs seamlessly at 1080p resolution on the MacBook Air, and reaches 4K resolution on the Mac Studio.
The Village port is being made for Macs with Apple Silicon - that is, with M-line processors.GRID Legends (Mac).No Man's Sky, running on an Apple laptop.
It will be one of the first games to use MetalFX Upscaling.

SEGA announced Mega Drive Mini 2 - it is smaller, but there are more games on it

SEGA seems to have found its cozy niche: it does not care about the console race, because consumers are full of nostalgic gamers.
That's why the company introduced the Mega Drive Mini 2 - an updated version of the retro console with an increased number of games.The device was announced during the SEGA broadcast.
What is known about the Mega Drive Mini 2: Dimensions: 120.8 millimeters wide, 116.5 millimeters long and 32.3 millimeters high.
Such parameters make the console smaller than its predecessor.Supported resolutions: 480p and 720p.50 games from the original Mega Drive and Mega CD, including \"bonus\" games that were not available on these platforms.SEGA Mega DriveBonanza Bros, Fantasy Zone,Magical Taruruuto-kun,Shining in the Darkness,Thunder Force IV (aka Lightening Force: Quest for the Darkstar),Virtua Racing.SEGA Mega CDMansion of Hidden Souls,Popful Mail,Shining Force CD,Silpheed,Sonic the Hedgehog CD.SEGA Mega Drive Mini 2 will go on sale in Japan on October 27 for 9,980 yen.
In addition, the Mega Drive Mini Tower 2 accessory will hit Japanese counters for 4,500 yen.
The release date of the goods and their price for the Western market has not yet been announced.Recall, the first SEGA Mega Drive Mini appeared in 2019 and included 42 games.Mega Drive Mini 2 Trailer.Mega Drive Mini 2 Game Review.

Intel commented on Arc Alchemist release delays and backtracking from original plans

Intel officially announced the Arc Mobile lineup on March 30.
At that time, the chip giant promised a very soon appearance of entry-level solutions in the market, but even today there are no laptops on Arc GPU in Russia or Europe, and almost in all other regions of the world.
Samsung has officially announced that it does not intend to deliver laptops with discrete GPU Intel in Europe.
Cards of some models appeared in online stores, but they are still not available for sale.On the subject of delays there have been many rumors, so Lisa Pearce (Lisa Pearce), vice president of Intel Visual Computing Group, decided to come out with comments.When asked about the status of mobile solutions Arc Alchemist Lisa said that at the moment the company is working closely with the OEM.
In South Korea, the GPU was launched with Samsung, and now the notebooks will gradually appear in other markets.
Of course, the original plan was to start deliveries earlier, but both software and COVID lockdowns in China are to blame.
In any case, laptops with Arc 3 graphics cards will gradually appear in stores.
Laptops with Arc 5 and 7 graphics cards will come out in the summer, as planned, although the window here is pretty wide.Of course, questions immediately arose about desktop graphics cards.
Intel plans to sell the Arc 3 line in China first to OEMs and system integrators in the second quarter of 2022.
Then the graphics cards will appear at retail for regular customers.
The Chinese market was chosen because of the high demand for budget graphics cards, as well as proximity to manufacturing facilities.Later in the summer, the Arc 5 and Arc 7 graphics cards will be released.
Intel is also mentioning OEM and system integrators first for now.
And only later graphics cards will be available at retail.Most likely, gamers will be able to get a cherished Intel graphics card until August.
By then we will surely receive a sample for testing.
But it is possible that we will not be able to buy it until September or even October, as various circumstances may intervene.
And no one is immune to new delays.
Intel in early 2022 planned other deadlines, which turned out to be thwarted.The main features of Arc GPU are already known, including paired with Alder Lake processors.
Intel continues to actively refine the drivers, optimizing them for games and benchmarks.
Moreover, there will be an option in Control Center to enable/disable optimizations for benchmarks.
Intel is planning to make the drivers more transparent to the user by providing fine-tuning and optimization capabilities.
A new driver version will be released in a few weeks.

Montage Technology begins production of second-generation DDR5 RCD memory chips

Montage Technology, a leading data processing and interconnect integrated circuit company, today announced the release of its second-generation DDR5 RCD chip (RCD02) at 5600 MT/s to support memory module manufacturers to enable the DDR5-5600 ecosystem.
The new device is designed for resource-intensive applications such as next-generation servers, edge computing and artificial intelligence.The RCD02 meets the latest JEDEC DDR5RCD02 specification.
Compared to the 1st generation RCD (RCD01), the RCD02 increases the DDR5 data rate by 16.67%.
The RCD02 chip uses a dual-channel memory architecture, supports 1.1V VDD and 1.0V VDDIO voltages and several power saving modes to significantly reduce power consumption.
The RCD02 not only delivers industry-leading performance, power efficiency and device-level reliability but also supports CA, CS and DFE learning modes, dual frequency mode, and other advanced features to deliver higher speed for next generation DDR5 memory.

ASUS hints at the imminent release of the high-performance 1TB ROG STRIX SQ7 NVMe PCIe Gen 4.0 SSDs

Major hardware vendors are now offering their own range of PCIe SSDs with both value-oriented and high-quality benchmarks.
Major companies ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI, have been offering their own solutions for some time.
MSI, which is an older entrant, has its SPATIUM series, while Gigabyte offers its SSDs under the AORUS brand.
Based on marketing, ASUS will probably use its ROG STRIX brand for the new PCIe NVMe SSDs.In fact, SSD marketing gives a lot of details to expect from the upcoming lineup.
For starters, the series will be called the ROG STRIX SQ7, and it looks like there will be SQ7, SQ5 and SQ3 models as well.
The introduced drive comes in a standard M.2 2280 form factor.
It is PCIe Gen 4x4 compatible, and the copper sticker, has a 1TB capacity tag.
It's not known if this will be the maximum capacity offered in this variant, though competitors offer much more capacity storage than this.ASUS takes into account that their competitors already offer their SSD solutions with compatibility for the PlayStation 5.
Having this from the start would be met with a positive response.
In addition, other manufacturers are offering their solutions with a heatsink as well.It looks like ASUS is waiting for the initial response and reviews for this SSD before they eventually provide a higher quality solution.
Also, the PCIe NVMe Gen 4 SSD market is very saturated in almost all categories, so ASUS should be pretty good on the price point if they want to win over consumers with their new solution.There is no word at this time on when ASUS plans to launch their ROG STRIX Gen 4 NVMe SSDs, but maybe the upcoming \"BOUNDLESS\" event scheduled for May 17, before the Computex show, will somehow make it clear that there will be SSD announcements and many more products.

Qualcomm Announces Wi-Fi 7 Networking Pro Platform

Qualcomm has announced a new Wi-Fi 7 Networking Pro platform.
According to the company, it will be the most scalable commercial Wi-Fi 7 platform in the world.
The third generation of the Qualcomm Networking Pro line will deliver WLAN speeds of more than 10 Gbps on enterprise access points, mesh Wi-Fi networks and high-end home routers.As of now, Qualcomm has begun sending out samples to developers.
The Wi-Fi 7 Networking Pro platform supports 6 to 16 streams simultaneously on enterprise access points and high-end routers.
Channel widths can reach up to 320 MHz, total system PHY throughput up to 33 Gbps, and more than 10 Gbps for each WLAN PHY channel.The Networking Pro platform focuses on networks with large numbers of users.
Qualcomm promises to give high performance with low CPU utilization.
Workgroups, telepresence, metaverse and gaming in both the home and corporate segments are cited as potential scenarios.Qualcomm Networking Pro products support Automated Frequency Control (AFC) technology designed to reduce interference from existing Wi-Fi networks and other equipment.
Qualcomm decided to promote its technology here by abandoning the Open AFC initiative (in which Broadcom participates).
AFC requires an agent to connect to the Internet to select the most optimal channel and power configuration.
It is not known when Wi-Fi 7 devices will be available.

According to leaked 3DMark TimeSpy tests the AMD Radeon RX 6950XT graphics card is slightly faster than the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti

Wccftech's website shows all the 3DMark synthetic test scores of the upcoming new AMD Radeon RX 6000 series models.The full specifications of the new Radeon RX 6950XT, 6750XT and 6650XT graphics cards were published yesterday.
The new models will mainly benefit from higher memory speeds, and 20 to 35 watts, depending on the specific instance.Although all the scores shared by Wccftech were obtained on the same test platform, they may not be comparable to results published elsewhere, at least as long as no graphics evaluation is used.For combined and overall scores, it is important to use the same system, which in this case is the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D processor combined with DDR4-3600 memory.
The cards were tested using pre-released drivers 22.10-220411n on Windows 10.
With that in mind, only graphics scores are considered.Based on these results, the Radeon RX 6950XT is indeed 6.5% faster than the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti in the 3DMark TimeSpy Performance preset (1440p resolution).
Meanwhile, the RX 6750XT is faster than the RTX 3070 Ti and the RX 6650XT outperforms the RTX 3060.Things are no better even when overclocking the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti to 2.2GHz with memory at 23.5GHz.
In this case, the RTX card was only 1% faster than the Radeon RX 6950XT.
This is especially interesting given that all the estimates obtained were based on AMD's reference clock speeds without overclocking.AMD Radeon RX 6X50XT cards will be released on May 10.
As far as we know now, the company has not yet confirmed pricing for buyers.

Users have complained about Apple's new computers

Mac Studio owners have complained about the computers high-frequency \"whining\" sound.
Most complaints came from users of the M1 Max processor-based version of the PC.The complaints appeared on the MacRumors portal forum.
Some users encountered the problem of the harsh sound of the Mac Studio cooler right after starting the computer, and others after a short period of use.The problem affects some models based on the M1 Max processor.
It has a smaller cooling radiator, and because of this the cooler starts more often, the intensity of the sound changes depending on the speed of the fan.
Perhaps we are talking about a partial defect in the cooling system.One forum user under the nickname sunsetblvd contacted the Apple Store service center, where after fixing and restoring the operating system the problem was not eliminated and Apple decided to replace his Mac Studio for free.Apple provides an opportunity to replace Mac Studio for two weeks for a new one, but there are reports on the forum MacRumors that replacement models also experience a noise problem.Mac Studio - a series of compact desktop computers by Apple, released in March 2022.
The cost of the new product starts at $2,000, depending on the package and the processor used.