Gaming laptop makers are intrinsically lazy

AMD has unveiled the most powerful x86 CPU for thin and light laptops in the new Ryzen 5000 chips, and is even promising its Zen 3-powered HX gaming chips will smash whatever Intel can throw its way. Dr. Su has also promised us that, in the next six months, we'll have mobile versions of its RX 6000-series GPUs ready to roll out in new gaming laptops.

For its part Intel unveiled a slightly higher TDP version of its current Tiger Lake processors, designed for thin-and-light gaming laptops, and teased us with the proper H-series chips sporting eight cores and 16 threads, with clock speeds in excess of 5GHz.

Nvidia was perhaps the biggest gaming laptop noise-maker at CES this year, unveiling the new Ampere generation notebook GPUs, with RTX 3060, RTX 3070, and RTX 3080 graphics silicon ready to hit the very tops of our laps at the start of February. These will deliver unprecedented levels of gaming performance at every price point. And you might even be able to buy these versions.

But though there has been some spectacular mobile silicon unveiled—mentioning nothing of the stunning new 240Hz QHD notebook screens—the actual gaming laptops on show are no different at all. Razer even made a point about how it hadn't changed the Blade design one iota in three generations. Sure, it's a pretty aluminium chassis, but c'mon.

Because the new tech demands little more in terms of power and cooling, most manufacturers are simply rolling out their old chassis designs but with new innards and screens. At least until Intel releases Tiger Lake-H in May or June anyways, we might get redesigns then. Maybe.


Nvidia’s desktop graphics line up is now looking a little wonky

The launch of the new GeForce RTX 3060 makes for probably the least impressive member yet of Nvidia’s mostly mega new Ampere family of RTX 30 Series GPUs. For starters, initial specs indicate it’s not as big a leap over its Turing predecessor as other members of the Ampere range. But it also has the effect of making the whole RTX 30 Series look a little wonky.

That’s because the RTX 3060 packs fully 12GB of video memory. That’s more graphics memory than every other Ampere GPU up to and including the 10GB $699 Nvidia RTX 3080. As you’ll almost certainly know, the RTX 3060Ti and RTX 3070 both sport 8GB of VRAM. If any member of the new RTX 30 series doesn’t need 12GB, it’s the plain old RTX 3060.

Meanwhile, cards like the RTX 3070 and RTX 3080 that could really use a bit more VRAM to compete with AMD’s new Radeon RX 6000 series 16GB boards. They have to make do with far less. The RTX 3060 has no real competitor over at AMD, at all, let alone one with far more VRAM.

It’s all very odd and surely can’t last. In fact, it probably wouldn’t be happening at all were it not for the fact that demand in the GPU market currently outstrips supply by such a huge degree, Nvidia could probably tart up an old GeForce 256 board with some LED lighting and flog it for $500. That’s how desperate people are for new graphics cards. Anyway, Nvidia will surely be revising the RTX 30 series fairly soon with increased VRAMs SKUs. Surely.


Hardware shortages will linger

New PC products are always fun to digest (not literally—please don't eat your CPU), but what's the point if you can't actually get your hands on them? I was really hoping AMD and Nvidia would announce they found a bunch of missing shipping containers filled to the brim with the latest CPUs and GPUs, so we could finally have a shot at competing with unscrupulous resellers and bots. Instead, it sounds like lean inventory levels will linger for at least a few more weeks, maybe months.

The good news is, it won't last forever (if I say that enough, I start to believe it). Just long enough for AMD to refrain from announcing more Ryzen 5000 series CPUs at CES, and where is the expanded ‘Ti’ lineup from Nvidia? A thousand leaks can't all be wrong,? We'll see.

We'll also have to wait and see if Intel's Rocket Lake CPUs launch in sufficient quantities to meet demand. I know, I know—it's another iteration of 14nm, but I'm looking forward to seeing if Rocket Lake can deliver the 19 IPC boost Intel is claiming. I've been considering building a new PC, and if AMD's Zen 3 chips are still in short supply when Intel Rocket Lake arrives, I may go that route instead. Just not with a $1,000 MSI motherboard.