Maximum PC August 2020

MAXIMUM PC to me has always been more than just another tech publication. It’s got a history and a reputation behind it. From its earliest days as Boot magazine, to the heady heights of Gordon Mah Ung’s run as editor, to the closure of its website back in 2017, and my own coronavirus-stressed tenure, it’s had its fair share of ups and downs But honestly, my biggest takeaway from it—and perhaps the biggest reason why I came back to it—is the community. All of you who still subscribe, support us, and write in—whether that’s with suggestions, or anger and complaints, or just questions and praise—you continue to make Maximum PC better than it was the day before. It’s a key part of why I believe it’s still so successful. We might…

APPLE IS TO USE its own designs of ARM processors in all its Macs. Rumors of this move have been floating around for years—actually a decade—but now it’s a reality: Apple is dropping the x86 processor, and taking the job in-house. There are, reportedly, three different system-on-a-chip designs in development: “Project Kalamata” as it is called within Apple. The first design is based on the iPhone A14 chip (due to appear in the iPhone 12 shortly). Apple’s custom A-series chips are already the best in the business, surpassing ARM’s own designs. The chips are to be made by TSMC—Apple has no manufacturing capacity for this—and will use the same 5nm process as the A14. The first design is expected to have 12 cores: eight high performance “Firestorm” cores, and four energyefficient…

INTEL HAS LOST its leading chip a rchitect, Jim Keller, after barely two years at the company. Keller will work as a consultant for six months to help in the transition as Intel shuffles around the heads of it engineering groups. Keller has resigned for undisclosed personal reasons, although it seems amicable enough, with Intel praising his work in an internal memo. Keller has an impressive work history, including being a big hand in the Zen microarchitecture, Tesla’s Autopilot, and Apple’s A4 and A5 chips. His loss couldn’t come at a worse time for Intel: Just a couple of months ago he was the subject of an article in Fortune magazine that said Intel was “betting its chips” on the “mastermind” Keller, who was to be given room to make wide…

MAXIMUM PC to me has always been more than just another tech publication. It’s got a history and a reputation behind it. From its earliest days as Boot magazine, to the heady heights of Gordon Mah Ung’s run as editor, to the closure of its website back in 2017, and my own coronavirus-stressed tenure, it’s had its fair share of ups and downs But honestly, my biggest takeaway from it—and perhaps the biggest reason why I came back to it—is the community. All of you who still subscribe, support us, and write in—whether that’s with suggestions, or anger and complaints, or just questions and praise—you continue to make Maximum PC better than it was the day before. It’s a key part of why I believe it’s still so successful. We…

IN A BLOG POST AMD pitched a 4GB Radeon RX 5500XT against an 8GB version, and has concluded that the 4GB card is increasingly obsolete for top-flight gaming. The average performance gap at 1440p is under 10 percent. However, for newer, heavy-hitting games the gap is more pronounced. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is 22% faster, and Wolfenstein II: New Colossus is 24% faster. That’s a fairly significant margin. That gap will only get wider too: The next generation of consoles will both have 16GB. Running a PC version without all that VRAM means a compromise. A company recommending that you buy a more expensive product is hardly surprising, but AMD does have a point, especially for AAA titles. You’ll still need a GPU that can fill that VRAM with useful…

TRIUMPHS GAME GEAR GOES MICRO Sega has launched a miniature version of its Game Gear in Japan, in four colors with four different games built into each. LENSES WITH MOJO Mojo Vision says it has developed a contact lens with a head-up display, using a tiny projector. GAME WITH NO ENGINE Nvidia got an AI system to create a Pac-Man game, without an underlying game engine, using its GameGAN model. TRAGEDIES ANDROID DEFEATED Setting an image with a non-standard color map as a wallpaper can send your phone into an endless reboot loop. ISP WARNS USERS Cox has warned heavy users to cut back data consumption, or it will cut upload speeds across the entire neighborhood. Ouch. VR EYESIGHT WORRIES A developer with over 10,000 hours using headsets claims it has degraded his eyesight.…