Plus! Why is Mario’s mouth moving like that
The MSI Claw handheld makes an Intel power grab
Since the value of portable gaming PCs is not determined by how rad of a name it has, it remains to be seen whetherthe Clawcan take on theSteam DeckorLenovo Legion Go. Still, it is the first of its kind to wield one of Intel’s new, supposedly much more graphically capableCore Ultrachips, the Core Ultra 7 155H. I’m exceedingly curious to see how this fares against the AMD APUs that drive its handheld rivals, though as this was intended as a laptop CPU, power draw could be an issue – the Claw (the Clawwwww) will likely need every drop of its hefty 53Whr battery reserve.
By the end of January, there’ll bethree new Nvidia GeForce graphics cardson sale: the RTX 4070 Super, RTX 4070 Ti Super, and RTX 4080 Super. All three are offering performance improvements over their non-Super originals, with starting prices that come in either equal to or below what the predecessors cost at launch. A welcome, some might say overdue change of tack, considering how bonkers expensive much of the RTX 40 lineup is.
While Nvidia made their Super-powered pitch to the premium market, AMD’s latest GPU launch was all about speedy 1080p. The Radeon RX 7600 XT is largely based on last year’sRX 7600, which doesn’t sound very impressive, but besides boosting clock speeds, it also rips out the latter’s 8GB of GDDR6 to replace with a more forward-thinking 16GB. That’s not going to magically make the XT model a 4K-ready beast, but it might be enough to give the rivalRTX 4060a rough time. It’ll cost more than the Nvidia card, mind, launching on January 24th from $330.
The 24th will also seeFluid Motion Frames, AMD’s attempt at a driver-based, hardware-agnostic version of DLSS 3 frame generation, emerge from its preview build into a full launch. In theory, Fluid Motion Frames should work withanyDX11 or DX12 game – not just the few supported byFSR 3.
Intel’s most gaming-relevant CES announcements focused on several new handfuls of laptop and desktop CPUs, making the current14th generation of chipsan even bigger mishmash of specs and branding than it was before. Rather than adding to the previously announced, yet still very new Core Ultra series – which is comprised of multifunction APUs for slimline laptops and MSI Claws – thesenew-new processors use the traditional Intel branding. So there’s the 24-core core, 5.8GHz Core i9-14900HX heading up the gaming laptop chips, while the 18 new desktop CPUs range from the 24-core/32-thread Core i9-14900 all the way down to the dual-core (and likely dirt-cheap) Core Processor 300.
I suppose dodging ganks inLeague of Legendsisn’t the evillest application of AI imaginable, but you’d need to have quaffed an awful lot of Silicon Valley Kool-Aid to believe that the MSI MEG 321URX’s “SkySight” feature is a net good. It works by analysing enemy movements on LoL’s minimap, calculating their likely movements when they’re out of vision, and adding icons to warn you of incoming ambushes.
Look, there ismaybea use for this in some kind of offline training mode. Otherwise, it aims a shimmering, six-fingered AI punch square in the face of fair play, completely automating one of the wizard fight genre’s most fundamental skills – watching the god-damned map – and even adding new UI elements to show the exact direction of the move you’re about to artificially counter. It’s unlikely to get picked up by anti-cheat systems as well, as the AI processing is performed on the monitor rather than the PC. It’s all a bit gross, which is even more of a shame when the MEG 321URX looks like a tasty monitor otherwise: 4K resolution, 240Hz refresh rate, QD-OLED panel tech, DisplayPort 2.1. Boo.
One of the best things about the Steam Deck is SteamOS; the more I use Windows 11-based handhelds, the more I’m convinced that any game compatibility issues SteamOS has are outweighed by its convenience and general slickness. Qualities born directly from it being designed for these small, touch- and joypad-operated devices in the first place, very much unlike Windows.
That’s why the Ayaneo Next Lite intrigues me so: it’s the first post-Deck portable PC, not counting theSteam Deck OLED, to come with SteamOS preinstalled as standard. And, while pricing hasn’t been announced, it’s being pitched as relatively budget-friendly handheld, with a choice of older, off-the shelf AMD laptop chips (the Ryzen 5 4500U and Ryzen 7 4800U) instead of a custom-built gaming APU. It also matches the original Steam Deck’s screen specs, fitting a 7in, 1280x800 IPS display.
CES loves its laptops almost as much as it loves machine learning, and all the major players – Asus, Acer, MSI, HP, Alienware, Razer and so – had flipping lil’ PCs to show off. Usually featuring one of the aforementioned new Intel CPUs, naturally.
The vast, vast majority of these are updates to long-running gaming laptop series, and are thus not interesting. But I’ve definitely let my head be turned by the HP Omen Transcend 14, a more compact, internally up-to-date cousin of theOmen Transcend 16I reviewed the other day. Just look at it – if it weren’t for the RGB keyboard, that could easily pass for a thin, light, completely non-gaming ultrabook. What a happy departure from the usual practice of building a big, plastic paving slab. With racing stripes.
So Mario was at#CESBut uh… who approved this abomination? 💀pic.twitter.com/diG3axCJIG
No, this has nothing to do with PC gaming, but it so perfectly encompasses the “Didn’t stop to think if they should” vibe of CES that I simply must include it. Even at the expense of theRazer gaming car. You may have spotted it doing the rounds on Xitter anyway: an unnervingly wooden Mario hologram, mouth and moustache staccato-flapping in a doomed attempt to sync with some AI speechbox’s approximation of an Italian accent.
What is its purpose, except to suggest that maybe we all owe Chris Pratt an apology? You’d have to ask its creators, Proto Hologram, and the booth’s organisers, the AARP, formerly the American Association of Retired Persons. The two have been collaborating on the (genuinely noble) use of holograms to treat loneliness among older people, though it turns out that Mario wasn’t actually supposed to be part of the CES plan. Proto and AARPtold Kotakuthat this particular, copyright-protected lightperson is “not intended for commercial release," and that “AARP and Nintendo were not involved in the inadvertent showing.” In fairness, whohasn’tbeamed an unauthorised AI automaton bearing the likeness of gaming’s most recognisable mascot to a packed convention centre, by mistake?
