Shortly after the specification-unveil of the Xbox Series X, Microsoft announced the DirectX 12 Ultimate API for the next-gen gaming PCs and the accompanying XSX console. While it basically it’s an incremental upgrade over the existing DirectX 12 (tier 1.1), its core advantage is cross-platform support: Both the next-gen Xbox Series X as well as the latest PC games will leverage it. This not only simplifies cross-platform porting but also makes it easier for developers to optimize their games for the latest hardware.

Publication: Hardware Times 

AMD is in a very competitive position at the moment. Their market shared in both the consumer and server segments are growing and they’ve got a process lead over Intel. This is all thanks to the new Zen microarchitecture that powers the existing Ryzen CPUs. Before Zen, AMD was in a very precarious situation, nearly on the verge of bankruptcy. The older Bulldozer based FX processors were slow, inefficient and overall an architectural disaster.

Publication: Hardware Times 

When AMD revealed the two newest members of their family of the first-gen RDNA powered cards, we were excited. After all, when you have at least one GPU in each price segment, it becomes easier for consumers. Today we’re taking a look into the Radeon RX 5500 XT, or rather the Powercolor Red Dragon variant of it. Before jumping in, I’d like to set expectations for this card. While its bigger brother, the RX 5600 XT is targeted towards luxury 1080p gaming, this one’s not. The 5500 XT is really meant to tackle the NVIDIA GTX 1650 Super. So, with that in mind, let’s jump into it.

Publication: TechQuila

Microsoft has now updated its DirectX API with DirectX 12 Ultimate, whose core focus is one raytracing and other nifty features for video game development. In their new blog post on the API update, Microsoft explained how DX12 Ultimate will help developers and GPU platform creators (AMD and NVIDIA). As seen in the video above, DX12 Ultimate will aim to become the leading API for cross-platform development. It brings updated features on DXR (DirectX Raytracing), Variable Rate Shading, Mesh shaders, and sampler feedback.

Publication: Daily Hunt 

Microsoft has now updated its DirectX API with DirectX 12 Ultimate, whose core focus is one raytracing and other nifty features for video game development. In their new blog post on the API update, Microsoft explained how DX12 Ultimate will help developers and GPU platform creators (AMD and NVIDIA).

Publication: TechQuila

The Red team’s upcoming Ryzen 4000H gaming APU will be seen on next-gen gaming laptops with all the Zen 2 architecture goodness. We know that the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 will be one of the firsts to debut in the market with this APU. Also the Ryzen 7 4800HS which is custom made by AMD for ASUS coming with 35W TDP is also a 8 core, 16 threaded processor with 3GHz base clock and 4.3GHz boost. So it should give superior performance both in terms of gaming and productivity.

Publication: TechnoSports

Ecosystem is the biggest and most renowned fight in the tech industry. Microsoft and Apple fought for the PC market with Windows and Mac respectively. Google and Apple are fighting for the mobile market with Android and iOS respectively. While we thought the PC market fight is a long decided battle, Google thinks there is an opportunity for a third player. Its challenger is the Chrome OS, and we got a chance to test it on HP Chromebook x360.

Publication: BGR India 

Affordable gaming laptops that suit your needs perfectly are always challenging to find and that’s simply because of the sheer number of things you need to take into account before splashing the cash. Well, ASUS is one brand which is among the few out there in India to have something for you, regardless of how niche your requirements are. Even if we talk about gaming laptops, ASUS offers a wide range of products under its affordable TUF range and the more premium ROG (Republic of Gamers) range.

Publication: MensXp

PC maker Asus India has made it mandatory for all employees to work from home (WFH) from March 23, in line with government advisory to check the spread of Coronavirus. “Effective 23rd March we have made WFH mandatory for all employees across India till 31st March, following the recent guidance from the government.

Publication: Business Insider 

India has set a good audacious goal to rally the entire country towards the aggressive target of becoming a $5-trillion economy. Amit Midha, president, APJ & Global Digital Cities, Dell Technologies, believes India has the right demographics and capabilities to realise this digital future and achieve the $5-trillion target. “With a significant focus on Make in India, India can leapfrog the digital economy phase and be amongst the top players, globally,” he tells Sudhir Chowdhary in a recent interview.

Publication: Financial Express 

Apple has just introduced its brand-new iPad Pro 11-inch and 12.9-inch models that are more feature rich than before and are more powerful as well. To be precise, the new 12.9-inch iPad Pro is in its 4th-generation while the 11-inch model is in its 2nd-generation. Apple, like the last time, is pitching both tablets as a replacement to your laptops for everyday work. And adding to it is the new Magic Keyboard that now comes with a trackpad. So, with the keyboard accessory and the tablet Apple claims to deliver users a similar experience that they get when working on traditional laptops.

Publication: Hindustan Times

Despite launching new iPad Pro models this week, Apple is still on course to launch a 12.9-inch iPad Pro with a mini-LED display later this year. A new supply chain report says that Apple will utilize mini LED in an iPad Pro and the source further claims that this is only the start of Apple adopting this display technology, as the company aims to increasingly deploy it over the next five years, Taiwanese industry publication DigiTimes reported recently.

Publication: Hindustan Times 

AMD has posted a video showing the RDNA 2 ray-tracing capabilities of upcoming video cards – with the technology also found in PS5 and Xbox Series X – and this gives us an idea of the kind of graphic effects we can see in future games. Using Microsoft’s just-announced DirectX 12 Ultimate API, which brings DirectX Raytracing tools, variable-rate shading and more, the video shows advanced lighting effects and reflections, including bells and whistles. Although this is just a technical demo – and in some cases goes a bit overboard with some of the effects – it does show what the Xbox Series X and future AMD Radeon graphics cards can do.

Publication: Compsmag

The main function is DirectX Ray Tracing 1.1, which was developed by Nvidia together with Microsoft and AMD. This upgrade to ray tracing rendering brings better lighting, reflection and shadow effects for a larger number of future games. It is also planned to make some of the current games look better, with Minecraft being one of the great examples.

Publication: Bolly Inside

The Sony PlayStation 5 will come with a custom eight-core AMD Zen 2 CPU clocked at 3.5GHz and a custom GPU based on AMD’s RDNA 2 architecture hardware that goes up to 10.28 teraflops and has 36 compute units clocked at 2.23GHz. Both the CPU and GPU will support variable frequencies. The PS5 is set to have 16GB of GDDR6 RAM and a custom 825GB SSD. Sony promises that the SSD will have super fast load times in games. The PS5 SSD is set to have a bandwidth of 5GB per second while it will have a load time of 2GB in 0.27 seconds.

Publication: BGR India 

The PlayStation 5 is already sounding closer to a gaming PC with impressive specifications that will power the console. From super-fast Solid State Drives (SSD), to new CPU and GPUs by AMD and interesting audio features – the console has a lot going for it. We also know that the console will be able to support up to 8K resolution and higher refresh rates, thanks to the upgraded hardware.

Publication: MensXp

AMD hs finally started to reveal more about their plans for raytracing on their upcoming RDNA 2 graphics cards. Yesterday, AMD released the following video which showcases raytracing via Microsoft’s Direct X API. An interesting thing to note is that this comes right after Microsoft unveiled Direct X 12 Ultimate, which is an updated version of the same API.

Publication: TechQuila

Together with the PLI, the government also announced a scheme for Promotion of Manufacturing of Electronics Components and Semiconductors (SPECS) with an outlay of ~3,285 crore over eight years, and Electronics Manufacturing Clusters (EMC) 2.0 with a budget of of ~3,762.25 crore spread over eight years

Publication: Business Standard

Industry executives say demand for laptops have gone up by 40-45 per cent in the past week mirroring a trend in Europe and other parts of the world. Firms are placing bulk orders with laptop makers such Dell, Acer, HP and Lenovo. “Our services and sales teams, supply chain partners are continuously working together to meet our customers’ demand,” said a spokesperson of Dell.

Publication: The Morning Standard 

Microsoft has announced that the Xbox Series X will be using a custom AMD Zen 2 CPU with eight cores at 3.8 GHz each and a custom AMD RNDA 2 GPU with 12 tera flops and 52 compute units at 1.825 GHz each, coming with 16GB of GDDR6 RAM with a 1TB custom NVME SSD storage drive. Microsoft is targeting overall performance at 4K 60fps, up to 120fps.

Publication: Indian Express