by We’re just weeks away from the biggest tech jamboree of the year, the Consumer Electronics Show or CES. 130,000 attendees and 3,500 vendors are expected to descend on the sprawling complex of exhibition centers and exhibition floors across Las Vegas for the event, which opens on January 9.
Among them will be our very own Jacob, fighting through the comers to bring you the best PC gaming tech from the show. But what exactly will it get at CES 2024?
Everything AI, all at once
Hello. You heard like AI. So we took some AI and made it intelligent and artificial and then ran it all through a big language model. Probably. Basically, if you are not in AI, steer clear of CES 2024. It will be everywhere. Actually, that’s the Intel Marketing tag line hammered to death at CES, literally “AI Everywhere”.
The rest of the tech giants will almost certainly have an AI message to sell as well. It remains to be seen how much any of this translates into tangible products and benefits for the real world, especially for PC gaming.
Nvidia super sizes
Of the big noises in computer technology, Nvidia is likely to be alone in rolling out something truly new in the form of “Super” branded updates to its existing line of RTX 40 gaming graphics cards.
We’ve done the rumors to death, but we’re expecting an RTX 4070 Super, and an RTX 4070 Ti Super, and an RTX 4080 Super. Of those three, the RTX 4070 Ti Super promises to be the biggest step forward. That’s because it’s rumored to switch from Nvidia’s AD104 chip to the larger AD103 GPU, the latter of which the RTX 4080 currently uses.
The RTX 4070 Super and RTX 4080 Super are considered smaller upgrades using the same silicon as existing non-Super GPUs. Perhaps the equally important question is what will happen to those existing GPUs. Will they go away? Or could they get a pricey haircut?
Either way, what you won’t see are Nvidia’s next-generation Blackwell GPUs, likely branded as the RTX 50-s Series. They won’t appear until at least late 2024 and possibly early 20225.
Finally, could Nvidia start talking about its rumored ARM CPU for PCs at CES? 2024 is the year we expect to see serious movement on high-performance ARM chips for PCs, so it’s almost possible.
Deep impact Intel Meteor Lake
You’ve seen the previews, but CES should see a series of Meteor Lake-based laptops all touting Intel’s new chips. Early previews of the new chip are a bit underwhelming. But perhaps Intel can make a bigger impact with Meteor Lake and the new Core Ultra Series of laptop CPUs at CES.
More broadly, Intel will be expanding Meteor Lake’s AI capabilities under its “AI Everywhere” banner during CEO Pat Gelisgner’s CES keynote. Will we see awesome new apps to take advantage of the NPU in Meteor Lake? Maybe, but more likely a few slightly meh tech demos running something like local AI image generation on the NPU and then a load of positive but vague views about the transformative power of AI.
Everything AMD FSR, all at once?
Sorry for the repeat gag, but AMD has already announced that its FSR 3 upscaling technology is going open source, making it easier for anyone to add support, including community-based modders. You could argue that what FSR really needs is more polish and work from AMD itself, not a load more games with scaling support that’s a little rough around the edges.
Speaking of more polish, AMD is announcing more games with FSR 3 support and adding variable refresh support to its fluid motion frame generation technology within FSR 3. So, more in-house work is also underway . Expect to see further improvements to FSR 3 at CES from AMD.
AMD will also be making an AI pitch courtesy of its new Hawk Point laptop chip, which is actually just the flagship Phoenix chip already used in everything from laptops to gaming handhelds. That’s probably okay, because it’s a great chip. Anyway, it’s branded Ryzen 8000 series, which is a bit misleading, but it features the same AI-accelerated NPU as existing Ryzen 7000 laptop APUs, allowing AMD to improve that all-important AI pitch. do at CES.
Finally, there’s a tiny chance that AMD may spin out an updated version of its N31 GPU, as seen in the Radeon RX 7900 XT and XTX graphics cards, to take on Nvidia’s Super Series graphics. If so, it will be the same silicon running a little faster, not really a new thing.
Qualcomm’s new killer CPU
We don’t expect to be able to buy a laptop with the new Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite Arm-powered CPU until June. But it is unlikely Qualcomm will show some devices running the chip at CES.
Snapdragon X Elite looks to have competitive processing power compared to the best x86 CPUs from Intel and AMD, but could offer much better efficiency. Think of it as something like bringing the balance of performance and efficiency of Apple’s M series chips to the PC and you’ll have roughly the right idea.
With Nvidia and possibly AMD also expected to bring Arm-powered CPUs to the PC in the first year or so, the PC’s long-awaited move from x86 to Arm just hit us and CES 2024 could be a major punctuation point. the way.
Ole, ole, OLED
Expect to see plenty of new OLED gaming monitors at CES. 32-inch 4K models using LG and Samsung OLED panels will be the new flagship. However, with the news that TCL is also giving up its own OLED panels for monitors, it will be interesting to see if there are any new high-end monitor products in the 32-inch 4K space based on TCL’s new low-cost OLED inkjet printed technology. They are shown at CES.
We also expect to see many new gaming laptops with OLED screen technology from many of the major brands.
TeeVee tech
CES also debuts new technology ranges and TV models. For us, they’re mostly interesting because the panel technology seen in these new TVs usually finds its way into PC monitors sooner or later.
CES 2024 is expected to see a breakthrough from OLED panels in terms of full-screen brightness. We’d also love to see some new, lower-cost displays using microLED technology, but that’s probably years away.
PCIe 5 SSDs running cooler
As we reported, Phison has a new PCIe Gen 5 fanless controller for SSDs. It’s not as fast in terms of peak throughput as the existing controller, the hot and hungry E26, but crucially it can be run without the need for active cooling. CES should see a lot of drives with the new chip debut.
Silicon Motion has its own new PCIe 5 SSD controller in the works and is claimed to be at least 30% more energy efficient than the Phison E26 while offering essentially the same bandwidth. It’s unclear if the Silicon Motion controller needs active cooling for peak performance, but we may find out at CES.
Weird and whacky prototypes
Of course, it wouldn’t be CES without some weird and whacky prototypes. Back in 2008, Alienware presented the world with a prototype curved PC monitor with an ultrawide 21:9 aspect ratio. Could you imagine such a thing?
Actually, back then it used DLP rear projection, so it was really weird, even by today’s standards. But it certainly gave a glimpse of the future. As did the handheld gaming PC that Alienware showed off at CES 2020. It seems to be the case recently for AMD-powered handhelds including the Asus RoG Ally.
2017 saw the triple-screen Razer laptop, while more prosaic concepts include new case and motherboard form factors, and new cooling technologies. Foldable screens were all the rage last year, so it will be interesting to see what themes emerge at the 2024 show. How about a laptop that can successfully sleep without draining its battery or hanging up? Now that would be a technical marvel!
Oh and while you’re waiting for this year’s show, why not check out our preview from last year and see how well we did…
