CES 2022 is underway, though there really isn't much of an "in-person" presence this year. Even still, some new tech was announced on the first day that was worth sharing. AMD and Nvidia both announced new releases of their current lineup of Radeon and GeForce cards respectively. Intel announced its first generation of Arc series GPUs.
AMD
AMD announed the Radeon RX 6500 XT. This card will release on January 19 for an MSRP of $199 (USD). Of course, actually finding a card at that price probably isn't going to happen. This card will also sport the RDNA 2 architecture just like the other cards in the 6xxx series. This GPU is targeting lower-spec gaming and is aiming for playable framerates at 1080p resolution at the highest settings.
AMD says that the RX 6500 XT will offer up to 1.6 times the performance of other cards such as AMD's own Radeon RX 570 and Nvidia's GTX 1650. This was shown off in games like Resident Evil Village. Other titles saw smaller gains of 1.2 to 1.4 times the performance of those other cards in games like Apex Legends and Age of Empires 4.
Intel
Intel talked about their first generation discreet Arc series GPUs today. They did not provide any sort of release date outside of "Q1 2022." Specifications and pricing were also not yet revealed by Intel.
They did, however, talk briefly about their Xe Super Sampling (XeSS) technology. This tech was first announced August 2021 when Intel revealed that they were making new GPU hardware. XeSS is essentially Intel's version of Nvidia's DLSS and, to a lesser degree, AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR). The goal of XeSS is similar to that of DLSS and FSR: Offer better performance and possibly better visuals without needing better hardware.
Intel announced some of the games and companies that are already confirmed to be onboard with supporting XeSS in their releases. So far, a total of 13 studios have voiced their support of incorporating their technology into new and upcoming releases. One of those confirmed titles is Death Stranding Director's Cut by Kojima Productions. The full list of studios that are confirmed to support XeSS can be found below.
- Ubisoft
- Kojima Productions
- 505 Games
- Codemasters
- PUBG Studios
- IO Interactive
- Techland
- EXOR Studios
- Fioshlabs
- Hashbane
- Illfonic
- Massive Work Studio
- Wonder People
Nvidia
During Nvidia's livestream, the tech giant showed off a few new pieces of hardware. They announced that they will be making laptop versions of the RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 3070 Ti GPUs. Laptops with the 3070 Ti will start at $1,499 (USD) with the 3080 Ti equipped laptops starting at $2,499. These laptops will start to be out on February 1.
Nvidia also announced the RTX 3050, which will be released on January 27. The MSRP on this one is under $300 (USD) and will offer performance that is greater than the GTX 1650. It will also support DLSS and RTX, though I cannot imagine the framerates while using RTX are going to be all that great with this card.
The RTX 3090 Ti was also announced. It will include 24GB of GDDR6X VRAM and offer 40 teraflops of performance. This makes it about 11% faster than the RTX 3090 non-Ti. A release date was not announced for this card. A price was also not announced but expect it to be a lot. Like a lot a lot. To give you some idea of where the 3090 Ti pricing will start, the Founder's Edition 3090 cards start at $1,499.99, with many partner cards starting at $2,200. These are the prices listed on Best Buy. Scalper prices for these cards on eBay often put them in excess of $3,000.
