Gaming

New RTX 4070 TI Graphics cards from Nvidia and RX 7600 XT

January 27, 2024

microsoft y riot games recortan personal llegan las rx 7600 xt y rtx 4070 ti super y palworld arrasa en steam.jpg

In this weekly summary corresponding to the fourth week of January 2024, we will talk about layoffs in the video game industry , where two large companies (Microsoft and Riot Games) have just announced cuts to their respective gaming divisions. In terms of hardware launches, we have the new RTX 4070 Ti graphics cards from Nvidia and RX 7600 XT from AMD on the market. Likewise, the new Samsung 990 EVO SSDs for gamers and the ROG Strix SCAR 18 (2024) laptops arrive , all this and more in this article.

Table of Contents

Mass layoff of employees by Microsoft in the gaming division

Microsoft has carried out a wave of massive layoffs of workers linked to the video game division. This action that began in 2023 will continue with equal force in 2024, for example, in the coming days the company announced the dismissal of 1,900 employees linked to the world of video games.

Adding Microsoft’s layoffs from the previous year to those of the current year, there are already 5,670 layoffs, and the figure is closer to continuing to grow than to stopping. These massive layoffs – according to experts – are linked to the effects of the post-pandemic, market saturation and the disproportionate distribution of profits.

By way of justification, Microsoft has indicated that it is developing a strategy and execution plan with a sustainable cost structure that will support its entire growing business. In the internal Microsoft statement signed by Phil Spencer, it is added that priorities have been established in pursuit of the best growth opportunities.

With these actions, Microsoft has already reduced the workforce made up of video game developers by 8%, a percentage that is more than possible to increase as the months go by of this year that is just beginning. Among the departments most affected by such numerous cuts are Activision Blizzard, ZeniMax and Xbox, whose physical games division could be in danger of disappearing.

Riot Games also rides the wave of massive layoffs

Microsoft is not the only company making cuts to its workforce, as Riot Games has laid off 500 members of its staff. As a result of these actions, the Riot Forge label has disappeared. In a statement, the company has tried to explain the reasons that caused this avalanche of layoffs that have reduced the payroll in this area by up to 11%. Official figures put the number of workers who have been laid off in the midst of a whirlwind of internal reforms at 530.

The company explains by way of justification that it wants to ‘focus its future on more sustainable projects’ and consequently ignore the less important ones. In Riot Games’ opinion, the changes, in this case layoffs, are necessary to guarantee the future of the company.

In addition to the statement, it could be read that the company plans to focus on four video games in particular in the future, these are: League of Legends, Valorant, Teamfight Tactics and Wild Rift . Among the other projects mentioned are Project L and the premiere of the second season of Arcane scheduled for November of this year.

Some of the franchises’ most important games, still in development, are likely to be delayed due to so many layoffs, and the sustainability levels of others will be affected.

Palworld, the “Pokémon with weapons”, is a surprise success with 2 million players on Steam

In recent weeks there has been a game making a lot of noise in the gaming community, and this is the case for both good and bad reasons. We are talking about the popular Palworld, a kind of mix between Pokémon, Ark Survival and Rust, which is sweeping Steam and Xbox. In this sense, the title developed by Pocket Pair has reached an impressive milestone with more than two million simultaneous players on Steam thanks to its unique formula and viral success. Likewise, in one week it has already sold more than 7 million units , which supports its popularity.

However, the game’s launch has not been free of controversy, with many of its detractors criticizing its undeniable kinship with Pokémon. There are even accusations of stolen models and plagiarism. All of this drama has reached the ears of Nintendo , whose legal team issued a statement to make it clear that they will be investigating the matter. Now, if there is a legal case against Palworld, we don’t know yet, but we’ll keep an eye out if anything worth reporting happens.

Sony CEO envisions its games on mobile PCs and the cloud going forward

The CEO of Sony Group, the Japanese Kenichiro Yoshira, has indicated that PlayStation will continue to be its leading product, however, he anticipates that its games will also be on PC, mobile phones and the cloud. These statements emerged in the middle of an interview conducted by the Norges Bank Investment Management YouTube channel.

In the statements, the CEO made it clear that PlayStation will be everywhere and in different spaces in the future. In summary, he has made it clear that the console will continue to be the flagship of its products, but that they plan to expand the gaming experience on PC, mobile phones and also to the cloud.

In the interview, Kenichiro Yoshira also referred to subscription games and announced that in this field they will have a balanced or hybrid service on PlayStation Network , that is, a subscription that includes payment for content. Likewise, after being questioned about Microsoft’s purchase of Activision, he responded conciliatoryly, alluding that healthy competition contributes to the growth of the video game industry while offering more alternatives to players.

Asus presents the ROG Strix SCAR 18 laptop (2024)

ASUS Republic of Gamers has just presented a new family of laptops for this year 2024, which is characterized by providing elite performance thanks to the use of the best components that money can buy. With that in mind, the flagship model, the ROG Strix SCAR 18, marks a milestone as it is the first 18-inch laptop with Mini LED ROG Nebula Display . It displays a 2.5K resolution with a 16:10 aspect ratio, as well as a 240Hz refresh rate, a typical brightness of 500nits (max 1,100nits) and covers 100% of the DCI-P3 range.

Inside we can expect up to an Intel® Core™ i9 14900HX processor with a TDP of up to 65 W and 24 cores (with 32 threads). As if that were not enough, it can be equipped with up to 64GB of DDR5 RAM at 5,600Mhz and in dual channel, not to mention the internal PCIe Gen 4 SSD storage configured in RAID 0 (maximum 4TB).

The current operating system is Windows 11 Home from Microsoft.

To put the icing on the cake, the top option includes an RTX 4090 graphics card with a maximum TDP of 175W to squeeze every drop out of it in demanding 3D games and applications.

To keep all that power under control, the ROG Strix 2024 family of laptops features a cooling system with Tri-Fan technology, where a third fan helps improve airflow. On top of all that, it consists of Conductonaut Extreme liquid metal instead of conventional thermal paste.

With all this said, the ASUS ROG Strix 2024 laptops are available from €3,699 through the Asus Store and authorized channels.

The RTX 4070 Ti Super is now available

We can already find the new RTX 4070 Ti Super in the Nvidia catalog, which comes with the improved SKU AD103 with 20% more cores, 33% more memory and the same recommended retail price as the base version. Like the model on which it is based, it is a graphics card suitable for high-quality gaming in 1440p and 4K resolutions. It consists of 8,448 cores, 48MB of L2 cache, 16GB of GDDR6 video memory and a 256-bit bus interface. Curiously, the TGP remains at 285W.

Unfortunately, no one is very impressed with this graph, since the performance increase appears to be only 3-5% compared to the non-Ti version (Nvidia promised a 10% increase).

The RX 7600 XT is also available

AMD has also launched a new graphics card, although one aimed at the low-mid range. We are talking about the RX 7600 XT, which is aimed at gaming in 1080p and perhaps 1,440p depending on the title. The week of CES 2024 we talked about all its older brothers, including the factory overclocked variant, but today it is the turn of the base version.

In this regard, the graphics card retains the same core configuration as the RX 7600, but boasts a 2760 MHz clock speed, a 100 MHz increase over the non-XT variant, as well as a 128-bit bus. However, the TDP also increases, to 190W to be exact. Be that as it may, it has 16GB of video memory and that’s a double increase in VRAM, so the higher power consumption is forgivable. According to official data, this GPU delivers 19.42% higher performance than the original version in 1080p resolution, while in 1440p the gap grows to 46%.

Unfortunately for AMD, it seems that sales of this graphics card have been quite low on the day of its launch, something that may be due to the unattractive recommended price ($329 dollars) and the fierce competition.

New Samsung SSD 990 EVO

Samsung announced on January 24, 2024 the new SSD 990 EVO for gamers, creative professionals and power users. This range of NVMe SSDs exhibits up to 43% higher performance than the previous generation (970 EVO Plus), with among its virtues Host Memory Buffer technology, compatibility with PCIe 4.0 x4 / PCIe 5.0 x2 interfaces and Modern Standby.

Samsung advertises sequential read speeds of up to 5,000MB/s and write speeds of up to 4,200MB/s. Likewise, the company talks about up to 700,000 and 800,000 input/output operations per second (IOPS), respectively. With all that in mind, the Samsung 990 EVO are available in 1TB and 2TB capacities.

OVHcloud improves its AI offering with new solutions

OVHcloud has announced a significant improvement in its artificial intelligence offering, launching a series of innovative serverless solutions that integrate high-end GPUs, as well as new Bare Metal servers with GPUs. These new offerings are designed to make AI more accessible and easier to use for organizations of all sizes. With that in mind, OVHcloud is now focused on delivering four key elements:

Powerful compute resources: OVHcloud offers a wide range of high-end GPU instances, from the NVIDIA H100 PCIe to the NVIDIA A10. These GPUs deliver exceptional performance for AI workloads such as machine learning, deep learning, and inference.
Polished data sets: OVHcloud Data Platform is a comprehensive data platform that helps organizations collect, store, manage, analyze and visualize their data. This platform guarantees data security and complies with laws and regulations.
Tools in software form: OVHcloud offers a complete set of serverless tools for AI, from Notebooks for experimenting with data to model training and deployment solutions.
World-class talent: OVHcloud offers a range of resources to help organizations develop their AI skills. These resources include webinars, courses and certifications.