If you pay for YouTube Premium, you may have recently come across a new playback option in the bottom-right corner of your screen. YouTube is sneakily testing “1080p Premium,” a video quality option that streams at an enhanced bitrate.
YouTube videos play at 1080p (1,920 pixels horizontally, 1,080 vertically) by default. Free and paid users can adjust playback down to 144p, 240p, 360p, 480p, and 720p60 (720p with 60Hz frame rate), depending on the video they’re watching. YouTube has also added higher-definition options over the last decade: 1080p HD, 1440p HD, and 4K. Together, these choices allow users to tailor their viewing experience based on the device they’re watching on, their internet speed, their comfort, and more.
Over the last few days, Premium users have reported seeing a new 1080p Premium option in the video quality menu. YouTube spokesperson Paul Pennington toldThe Verge that “a small group of YouTube Premium subscribers” can try out the feature, which purports to offer “an enhanced bitrate version of 1080p which provides more information per pixel.” This, Pennington said, creates a higher-quality viewing experience.
Bitrate, or the measurement of how much video data is transferred within a specific timeframe, is often said to be half of what makes up a visually appealing playback experience. YouTube’s standard 1080p option typically plays at eight to 10 megabits per second (Mbps). While YouTube hasn’t said what Mbps 1080p Premium would provide, a Reddit user who took advantage of YouTube’s “Stats for Nerds” tool found the playback mode to run at about 13Mbps—a marked improvement from the standard option, given the massive difference just 3Mbps can provide.
With the news of 1080p Premium, some non-Premium users have expressed concern that YouTube is ditching the standard 1080p option to tempt free users toward its paid subscription. YouTube insists this isn’t the case. According to Pennington, “there are no changes to the existing quality offerings for 1080p (HD) resolution on YouTube.” It’s also important to remember that 1080p Premium is in testing; there’s no guarantee YouTube will roll it out to all Premium subscribers.
Microsoft is reportedly ramping up its efforts to annoy people running Windows 11 on unsupported hardware. The company is adding a watermark to users’ desktops, admonishing them for not meeting Windows 11 requirements. This has long been a huge roadblock for Windows 11 adoption, as it’s only supported on newer PCs. The biggest sticking point is the requirement of a Trusted Platform Module 2.0, which only comes on CPUs made in the past few years. It also has to be enabled in the BIOS, so a newer motherboard is needed too. However, there’s always been workarounds for older PC running Windows 11. Now Microsoft is upping the stakes by trying to bug users of these machines via desktop messages. You can turn it off if you’re comfortable editing the Windows Registry.
It seems Microsoft recently began pushing this message to users that are deploying TPM bypass or another workaround. A user on Twitter flagged it recently as appearing unexpectedly. That user was indeed using the TPM bypass, as their laptop is 15 years old. The blunt message states, “System requirements not met. Go to Settings to learn more.” To be fair to Microsoft, if a system doesn’t support Windows 11, a user might want to know how to get rid of this message. However, according to HotHardware, there’s not much to be gleaned from learning more in Settings. Instead, it says you “might want to consider purchasing a new PC.” Gee, thanks for the advice Microsoft.
Bruh since when did Windows 11 start showing this message? Now my desktop is probably gonna show the same message too as it's also running a TPM bypassed install like this laptop
If you’re seeing this message and have decided not to buy a new PC, here’s how to get rid of the message. We have to insert the usual disclaimer here about the dangers of editing the registry. This is the underbelly of the entire operating system, so proceed with caution. It’s also a good idea to create a System Restore Point before you do it. That will save a copy of the current registry in case things go sideways. With that in mind, here’s what you need to do:
Click on the Start menu and type Registry Editor and open it
Expand HKEY_CURRENT_USER
Navigate to and expand Control Panel
Click the UnsupportedHardwareNotificationCache folder
In the accompanying window pane, right-click the SV2 entry and select Modify
Change the value to “0” then click OK
Reboot your PC
To recap, the official requirements for Windows 11 are as follows: You’ll need an 8th Gen Intel CPU or second-gen AMD Ryzen CPU, at least 4GB of memory, 64GB of storage, and a motherboard that supports UEFI and Secure Boot. Your graphics card has to support DirectX 12. Finally, you’ll need a 9-inch display that supports 720p resolution.
Good afternoon, readers, and welcome to This Week in Space: Your weekly roundup of news from here to the big empty. This week, a lot is going on with SpaceX and the International Space Station. Today we’ll hear those updates, plus a colossal solar flare, ‘beneficiated regolith,’ and a black hole that decided three’s a crowd.
For our fellow sci-fi nerds: This week also marks the 30th anniversary of the beloved sci-fi TV series Babylon 5. The show’s pilot aired on Feb. 23, 1993. Unfortunately, the recent reboot attempt (with J. Michael Straczynski at the helm!) has run aground upon the shoals of studio funding. Even so, we’ll be busting out the DVD box set this weekend.
Russia Launches Replacement Soyuz Capsule to International Space Station
Last December, a micrometeoroid or orbital debris (MMOD) punched a hole in Russia’s Soyuz MS-22 capsule, leaving two cosmonauts and an astronaut without an easy way home. A replacement Soyuz capsule, MS-23, took off for the International Space Station last night (Thursday, Feb. 23) at 7:24 p.m. EST from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. According to a NASA blog update, the uncrewed Soyuz spacecraft is safely in orbit headed for the ISS.
After a two-day journey, MS-23 will dock with the station’s Poisk module at 8:01 p.m. tomorrow (Saturday, Feb. 25). This new Soyuz will replace the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft. NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin would have returned on the Soyuz MS-22, but that MMOD strike wrecked the capsule’s coolant loop. The three crew members will return to Earth on the new Soyuz MS-23 later this year.
The damaged Soyuz MS-22 is scheduled to undock from the station in late March. When it does, it will parachute back to Earth, landing somewhere in Kazakhstan for post-flight analysis by Roscosmos.
…the MS-23 capsule will carry home the astronaut and cosmonauts currently semi-stranded in orbit.
Russia accelerated the launch of the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft to the ISS to Thursday from a shifting target date somewhere in March. MS-23 was supposed to be just another routine crew rotation for personnel on the space station. However, the December coolant leak — and another coolant leak, this one from the Progress-82 cargo capsule docked at the station — set in motion a series of changes to the plan.
MS-23 was supposed to launch later this spring with three crew members on board. However, the MS-22 leak wrecked that schedule and left Prokopyev, Petelin, and Rubio looking for a different ride. Roscosmos determined that the damaged Soyuz could maybe carry two people safely home in the event of some emergency that demanded swift evacuation. In such a situation, Prokopyev and Petelin will entrust their lives to the MS-22 capsule. Rubio would take shelter aboard the four-person SpaceX Crew-5 capsule.
…meanwhile, SpaceX delayed its Crew-6 launch until Monday.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that will carry Crew-6 to the International Space Station is upright on its launch pad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in preparation for its scheduled Monday launch.
(Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky, via NASA HQ Flickr)
“An integrated static fire test and dry dress rehearsal with the crew will occur prior to liftoff,” NASA officials wrote in a blog post. If those tests go well, the rocket will take off Monday morning (Feb. 27) at 1:45 a.m. EST (0645 GMT) from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
Crew-6 is a four-person team, including the first United Arab Emirates astronaut to perform a long-duration mission, Sultan Al-Neyadi; NASA astronauts Warren “Woody” Hoburg and Stephen Bowen; and cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev of Russian space agency Roscosmos.
According to NASA, this mission will be the fourth spaceflight for Bowen, who flew several space shuttle missions between 2008 and 2011. For Hoburg, Alneyadi, and Fedyaev, Crew-6 will be their first spaceflight. The quartet will spend up to six months in microgravity before returning to Earth.
…SpaceX also postponed its Starlink launch, giving priority to the Crew-6 mission.
SpaceX confirmed Thursday that the next batch of Starlink internet satellites will now launch no earlier than Sunday.
The mission, Starlink 6-1, will put another group of SpaceX internet satellites into low-Earth orbit. (Trivia: Their 43-degree orbital inclination with respect to the equator will leave the satellites moving in a nearly perfect sine wave.) It was originally scheduled to launch yesterday from pad 40 at Canaveral aboard a Falcon 9 rocket. However, SpaceX and NASA officials said Wednesday that the Starlink 6-1 mission would be delayed from Thursday to “no earlier than Sunday.” Meanwhile, mission personnel are getting the Crew-6 Falcon 9 rocket ready for takeoff at the KSC.
Calling Ham Radio Operators: NASA Wants Your Help
You all know by now how much we love citizen science. An ‘amateur’ astronomer was instrumental in finding a recent impact that taught us much about what lies beneath Jupiter’s mysterious surface. And NASA also recognizes the great value of citizen scientists. In its most recent outreach, the agency has called on ham radio operators to help study upcoming solar eclipses in 2023 and 2024. From their site:
[Long-distance ham radio] communication is possible due to interactions between our Sun and the ionosphere, the ionized region of the Earth’s atmosphere located roughly 80 to 1000 km overhead. The upcoming eclipses (Oct. 14, 2023, and April 8, 2024) provide unique opportunities to study these interactions. As you and other HamSCI members transmit, receive, and record signals across the radio spectrum during the eclipse, you will create valuable data to test computer models of the ionosphere.
NASA plans to include measurements of the ionosphere and signal-spotting challenges in the eclipse events. Since the nearest eclipse is in October, you’ll have time to get your setup in order. This might also be a great way to bring hands-on science into the classroom once the school year starts. For more information, check out the solar eclipse page on HamSCI.org.
European Space Agency Launches Lunar Farming Study
If humans want to establish a long-term presence on the Moon, we’ll need to figure out how to get food once we’re there. In pursuit of that idea, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced this week that it has begun a year-long study on what it will take to create flourishing farms on the Moon.
My colleague Adrianna Nine writes that the project, “Enabling Lunar In-Situ Agriculture by Producing Fertilizer from Beneficiated Regolith,” will study various ways of extracting minerals from lunar soil for hydroponic farming. Lunar regolith has lots of nutrients, it turns out. Alas, it doesn’t have one crucial component Earthly plants all seem to need — nitrogen.
NASA Working to Develop a Battery That Could Survive on Venus
Venus is a deeply hostile place. Landers we try to drop onto its surface melt into slag, sometimes within minutes. However, NASA is working with a private company to develop a power system that will live on the planet’s oppressive surface for an incredible sixty days. However, not just any power system will do. My colleague Ryan Whitwam points out, “it has to be a battery. You can’t use solar panels due to the planet’s thick atmosphere. A radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) like the one used in the Perseverance rover would produce heat, and Venus is already hot enough to threaten the 22-pound lander.”
Test battery hardware: High-temperature thermal batteries adapted for the Venus surface. (Credit: Dr. Michael Barclay, Advanced Thermal Batteries)
The heat-loving battery is based on the short-lived thermal batteries used in smart missiles, and this technology could be ideal for use on Venus. The 17-cell battery developed by ATB uses a special high-temperature electrolyte that is solid and inert at normal Earth temperatures. When heated to high temperatures, the battery instantly provides high power output, and there’s plenty of heat to spare on Venus.
The Worst Pile-Up Ever: Black Holes Discovered On Collision Course
Make a list of the most destructive phenomena in the universe, and black holes are likely to make an appearance near the top. We’ve learned a great deal about them in recent years, but they still occasionally delight in telling our understanding of physics to go lay an egg. Case in point: According to data from the Chandra Observatory, two black holes in distant dwarf galaxies are on a collision course with each other.
(Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Alabama/M. Micic et al.; Optical: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA)
Many, if not most, galaxies have a supermassive black hole at their core. However, the dwarf galaxies we can see haven’t had black holes at their center — at least, not until now. Researchers have now found two sets of black holes in dwarf galaxies on collision courses, implying the scenario may be more common than we have observed to date.
“Astronomers have found many examples of black holes on collision courses in large galaxies that are relatively close by,” said Marko Micic of the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, who led the study. “But searches for them in dwarf galaxies are much more challenging and until now had failed.”
The researchers overcame the intrinsic difficulty of imaging these far-flung galaxies by combining optical observations from the Canada-France Hawaii telescope with data from the Chandra X-ray observatory and NASA’s Wide Infrared Survey Explorer. The two pairs of colliding black holes are located 760 million and 3.2 billion light-years from Earth, respectively. Both are in the process of merging. Astronomers believe that larger galaxies like the Milky Way formed through the collision of dwarf galaxies, which means we may be watching the same type of merger that gave rise to the Milky Way and its ecliptic: the backbone of night.
Webb Telescope Spies a Legion of Tiny Stars Hubble Couldn’t See
It’s easy to crow about the outstanding clarity of the James Webb space telescope’s vision. I myself have declared the JWST the victor over the Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes, comparing what they see when they look at the same part of the sky. But there’s a use to the comparison beyond gloating. In a recent NASA interview, astronomers tell how they used just such a comparison to find a huge population of cool, dim, low-mass stars with the JWST that Hubble couldn’t detect.
The astronomers explained that Webb is well-suited to finding very cool, low-mass stars of less than 0.1 solar masses. That’s very close to the threshold of mass beyond which a celestial body usually ignites fusion and begins to radiate light as a star. With Hubble, their faint points of light were lost in the noise. However, these small stars are apparently the most numerous in the universe. What we learn from them with the JWST has implications for our understanding of cosmic history.
Scientists Find Gargantuan “Runaway” Supermassive Black Hole
Looking elsewhere in the sky with Hubble, astronomers have spotted a “runaway” supermassive black hole with its own stellar entourage. It appears that the black hole was ejected from its home galaxy. It’s now racing away at ludicrous speed, with dozens of stars trailing in its wake as if it were some great celestial Pied Piper.
Artist’s impression of the runaway black hole as it streaks away from its home galaxy. (Credit: Keio University, via LiveScience)
In a paper recently accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, astronomers present the observation as the first direct evidence that supermassive black holes can be flung from their home galaxies by some titanic force and cast into interstellar space.
The researchers discovered the runaway black hole by the light of its “entourage.” Black holes are invisible against the pure black of the deep sky. However, the researchers spotted a brilliant and unexpected streak of light while using the Hubble Space Telescope to observe the dwarf galaxy RCP 28, which lies about 7.5 billion light-years from Earth.
The next step is to figure out how this could possibly have happened. Pieter van Dokkum, the lead author of the paper, believes that a “gravitational slingshot” threw the black hole out into deep space. “The most likely scenario that explains everything we’ve seen is a slingshot, caused by a three-body interaction,” van Dokkum said. “When three similar-mass bodies gravitationally interact, the interaction does not lead to a stable configuration but usually to the formation of a binary and the ejection of the third body.”
The report is currently available on arXiv, while it awaits peer review and publication.
Skywatchers Corner
Normally we don’t report on solar flares unless they’re big enough to cause significant problems here on Earth. This was the case with a powerful X-class solar flare that released a shockwave on the surface of the Sun last weekend. The shockwave created a “solar tsunami” that experts believe approached sixty thousand miles in height. But the event occurred at a place on the Sun that left the outbound coronal mass ejection (CME) perfectly pointed at the Earth.
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory caught the flare as it happened. (Credit: NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory, via SpaceWeather.com)
The CME “only” scraped past the Earth (instead of slamming into us head-on). However, it was still enough to create a geomagnetic storm that caused serious short-wave radio blackouts Wednesday across a huge swathe of the planet, including the southwestern US. The ion storm also lit up the night with a display of the aurora borealis visible as far south as Michigan and New York.
Amateur radio astronomer Thomas Ashcraft had his telescope pointing right at the sun when the flare let loose — and he caught a recording of the roar of radio noise when the flare hit our atmosphere. “The sun was right in my radio telescope beam when the flare occurred,” said Ashcraft, “and my spectrograph captured the full force of the resulting radio burst.”
Elsewhere in the sky — Monday night (Feb. 27), look to the southwest shortly after sunset. The Moon and Mars are in conjunction, and they will appear less than a degree apart.
Feature image credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky, via NASA HQ Flickr
A team of astronomers has used some of the most powerful telescopes on (and orbiting) Earth to make a first-of-its-kind observation. They’ve spotted a pair of dwarf galaxies containing supermassive black holes on a collision course. Then, they did it again. Yes, two pairs of colliding dwarf galaxies, both extremely distant but at different phases of merging. Scientists hope this discovery can help shed light on how large galaxies like the Milky Way came to be.
A dwarf galaxy is one with less than 3 billion solar masses, about one-twentieth of the Milky Way’s mass. There are plenty of those drifting around in our corner of the universe, including several orbiting the Milky Way. None of them are about to collide, though. The current scientific consensus holds that the large galaxies common today arose from the merger of smaller ones, but ancient galactic mergers are difficult to observe because of their distance. The team, led by astrophysicist Marko Micic from the University of Alabama, got around that by combining data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, infrared observations from NASA’s Wide Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), and optical data from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT).
The orbiting Chandra observatory was particularly valuable in this study as it revealed the black holes, which are becoming more active as the galaxies move toward each other. The disk of super-heated material spiraling toward the event horizon heats up to millions of degrees, causing it to emit X-ray energy. This data pinpointed the colliding dwarf galaxies, and the visible and infrared data showed how the galaxies are interacting as they approach each other.
In the image above, the left composite shows a merger in galaxy cluster Abell 133, about 760 million light-years from Earth. Since the galaxies are in the late stages of merging, it’s been given a single name: Mirabilis, after an endangered species of hummingbird. On the right are the dwarf galaxies Elstir and Vinteuil, which are a reference to the Proust novel “In Search of Lost Time.” These galaxies are still separate, but a bridge of stars and gas has started to form between them. These objects are located in the Abell 1758S cluster some 3.2 billion light-years away.
With these objects identified, astronomers will be able to conduct follow-up observations that will reveal the processes taking place as they merge. In time, both pairs of galaxies will become larger dwarf galaxies with even bigger central black holes. This could cause more draw more small galaxies toward them, resulting in more mergers. Given the time scales involved, we can’t just stare at Elstir and Vinteuil until that happens, but astronomers have other sources of data. The James Webb Space Telescope recently revealed the Sparkler Galaxy, which appears to be a mirror image of a young Milky Way, studded with glowing globular clusters. This, too, could offer insight into how our galaxy evolved over the eons.
We’ve heard about quantum computers for years, but no one has made one better at crunching numbers than a binary machine. Google’s Quantum Engineering team may be on the right track, though. For the first time, the team built a larger quantum computer that didn’t become less accurate. In a few years, we might consider this a significant turning point in the quest to make quantum computers useful.
The promise of a practical quantum computer is alluring — a bit of quantum information (a qubit) can encode more data than just 0 or 1 like a traditional binary computer. That means a quantum computer can, in theory, be much more powerful. However, qubits are sensitive to interference, even from light and temperature variations. This leads to higher error rates that make the output of quantum computers untrustworthy. And the more qubits you add, the higher the error rate.
However, Google’s quantum engineering team says there may be light at the end of the tunnel. In the latest experiment, engineers have used quantum error correction to reduce the error rate while also making the quantum array larger. Google’s engineers group individual qubits in arrays of 49 to form a single logical qubit. In the past, Google worked with groups of 17 qubits, but the new 49-qubit design demonstrated a lower error rate.
According to Google, this is the first time anyone has scaled a logical qubit without increasing the error rate. This could be an important milestone on the way to a practical quantum computer. Google cites potential use cases like modeling new molecules for medical uses, refining battery technology, and designing power-generating fusion reactors.
Creating a larger logical qubit with a lower error rate is a big step in that direction, but the hardware and software that goes into quantum computing must first improve. Google is looking toward upgrades in control electronics and cryogenics to move us in the right direction, and the materials that go into the company’s Sycamore 2 quantum chips will be refined. That could get us to a place where quantum computing has real-world uses, and Google says it’s already planning for that day. The company is working with government agencies and the larger security community to ensure that internet traffic and Google’s cloud services remain secure in a world of robust, scalable quantum computers.
Banks are continuously coming up with new ways to verify customers’ identities. Before biometrics allowed people to access their accounts from home, banks required customers to show their driver’s licenses or sign a paper or digital pad to compare the signature with the one on file. Now most of us can access our balances, make transfers, and complete other virtual banking tasks with a quick Face ID scan, a fingerprint scan, or by speaking a specific phrase out loud.
One little problem: The latter option is easy to exploit. Vice Motherboard’s Joseph Cox successfully “broke into” his own bank account this week using a readily available AI voice generator, which mimicked Cox’s voice well enough that the bank’s voice-based biometric security system didn’t raise a red flag.
Cox started with a free voice creation service from Eleven Labs, an AI company founded by a former Googler focusing on “realistic and versatile” speech. He recorded five minutes of his own speech and uploaded it to Eleven Labs’ software, which used the recordings to create a synthetic voice. Cox could type in whatever he wanted the synthetic voice to say, then download those snippets as audio files. Among the phrases he procured were “Check my balance” and “My voice is my password.”
Cox called his bank—Lloyds Bank in the United Kingdom—and played the files corresponding with these phrases as the automated teller walked him through its security checks. To Cox’s disbelief, the system perceived the synthetic voice as his own and allowed him access to his balance, recent transfers, and other information.
Lloyds Bank is far from the only bank to use voice verification. (Image: Nick Sarvari/Unsplash)
“Some banks tout voice identification as equivalent to a fingerprint, a secure and convenient way for users to interact with their bank,” Cox writes in his description of the hack. “But this experiment shatters the idea that voice-based biometric security provides foolproof protection in a world where anyone can now generate synthetic voices for cheap or sometimes at no cost.”
A glaring vulnerability like this doesn’t just spell danger for unsuspecting randoms; it also presents real risks for victims of financial abuse, who’d otherwise keep balances and transactions private from toxic partners. Cox notes that while bad actors would need a victim’s date of birth to break into an account (he had to type his own into his phone), such information is readily available online, thanks to social media, data breaches, and data brokers.
Between Wells Fargo’s “Voice Verification” system and Chase’s “Voice ID,” large banks tend to assure their customers that voice-based security systems are secure and effective. When Cox informed his bank that he’d been able to access his account with a synthetic voice, a spokesperson responded that Lloyds Bank’s system provided “higher levels of security than traditional knowledge-based authentication methods.” Wells Fargo and Chase didn’t respond to related inquiries.
At that point, there’s only one small comfort: Voice verification is usually an option that can be disabled, much like Face ID. With the proliferation of AI-based imitation technology as of late, it might be best to turn that feature off.
AMD and Nvidia have come under fire for their respective GPU prices. Both companies have only launched high-end cards and they’re understandably pricey. Still, not everyone can pay $800 or more for a GPU. The remedy to this situation is a midrange model, but neither company has revealed plans for those yet. It’s anticipated that Nvidia will launch the RTX 4070 in March at GTC, but it’ll still be a $500 card. Since AMD has historically undercut Nvidia on pricing, it’s widely expected that its midrange RDNA 3 GPUs will be the first affordable GPUs in the current generation. However, a new report indicates they might not be available for a very long time.
AMD is developing three midrange GPUs: RX 7800, RX 7700, and RX 7600. A total of seven RDNA 3 GPUs have appeared in a post on the Chinese forum MyDrivers. Two are confirmed to be the current RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT. Even though they might exist currently, sources indicate they’re being delayed until June 2023. That’s when China has one of its most significant shopping events of the year, called 618. It takes place on June 18, and it’s like our Black Friday. Apparently, AMD is waiting for this event to launch them simultaneously and hopefully sell many GPUs.
Discrete Desktop GPU shipments over time. (Image: JPR/Tom’s Hardware)
As Wccftech notes, this is a risky strategy if true. It’s an unprecedented gap between launches and comes when the gaming industry is begging AMD and Nvidia for more affordable GPUs.
It’s possible engineering reasons are behind the company’s plans. AMD had a widely reported issue with the vapor chamber on some of its Radeon RX 7900 XTX cards. We are still unsure how many cards were affected by that manufacturing snafu. AMD is reportedly offering RMAs to affected customers, but it might have led the company to take a second look at its partner XTX’s capabilities.
A second poster on MyDrivers points to other engineering issues for the delay. AMD has seen what Nvidia’s upcoming RTX 4070 and RTX 4060 can theoretically do and thinks it can’t compete. This has caused it to go back to the drawing board to polish the silicon and drivers. Specific topics of investigation include power consumption and thermals.
Despite the alleged delay, it’s also reported that AMD wants to compete on price-to-performance in the midrange. That is, after all, the vast majority of what gamers buy. GPUs in the $150 to $250 price range have always reigned supreme at the top of the Steam survey. The GTX 1060 is still at the top of the rankings despite being released in 2016. If Nvidia continues its trend of stratospheric pricing for Ada Lovelace GPUs, it’s giving AMD a big opening to exploit. Now the question is simply whether AMD can take advantage of it.
