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More than a month after their reveal at CES 2025, I think it's fair to say NVIDIA's 50 series RTX GPUs are a disappointment. Between manufacturing issues, the company's misleading marketing around the 5070 and minimal performance gains over the 40 series, this might be one of NVIDIA's worst releases in recent memory. But the worst part of it all has been watching history repeat itself. Looking back at the last few weeks, I'm reminded of an article I wrote in 2022. The short of it was I bought an RTX 3070 in August of that year, or little more than two years before NVIDIA announced the GeForce 40 series. Plenty of readers rightfully pointed out that I was wrong about the effect the crypto market would have on future pricing, but I think my underlying reasoning was sound. I bought the 3070 when I did because I had a feeling NVIDIA's new GPUs would cost more than their 30 series counterparts and that finding a new card at release for a reasonable price would be nearly impossible. And I was right: 40 series cards were difficult to find at launch. Here we are two years later at the start of a new GPU generation, and we're doing this all over again. If you're just a regular person looking to upgrade your gaming PC, not only is it impossible to find a 50 series GPU in stock anywhere, but nearly every single model is priced far above NVIDIA's suggested price. There's no pandemic to blame this time, so what gives? Devindra Hardawar for Engadget The problem is that trends during COVID set a precedent. Since 2020, some people have been willing to pay whatever it costs to buy NVIDIA new cards at launch. The difference now is that rather than give scalpers the chance to profit on that behavior, NVIDIA's partners have decided to take that money for themselves. The end result is that the company's GPUs are now marked up as high as the market will tolerate, and they will continue to carry outrageous prices as long as supply is limited. It's time we admit the business model at the heart of the GPU industry is broken. For the uninitiated, AIBs (or add-in board partners) like ASUS, Gigabyte, XFX, and Zotac produce the majority of GPUs you can buy from NVIDIA and AMD. In the past, this model led to differentiation between cards in the same tier. For instance, there was a time in the mid-aughts where you could spend extra to buy a GeForce 8800 GT with 1GB of VRAM instead of the 512GB specified by NVIDIA. However, those days are long gone. Modern AIB GPUs can feature slight overclocks or an extra fan but fundamentally they're all the same product. Whether you buy a 5070 directly from NVIDIA or one of its partners, it will still be a 5070. At best, you might see a few percentage point difference in performance if you pick a model with an overclock or additional cooling, and yet pricing can vary dramatically between different AIBs and even within one company's lineup. Digital Foundry's Alex Battaglia said it best in one of the outlet's recent DF Direct episodes. "The AIB model seems, for a lot of cards, like some weird middle man that purely exists to extract more value from the consumer, and doesn't offer valid differentiation for the price increase." Just look at the 5070 Ti. According to NVIDIA's website, pricing starts at $749. However, retailer websites tell a different story. If you visit Newegg, for instance, there's not a single 5070 Ti listed for $749. The most affordable one comes in at $799, with every other option priced above $830. There's even one listed at $920. Needless to say, the 5070 Ti is a very different (and worse) value proposition at $900 than it is at $750. Newegg briefly blamed the Trump administration's recent tariffs on Chinese imports for the inflated price of NVIDIA's new 50 series GPU, and that would have been a plausible explanation if the cost of those cards went up by only 10 percent. NVIDIA seems uninterested in tackling the problem in a meaningful way. So far, the best solution it has offered is a program that gives an unspecified number of US customers the chance to buy a 5090 or 5080 directly from the company. Provided they deliver the performance the company is promising, AMD's new $549 Radeon 9070 and 9070 XT cards will put pressure on NVIDIA to price the 5070 and 5070 Ti more aggressively, but it remains to be seen if AMD will manage to keep the cards in stock and at their suggested retail price. Pricing for this generation's GPUs will normalize eventually, but unless there's a fundamental change to how the industry does business, you can bet all of this will happen again. Just because the industry has always done things this way doesn't mean we should settle for business as usual especially as the status quo gets worse every launch cycle.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/the-gpu-market-is-built-on-a-broken-foundation-143100986.html?src=rss
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Apple has been steadily updating its product lineup over the last year or so to make sure as many devices work with Apple Intelligence as possible. But shockingly enough, the new base iPad now has an A16 chip rather than the A14 in the previous model. That'll certainly provide better performance, but it's not enough for Apple Intelligence. It's an obvious way to differentiate this iPad from the just-updated iPad Air, which now has an M3 chip. The two most recent Air models also work with Apple Intelligence. One nice thing here is that Apple doubled the storage and kept prices the same the 128GB model costs $349, and you can also get it with 256GB or 512GB of storage. It comes in blue, pink, silver and yellow. Besides the A16, much remains the same here, though. The iPad still has a 10.9-inch screen (that they're just calling 11 inches at this point) that lacks some of the niceties you'll find on the iPad Air display like full lamination to the front glass and an antireflective coating. It has basically the same camera array as other non-Pro iPads at this point, a 12-megapixel shooter on both the front and back. There's no Face ID, unsurprisingly you'll need to authenticate with Touch ID on the power button. As with the iPad Air, the new base iPad is open for pre-orders now and will be available on March 12. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/tablets/apple-updates-the-base-ipad-with-an-a16-chip-and-more-storage-141208654.html?src=rss
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It's been less than a year since Apple update the iPad Air, but the company is taking another opportunity to speed things up by adding the M3 chip to the mix. The new iPad Air still comes in 11- and 13-inch sizes and starts at the same price as the prior model $599 for the 11-inch and $799 for the 13-inch. It also works with a redesigned Magic Keyboard, similar to the one Apple introduced last May with the iPad Pro. It's definitely a strange update, given that Apple doesn't typically upgrade its iPads on an annual basis at this point. And an M3 versus the M2 that it had before likely won't make a big difference to most users the iPad Air already worked with Apple Intelligence, and the M-series chip also enables it to use the more advanced Stage Manager multitasking mode. I guess moving to the M3 means Apple can get one step closer to winding down M2 production. Most other specs appear identical to last year's model. The 11- and 13-inch displays are the same resolution and are still stuck at a 60Hz refresh rate, though they are fully laminated to the glass and have an antireflective coating, unlike the screen on the base iPad (which was also just updated). It still uses Touch ID on the power button rather than Face ID, and storage (which starts at 128GB) remains unchanged. As usual, you can get 5G wireless capabilities for an extra $150. Surprisingly enough, Apple cut the price of the updated Magic Keyboard it now starts at $269 for the 11-inch and $319 for the 13-inch, $30 less than before in both cases. It's a lighter and thinner keyboard than the one it replaces, and adds an extremely handy function key row to the top. There are a few differences to the keyboard compared to the iPad Pro model, though. It isn't backlit, and the trackpad doesn't have haptic feedback. Still, it's a definite step up over the older model Apple offered, at a better price as well. That said, it's identical in size to the M2 model, so an older Magic Keyboard should work without issue. Pre-orders start today, and the new iPad Air will ship on March 12. In case you were curious, it looks like it comes in the same four colors as the last model: space grey, starlight silver, purple and blue. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/tablets/apple-updates-the-ipad-air-with-an-m3-chip-and-a-new-magic-keyboard-140525345.html?src=rss
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