Nvidia, AMD, and Intel all presented their fair share of new products during CES 2024. Which tech giant comes out on top?
Nvidia, AMD, and Intel all unveiled some of the best PC hardware of CES 2024. With plenty of processors for both mobile and desktop, as well as some new graphics cards, the three PC giants came in with plenty to offer — but which one did it best?
We have an interesting lineup from Intel, which expanded its list of top CPUs with chips ranging from the entry-level Core i3 to the high-end Core i9-HX. AMD served up some revolutionary APUs and a new graphics card. Meanwhile, Nvidia did something unprecedented — it actually offered better value in its new GPUs. Let’s compare the three and determine who won this year’s CES 2024.Nvidia: Super cards and lots of AI
By the time CES 2024 came around, Nvidia’s most anticipated announcement was spoiled five times over. I’m talking about the RTX 40-series Super refresh, a trio of graphics cards that was leaked roughly every few weeks for the past few months. However, even though we knew all the specs beforehand, Nvidia still managed to deliver a surprise.
It’s not that the three additions to Nvidia’s list of top graphics cards were any different than we thought. It’s the fact that Nvidia strayed from its previous pricing strategy and actually offered more value instead of just more performance.
When Nvidia unveiled the RTX 4080 Super, the RTX 4070 Ti Super, and the RTX 4070 Super, it also released the prices for these three cards, and therein lies the shocker. While the RTX 4080S only offers about 2 to 5 percent better performance than the RTX 4080, it’s coming out at $1,000, meaning $200 less. That took me entirely by surprise, and this drop in price makes the RTX 4080 Super a great high-end GPU without an overly inflated price tag.
The RTX 4070 Ti Super and the RTX 4070 Super both retain the price of the original models, but each brings performance improvements, with the 4070 Ti Super featuring a much-needed boost in memory — from 12GB to 16GB — while the 4070 Super is up to 15% faster than its predecessor. The top two cards will replace their previous versions, but the RTX 4070 Super will coexist alongside the RTX 4070.
The next-gen RTX 50-series wasn’t mentioned at all, so Blackwell remains a mystery for the time being.
Seeing as every tech company ever created now dabbles in AI, it’s no wonder that Nvidia’s focus is on it, too. It showed a demo of Nvidia’s Ace, an AI tech that lets gamers speak to NPCs and receive custom responses. Ace allows developers to simply upload a character’s backstory and have the language model turn that into custom-generated responses. The demo broke the fourth wall in every way possible, but the tech is certainly impressive.
Nvidia also introduced Half-Life 2 RTX, which brings Nvidia’s RTX treatment to the old classic. Community modders are helping Nvidia bring this project to life, refreshing it with ray tracing and all-new assets. It’s something very close to Nvidia’s Portal RTX. In addition, RTX Remix, a tool that can be used to remaster games with ray tracing, is now set to launch a beta release on January 22.
As far as AI goes, Nvidia talked about how its products will power all sorts of new developments in artificial intelligence, including generative AI, such as chatbots and image generators. Of course, Nvidia Ace is also a big part of that.AMD: The return of the APUs
AMD dipped its toes into GPU territory in its CES 2024 keynote, but the vast majority of it was centered around processors.
