We're just a few weeks away from the biggest tech jamboree of the year, the Consumer Electronics Show, or CES. 130,000 visitors and 3,500 vendors are expected to descend on Las Vegas' sprawling complex of exhibit centers and trade show floors for the event, which kicks off on January 9.
Among them is our very own Jacob, who fights through the hordes to bring you the very best PC gaming technology from the show. But what exactly will he find at CES 2024?
Everything AI, all at once
Sure. I heard you like AI. So we took some AI and made it intelligent and artificial, and then ran it all through a big language model. Probably. In short, if you don't like AI, stay away from CES 2024. It will be everywhere. Actually, that's Intel's marketing slogan that will be beaten to death at CES, literally "AI Everywhere."
The rest of the tech giants will almost certainly have an AI message to sell as well. How much of this translates into tangible products and benefits in the real world, especially for PC gaming, remains to be seen.
Nvidia super formats
Of the big sounds in PC tech, Nvidia will likely be the only one to roll out something truly new in the form of 'Super' brand updates for its existing RTX 40 series gaming graphics cards.
We've killed the rumors, but we expect an RTX 4070 Super, and RTX 4070 Ti Super, and an RTX 4080 Super. Of the three, the RTX 4070 Ti Super promises to be the biggest step forward. That's because it's rumored to make the jump from Nvidia's AD104 chip to the larger AD103 GPU, the latter currently used by the RTX 4080.
The RTX 4070 Super and RTX 4080 Super are believed to be smaller upgrades that use the same silicon as existing non-Super GPUs. Perhaps just as important is the question of what will happen to those existing GPUs. Will they disappear? Or can they get a price reduction?
Anyway, what you won't see are Nvidia's next-generation Blackwell GPUs, likely branded RTX 50-s Series. They won't appear until late 2024 and perhaps early 2025.
The story continues
Could Nvidia be the latest outsider to start talking about the rumored ARM CPU for PCs at CES? 2024 is the year we expect a serious move in high-performance ARM chips for PCs, so it's as good as it gets.
The deep impact of Intel Meteor Lake
You've seen the previews, but CES should see a slew of Meteor Lake-based laptops all touting Intel's new chip. Early previews of the new chip are a bit disappointing. But perhaps Intel can make a bigger impact with Meteor Lake and the new Core Ultra series of laptop CPUs at CES.
More broadly, Intel will expand Meteor Lake's AI capabilities under the "AI Everywhere" banner during CEO Pat Gelisgner's CES keynote. Will we see some great new apps that take advantage of the NPU in Meteor Lake? Maybe, but more likely are a few somewhat mediocre tech demos running something like local AI image generation on the NPU and then a lot of positive but vague sentiments about the transformative power of AI.
Everything AMD FSR in one go?
Sorry for the repeated joke, but AMD has already announced that its FSR 3 upscaling technology is going open source, making it easier for anyone to add support, including community-based modders. You could argue that FSR really needs more polish and work from AMD itself, and not more games with somewhat crude scaling support.
Speaking of more refinement, AMD has announced more games with FSR 3 support and the addition of variable refresh support for its smooth motion graphics generation technology within FSR 3. So there's more internal work going on as well. Expect AMD to detail further improvements to FSR 3 at CES.
AMD will also be making an AI pitch courtesy of its new Hawk Point laptop chip, which is basically just the excellent Phoenix chip already used in everything from laptops to gaming handhelds. That's probably fine, because it's a great chip. Anyway, it's called the Ryzen 8000 series, which is a bit misleading but includes the same AI-accelerating NPU as existing Ryzen 7000 laptop APUs, allowing AMD to make that all-important AI pitch at CES.
Finally, there's a slim chance that AMD will release a refreshed version of its N31 GPU, as seen in the Radeon RX 7900 XT and XTX graphics cards, to tackle Nvidia's Super Series graphics. If so, it will be the same silicon working a little faster, and not really anything new.
Qualcomm's new killer CPU
We don't expect to actually be able to buy a laptop with Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X Elite Arm-powered CPU until June. But there is a good chance that Qualcomm will show some devices with the chip at CES.
Snapdragon X Elite appears to have competitive processing power compared to the best x86 CPUs from Intel and AMD, but could offer much better efficiency. Think of it as bringing something like the balance of performance and efficiency of Apple's M-series chips to the PC and you'll have about the right idea.
With Nvidia and possibly AMD also expected to bring Arm-powered CPUs to PC in the coming year, the PC's long-awaited transition from x86 to Arm could be just around the corner and CES 2024 could be a major anchor point . the route.
Ole, ole, OLED
Expect to see a lot of new OLED gaming monitors at CES. An important new segment will be the 32-inch 4K models that use both LG and Samsung OLED panels. However, with the news that TCL is also launching production of its own OLED panels for monitors, it will be interesting to see if any new definitive monitor products will emerge in the 32-inch 4K space based on TCL's new , low-cost inkjet printed OLED technology. will be shown at CES.
We also hope to see many new gaming laptops with OLED screen technology from many major brands.
TeeVee technology
CES also introduces a host of new TV technology and model ranges. For us, they are especially interesting because the panel technology you see in these new TVs usually finds its way to PC monitors sooner or later.
Hopefully CES 2024 will see progress from OLED panels in terms of full-screen brightness. We'd also like to see some new, cheaper displays that use microLED technology, but that's likely years away.
Cooler running PCIe 5 SSDs
As we reported, Phison has a new fanless PCIe Gen 5 controller for SSDs. It's not as fast in terms of peak throughput as its existing controller, the hot and hungry E26, but critically it can run without the need for active cooling. CES should see numerous drives with the new chip debut.
Silicon Motion has its own new PCIe 5 SSD controller in the works and it's claimed to be at least 30% more power efficient than the Phison E26, while offering essentially the same bandwidth. It's not clear if the Silicon Motion controller will require active cooling for peak performance, but maybe we'll find out at CES.
Weird and crazy prototypes
Of course, it wouldn't be CES without some weird and wacky prototypes. In 2008, Alienware stunned the world with a prototype curved PC monitor with an ultra-wide 21:9 aspect ratio. Can you imagine something like that?
Actually, it used DLP rear projection at the time, so it was really weird, even by today's standards. But it certainly offered a glimpse of the future. Just like the portable gaming PC that Alienware showed off at CES 2020. It looks exactly like the recent crop of AMD-powered handhelds, including the Asus RoG Ally.
2017 saw a Razer laptop with three screens, while more prosaic concepts included new case and motherboard form factors and new cooling technologies. Last year was all about foldable screens, so it will be interesting to see what themes emerge in the 2024 show. How about a laptop PC that can successfully sleep without draining or staying on the battery to hang? That would be an engineering marvel!
Oh and while you wait for this year's show, check out our preview from last year to see how much we got right...
