The biggest PC news from January 2022: GPUs and controversy

January was a big month for PC. Starting with the biggest technical program of the year, we have seen new graphics cards, laptops, monitors and everything in between. January was a month of new products, but also had unprecedented levels of dispute, and these eight new stories tell.

We scored the most important news stories from January 2022 so that you can gain momentum on all the announcements you can miss.

RX 6500 xt is actually a laptop gpu

The budget graphics cards were prescribed to return after CES 2022, which was done by $ 199 RX 6500 XT of AMD. It was established for success. AMD stated that the card was the most constant clock speed so far, and this was the first time that the team was using the 6Nm manufacturing process on the Red Desktop Graphics Card.

But then our hopes crashed back on Earth. The card performs very rarely, even considering its list price. Graphics cards that are three or four years old, perform better in many cases, despite the low cost on the second hand market. The situation is so bad that we scored three graphics cards that are better than the RX 6500 XT, and some of them are about five years old.

The climax of this story is that RX 6500 XT is actually a laptop GPU. An AMD employee took to the foreonics forums to explain that RX 6500 XT was designed to go with AMD's new Rvenie 6000 mobile EPUS, which tells about all fruitless design decisions. Yikes.

Folding laptop makes a comeback

CES 2020 was considered to be the year of folding laptop, in which Lenovo first made a foldable laptop debut. Two years later, folding laptops are making a big comeback. Intel recently unveiled a foldable display specification for a laptop in 2022, and some designers have already working machines.

One of those machines is Asas Zenbook 17 folds, which we had a chance to demo earlier this month. This is a great concept, but it is still not ready for prime time because there are many designs of disappointment. While the 2022 folding laptop can be the year, the folding laptop still needs to learn from folding phone mistakes, as our senior mobile writer explains as Andy Boxol.

Samsung knows those mistakes very well, which is why we are especially excited about the Samsung Flex Note. This is still a concept, but the machine feels that Samsung seems to take knowledge with foldable phones and apply it to the laptop. We do not yet have information about the machine, but hopefully it will come this year.

Intel expands the 12th-Gi Elder Lake

Intel launched its 12th-jewelery Lake platform last November, but only in the soul. We had a small CPU's low in the release, led by Core i9–12900K. January occurred when Intel expanded the 12th-Jegery Elder Lake to the mobile and filled the rest of the desktop range.

We had a chance to test the flagship mobile chip later in the month. The core i9-12900hk is the fastest mobile processor we have tested, easily beating Apple's M1 Pro and AMD competitor Ryzen 95900h. Intel announced that the 12th-Jews Elder Lake processor would be available in more than 100 laptop designs by the end of the year.

This is very good, but this news is a bit sour with the other announcement of Intel in January: more 12th-gene desktop CPU. There are some standouts, but most of the new desktop processors dig up hybrid architecture, making the Elder Lake so impressive to start.

Nobody said for this: RTX 3090 ti

NVIDIA announced two new graphics cards in CES 2022: RTX 3050 and RTX 3090 ti. RTX 3050 is a great budget GPU, but RTX 3090 ti? No one said for this card, we still know very little about when it will be launched and seriously, how much it will cost.

Although there are signs. January brought rumors about the Supreme X version of MSI's GPU, which is said to have cost $ 4,500 and require a 1,000-watt power supply. This may not be true, but we have already seen half a dozen rumors about RTX 3090 ti drawing 500W power or more.

We are not eager for a new Hello product when finding a midrange graphics card in stock is still so difficult. Reports suggest that NVidia has stopped the production of RTX 3090 TI, so we cannot hear more about this graphics card for some time.

Samsung hits big with display

Samsung won the CES this year with the announcement of Samsung Arc. It is a 55-inch QD-Oled Gaming Monitor with a unique twist: a stand that allows the display to completely vertical. We saw the monitor in the show, and this is the final gaming display. The form factor is interesting, but enables wireless control dial multitasking, different aspects in ratio and picture-in-picture.

The arch is so impressive that this is another amazing achievement Samsung achieved this month: at 4K at 240Hz. We saw a dozen 4K monitors with high fresh rates at CES, but Samsung Odyssey Neo G8 expelled them all from the water. It is the first 4K display with a 240Hz refresh rate, and it sets a new standard for high-end gaming monitors.

Samsung announced a suit of other products in January, including a gaming hub that can launch a popular gaming app directly on your TV or monitor.

Nvidia forgets about 12GB RTX 3080

NVIDIA announced the RTX 3050 and RTX 3090 TI in January, but a third GPU also came last month. The 12GB RTX 3080 quietly launched a week after CES, such as Nvidia forgot to mention that it was starting a new major in the biggest technical program of the year.

There was a reason for that. NVIDIA quietly launched a card without a review, and although NVIDIA did not set a list price, board partners are selling cards for much more than RTX 3080. It is not good that we did not get a major performance improvement in our 12GB RTX 3080 review.

It seems that this 12GB model was a way to increase the base value of RTX 3080 after the GPU shortage ended. Compared to the 10GB model, which is cheaper in many cases, does not do much for additional video memory performance.

Dale messes up with a fan-pasted design

It is no secret that we like Dell XPS 13 in digital trends here. It has consistently organized a crown for the best laptops that you can buy. But Dell messed up with the design this month. Dell XPS13 Plus invites disputes with an aluminum finish around the body, no headphone jack, and a function row is fully made of capacitive touch buttons.

The new design is a departure for Go-to-Thin-And-Light Laptop over the years. Our resident laptop expert, Mark Copock, argues that changes are for the best, allowing Dell to innovate a product that has become stale in the last few releases. We have to wait yet, though. XPS 13 Plus is expected to come in the first few months of 2022.

Nvidia's hand deal is all dead

In 2020, Nvidia announced that it planned to buy a chipmaker arm for about 40 billion dollars. ARM is behind chip design in hundreds of billions of devices, including most phones and smart home products. After announcing the acquisition, Nvidia was met with the Antitrest Probe, which was at the climax with a case from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in December 2021.

This suit may be the last nail in the coffin. This month, sources confirmed that Nvidia was leaving the deal with the hand. NVIDIA has not announced any announcement, but with the report of the company's deal and a pending trial, it can be dead.