If you’re expecting boffo news from CES 2021, it looks like you won’t have to wait beyond day two, when both AMD and Nvidia are expected to talk up new hardware in back-to-back streams.
AMD will go first on January 12, with a keynote address by CEO Lisa Su at 8 a.m. PST. Su is scheduled to “highlight AMD’s high-performance computing and graphics solutions portfolio and outline the company’s innovative vision for the future of research, education, work, entertainment and gaming.”
Su’s keynote time and date was announced about two weeks ago, but today Nvidia announced a “special broadcast event” timed for 9 a.m. PST on the same day. In it, Nvidia senior VP of GeForce Jeff Fisher is expected to “unveil the latest innovations in gaming and graphics.”
AMD Obviously, no one knows exactly what AMD and Nvidia will announce but there’s been hot and heavy talk of AMD’s much-touted Ryzen 5000 chips making their way into laptops finally. Also expected at CES are Nvidia’s laptop versions of its own much-touted GeForce RTX 30-series GPUs.
With RTX 30-series and Ryzen 5000 being the new hotness for PCs, both of the announcements may actually complement each other for once. Both companies have a long history of feisty competition and stepping on each other’s Jordans intentionally. For example, both have scheduled competing events or events so closely timed at trade shows that reporters are often forced to cut short one to attend the other.
With the virtual nature of CES 2021 though, attending the competitor’s stream shouldn’t be a problem. Unless, of course, AMD’s keynote “unexpectedly” runs long by five minutes or so. If AMD wanted to really shade Nvidia, it might talk up its own Ryzen 5000 CPU paired with its own Radeon RX 6000 mobile GPU just before Nvidia’s stream begins.
You can watch Lisa Su’s keynote here at 8 a.m. PST Jan 12. And then switch over to Nvidia’s stream here at 9 a.m. PST Jan. 12.
Nvidia Intel, the third-bun in the Big Mac of PCs, will actually go live the day before when Gregory Bryant speaks at 1 p.m. PDT on January 11. Bryant runs Intel’s client computing group and the talk is titled “Do more with the power of computing,” but it’s hoped he’ll say more about Intel’s upcoming Tiger Lake H CPU—which is also expected to be paired with Nvidia’s GeForce 30-series early next year.
Intel itself could flex on both AMD and Nvidia with talk of its in-house discrete graphics chip that’s expected to come to laptops soon, as well. You can watch Bryant’s presentation live at 1 p.m. PDT on Jan. 11 here.
Intel