Laptop Batteries, Chargers and AC Adapters

Intel is still the leading CPU manufacturer worldwide, but the competition in 2022 is fiercer than ever.

The rapid recent rise of AMD is reflected in the excellent Ryzen 6000 Series, while Apple has successfully moved away from Intel and embraced its own silicon.

After an underwhelming lineup of Rocket Lake desktop CPUs last year, Intel was under pressure to respond. The company has done just that, with the shift to a new hybrid delivering significant improvements.

The first Alder Lake CPUs were released towards the end of 2021, but in the last few months we’ve really seen Intel show its hand. Dozens of chips are now available for desktops and built into laptops, but new processors continue to be announced. Here’s everything you need to know about Intel’s 12th-gen CPUs.

When were Intel Alder Lake CPUs released?
Intel confirmed the Alder Lake name and some key specs back in January 2021 at CES, but we had to wait until 27 October for any CPUs to actually be announced.

That was the Alder Lake-S series for desktops, but loads more processors were announced at CES 2022 on 4 January. A total of 22 new desktop CPUs were added to the lineup, alongside mobile chips split into three key categories: H-Series (enthusiast), P-Series (thin and light laptops) and U-Series (more affordable devices).

Many have already made their way into 2022 laptops, but Intel’s not done there. A new high-end HX Series was announced on 10 May, with new mobile workstations powered by them expected in the coming months.

During the announcement, Intel teased that even more CPUs could be released prior to 13 th -gen Raptor Lake arriving later this year.

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After Fortnite developer Epic Games took on the behemoth that is Apple by trying to circumvent its in-app purchase system back in 2020, the hugely popular game was booted off the App Store – much to the dismay of mobile gamers around the world.

An epic court case ensued, pun intended, and after months of courtroom chatter, Apple largely came out the winner. It meant that Apple was under no obligation to allow Fornite to return to the App Store, and it didn’t.

While many assumed that was the end of it, Nvidia and Epic Games had other plans in store, and today is the day that Fortnite officially returns to the iPhone and iPad.

Well, maybe not officially, as you can’t go to the App Store and download the app.

Instead, you can play Fortnite using Nvidia’s cloud-based game streaming service, GeForce Now, which is accessible via the Safari browser on all iPhones and iPads.

There are premium subscriptions available, but there’s also a free tier that allows you to play a variety of your favourite PC games free of charge for up to an hour at a time, so there’s no need to pay for access.

You’d be right to point out that Fortnite has been available on GeForce Now – and competing apps like Xbox Cloud Gaming – for some time. What makes this different, however, is that it’s a mobile-optimised version of the game complete with full touchscreen controls, just like it used to be.

Essentially, today’s release brings Fortnite as close to the native iOS experience as iPhone and iPad players will likely ever get. It’s just as responsive too, thanks to a combination of Nvidia’s impressive low-latency cloud tech, direct collaboration with Epic Games and, of course, a thorough beta testing period that saw over 500,000 participants join in the fun.

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Qualcomm has unveiled two new chipsets to power high-end mobile phones, including its new top-tier offering: the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1.

The 8+ Gen 1 is one of Qualcomm’s typical mid-cycle refreshes, in this case upgrading on last December’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1.

The core of the chip remains unchanged, but the CPU’s prime core has been overclocked to 3.2GHz – up from 3GHz – resulting in a 10% increased in CPU performance. That’s matched by a further 10% improvement to the GPU, and both benefit from a 30% improvement to power efficiency.

Those upgrades won’t be enough to see the 8+ Gen 1 catch up to Apple’s A15 Bionic on pure performance, but should further cement Qualcomm as the dominant chip provider for high-end Android phones.

Brands including Xiaomi, Asus ROG, Realme, and Motorola have already committed to using the upgraded chip, which is expected to appear in the likes of the ROG Phone 6, Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 and Fold 4, and Xiaomi 12 Ultra.

Alongside the 8+ Gen 1, Qualcomm also revealed the 7 Gen 1 – its first mid-range chip since the company adopted the new ‘Gen’ branding.

Like the 8+ Gen 1, this is a 4nm chip, and uses roughly the same CPU structure – though clocked slower at 2.4GHz on its prime core.

It’s powerful enough to drive FHD+ displays at 144Hz – or QHD+ screens at 60Hz; can record 4K HDR video at up to 30fps with up to 200Mp photo capture; and boasts gaming features like Variable Rate Shading, the Adreno Frame Motion Engine, and over 20% faster graphics rendering than last year’s Snapdragon 778G.

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After years of success in China, and slow but steady progress in Europe and the rest of Asia, chipset manufacturer MediaTek has clearly set its sights on the US smartphone market with its first ever mmWave 5G chipset: the Dimensity 1050.

While MediaTek already offers several 5G chipsets to smartphone manufacturers, all so far have been limited to sub-6GHz frequencies. The Dimensity 1050 breaks that trend by supporting sub6 along with mmWave, a different frequency band that’s currently only widely used in the US. Support is often set as a requirement by key US carriers to stock manufacturers’ 5G phones.

Despite arguably boasting MediaTek’s most advanced networking yet, the Dimensity 1050 isn’t actually the company’s top-tier chip – that remains the Dimensity 9000. Instead, this is a cheaper offering built on a 6nm process, intended to even sit below the recently announced Dimensity 8000 and 8100 in the MediaTek lineup.

Expect it to appear in mid-range Android phones, with specs including support for 144Hz displays, 108Mp cameras, and Wi-Fi 6E connections.

For those who care about CPU construction, the 1050 uses two A78 performance cores clocked at 2.5GHz, and a further six A55 efficiency cores.

MediaTek hasn’t yet confirmed any specific manufacturers that intend to use the Dimensity 1050, but says the first phones should arrive some time in Q3, meaning July to September this year.

That means phones will begin to arrive after the first handsets using the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1, the similarly positioned rival chip from Qualcomm, announced just last week. Honor, Oppo, and Xiaomi have already committed to using the Qualcomm chip, and it will be interesting to see if MediaTek can attract a similar calibre of OEM – or, as it’s no doubt hoping, companies like Motorola and OnePlus that have a foothold in the US market.

Alongside the 1050 MediaTek also announced two cheaper smartphone chips. The Dimensity 930 is a similar 6nm chip, with the same CPU cores but clocked at a slower 2.2GHz – and while it’s 5G-capable, it lacks mmWave support. Expect to see this chip in more affordable mid-rangers – its predecessor, the Dimensity 810, was used in the likes of the Vivo V23 and the Indian version of the Realme 9 5G.

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It’s hard to believe that AMD released its very first Ryzen CPUs as recently as 2017. They were based on a new Zen architecture, built from the ground up in the five years prior to release. Looking back, this was a defining moment for AMD, and the future of laptop and desktop chips more widely.

In the five years since, we’ve seen six generations of Ryzen chips and three subsequent Zen architectures. The latest of these is the Ryzen 6000 Series, which uses a tweaked version of the existing architecture known as Zen 3+.

But AMD confirmed it was working on the next-gen Zen 4 architecture back in 2020, and it’s set to arrive before the end of 2022.

AMD Zen 4 release date
At the Zen 3 reveal in October 2020, AMD Chief Technology Officer Mark Papermaster confirmed that Zen 4 was “on track, in design”. His presentation was accompanied by the following timeline:

Image: AMD
Our next official update came in July 2021, when AMD CEO Lisa Su confirmed that Zen 4 was on track to launch the following. At CES in January 2022, the company was a little more specific – the second half of 2022 is the target.

Following the reveal of an official roadmap, that timeframe is looking likely:

Image: AMD
That was then reiterated at Computex 2022, with the company announcing that we’d begin seeing Zen 4-equipped Ryzen 7000 series processors as soon as Q3 2022, but again, no solid release date was given.

A specific release date remains unclear then, but Twitter leaker @Broly_X1 said Zen 4 could be announced in September 2022, with availability a month later. However, the tweet has now been deleted.

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