CES 2023 is just around the corner, and as we gear up to cover the show, I can’t help but get excited about what we might see from AMD, Intel, and Nvidia. This is an especially interesting year for chip owners because all of the major players are coming to CES after a strong year with important product launches.
On the graphics card front, the first Intel Arc GPUs for both laptops and desktops are launching in 2022, marking Intel’s return to the market after decades. Nvidia and AMD each had their own new line of cards (the GeForce RTX 4000 series and the Radeon RX 7000 line, respectively), and although Nvidia’s prices are a bit ridiculous, you can’t say these cards aren’t the fastest.
In terms of CPUs, both AMD and Intel brought in the heat this year. AMD’s first Ryzen 7000 chips launched in September, and there’s a good chance we’ll see more in the near future. Intel unveiled its new 13th-generation Raptor Lake CPUs the same day AMD went on sale its new Ryzen 7000 chips, and that competitive spirit will likely be in full force at CES 2023 this week.
And while Apple won’t spend a lot of time at CES talking about its internal silicon efforts, the specter of Apple’s M2 chip will haunt the halls of rival chipmakers. Apple’s processors have helped the company’s recent MacBooks set new records for performance and energy efficiency.
As the Computing Editor here at Tom’s Guide, I had a front row seat to the show that ran in our test lab last year as Apple laptops exceeded our expectations, clocking up some of the best I’ve ever seen. Our battery life test. MacBooks now dominate the top tier of our best laptops for battery life list, and as we head into the new year, I can’t wait to see if Intel and AMD can deliver similar efficiencies in laptop chips for 2023.
To help you understand what to expect from the big chipmakers at CES 2023, let’s go through them one by one and look at what AMD, Intel, and Nvidia might be bringing to the show.
AMD
This year, I expect AMD will have some pretty big products to show off at CES 2023, not least because AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su will be giving a keynote address Wednesday night (1/4, 6:30 p.m. PT) to help kick off out of the show.
On top, we’ll almost certainly see more chips from the Ryzen 7000 series of desktop CPUs. These new chips feature TSMC’s 5nm process and run on AMD’s new AM5 platform, which requires an upgrade to a motherboard with an AM5 socket.
Since the company launched the line in September with four high-end processors (Ryzen 5 7600X through Ryzen 9 7950X, priced from $299 to $699), we’re expecting to see more midrange Ryzen 7000 desktop CPUs revealed at CES, though. Most likely without the “X” suffix and therefore weaker but less expensive.
I also expect that we’ll get to meet the first batch of Ryzen 7000 laptop chips, which is very exciting to me because it means we’ll see how much impact these new chips have on battery life. As I mentioned above, we’ve seen some impressive performance from laptops in our battery life test this year, and it’s not just Apple MacBooks. Intel’s 13th Gen laptop chips seem to be making big gains in battery life over their predecessors, and I can’t wait to see what AMD’s latest mobile chips do to the battery life of my laptops.
Maybe even see some improvements in its integrated graphics capabilities as well?
If we’re lucky, we’ll see more Radeon 7000 GPUs, though since AMD just put the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and XT on sale in December, it’s too early to reveal more cards in the series.
Intel
You can be confident that Intel will be talking about new 13th Gen CPUs during CES 2023. The first 6 chipsets in the Raptor Lake lineup launched last year, and although they’re still built on the 7nm process used by their predecessors, the latest Intel chips aren’t shy in the speed department.
The best on the market so far is 5.8GHz, and Intel claims it plans to release a Raptor Lake CPU that can achieve 6GHz down the line. Will we see it at CES this week? Maybe, but my money in the company reveals more of the mid-range Raptor Lake lineup at lower speeds and lower prices than we’ve seen so far. Keep an eye out for the new Raptor Lake laptop chips – this seems like a great time for Intel to start showing them off.
In terms of graphics cards, I’m not sure if we should expect to hear more about the next big thing from Intel during CES 2023. The company has now released a meaningful number of desktop and laptop GPUs in the Arc lineup, and while that will likely be Intel has more support and I think the next big thing will be what comes after Arc.
Remember, in the summer of 2021, Intel laid out its plans to enter the graphics card market, and those plans included multiple generations of GPUs. The first wave was named Alchemist, but in 2021 Intel codenamed three planned generations of Arc GPUs to follow Alchemist: Battlemage, Celestial, and Druid. Now that we’ve seen Alchemist, will Battlemage hardware be harassed at CES 2023? I certainly hope so, because we need more competition in the GPU space.
nvidia
Here’s why: Nvidia enters CES 2023 right after launching the GeForce RTX 4090 and 4080, which — at $1,599 and $1,199, respectively — are some of the most expensive graphics cards ever released.
It’s among the most powerful hardware ever released too, helping ease the pain of spending more than the price of a new PC (or several PS5s) on the 4090. The company also initially announced a less expensive, less powerful variant of the 12-quart GeForce RTX 4080. GB of RAM instead of 16 GB at a cost of $899. However, the differences between the two 4080s were so great that Nvidia memorably canceled the launch of the GeForce RTX 4080 12GB, claiming that “The RTX 4080 12GB is a great graphics card, but it’s not properly named.”
Many felt it would be better called the GeForce RTX 4070 because it was less powerful than the RTX 4080 16GB in many ways, from the number of cores to the amount of RAM. Keep that in mind as we head into CES 2023 because I have a hunch we’ll see this card recover again with a different name, perhaps like the RTX 4070 or 4070 Ti.
We’ll also likely get to know some new mobile members of the GeForce RTX 40-series family, which will then start appearing in the best gaming laptops shipping throughout 2023. Whatever Nvidia brings to CES this year, you’ll need Hear all about it during the company’s pre-recorded “Special Address at CES 2023,” which is set to air on Tuesday, January 3 (the day before AMD’s keynote, of course) at 8 a.m. PST.
Of course, I’m only including these broadcast details for the truly loyal fans who want to hear first-hand the presentation these companies give of their new products.
Tom’s Guide will have a team of editors on the ground at CES 2023 bringing you all the most important news straight from the show, and the rest of us will be covering the action from around the world to bring you the most relevant details and announcements.
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