CES 2017: Highlights From January 5 -- Things Get Weird
Las Vegas used to be haunted by vice. Now its residents will forever hear the echo of a thousand mouths uttering "Kaby Lake" a thousand times throughout CES 2017. That might sound like hyperbole, but it's probably an understatement--Intel's 7th generation processors are kind of a big deal. Yet they aren't the only conversation piece at this year's CES, of course, and more announcements have distracted from their bombastic debut.
The first day centered on Kaby Lake, the second revolved around changing reality, and the third has so far involved things getting a little... strange. Whether it's a laptop with three displays (you read that right) or a bike that lets people control a pegasus, well, CES 2017 has something for everyone.
Nvidia (And AMD) Get In On The Action
Nvidia's branching out. Not content for its graphics cards to sit in PCs, mobile devices, and countless other consumer electronics, the company used CES to let people know that it wants to keep growing. Not one to be left out, AMD revealed that its Ryzen chips will come to market, and more. Read on:
- Auto Parts Supplier ZF Launches 'ProAI' Self-Driving Solution Using Nvidia's Drive PX 2
- Nvidia GeForce Now Streams Games To Macs And Low-Power PCs
- Nvidia's New Shield TV Wants To Control Your Entire Home
- AMD Unveils 16 AM4 Motherboards, X300 And X370 Chipsets, And 17 Full Systems
- AMD Teases Vega Architecture: More Than 200+ New Features, Ready First Half Of 2017
Ripples Of Kaby Lake
We covered fewer devices adding support for Intel's new processors and chipsets, but there are still a few notable updates to catch up on:
- MSI Sharpens Its Gaming Desktop Arsenal With Kaby Lake
- MSI Gaming And Workstation Laptops Get Kaby Lake, New GPUs
- Biostar's Z270GT9 Is Lone 200-Series Launch SKU, Offers 10Gbps NIC And NVMe SSD Bundle
- Dropbox To Support Intel Kaby Lake U2F Authentication, But It’s No Security Panacea
Reality Gets A Little Funky
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If 2016 was the year companies and consumers alike grew accustomed to the idea of virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality, 2017 could be the year companies push things into weirder directions. Want a lamp that projects AR experiences? Got it. Need a VR exercise bike? Hooray! And more:
- Introducing HoloLamp: Portable, Projector-Based, Glasses-Free Augmented Reality
- Staying Fit With VR: Playing VSports With VirZoom
- Pico Technology Reveals Self-Contained VR HMD With Wand Controllers, 6DoF Tracking
- Lucid VR Reveals Updated 4K LucidCam VR Camera, Developer Kits Shipping Now
- HTC Reveals Expanded Vive Accessories Lineup Including Universal Tracking Device, Deluxe Audio Headstrap
- ODG Introduces Consumer AR Device That Looks Like Sunglasses
The Best Of The Rest
Not everything revealed at CES 2017 falls into a neat little category, even if those categories are being thought up by someone all the way across the country. (Hi!) Here's what interested us on the CES showfloor that doesn't have much to do with Nvidia, Kaby Lake, or XR's funky future:
- Three Displays, One Laptop? Razer’s Project Valerie Shows Promise, Problems
- Dell Unveils Canvas, A Surface Studio Competitor, As Well As An 8K Monitor And AIO
- Deepcool Innovates With Quadstellar And Ark 90 Chassis At CES 2017
- Corsair's New HX And TX PSUs
- Western Digital Announces First Black Series SSD
- Cherry Pairs Silent Switches With G80-3000 Keyboard
- Corsair Reveals K95 RGB Platinum Keyboard, Scimitar Pro Mouse
- NZXT, Asus Light Up Special Edition Noctis 450 ROG
- Tesoro Pops Optical Switches Onto Gram SE Spectrum Keyboard
- Bitdefender Box Hopes To Secure The Internet Of Things
Nathaniel Mott is a freelance news and features writer for Tom's Hardware US, covering breaking news, security, and the silliest aspects of the tech industry.
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Xeddicus According to other articles elsewhere on the internet Intel's 7th generation is basically still born. No performance gains. Conflicting reports, ahhhh!Reply -
ammaross 19113988 said:According to other articles elsewhere on the internet Intel's 7th generation is basically still born. No performance gains. Conflicting reports, ahhhh!
It has performance gains solely due to the bumped up clockrates. If you've OCed Skylake, you're at the same level. Supposedly you can OC Kaby Lake a (very) little bit more than Skylake though. -
waltsmith You know, the Core Architecture has been around for quite a while now. Intel may have just about "Optimized" it to death by now.Reply -
Atterus I went ahead and picked up a i7 7700k, but based on what I've seen it was never intended to be a game changer. It seems like it was just a "perfected" i7 6700k. Thus the reason it can hold a higher base clock rate, "optimization" as the final stage of Skylake so this didn't surprise me at all. I'm upgrading from an older i5-2500k so I felt it was worth it, but definitely not if you were expecting a big jump from the 6700 to 7700. Nothing wrong with the 6700, but the 7700 sounds like it was just the last love song to the Skylake architecture before Cannonlake. It is probably little more than "7700k can OC with more stability than a 6700 plus new bells and whistles any new chips gets". In short, the 7700k seems like it was always going to be a 6700k mkII.Reply
Still, I was more disappointed we didn't get the 1080ti... now I have to wait :(