CES 2017: Highlights From January 5 -- Things Get Weird

By Nathaniel Mott
published

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:

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:

Reality Gets A Little Funky

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:

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:

Nathaniel Mott
Nathaniel Mott
Freelance News & Features Writer

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.

4 Comments Comment from the forums
  • 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.
    Reply
  • 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.

    Still, I was more disappointed we didn't get the 1080ti... now I have to wait :(
    Reply