Smaller, quieter and cheaper: Microsoft has released a second version of the Xbox Series X-style mini fridge

Microsoft has released a second version of the Xbox Series X-style mini fridge.
Aaron Greenberg, vice president of marketing at Xbox, made the announcement.
The refrigerator is now available at the U.S.
retailer Walmart.Image source: WalmartThe mini-fridge at Walmart is only $79.
According to Greenberg, it will be available in other countries in the future.
The second version of the device is smaller than the first - it only holds 8 cans.
In addition, the new refrigerator is quieter.In technical terms, the Mini-Me Xbox Series X Mini Fridge is a 4.5-liter thermoelectric refrigerator for the home or car.
It holds up to eight cans of soda and has one snack shelf inside the door.
The unit plugs into a standard wall or car outlet and cools food down to 2 degrees Celsius.
It also has a USB port (5 volts and 2.1 A) for charging your phone or controller.The first version of the mini fridge will be on sale for a while along with the new one.
Recall that it hit the market almost a year ago at a price of $99.

Microsoft will ban installing Windows 11 on HDDs in off-the-shelf PCs next year

Microsoft has urged PC and laptop OEMs to stop using conventional hard drives as the primary media from which to boot Windows 11 operating system in 2023 and instead equip their systems with solid state drives.
Tom's Hardware reached out to Microsoft for comment on the issue, but analysts at Trendfocus, citing PC makers, said they had nothing to say on the matter at this time.
Curiously, the system requirements of Windows 11 itself does not specify the need for an SSD.
Instead, Microsoft simply reports the need for a medium with 64 GB or more of free space to install and use the OS.
However, the SSD is required to use DirectStorage fast boot technology as well as the Windows subsystem to run Android apps on this OS.
Nevertheless, it is unclear whether Microsoft plans to officially change the system requirements for Windows 11 after 2023, and whether it is going to specify them to make SSDs mandatory.On the one hand, the transition to SSDs makes sense.
Unlike conventional hard drives, these drives do not create noise and run much faster than conventional HDDs.
However, despite the reduction in the price of SSDs in recent years, even the most affordable models of these media are now generally more expensive than HDD models with the same capacity.
If we compare SSD and HDD with 1TB capacity, a gigabyte of memory in an HDD costs about $0.05, an SSD with SATA III interface costs $0.08, and an M.2 NVMe format drive costs $0.14.
So a 1TB hard drive costs $45, a SATA III SSD costs $75, and an M.2 NVMe SSD costs $150.Image source: Tom's HardwareMany PC and laptop manufacturers already equip their systems with SSDs without any insistence from Microsoft.
But there are exceptions.
In emerging markets, where low- and mid-end offerings are ample, computers are often equipped with SSDs to cut costs.According to John Chen, vice president of Trendfocus, replacing a 1TB hard drive would require a system with an equivalent SSD of only 256GB.
Switching to a 512GB SSD would make the entire system more expensive.
Many customers who care about storage capacity will not accept this compromise.
\"Microsoft originally intended to make the switch from HDDs to SSDs this year.
At least that's what the OEMs are saying.
However, in the end, this plan was pushed back to next year.
Most likely in the second half of the year.
OEMs are now trying to negotiate with the company about possible exceptions.
For example, they are discussing the possibility of postponing the transition to SSD in the desktop segment or emerging markets until 2024.
In general, things could still change,\" Chen commented.It is still unclear what measures Microsoft plans to take against those PC and laptop OEMs who refuse to follow its wishes.
According to Trendfocus, the media type change will hit demand for hard drives next year anyway.

Microsoft unveils mini-computer with Arm chip and AI gas pedal and announces Arm version of Visual Studio 2022

Microsoft today announced Visual Studio 2022 version with native Arm64 support.
At the same time, the public was shown an Arm processor-based device being developed under the codename Project Volterra.
Developers promise to release a preview version of Visual Studio 2022 for Arm \"in the next few weeks,\" with a full release later this year.Image source: MicrosoftAlthough Arm devices such as the Surface Pro X tablet have been able to run Visual Studio via x64 emulation before, some features remain unavailable and overall performance is lost during emulation.
To fix this, Microsoft created a \"native Arm toolchain,\" which includes a number of useful tools: full versions of Visual Studio 2022 and VS Code, Visual C++, current versions of .NET6 and Java, the classic .NET Framework, Windows Terminal, and Windows Subsystem for Linux and Windows Subsystem for Android to run Linux and Android software products.Along with this it was announced the signing of a new partnership agreement with Qualcomm.
The cooperation, codenamed Project Volterra, creates a device for developers based on the Snapdragon Arm-processor and some kind of neural processor (NPU), which will simplify the process of creating cloud applications with support for algorithms based on artificial intelligence.
At this stage, Microsoft did not disclose the specifications of the device, but it is known that it has three USB-connectors on the back of the case, as well as one DisplayPort and one Ethernet connector.
On the side of the case there are two USB Type-C ports.
It is also known that the body of the device is made of recycled plastic.
\"We want you to create cloud applications with artificial intelligence.
With the arrival of Arm64 support in Visual Studio, .NET and Project Volterra coming later this year, we are releasing new tools to help you take the first step in that direction,\" said Microsoft product director Panos Panay.

Microsoft fixed a performance issue with AMD processors in Windows 11

Microsoft has released another test build of Windows 11 numbered 22000.282 (KB5006746) for Beta Channel preview program participants. In it, the developers have fixed many known bugs, the main of which is related to AMD processors, as it became known earlier this month. The description of the update says that the developers have fixed a problem with the L3 cache, which was affecting the performance of AMD Ryzen devices after the upgrade to Windows 11.

Recall that after the beginning of the distribution of Windows 11 there was a problem which caused the performance in applications on computers with AMD chips to decrease by 3-5% and in games can be observed a drop of up to 15%. It seems that the developers have managed to quickly solve the problem and at the end of the month the fix will be available for devices running the stable version of Windows 11. The developers have also fixed many other bugs. Problem with the incorrect operation of the «Start» menu and failure to see the updated taskbar design in some cases has been resolved. Fixed a bug that could cause BSODs to appear in the early stages of OS startup. Resolved an issue that caused the Windows Management Instrumentation host process to stop working as a result of an unhandled access violation when using Desired State Configuration. Fixed an issue with writing data to WMI storage when there is not enough available memory on the device.

Microsoft has also introduced a lot of less noticeable fixes to make the software platform more stable. You can read them on the developers' blog. It is expected that the broad masses these patches will become available with the optional cumulative update, which will be released at the end of this month. In addition, the fixes will be part of an update to be released as part of the Patch Tuesday program next month.

AMD and Microsoft will release a special version of the Radeon RX 6900 XT Halo Infinite Limited Edition in the style of Master Chief's armor

AMD and Microsoft will be releasing a limited edition Radeon RX 6900 XT Halo Infinite Limited Edition graphics gas pedal, based on the upcoming game Halo Infinite. The card features a reference cooling system, which is painted in the colors of the Mjolnir Powered Assault Armor Mark VII, the protagonist of the game Master Cheef.

Both companies have not reported the specifications of the video card, but it is very likely that they repeat the reference specifications. To recap briefly, the Radeon RX 6900 XT is based on the Navi 21 XTX chip based on the AMD RDNA 2 graphics architecture. It consists of 80 execution blocks with 5,120 stream processors, 80 ray tracing acceleration blocks, 320 texture blocks and 128 rasterization blocks. The GPU's benchmark operating frequency range is from 2015 (gaming) to 2250 (max) MHz.

Developer studio 343 Industries, which created Halo Infinite, worked closely with AMD, so the game is optimized for use with Ryzen processors and Radeon graphics cards. Support for FreeSync Premium Pro is announced, but ray tracing support will be added after the game's release with one of the patches. On the possible support for AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) or NVIDIA Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) smart scaling technologies is still unknown.

Halo Infinite on PC will support extra wide monitors (you can move interface elements anywhere you want), it will come with built-in anticheat and will be synchronized with RGB backlighting of input devices. Saves in PC version of Halo Infinite can be transferred to the console and vice versa, as well as the progress in online mode.

On October 26 AMD is going to launch a promotion, in which customers of certain Radeon graphics cards and Ryzen processors will be able to get a monthly subscription to Xbox Game Pass gaming service for PC as a gift. As for the game Halo Infinite itself, it will be released on December 8 this year for PC (Steam, Microsoft Store), Xbox One, Xbox Series X and S.

AMD turned defective chips from Xbox Series X into 4700S desktop platform

AMD has unveiled the 4700S desktop platform with an eight-core hybrid processor. It is based on an APU designed for the Xbox Series X gaming consoles, but has not passed the quality test. About the preparation of such a platform was known before, but now its characteristics have been published on the manufacturer's web site.

The AMD 4700S platform is a «integrated» solution & ; almost everything you need is included in a mini-ITX format motherboard & ; processor, memory and cooling system. The processor has eight cores on Zen 2 architecture. Ryzen brand does not apply to it, but it has long been known that it & ; eight-core sixteen-threaded model with disabled (or defective) integrated graphics processor. Although AMD itself does not name detailed characteristics of the APU, in the benchmark Geekbench 5 already appeared information that the novelty has a base frequency of 3.6 GHz and the maximum & ; up to 4 GHz. The platform will come with 8 or 16 GB of GDDR6 RAM (whose speed is also unknown). Since AMD 4700S has no display outputs, a discrete graphics card must be connected to the platform. Just like regular mini-ITX motherboards, AMD 4700S has a PCIe x16 slot, but in this case it has only four PCIe 4.0 lanes. This in particular means that the list of suitable graphics cards is very short: AMD 4700S is compatible with Radeon 550, RX 550, RX 560, RX 570, RX 580 and RX 590 as well as NVIDIA GeForce GT 710, GT 1030, GTX 1050, GTX 1050 Ti and GTX 1060.

Additionally, there are two SATA III ports for drives, a Gigabit Ethernet port on the Asix AX88179 controller and three 3.5mm audio ports. The board has four USB Type-A ports, three second-generation USB 3.2 Type-A (up to 10Gbps) and one first-generation USB 3.2 (5Gbps) adapter to add additional ports if needed. Power is supplied via standard EPS connections of 24 and 8 pins. AMD recommends a power supply of at least 250W, recommended power & ; 300W. Power supply requirements will vary depending on the needs of the graphics card. The company has provided drivers only for Windows 10 & ; the AMD 4700S kit is incompatible with earlier versions of Microsoft's OS, as well as Linux. No price has been announced on the manufacturer's website. AMD provides the platform with a two-year warranty. According to some reports, the variant is already available in a Finnish store for the equivalent of $317.

Microsoft will test the performance of Windows 11 with AMD Ryzen 1000 and Intel Kaby Lake processors

Microsoft will consider lowering the system requirements for installing Windows 11. The software maker said in its official blog that it will test 7th generation Intel Core processors and first-generation AMD Ryzen processors for compatibility with the new OS.

Many PC users were discouraged by Microsoft's announcement that the new OS would not work with processors older than second-generation AMD Ryzen or eighth-generation Intel Core. But now the company has decided to reconsider this issue and is going to conduct a series of tests on these platforms, which will result in a final conclusion. "With the launch of the Windows 11 pre-release Windows Insider program, we're starting to test devices based on the 7th generation Intel Core processors and the first AMD Ryzen processors with OEM partners to see if they meet our guidelines. We'll keep you posted on these tests and will share the results in due course," the company's blog stated. Microsoft justifies its requirements for processors by the fact that Windows 11 offers a significantly higher level of security than previous OS versions, which reduces the risk of PC infection by up to 60% of malware, as well as having an improved encryption system and biometric authentication. The company also attributes the "culling" of older processors to the desire to ensure the best compatibility of the system with the Office software package and the Teams messenger. Part of their security features are directly dependent on the company's requirements for the PC to have a TPM 2.0 cryptographic module or support for fTPM emulation software. In addition, the company said it has temporarily removed the PC Health Check app, which lets you check a Windows 10-based system for compatibility with the new Windows 11. "Based on the feedback, we realized that this app could not accurately answer why your system is not ready for Windows 11. We are temporarily removing it so that our development teams can address these shortcomings in a future release," Microsoft said in a blog post. The company has promised to re-release an updated version of the PC Health Check tool before the actual launch of Windows 11, which will take place this fall.

Microsoft has introduced Surface Laptop 4 on Intel and AMD processors. The latter are much cheaper.

Microsoft has officially unveiled a new addition to the Surface family of devices. We're talking about the Surface Laptop 4, which comes in versions with 13.5- and 15-inch displays, each of which is available in both AMD and Intel processor versions. All versions will become available for purchase this month.

The design of Surface Laptop 4 is almost the same as the appearance of the previous generation model. The older version of the device has a 15-inch touchscreen display supporting a resolution of 2496 ×1664 pixels and an aspect ratio of 3:2. Buyers can choose between versions with Intel Core i7-1185G7 processor generation Tiger Lake and AMD Ryzen 7 4980U last generation on the architecture Zen 2. The younger version of the laptop has a 13.5-inch touchscreen display with 2256 × 1504 pixel resolution and a 3:2 aspect ratio. Buyers will also be able to choose between several options based on Intel and AMD chips, including the Core i7-1185G7 and Ryzen 7 4980U.

The manufacturer says that the use of new processors in Surface Laptop 4 has provided up to 70% more performance than the previous generation models, as well as increased battery life. Microsoft promises up to 19 hours of battery life for the 13.5-inch version of the laptop with AMD chip and up to 17.5 hours -for the 15-inch version. At the same time, the 13.5-inch version with Intel chip will provide up to 17 hours of continuous use, and the older model - up to 16.5 hours. All versions of the laptop on Intel have Intel Iris Xe graphics, and in the case of AMD - Radeon Graphics. Surface Laptop 4 with processor from Intel supports installation of up to 32 GB of LPDDR4x RAM, and versions with chip from AMD - up to 16 GB of RAM. As for the storage, the Intel models will provide up to 1TB of internal storage, and the AMD - up to 512GB.

Otherwise, the Surface Laptop 4 is similar to the previous generation model. The design includes USB Type-C, USB Type-A ports, a headphone jack and a Microsoft Surface Connect interface for charging. Thunderbolt support is still missing, and the M.2 NVMe SSD can still be easily removed from the slot on the back of the device. The Surface Laptop 4 will reportedly go on sale as early as April 15 in the U.S., Canada and Japan, priced from $999 for the AMD-powered model and from $1299 for the Intel-powered versions. The price difference is due in part to the fact that Microsoft used last generation AMD processors in the laptops.

Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 will get last generation AMD Ryzen processors

Rumors about the upcoming Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 have not stopped for some time. They are expected to go on sale in April, and, accordingly, the presentation of the new products will take place in the very near future. Now information from retailers has appeared on the web, shedding light on the models of processors that will be used in Surface Laptop 4.

neowin.net.

According to these data, Intel versions of the laptop, not surprisingly, will be based on processors Core i5-1145G7 and Core i7-1185G7 generation Tiger Lake. And as for the models with AMD chips, it seems that users will have to settle for the previous generation processors. It is reported that Sarface Laptop 4 will be able to offer Ryzen 4000 processors, based on the architecture Zen 2, while on the market are already available laptops with Ryzen 5000 chips, based on the architecture Zen 3; It is assumed that, as in the case of Surface Laptop 3, AMD will give Microsoft exclusive versions of its chips for the new laptops, which will receive the prefix Microsoft Surface Edition to the name. Ryzen 5 4680U and Ryzen 7 4980U will reportedly be available to choose from.

neowin.net.

Another interesting point is that the maximum bundles of Surface Laptop on Intel will include 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage, while the AMD versions will have up to 16GB of RAM and a maximum SSD capacity of 512GB. As for the design, Surface Laptop 4 is expected to retain the look of the previous model. However, it is now rumored that users will have 13-inch models based on AMD processors. In the case of Surface Laptop 3, only the 15-inch model is available to customers who want to buy a version with Ryzen.

Microsoft's upcoming Surface Laptop 4 made its mark on GeekBench with AMD and Intel chips

Microsoft has found a new generation notebook in the popular benchmark GeekBench: We're talking about Surface Laptop 4, the official presentation of which is expected next month.

The laptop will be released in modifications with a display size of 13,5 and 15 inches diagonally. At the same time, each of the versions will be available with AMD and Intel processors: both variants have been tested in GeekBench. In particular, the Intel version carries on board the Core i5-1135G7 processor generation Tiger Lake. This chip contains four processing cores (eight instruction threads) with clock speeds up to 4.2 GHz. There is an Intel Iris Xe graphics gas pedal. The amount of RAM is 8 GB.

The tested variant on the AMD platform is equipped with the Ryzen 5 3580U Microsoft Surface Edition processor. This chip has four cores (eight threads), which can reach a frequency of 3.7 GHz. However, the GeekBench data indicates that the number of cores is six. Most likely, the test misidentified the name of the processor, because AMD already has Ryzen 5000-series mobile chips, where Ryzen 5 models have six cores. And it is unlikely that Microsoft will release a laptop on the outdated Ryzen 3000-series chip.

It is assumed that the Surface Laptop 4 will be identical in appearance to the Surface Laptop 3, which is shown in the first image. Handheld computers of the new generation, of course, will come with the operating system Windows 10;

Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 will feature Intel and AMD processors

According to online sources, Microsoft is gearing up to release new devices in the Surface family. The talk is about Surface Pro 8 and Surface Laptop 4, with the latter reportedly to be available with Intel and AMD processor.

The first devices in the Surface family with AMD processors were the Surface Laptop 3, released in October 2019, which featured custom versions of AMD Ryzen 3700U and AMD Ryzen 5 3500U chips. Now the source reports that Surface Laptop 4 laptops will be available with Intel and AMD processors. To recall, in the previous generation Surface Laptop 3, only the 15-inch version of the laptop was equipped with an AMD processor. But now the 13.5-inch version of the Laptop 4 will also come with an AMD processor. The source says that Microsoft has already started testing the new laptops with custom AMD chips, but which processors the developers used is not yet known. It is speculated that Surface Laptop 4 may be announced at the end of this year and won't go on sale until early next year. To recap, Microsoft's Surface Laptop 3 with 13.5-inch display comes with Intel Core i5 and Intel Core i7 10th generation processors, while the 15-inch display variant comes with a custom AMD Ryzen Surface Edition chip. All models available on the market support up to 16GB of RAM and an SSD drive with up to 512GB capacity. In addition to the proprietary Surface Connector charging socket, Microsoft laptops can also be charged via the USB Type-C interface.

Microsoft has asked AMD to help eliminate Xbox Series X shortages

Almost three months after the release of the Xbox Series X and S, Microsoft still can't meet the strong demand for its new consoles: a stock shortage is expected to last until at least April 2021. But in a new Microsoft podcast with Xbox Live head Larry Hryb, Xbox executive Phil Spencer assured fans that the company is working hard to expand its Xbox Series X inventory.

In doing so, the executive said that he has even reached out to AMD to push the single-chip system maker to ramp up production to meet demand. «Some people are asking, "Why didn't you release more? Why didn't you start earlier? Why didn't you stockpile enough in advance?" And so on. It all boils down to physics and engineering. We don't hold back production: we make consoles as fast as we can. We have all the assembly lines. I was on the phone with AMD's Lisa Su last week and one question I was discussing was, "How do we get more chips? "' So we are constantly working in that direction», & ; noted Mr. Spencer.

AMD produces single-chip systems for both the Xbox Series X and Series S, and these consist of an AMD Zen 2 8-core processor and RDNA 2 architecture graphics. If AMD ramps up production of these chips, Microsoft could (in theory) make more consoles. But Xbox consoles aren't the only ones using AMD chips. PlayStation 5 relies on a similar single-chip system from AMD & ; Sony too is suffering from a supply shortage for the new console.

«And it's not just us: games really have become much more popular in 2020, & ; noted Mr Spencer. & ;Apparently, the PlayStation 5 is in great short supply too. If you look at video cards from AMD and NVIDIA, there is a similar situation. There is just a lot of interest in games right now, and the sale of consoles & ; is just one of the signs. Game sales are growing rapidly and new hardware is in short supply. But we are working as hard as we can. The teams in charge are incredibly dedicated, and I appreciate people's patience as we work to release more systems».

Microsoft has agreed with Intel, AMD and Qualcomm to embed their own security chip in future computers

Microsoft Corporation introduced a hardware solution designed to protect future computers running Windows. It is a system Microsoft Pluton, which integrates into the processors and is a replacement for the Trusted Platform Module (TPM), which is currently used for security, located separately from the processor.

Over the past two years, some major chip makers have faced hardware vulnerabilities in their chips such as Meltdown and Spectre. Although the developers fixed dangerous vulnerabilities, they had to rethink their approach to chip security. Now a new Pluton security coprocessor has been introduced, which is the brainchild of the partnership between Microsoft, AMD, Intel and Qualcomm and will be built into the latter three processors. According to available data, the new Microsoft security system reliably protects devices from hacking, both in case of physical access to the attacked system by an attacker, and during campaigns based on the exploitation of various vulnerabilities. The developers say that integration of the system with future Intel, AMD and Qualcomm processors will significantly complicate the life of hackers who aim to use vulnerabilities to extract encryption keys, credentials and other confidential information from attacked systems with Windows. Computers using the Pluton architecture will initially emulate TPM to ensure compatibility with already existing TPM specifications and API interfaces. This approach will allow users to immediately begin taking advantage of the enhanced security features of Windows, which are based on TPM. Devices with the Pluton architecture running Windows will use a security coprocessor to ensure the protection of account data, user IDs, encryption keys and other sensitive information.

Microsoft announced that Pluton was first introduced back in 2013 with Xbox One, which made it much more difficult to hack into the console. By the way, it can complicate the lives of PC pirates as well. Later, the security chip was used in the cloud service Microsoft Azure Sphere to protect Internet devices of things (IoT). Now the idea is to use the same technology with some improvements in the new devices based on Windows 10. The collaboration between Microsoft, AMD, Intel and Qualcomm also means that updates to Pluton will be delivered along with regular patch packs for the Windows platform. In addition, this should ensure maximum Pluton distribution on a large number of new systems. «We believe that processors with built-in protection such as Pluton are the future of computing hardware. With Pluton, we are striving to provide a more secure foundation for smart peripherals and smart clouds by extending this default level of trust to objects around the world;« & ; Microsoft said.