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.

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.

AMD: chip shortages for Xbox Series X and S, PlayStation 5 and PC will continue through the second half of 2021

AMD CEO Lisa Su said in a recent financial report that component supply will remain limited until the second half of 2021. In particular, production of the Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S and PlayStation 5 will be affected. The PC market will be affected to a lesser extent.

A shortage of next-generation consoles emerged almost immediately after they went on sale in mid-November 2020. Although AMD, Microsoft and Sony are all trying to throw everything they can at boosting production of the devices, the companies' forecasts are disappointing.

According to AMD, the company is working on getting more capacity in the second half of the year. Then the manufacturer will be able to produce more chips and shipments will increase significantly. However, they will still be limited, but the consoles will at least become freely available in retail shops.

Microsoft previously commented on the Xbox's recent financial successes and said that shortages of Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S are expected at least until the end of March 2021.

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».

PlayStation 5 games perform better than the more powerful Xbox Series X, the paradox that AMD is responsible for.

A series of videos comparing the image quality and performance of Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 has appeared on the Internet. There are no clear winners, but Microsoft console has quite serious optimization problems.

Since the announcement of the new generation console, Microsoft has declared that the Xbox Series X is the most powerful console. And really & ; with PlayStation 5 in the background, the performance of the video chip  it really wins a lot. Microsoft's console has a capacity of 12 teraflops, while PlayStation 5 has a capacity of 10.28 teraflops. Specialists from the YouTube channel Digital Foundry made a detailed comparison of both consoles in new games.

In Devil May Cry 5 shows a good picture on Xbox Seris X in 4K resolution with ray tracing. However, in the frame rate indicator wins PlayStation 5. The gap here between Xbox and PlayStation is about 40 frames per second. The console from Microsoft gives only about 24–30 frames per second.

Dirt 5 on Xbox Series X also does not perform well. In complex scenes, FPS drops to 52 frames per second. At the same time, the image quality is much lower compared to the competitor.

Image source: Digital Foundry

Sony's console is better at texture filtering and less likely to reduce image quality. Plus, the image detail in the mode aimed at the maximum frame rate is clearly higher on PlayStation 5. This can be seen in the screenshot above.

Microsoft has also acquired the rights to have their console displayed on the Assassin’s Creed Valhalla promotional materials. This may give the impression that Xbox is better at this game, but here too PlayStation has shown itself better. Microsoft prefixes have frame rate slump and picture jerking. However, as found out the edition of The Verge from one of the developers who preferred to remain anonymous, the reason why Xbox Series X is inferior to PlayStation 5, lies in the optimization. The studios too late received development kits from Microsoft, plus the tight deadlines did not allow for proper testing and debugging of game projects. Sony sent their kits much earlier and the developers had more time for the optimization process. In addition, the problem arose due to AMD, which uses GPUs in both consoles. But the manufacturer of hardware components with a long delay gave access to the RDNA 2 micro-instructions set for Xbox Series X. Because of this, even Microsoft had to start manufacturing consoles only in late summer. «Our competitors were really ahead of us. The fact is, we've been waiting for AMD to give us full access to the microinstructions of its chips», & ; Phil Spencer (Xbox Division Head) said in an interview with The Verge. Otherwise, the Xbox Series X console does have more hardware than the PlayStation, but at this point, the games for it need to be improved.