Apple Reportedly Plans To Launch Updated MacBook Pro Lineup In Early 2023

Apple is expected to launch several new MacBook Pros and other Mac products with updated internals next year, along with a few external monitors in the works. This comes as the company seems to be failing to meet its 2022 deadline of completely transitioning its lineup of products away from Intel to its in-house Apple Silicon.

Reliable Apple leaker, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, claims that Apple will launch updated 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros early next year, offering the highly-anticipated M2 Pro and M2 Max chipsets. Reports from earlier this month also hint at the updated models getting faster LPDDR5X RAM that would provide more bandwidth and consume less power.

Apple still only sells an Intel-powered high-end version of the Mac mini but that will apparently change soon as the tech giant reportedly plans to replace it with an M2 Pro-powered offering. The Mac Pro is expected to receive its long-delayed Apple Silicon treatment with a high-powered chip that Gurman speculates will be the M2 Ultra.

The report claims that the M2 Ultra is set to be equipped with up to 24 CPU cores, 76 graphics cores, and will be able to be configured with up to a whopping 192GB of memory. A higher-end variant dubbed the M2 Extreme would have offered double the amount of CPU and GPU cores, but Gurman says that this was scrapped because of the cost and complexity of fusing four M2 Max chips together, which would have apparently priced the Mac Pro at a minimum of US$10000 (~RM44220).

In related news, the Cupertino-based company is purportedly working on several new external monitors as an update to the Pro Display XDR. Just like this year’s Studio Display, the new monitors will be powered by Apple Silicon to use fewer resources from the attached machine.

The US$2 trillion (~RM8.84 trillion) firm is predicted to shift its Mac Pro assembly from Texas to Vietnam. It was forced to do the assembly in the US after political pressure from the Trump administration but with the new government, Apple can move its production back to Asia.

MSI Seemingly Confirms Launch Date of Intel Alder Lake CPU Lineup

During its Architecture Day in August, Intel has promised that its 12th generation Alder Lake CPU lineup will launch this year, but fell short of providing a solid date for the event. Well, thanks to MSI, it appears that the date seems to be set for 4 November.

The alleged confirmation date stems from the Taiwanese PC components and laptop maker’s press release, announcing that it would be providing a free upgrade kit for Intel LGA1700 CPUs, along with their Coreliquid CPU coolers. More specifically, consumers will need to fill up a form in order to receive the upgrades but as of this publication, the button that would usually take them to the necessary portal is greyed out and sporting the words “Coming Soon”.

More to the point, the availability date of 4 November initially drew suspicions from Videocardz, whom after reaching out to what it says were reliable sources, was confident that the date is when Intel plans to launch its Alder Lake-S desktop CPU lineup. Further, that date reportedly coincides with the product’s sales and review embargo.

Intel is expected to launch three SKUs under the Alder Lake-S series, including the Core i9-12900K, Core i7-12700K, and Core i5-12600K. As it stands and given how these things usually go, Intel has yet to officially confirm anything, so take this news with a pinch of salt.

MSI Refreshes Gaming Laptop Series With Intel 11th Gen H-Series CPU Lineup

MSI recently held a “Tech meets Aesthetics” event, where the Taiwanese PC and laptop maker announced that it had refreshed its laptop lineup, both for gaming and its Creator series, with Intel’s new 11th generation Tiger Lake-H series CPUs.

For its gaming lineup, the refresh includes MSI’s currently existing GS, GE, GF, GL, and GP series of laptops. Specifically, both the GS and GE series will have SKUs that accommodate Intel’s top-tier Core i9 CPU, while the top-of-the-line models released in the remaining three series will be fitted with the top-range Core i7 CPU.

With Intel’s latest Tiger Lake H-series CPU now powering MSI’s laptops, consumers who purchase them will gain not only to improved CPU performance, but also access to new features such as PCIe Gen4, Thunderbolt 4, and Wi-Fi 6E.

Then, as now, all of MSI’s Intel 11th generation gaming laptops are paired with NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 30 Series Mobile GPUs. That list includes the recently launched GeForce RTX 3050 and RTX 3050 Ti discrete GPUs that is only available for laptops.

As for their availability, MSI currently has the GE66, GL66, and GL76 available for preorder via its official Lazada store page, with the first batch expected to be available as early as next week. As for the other models, the brand says that they should come  sometime in June, although it did not specify an exact date.

Intel Expands 11th Generation Tiger Lake Lineup With Two New U-Series CPUs

Earlier today during its Computex 2021 keynote, Intel announced that it is adding two new CPU SKUs to its 11th generation Tiger Lake lineup. Specifically, the new CPU models are part of Intel’s U-Series Mobile CPU lineup.

Breaking it down, the new CPUs are the Core i7-1195G7 and Core i5-1155G7. Like all 11th generation CPUs, both U-Series processors are based on the chipmaker’s new 10nm SuperFin die lithography, and even come fitted with its Xe-LP integrated graphics, which has up to 96EU. As for its Cache size, both the Core i7-1195G7 and Core i5-1155G7 have 12MB and 8MB of Intel Smart Memory, respectively.

Specs-wise, both the Core i7-1195G7 and Core i5-1155G7 come with a 4-cores, 8-threads layout and have an operating power range between 12W and 28W. What is of particular interest, however, is the Core i7 variant, primarily because it is the first U-Series CPU that can achieve a maximum single-core Turbo boost clock of 5GHz, while running all cores on Turbo is capped at 4.6GHz. Lastly, both the Core i7-1195G7 and Core i5-1155G7 Intel’s Wi-Fi 6E wireless technology.

As for when these new CPUs will be available, Intel says that we can expect them to arrive “during the holidays” and that more than 60 consumer devices such as laptops should be fitted with either the Core i7-1195G7 or the Core i5-1155G7. In addition, the chipmaker expects more than 250 OEMs to have designs based on its new U-Series CPUs.

Illegear Adds Selenite X Into Its GeForce RTX 30 Series High Performance Laptop Lineup

After unveiling five gaming laptops with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series graphics back in January, local high-performance PC outfit Illegear has since added another model into the lineup. It comes in the form of Selenite X which is an all-new model for 2021 according to the company.

Equipped with a 17.3-inch WQHD IPS display that also has a refresh rate of 165Hz, the new Selenite X can be obtained with either Intel Core i7-10875H or AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX. Interesting enough, customers’ choice of CPU will also affect their graphics option as well.

Those who prefer the Intel CPU can choose between RTX 3060 and RTX 3070 while the Ryzen-based variant is equipped with GeForce RTX 3080 as standard. Positioned as a high-performance laptop that can cater to both gaming and professional environment, the Selenite X can be fitted with up to two 2TB PCIe NVMe M.2 solid state drives.

The 2.42kg laptop is also equipped with a 63Whr battery and RGB backlit keyboard. Price-wise, the variant with Core i7 CPU and RTX 3060 GPU starts at RM 7299 while its RTX 3070’s twin has a starting price of RM 8,398.

As for the Ryzen 9 and RTX 3080 combo, it can be obtained from RM 12,198 onwards. To learn more about the new Selenite X high-performance laptop, check out Illegear’s official website right here.