It’s Sunday again, meaning it’s time to reflect on the past week with this edition of Winners of Losers.
This week hasn’t been short of launches with Intel announcing its latest CPU, Asus showcasing the flagship Zenfone 11 Ultra, Samsung launching the Galaxy A55 5G and A35 5G and Instax unveiling its Instax Mini 99 instant camera.
Keep reading to discover our winner and loser from the last week.
Winner: Intel
Our winner this week is Intel after the company announced its fastest desktop processor yet and the most advanced chip in the Meteor Lake series, Intel’s 14th Generation of CPUs.
The Core i9-14900KS Unlocked is capable of hitting speeds of up to 6.2GHz out of the box, beating Intel’s own 6GHz record established by last year’s i9-13900KS. Not only is the Core i9-14900KS the “world’s fastest desktop processor” according to Intel, but the CPU offers a 15% performance boost compared to the previous generation of Intel chips.
“The Intel Core i9-14900KS showcases the full power and performance potential of the Intel Core 14th Gen desktop processor family and its performance hybrid architecture,” said Intel VP and general manager of Intel’s Enthusiast PC and Workstation Segment, Roger Chandler.
“Extreme PC enthusiasts – especially gamers and creators – can now enjoy the i9-14900KS’s record-breaking 6.2 GHz frequency while taking their desktop experience to higher levels of performance than ever before.”
The 24-core i9-14900KS is available to buy from March 14. However, it won’t be long before we hear all about Intel’s 15th Generation of chips, with Intel Arrow Lake expected to arrive at the end of 2024.
Loser: Microsoft
This week’s loser is Microsoft after the company opened up a former Xbox-exclusive title to PlayStation gamers only to receive feedback that the game ran better on the PS5.
Narrative game Pentiment – which also recently arrived on the Switch – proved able to run at 120fps on the PS5, while Xbox Series X users had previously settled for 60fps.
According to Pentiment director Josh Sawyer, a bug had caused the 120fps setting to be disabled on the Xbox and the faster frame rate would be made available with the next patch which has just rolled out.
Other fixes delivered with this patch include a fix for the High Contrast accessibility option not rendering correctly, updated icons, an updated trophy name and new PS4 and PS5 controller graphics.
While it’s good to see Microsoft open up its first-party games to a wider variety of platforms, it seems this particular launch backfired slightly. Hopefully, the next IP the company shares with the PS5 and Nintendo Switch will run just as smoothly on its own Xbox consoles as it does on its competitors’.
