Gigabyte releases a motherboard aimed at PICO ITX systems-- the GA-PICO3350, a board measuring all of 100 x 72mm based on the Intel Celeron N3350 Apollo Lake SoC processor.

The 6W processor is soldered on, and offers 2C/2T with a base boost of 1.1/2.4GHz. In addition, the motherboard has a single SO-DIMM with support for up to 8GB of DDR3L memory running at 1600/1866MHz, and offers dual-display capability through 24-bit dual-channel LVDS with max resolution reaching 1920x1200.

The PCI-SIG announces the next generation of PCIe technology-- the PCIe 6.0 specification-- is on track for a final 2021 release, following the completion of revision 0.3 of the specification.

The organisation completed the PCIe 5.0 specification just a few months ago, specifically on May 2019. We know little as to how version 6.0 will improve on it, other than the doubling of the data rate to 64 GT/s while maintaining backward compatibility with all previous spec generations. For the curious, the 64 GT/s figure refers to GigaTransfers per second over the interface, and clocks to around 256GB/s of bandwidth (or 128GB/s in each direction).

The EMEA PC market is up by 3% Y-o-Y in Q3 2019, Gartner reports, as shipments total 19.4 million units thanks to "strong" demand from businesses across W. Europe, except the UK due to (perhaps obvious) Brexit-related reasons.

Desktops remain a popular form factor with many European businesses, while mobile PC shipments see a return to growth after 2 quarters of decline. Results are less rosy on a global perspective, since Q3 2019 shipments total 68m units, a 1.1% Y-o-Y increase compared to the 67m units of Q3 2018.

“The Windows 10 refresh cycle continued to be the primary driver for growth across all regions, although the magnitude of the impact varied according to local market conditions and the stage of the refresh cycle,” the analyst says. “For example, in Japan, PC shipments grew 55% Y-o-Y in Q3 2019, driven by the Windows 10 refresh cycle and a pending sales tax change. This strong growth helped propel the total worldwide PC market to growth.”

AMD announces the Radeon RX 5500-- a series of graphics processors based on 7nm Navi GPUs aimed at bringing RDNA gaming architecture to the mainstream market on both desktop and notebook PCs.

The range consists of the regular desktop RX 5500 and the RX 5500M mobile variant. The company says it built for 1080p gaming with high-fidelity graphics and ultra-responsive gameplay, with the promise of a 37% increase in average performance compared to previous Radeon graphics cards running at 1080p, at least with "select titles."

For mobile gaming, the RX 5500M provides a 30% boost in performance, with up to 60fps in select AAA titles and up to 90fps in select eSports games. In addition, AMD says the RX5500 allows for 1.6X higher gaming performance-per-watt than current Radeon graphics cards based on Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture.