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Hey look, an AMD graphics card
While proper next-gen graphics cards are a ways off yet, there's still some new GPU news in the form of the RX 9070 GRE. The previously-China-only card will now be available to the rest of the world with an MSRP of $549. That's the same original price as the RX 9070, but graphics card pricing being what it is, it's soared ever higher since launch.
The RX 9070 GRE has 48 compute units, as opposed to the 56 in the RX 9070 proper, and slightly lower ray accelerator and AI accelerator counts, too. Still, it looks beefy enough to provide a decent whack of gaming grunt for more reasonable money than its bigger brothers.
It might not be the most exciting GPU announcement, but I reckon the RX 9070 GRE might make for a canny buy if AMD's performance claims prove out. And the price stays around that figure, obviously. Time to boot up the test rig?
And now for something completely different...
Would you like a holographic dragon in an over-sized test tube mounted to the front of your gaming PC?
No, I'm not sure either. But MSI has unveiled the MEG Vision X2 AI with a "first-of-it's kind AI Holostage", featuring the company's mascot, Lucky the dragon, as an AI avatar.
Yep, it's not subtle. Still, the press release suggests that a choice of digital companions will be available in future, and the "LuckyClaw" avatar will be available to respond to natural speech commands to help you tune your rig.
I'm really not sure how to feel about AI cyber prisons attached to the front of our machines (or on our desks), but perhaps we're looking at the future. Or, an experiment that makes for a booth-friendly showcase of MSI's burgeoning AI tech.
Still, Computex is known for wild PC case designs, and this one's certainly that.
Intel Arc G-Series Panther Lake handheld chips
Let's not forget we had one of the biggest announcements of this year's show... err, last week. Well, sort of. Intel's Arc G-Series chips for handheld gaming PCs have been long teased, but the blue team took the official wraps off well in advance of the show. Hey, getting in first counts for something, I guess?
Two chips were announced, the Intel Arc G3 and the Intel Arc G3 Extreme. They feature "up to Intel Arc B390 graphics", two P-cores, eight E-cores, and four LPE cores. That's a pretty good combination on paper for a handheld chip, particularly as Intel's Panther Lake laptop chips have already proven their gaming prowess.
Our Dave has already got his hands on the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+, one of the first handhelds to use the G3 Extreme, and I think it's fair to say he's rather impressed:
"The device in my hands feels like the standard all new handheld gaming PCs will be judged by"
Dave loves a handheld and he's tested the very best around, so that headline's got me all sorts of curious to test one for myself. The bad news? The price has been mooted as around $1,500.
Sigh. I loved my time with the previous MSI Claw 8 AI+ A2VM, and this new model should make mincemeat of its impressive-for-the-time performance figures. A grand and a half, though? That's some serious moolah, and the same sort of money as some mid-range gaming laptop deals. We thought the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X was expensive, but this? It's proper money, so it'd better be proper good.
Still, if those first impressions hold up, we could be looking at the new king of our best handheld gaming PC guide. That being said, it looks like there'll be plenty of handhelds featuring the chip at this year's show, so the MSI beastie has some competition straight out the gate. Stay tuned here to see what we make of the rest, as the show goes on.
Nvidia RTX Spark
The biggest news so far is Nvidia's announcement of the RTX Spark SoC, which makes use of an Arm-based N1X "superchip" with up to 20 Grace CPU cores and 6188 RTX Blackwell GPU cores.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang took to the stage to hold up two RTX Spark-equipped laptops running games, as the GPU core count is equivalent to an RTX 5070. In terms of gaming performance, though, it might be better to think of it as "RTX 5070-like", as emulation may well take its toll on the frame rate depending on the game/implementation.
We'll have to play with one ourselves to find out, of course, but the new SoC won't just be for laptops. There are also said to be Spark-equipped mini PCs and desktops on the way, which marks something of a brave new frontier for Nvidia in the hardware space.
Still, it's the laptop potential that really has us excited here at PC Gamer Towers. Particularly if Nvidia's claims of gaming battery life "better than anything you've seen before on RTX laptops" hold up in practice.
Many questions remain, though. For a start, these systems can support up to 128 GB of RAM, which will be mighty expensive in these RAMpocalypse-influenced times. Will we see reasonably-priced 16 GB or 32 GB offerings? And will the emulation prove to be an issue, or will Nvidia's technical know-how smooth over some of the rougher Arm-based waters, especially as it's working with devs to create Arm-native games?
It's all still to play for. Still, a brand new Nvidia hardware release, with actual gaming potential rather than pure AI chops? Yep, you should pay attention to this one very closely—especially as it gives us a better idea of when to expect next-gen RTX GPUs.
2026-06-01T10:11:13.873Z
Hello and welcome to our Computex 2026 live blog! You'll find all the latest PC gaming announcements from this year's show on this very page. Bear with me a second, because there's a whole lot to cover, so let's get you caught up...
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