AMD's bringing its friends to Computex but Jen-Hsun's nowhere to be seen

(Image credit: Taitra)

When Computex kicks off this month it may well be the place where we find out all the details of the next generation of gaming hardware. Those new slices of silicon nirvana which promise to deliver frame rates beyond our wildest dreams. Or, alternatively, it could be a huge anti-climax where both AMD and Nvidia nod to their new technologies without giving us anything more tangible than some chips shown off on stage, or an anonymous benchmark.

As is now traditional for the Taiwan tech show, AMD's superstar CEO, Dr. Lisa Su, is hosting one of the three CEO Keynotes, and Nvidia has just announced that it, too, will be holding a keynote the following day.

Though without a single leather jacket in sight, as Jen-Hsun is nowhere to be seen on the list of speakers for Nvidia's show. Jeff Fisher is, however, so there's a chance there'll be something there for GeForce gamers, though it may just be a quick 'and finally…' where he introduces some teaser trailer for its RTX 4000-series expected around August or September.

For its part, AMD's keynote is titled, "AMD Advancing the High-Performance Computing Experience" and it promises that during the address it and its ecosystem partners "will show breakthrough performance and leadership experiences for gamers, enthusiasts and creators."

If I had to guess I'd say either Su or Mark Papermaster will wave around a Zen 4 processor with its new heatspreader, but there will be little mention of graphics cards.

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Nvidia keynote details at Computex — (Image credit: Nvidia)

On the Nvidia side, there have been some reports that its Computex keynote will present the latest gaming products. But that's based on a single line in the write-up on Nvidia's own site, which can be interpreted in a couple of different ways. The full line is:

"NVIDIA will present how AI is powering the enterprise data center and the latest products and technologies for gamers and creators."

That can either be read as "NVIDIA will present… the latest products and technologies for gamers and creators," or as "NVIDIA will present how AI is powering… the latest products and technologies for gamers and creators," which is far less tantalising.

But, like I say Jeff Fisher's there, the senior VP of GeForce, and he'll have something to say on the gaming front at least. Though hopefully, it won't be as throwaway as his brief mention of the subsequently delayed RTX 3090 Ti back at CES 2022.

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And where will Intel be? I'm guessing it will still be trying to sort its drivers out, hoping that it can finally get a performant discrete GPU out of the door before the end of the year. I've heard there would have been some big announcements from Intel in Computex had things gone to plan.

But they really haven't.

Overall though, I'm expecting little more than teasers as opposed to full-on details. Few companies are willing to tie their biggest launches of the year to coincide with specific shows, preferring instead to have their own events where they can dominate rather than battle with the competition for internet air time.

Still, once Computex has passed the hype machine will kick into top gear as we barrel on towards a new generation of gaming gear at the end of the year.

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Dave has been gaming since the days of Zaxxon and Lady Bug on the Colecovision, and code books for the Commodore Vic 20 (Death Race 2000!). He built his first gaming PC at the tender age of 16, and finally finished bug-fixing the Cyrix-based system around a year later. When he dropped it out of the window. He first started writing for Official PlayStation Magazine and Xbox World many decades ago, then moved onto PC Format full-time, then PC Gamer, TechRadar, and T3 among others. Now he's back, writing about the nightmarish graphics card market, CPUs with more cores than sense, gaming laptops hotter than the sun, and SSDs more capacious than a Cybertruck.