The Tesla Model S has just had a 2021 refresh, which in itself wasn't on our list of potential stories, until we realised that it includes a built in gaming PC. Nestled deep in that spacious, swanky, white interior, we might've even gotten our first sighting of a machine running AMD's Navi 23 GPU, though this hasn't been confirmed.
In addition to the already impressive list of entertainment features on the Tesla Model S—including music and media streaming, 960-watt UHF sound system with 22 speaker setup, karaoke facility, and internet browser—now you can play PC games from the comfort of your car.
There's no official spec details floating around on the Tesla site (opens in new tab) yet, other than it packing "up to 10 teraflops" of processing power. But according to Patrick Schur, software engineer and well-known twitter tech leaker, the machines will utilise a Navi 23 GPU.
Today Tesla announced a new infotainment system and some people thought I was kidding when I said they were going to use the Navi 23. 😏 pic.twitter.com/9rYHi1HK7JJanuary 28, 2021
None of this is confirmed on the Tesla site but, if the above spec is anything to go by, it should just about outperform the Radeon RX 5700 XT (opens in new tab) in raw TFLOPs, which tops out at 9.75 TFLOPs. It's likely to be in the same performance class as the 10.28 TFLOP PS5 (opens in new tab), which utilises a custom RDNA 2 GPU with 36 CUs running at 2.23GHz.
The promo material teases that the machine should be able to handle The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (opens in new tab), which is a telling last-gen performance bar. But perhaps more excitingly, Elon himself tweeted (opens in new tab) that it can indeed play Cyberpunk 2077 (opens in new tab). Whether that's with ray tracing on or not, we're yet to discover.
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The PC can be played from any seat in the car using a wireless controller—preferably not the drivers seat while moving, though. There's no hint as to which controllers are compatible at this point, but one would assume these PC gaming controllers (opens in new tab) are all on the list. Perhaps Tesla will be bringing out some own-brand controllers, who knows.
There are two screen options for use with the gaming rig: a 17 inch, 2200 x 1300 (potentially touchscreen) display in the middle of the dashboard, and an 8-inch panel jammed between the two front seats, for use by backseat passengers.
I can't believe our first look at Navi 23 might be at the helm of a Tesla. Save some GPU chips for us mortals, daddy Musk.
