Welcome back to Paul’s Tech News! The official 
arrival of summer this week brings with it many cherished seasonal traditions Pools will 
be partied Barbies will be Q’d and back sweat will accumulate with alarming speed and 
moistness In the tech world though the summer is usually marked by a bit of a lull as many 
manufacturers devote their time to prepping for big launches in Q3 or Q4 closer to the 
holidays But this is summer 2025 And if the year thus far can be characterized as the 
metaphorical out-of-control freight train speeding towards a bridgeless gorge, the 
summer lull is kind of like a cool slow-mo shot the director cuts to as the locomotive 
plummets into the ravine below. which should make for an interesting fall But let’s not 
get ahead of ourselves For now we can report that Nvidia is apparently enhancing their RTX 
5090D GPU bumping up a cup size to double D, AMD seems to have a six core X3D CPU in the 
works for budget AM5 gamers And despite what you may have heard on my GPU price watch series 
earlier this week there actually are high-end GPUs available at MSRP – All you’ve got to do is 
enlist. I’m doing my part on this week’s tech news it’s as if Nvidia just wanted to say “get a 
load of these” Obviously I could take a couple different approaches here – Boobs, the low-hanging 
fruit option if you will or I considered the classic Double Dragon reference or perhaps both? 
Let’s cover the details before any of us get too excited though, If you weren’t aware the best 
gaming GPU in the world the RTX 5090 was banned for sale in China by the US government prompting 
Nvidia to make a cut down version called the RTX 5090D that slipped in just beneath those export 
restrictions Gaming performance was pretty much identical but some said they could still 
feel the difference It just wasn’t quite the same as the natural 5090s Still due to more 
limited AI performance it was OK’d for export, at least for a while But the finicky old feds 
have now decided to ban it as well Specifically both the GB 202-300 that the 5090 uses as well as 
the GB 202-250 from the 5090D are now off limits for sale in China So now Nvidia is putting 
the 5090 under the knife yet again or so says generally reliable hardware leaker MegaSizeGPU on 
Twitter whose titillating name works nicely with the segment’s running gag The 5090DD will actually 
be a reduction though versus the single D despite the name’s implication using a new GB 202-240 
die and a reference non-founders edition PCB. The existence of Nvidia’s double-Ds was further 
supported by kopite7kimi on Wednesday who also added a CUDA core count, 21,760 same as the other 
5090s but the VRAM allocation has visibly sagged The current 5090s have 32 gigabytes but the 5090DD 
will be equipped with just 24 GB of 384-bit GDDR7 mammary – memory – which again is a notable 
reduction that will implant some justifiable frustration due to potential confusion between 
the three models. And lastly there will also be a “surprise” which I’m guessing is a blank 
check for AIB partners in China to adorn these GPUs with only the most buxom of anime waifus. 
Or perhaps they can only be imported to China via motorboat. Speaking of big beautiful GPUs, the 
OG RTX 5090 is still on a lot of gamers’ buy lists Despite all the negative press it has gotten it 
remains the top dog in the PC gaming game and some people just want the best It’s understandable 
Finding one for sale for less than three grand can be a challenge though especially stateside 
But another retail option was revealed Monday by Redditor AccomplishedFeed123 who snagged 
a Founders Edition RTX 5090 for $1,900 after discounts when they spotted a mysterious locked 
cage of goods at the NEX, aka the US Navy Exchange Store There were several RTX 5070s and 5080s as 
well as a single 5090 still chilling in their brown box packaging from Nvidia as you might have 
seen in some unboxing videos earlier in the year when they launched All were for sale at MSRP But 
before you grab your keys and Google map yourself to your closest Navy exchange store perhaps thank 
a veteran for their service first and then see if they will go GPU shopping with you, since only 
active and retired military families are allowed to shop there. Other branches of the military have 
similar stores and although there haven’t been any reports of Nvidia GPUs for sale at them it might 
be worth checking out if you’re both enlisted and an avid PC gamer And if that does apply to you 
then thank you for your service as well. Moving on to some AMD news we have a handful of new CPUs 
on the horizon that have been confirmed directly by Team Red via recent driver release notes This 
info was first spotted by melodic warrior on Twitter And the headliner is the 9600X3D which 
we can safely assume is a six core 3D v-cache enabled chip following in the footsteps of the 
7600X3D Now all we currently have is a list of hardware that is compatible with the Radeon 
AI Pro R9700 per the system integrator driver release notes but assuming AMD isn’t going 
completely off the rails with their naming schemes there’s a lot that can be inferred If the 
9600X3D is a 9600X with 3D v-cache added it will have six cores 12 threads a 5.2 GHz boost clock 
65 watt TDP and 96 MB of L3 cache It will likely be a desirable CPU for more entry-level AM5 builds 
focused on game performance if you don’t mind that some newer games are actually recommending 8 core 
chips now But it remains to be seen if it will be a MicroCenter exclusive product like the 7600X3D 
was. Melodic Warrior seems to think otherwise They say the 9600X3D will first be offered to system 
integrators with a later release to the DIY market at the end of Q3 or beginning of Q4 Since this 
info came from system integrator driver notes that could very well be true and would hopefully 
mean easier accessibility for builders who aren’t in range of a microcenter location Along with 
the 9600X3D the notes listed four new Ryzen Pro 9000 series CPUs that we don’t have much 
further info on as of yet And in some separate but related news an AMD AGESA update recently 
listed a Ryzen 7 9700F as well which is almost certainly an 8 core without integrated graphics 
So AMD seems prepped to start rolling out some iGPU-less versions of their 9000 series parts as 
well Meanwhile on the AMD Radeon side of things I have two updates I was recently able to directly 
ask AMD about their expectations for RDNA4-based Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT supply and whether that 
would be getting better anytime soon And the good news is that the answer was yes I wasn’t given too 
many specifics but AMD did notice the demand for these GPUs quickly after launch and took action 
to produce a lot more of them These decisions can’t be implemented quickly in the world of chip 
fabrication though I usually get about a six-month time frame estimate when I inquire how long it 
takes to go from an executive decision being made to more products arriving on the shelves 
In Q3 though which is July to September I’m told the 9070 supply will get much much better 
which should hopefully mean two things MSRP or better availability for those who want to buy one 
of those cards and more competitive pricing for higher-end Nvidia cards like the 5070 Ti and 5080 
due to the existence of other competitive options The second update is about the next generation 
of AMD Radeon graphics products which are in development The architecture is known as RDNA 5 
or UDNA and products based on it are expected to launch in 2026 per videocardz.com We will surely 
be getting more trickles of info about them between now and then such as this week’s Nugget 
from Kepler_L2 HDMI 2.2 support for the GFX13 display engine that underlies RDNA 5 going up to 
the 80 Gb/s mode which is actually lower than HDMI 2.2’s peak transfer speed of 96 Gb/s Displayport 
support remains undetermined as does many details of Radeon’s next-gen GPUs which are currently 
called Radeon next A bit on the nose don’t you think And now let us quickly transition to tech 
briefs where the tech news has been in shortened to ease digestion Intel continues to struggle 
along under new CEO Lip Bu Tan whose plans to right the listing ship are coming into clearer 
focus – slash and burn 15 to 20% of Intel foundry workers will reportedly be laid off in July Around 
10,000 souls across Intel’s global workforce apparently without severance pay too as they’ll 
be eliminated based on performance So you’re fired and you sucked or you sucked now you’re fired 
Intel’s marketing team will also be restructured or essentially eliminated and replaced by 
outsourcing those tasks to third-party Accenture because outsourcing always works thanks to the 
added efficiency of another management layer in the business structure On the other hand I can’t 
recall many noteworthy Intel marketing campaigns since Thanks Steve No not that one I guess Intel 
inside from like 15 years back So perhaps some new ideas could freshen things up a bit and distract 
from all those employees that they just axed Speaking of wielding a big axe Gamers Nexus posted 
another installment of their tariff investigation series on their consumer advocacy channel running 
about 2 hours in duration And try as I might I could not make time to watch it quite yet But 
thankfully Redditor Rap Jesus did and wrote up a brief summary as shown here on the hardware 
subreddit It’s notable that many subcategories of PC hardware are still being tariffed such as 
thermal grease and coolers while many companies have been trying to set up workarounds that 
still add to end user prices Pre-builts and console prices are up as well as many cases on 
the market But I appreciate a succinct bottom line evaluation Tariffs continue to cause higher 
prices supply chain chaos and business uncertainty for PC hardware Closing out with some interesting 
non-PC tech news DARPA has apparently set a new record for wireless power transfer with their 
immaculately acronymed persistent optical wireless energy relay or power program This uses freaking 
lasers to transmit power instead of clunky cables And they managed to shoot 800 watts of power 5.3 
mi or 8.6 km for 30 seconds up from the previous record of 230 watts being lasered across 1 mile 
for 25 seconds No indication of how efficient this process is but the ground to ground tests 
they’re currently running could eventually be switched to surface-to-air transmissions or 
surface-to-air-to-air back to surface for long range power transmission or to power drones 
in flight And then in phase three they aim to shoot 10 kW of energy up to 125 miles or 200 
km away with relays capable of being installed in conventional airplanes So I know we’re all 
thinking the same thing Finally we’ll have the technology to host an RTX 5090 powered jumbo jet 
land party The future is bright But there you have it guys Tech news for the week And if you liked 
it click that like button or leave me a comment