As the Consumer Electronics Show of 2026 comes to an end, our field crew has done of a lot of work to keep readers updated. However, pre-CES expectations were high for several product launches, that sadly didn’t happen. In today’s piece we are ranking the top five things we didn’t get at CES 2026, even with hopes of a product launch occurring during the show.

1) First on our non-weighted ranking is NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 50-series “Blackwell” SUPER refresh. This mid-cycle was originally planned for late Q1 to early Q2 2026, with a possible announcement at CES 2026. The “SUPER” treatment was planned with denser GDDR7 memory modules with 3 GB of capacity per chip, increasing the memory configuration of the standard GeForce RTX 5070, RTX 5070 Ti, and RTX 5080. Initially, the RTX 5070 SUPER was planned with an upgrade to offer 18 GB, while the RTX 5070 Ti SUPER and RTX 5080 SUPER would each provide 24 GB of GDDR7 memory.

2) At number two is NVIDIA’s rumored Arm-based N1X SoC for gaming laptops. The processor was expected to debut around CES 2026, which would have set up direct competition with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Plus announced at the show. NVIDIA reportedly used its GB10 Superchip—the design powering DGX Spark—as the blueprint for N1/N1X. The CPU features 20 Arm v9.2 cores split into two clusters of ten, each backed by 16 MB of shared L3 cache (32 MB total), while each core maintains private L2 storage. The memory subsystem leverages a unified LPDDR5X-9400 fabric on a 256-bit bus, supporting up to 128 GB and delivering roughly 301 GB/s of raw bandwidth, though it’s unclear if such capacity will remain an option in consumer laptops. As the package is rated at approximately 140 W TDP, connectivity includes PCIe 5.0 for high-speed NVMe SSD connection. 3) Coming in at number three, AMD’s CEO Dr. Lisa Su was at CES 2026 with a very interesting keynote, but with no official information about the rumored AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 processor. As with all the products mentioned here, it was believed that CES 2026 was the day of announcement. This processor reportedly features 16 cores and 32 threads, with 3D V-Cache on both chiplets, totaling approximately 192 MB of L3 cache. It operates at a base frequency of 4.30 GHz, with boost clocks reaching 5.6 GHz. Compared to its predecessor, it sacrifices a modest 100 MHz in peak speed for significantly greater cache capacity and more flexible scheduling. This setup is expected to benefit cache-sensitive workloads and gaming, while also appealing to workstation and creator users handling memory-intensive tasks. However, this enhanced capability comes with a thermal cost, as the rumored TDP rises to 200 W from the 9950X3D’s 170 W, potentially pushing PPT values close to 250 W. Instead of this SKU, we got the announcement for a Ryzen 7 9850X3D, which is similar to Ryzen 7 9800X3D but cranks the boost frequency by another 400 MHz to 5.6 GHz. 4) At number four is Intel’s “Arrow Lake Refresh” of the current “Arrow Lake-S” desktop CPU family. We hoped to see Intel come out with a more tuned “Arrow Lake” silicon which would give gamers a couple of extra FPS when building on the LGA-1851 socket. Originally the rumor mill showed a few SKUs like Core Ultra 9 290K Plus,
Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, and Core Ultra 5 250K Plus, which would gain about 100 MHz in base and boost frequencies across P- and E-cores. Intel also planned an upgraded memory controller supporting DDR5 memory running at 7,200 MT/s, a significant increase over the 6,400 MT/s transfer rate of the regular “Arrow Lake.” With the refresh we would get a lot of tiny optimizations that made the original launch bumpy and unappealing for some gamers, but it looks like that might not be the case anymore. Perhaps Intel’s only true goal for CES 2026 was the long-rumored “Panther Lake” launch, and not the desktop line refresh. The company’s “Nova Lake” is a few months away, so we possibly won’t get “Arrow Lake Refresh” at all. 5) Last but not least, a great part of the community was interested in the launch of Intel’s flagship Arc “Battlemage” B770 GPU based on the BMG-G31 die. With 32 Xe2 cores and 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit interface, the card was nearing launch as it surfaces in more software libraries. However, Intel’s CES 2026 keynote focused more on “Panther Lake,” with zero mention of discrete graphics. The Arc B770 is expected to carry a 300 W TDP, representing Intel’s highest-ever rating in the consumer Arc discrete GPU segment. That 300 W board-level figure significantly exceeds Intel’s recent mainstream offerings. Previous high-end cards like the Arc “Alchemist” A770 and several B-series “Battlemage” models, for example, have operated within a 190 to 225 W range. Whatever this added TDP would gain a lot of real-world performance, we are yet to see.