The Falcon' Post

The Calm March 2020 Logical Increments Update

The Falcon

March 2020 Update Feature Image

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears! Also: Greetings.

The topic of this month has been the Coronavirus epidemic, so you are probably expecting some sage advice in this update. We will not give you any medical advice, because… we are not qualified to give medical advice. We research computer parts, not medicine! So please visit the official website of the Ministry of Health (or Department of Medicine, or Center of Disease Control, or etc) of your country, and follow their advice. They are professionals, and they know the best ways to deal with this.

As for us: We are professionals too, we know the best ways to buy PC parts! And this update brings changes to our main chart, mostly in the CPU column.

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The Towering 64-Core Threadripper 3990X Update

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At times there are earthquakes, and at times there are hurricanes. Volcanoes sometimes erupt, and meteors sometimes strike the earth. And when they are in the mood, sometimes AMD releases a 64-core, 128-thread consumer CPU that makes you sit up and wonder if you are in a dream. 64 cores! Sixty (60) four (4) cores (cores)!

Remember when 6-core CPUs became normal barely 2 years ago? “Haha, you foolish weaklings”, says AMD, as it unveils a CPU that is TEN TIMES more powerful. We need to send a letter to Dr. Lisa Su to inform her that this is a mistake, and it is not the year 2030 yet!

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The Dramatic RX 5600 XT (and Minor GPU Updates)

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RX 5600 XT

After many rumours and much debate, the RX 5600 XT has been released. Originally slated to be a GTX 1660 “killer”, AMD re-positioned this card to compete with the RTX 2060.

From the reviews, you can see that it competes well with the 2060, beating it by a tiny margin. The 5600 XT is a $280 card, and the 2060 was a $350 card, so a victory is neat! More than just having high performance and a good price, though—this new card also uses little power, runs cool, and runs quiet. When you check all the main boxes, you have a winner!

But is it all sunshine and rainbows?

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The GTX 1650 Super Launch

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nVidia’s Turing architecture has been fantastic, with almost every card in the 16xx and 20xx range being recommended on our charts. The cards perform well and are power-efficient, so you typically get a card that hits all the main points: high performance, lower power draw, low temperatures, and low noise. Pricing is an issue for the flagship cards (2080 and 2080 Ti) where lack of competition lets nVidia showcase its pricing creativity with $1200 cards. Oil tycoons buy graphics cards too, you know! But for all the other Turing cards, the prices are fine at launch. Well, almost all.

The sole Turing card that was a thoroughly bad launch was the GTX 1650, which was weak and quite overpriced. Even today, half a year after its launch, it remains overpriced at $150, easily beaten by cheaper ~$120 cards. Today, nVidia is updating the lineup with the GTX 1650 Super, for $160.

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