nVidia has recently released three refreshed cards, the RTX 4070 Super, RTX 4070 Ti Super, and the RTX 4080 Super.
That is a lot of Supers! Let us take a look at each, in brief.
I am always excited by hardware launches! The feeling of fresh, new, unexpected hardware! Progressing technology, things getting faster, or cooler, or cheaper, or all three at the same time. It is wonderful, and it is a feeling I look forward to with each launch…
Intel just launched its Raptor Lake refresh CPUs, adding a (hopefully) fresh coat of paint and renewing its Raptor Lake lineup from last year.
One year ago (almost to the day) Intel presented its A770 and A750 cards to the world. These were reasonably priced cards with reasonable performance, but were not added to our build chart then because—in addition to other minor issues with them—they suffered from two major flaws:
It has been a year, and you still need a system that has Resizable BAR, but that is available on all modern platforms launched in the last ~3 years, so it is less of an issue. More importantly, Intel’s latest drivers have dramatically improved performance in older games, between 20%-40%! That is a huge improvement.
Today, Intel launched the A580, prompting a second look into Intel’s previous cards. Since all three are based on the same silicon, we will look at them together.
We all know that HDDs are essentially obsolete as a technology, as SSDs now do everything better. But HDDs have continued to be manufactured and recommended, as they have one very desirable advantage: A lower price.
SSDs have been getting cheaper though, and have overtaken HDDs in some price segments…
The majority of PC part launches from established companies are successes, as professionals usually try to design good products for the purpose of attracting customers.
From time to time, however, the human beings at such companies make mistakes, or go overboard on the alcohol, or let the engineers dream a little too much. The past week gave us a rare and beautiful opportunity to see not one but two hugely entertaining slipping-on-banana-peel-tier product launch failures, with a pratfall each from nVidia and AMD.
This is a double update: one CPU, one GPU.
Let us begin with the section that contains (on balance) good news for PC builders!
January brought a lot of CPU options to our attention from AMD and Intel, and as a result we’ve made a whole host of changes to the processor column of our main chart!
Since its launch many years ago, the Athlon 200GE was the refuge of the tired, the hungry, the poor and oppressed. For a tiny fee of about $55, you would get a decent-ish CPU that had a decent-ish iGPU within. All you had to do next was find a very cheap motherboard to house it, and you had yourself a very affordable computer. This made it our go-to recommendation for the absolute cheapest build in our main chart.
But recently, the price of the 200GE has been going up, and it is getting harder to find…
In the midst of a festive season, we bring tidings of good graphical cheer to some of the highest tiers of our main PC building chart!
New GPUs from both AMD and Nvidia are now making an appearance, and causing some accompanying changes for older graphics cards.
What a fantastic month it has been, with so much new hardware available! But what is this? It is Intel, who decided to add even more spice with their new Raptor Lake launch! Woohoo!
Potential CPU buyers had already had their options improved when AMD launched Zen 4 earlier this month, and from Intel’s timing, price, and performance, it is clear that this is a response. How good are the new choices from Intel?
Let us take a look.