After months of dealing with graphics card shortages and price spikes due to unsustainable demand from cryptocurrency miners, some very welcome headlines have recently come our way:
In early October, Intel launched its new Coffee Lake lineup of CPUs. In many ways, it’s a very exciting launch, with the entire range of CPUs receiving a core count upgrade for the first time since 2009.
However, the launch has also been plagued with some issues. Namely, availability has been extremely limited, with the most desirable CPUs selling out faster than most people can snag them.
As a result, we have been intentionally slow to add the new CPUs to the main computer parts list on our homepage. We don’t like recommended hardware that people cannot reliably buy.
That said, we are past due for addressing Coffee Lake, so this post should fully inform you of our thinking. Read all the gory analysis below:
AMD has launched a huge amount of disruptive hardware recently. Here’s the official Logical Increments™ analysis you have all been waiting breathlessly to absorb.
Intel’s new Skylake-X CPUs have taken over our top two tiers, Extremist and Monstrous. They have effortlessly dethroned Intel’s previous line of high-end CPUs, Broadwell-E.
The new additions to our highest-end CPU recommendations are the i9-7900X (10 cores; $1,000) and i7-7820X (8 cores; $600). They replace last generation’s i7-6950X (10-cores; $1,700), i7-6900K (8 cores; $1,100), and i7-6850K (6 cores; $600).
The GT 1030
Three lower-end graphics cards have released recently, but you may not have heard anything about them. AMD and NVIDIA generally do not throw major parties when they release ~$70 products, so do not worry about it if these launches slipped under your radar!
The three new-ish cards are:
The Gigabyte RX 580, which is… Basically the Gigabyte RX 480.
This week, AMD releases two new graphics cards: the RX 580 and RX 570. Actually, calling them “new” is an overstatement. AMD has taken two cards from last year (the RX 480 and RX 470) and is now selling them with new names and a small overclock.
This week, AMD launched their exciting Ryzen 5 CPUs, which include two 6-core hyperthreaded chips (the 1600X and 1600) and two 4-core hyperthreaded chips (the 1500X and 1400). These CPUs are now among our recommendations on the Logical Increments homepage, marking a welcome return for AMD to the mid-range CPU space.
Long story short: We have added the the R5 1500X and 1600 to our Great tier, while the R5 1600 and 1600X now appear in our Excellent tier. As a result, the Ryzen chips have shaken up our once Intel-dominated mid-range CPU recommendations, and knocked the Intel i5-7400 completely off our list.
Here it is… The Ryzen 7 update. This is going to be a long one.
AMD has released the first three CPUs in its Ryzen lineup: The Ryzen 7 1700, 1700X, and 1800X. Currently, you will find all three CPUs occupying our Enthusiast tier.
Now, read on to get our full impressions and explanation for our placement of the Ryzen 7 chips.
After months of delays and years of waiting, AMD’s Ryzen CPUs have finally… almost launched. The top three Ryzen CPUs are now available for pre-order and will be releasing on March 2nd, 2017.
Kaby Lake continues its takeover our CPU recommendations.
Kaby Lake has now replaced all of the Skylake CPUs except for some low-end Skylake Celerons in our Minimum tier. (Since H210 motherboards are not out yet, we cannot find suitable motherboards for Kaby Lake Celerons.)