Posts in Category: logical increments updates

The RTX 3060 Launch Update

The PC buyers have been living in the dry desert of GPU-lessness for 5 months now, and a few days ago, nVidia promised that relief is coming with the RTX 3060.

But let us get the usual things out of the way: $330, great performance for the price, runs cool. It is a modern nVidia launch, and you typically only need to ask if they have messed up the price or not. This time, the price is good.

Or is it?

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The November 2020 Memory and Storage Update

Prices for various PC parts often have a huge range, depending on items quality, performance, and availability. Some CPUs are $100, some are $1000, and some cannot be bought for love or money. Some other items have a much smaller range of prices, and this can be seen when we look at PC memory and storage (including RAM and hard drives). Memory and storage are offered by a large number of sellers, and thus the options are competitively priced. Most options that are similar in speed and capacity tend to be close to each other in price, making it easy to track and compare.

With time, long-term and short-term computer memory always sees a downward trend in price, with the only exception being when a factory is burned or flooded or something. Once certain items (or capacities) can be reliably found for a particular price, we overhaul our memory recommendations to recommend better/larger components, for the same price.

Along those lines, let us take a look at some recently changed recommendations:

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The Zen 3 Update (Ryzen 5000 Series CPUs)

AMD and Intel have been the desktop CPU duopoly for as long as we can remember, with the mantle of “best CPU manufacturer” having been worn by both. From about 2005 to 2017, Intel was king. AMD’s Ryzen series began stealing the multi-threaded marketshare with the launch of a large number of high-core-count CPUs at a moderate price. These CPUs did not make AMD the “best CPU manufacturer” though, since single-threaded performance was still behind.

Numerically, 2017 was 3 years ago, but the numbers do not match the emotion: 2017 feels like it was in the Dark Ages. Many centuries have passed since the year 2017, and AMD has been improving. With each revision to the Ryzen family, AMD’s multi-threaded superiority was extended, and Intel’s single-threaded lead was diminished.

With Intel stubbornly refusing to abandon the 14nm process that has been (reportedly) in use since the times of Genghis Khan, this day had to come. Intel’s single-threaded dominance is over, for no king can rule forever.

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The RTX 3070 Update

Over the years, nVidia has gotten better and better at GPU launches. Each new card performs well, runs cool and quiet, and is better than what it replaces… and no exceptions to this come readily to mind.

nVidia’s sole (and rare) issue with modern launches is the pricing, which can sometimes feel like highway robbery: $1800 for a graphics card? Want my firstborn with that, too, nVidia? Or just an arm and a leg?

This year, though, it is a bit different.

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