Re-basing Graphics Cards to Compare with the RTX 5080

3080 to 5080

Did you check out the new RTX 5080 launch? It is nVidia’s latest $1000 (or $1500) card, meant for those who have $1000-$1500 to spend on a GPU, and do not wish to splurge on the $2800 RTX 5090. It is a good time to be very wealthy!

Getting deeper into RTX 5080 specifics is not the goal for this post, though. That’s what we did last week! Instead, today’s post is about the fact that we will be using the RTX 5080 as the reference for our performance percentages in our main chart from now on, as opposed to the RTX 3080.

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Intel Fumbles the Arrow into the Lake

Ultra 9 Underwater

CPUs are a duopoly. While some alternatives to AMD and Intel technically exist, their market share is so tiny that they do not appear on some statistics tracking pages. It is for this reason that we rarely talk about only Intel or only AMD. We instead compare them to one another, as they are both the only true competition to each other.

So, in today’s update article, as we turn our attention to whether there’s a place in our PC build chart for Intel’s strange new CPU release, named ‘Arrow Lake’—we also consider how this release fits into the history of the battle between two impressive (sometimes clumsy) tech giants.

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AMD Conquers the High-end CPU Tiers

AMD Ryzen 9000 CPU lineup

It has been a while, but here we are with AMD’s Ryzen 9000 series launched and ready for purchase!

AMD’s new CPU series starts with a serious set of excellent high-end CPUs. We are not going to analyze all of them individually in this post, but as a quick summary:

    • Ryzen 5 9600X: 6 cores and 12 threads for $250.
    • Ryzen 7 9700X: 8 cores and 16 threads for $320.
    • Ryzen 7 9800X3D: Also 8 cores and 16 threads, but with extra cache for $480.
    • Ryzen 9 9900X: 12 cores and 24 threads for $380.
    • Ryzen 9 9950X: 16 cores (!) and 32 threads (!!) for $550.

So, how do these new CPUs measure up? Do they belong in our chart?

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Updating CPU Performance Comparisons Nov. 18-19

Greetings.

We are updating the CPU performance information shown. Our current CPU descriptions compare performance to the old Ryzen 9 3900X. We are updating the performance numbers to be compiled from newer benchmarks, and showing performance relative to the new Ryzen 9 9900X.

As we update the CPU descriptions, you may see errors in the performance numbers, where some of the CPUs are still being compared to the older 3900X, making them look out of place. We are working on making sure that all CPU description are updated and standardized within a day or two of this post.

showing the cpu performance numbers in the cpu description that will be updated

Thank you!

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Hall Effect Game Controllers – The Next Level Up?

New titles, new games, new(ish) consoles, and yet we still use the same technology in our game controllers. Sure, the PlayStation 5 controller has some advanced features such as adaptive triggers, but after many months of gaming, you may notice something odd about your Xbox, Switch, or PlayStation controller. Perhaps, your characters walk without input, or the camera moves around slowly. Maybe you wiggle the analog sticks and it’s fine … but only for a moment. One of the sticks has begun to drift on its own.

Enter the Hall Effect game controller. They promise to address the annoying issues that often plague traditional controllers, such as stick drift and similar wear over time. But what exactly are they, and how do they measure up against the standard Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo controllers?

Let’s delve into the magnetic world of Hall Effect game controllers to unravel their magic and see what they are, whether they’re worth preferring, and how some specific models compare.

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