(Information on Steam’s top games were gathered for this article from Steam Charts)
A couple of weeks ago I went through eight of the most popular Steam games at the time, and linked which Logical Increments PC build tier is needed to play that game at a specific performance level. Well, that proved to be a popular article, so I’m here to round out the list with more of Steam’s most successful titles (and maybe a couple trending ones)!
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.
Fig. 1: Our prediction of the only graphics card nVidia will release in the year 2026 (projected MSRP: $20,000)
Greetings. This article was painful to write. Every section hurt, and every section gets progressively more painful. But the truth can hurt, so read on.
The consumer PC world is headed down a bad path:
There is a major focus by PC part manufacturers to produce extremely expensive and overpowered products, with the mid-tiers and the low-end being neglected. There might be no annihilation and havoc in the personal computer sector immediately, but most consumers are unhappy. If things continue as they are, normal PC buyers may choose to opt out, shrinking the market significantly. With fewer and fewer customers in the long-term, some component manufacturers may find themselves facing their own end-of-life.
Come walk with me, friendly reader, down memory lane, and I will show you how we ended up here… and where we might be going next.
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…
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.
Rumours of an Intel entry into the graphics card market have been circulating for years, and many people had eagerly anticipated the arrival of a third player to the discrete GPU space.
Well, it happened. A few days ago, Intel released the Arc A750 and Arc A770 cards. Let us take a look at the good and the bad of this launch.
We are going to skip the big long AMD history lesson for this one, but if you have hours to spare and want to read about that:
Today, we take a look at where AMD lands with its Zen 4 launch.
The i9-12900KS is now among us, and it computes its way across the land like a fearsome giant. Until the next generation of chips releases in the (not-too-distant) future, this is the best CPU for gaming that is available.
It is also a CPU with a massive power draw and large thermal requirements . . . but fear not! If you are considering the route offered by this beefy component, you don’t have to walk the path alone. In this article, we’ll be taking a look at how to build an absurdly powerful top-tier gaming system with the 12900KS—all while maintaining system balance and even room for upgrades (many years down the line, when an “upgrade” might once again become possible for this system in a really noteworthy way).