That is a lot of new cards launched recently! The RTX 5050, the RTX 5060, two versions of the RTX 5060 Ti, and two versions of the RX 9060 XT!
Instead of checking each one out separately, let us take a look at them all in one fell swoop, with an eye toward deciding where/if they belong in our main build chart. I am somewhat unsure of what a swoop is, and why it needs to be of the fell variety, but here are the cards:
Tell me, how rich are you? If you are rich, then we can be friends. If you are very very rich, I would like to upgrade you to my best friend, and tell you about nVidia’s two newly released hyper-overpriced graphics cards, the RTX 5080 and RTX 5090.
…let us take a closer look:
(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)!
(Information on Steam’s top games were gathered for this article from Steam Charts)
Back in January 2020, I crafted a neat little piece discussing the Logical Increments tier needed to enjoy each of the top games on Steam at the time. Fast forward to now, and oh, how the scene has shifted! Back around that period, we were seeing trade tariffs causing a good bump in prices for PC hardware. As we ventured into late 2020, high demand meant the cost of PC parts kept climbing, and 2021 brought even higher prices—especially for graphics cards due to a cryptocurrency boom. Oh, and let’s not forget, the world was just getting acquainted with Covid-19, adding a whole new level of complexity to tech market dynamics through supply chain issues.
Now, at the tail end of 2023, with prices and availability having normalized in some (though not all) component categories, and just a week left until Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it’s about time we take a fresh look at what Logical Increments PC building tier you’d need to dive into the most popular Steam games today. Let’s see what changed in the last few years, and whether that ol’ system still has some life in it, or whether it might be worth a little upgrade. Stick around as we unpack the current gaming demands and discuss today’s tech landscape.
In a world where visuals speak louder than words, video editing and animation have emerged as potent tools to tell compelling stories. For professionals venturing into the realms of cinematic or animated storytelling, the centrepiece of their tech arsenal is undeniably the graphics card. The graphical prowess doesn’t just define the quality of visuals but also the efficiency and speed of rendering them.
Here, we unearth the graphics cards that stand out in the tail end of 2023 for their remarkable capabilities in video editing and animation.
This is a double update: one CPU, one GPU.
Let us begin with the section that contains (on balance) good news for PC builders!
Intel recently launched a new lineup of chips, and one of them was the i7-11700K, an 8 core/16 threaded powerhouse with a boost clock of 5 GHz. With such specifications, this processor runs any game smoothly. As a result of the high core count, it would also be fit for workstation purposes such as video rendering.
It does have a noticeably high TDP: 125 Watts! This already tells us the processor might get a little hot under high loads. Nevertheless, the performance is astounding and makes up (slightly) for the high TDP.
In this article, we’ll be building using the new i7 to build a PC for high-tier gaming. Let’s dig in:
Thanks to chip scarcities and high demand due to people working at home, computer part prices have skyrocketed. And that includes the price of the Ryzen 3 3200G. Once upon a time, the 3200G was a solid budget option for anybody looking to build a budget gaming PC to get started with PC gaming.
But it cost about 100 USD before the prices starting jumping, and it is now either out-of-stock or costs over 200 USD! Still, thanks to people still being stuck (or content) at home and prices on higher-tier components ballooning even higher, lots of people are planning to build a budget PC right now. So, should they overpay for the 3200G, or does it now make more sense to step back in popularity and/or age to buy an ultra-budget graphics card and CPU combo?
The RTX 3060 was recently launched. It is an improvement compared to the previous-gen RTX 2060, while (as expected) falling behind its faster RTX 3060 Ti brother. With seemingly promising benchmarks and an MSRP of 330 USD, it seems like a great card.
But the RTX 3060 is not available for its MSRP of 330 USD. In fact, right now it goes for around 1000 USD—if you can find it in-stock, of course. The demand is incredibly high, which results in prices of about three times the MSRP (or, again, the card simply being out-of-stock).
Nonetheless, we are undeterred! We will try and see if you can build a decent rig with it, despite the overpriced and rare status of this new GPU.
nVidia has very recently launched 2 new cards, the RTX 5070 ($550) and the RTX 5070 Ti ($750). This is a standard nVidia launch, so if you want the tl;dr: Good cards, overpriced.