AMD's New Reality...

Last time, I pontificated on the current situation surrounding two of the gaming industry greats. Today, I'm going to address very recent comments on their current strategies relating to the consumer (client) graphics card market...

It may not be what you think it is...

Is the PS5 Pro really equivalent to an RTX 4090? (No!)

Playstation 5 Pro fever is nearing its zenith, with speculations becoming rife and consumers beginning to fantasize about what, exactly, the new console will be capable of. This is a fun look at some of the recent nonsense coming out of the Twittersphere on the subject:

Microsoft and Intel are on the ropes... what's next?

I'm not known for being a positive person when it comes to certain things. I'm generally critical, analytical, sceptical, and distrusting of processes, industries, and companies. However, I do love tech. I am critically positive about it, and for people in general and it's in the spirit of these two parts of me that I feel like I need to get these thoughts off of my chest.

Two of the biggest players in gaming are dying - their literal death throes are all around us and fill the tech news headlines, background blog rants, literal subreddits, and trending on social media.

I don't even think we need to introduce who I'm talking about but let's get it out of the way:

• Microsoft
• Intel

Their flailing is having a huge impact on gaming and tech in general and I'm a little worried as to what fills the hole they make if and when they do fail or contract away from the segments that I've traditionally engaged with.

How CPU-limited IS a modern mid-range PC...?

These days, there's a lot of talk about how CPU- or GPU-limited various games are but something I've always wondered is "where is the cut-off point?" for pairing a GPU with a particular CPU? This is especially important as we reach a point where the Ryzen 5 5600 and i5-12400 reach around €120 - these are really cheap and relatively performant options for the lower mid-range.

That's something that you don't tend to see explored too often at any well-rated benchmarking outlets like Hardware Unboxed, eteknix, or GamersNexus, etc. So, while I don't have many configurations to test out, I wanted to explore where the point of diminishing returns might be for games, as gamers would actually play them...

Next Gen PC gaming requirements (2023 update)

It's that time for a belated look at the yearly trending of recommended system specifications. I'm mostly late because I got side-tracked by other projects, by work, and various other life events. So, apologies for that if anyone was waiting on this data.

As always, the raw data is available here. And, once again, I'd like to pay tribute to Shamus Young, who inspired this series with his Steam data analytics....

However, as they say - on with the show!