Robert Dow

Nvidia’s RTX 3060 Ti —a terrific value for gamers

The RTX 3060 Ti debuted at $399, and Nvidia claimed it to be 40% faster on average than its predecessor, the GeForce RTX 2060 Super. The RTX 3060 Ti Founder’s Edition is a tremendous addition to the GeForce RTX 30 Series, but we couldn’t match Nvidia’s performance claims in all cases. We came close in game-only FPS tests—35%. The new … Read more

AMD’s Radeon RX 6800 XT is a winner

AMD has announced its new line of Radeon boards based on the Navi 21 GPU architecture. We have heard rumors and hints from AMD about “Big”-Navi for over a year. Our first examination of the new AIB indicates it was worth the wait. AMD hasn’t been a contender in the high-end for a while. As a result, Nvidia has enjoyed … Read more

Nvidia RTX 3070 fills a niche

It is amusing to a long time follower of this industry, to describe a midrange AIB that sells for $500 as not too expensive, but that’s how the average selling prices have moved led by Nvidia. Nvidia is positioning its RTX 3070 as a replacement for the RTX 2070 or RTX 2080 Ti. Nvidia introduced the RTX 2070 in October 2018 at … Read more

Intel’s discrete GPU

(Source: Clker-Free-Vector-Images)   Intel has been laying the groundwork for its new, Xe line of discrete GPUs (dGPU). The company has a long history in graphics, determined this time to avoid past mistakes. Intel has taken several runs building a discrete graphics chip to take on the market leaders. But the company has had a challenging time. They never seemed … Read more

If you like Zen2, you’ll love Zen3

(Source:  AMD) AMD created an extraordinarily good design with the Zen architecture in April 2017. You can measure that by the steady generation-to-generation improvements the company has made with Zen’s various derivatives. The latest iteration is the new Ryzens. AMD predicts a 19% improvement in instructions-per-clock (IPC) for the Zen 3 over last year’s Zen 2 design version. This improvement … Read more

Epic’s Unreal Engine is almost…

(Source: Epic)   I have been trying to write about Epic’s new Unreal Engine 5 since they announced it in May. Every time I do, I am awestruck by the visuals, and mind-boggled trying to figure out how they did it. It is making a bazillion zillion quadrillion polygons fit in a 4k screen. The company said at the time … Read more