PCWorld August 2017

Tech and trends that will affect you today and beyond. AMD HAS REVEALED the prices for some of its Threadripper CPUs, using the same effective strategy that it executed for its mainstream Ryzen chips: set eye-popping discounts compared to Intel’s own Core i9 family, and probably earlier release dates, too. Recently, AMD disclosed the model numbers, price, and rough availability of both the 12- and 16-core AMD Threadripper chips, designed for the upper echelons of gaming and content-creation PCs: The $999 16-core, 32-thread 3.4GHz Threadripper 1950X The $799 12-core, 24-thread 3.5GHz Threadripper 1920X Given that information, we also know the difference between what Intel and AMD will charge for their respective offerings. You’ll pay $700 less for a 1950X than for Intel’s 16-core, 32-thread Core i9-7960X, and a thousand dollars less than Intel’s 18-core, 36-thread…

AMD CONTINUES ITS quest to democratize multicore computing. It recently revealed hard details about Ryzen 3 processors with twice as many CPU cores as their Intel rivals. Only a pair of Ryzen 3 chips will be available when the lineup launches on July 27. Both the Ryzen 3 1200 and the Ryzen 3 1300X rock four cores and four threads, meaning they have double the physical cores as Intel’s dual-core i3 chips, but lack the simultaneous multi-threading that allow AMD’s Ryzen 5 (go.pcworld.com/ry5) and Ryzen 7 (go.pcworld.com/ry7) CPUs to press their core count advantage even further. The Ryzen 3 1200 has a 3.1GHz base clock capable of boosting to 3.4GHz when needed, and the Ryzen 3 1300X hums along between 3.5GHz and 3.7GHz. AMD didn’t reveal any fresh performance comparisons against Intel’s…

AS WINDOWS 10’S next big release date nears, the latest Insider Preview Build 16241 gives us a solid sneak peek at what the Fall Creators Update will look like. You’ll see a some significant new features, including Ubuntu support, update delivery options, and improved Task Manager visibility. But tellingly, Microsoft also opened its final “bug bash” challenge. That means the Windows 10 team is just about ready to button up the OS for its promised September debut. Build 16241 also shows it’s serious because of the nature of its new features, emphasizing nuts-and-bolts improvements over new capabilities. For example, Windows 10 now offers a great deal more granularity into how Windows updates will be delivered, and how you can manage their bandwidth. Task Manager adds deeper insights into what’s going on…

IT’S DAMNED NEAR impossible to buy a reasonably priced graphics card right now. First AMD’s Radeon cards disappeared (go.pcworld.com/rcd), then GeForce cards began to dry up too (go.pcworld.com/gfc). The culprit? Cryptocurrency miners chasing price bubbles in Etherium, Zcash, et cetera. But new mining-dedicated graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia’s hardware partners might help ease the dearth of gaming hardware. Maybe? Hopefully? Okay, probably not. A swarm of coin-mining cards have hit online e-tailers recently, as AnandTech (go.pcworld.com/ant) reports. Most are based on AMD’s more mining-friendly Radeon “Polaris” GPUs, but you’ll also find a couple of cards based on Nvidia designs. Notably, those use “GP106” branding—that’s the name of the GPU itself—rather than being called GTX 1060 cards. We’ll get to other crucial differences in a bit. First, here’s a rundown of the coin…

USUALLY I START these mid-year lists of the best PC games with “Can you believe it’s already June?” But I think I speak for everyone when I say, “Wow, we’re only halfway through 2017? Seriously?” This has been one of the busiest spring release windows I’ve ever seen, with dozens of major PC games already released this year. Sure, a few we were looking forward to turned out to be high-profile flops (cough Mass Effect: Andromeda [go.pcworld.com/mea] cough), but there have also been some instant classics—NieR: Automata, Prey, Thimbleweed Park, and more. Look for those and more inside, as we round up the best PC games of 2017—so far, at least. This fall’s looking even more packed. Prey It’s not the story you tell, it’s how you tell it. You could easily look at…

HOW MUCH TOTALWar is too much? It seems like Creative Assembly’s determined to discover the answer, recently announcing yet another spin-off of the strategy series. In addition to the mainline historical Total War and the fantastical Total Warhammer, we’ll now see Total War Saga games. And soon. While Total Warhammer 2 releases this fall, the first Total War Saga game will release “before the next major historical release in the franchise,” as this press release puts it. Sometime next year, probably. So what is Total War Saga? I’ll let Creative Assembly’s Jack Lusted give you the short of it. From the announcement: There are key, pivotal points in history which don’t necessarily revolve around a single character, and only lasted a few months or few decades at most. Such moments also tend to…