Maximum PC December 2022

WHAT A ROLLERCOASTER ride 2022 has been. Obviously, I mean in general, but this being Maximum PC, I refer specifically to the last 12 months in tech. The story of the year has to be graphics cards—in January the only way to get a decent GPU was by paying double the RRP for some dodgy-looking deal on eBay. That thankfully came to an end a few months ago as supply normalized and Crypto miners quickly exited the market thanks to rising energy costs and Ethereum’s move to Proof of Stake. Now, those same cards are about to become even cheaper, thanks to the release of Nvidia’s newest RTX 4000-series GPUs, which Nvidia claims offer a performance boost of between two and four times over their predecessors! In our labs, we found…

NVIDIA’S NEW GPU has landed in the form of three new 4000-series graphics cards, and they are beasts. The $1,599 RTX 4090 24GB is a triple-slot 450W monster with 16,384 CUDA cores—50 percent more than the RTX 3090. Next is the $1,199 RTX 4080 16GB with 9,728 CUDA cores, and finally, the RTX 4080 12GB at $899 with 7,680 cores. All three use different versions of the new Ada Lovelace GPU coupled to GDDR6X memory. These have fourth-generation Tensor cores, third-generation ray tracing cores, shader execution reordering, DLSS 3, and clocks over 2.5GHz. These updated technologies, along with bigger core counts and faster clocks, add up to a big performance increase over the Ampere-powered cards. Every metric has been bumped: doubled or more in many cases. Nvidia’s claims include the…

WHEN AMD’S NEW ZEN 4 PROCESSORS launched, they reached benchmarks that put AMD back on top of the leaderboards in multithreaded performance. The top dog, the Ryzen 9 7950X ($699, see review page 76) broke benchmarking world records. It has a peak clock rate of 5.7GHz on two cores but, with some cooling, can be pushed to 5.8GHz on all cores. AMD’s own overclocking team, using a Corsair AIO cooler, managed a 5.4GHz all-core boost, and claimed a world record for a 16-core Cinebench R23 benchmark at 40,498. The chips have drawn attention for their heat too, a properly toasty 95°C. Consuming over 200W doesn’t help but neither, apparently, does a thick integrated heat-spreader added to ensure compatibility with older AM4 coolers. Sadly for AMD, a reckoning with Intel’s 13th…

WHAT A ROLLERCOASTER ride 2022 has been. Obviously, I mean in general, but this being Maximum PC, I refer specifically to the last 12 months in tech. The story of the year has to be graphics cards—in January the only way to get a decent GPU was by paying double the RRP for some dodgy-looking deal on eBay. That thankfully came to an end a few months ago as supply normalized and Crypto miners quickly exited the market thanks to rising energy costs and Ethereum’s move to Proof of Stake. Now, those same cards are about to become even cheaper, thanks to the release of Nvidia’s newest RTX 4000-series GPUs, which Nvidia claims offer a performance boost of between two and four times over their predecessors! In our labs, we…

WE’VE BEEN WAITING for Intel to ship some useful graphics cards for a while, but now the new Arc Alchemist A750 and A770 (see review, page 78) are here. The 8GB A770 costs $329 and Intel will build a ‘limited edition’ version with 16GB RAM ($349). The A770 has a 2.1Ghz GPU with 32 Xe-cores. Below this is the A750 ($289), which has 28 Xe-cores running at 2.05GHz. Intel’s versions look similar; two slots, two fans, and a TDP of 225W. Performance from all three won’t be too different, given the similar specs. Just how good they are will depend on the drivers, and work appears to have been done here. Benchmarks show the newer cards are 20 percent faster than the first samples. The A770 pretty much matches the…

TRIUMPHS JET PACKS NOW ON SALE If you have $400,000 and nerves of steel, Gravity Industries’ 75lb jet pack has five gas turbine engines capable of going 80mph. ROBOTIC COBBLER Nike has invested in a robot named BILL (Bot Initiated Longevity Lab) that can clean and repair sneakers. ELECTRIC HELICOPTERS United Airlines is to invest in 200 electric ‘air taxis’, small aircraft for flights of up to 60 miles. TRAGEDIES TESLA RECALL (AGAIN) Yet another Tesla recall. This time, the window’s obstruction recognition software has a bug. AAA GAMES NOW $70 Ubisoft has fixed its new high-end games at $70. Microsoft still sells at $60, but that’s expected to change soon too. GOOGLE PAID SEARCHES? The DoJ has accused Google of paying phone manufacturers ‘billions’ every year to ensure it’s the default search engine.…