Maximum PC October 2022

I’M SURE IT hasn’t escaped your attention, but the cost of living is going up. Gas prices are higher than ever, inflation is running away from pay rises, and many expect us to be in a recession by… well, by the time you’ve finished reading this sentence. However, in the computing world at least, prices in some areas are coming down, such as graphics cards, SSDs, and DDR 5 RAM. But then again, prices were so artificially high during the pandemic that it’s less of a discount and more of a return to where they should have been in the first place. With that in mind, in this month’s cover feature we look at how to put together a solid mid-range PC and wring every last bit of performance out…

THIS FALL WILL see new CPU designs from AMD and Intel, heralding a renewed fight for desktop processor supremacy. AMD’s offering hopes to repeat its predecessor’s feat by thrashing Intel and being crowned the best gaming chip. Intel responded with its Alder Lake family and the forthcoming 7000-series Ryzen uses the new Zen 4 core architecture, so we start with a decent instructions per cycle bump (about eight to ten percent) before we even get to the other improvements, such as some impressive frequencies. We’ve seen a 16-core version running at 5.5GHz, and another being run at a peak of 5.7GHz. We also get a new RDNA 2-based integrated graphics engine, PCIe 5.0, and DDR5 memory. In time we’ll get a V-Cache version, with a slab of extra L3 cache…

WE’RE EAGERLY WAITING the next generation of cards from Nvidia with the new Ada Lovelace GPUs, especially the halo model: the GeForce RTX 4090 Ti. This will sport a GPU near the top of the Lovelace tree, an AD102-400-A1, or AD102-450-A1, using close to the full die. There will be a lot of cores: 18,176 or more CUDA cores, 142 or 144 RT cores, and 576-odd Tensor cores. The RTX 4090 Ti will couple this to a whopping 48GB of GDDR6X sitting on a 384-bit bus capable of shifting 1,152GB/s. There is no statistic about this triple-width card that isn’t jaw-dropping, including expected power consumption, which has a rumored TDP of 800W, requiring a 1,200W PSU as a minimum and two 16-pin power connectors. Early leaks put this monster at…

WI-FI IS BASED on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards and major updates are marketed as versions of Wi-Fi. Intel has revealed that it will be ready to launch IEEE 802.11be in 2024, known as Wi-Fi 7. Wi-Fi’s protocols are in the care of the Wi-Fi Alliance, a non-profit organization that makes sure everything works together. All kit labeled as Wi-Fi needs to complete interoperability testing and Intel is currently working to get its new version certified. Intel developed the current standard, 802.11ax and this new version has more bandwidth (320MHz vs. 160MHz) and packs more data. It employs 4096 QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation), alongside other trickery such as Multi-RU Puncturing, Enhanced QoS, and more. The result is a theoretical maximum data transfer rate of 46.1Gbps. The practical speed jumps…

TRIUMPHS ✔ ROBOT SURGEON A remote control robotic surgeon will join the International Space Station for testing purposes. ✔ RETRO GAMING GOODNESS The Sega Genesis 2 Mini retro console is coming, complete with 50 built-in games. It’s available for pre-order at $105. ✔ MICRON’S 232-LAYERS Last year, Micron managed 176-layer NAND chips, this year it has reached 232-layers. The talk is now of 200TB SSD drives. TRAGEDIES ✖ ANOTHER CRYPTO CRASH Crypto firm Celsius has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and withdrawals have been frozen. ✖ LONE DIABLO IMMORTAL A player dropped $100K to level up his character, but his ranking is so high there are no suitable rivals in PVP matches. ✖ HONDA HACK A vulnerability in Honda’s keyless fob was found. Rolling-PWN allows cars to be opened and…

TWO YEARS AGO, GPUs were in short supply and prices were ridiculous. Intel entered the market promising competitive and available hardware—we were promised four million GPUs in 2022, remember? However, the Arc project has hit a few problems, not least with drivers. Intel thought it could “leverage the integrated graphics software stack”, according to CEO Pat Gelsinger, but that simply didn’t work. Nvidia and AMD have years of hard work behind their drivers, Intel hasn’t. Performance with DirectX 11 is particularly bad with some titles seeing performance differentials of 50 percent between DX11 and 12. The Arc driver also has features that don’t work, such as Smooth Sync. In the meantime, another problem is who will sell the cards? It seems Intel’s retailer packages, including the RMA (Return to Manufacturer)…