I’m not saying the historically bustling Computex commerce present in Taipei has been a desolate wasteland or something, however it was definitely quieter than I’ve seen it in a very long time. And there’s just one factor I blame for that – the graphics card, or lack thereof.
It’s been a tricky 12 months for PC fans. Since this time final yr it has been nearly unattainable to purchase a decently priced GPU with out sacrificing your first-born in some craven blood ritual to take action. And, partly due to that dearth of affordable graphics card costs, we additionally have not seen a brand new era of GPUs from Nvidia in over two years, with AMD not prone to do something till probably this time subsequent yr.
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With gaming being such an enormous revenue-driver for the PC market, and far of Computex being centered solely on the PC, it is most likely no shock that with the present as an entire has been quiet.
With the week of Computex missing something new when it comes to a very powerful gaming PC part, the GPU, it is had a significant knock-on impact on the trade.
While Computex is not essentially utterly centered on elements, a lot of what’s proven off on the PC facet is designed for the avid gamers and the DIY fans. We’re speaking new chassis, new PC designs, motherboards, funky RAM, SSDs, system builds, and every kind of peripherals. And gaming chairs… so many frickin’ gaming chairs.
But so lots of the corporations I spoke to on the present had little to nothing new to indicate off. Some of that was as a result of we had already seen what they have been releasing across the present, however largely as a result of the PC trade appears to be in some form of holding sample till Nvidia deigns to launch its subsequent era of GTX 1180 (or GTX 2080, there was nonetheless no particular reply on that both).
Honestly essentially the most fascinating issues I noticed on the present from a PC gaming angle the place some stylish new keyboards. I’ve been speaking to different journalists on the present and attempting to gauge what essentially the most thrilling issues they’ve seen have been and there has not often been a optimistic response.
That ought to let you know simply how light-weight issues have been on the present flooring. Sure, there have been some neat ideas, equivalent to Cooler Master’s Peltier cooler, and plenty of liquid immersion PC fantasy builds. And, in fact, each AMD and Intel introduced new megacore CPUs, ramping up the processor core conflict with 32- and 28-core CPUs respectively, however that is all on the HEDT facet of issues.
It’s good that after such an extended interval of processor stagnation issues are actually shifting alongside apace, however it is going to be an extended whereas earlier than that degree of dense silicon actually issues in a gaming desktop.
Lots of the opposite producers, nevertheless, saved expressing the well-worn phrase, ‘we’re ready on the following era of GPUs to replace.’
Because of the dearth of graphics playing cards during the last yr, and Nvidia not needing to launch its new vary of GPUs till Jen-Hsun is sweet and prepared (and other people cease shopping for up all of the Pascal-based playing cards nonetheless sitting within the channel), the DIY market has taken an actual hit. In brief individuals aren’t upgrading and so they’re not constructing new rigs as a result of they’re ready to construct round a brand new graphics card.
Thankfully the availability points appear to have largely been fastened, and it seems like everybody within the graphics sport is working laborious to make the trade immune to the following inevitable rise in GPU mining. But now there’s an expectation that we’ll have new GPUs earlier than the tip of the summer time, so persons are beginning to hold again although there are current-gen playing cards out there.
And that has strangled innovation from the DIY market, which implies the one people making actual headway in the intervening time are the peripheral peops. It does not matter what is going on on inside our rigs, there’s all the time a brand new keyboard, a brand new headset, or a brand new gaming mouse that catches our eyes. And we have been getting our retail remedy in that means.
So when are the brand new GPUs popping out? Well, AMD’s Navi is not anticipated till Q1 2019 on the earliest, and I have not heard the identical rumours of a July 30 launch that at the very least one different outlet has been touting… and I’ve been asking everybody. The normal consensus appears to be someday between July and the tip of August. Maybe Gamescom. Maybe October. It all appears slightly fluid to me, although most likely not as far off as Jen-Hsun might want us to believe…
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