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The new Alienware M15 R5 Ryzen Edition is a slight undoing of progress, depending on how you look at it. As many gaming laptops are going thinner, this one is heavier and thicker than previous generations. Its design has been tweaked slightly in ways both good and bad, and it has fewer ports than before, too.

Despite all of that, it’s a cause for a small celebration because of the Ryzen processor it uses, marking AMD’s return to Alienware products after a 14-year gap when the brand exclusively used Intel CPUs. And it’s a welcome return, even if this laptop won’t appeal to everyone. AMD’s high-end mobile processors have been a boon to gaming laptops for the last couple of years, bringing long battery life and fast performance that sometimes outpaces and undercuts laptops that have competing Intel processors.

The Ryzen 7 5800H processor brings that magic to the M15 R5 Ryzen Edition, and gaming performance with its RTX 3060 doesn’t struggle to get above 60 FPS in graphically-demanding games — all thanks to being a high-wattage component. This R5 that I tested has 16GB of RAM and a 512GB NVMe SSD for a total cost of about $1,616 currently, which isn’t cheap despite being close to the most affordable version that Alienware makes. If money isn’t an issue, it can be upgraded to the more powerful Ryzen 9 5900HX with Nvidia’s RTX 3070 and more storage and RAM for $2,379.

The high price is something that I couldn’t ignore while reviewing this laptop, especially since Dell (Alienware’s parent company) makes a $1,225 G15 Ryzen Edition that has similar GPU specs that should come close to what this pricier M15 R5 can do. And, if you can settle for a slightly lesser processor, there’s a $900 model in the works that has the RTX 3060, but it isn’t available yet.

The value doesn’t fare well outside of Dell’s world either. Asus is currently the go-to brand for excellent AMD-based gaming laptops that are easier to recommend for people who want something more portable and feature-packed, without sacrificing battery life. Compared to a similar M15 R5 configuration, the ROG Zephyrus G15 offers a QHD display, more storage, a better processor and a powerful RTX 3070 (albeit a lower-powered GPU than you’ll find in the M15 R5) for a few hundred dollars less. The new Strix G15 Advantage Edition looks more garish next to Alienware’s laptop, but it also has fast gaming performance and high-end features for a lower price. Neither of these models feature a webcam, but that might be something you can live without.

The M15 R5 is 19.25mm (0.75 inches) thick for most of the machine (thinner at the front, but slightly thicker in the back) and it weighs 5.34 pounds. Some configurations weigh more, going up to 5.93 pounds. Its heft is jarring if you’ve picked up an ultrabook recently, but it’s an asset in helping its high-wattage RTX 3060 graphics chip (125W maximum graphics power, 1,702MHz boost clock) to perform similarly to a low-wattage RTX 3070. Compared to thinner laptops that have a low-powered 3070, like Asus’ TUF Dash 15, Alienware’s laptop makes up for the difference in CUDA cores with sheer power. It will likely be a solid performer well into the future — perhaps longer than some lower-powered 3070s — despite having a technically lesser component. It’ll just be more of a chore to lug around.

The M15 R5 Ryzen Edition fared well while running some demanding games at their highest settings. Red Dead Redemption 2 managed to reach 63 frames per second. Shadow of the Tomb Raider ran at about 80 frames per second with its ray tracing shadows feature and DLSS switched on. Horizon Zero Dawn ran at an average of 68 frames per second. None of them came close to fully taking advantage of the default 1080p display’s 165Hz refresh rate, but most people likely have older games in their library that should be able to display at very fast frame rates on this laptop.

It didn’t take long for this laptop to make a good impression with gaming performance. It took even less time to learn that it gets warm to the touch even while idling with no apps, and that when games (especially graphically-demanding ones) are running, it can get very loud. A fast and quiet gaming laptop is an oxymoron, and the M15 R5 is really just one of many offenders. But I didn’t notice signs of thermal throttling after long periods of gaming, nor did I encounter unexplainable slow-down. You just might want to wear some headphones while gaming. The speakers shoot sound out of the sides of the laptop. It’s serviceable for YouTube videos or video calls, but it doesn’t deliver enough depth or bass for entertainment purposes.

This Ryzen-based gaming laptop can handle any sort of casual browser-based workflow with ease. It shouldn’t have surprised me that the M15 R5 has great battery life, since AMD’s processors have proven to bring efficiency to other gaming laptops, but it still did. This one’s 86Wh battery lasted for about seven hours of mixed use, through sustained use of Microsoft Edge with 10 or so tabs, Spotify, Slack, and some video calls. That’s great for an Alienware laptop. The M15 R3 that I reviewed last year clocked in at just one hour. Though, other AMD-based gaming laptops have the M15 R5 beat. The Strix G15 Advantage Edition lasted over nine hours for my colleague Monica Chin.

One area where the Ryzen Edition got a little hung up is with a video export test in Adobe Premiere Pro. Our video team’s five-minute, thirty-three second 4K file took just over seven minutes to finish exporting. That’s not a bad result, but it’s not going to be fast enough for creators to quickly turn around projects and not nearly as fast as laptops with Intel processors can manage.

The M15 R5’s design is different from earlier models in minor ways. Sometimes, it’s for the better. For instance, this newer model is matte-textured all around, including on its screen bezels, which looks better than the glossy bezels used in previous generations. Some people might like the M15 R3 and R4’s two-toned color design, but the R5 comes in a gunmetal silver color that is striking, and the black plastic covering the keyboard is relatively free of distractions, aside from the backlit keyboard and illuminated Alienware logo. One of my favorite changes is inside of the laptop: Alienware lets you easily upgrade the RAM and storage if you want. Some previous models had RAM soldered onto the motherboard, but this one’s more futureproof.

Alienware shuffled around the keyboard layout, though, and it’s worse off than before. The M15 R5’s keys are still enjoyable to type on, but I make more typing mistakes because the volume keys have been delegated to the right side of the keyboard instead of the top. Also, the arrow keys were previously positioned a little lower than the rest of the keyboard to make them easy to find, but those have been shoved up in this model, resulting in a smaller right shift key. This might not be a problem once you get accustomed to typing on the M15, but it still feels like a step backwards.

The port selection isn’t as generous, either. The Ryzen Edition features three USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports, one USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port, an HDMI 2.1 port (capable of 4K output at up to 120Hz), a headphone jack, and a 2.5Gbps ethernet port. It’s not a bad lineup, but it could be better.

Missing from this model, and all other new models that Alienware recently unveiled, is the proprietary amplifier connector for its external GPU enclosure, which has been officially discontinued. Intel-based versions of Alienware’s newest laptops, like the M15 R6, X15, and X17, will support Thunderbolt eGPUs, but the M15 R5 won’t because it lacks a Thunderbolt port. So, you’re just stuck with the GPU that’s inside. Thankfully, the graphics performance is great by default, but there’s a lot of unused space on the R5’s rear where that amplifier port used to be. It would have been nice if Alienware had filled it with an SD card reader and an extra USB-C port.

The M15 R5’s performance didn’t come into question during my testing. I don’t think I’ll ever tire of seeing the great battery life AMD’s processors bring, and it’s great that this GPU can hold its own next to pricier components like the RTX 3070.

But as a whole, Alienware missed the landing when it comes to value. If you want more features for your money, even if it involves swapping some of the M15 R5’s power for a QHD screen and better portability, you should look elsewhere. The M15 R5 isn’t the jaw-dropping value that it needed to be (and that I’d hoped it would be) to steer everyone away from the 2021 gaming laptop frontrunner (so far), the Asus ROG Zephyrus G15.

Photography by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge

(Image credit: AMD)

AMD this week issued a teaser post in Twitter that pre-announces formal launch of the company’s Radeon Pro graphics card based on the RDNA2 architecture on June 8. While the company did not officially disclose specifications of the Radeon Pro W6800, an unknown leaker disclosed a Geekbench 5 entry early on Friday June 4. As this is a leak the information should be taken with a grain of salt.

AMD’s upcoming workstation-grade Radeon Pro W6800 reportedly carries AMD’s Navi 21 graphics processor in its full configuration with 5120 stream processors as well as 32GB of GDDR6 memory connected to the GPU using a 256-bit bus, according to previous leaks and a Geekbench 5 database entry. So far, AMD has not offered an RDNA2-powered graphics card with 32GB of memory onboard, so this workstation-grade product will be the first one in the family to feature 32GB of GDDR6 SDRAM.

The maximum GPU frequency was reportedly set to 2,554 MHz, though whether this was final or not is unknown. AMD’s Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics board has an official Game Clock frequency of 2,250 MHz, but its actual maximum clockspeed is much higher. Typically ProViz cards are clocked lower than their gaming counterparts, but RDNA2 cards have proven very capable of high clocks.

(Image credit: Geekbench)

AMD itself confirmed that the Radeon Pro W6800 graphics card supports up to six 4Kp60 monitors (or three 5Kp60 or one 8Kp60 monitors) using six mini-DisplayPort 1.4 connectors as well as AMD’s Eyefinity technology, which will be another unique feature of the product.

The board uses a blower-type cooler, which is common for workstation and datacenter cards as it ensures longevity. Speaking of datacenters, it should be noted that AMD’s Big Navi GPU supports GPU virtualization (including SR-IOV), so the upcoming board could be used in datacenters to power multiple remote workstations.

As far as OpenCL performance of the Radeon Pro W6800 is concerned, the card scores 137,230 points in Geekbench 5, which is in line with that of the Radeon RX 6800. Geekbench 5 isn’t a very good benchmark since its results vary greatly, because the tests are too short for a GPU to set itself to a stable frequency.

AMD will officially unveil its Radeon Pro W6800 32GB GDDR6 graphics card on June 8, so before that date any information about the product should be taken with a grain of salt.

(Image credit: Nvidia)

Sales of discrete GPUs in the first quarter were up both sequentially and year-over-year due to high demand for PCs in general and gaming PCs in particular, according to Mercury Research. Nvidia continued to dominate the market,

AMD has been gaining CPU sales and market share in the recent years particularly in the gaming segment as many of its processors do not have any direct rivals. But at the same time sales of the company’s discrete GPUs have been a roller coaster and its market share has been declining. In the recent months the situation with AMD’s standalone GPU supplies were tougher because of chip shortages and its market share in Q4 2020 declined to a multi-year low, according to Jon Peddie Research.

Shipments of discrete graphics processors in the first quarter reached 22 million units (which includes graphics chips for desktops and notebooks as well as for crypto mining), a 1% increase sequentially, according to data by Mercury Research cited by Capital Markets (which was cited by Barron’s). Typically, shipments of standalone GPUs decrease in Q1 versus Q4, but this was not a usual quarter.

Nvidia commanded 81% of standalone GPU shipments in Q1 2021, which was 5.2% higher than in the same period a year ago, based on data from Mercury Research. AMD commanded 19% of shipments, almost flat with the previous quarter and a decline compared to Q1 2020. Meanwhile, since unit sales increased sequentially and AMD’s share remained flat, it means that the company sold more GPUs in Q1 2021 than it did in Q4 2020.

GPUs used to mine Ethereum contributed to additional GPU sales in the first quarter, said Dean McCarron, the head of Mercury Research. Yet, it is hard to estimate how many of GPUs sold in Q1 are now used to mine cryptocurrency. McCarron estimates that sales of Nvidia’s custom crypto mining processors (CMP) totalled 1 – 2 million in the first quarter, which is well below his expectation of around 4.5 million.

Both AMD and Nvidia said recently that their shipments in Q1 2021 were constrained by shortages of production capacity at foundries as well as tight supply of components. Since AMD has contract obligations to supply its custom SoCs for the latest game consoles from Microsoft and Sony as well as CPUs to PC and server makers, it is not particularly surprising that the company could not increase shipments of its own GPUs significantly in the first quarter. Meanwhile, AMD hopes to boost sales of its graphics processors later this year.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

A California man has filed for a class action lawsuit against PC manufacturer Dell, claiming that the company “intentionally misled and deceived” buyers of its Alienware Area 51-m R1 gaming laptop, which was advertised to be more upgradeable than other gaming notebooks.

The plaintiff, Robert Felter, who is based in San Francisco, alleges that Dell misleads customers to believe that the laptop would be upgradeable, possibly into future generations of components. The case, Felter v. Dell Technologies, Inc. (3:21-cv-04187) has been filed with the United States District Court in the Northern District of California.

The Alienware Area 51-m was announced at CES 2019 and launched soon after. (The complaint claims the announcement was made in the summer of 2019, which is incorrect.). Among the Area 51-m’s biggest touted innovations were a user-replaceable CPU and GPU.

At media briefings, Alienware representatives told the press that the CPU could be upgraded as long as it used Intel’s Z390 chipset. The laptop used Intel’s 9th Gen Core desktop processors, up to the Intel Core i9-9900K. Dell developed separate proprietary Dell Graphics Form Factor (DGFF) modules for the Nvidia graphics.

The lawsuit, however, claims that consumers were told that “core components” (meaning the CPU and GPU) could be replaced beyond the current generation of hardware.

“Dell’s advertisement to the public didn’t place any restrictions on the upgradeability of the laptop,” lawyer David W. Kani said in an email to Tom’s Hardware. “They also never disclosed that those with the highest spec CPU and/or GPU that their device would not be upgradeable.”

Dell did not respond to a request for comment prior to publishing. This article will be updated if and when it does.

The complaint reads that “Dell’s representations of the upgradability of the Area 51M R1 also extended to units that were equipped with the fastest, most advanced Core Components available to the market, thus creating a reasonable expectation with consumers that the upgradability of the Area 51M R1 extended to yet to be released INTEL CPUs and NVIDIA GPUs, and did in fact create such expectations with consumers.” Several times, the complaint refers to Dell’s claims of “unprecedented upgradeability.”

Those words indeed live on Dell’s web page for the Alienware Area-51M R1.

“Gamers have made it clear that they’ve noticed a lack of CPU and GPU upgradability in gaming laptops,” it reads. “The Area-51m was engineered with this in mind, finally allowing gamers to harness power comparable to even the highest-performance desktop… CPU upgrades can be done using standard desktop-class processors, while GPU upgrades can be done with GPU upgrade kits available on Dell.com or with the Alienware Graphics Amplifier.”

(Image credit: Dell)

Upgrade kits for the graphics card finally launched in November of 2019 and included options for the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 and Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080. Those were the GPUs in the earliest sold Area-51m units, though later ones launched with the weaker RTX 2060 and GTX 1660 Ti. Those with an RTX 2070, could, in theory, upgrade to an RTX 2080, and those with lesser GPUs could move up the chain.

But in May of 2020, Alienware released the Alienware Area-51m R2, a refresh that added support for 10th Gen Intel Core desktop processors and a wider range of GPUs from the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti up to the newer Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super and an AMD option, the Radeon RX 5700M.

In June, Alienware laid bare the limits of the upgradeability of both machines. Like the earlier laptop that only supported 9th Gen Intel processors, the new one would only support Intel 10th Gen. The top-end RTX 2080 Super and RTX 2070 Super would be the end of the line of GPUs.

It’s the release of the second-generation Area-51m that is the crux of Felter’s argument.

“The Area 51M’s CPU was not upgradeable to the new INTEL 10th generation CPU, nor was its GPU upgradeable to the new NVIDIA RTX SUPER 2000 series,” the complaint states. “In fact, the only way Plaintiff could own a laptop with these newly released upgraded Core Components was to spend several thousand dollars more than what an upgrade would cost to purchase the then-newly released Alienware Area 51M R2 or a similarly equipped laptop from another manufacturer.”

In other words: To further upgrade the laptop, Felter would have to buy a new model.

Additionally, the plaintiff and his attorneys claim that because Dell includes Intel and Nvidia components in its machines and has roadmaps in advance, that the company knew the laptop could not be upgraded.

The case is an interesting one in the enthusiast space. At its essence, this boils down to a motherboard with Intel’s Z390 chipset as well as the proprietary graphics cards. Motherboards are upgraded at a regular cadence to work with the latest processors, though occasionally new processors will work on older boards. This could potentially set a sort of precedent about how far out a motherboard needs to support a CPU. In desktops, GPUs typically work for years, as long as it’s not using an outdated standard. But Dell’s graphics were in a proprietary form factor.

Felter is seeking damages, relief and attorneys fees for himself and those in Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington state who purchased the laptop on their own since its release in 2019. He is represented by attorneys Brian H. Mahany of Mahany Law and Steven I. Hochfelsen and David W. Kani of Hochfelsen & Kani, LLP. He is asking the court for a jury trial.

(Image credit: Shutterstock )

Valve has released the results for the May 2021 installment of its monthly Steam Hardware & Software Survey. The biggest takeaway is that AMD took one step forward by claiming 30% of the CPU market, at least as represented by Steam users, but it also took one step back by ceding more of the GPU market to Nvidia.

The survey results showed that AMD‘s share of the CPU market rose from 29.48% in April to 30.13% in May. That follows the same pattern as previous months: The popularity of AMD processors among Steam users has risen by roughly half a percent throughout 2021. Now those incremental gains are starting to add up.

It wouldn’t be a surprise if AMD continued its rise up the Steam survey’s results in the future. The company actually has more entries on our list of the best CPUs for 2021 than Intel, and several of them are more affordable than their Intel counterparts, which could help convince more gamers to give AMD CPUs a shot.

AMD has failed to make similar headway in the graphics market, however, and the survey results showed that its share fell to 16.18% in May. That isn’t a drastic drop—AMD graphics cards have powered roughly 16% of survey respondents’ systems since late 2019—but it does highlight the company’s struggle in that segment.

This isn’t for lack of trying. AMD’s latest Navi offerings are still found in some of the best graphics cards for gaming; at least part of the problem is that they are in short supply. The company said in April that it would increase GPU supply, but that’s going to take some time, so that promise probably didn’t affect these survey results much.

Of course, some of these results do need to be taken with a grain of salt. The Steam hardware survey may not be taken by every user and can’t be completely representative. Still, it provides an idea of trends.

Not that many Steam users are quick to adopt the latest hardware. The most popular GPU on the platform is the GeForce GTX 1060, according to the survey, and 1% of Steam users are somehow continuing to get by with CPUs featuring clock speeds lower than 1.4 GHz. It takes a while for the survey results change much.

(Image credit: Nvidia)

We have our first glimpse at the performance of Nvidia’s recently announced GeForce RTX 3070 TI, thanks to two leaked benchmark runs from Ashes of the Singularity and Geekbench 5. They were brought to our attention by @leakbench on Twitter. However, the benchmark results are about as vague as it gets, giving us a little indication as to the real performance of the 3070 Ti.

Unfortunately for us, the Ashes of the Singularity score in particular tells us almost nothing about the performance of Nvidia’s new mid-range part, due to the system configuration and game quality settings.

The RTX 3070 Ti was paired with a Ryzen 9 3900X and 32GB of system memory, and the resolution used was 1080P with a high-quality preset (not the crazy preset). The 3070 Ti scores an average frame rate of 105.5 frames per second and a CPU frame rate of 105.9 fps.

(Image credit: Twitter)

While the frame rate looks good, this is probably one of the worst Ashes benchmarks to date, as the resolution is locked to 1080P and the teseter didn’t even use the maximum quality preset. On top of that, the Ryzen 9 3900X is a Zen 2 part, and at 1080P there should be a noticeable amount of bottlenecking, enough to skew performance results when comparing graphics cards specifically.

What we really needed from the leaker is a better testbed with a more powerful CPU like a Ryzen 5000 series or a highly overclocked Intel 10th gen or 11th gen part. But most importantly, we would like to see resolutions of 1440P or 4K and have the game running at the crazy preset.

As it stands now, there aren’t enough benchmarks on the high preset, with the same CPU and memory configuration to judge performance. For instance, the top result for the 1080P high preset benchmark results belongs to a system running on an i7-11700KF running 16GB of RAM, with an RTX 3080, which has exactly 1-2 FPS less on its score than the leaked RTX 3070 Ti test.

Geekbench

(Image credit: Twitter)

Hopefully, Geekbench 5’s result can give us some better guesses as to the performance of the RTX 3070 Ti. Paired with a Core i9-11900K, the RTX 3070 Ti scored 155763 points in the OpenCL test.

For comparison, the RTX 3080 on Geekbench’s browser earned a score of 183,452 and the RTX 3070 scores a 135,886. So the RTX 3070 Ti is sandwiched right in-between the vanilla 3080 and 3070, being 17% slower than the RTX 3080 and 14% faster than the RTX 3070, which is to be expected.

Take this result with a pinch of salt, until you see full reviews of the RTX 3070 Ti come online. This is especially true of Geekbench 5, which focuses on the raw compute performance of GPUs, which rarely applies to the actual gaming performance of Nvidia and AMD’s graphics cards.

Valve has started letting developers team up to create bundles on the Steam gaming storefront. It outlined the new “DIY collaborative bundles” in a blog post yesterday, describing the feature as a way to collect titles with “common themes.”

Steam already offered multi-developer bundles, but only ones that were specially curated by the platform. Now, any developer can create a bundle and send an invitation link to other creators, who can then choose to add their own projects. The bundle owner then locks the bundle and participants agree to a name, royalty split, discount amount, and other details. All participants have to approve later game additions, but someone can remove their game from the bundle unilaterally, and the bundle owner can change the description and art without approval — so Valve notes that you should “be sure that you trust the owner of the bundle.”

Valve characterizes DIY bundles as a “co-marketing” option for related games, as well as an option for splitting the royalties on soundtracks. Instead of the publisher selling a game’s soundtrack and passing along funds, they can collaborate on a bundle with the musicians. Themed bundles have a long history on many platforms, including the Humble Bundle storefront, which helped popularize the model.

Developers on the smaller platform Itch.io in particular have used collaborative bundles for activism and commentary, supporting causes like Black Lives Matter or indie alternatives to big-budget releases like Cyberpunk 2077. (That’s in addition to an official Itch.io-organized Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality, which raised over $8.1 million last year.) Valve’s new system could facilitate something similar — in addition to making it easier for developers to market games together.

After being canceled last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, E3 is back for 2021 in an all-digital format, kicking off on June 12th. And with Microsoft and Nintendo finally having announced the dates and times for their big showcase presentations, the event schedule is starting to fall into place.

If you want to attend the virtual event as a fan, you can now register to attend on E3’s website so that you can get access to the E3 portal and app. But if you want to follow along with the press conferences and announcements, we’ve put together a rough timeline of events with everything that we’re aware of. (Note that the exact times of some presentations haven’t been announced yet.)

When is E3?

E3 technically takes place from Saturday, June 12th, to Tuesday, June 15th, but you can expect some big announcements a couple days before E3 at Summer Game Fest’s Kickoff Live event.

Thursday, June 10th

2PM ET: Summer Game Fest’s Kickoff Live event hosted by Geoff Keighley

Saturday, June 12th

11AM ET: Guerrilla Collective (note that this is the second Guerrilla Collective show — the first takes place on June 5th)
1PM ET: E3 broadcast pre-show
3PM ET: Ubisoft Forward
TBA time: Gearbox press conference, Devolver Digital show

Sunday, June 13th

11:45AM ET: E3 broadcast pre-show
1PM ET: Microsoft’s Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase
3:15PM ET: Square Enix Presents
TBA time: “Special presentations” from the PC Gaming Show and the Future Games Show. E3 parent company ESA also says that Warner Bros. Games & Back4Blood and 24 Entertainment “will be featured” on the E3 broadcast on Sunday.

Monday, June 14th

11AM ET: E3 broadcast pre-show
TBA time: “Press conferences from several indie developers” and “presentations from Take-Two Interactive, Mythical Games, Freedom Games, Razer and Capcom.” Verizon and Intellivision will also be “featured,” the ESA says.

Tuesday, June 15th

11AM ET: E3 broadcast pre-show
12PM ET: Nintendo’s Nintendo Direct, which will have “roughly” 40 minutes of information about upcoming games, followed by a Treehouse Live with about three hours of gameplay demoed.
TBA time: “Focused events” from Bandai Namco, Yooreka Games, and GameSpot
The day will close out with the Official E3 2021 Awards Show

How can I watch E3?

E3 will be airing its broadcast on Twitch, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. For the presentations hosted by individual companies, you may be able to find official streams on their social platforms.

Update June 3rd, 11:18AM ET: Added Square Enix Presents.

(Image credit: Newegg)

Today’s Newegg shuffle is actually worth paying attention to, since it’s all RTX 3080 Ti cards, three of which match the Founders Edition’s $1,199 MSRP. In a sea of sold out signs and gray “add to cart” buttons, even the minimal chance of winning a Newegg Shuffle actually starts to look enticing.

All of today’s picks are from third party manufacturers, ranging from Gigabyte to EVGA to Asus to Zotac. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though. We’ve only reviewed Nvidia’s own GeForce RTX 3080 Ti so far, but in our review, we said “Anyone still hoping to pick up a 3080 Ti should also opt for a third party card with higher factory clocks and a beefier cooler.” That’s because, in our testing, the RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition tended to run a bit hot with higher fan speeds than previous 30-series Founders Edition cards — no surprise considering it’s the same cooler as the 3080, but now with a higher TDP and two more GDDR6X modules.

Luckily, all of today’s cards have three fans each, including the ones that match the FE’s MSRP. Specifically, here’s what you can get today:

Gigabyte Eagle GeForce RTX 3080 Ti for $1,199
EVGA XC3 GeForce RTX 3080 Ti for $1,199
Asus TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 Ti for $1,199
EVGA FTW3 GeForce RTX 3080 Ti for $1,399
Gigabyte Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 Ti for $1,479
Gigabyte Vision GeForce RTX 3080 Ti for $1,529
Zotac AMP Holo GeForce RTX 3080 Ti for $1,799

For most people, even $1,199 will be too expensive, but that’s just the starting price. In a world of perpetually sold out GPUs, prices have skyrocketed. There’s a $200 gap between the three MSRP-level cards and the next costom card, the EVGA FTW3. Zotac’s AMP Holo meanwhile kicks reason to the curb and sports a $1,799 price tag. At that point, you should be getting a custom RTX 3090 with twice the memory.

Today’s Newegg Shuffle is active for just over 2 more hours. If you’re not aware of how the Newegg Shuffle works, it uses a lottery format. Just select the component(s) you’d like to potentially buy. Then Newegg will hold a drawing later today, after which the ‘winners’ will be notified by email with the chance to purchase an item (only one) within a several-hour period.

For other ways to get hard-to-find graphics cards, check out our RTX 3080 stock tracker and our feature on where to buy RTX 30-series cards. And for more Newegg savings, visit out page of Newegg promo codes.

The Nvidia TX 3080 Ti is here, at least for those lucky enough to find one. Announced earlier this week alongside the forthcoming RTX 3070 Ti, the 3080 Ti serves as the pricier successor to the GeForce RTX 3080, an excellent graphics card that made 4K gaming that much more affordable and exemplified just how transformative DLSS technology could be.

Like the RTX 3090, Nvidia’s newest flagship touts impressive 1440p and 4K performance, albeit in a smaller, quieter package with half the VRAM. It certainly isn’t cheap at $1,200, but given the ongoing semiconductor shortage and the outlandish street prices of most GPUs right now, the RTX 3080 Ti might be more affordable at MSRP than if you were to succumb to the resale market.

While we expect availability to be limited at launch and throughout the remainder of the year, several retailers currently have the RTX 3080 Ti in stock. Best Buy announced yesterday that it would give customers a chance to purchase a Founder’s Edition of the card at select stores today, however, unlike previous years, Best Buy will only offer the GPU in-store. Customers who are hoping to pick it up at launch will need to line up early and secure a ticket at 7:30AM local time before it officially goes on sale at 9:00AM local time. If you’re reading this now, chances are good that you’re already too late.

Heading to your local Micro Center might be your only other viable option, if you’re hoping to get one in-store. That retailer lists five RTX 3080 Ti models on its site from Gigabyte, Asus, EVGA, and MSI. If you’re looking to purchase the RTX 3080 Ti online, your options are limited. The cards will go on sale at B&H Photo, Newegg, Micro Center, and Amazon, however, we expect stock to sell out fast. You might have luck getting one online through MSI, PNY, Zotac, or EVGA’s site.

Here are some of the specific models available at the online retailers above (we’ll add more individual listings as they go live at other sites):

If these options fail you, try your luck in a Newegg Shuffle lottery on June 4th at 9AM ET:

Netflix is holding its first “Geeked” virtual event starting on June 7th, an entire week dedicated to genre stories across film and TV. That means sci-fi and fantasy, and shows based on comic books and video games.

The company says that more than 50 projects will be featured, including big names like The Witcher, Sandman, Lucifer, Cowboy Bebop, Arcane (the League of Legends animated series), The Cuphead Show, and more. In addition to big announcements and trailers, the event will also include “first looks, behind-the-scenes footage, cast interviews, celebrity games, script table reads, live performances, and much more,” according to Netflix.

It’s a lot to spread across five days. Here’s how you can keep up with everything.

What time is Netflix’s Geeked Week?

The event takes place from June 7th to the 11th, and Netflix says that things will kick off at 9AM PT / 12PM ET. The company will also be posting daily recaps at 10AM PT / 1PM ET, suggesting that things will last around an hour each day. There isn’t an exact schedule, but Netflix says that “each day will be broadly themed to different genres: film, comic books, fantasy, anime / animation, and gaming.”

Where can I watch the event?

If you want to watch everything, it seems like it’ll be hard to miss, as Netflix will be utilizing just about every video platform imaginable. That means you can watch and follow the daily events on YouTube, Twitter, Twitch, Facebook, and TikTok. And be sure to stay tuned to The Verge for coverage of the biggest announcements.

(Image credit: AMD)

AMD’s FidelityFX SuperResolution technology works not only on the company’s Radeon graphics processors, but also on Nvidia’s GeForce GPUs so developers can support it across all the best graphics cards. For Nvidia’s, which has its own deep learning super sampling (DLSS) technology, ensuring compatibility with AMD’s FSR is not a priority, but Intel, which is quarters away from launching its gaming GPUs, is looking at AMD’s FidelityFX SuperResolution.

AMD’s FidelityFX SuperResolution is a typical upscaling technology that generates the final image, based on multiple frames as a point of reference using linear and nonlinear processing techniques, according to an AMD patent. Unlike Nvidia’s DLSS, AMD’s FSR does not really use deep learning, something that has its advantages and disadvantages. Meanwhile, the technology promises tangible performance improvements without quality degradation, so game developers should be interested in supporting it.

Since AMD’s FidelityFX SuperResolution is hardware agnostic, it also makes sense for Intel to support it and optimize drivers for it. As a result, Intel’s graphics chief Raja Koduri said in a Twitter post that Intel could support the technology developed by AMD.

“Definitely looking at it — the deep learning capabilities of Xe-HPG architecture do lend to approaches that achieve better quality and performance,” said Raja Koduri. “We will definitely try to align with open approaches to make ISVs job easier.”

At present AMD’s FidelityFX SuperResolution is supported by Gearbox Software’s Godfall title, which supports a number of other AMD-designed technologies too. But making AMD’s FSR technology an industry-standard is not impossible. AMD’s FidelityFX technologies are available not only on PCs, but also will be available on the latest game consoles that use AMD’s GPUs. Therefore, over time these technologies will be adopted pretty widely and AMD’s rivals Intel and Nvidia will have to optimize their drivers for games that use AMD’s technologies.

The Olympics is currently hosting its first-ever virtual sporting event series, the Olympic Virtual Series, where competitors can play in virtual versions of five different physical sports: motorsport, cycling, baseball, sailing, and rowing. The cycling competition, for example, takes place in Zwift, which lets you pair your bike and a bike trainer with your computer, phone, or tablet. The motorsport competition takes place entirely inside Gran Turismo Sport.

You might notice that none of those are games you might typically associate with esports, such as Overwatch, which has previously hosted World Cup-style tournaments where players represented their countries. At least for now, though, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is intentionally choosing to host competitions in virtual versions of physical sports.

“I think it’s fair to say that we remain a sport-based and sport-focused organization,” the IOC’s sport director, Kit McConnell, told The Verge in an interview. “We’re looking to keep the Olympic Virtual Series focused around sport titles.”

While that might sound like the IOC has shut the door on keeping esports out of the Olympics, the Olympics still plans to stay in touch with the esports community, especially since more athletes are playing video games. “We don’t think there’s any mutual exclusivity between the esport community and the traditional sport community,” McConnell said.

The IOC also wants to find ways to help support esports players similarly to how it supports athletes in traditional sports. “As elite esports and gaming competitors are relatively new to the highly competitive environment, they have more limited access to resources than athletes in traditional sports,” the IOC says in its latest strategic roadmap, which was released in March. “The IOC recognises these challenges and aims to adapt various existing tools and resources to support them in different fields such as gender equality, mental and physical health, competition integrity and career transition.”

And the IOC sees virtual sports continuing to play a growing role in the Olympics. While the Olympic Virtual Series isn’t a medalled event, there is a possibility that a virtual representation of a physical sport could become one as early as the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Games, according to that roadmap.

To be clear, the actual language in the roadmap does not make that a sure bet. The roadmap has a “recommendation” to “consider the addition of physical virtual sports in the Olympic Programme in cooperation with the respective International Federations.” But if that became a reality, you could expect to see it take a similar form to what’s being done for the cycling and rowing events for the Olympic Virtual Series, McConnell said. (Of the five sports in the Olympic Virtual Series, only those two require players to compete on physical hardware.)

So while we may not see a League of Legends team adorned in Olympic gold medals anytime soon, virtual sports might actually become an official Olympic event someday. And the Olympic Virtual Series could be a preview of what that may look like.

Nvidia goes back to 4K for more than $1K

Last year’s Nvidia RTX 3080 was the first GPU to make 4K gaming finally feasible. It was a card that delivered impressive performance at 4K, especially for its retail price of $699 — far less than the 2080 Ti cost a generation earlier. That was before the reality of a global chip shortage drove the prices of modern GPUs well above $1,000. Now that the street prices of RTX 3080s have stayed above $2,000 for months, Nvidia is launching its RTX 3080 Ti flagship priced at $1,199.

It’s a card that aims to deliver near identical levels of performance to the $1,499 RTX 3090, but in a smaller package and with just 12GB of VRAM — half what’s found on the RTX 3090. Nvidia is effectively competing with itself here, and now offering three cards at the top end. That’s if you can even manage to buy any of them in the first place.

I’ve spent the past week testing the RTX 3080 Ti at both 4K and 1440p resolutions. 4K gaming might have arrived originally with the RTX 2080 Ti, but the RTX 3080 Ti refines it and offers more headroom in the latest games. Unfortunately, it does so with a $1,199 price tag that I think will be beyond most people’s budgets even before you factor in the inevitable street price markup it will see during the current GPU shortage.

Hardware

If you put the RTX 3080 Ti and the RTX 3080 side by side, it would be difficult to tell the difference between them. They look identical, with the same ports and fan setup. I’m actually surprised this card isn’t a three-slot like the RTX 3090, or just bigger generally. The RTX 3080 Ti has one fan on either side of the card, with a push-pull system in place. The bottom fan pulls cool air into the card, which then exhausts on the opposite side that’s closest to your CPU cooler and rear case fan. A traditional blower cooler also exhausts the hot air out of the PCIe slot at the back.

This helped create a quieter card on the original RTX 3080, and I’m happy to report it’s the same with the RTX 3080 Ti. The RTX 3080 Ti runs at or close to its max fan RPM under heavy loads, but the hum of the fans isn’t too distracting. I personally own an RTX 3090, and while the fans rarely kick in at full speed, they’re certainly a lot more noticeable than the RTX 3080 Ti’s.

Nvidia has used the same RTX 3080 design for the 3080 Ti Model.

That quiet performance might have a downside, though. During my week of testing with the RTX 3080 Ti, I noticed that the card seems to run rather hot. I recorded temperatures regularly around 80 degrees Celsius, compared to the 70 degrees Celsius temperatures on the larger RTX 3090. The fans also maxed out a lot during demanding 4K games on the RTX 3080 Ti in order to keep the card cool. I don’t have the necessary equipment to fully measure the heat output here, but when I went to swap the RTX 3080 Ti for another card after hours of testing, it was too hot to touch, and stayed hotter for longer than I’d noticed with either the RTX 3080 or RTX 3090. I’m not sure if this will result in problems in the long term, as we saw with the initial batch of 2080 Ti units having memory overheating issues, but most people will put this in a case and never touch it again. Still, I’m surprised at how long it stayed hot enough for me to not want to touch it.

As this is a Founders Edition card, Nvidia is using its latest 12-pin single power connector. There’s an ugly and awkward adapter in the box that lets you connect two eight-pin PCIe power connectors to it, but I’d highly recommend getting a single new cable from your PSU supplier to connect directly to this card. It’s less cabling, and a more elegant solution if you have a case window or you’re addicted to tidy cable management (hello, that’s me).

The RTX 3080 Ti inside my case.

I love the look of the RTX 3080 Ti and the pennant-shaped board that Nvidia uses here. Just like the RTX 3080, there are no visible screws, and the regulatory notices are all on the output part of the card so there are no ugly stickers or FCC logos. It’s a really clean card, and I’m sorry to bring this up, but Nvidia has even fixed the way the number 8 is displayed. It was a minor mistake on the RTX 3080, but I’m glad the 8 has the correct proportions on the RTX 3080 Ti.

At the back of the card there’s a single HDMI 2.1 port and three DisplayPort 1.4a ports. Just like the RTX 3080, there are also LEDs that glow around the top part of the fan, and the GeForce RTX branding lights up, too. You can even customize the colors of the glowing part around the fan if you’re really into RGB lighting.

Just like the RTX 3080, this new RTX 3080 Ti needs a 750W power supply. The RTX 3080 Ti even draws more power, too, at up to 350 watts under load compared to 320 watts on the RTX 3080. That’s the same amount of power draw as the larger RTX 3090, which is understandable given the performance improvements, but it’s worth being aware of how this might impact your energy bills (and the cost of your PC build to run it).

1440p testing

I’ve been testing the RTX 3080 Ti with Intel’s latest Core i9 processor. For 1440p tests, I’ve also paired the GPU with a 32-inch Samsung Odyssey G7 monitor. This monitor supports refresh rates up to 240Hz, as well as Nvidia’s G-Sync technology.

I compared the RTX 3080 Ti against both the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 to really understand where it fits into Nvidia’s new lineup. I tested a variety of AAA titles, including Fortnite, Control, Death Stranding, Metro Exodus, Call of Duty: Warzone, Microsoft Flight Simulator, and many more. You can also find the same games tested at 4K resolution below.

All games were tested at max or ultra settings on the RTX 3080 Ti, and most exceeded an average of 100fps at 1440p. On paper, the RTX 3080 Ti is very close to an RTX 3090, and my testing showed that plays out in most games at 1440p. Games like Microsoft Flight Simulator, Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, and Watch Dogs: Legion all have near-identical performance across the RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 3090 at 1440p.

Even Call of Duty: Warzone is the same without Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) technology enabled, and it’s only really games like Control and Death Stranding where there’s a noteworthy, but small, gap in performance.

However, the jump in performance from the RTX 3080 to the RTX 3080 Ti is noticeable across nearly every game, with the exception of Death Stranding and Fortnite, which both perform really well on the base RTX 3080.

RTX 3080 Ti (1440p)

Benchmark	RTX 3080 Founders Edition	RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition	RTX 3090 Founders Edition
Benchmark	RTX 3080 Founders Edition	RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition	RTX 3090 Founders Edition
Microsoft Flight Simulator	46fps	45fps	45fps
Shadow of the Tomb Raider	147fps	156fps	160fps
Shadow of the Tomb Raider (DLSS)	154fps	162fps	167fps
CoD: Warzone	124fps	140fps	140fps
CoD: Warzone (DLSS+RT)	133fps	144fps	155fps
Fortnite	160fps	167fps	188fps
Fortnite (DLSS)	181fps	173fps	205fps
Gears 5	87fps	98fps	103fps
Death Stranding	163fps	164fps	172fps
Death Stranding (DLSS quality)	197fps	165fps	179fps
Control	124fps	134fps	142fps
Control (DLSS quality + RT)	126fps	134fps	144fps
Metro Exodus	56fps	64fps	65fps
Metro Exodus (DLSS+RT)	67fps	75fps	77fps
Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla	73fps	84fps	85fps
Watch Dogs: Legion	79fps	86fps	89fps
Watch Dogs: Legion (DLSS+RT)	67fps	72fps	74fps
Watch Dogs: Legion (RT)	49fps	55fps	56fps

Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla performs 15 percent better on the RTX 3080 Ti over the regular RTX 3080, and Metro Exodus also shows a 14 percent improvement. The range of performance increases ranges from around 4 percent all the way up to 15 percent, so the performance gap is very game dependent.

Even when using games with ray tracing, the RTX 3080 Ti still managed high frame rates when paired with DLSS. DLSS uses neural networks and AI supercomputers to analyze games and sharpen or clean up images at lower resolutions. In simple terms, it allows a game to render at a lower resolution and use Nvidia’s image reconstruction technique to upscale the image and make it look as good as native 4K.

Whenever I see the DLSS option in games, I immediately turn it on now to get as much performance as possible. It’s still very much required for ray tracing games, particularly as titles like Watch Dogs: Legion only manage to hit 55fps with ultra ray tracing enabled. If you enable DLSS, this jumps to 72fps and it’s difficult to notice a hit in image quality.

The RTX 3080 Ti stays quiet during heavy loads.

4K testing

For my 4K testing, I paired the RTX 3080 Ti with Acer’s 27-inch Nitro XV273K, a 4K monitor that offers up to 144Hz refresh rates and supports G-Sync. I wasn’t able to get any of the games I tested on both the RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 3090 to hit the frame rates necessary to really take advantage of this 144Hz panel, but some came close thanks to DLSS.

Metro Exodus manages a 14 percent improvement over the RTX 3080, and Microsoft Flight Simulator also sees a 13 percent jump. Elsewhere, other games see between a 4 and 9 percent improvement. These are solid gains for the RTX 3080 Ti, providing more headroom for 4K gaming over the original RTX 3080.

The RTX 3080 Ti comes close to matching the RTX 3090 performance at 4K in games like Watch Dogs: Legion, Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, Gears 5, and Death Stranding. Neither the RTX 3080 Ti nor RTX 3090 is strong enough to handle Watch Dogs: Legion with ray tracing, though. Both cards manage around 30fps on average, and even DLSS only bumps this up to below 50fps averages.

RTX 3080 Ti (4K)

Benchmark	RTX 3080 Founders Edition	RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition	RTX 3090 Founders Edition
Benchmark	RTX 3080 Founders Edition	RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition	RTX 3090 Founders Edition
Microsoft Flight Simulator	30fps	34fps	37fps
Shadow of the Tomb Raider	84fps	88fps	92fps
Shadow of the Tomb Raider (DLSS)	102fps	107fps	111fps
CoD: Warzone	89fps	95fps	102fps
CoD: Warzone (DLSS+RT)	119fps	119fps	129fps
Fortnite	84fps	92fps	94fps
Fortnite (DLSS)	124fps	134fps	141fps
Gears 5	64fps	72fps	73fps
Death Stranding	98fps	106fps	109fps
Death Stranding (DLSS quality)	131fps	132fps	138fps
Control	65fps	70fps	72fps
Control (DLSS quality + RT)	72fps	78fps	80fps
Metro Exodus	34fps	39fps	39fps
Metro Exodus (DLSS+RT)	50fps	53fps	55fps
Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla	64fps	70fps	70fps
Watch Dogs: Legion	52fps	55fps	57fps
Watch Dogs: Legion (DLSS+RT)	40fps	47fps	49fps
Watch Dogs: Legion (RT)	21fps	29fps	32fps

Most games manage to comfortably rise above 60fps in 4K at ultra settings, with Microsoft Flight Simulator and Metro Exodus as the only exceptions. Not even the RTX 3090 could reliably push beyond 144fps at 4K without assistance from DLSS or a drop in visual settings. I think we’re going to be waiting on whatever Nvidia does next to really push 4K at these types of frame rates.

When you start to add ray tracing and ultra 4K settings, it’s clear that both the RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 3090 need to have DLSS enabled to play at reasonable frame rates across the most demanding ray-traced titles. Without DLSS, Watch Dogs: Legion manages an average of 29fps (at max settings), with dips below that making the game unplayable.

DLSS really is the key here across both 1440p and 4K. It was merely a promise when the 2080 Ti debuted nearly three years ago, but Nvidia has now managed to get DLSS into more than 50 popular games. Red Dead Redemption 2 and Rainbow Six Siege are getting DLSS support soon, too.

DLSS also sets Nvidia apart from AMD’s cards. While AMD’s RX 6800 XT is fairly competitive at basic rasterization at 1440p, it falls behind the RTX 3080 in the most demanding games at 4K — particularly when ray tracing is enabled. Even the $1,000 Radeon RX 6900 XT doesn’t fare much better at 4K. AMD’s answer to DLSS is coming later this month, but until it arrives we still don’t know exactly how it will compensate for ray tracing performance on AMD’s GPUs. AMD has also struggled to supply retailers with stock of its cards.

That’s left Nvidia in a position to launch the RTX 3080 Ti at a price point that really means it’s competing with itself, positioned between the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090. If the RTX 3090 wasn’t a thing, the RTX 3080 Ti would make a lot more sense.

The RTX 3080 Ti comes close to RTX 3090 performance.

Nvidia is also competing with the reality of the market right now, as demand has been outpacing supply for more than six months. Nvidia has introduced a hash rate limiter for Ethereum cryptocurrency mining on new versions of the RTX 3080, RTX 3070, and now this RTX 3080 Ti. It could help deter some scalpers, but we’ll need months of data on street prices to really understand if it’s driven pricing down to normal levels.

Demand for 30-series cards has skyrocketed as many rush to replace their aging GTX 1080 and GTX 1080 Ti cards. Coupled with Nvidia’s NVENC and professional tooling support, it’s also made the RTX 30-series a great option for creators looking to stream games, edit videos, or build games.

In a normal market, I would only recommend the RTX 3080 Ti if you’re really willing to spend an extra $500 to get some extra gains in 1440p and 4K performance. But it’s a big price premium when the RTX 3090 exists at this niche end of the market and offers more performance and double the VRAM if you’re really willing to pay this much for a graphics card.

At $999 or even $1,099, the RTX 3080 Ti would tempt me a lot more, but $1,199 feels a little too pricey. For most people, an RTX 3080 makes a lot more sense if it were actually available at its standard retail price. Nvidia also has a $599 RTX 3070 Ti on the way next week, which could offer some performance gains to rival the RTX 3080.

Either way, the best GPU is the one you can buy right now, and let’s hope that Nvidia and AMD manage to make that a reality soon.

Photography by Tom Warren / The Verge

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