(Image credit: Shutterstock, Edited by Tom’s Hardware)
A bill proposed in New York state by state Sen. Kevin S. Parker could stop cryptocurrency mining to study and issue findings on how it affects the environment. The bill, NY State Senate Bill S6486, was first reported on by Earther.
Beyond making PC components notoriously difficult to find, running powerful computers day in and day out uses huge amounts of electricity.
The bill, which is still in committee so could change, calls for a “three-year moratorium on the operation of cryptocurrency mining centers in the state, including, but not limited to cryptocurrency mining centers located in converted fossil fuel power plants.” There has been an increase in mining activity in upstate New York. In the town of Dresden, one plant planned “to quadruple the power used to process Bitcoin transactions by late next year,” much to the concerns of environmentalists.
It isn’t completely clear what makes a “cryptocurrency mining center,” and if individuals mining on their own computers would also be banned. Tom’s Hardware has reached out to Sen. Parker’s office and will update this story if we get a response.
Following the environmental impact studies, mining operations that negatively impact greenhouse gas emission targets in the state’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019 would be ineligible to obtain a permit to continue running. That act requires that greenhouse gas emissions across the state be reduced 85% and that it achieves net zero emissions across industries.
The bill cites statistics estimating that cryptocurrency networks use as much energy as Sweden. Some cryptocurrency advocates suggest that it is becoming increasingly common for mining to take place using renewable energy. But while using cheap energy makes for increased profits, that energy still often comes from coal.
Bill S6486 is currently in committee. Its next steps would be to go to the floor calendar, pass both the state’s senate and assembly and, if it gets through all that, be delivered to and signed or vetoed by the governor.
In 2020, Microsoft was battling to bring xCloud or Xbox Game Streaming to the iPhone and iPad, and the conversations had an unlikely victim: Shadow — a third-party cloud gaming app that lets you stream PC games to an iPhone or iPad.
Emails between Microsoft and Apple, revealed in the Epic v. Apple trial today, show how the Xbox maker was trying to get xCloud on iOS. Microsoft was trying to figure out how Shadow, Netflix, and other similar “interactive” apps were able to exist in the App Store while Apple was refusing to approve xCloud. Microsoft put forward Shadow as an example of such a service, only to see it suddenly removed from the store.
“We were showing two examples where a game or an application was able to exist, and we didn’t understand why we couldn’t,” explained Lori Wright, Microsoft’s head of business development for Xbox, during the Epic v. Apple trial today. “I believe they [Apple] ended up pulling Shadow out of the App Store based off this email we sent until they submitted changes. That was not our intention of course, it was a byproduct.”
Shadow on iPhone.Image: Shadow
While Shadow’s removal wasn’t permanent, Apple has temporarily removed the app from the App Store twice in the past year. Shadow was first removed in February last year, with Apple reportedly citing a “failure to act in accordance with a specific part of the Apple App Store Guidelines.” Apple once again removed Shadow from the App Store in February, and the app returned a week later.
Shadow revealed that the app was removed the second time “due to a misunderstanding” around the nature of the app. “Unlike game streaming services, Shadow provides a full Windows 10 PC, rather than a library of games,” explained Luc Hancock, a community manager for Shadow. “This unique approach allows Shadow to comply with the App Store guidelines, so that you can access your Shadow PC on any iOS device to run your favorite games and software.”
Valve struggled for more than a year to launch its Steam Link game streaming service on iOS. Apple rejected the app, likely because it allowed an iOS user to access another app store, Steam, within Apple’s tightly controlled ecosystem. Apple revised its rules after rejecting Steam Link, and the app was finally approved two years ago in May 2019.
xCloud on iOS via the web.Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge
Apple continued to make it difficult for services like xCloud and Stadia to run the way Microsoft and Google wanted to on iOS devices after those conversations, only slowly making App Store policy carve-outs that would let the services operate under severe restrictions. Apple now insists that developers individually submit games as separate apps using their streaming tech, only then bundling them together as a “catalog”-style app.
Microsoft wasn’t impressed with Apple’s approach, calling it a “bad experience for customers.” This public spat has now boiled over into the courtroom battle between Epic Games and Apple, with lawyers on Epic’s side questioning Microsoft and Nvidia representatives about their struggles to bring cloud gaming apps to iOS.
Both Microsoft and Nvidia have had to give in to Apple’s restrictions and launch their cloud gaming services through the Safari web browser instead.
Corsair’s K70 RGB TKL is an unashamedly gaming-focused keyboard. For one thing, it’s only available with the kinds of switches people normally recommend for playing games, while other features like low input latency and a dedicated “tournament switch” for esports clearly have gamers in mind.
At a price of $139.99 (£139.99), these features are coming at a premium, and they’re overkill for anyone not planning on competing at the next Dota 2 International. But the K70 RGB TKL is a complete package with lots of quality-of-life features for non-gamers. It attaches to your PC with a detachable USB-C cable (a first for Corsair) and features customizable per-key RGB backlighting, dedicated media keys, and a roller wheel for volume control.
At this price, the result is a great gaming-focused keyboard but only a good general purpose keyboard.
In case the specs didn’t tip you off beforehand, just looking at the Corsair K70 RGB TKL should tell you everything you need to know about its target audience. The bold, squared-off font on its keycaps is peak gamer, and the case itself has a minimalist, angular design. The only branding you get is a small Corsair logo on the keyboard’s forehead, which illuminates along with the rest of the keyboard’s lighting.
Its design might not be for everyone, but construction quality is good here. The K70’s keycaps are made of hard-wearing PBT plastic, and their legends are double-shot, meaning they let each switch’s lighting shine through and will never rub off. Corsair uses a standard keyboard layout, so you shouldn’t have any problems finding replacement keycaps in the right sizes.
As its name implies, the K70 RGB TKL is a tenkeyless board (hence the “TKL” in its name), meaning you don’t get a numpad to the right of the arrow keys. This makes perfect sense on a gaming keyboard, where you’ll typically spend most of your time with your left hand on the WASD keys and your right hand on a mouse. Unless you really need it for data entry, a numpad just gets in the way. Available layouts include US ANSI, UK ISO (which I’m using), and other European layouts, but there are no Mac-specific keys available.
Although it’s not particularly wide, Corsair’s keyboard has a bit of a forehead to house its media keys and volume roller. I generally prefer this simple approach, rather than having to access media controls through a combination of keypresses, even if it adds a little more bulk to the board. Build quality is otherwise solid; the keyboard wouldn’t flex, no matter how much I tried to bend it.
The keyboard’s configuration options are aimed squarely at gamers. There’s no option for tactile Cherry MX Browns or clicky Cherry MX Blue switches here. Instead, your options are classic gamer Cherry MX Reds, competitive gamer Cherry MX Speed Silvers, or, if you’re in Korea, considerate gamer Cherry MX Silent Reds. My review board came equipped with standard Red switches. The switches aren’t hot-swappable, so you’re going to have to use desoldering tools and then a soldering iron if you want to try out any other switch types.
The nice thing about buying from an established company like Corsair is that its companion software for configuring the keyboard’s layout and lighting effects is slick and polished. iCue is available for Mac and Windows and offers a truly dizzying amount of control over the K70 RGB TKL. You can remap the keyboard’s keys however you like and get access to a plethora of additional lighting effects. The controls are granular and get complicated fast, so I ended up ignoring them and just controlled the keyboard’s lighting from the board itself.
You can control its lighting directly from the keyboard itself or via companion software.
As well as handling lighting controls, iCue can also handle key remapping if you want to swap the layout of your keyboard around. It’s not as necessary a feature on a TKL board as on a smaller board with a more limited selection of keys, but it’s a useful inclusion if you want to tinker.
All of these are useful features regardless of what you want to use the Corsair K70 RGB TKL for. But its more unique features are gaming-focused. First up is a “tournament switch” on the top of the board, which disables any custom macros you’ve set up and switches the backlighting to a single less-distracting color. (You can customize which color using iCue.) It’s the kind of feature I could see being helpful if you’re simultaneously big into online gaming and also use a ton of macros. That’s a pretty slim Venn diagram of users, but thankfully, the switch is completely out of the way otherwise.
The other gaming feature here is an advertised polling rate of 8,000Hz, which is eight times higher than the 1,000Hz rate used by most keyboards. In theory, this means the keyboard’s input lag or the time between you pressing a key and the signal being transmitted to your PC, is as minimal as possible, presumably making all the difference in a high-speed gaming situation. Corsair tells me this brings down median latency to under a quarter of a millisecond, compared to 2 milliseconds and up with a 1,000Hz keyboard. You enable the 8,000Hz polling rate from within Corsair’s software. It’ll warn you that the higher polling rate uses more system resources, but I didn’t notice any impact on performance on my Ryzen 5 3600-equipped gaming PC, and Corsair tells me this should be the same for anyone using a gaming machine built in the last three years.
We’ve seen a similar trend with gaming mice, and Linus Tech Tips did a great analysis of what that actually means for performance. But the real-world difference it makes is minor, and I struggled to feel any difference in responsiveness when switching between playing Overwatch on the Corsair K70 RGB TKL and a regular 1,000Hz Filco office keyboard when playing on a 100Hz monitor. I have no reason to doubt Corsair’s low latency claims, but I think it’s the kind of improvement that only a small number of players will actually be able to notice.
The Corsair K70 RGB TKL is being sold by a gaming-oriented brand as a gaming-oriented keyboard with gaming-oriented switches, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that it doesn’t offer the best typing experience. The typing feel just doesn’t match the crispness of a board like the similarly priced Filco Majestouch 2. Instead, bottoming out each keypress feels slightly dulled or softened, and since this keyboard is only available with linear switches, you’re all but guaranteed to bottom out each keypress while you’re typing.
I’ll give credit to Corsair for the K70’s spacebar stabilizer (the mechanism installed under the larger keycap to stop it from wobbling). While this can sometimes sound rattly on other keyboards, there’s no such problem here. But if you listen to the typing sample above, you’ll hear that other stabilized keys like Backspace and Enter have more rattle. Ultimately, the overall typing experience on the K70 RGB TKL is only good, never great.
No numpads here.
At this point, Corsair knows what it’s doing when it comes to mechanical keyboards for gaming. The K70 RGB TKL comes equipped with all of the quality-of-life features that are expected out of a mainstream keyboard at this point: nice durable keycaps, media keys and volume dial, and a detachable USB-C cable. Some of its more gaming-focused features are borderline overkill, but they don’t get in the way.
At its core, though, the K70 RGB TKL is a keyboard designed for gamers, and there are better keyboards out there if you’re only an occasional gamer. You can get a better range of switches elsewhere, as well as a more satisfying typing experience overall. That makes the Corsair K70 RGB TKL a great option for a gaming keyboard, but only a good keyboard overall.
Resident Evil Village is described by its makers as “a theme-park of horrors.” A sequel to RE 7: Biohazard, it sees a return our protagonist Ethan Winters, who finds himself in a European styled village of horrors in Transylvania, the de facto capital of western horror fiction. An arch-enemy has murdered his wife in cold blood, and abducted his infant daughter. In a bid to rescue her, Winters must now traverse the mysterious village ruled by four mutant lords–a vampire ruling over a large castle that calls back to the Count Dracula lore; an abandoned factory with werewolf-like creatures; a swamp with mermen; and a horror-house with dolls and puppets.
Resident Evil Village is played in a first-person RPG format, with gameplay mechanics similar to RE 7: Biohazard; but with the inventory system carried over from RE 4–a briefcase that can store weapons and loot, you can get more items from an in-game merchant called The Duke. You can also craft various buffs by exchanging ingredients here. The Village is a large open-world spread across the four zones, which rewards exploration with a secret area of the map.
Capcom developed Resident Evil Village on the latest iteration of its in-house RE Engine that also powers popular titles such as Devil May Cry 5, and the upcoming Monster Hunter Rise. The Resident Evil franchise owes much of its popularity to consoles, mainly PlayStations, and the developer appears to have built the game for consoles, porting it to the PC with certain quality tweaks. The engine supports real-time raytracing, variable-rate shading, and AMD FidelityFX. In this article we explore how the game plays on the PC, and whether there’s enough eye-candy to be had with raytracing turned on. We test performance and hardware requirements of Resident Evil Village on 18 graphics cards, at three resolutions, with raytracing on and off.
HTC is planning to unveil two Vive virtual reality headsets at its ViveCon 2021 conference that’s happening on May 11th and May 12th, according to Protocol. While the original Vive and Vive Pro headsets were associated more with gaming, the high-end Vive Pro 2 and Vive Focus 3 Business Edition will reportedly be aimed toward the enterprise sector.
No specs or images of either headset have surfaced, so it’s unclear if both will be tethered headsets that require a PC to use or if one will have a standalone, wire-free design to take on the likes of the Oculus Quest 2.
The report from Protocol states that both headsets were mentioned in HTC company documents and were also briefly listed on European e-commerce site Alzashop. Before those shop listings were taken down, the Vive Focus 3 Business Edition showed a €1,474 ($1,771) price, and the Vive Pro 2 was listed for €842 ($1,012), according to Protocol. Both headsets are reportedly launching sometime in May.
These headsets could be exciting in their own ways, but another device I’m holding out hope to see at ViveCon is the fitness-focused Vive Air. Pictures leaked a couple of weeks ago showing an attractive standalone VR headset with a breathable fabric design, and it prompted HTC to say that, unfortunately, it’s just a concept. But maybe that’s just what a company trying to downplay an exciting announcement would say, right?
We’ll know much more come May 11th at HTC’s VR conference, where the company says it will debut “game-changing VR headsets” during the keynote.
Nvidia appears to be getting ready to launch its RTX 3080 Ti graphics card later this month. Over the past few weeks, RTX 3080 Ti cards have reportedly been spotted on shipping pallets, in retail boxes, and now in the hands of someone. VideoCardz has been at the center of tracking down Nvidia’s rumored RTX 3080 Ti card, and it reports the GPU will be launched on May 31st, alongside the RTX 3070 Ti.
The RTX 3080 Ti will reportedly include 12GB of GDDR6X memory, a 2GB increase over what’s found on the RTX 3080. A wider 384-bit bus is rumored, matching the RTX 3090 — and an increase to the memory bandwidth over the RTX 3080. What this all means in terms of performance isn’t exactly clear yet, but it certainly looks like the RTX 3080 Ti will sit comfortably in between the RTX 3080 and the RTX 3090.
That may mean we’re looking at another GPU from Nvidia that’s over the $1,000 mark, but given the scalper prices for the RTX 3080, that’s not exactly unusual now. VideoCardz spotted an MSI 3080 Ti late last week, and today YouTuber Moore’s Law Is Dead now claims to know someone with an unannounced Gigabyte RTX 3080 Ti.
Just to confirm from my end – the RTX 3080 Ti 12GB is certainly real, and coming soon™️.
I obviously blacked out the background to protect someone, but that’s a real 3080 Ti someone I know has their hands on… pic.twitter.com/sn18aNbboa
— Moore’s Law Is Dead (@mooreslawisdead) May 4, 2021
If the reports are accurate, we should be getting a lot more details about both the RTX 3080 Ti and the 3070 Ti later this month. Both cards are also rumored to ship with the same Ethereum cryptocurrency mining limiter that Nvidia implemented with the RTX 3060. Nvidia accidentally removed this nerf with a driver update, before once again reinstating the hash limiter last week.
Either way, many people waiting to build PCs right now might not get overly excited about news of yet another GPU launch. It has been nearly impossible to buy RTX 30-series cards thanks to a global chip shortage and massive demand from PC gamers looking to upgrade. Launching yet another GPU won’t fix the supply and demand issues that Nvidia has already warned will continue throughout 2021.
After about a month of preparation, following the initial mainnet launch, cryptocurrency Chia coin (XCH) has officially started trading — which means it’s possibly preparing to suck up all of the best SSDs like Ethereum (see how to mine Ethereum) has been gobbling up the best graphics cards. Early Chia calculators suggested an estimated starting price of $20 per XCH. That was way off, but with the initial fervor and hype subsiding, we’re ready to look at where things stand and where they might stabilize.
To recap, Chia is a novel approach to cryptocurrencies, ditching the Proof of Work hashing used by most coins (i.e., Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Dogecoin, and others) and instead opting for a new Proof of Time and Space algorithm. Using storage capacity helps reduce the potential power footprint, obviously at the cost of storage. And let’s be clear: The amount of storage space (aka netspace) already used by the Chia network is astonishing. It passed 1 EiB (Exbibyte, or 2^60 bytes) of storage on April 28, and just a few days later it’s approaching the 2 EiB mark. Where will it stop? That’s the $21 billion dollar question.
All of that space goes to storing plots of Chia, which are basically massive 101.4GiB Bingo cards. Each online plot has an equal chance, based on the total netspace, of ‘winning’ the block solution. This occurs at a rate of approximately 32 blocks per 10 minutes, with 2 XCH as the reward per block. Right now, assuming every Chia plot was stored on a 10TB HDD (which obviously isn’t accurate, but roll with it for a moment), that would require about 200,000 HDDs worth of Chia farms.
Assuming 5W per HDD, since they’re just sitting idle for the most part, that’s potentially 1 MW of power use. That might sound like a lot, and it is — about 8.8 GWh per year — but it pales in comparison to the amount of power going into Bitcoin and Ethereum. Ethereum, as an example, currently uses an estimated 41.3 TWh per year of power because it relies primarily on the best mining GPUs, while Bitcoin uses 109.7 TWh per year. That’s around 4,700 and 12,500 times more power than Chia at present, respectively. Of course, Ethereum and Bitcoin are also far more valuable than Chia at current exchange rates, and Chia has a long way to go to prove itself a viable cryptocoin.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
Back to the launch, though. Only a few cryptocurrency exchanges have picked up XCH trading so far, and none of them are what we would call major exchanges. Considering how many things have gone wrong in the past (like the Turkish exchange where the founder appears to have walked off with $2 billion in Bitcoins), discretion is definitely the best approach. Initially, according to Coinmarketcap, Gate.io accounted for around 65% of transactions, MXC.com was around 34.5%, and Bibox made up the remaining 0.5%. Since then, MSC and Gate.io swapped places, with MXC now sitting at 64% of all transactions.
By way of reference, Gate.io only accounts for around 0.21% of all Bitcoin transactions, and MXC doesn’t even show up on Coinmarketcap’s list of the top 500 BTC exchange pairs. So, we’re talking about small-time trading right now, on riskier platforms, with a total trading volume of around $27 million in the first day. That might sound like a lot, but it’s only a fraction of Bitcoin’s $60 billion or so in daily trade volume.
Chia started at an initial trading price of nearly $1,600 per XCH, peaked in early trading to peak at around $1,800, and has been on a steady downward slope since then. At present, the price seems to mostly have flattened out (at least temporarily) at around $700. It could certainly end up going a lot lower, however, so we wouldn’t recommend betting the farm on Chia, but even at $100 per XCH a lot of miners/crypto-farmers are likely to jump on the bandwagon.
As with many cryptocoins, Chia is searching for equilibrium right now. 10TB of storage dedicated to Chia plots would be enough for a farm of 100 plots and should in theory account for 0.0005% of the netspace. That would mean about 0.046 XCH per day of potential farming, except you’re flying solo (proper Chia pools don’t exist yet), so it would take on average 43 days to farm a block — and that’s assuming netspace doesn’t continue to increase, which it will. But if you could bring in a steady stream of 0.04 XCH per day, even if we lowball things with a value of $100, that’s $4-$5 per day, from a 10TB HDD that only costs about $250. Scale that up to ten drives and you’d be looking at $45 per day, albeit with returns trending downward over time.
GPU miners have paid a lot more than that for similar returns, and the power and complexity of running lots of GPUs (or ASICs) ends up being far higher than running a Chia farm. In fact, the recommended approach to Chia farming is to get the plots set up using a high-end PC, and then connect all the storage to a Raspberry Pi afterwards for low-power farming. You could run around 50 10TB HDDs for the same amount of power as a single RTX 3080 mining Ethereum.
Seed size not to scale. ☺ (Image credit: Shutterstock)
It’s important to note that it takes a decent amount of time to get a Chia farm up and running. If you have a server with a 64-core EPYC processor, 256GB of RAM, and at least 16TB of fast SSD storage, you could potentially create up to 64 plots at a time, at a rate of around six (give or take) hours per group of plots. That’s enough to create 256 plots per day, filling over 2.5 10TB HDDs with data. For a more typical PC, with an 8-core CPU (e.g, Ryzen 7 5800X or Core i9-11900K), 32GB of RAM, and an enterprise SSD with at least 2.4TB of storage, doing eight concurrent plots should be feasible. The higher clocks on consumer CPUs probably mean you could do a group of plots in four hours, which means 48 plots per day occupying about half of a 10TB HDD. That’s still a relatively fast ramp to a bunch of drives running a Chia farm, though.
In either case, the potential returns even with a price of $100 per XCH amount to hundreds of dollars per month. Obviously, that’s way too high of a return rate, so things will continue to change. Keep in mind that where a GPU can cost $15-$20 in power per month (depending on the price of electricity), a hard drive running 24/7 will only cost $0.35. So what’s a reasonable rate of return for filling up a hard drive or SSD and letting it sit, farming Chia? If we target $20 per month for a $250 10TB HDD, then either Chia’s netspace needs to balloon to around 60EiB, or the price needs to drop to around $16 per XCH — or more likely some combination of more netspace and lower prices.
In the meantime, don’t be surprised if prices on storage shoots up. It was already starting to happen, but like the GPU and other component shortages, it might be set to get a lot worse.
Almost every SKU of the RTX 30-series line returns in today’s Newegg Shuffle, save for the RTX 3090. But making up for that high-end absence are new bundles for some of AMD’s best graphics cards, giving you a total selection between not only the RTX 3060, RTX 3060 Ti, RTX 3070 and RTX 3080, but also the RX 6700 XT and RX 6900 XT.
Like most of Newegg’s recent shuffles, all of today’s cards do come bundled with another component. For the most part, that’s a power supply or motherboard, though there are a few RAM bundles in today’s shuffle as well. There’s also a bundle for an RTX 3070 and EVGA XR1 Capture Card that might interest streamers.
These bundles, unfortunately, don’t represent savings. Instead, Newegg’s just taking the opportunity to sell loosely related components by forcing prospective graphics card buyers to get them with their purchase. These additional parts aren’t overpriced, but you can’t opt out of buying them if you don’t need them. Certain parts, like the Gigabyte Power Supplies, also have low ratings and could prove unreliable over time.
Still, even with the extra parts, our eBay GPU pricing index shows that you’re still likely to pay less for a GPU here than you would with a scalper. You could probably trash the bundled item and still come out ahead, though reselling might be the wiser choice.
And that’s not a horrible tradeoff to be able to buy cards from all over the top half of our GPU benchmarks hierarchy. For an idea of the power we’re looking at here, know that RTX 3060 cards are about as fast as the RTX 2070 from 2018, but with more memory (and less memory bandwidth). The RTX 3080, meanwhile, is the Ampere flagship and offers the best performance you can find without going into the RTX 3090’s Titan RTX-level power.
AMD’s Radeon cards are also powerful when it comes to rasterized games, but our ray tracing face-off shows that they still have a ways to go when it comes to matching Nvidia’s ray-tracing and DLSS prowess.
For those unfamiliar with the process, Newegg Shuffle 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. Based on our experience, you won’t get selected most of the time. But hey, it’s free to try.
Here’s the full list of today’s options:
EVGA RTX 3060 with EVGA Supernova 750W Power Supply for $522
EVGA RTX 3060 with EVGA 750W Power Supply for $505
MSI RTX 3060 Ventus OC with OLOy WarHawk RGB 2 x 8GB RAM for $600
MSI RTX 3060 Ventus OC with OLOy 2 x 8GB RAM for $580
MSI RTX 3060 Ventus OC with OLOy 2 x 8GB RAM for $588
Asus TUF Gaming RTX 3060 OC with Asus TUF Gaming B450M Motherboard for $604
Asus TUF Gaming RTX 3060 OC with Asus ROG Strix GB450-F Motherboard for $644
EVGA RTX 3070 with EVGA Supernova 750W Power Supply for $761
EVGA RTX 3070 with EVGA XR1 Capture Card for $824
Gigabyte RTX 3060 Ti with Gigabyte 750W Power Supply for $759
Gigabyte RTX 3060 Ti with Gigabyte B550 Aorus Elite Motherboard for $804
Gigabyte RTX 3060 Ti OC with Gigabyte B550 Aorus Elite Motherboard for $814
Gigabyte RTX 3060 Ti OC with Gigabyte 750W Power Supply for $769
Gigabyte RX 6700 XT with Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite Wifi Motherboard for $1,084
Gigabyte RX 6700 XT with Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite Motherboard for $1,084
Asus ROG Strix RX 6700 XT with Asus TUF Gaming B450M Motherboard for $1,044
Asus ROG Strix RX 6700 XT with Asus ROG Strix B450-F Motherboard for $1,084
Gigabyte Aorus RTX 3080 with Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite Wifi Motherboard for $1,304
Gigabyte Aorus RTX 3080 with Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite Motherboard for $1,304
AsRock RX 6900 XT with ASRock B550M Steel Legend Motherboard for $1,859
With component shortages plaguing the PC industry, not to mention the smartphone and automotive industries, the latest word is that prices aren’t likely to return to ‘normal’ throughout 2021. If you can keep chugging along with whatever your PC currently has, that’s the best option, as otherwise prices are painful for all of the Nvidia Ampere and AMD RDNA2 GPUs.
Today’s Newegg shuffle starts at 1 pm EST/10 am PST. The Newegg Shuffle normally lasts for 2 hours, so if you’re interested in any of these components, act fast!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.
When you spend so much time building PCs and picking the best gaming monitor, gaming keyboard and gaming mouse, it’s easy to overlook the importance of the chair you use to navigate that setup. For PC gamers, sitting in the best gaming chair can add some personality to your gaming den and, more importantly, provide support to key areas, like your back and shoulders, that are often neglected by cheaper furniture . When you’re sitting for large chunks of the day, your body needs just as much attention as your next CPU buy, so you can focus on gaming and working, rather than scheduling your next chiropractor visit.
But the best gaming chair may not necessarily be a gaming chair per se. When you’re using your computer to work or study, you need to ensure that you’re sitting on something that’s comfortable, even when you’re not fragging with your friends or listening to Johnny Silverhand. . Whether that means a bright gamer aesthetic, a more subdued look fit for conference calls or a range of adjustments for when you need to lay back and regroup is all up to you.
Below we break down the best gaming chairs to hit the Tom’s Hardware lab (whether they’re explicitly targeted at gamers or not), but first, here are some things to consider when shopping for a new gaming chair.
What’s the chair’s maximum supported height and weight? If you don’t fit the chair’s recommendations or if you’re a smaller person and notice the chair is geared toward the big and tall crowd, look elsewhere.
Shoulder and lumbar support are key. Chairs without enough backrest height and width to support your shoulders and lumbar region via a dedicated mechanism or pillow may feel fine for a quick sit but won’t provide enough support for frequent hours of gaming or work.
Mind your seat too. Some chairs provide measurements for the whole seat, which may be smaller than the measurement for the actual sittable area of the seat. Make sure the seat’s point of contact is wide enough for your hips and how you like to sit.
Which adjustments do you need? Height adjustment is pretty standard, but you may also want to recline forward and/or backward, move the armrests in multiple directions or have the ability to rock.
What material and look do you want? There are a lot of gaming chairs that look like racecar bucket seats and use faux leather and are often easy to clean. Real leather will be pricier, and mesh chairs can be harder to clean. If you want something that looks more subdued, remember to also consider chairs that may not claim “gaming” in their title.
Can it fit under your desk? If pairing your chair with a certain desk, make sure the chair’s height and armrests will be able to fit under the desk, so you can push it in when not in use.
Best Gaming Chairs 2021
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
1. Secretlab Omega
Best Gaming Chair
Upholstery: PU faux leather (tested), leather or fabric | Maximum Weight: Maximum Height: Backrest Length: 31.5 inches | Backrest Width (Shoulder Level): 21 inches | Seat Width (Point of Contact): 14 inches
Padding is supportive but not stiff
Backrest has good range
Hard armrests
Backrest lever occasionally gets jammed
With a complete range of adjustments, including a backrest that can sit from 85-165 degrees, premium-feeling faux leather and some of the coziest extra pillows we’ve ever laid our heads and lumbars on, the Secretlab Omega is the best gaming chair. Secretlab’s homemade take on memory foam has just the right amount of hardness to support the whole body for hours without being overly rigid and stiff. In fact, I used this as my primary work chair for about a year and never got sore.
One of the Omega’s most standout features is the foam neck and lumbar foam pillows that use cooling gel to fight heat and are covered in a deliciously soft fabric. They’re not just decoration; the pillows conform to your body when in use and revert back to their original shape after. Plus, the armrests move up/down, in/out and toward/away the body and forward/back. It’s not perfect: these armrests could be softer for resting on, and the recline lever’s quality has room for improvement. However, with all of these advantages and a helpful tilt function , the Secret Labs Omega offers a comfortable position for most body types.
Note that the Omega also comes in different upholsteries and finishes. We tested the fabric upholstery in our Secretlab Titan SoftWeave review, as well one of the more colorful design options, the Secretlab League of Legends K/DA Edition.
At under $300, the AndaSeat Jungle is the best gaming chair for gamers who don’t want to break their back or the bank. A 1.5-inch-thick layer of memory foam prevents your body from sagging into the chair, and the foam lumbar support and neck pillows make it even harder to slouch.
Despite its more budget pricing, the Jungle offers breathable vinyl faux leather and the necessary adjustments for gaming and work. You get height adjustment, a rocking feature, recline from 90-160 degrees and height-adjustable armrests.
Those with wider hips or who just like to spread out, however, will lament the seat’s narrowness. Make sure the 14.2-inch width is enough room for you, otherwise you won’t last very long in the chair.
Supporting gamers up to 440 pounds — or 330.7 pounds if you want to use the rocking feature — and 6 feet 11 inches with a wider seat that’s 22.4 inches across, the AndaSeat Spider-Man Edition is the best gaming chair for big and tall gamers. In fact, taller gamers would fare better in this particular throne, as even our reviewer at 5 feet 8 inches found the neck pillow and headrest hard to access. The shoulder area could be a bit wider, but you do get a wide lumbar foam support pillow that covers the backrest well.
The molded foam proved hard enough to prevent fatigue during long gaming shifts while still offering some flexibility. Another bonus was that we didn’t find our skin sticking to the chair’s surface, as is the case with our vinyl faux leather chairs we’ve tested.
AndaSeat’s Spider-Man-themed seat also offers a solid range of adjustments, such as the ability to tilt and recline from 90-160 degrees. The armrests are nicely covered in PU faux leather and can move up/down, forward/backward, left/right and tilt inward/outward.
And, if Spider-Man isn’t the kind of hero you’d sit on, AndaSeat also makes this chair in Iron Man, Captain America and Ant Man styles.
More: AndaSeat Spider-Man Edition review
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
4. X-Chair X3 ATR Mgmt
Best Gaming Chair Splurge
Upholstery: Knit polymer mesh | Maximum Weight: 340 pounds | Maximum Height: Not disclosed | Backrest Length: 24 inches | Backrest Width (Shoulder Level): 26.5 inches | Seat Width (Point of Contact): 20.5 inches
Extremely customizable and adjustable
Heat and massage option
Expensive
Warranty not as robust as some competitors
Yes, the X-Chair X3 ATR Mgmt is expensive, but with configurable options that let you build a chair that fits your body type, it’s an investment in comfort. Primarily, the X3 ATR Mgmt blows most other gaming chairs’ approaches to lumbar support away by ditching the clunky pillow or adjustable firmness with a tension mechanism that properly adjusts to your size and lower back shape.
The X3 ATR Mgmt comes with a lot of optional features that can add to its price, from the massage/heat features we tested to the headrest and your choice of foam. The configuration we tested lets us work and play for hours without any back or body aches; although, the armrests could be a little softer. Those armrests can move up/down, forward/back and twist in/out. The seat’s also movable, as is the height, and the backrest and recline from 90-130 degrees.
Most people don’t need the $100 heat and massage feature add-on, which you can power it via your PC or a battery pack. It feels nice on the lower back but isn’t very strong.
Patch notes for a new update of HWInfo64 have confirmed that Intel’s next generation of CPUs, codenamed ‘Alder Lake’ will use gear modes on its memory controller, similar to Intel’s current Rocket Lake processors. The patch notes indicate that HWInfo64 can now report which gear mode an Alder Lake CPU is actively using.
Gear modes were introduced with the Rocket Lake architecture, and they allow users to change the way the memory controller behaves in order to achieve higher compatibility with more memory kits and higher RAM speeds.
You are given the choice of two gear modes with Rocket Lake. Gear 1 will allow the memory controller to operate at the same frequency as the system’s memory (known as a 1:1 ratio), allowing for the lowest latency possible. Gear 2, on the other hand, will cut the memory controller’s speed in half (2:1 ratio), compared to the system’s memory frequency allowing the memory controller to operate significantly higher frequency RAM.
However, because Gear 2 cuts the memory controller’s clock speed in half, your memory latency gets penalized, so this mode is only beneficial for workloads that are very sensitive to memory bandwidth over memory latency, which is found mostly in professional applications. If you’re a gamer or casual PC user, the lower latency with Gear 1 is the better choice.
What we don’t know yet is how gears will be implemented on Alder Lake. Intel could be upgrading the memory controller on Alder Lake, which would change the capabilities of each gear ratio. Or Intel might be using the same controller found on current Rocket Lake CPUs, we really don’t know at this time.
Either way, gears will most likely play a much bigger role in memory performance with DDR5 arriving on the scene. Alder Lake will be Intel’s first architecture to support not just DDR4 but DDR5 as well. With DDR5 frequencies hitting 8400MHz already, we could see a change in the way things currently stand, so that having a higher frequency at the expense of a slower memory controller speed is more important than lower latency in more situations.
Gigabyte has announced a pair of pre-built desktop gaming PCs, the Aorus Model X and Aorus Model S, both featuring top-of-the-range Intel and AMD CPUs alongside Nvidia RTX GPUs. What’s more, while the Model X is a standard-looking PC tower, the Model S comes in a 14L low-profile case that bears a distinct resemblance to Microsoft’s Xbox Series X.
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Across the board specs are high, with the Intel models sporting Rocket Lake i9 CPUs with eight cores and 16 threads, that turbo up to 5.3 GHz. AMD fans get the 12-core/24-thread Ryzen 9-5900X, which boosts up to 4.8 GHz and has 64MB of L3 cache, compared to 16MB on the Intel chip. RAM is also fast, with the Model X fitted with 16GB of 4400 MHz DDR4 (3600 MHz on the AMD model), while the Model S gets 32GB of 4000 MHz chips (again 3600 MHz if you choose AMD). To back all this up, the GPUs in both models are RTX 3080s.
Built on the Intel Z590 and AMD X570 / B550 chipsets, there’s also plenty of networking and I/O available, with Wi-Fi 6 available on all models. The Ethernet ports are both fast models – with 10bE LAN on the Intel Model X (plus a secondary 2.5GbE port), 2.5GbE on the AMD Model X (with a secondary 1GbE port) and 2.5GbE on both flavours of Model S. USB ports are plentiful – especially on the 58L Model X, which supports the Thunderbolt 4 standard in its Intel incarnation – and SSDs are fast, with each tower featuring a 1TB PCIe Gen 4 model and a 2TB PCIe 3.0 drive.
And while the X is cooled by a 360mm AIO liquid cooler putting out 40 decibels (dB), the Model S features an Xbox Series X-like cooling system that draws air in at the bottom of the tower and vents it from the top across a thermal fin. This system is so quiet it claims to put out less than 37 dB while gaming. That’s equivalent to, according to the American Academy of Audiology, something between a whisper and a quiet library.
At the time of writing, neither system seemed to be available for purchase.
Walmart’s unannounced cloud gaming service, codenamed Project Storm, has been detailed in new confidential emails. An exhibit in the Epic Games v. Apple trial reveals Walmart’s efforts to pitch its cloud gaming service to Epic Games and get Fortnite on board.
“I played Walmart’s demo on an Android phone (with an Xbox controller) and the experience felt like playing on PS4 and superior to playing on Android or iOS,” said Epic Games co-founder Mark Rein in an email thread from April 2019. Rein also excitedly shares a photo of a game clip with the rest of the Epic Games executive team, showing how Walmart was planning to sell this in stores to let a phone attach to a controller. “They’re going to sell the clip for a crazy low amount, they were saying something like $2,” said Rein.
How Walmart was building its cloud streaming service.
A presentation attached to the emails shows how Walmart had been pitching its cloud gaming service to publishers like Epic Games. The company was planning to run the service on Windows, with third-party game launchers like Steam, Uplay, Origin, Epic Games Store, Battle.net, and Bethesda Launcher supported.
It’s not clear from Walmart’s presentation when the company planned to launch the service, with a beta period originally set to launch in July 2019. An early mock-up of the user experience looks very similar to other cloud gaming services, with a list of games, genres, and a search function.
An early look at Walmart’s Project Storm service.
Walmart was planning what it describes as an “open ecosystem,” with the ability to stream from the cloud or download and play games locally. The technology behind Walmart’s cloud gaming service is LiquidSky, a service Walmart acquired. LiquidSky was previously powered by IBM Cloud’s bare metal servers and Nvidia GPUs, and it appears to offer a powerful Windows PC for cloud gaming.
Epic Games was one of many publishers to which Walmart pitched. Reports originally surfaced about Walmart’s plans in 2019, but the company has still not officially announced any cloud gaming service. Sources familiar with Walmart’s plans tell The Verge that some publishers and developers had signed up to produce or host games on Walmart’s service, but that the launch had been put on hold once the pandemic began last year.
It’s not clear if Walmart’s cloud gaming service will still launch. We reached out to Walmart to comment on Project Storm, but the company did not respond in time for publication.
Either way, Mark Rein seemed interested in Walmart’s pitch and exploring services like Google Stadia and Nvidia GeForce Now. “Walmart is open to exploring all kinds of business models, but I expect their service will be the least expensive of all of these because they’re Walmart and that’s their gig.”
Epic Games ultimately partnered with Nvidia to launch Fortnite on GeForce Now last year. It’s currently the only way to play Fortnite on iOS, after the Epic dispute with Apple led to the removal of Fortnite from the App Store.
It’s not an HDMI standard with much publicity right now, but HDMI QFT should be one you’re keeping an eye on if gaming is a priority. It may be one of the lesser talked about HDMI 2.1 features but this low latency technology has the potential to make your on-screen action more responsive and give your overall reaction time a head-start over the competition. So, what is HDMI QFT?
What is HDMI QFT?
(Image credit: LG / Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Sony)
The QFT in HDMI QFT stands for Quick Frame Transport and, like its name suggests, it’s a technology that speeds up the transmission of each frame on its journey from source to screen. It decreases the latency between the moment when the visual data is available in the graphics processor of your gaming device and the time when that data is then rendered on the screen as a frame. The shorter that gap, the closer your gameplay can be to the live version of the action.
This is very different to something like ALLM which simply optimises an ALLM-compatible TV to gaming. While ALLM will automatically shut down your TV’s extraneous picture processing in order to reduce what’s known as ‘input lag’, HDMI QFT actively speeds up the transport of the game data itself.
It’s so effective that it can theoretically reduce that time and lower latency by multiples of milliseconds. In the world of fast-action online gaming, with input lag for TVs already down to a matter of 20ms, those extra few milliseconds could make a very big difference.
How does HDMI QFT work?
The path of gaming data from source to screen is a lot longer than an HDMI cable. Display latency is defined as the time it takes to get a frame from the source GPU, at the moment that its ready, all the way until its painted on your TV screen.
That’s the time it takes to get through the source’s output circuits, the transfer across the cable, the processing of the video data by the TV’s chips and then finally the rendering of those frames on-screen. In real terms, that can affect things such as the delay between pressing a button on your games controller and actually seeing that action take place on the screen.
HDMI QFT can’t speed up all of that but it can accelerate things from source HDMI port to sink HDMI port, so long as both devices support the HDMI QFT standard. QFT transports each frame through the pipeline at a higher rate than normal.
HDMI QFT is an HDMI 2.1 feature, which means that it could be possible to enable it at some point on any device with an HDMI 2.1-certified port.
Which devices are HDMI QFT-certified?
At present you’ll struggle to find HDMI QFT support on any TV or games console. For the time being, neither the Xbox Series X and Series S, nor the PlayStation 5 can make use of HDMI QFT technology, and it’s unclear whether or not it can be added as a firmware update.
A clue may come from the world of AV receivers, which are often way ahead of the curve when it comes to new audio-visual technologies. All of the current Denon X Series AVRs (from the X2700H upwards) with an 8K input, and all the current Marantz AV receivers with an 8K input, support QFT. They’re also able to passthrough a QFT signal on their non-8K HDMI ports.
While older AVRs with HDMI2.0b sockets were able to add ALLM, HDMI 2.1 features such as VRR, QFT and QMS require hardware upgrades for compatibility. It seems likely that it would only take software tweaks to add QFT to any device already stocked with at least one HDMI 2.1-certified port, but we await confirmation from the manufacturers.
So, there’s a good chance that, while neither PS5 nor Xbox Series X users can benefit from the low latency gaming potential of HDMI QFT right now, that doesn’t mean they won’t be able to at some point soon. More crucial might be to have a relatively modern TV, which is likely to benefit from its own HDMI QFT update eventually at some point.
For the present, Samsung does not support HDMI QFT with its TV range nor has it any immediate plans to add it. However, with little source support and a claimed input lag of under 10ms at 60Hz and under 6ms at 120Hz on its recent QN95A TV, it doesn’t feel a pressing need.
That said, there is one manufacturer on the gaming side that is QFT-ready. Nvidia’s Ampere 30-series GPUs fully support HDMI 2.1 including HDMI QFT. So, if you’re looking to take your PC gaming to the big screen, then you’re only a TV away. We’ll keep you posted and add to this list as soon as we hear of any available.
Until then, happy, if slightly less responsive, gaming.
MORE:
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GPD’s latest iteration of its handheld gaming PC, the Win 3, is finally going on sale later this month. You’ll be able to grab it from multiple e-tailers such as Amazon starting May 15th or later.
The Win 3 is GPD’s latest handheld gaming device designed to run Windows 10 and play PC games. The biggest upgrade for the Win 3 over previous designs is its inclusion of a QWERTY keyboard along with gamepad controls (like joysticks, a d-pad, and triggers), all in a similar form factor as a Nintendo Switch.
The Win 3 is GPD’s first Tiger Lake-based gaming handheld, featuring an Intel Core i7-1165G7 or a Core i5-1135G7, with Intel’s big core count Xe graphics chip that comes in either an 80EU configuration (for the Core i5) or 96EUs (for the Core i7). To help boost Intel’s Xe graphics even further, the Win 3 comes with 16GB of LPDDR4x memory clocked at 4266MHz.
For the screen, GPC went with a 5.5-inch display with a resolution of 1280×720. A higher resolution isn’t really needed with such a tiny display. Plus, a 720P resolution will really help the integrated graphics push higher frame rates since it is still an integrated graphics chip, not a discrete Nvidia or AMD GPU.
If GPC’s performance metrics are to be believed, then the Win 3 is quite a capable gaming machine. In the most demanding games GPC tested, like Red Dead Redemption 2, Control, and Battlefield V, the Win 3 averaged 50FPS with the Core i5 version.
These were the worst-case scenarios as well, with other games like SEKIRO: Shadows Die Twice, World War Z, and other games maintaining 60FPS or higher, again on the Core i5 version. For the Core i7 model, frame rates were reportedly at least 10-15% better (thanks to the higher core count Xe graphics).
We don’t know what graphics details were used in these tests though so take those results with a grain of salt–and assume lots of things were turned down or off.
You will be able to grab the Win 3 from Amazon starting May 28th for $1130, Banggood for $1100 on May 15th, and IndieGoGo InDemand for $997 sometime in July. Specifically, those prices are for the i5 models; the i7 models are roughly $200 pricier.
Monday’s Newegg Shuffle comes with every SKU of Nvidia’s best graphics cards from the Ampere line, plus a single AMD GPU and a bunch of motherboards and power supplies that you probably don’t want. The RTX 3060 and RTX 3090 are both here, as well as every option in between, including Ti and overclocked models. Plus, the Radeon RX 6700 makes sure AMD has some representation.
Of note is that all of today’s bundles come with either a motherboard or power supply attached, save for one bundle that instead opts to include a 1440p @ 165Hz Asus Monitor. Some of these are decent gear, like the Gigabyte Elite and Master series motherboards, but be careful around those power supplies. The Gigabyte power supplies included here have some pretty low ratings, although the EVGA bundles are likely a safer bet. Maybe.
As for why you need to buy a bundle in the first place, it’s because Newegg knows these GPUs are rare, and it’s happy to take the opportunity to force you to buy extra gear if you want to get them. Not just any gear, either: It’s often gear that doesn’t sell as well on its own. Still, even with the extra parts, our eBay GPU pricing index shows that you’re still likely to pay less for a GPU here than you would with a scalper — the bundled item can be offloaded or trashed and you’d still come out ahead.
And this is a pretty strong lineup, featuring cards from all over the top half of our GPU benchmarks hierarchy. For an idea of the power we’re looking at here, know that RTX 3060 cards are about as fast as the RTX 2070 from 2018, but with more memory (and less memory bandwidth). The RTX 3090 meanwhile reigns as the king of the GPU hill, with 24GB of VRAM for good measure. It’s about 25% faster than the old Titan RTX, and right now costs nearly as much.
If you’re eyeing the lone Radeon card, refer to our ray tracing face-off to see how it stacks compared to Nvidia’s ray-tracing and DLSS prowess. It does a lot better in traditional rasterized games, however, where it keeps pace with the RTX 3070.
For those unfamiliar with the process, Newegg Shuffle 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. Based on our experience, you won’t get selected most of the time. But hey, it’s free to try.
Here’s the full list of today’s options:
Gigabyte RTX 3060 Vision OC with Gigabyte B550M Aorus Pro Motherboard or Gigabyte B550 Gaming X V2 Motherboard for $634
Gigabyte Aorus RTX 3060 Ti with B550M Aorus Pro Motherboard or Gigabyte B550 Gaming X V2 Motherboard for $774
Gigabyte Aorus RTX 3060 Ti with Gigabyte B550 Aorus Elite Motherboard for $804
Gigabyte RTX 3060 Ti with Gigabyte B550 Gaming X V2 Motherboard for $784
Gigabyte RTX 3060 Ti with Gigabyte B550 Aorus Elite Motherboard for $814
EVGA RTX 3070 with EVGA 750W Power Supply for $819
EVGA RTX 3070 with EVGA Supernova 750W Plus Gold Power Supply for $821
EXGA RTX 3070 with EVGA Supernova GT 750W Power Supply for $834
Gigabyte RTX 3070 Vision OC with Gigabyte 750W Power Supply for $879
Gigabyte RTX 3070 Vision OC with Gigabyte B550 Aorus Pro Motherboard for $959
Gigabyte RTX 3070 with Gigabyte 750W Power Supply for $899
Gigabyte RTX 3070 with Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite Motherboard for $1,004
Gigabyte RTX 3070 with Gigabyte B550 Aorus Master for $1,064
Asus ROG Strix RX 6700 XT with Asus TUF Gaming B450M Motherboard for $1,044
Asus ROG Strix RTX 6700 XT with Asus ROG Strix B450-F Motherboard for $1,084
Asus TUF Gaming RTX 3080 with Asus ROG Strix B550-F Motherboard for $1,239
Asus TUF Gaming RTX 3080 with Asus TUF Gaming 27 inch 1440p @ 165Hz Monitor for $1,409
Gigabyte RTX 3080 Vision OC with Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite Motherboard or Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite Wifi Motherboard for $1,304
Gigabyte RTX 3080 Vision OC with Gigabyte B550 Aorus Master Motherboard for $1,364
Asus TUF Gaming RTX 3090 with Asus Prime B550M Motherboard for $2,309
Asus TUF Gaming RTX 3090 with Asus ROG Strix B550-F Gaming for $2,399
Gigabyte Aorus RTX 3090 with Gigabyte 850W Power Supply for $2,379
Gigabyte Aorus RTX 3090 with Gigabyte X570 Aorus Master Motherboard for $2,604
Gigabyte Aorus RTX 3090 with Gigabyte X490 Aorus Master Waterforce Motherboard for $2,854
With component shortages plaguing the PC industry, not to mention the smartphone and automotive industries, the latest word is that prices aren’t likely to return to ‘normal’ throughout 2021. If you can keep chugging along with whatever your PC currently has, that’s the best option, as otherwise prices are painful for all of the Nvidia Ampere and AMD RDNA2 GPUs.
Today’s Newegg shuffle starts at 1 pm EST/10 am PST. The Newegg Shuffle normally lasts for 2 hours, so if you’re interested in any of these components, act fast!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.
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