2022 will see new colors for PC gaming hardware. Black is obsolete and RGB is obsolete. Sorry, Molly isn’t even pink. (opens in new tab)No, the new color is beige. Just plain, boring, dull beige keyboard. That’s the most mediocre, most beautiful piece of hardware that the biggest PC gaming company has introduced in his tech-dreary year.
Honestly, I’m having trouble generating a lot of enthusiasm for the technology we’ve seen this year. Honestly, it’s hardly surprising, at least in a good way. It all feels like companies are running with super-expensive this, super-enthusiastic that.
For me, only Valve’s Steam Deck dares to take the risk to do something different at a price point most gamers can afford. remaining? Expect repetitive steps to what you did before.
In the past, AMD has used its underdog status and credible and enthusiastic reddit to generate a lot of goodwill around its launch. And honestly, rightly so. Without the resurrected AMD, we would still be buying quad-core, eight-thread CPUs for $300 and whining about it.
Nvidia has historically been at the other end of the spectrum, a dominant player releasing new and exciting hardware that many PC gamers aspire to.
True, both companies released new architectures this year, but only the RTX 4090. (opens in new tab) Completely exorbitant and exorbitantly priced, it represents something of a genuine inter-generational step forward.
AMD’s Zen 4 chip (opens in new tab) It’s brought a new manufacturing process to the fore and offered it on a new AM5 socket, but it feels like an iterative upgrade, as you’d expect from a new Intel processor line circa 2015.
The new RDNA 3 graphics cards should be exciting, but I just can’t get excited about them. Jacob likes the look of the new Radeon reference shroud, but to me it looks no different than any other triple-fan GPU from PNY or Palit. But the RX 7900 XTX (opens in new tab) and RX 7900 XT (opens in new tab) uses a new chiplet design. This is honestly more exciting for AMD shareholders looking for increased margins than it is for graphics card enthusiasts looking for better performance.
At some point it seemed like we might see AMD take the first risk with their multicomputing chiplet GPU design, packing even more cores onto multiple dies within a single package, but unfortunately AMD’s creation of a functional chiplet design is impressive, but the fact that it’s invisible to the end user is both a blessing and a curse. Well, the chiplet works! a bit A faster GPU that costs a lot of money.
As I said before, the RTX 4090 is the only card of this era that looks like a real step-up. Upscaling has also taken a step forward with the introduction of Frame Generation. But the price hike (even if it’s a substantial price cut given the current unprecedented level of inflation) doesn’t feel like the company is trying to offer anything different. It’s far out of reach, ultra-enthusiast hardware that most PC gamers don’t care about.
However, it could be argued that Nvidia took a big risk with the RTX 4080 card.Especially its RTX 4080 12GB version (opens in new tab)With lower-spec GPUs now clocking faster and the magic of DLSS capable of delivering higher performance than previous generation cards, gamers risk completely eating out lower-spec GPUs. However, the risk backfired, as gamers weren’t ready to smoke that particular pipe and Nvidia quickly changed course and “discontinued” it.
But gamers don’t seem willing to deal with the flawed RTX 4080 (opens in new tab) Placing either and leaving them on the same shelf is also weighed down by unnecessary RX 7900 XT cards.
And Intel?ok raptor lake (opens in new tab) teeth Great as the CPU generations go but basically it’s just a slightly tweaked Alder Lake update on the Intel 7 node with some more funky E cores thrown in. Big brought by Alder Lake change.
These Intel graphics cards did eventually come out, which in itself was a risk as a project, but given the fact that Pat and Raja didn’t try to do something a little more interesting, it feels like a failure. They are likely already at a loss so why not accept the hit and ship the A770 (opens in new tab) $250 per pop. For that price, it outperforms much more expensive cards in some respects, and at worst he’ll happily accept serving as a $250 card.
What we got was overpriced and underperforming.
what about the laptop? Razer hasn’t changed the chassis in the 3rd or 4th generation. Asus has probably stepped up the design of the Zephyrus G14, but everything else is pretty much the same as last year. How beige…
You might say I’m being too demanding. If he puts a lot of cash into his rig in 2022, some of it could be lurking in his PC. But realistically, all the limited innovations announced so far have been on the edge of a rare, hyper-enthusiastic market where the $1,000+ price point is a must. And let’s be honest, it’s fundamentally unfun for most of us PC gamers, especially in times of increasing financial hardship.
Valve was something of a hero in a year that pandered to only the otherwise moneybag super-enthusiastic crowd.
Every launch feels more and more deaf in that regard. No company has done the most tentative outreach to mainstream gamers. Except one.
After all, only Valve did something different this year. Only Valve has actually taken the risk and delivered something tangibly great to gamers without digging a huge hole in their bank account. Valve only none for someone else.steam deck (opens in new tab) Entering the handheld gaming segment dominated by a single Nintendo console, on the PC side, the obscure Kickstarter brand was backfilled by selling a small amount of somewhat gimmicky product at hyper-enthusiastic prices.
Valve was a bit of a hero in a year that otherwise pandered only to Moneybag’s super-enthusiastic crowd. $649 for 512GB version (opens in new tab)but there are cheaper 256GB and 64GB versions for $529 and $399 respectively, and aside from the level of storage (and for the Big Boy), the underlying hardware is identical across the board. Stuffing the ‘s SD card into the 64GB version might load slower, but you’ll be able to play the game as well as the $649 deck.
Jacob Ridley, Senior Hardware Ed
I have to agree with Dave here. Valve completely destroyed it with the Steam Deck and also brought some much-needed improvements to the Steam mobile app, did you want to see a little more of his Valve work in the VR space this year? Despite some pretty big missteps in 2022 with the Quest 2 price hike, it feels like Meta has run away with much of the market. There must be something.
And it’s good. In short, Valve only does good things. It can grow to such a size that it only needs to release what it really stands behind, and can simply kill anything Gabe doesn’t love unconditionally. There is no doubt that at least two versions of 3 are buried in Bellevue’s vault.
The deck itself is part of balanced PC gaming technology. It’s not very expensive, but it’s still capable of playing the latest games and is incredibly versatile. Wes said it’s basically the same as Leatherman’s multi-tool. He could be a PC of almost any type.
I even used it as an office PC for a week in a way no Linux machine ever really managed. Usually, I hit some sort of technical roadblock that snaps me back into the cold embrace of Windows. And while we may have previously been limited to arguments that consoles are best for modern games without the $1,000+ price tag, with Deck there’s something versatile and undeniably PC-friendly. .
Both Razer and Logitech offer other visions of handheld PC gaming, but present something other than a tremendous mobile phone with game streaming built around GeForce Now and more I don’t have that much confidence. .
Looking back now, 2022 was a creepy year for PC companies to tread water or, at best, lay a technological foundation that didn’t benefit gamers for years. And no one but Valve has really taken the risk to deliver something tangibly and functionally new.
