Latest from PC Gamer in Graphics-cards

Name: 4K gaming performance
Creator: PC Gamer

AMD is reportedly bumping the price of its GPU and VRAM bundles to graphics card makers and you can expect to feel the sting soon

James Bentley — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 13:07:06 +0000

AMD's latest line of GPUs barely followed MSRP at launch, and yet they may be set to get even pricier in the future.

As reported by Sweclockers, a poster took to Board Channels, a forum for communicating between manufacturers and partners, to share news of an AMD price increase. Effectively, it claims that Sapphire, Asus, and XFX have all been told that the supply price of GPU and video memory bundles from AMD will be bumped up by around 10% in July.

The post in question has been machine translated by Sweclockers, as the board primarily operates in Chinese, and it's otherwise difficult to get access to. It tends to be well vetted, so claims made on the forum tend to have some validity, though AMD haven't confirmed anything as of yet.

Historically AMD and Nvidia have provided graphics card manufacturers with the video memory in a bundle with the GPU. That made sense for the GPU manufacturer as it could take advantage of the economies of scale to buy that VRAM in bulk. However, the memory crisis has proven to be a thorn in the side of consumer PC hardware, and for every manufacturer, so those bundles are going up and it seems likely the end user will be the one paying at least some of the extra.

Though it's not absolutely guaranteed the reported 10% price increase will be passed on to the consumer, partners buying GPU bundles for manufacture won't want to take the price hit on their own, so they will likely adjust their own pricing to make up the difference.

As the price increase is expected to come into effect in July, partners should honour supply deals made prior to the change. So, any cards already in retailers, and those already in the manufacturing pipeline theoretically shouldn't be affected. That 10% increase won't be immediately visible, though it will likely hit us all eventually.

(Image credit: Future)

Late last year, it was rumoured Nvidia would stop bundling VRAM into its GPUs, leaving it up to partners to buy the GPU die alone and purchase the rest of the supporting cast themselves. It was theorised that would allow larger manufacturers, with wider relations to GDDR6/7 suppliers, to pick and choose where to buy their VRAM from, but the flip side is that smaller GPU vendors without those connections might struggle to compete.

So, while the price increase is a bummer, at least AMD is in some way helping support its smaller partners. Small crumbs, I know.

Unfortunately, with the memory crisis likely to go on for some time still, AMD probably isn't going to be bringing those prices back down any time soon. That means things are likely to get worse for hardware manufacturers and enthusiasts before they get any better.

New production runs of Nvidia's much-loved RTX 3060 finally hit the shelves in Europe, but the price just ain't right

Nick Evanson — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 10:53:04 +0000

Rumours of its resurrection rumbled away for months, but Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB graphics card has indeed been churned out from fresh runs of GPU production lines, with models hitting retailers' shelves in Germany. However, if you were hoping to pick up a cheap, older-generation card with lots of VRAM, then you're going to be disappointed when you see the price tag.

Computerbase reported the news of the fresh production runs, and a quick check of Mindfactory confirms the re-release of the GeForce RTX 3060. However, the German retailer is currently only offering a single Asus model. With an asking price of €338.99 (£291.86, $386.27), though, sales are unlikely to be especially healthy.

You only need to briefly glance through the latest GPU deals to see that this amount of money will get you a GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB in the US and an RTX 5060 8 GB in the UK, both of which will easily surpass the RTX 3060 in games. Both Blackwell GPUs have more shader units, more cache, and more memory bandwidth than the six-year-old Ampere chip, plus they support the full DLSS 4.5 tech suite.

While the RTX 3060 really only lacks DLSS Frame Generation, it also has weaker Tensor and RT cores than those in the RTX 50-series GPUs, so any game that utilises them just isn't going to be as performant. What the last-last-gen graphics card does offer more of is VRAM, of course, specifically 50% more and in some gaming scenarios, the extra memory will certainly help.

Is that enough to justify the price tag? The short answer is no; the long answer is noooooooo.

Slightly better: the RTX 4060Future

Quite a bit better: the RTX 5060Future

A lot better: the RTX 5060 TiFuture

When we reviewed the GeForce RTX 4060 back in June 2023, we recorded an average frame rate of 72 fps, with a 1% low rate of 46 fps, in Metro Exodus Enhanced (1080p Ultra). The RTX 3060 produced figures of 58 and 35 fps, respectively. Fast forward to May of last year, and the RTX 5060 pulled 87 and 47 fps, even with its shoddy launch drivers.

That's by no means indicative of how every game will run on an RTX 3060, compared to the latest GPUs, but a 50% higher average frame rate is not to be sniffed at. Swap the 5060 for an 8 GB RTX 5060 Ti, and you'll be looking at a 74% uplift on the average frame rate. Even an RTX 5050 is faster in that game, though not by very much.

The point is that the resurrection of the RTX 3060 is helping any PC gamer in these wallet-punishing times, and no amount of yelling about 8 GB of VRAM not being enough is going to offset the fact that the price is just far too high. If you really must have more graphics memory than this, then you'll be better off with an Arc B570 graphics card. While its performance is a bit wonky, it at least has 10 GB of VRAM, and you can pick one up for $250.

Believe it or not, you can buy a graphics card for less than its MSRP—and you don't need to be an Amazon Prime member to bag one

Nick Evanson — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 14:46:31 +0000

The RX 9070 GRE is the latest entry in AMD's RX 9000-series, and for the money, you're getting a great mid-range graphics card. At $49 under its MSRP, this deal is way better value for money than any RX 9060 XT or RTX 5060 Ti. You need to have a Newegg account and use the same email address to claim the $50 promo code.

Key specs: 3072 shaders | 2920 MHz boost | 12 GB GDDR6

RX 9070 GRE price check: Amazon $539.99 | Best Buy $549.99 | Walmart $549.99 | B&H $579.99 View Deal

Outside of the Prime Day sales, I hunt down the very best graphics card deals every single week. But at the moment, I'm checking all the major retailers' offers almost constantly. Mostly in the vain hope that something like an RTX 5070 Ti will be sold at its MSRP.

Fat chance, you might think, but you'd be surprised to know that two graphics cards are under their MSRPs: a PNY 8 GB RTX 5060 Ti and this one, a Gigabyte Radeon RX 9070 GRE, now just $500 at Newegg. Make sure to grab the $50 promo code to get the correct price.

We're curating all the best Prime Day PC gaming deals here

That's $46 under its launch price, and while that's not a massive saving, every other latest-gen graphics card (bar the 5060 Ti I've mentioned above) is noticeably over its MSRP. Now, such a situation might give you cause to worry about the GPU on offer. After all, if it's so cheap, then surely there must be a problem, right?

1 / 3

1080p gaming performance

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RX 9070 GRE | 12 GB

RX 9070 | 16 GB

103

RTX 5070 | 12 GB

RTX 5060 Ti | 16 GB

RX 9060 XT | 16 GB

Black Myth Wukong (1080p High) Data
Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| 12 GB	90 Avg FPS, 78 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 \| 16 GB	103 Avg FPS, 89 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 \| 12 GB	95 Avg FPS, 82 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060 Ti \| 16 GB	75 Avg FPS, 65 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT \| 16 GB	73 Avg FPS, 63 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RX 9070 GRE | 12 GB

RX 9070 | 16 GB

RTX 5070 | 12 GB

RTX 5060 Ti | 16 GB

RX 9060 XT | 16 GB

Cyberpunk 2077 (1080p RT Ultra) Data
Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| 12 GB	63 Avg FPS, 52 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 \| 16 GB	70 Avg FPS, 58 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 \| 12 GB	72 Avg FPS, 56 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060 Ti \| 16 GB	51 Avg FPS, 41 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT \| 16 GB	49 Avg FPS, 39 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RX 9070 GRE | 12 GB

123

RX 9070 | 16 GB

138

108

RTX 5070 | 12 GB

123

RTX 5060 Ti | 16 GB

RX 9060 XT | 16 GB

F1 24 (1080p Ultra high) Data
Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| 12 GB	123 Avg FPS, 89 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 \| 16 GB	138 Avg FPS, 108 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 \| 12 GB	123 Avg FPS, 96 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060 Ti \| 16 GB	90 Avg FPS, 71 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT \| 16 GB	95 Avg FPS, 61 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RX 9070 GRE | 12 GB

123

RX 9070 | 16 GB

125

RTX 5070 | 12 GB

125

RTX 5060 Ti | 16 GB

117

RX 9060 XT | 16 GB

106

Homeworld 3 (1080p Epic) Data
Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| 12 GB	123 Avg FPS, 65 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 \| 16 GB	125 Avg FPS, 62 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 \| 12 GB	125 Avg FPS, 64 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060 Ti \| 16 GB	117 Avg FPS, 65 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT \| 16 GB	106 Avg FPS, 65 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RX 9070 GRE | 12 GB

124

RX 9070 | 16 GB

143

RTX 5070 | 12 GB

139

RTX 5060 Ti | 16 GB

RX 9060 XT | 16 GB

Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition (1080p Ultra) Data
Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| 12 GB	124 Avg FPS, 80 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 \| 16 GB	143 Avg FPS, 76 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 \| 12 GB	139 Avg FPS, 88 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060 Ti \| 16 GB	98 Avg FPS, 42 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT \| 16 GB	96 Avg FPS, 42 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RX 9070 GRE | 12 GB

RX 9070 | 16 GB

106

RTX 5070 | 12 GB

RTX 5060 Ti | 16 GB

RX 9060 XT | 16 GB

The Talos Principle 2 (1080p Ultra) Data
Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| 12 GB	92 Avg FPS, 49 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 \| 16 GB	106 Avg FPS, 74 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 \| 12 GB	92 Avg FPS, 57 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060 Ti \| 16 GB	75 Avg FPS, 41 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT \| 16 GB	73 Avg FPS, 37 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RX 9070 GRE | 12 GB

102

RX 9070 | 16 GB

112

RTX 5070 | 12 GB

104

RTX 5060 Ti | 16 GB

RX 9060 XT | 16 GB

Total War: Warhammer 3 (1080p Ultra) Data
Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| 12 GB	102 Avg FPS, 46 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 \| 16 GB	112 Avg FPS, 41 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 \| 12 GB	104 Avg FPS, 53 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060 Ti \| 16 GB	83 Avg FPS, 54 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT \| 16 GB	94 Avg FPS, 72 1% Low FPS

The cheaper RX 9070 GRE is getting very close to the 1080p performance of the RX 9070, and it's practically a tie with the pricier Nvidia RTX 5070.

Well, take a gander at the performance figures above, as measured for our review of the Radeon RX 9070 GRE. It's faster than a 16 GB RTX 5060 Ti and close to an RTX 5070, but here's the real kicker: it's cheaper than both of them. I know, it's somewhat of a ridiculous situation, all thanks to the AI-induced RAMpocalypse ruining the price of VRAM, but never clock a gift horse in the mouth.

As the 9070 GRE uses an RDNA 4 GPU, it has full, native support for FSR 4.1, which is a vastly superior upscaling and frame generation suite than FSR 3. It's arguably not quite as good as DLSS 4.5, and AMD is the only GPU maker to not offer multi-frame gen yet, but overall, FSR 4.1 is very good.

Since the graphics card only draws around 250 W at most, it only requires two PCIe power connectors to work, and that amount of heat shouldn't turn your gaming den into a raging furnace either.

Here's the NickGPT summary for this card: fast, capable, good value, chicken chicken, potato, my name is Susan. Dammit AI, can't you get anything right?

👉Find all of Newegg's graphics card deals here👈

I hoped for Prime Day graphics card deals, and actually Newegg has delivered near-MSRP deals on my favorite AMD GPU, the RX 9070

dave.james@futurenet.com (Dave James) — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 16:43:40 +0000

The RX 9070 is one of AMD's better GPUs for many years and is not that much slower than the XT version. It's been so popular that it took months for the price to drop to anywhere near AMD's MSRP. Sadly, prices are right back up again. You need to have a Newegg account and use the same email address to claim the $30 promo code.

Key specs: 3584 shaders | 2520 MHz boost | 16 GB GDDR6

RX 9070 price check: Best Buy $579.99 | Amazon $579.99 | Walmart $599.99 | B&H $713.84 View Deal

I hoped, but did I expect Prime Day graphics card deals? In all honesty, given that we've been tracking GPU prices on a week-by-week basis since August last year, we knew that the base price of pretty much every graphics card had more or less plateaued. So, I had an inkling there would be a few actual price drops over Prime Day this year, and lo, it has come to pass.

And it has come to pass on our favorite graphics card of this generation, where the AMD Radeon RX 9070 has come in with a $570 price tag at Newegg thanks to its membership promo codes. Unlike Amazon's own Prime Member deals, you don't actually have to pay for Newegg's, just given 'em some data (name and email address) and you'll get a $30 promo code that knocks the price down from the listed $600.

That means you're only $20 north of the original, and very much ephemeral, $550 MSRP the card launched with back in March of last year. And that makes it a very, very good card in this market, especially when it's only a little short of the more expensive RX 9070 XT, which itself is only a little behind the hilariously expensive RTX 5070 Ti.

We're curating all the best Prime Day PC gaming deals here

And when it comes to the poor RTX 5070 this is a GPU that can outperform it on the regular. Luckily, for those of an Nvidia persuasion, you can now get the RTX 5070 (again with a Newegg member promo code) for just $550. Though the fact you can also bag an RX 9070 GRE now for just $500 via Newegg leaves the green team's card sandwiched between those two impressive AMD GPUs.

For me, well, I'd be spending my money on the RX 9070; it was too expensive when I first reviewed it, having already shrugged off its MSRP just after launch, but now it's far too great a competition for Nvidia's similarly priced offerings. It's got 16 GB VRAM, it's got a ton of 1440p gaming performance, and it has the undervolting potential baked into the Navi 42 GPU that makes it a really fun graphics card to just play with, too.

👉Check out all Newegg's graphics card deals👈

Update: This RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB is now down to $330, and it's still the only 8 GB graphics card I'd buy this Prime Day

Andy Edser — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 14:00:45 +0000

The 8 GB version of the new RTX 5060 Ti is a lot cheaper than the 16 GB one, and while the extra VRAM will be useful in the future, it's absolutely not worth paying $210 more for it, despite the clear benefits. This is a great little GPU for the money. You need to have a Newegg account and use the same email address to claim the $50 promo code.

Key specs: 4608 shaders | 2692 MHz boost | 8 GB GDDR7

RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB price check: Amazon $349.99 | Best Buy $369.99 | Walmart $369.99 | B&H $374.99 View Deal

I recently tested some 8 GB vs 16 GB graphics cards, and came away with some disappointing news. Yes, overall, 8 GB GPUs are usually slower than their 16 GB equivalents. Sometimes significantly. So what's the point in buying one?

Well, you can save a whole lot of cash, that's why. And that's particularly true when you look at this Zotac RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB for $350 at Newegg this Prime Day (make sure to click the "discount available" text and create a Newegg account to get the full discount).

The Palit version of this GPU came out of my testing looking rather good for its MSRP—because while it's slower than the 16 GB version, it's still pretty speedy. And with this discount? It's seriously good value.

We're curating all the best Prime Day PC gaming deals here

Especially when you consider the cheapest RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB we can find right now is a whole $210 more, which is silly money to pay for a "budget" card. And the 16 GB AMD RX 9060 XT is $80 more expensive at $430, too.

Now, I like the RX 9060 XT 16 GB a lot, and it's a faster GPU. But it has to be said, FSR 4 support has been very slow to roll out, while Nvidia's DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution and Multi Frame Generation chops have gone from strength to strength.

At this level, you need good upscaling and frame gen support to keep the image quality (and frame rates) high in the demanding stuff. And the little Nvidia card has that down. AMD's FSR 4? It's pretty good, but the game support is patchy at best.

Cyberpunk 2077 - VRAM usage and performance

In-game testing, Ultra RT settings

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Avg VRAM

RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB

9.28

RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB

7.44

RX 9060XT 16 GB

10.67

RX 9060 XT 8 GB

7.69

0255075100

1080p Ultra RT + Quality upscaling Data
Product	Value
RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB	84 Avg FPS, 56 1% Low FPS, 9.28 Avg. VRAM
RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB	78 Avg FPS, 42 1% Low FPS, 7.44 Avg. VRAM
RX 9060XT 16 GB	86 Avg FPS, 68 1% Low FPS, 10.67 Avg. VRAM
RX 9060 XT 8 GB	68 Avg FPS, 36 1% Low FPS, 7.69 Avg. VRAM

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Avg VRAM

RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB

10.4

RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB

7.37

RX 9060XT 16 GB

11.57

RX 9060 XT 8 GB

7.36

015304560

1440p Ultra RT + Quality upscaling Data
Product	Value
RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB	55 Avg FPS, 41 1% Low FPS, 10.4 Avg. VRAM
RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB	53 Avg FPS, 34 1% Low FPS, 7.37 Avg. VRAM
RX 9060XT 16 GB	53 Avg FPS, 33 1% Low FPS, 11.57 Avg. VRAM
RX 9060 XT 8 GB	45 Avg FPS, 19 1% Low FPS, 7.36 Avg. VRAM

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Avg VRAM

RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB

11.15

RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB

7.35

RX 9060XT 16 GB

11.27

RX 9060 XT 8 GB

7.61

0255075100

1440p Ultra RT + Quality upscaling + 2x FG Data
Product	Value
RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB	92 Avg FPS, 69 1% Low FPS, 11.15 Avg. VRAM
RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB	80 Avg FPS, 43 1% Low FPS, 7.35 Avg. VRAM
RX 9060XT 16 GB	99 Avg FPS, 81 1% Low FPS, 11.27 Avg. VRAM
RX 9060 XT 8 GB	74 Avg FPS, 40 1% Low FPS, 7.61 Avg. VRAM

I'm tempted by the RX 9060 XT 16 GB for this kind of money, I really am. But I think, for the better upscaling support and the $80 saving, I'd get the little RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB instead.

And no, I wouldn't go for the RX 9060 XT 8 GB. It simply can't keep up with the 8 GB Nvidia GPU overall, making it a poor value proposition by comparison.

Yes, 8 GB of VRAM is a limiting factor, particularly when you up the resolution and settings. But the RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB still pumps out some good frame rates even when its VRAM is topped out—and for $350, I think it's a great deal compared to the rest of the market right now.

If I had more cash to splash, I might go for the 16 GB AMD card. Perhaps. Or this RTX 5070 12 GB for $599 at Walmart, if I could stretch that far. But if money was really tight and I needed an upgrade today, I'd jump on the little RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB without a huge amount of thought. And if you want a canny deal, I reckon you should, too.

👉Shop all the Amazon Prime Day graphics card deals right here👈

True to its word, AMD brings FSR 4.1 to Radeon RX 7000-series card owners with its latest Adrenalin drivers

Nick Evanson — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 12:01:51 +0000

After accidentally dropping its source code on GitHub last year and kicking the door wide open for modders, AMD has done something exactly what it promised to: It's added support for FSR 4.1 to Radeon RX 7000-series graphics cards in its latest Adrenalin drivers.

The 26.2.2 driver set doesn't come with many other goodies (game support for Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced and Doom: The Dark Ages | Revelations), but I don't think many Team Red fans will care all that much, because FSR 4.1 is considerably more noteworthy. Compared to FSR 3, the quality of the AI-powered upscaling and frame generation is clearly superior and almost on par with Nvidia's DLSS 4.5 suite.

Back in May, AMD promised it would bring its best FSR algorithms to RDNA 3 cards in June, and true to its word, that's exactly what it has done. Unless a game has native support for FSR 4.1, you'll need to enable it via an override in Adrenalin (which does require the game to have a native FSR 3.1 implementation).

Something else worth noting is that RDNA 3-based FSR 4.1 is likely to be less performant than the RDNA 4-based one. I say 'likely' as I've not had the chance to test it yet, but simply going on the fact that the matrix operations ability of RX 7000 cards is far lower than that of RX 9000 ones, something has to give.

That means you're either going to get the same kind of performance uplift but not quite the same visual fidelity, or vice versa, when comparing FSR 4.1 on a Radeon RX 9070 XT and RX 7800 XT, for example. Don't misunderstand me: Switching on FSR 4.1 with an RDNA 3 card will still give a performance boost, but the end result won't be quite as impressive as it is on an RDNA 4 one.

The Steam Machine will get FSR 4.1 too. Yay? (Image credit: Future)

Still, it'll be nicer on the eyes than FSR 3.1, no matter how different it all is. And if you have an RX 6000-series graphics card, then it's worth noting that AMD said that it'll bring FSR 4.1 to that platform next year. Yes, that's a long ol' wait, but given how yucky prices for PC parts are right now, I should imagine a good number of RDNA 2 users will be clinging on to those cards for a good while longer anyway.

You might wonder what was so specific about the June date for RDNA 3 FSR 4.1, and now that the Steam Machine has been released, we know exactly why: Valve is working with AMD to add the fancy algorithms to its little box of underwhelm, although "coming soon" is the only commitment we've got for a release date.

Valve upgrades AMD's 9070 XT GPU in the Steam Hardware Survey, finally allowing the credit it deserves

Jeremy Laird — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 11:22:31 +0000

Valve's Steam Hardware survey is no stranger to data anomalies. And yet it remains an undeniable source of interest and intrigue if you're into PC hardware. So, here's the latest twist. AMD's Radeon 9070 XT is subject to an implausibly big upgrade in terms of its user numbers in the latest survey for May, suggesting that there's been a change in the way the 9070 XT's data is collected or tagged.

In previous Steam Hardware Surveys, the 9070 XT has essentially been Sir Not Appearing in This Data. It simply didn't figure. But suddenly, here it is in the latest survey with 1.33% of Steam users, placing it 23rd among discrete GPUs.

Valve lists the top 100 entries, which currently reaches down to the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT on 0.17%. The point here is that it's highly implausible that the 9700 XT has gone from zero in previous months to suddenly representing 1.33% of Steam gamers. It's not like it's just gone on sale.

Now, you could write this off as another Steam data anomaly that's likely to vanish in future surveys, like the fairly frequent anomalies in the survey caused by Chinese Lunar New Year. However, there's another data point in the new survey that likely reveals what's actually going on.

The listing in the survey for generic "AMD Radeon(TM) Graphics" GPUs has dropped from 2.37% share in April to 0.90% in the new May data. That's a drop of around 1.47% and suspiciously close to the 1.33% the 9070 XT picked up over the same period.

The regular RX 9070 non-XT already factored in previous surveys. (Image credit: Future)

Odds are, then, that either Valve has made changes to the way it collects data to better identify AMD GPUs. Or AMD has tweaked its driver software to the same ultimate effect. In other words, 9070 XTs that were being lumped into that generic Radeon category are now being counted properly.

The slight remaining gap between the loss of share of the generic Radeon class and the 9070 XT's gains can be easily accounted for by several factors. There may be other GPUs that have also benefited from the data collection changes (though not the vanilla RX 9070, which was in the previous few surveys and has not leapt up the ranks this month).

At the same time, presumably not everyone with and AMD GPU has updated to the latest drivers. So, that could play a part. Whatever, this new survey data seems much more likely to be accurate.

For some time now, AMD's latest RDNA 4 GPUs including the RX 9070 XT have ranked highly in various sales charts, most obviously on Amazon where a Gigabyte 9070 XT currently ranks as the most popular, which is about as mainstream as it gets. So, the idea that RDNA 4 and the 9070 XT in particular had gained so little traction with Steam gamers was hard to understand.

That's true even if you operate under the assumption that most graphics cards are sold as part of pre-built rigs. Anyway, suffice to say that the 9070 XT has now been installed in something more closely resembling its rightful place in the Steam Hardware Survey and we can all relax. Until the next anomaly gets our data antennae twitching.

Intel's first chip with Nvidia graphics is coming in early 2028 according to the latest leak and it could mark a new era for handheld PC gaming

Jeremy Laird — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 14:38:13 +0000

Intel and Nvidia are on the record regarding plans to combine graphics chiplets from the latter with CPUs from the former. When this is going to happen, however, now that's a question.

And the answer, according to a new leak, is early 2028 and maybe just in time for a launch at the CES show that year. Even more exciting, the new chip is set to have stiff competition from both Nvidia itself and AMD, perhaps heralding a new era of high-performance handheld PC gaming.

Tech journalist Erdi Özüağ claims that, "according to Intel's current roadmap, the targeted date for next-generation processors featuring Nvidia graphics units is the first quarter of 2028, and if plans do not change, the CES 2028 show could serve as the launch event."

That's not all that far away and, at the rate things are going in the stand-alone graphics card market, could align with new desktop GPU generations. Indeed, an early 2028 launch would make it very likely that Intel processors with Nvidia chiplets would get the upcoming Rubin graphics architecture.

Nvidia recently revealed that a Rubin-based version of its own new RTX Spark CPU-GPU superchip will be launched in 2028. It's not known when RTX Rubin desktop graphics cards, perhaps to be branded the RTX 60 Series, will arrive. But the latest rumours point to late 2027 or early 2028, which does indeed line up with this new "leak."

(Image credit: Future)

If this information is accurate, 2028 could be the year that APUs or chips combining CPU and GPU in a single package make a really big impact on PC gaming. These APUs are the class of chip used in handheld gaming PCs like the Steam Deck and Asus ROG Ally, of course. Along with these new Intel-Nvidia chips, we'll have Nvidia's own second-gen RTX Spark offering in 2028.

It's possible AMD could also launch new APUs in 2028, codenamed Grimlock Point and Grimlock Halo. Those APUs are not actually next-generation, which are the Medusa Point and Medusa Halo chips due later this year or in 2027, but the generation after that.

There are various rumours around what silicon production nodes all these chips will be using. By 2028, TSMC's upcoming N2 node will be quite mature and its A14 silicon could even be an option. Meanwhile, Intel's 14A node will supposedly be in full production by 2028.

Whatever, it seems safe to say that all of these new APUs will at least benefit from significantly more advanced silicon than anything available today. And that should allow both a high transistor budget for more performance and better efficiency.

Dare we hope for Steam Deck 2 in 2028? (Image credit: Valve)

So, it's pretty exciting to think about the levels of performance and battery life that might be possible in a handheld PC when all these new APUs come online in 2028. Indeed, 2028 is also a plausible launch date for the second coming of Valve's super-popular Steam Deck handheld.

Just like the OG Deck, Steam Deck 2 is likely to get custom silicon. Valve has spoken repeatedly about wanting, essentially, to wait for a really major advance in both performance and efficiency before releasing a follow up to the Steam Deck. And it very much looks like 2028 could be the year that such technology finally becomes available.

Watch this space, but 2028 could well be the year that handheld gaming makes a big leap forward. Let's just pray that the memory crisis is more or less over by then, otherwise these fab new devices might be too expensive to really matter.

Possibly the first instance of Asus' anti-melting 12V-2x6 power cable…err…melting shows up, adding more fuel to the fire that is Nvidia's connector

Nick Evanson — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 13:31:15 +0000

Two months ago, Asus announced the ROG Equalizer, a power cable for certain Nvidia RTX graphics cards designed to banish the fear of melting connectors once and for all. Well, perhaps not completely so, because it seems we now have the first case of a melted ROG Equalizer cable.

As posted on ChipHell and reported by Uniko's Hardware on X (via Videocardz), there's admittedly very little information to go on, other than a crystal-clear picture of a seriously fried connector at the end of an Asus ROG Equalizer cable. Three of the six power pins look properly scorched, with one showing a considerable degree of melting in the plastic housing.

😭😭😭😭😭😭asus rog equalizer (17a)chiphellhttps://t.co/rMR9DWWQmh pic.twitter.com/anh2M3Mgr4June 12, 2026

However, there's no indication as to what PSU and graphics card this cable was plugged into, nor the circumstances as to how the melty-melty all came about, so the one thing we can't do right now is point our fingers at Asus and go 'Ha! Your cable is rubbish!' Well, we can, but we just can't use this solitary picture as evidence for such a judgment.

If you're unaware of what all the hoohar is about Nvidia's 12VHPWR (and the subsequent 12V-2x6 design update) connector, let me give you a quick explainer. In order to have its graphics card use gopping great globs of power but also not require lots of big connectors on the card's PCB, Nvidia designed a compact system to be used instead of the traditional 8-pin PCIe system.

A precursor to 12VHPWR first appeared on certain RTX 30-series cards, such as the RTX 3090 Ti and 3060 Ti Founders Editions. This design just comprised twelve power pins (six +12V, six ground), but the iteration of the design that was approved by PCI-SIG and adopted into the PCIe specifications also housed four more pins for sensing.

(Image credit: Future)

That format first showed up on Nvidia's RTX 40-series, and almost immediately, reports of melting connectors appeared from owners of GeForce RTX 4090 cards. So much so that it resulted in a class action lawsuit against Nvidia being filed in 2022.

The problem is quite simple. A full load, an RTX 4090 can use up to 450 W of power, but distributed across six pins, each one only has to deal with 6.25 A of current. However, should one pin fail in some way, or the graphics card draw more current in one or two pins than the others, the resulting load imbalance can push the current over the 12VHPWR's design rating of 8.33 A per pin.

Fast forward to today, and we now have a power supply market replete with all kinds of 'solutions' to the connector melting problem. Even the minor redesign, called 12V-2x6, did little to prevent the problem from occurring. Der8auer's detailed analysis of the Asus ROG Equalizer cable shows that while it's a decent enough product, it doesn't really offer much in the way of protection against the problem.

With RTX 5090 graphics cards now costing more than $4,000 in the US, you'd think there would be a far more concerted effort to banish meltygate once and for all. Part of the reason as to why we haven't seen a permanent solution yet is that the fact not every 4090 or 5090 owner has suffered from a melting connector.

Burn baby, burn! Actually, please don't. (Image credit: der8auer)

The exact number of casualties is probably impossible to determine, but since graphics card vendors, as well as Nvidia, put money aside each year to cover warranty claims, the only way that they would really sit up and pay attention is if the total cost of all the replacements for damaged cards consistently exceeded the pot of money for claims.

We probably can't rely on hardware vendors coming up with a permanent solution, either. It's unlikely that Nvidia will abandon 12V-2x6 in favour of a completely new design, and having active load balancing on graphics cards will eat into a vendor's profit margins (though they're hardly small sums of money when it comes to the RTX 5090).

This particular instance of a melted ROG Equalizer cable could be entirely user error or even a clickbait thing, just to get a bit of attention, but since Asus' design has no means to actively prevent one pin from supplying too much current, this will almost certainly not be the only case we'll see, genuine or otherwise.

A small number of Radeon graphics card also use the 12V-2x6, like this Sapphire model (Image credit: Sapphire)

If you do have a very high-power RTX card with a 12VHPWR/12V-2x6 connector, here's my advice for keeping it as melt-free as possible:

Try to use a PSU that has a native 12VHPWR socket and cable: this won't guarantee perfect safety, but it removes the multiple points of failure you can get with adapter cables.
Don't keep removing the cable to check that it's okay: Power cables aren't designed to be repeatedly unplugged and jammed back in, and doing so can weaken the connections, leading to smaller contact patches and thus higher temperatures.
Explore undervolting your graphics card: You can just drop the maximum power limit for your RTX GPU in the Nvidia app, but you're better off following a detailed guide on how to lower your GPU's voltage across its range of clock speeds. If it all works as intended, you should get a graphics card that not only uses less power but is also cooler and, in some cases, able to clock higher.

Until we have graphics cards and/or power supply units that actively monitor the current draw on each pin, and dynamically prevent it from exceeding a set limit as standard, the melting connectors are still going to be a thing that will hit the headlines from time to time. Just like this one.

The latest market data shows GPU shipments are holding up for now but AMD isn't making any inroads on Nvidia

Jeremy Laird — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 14:39:04 +0000

The latest market data from research outfit Jon Peddie shows that the volume of PC graphics cards shipped in the first quarter of this year actually held up pretty well, despite the broader chip crisis. But AMD is basically flat lining, stuck at well under 10% of the market, albeit with caveats attached to the quality of JPR's data.

According to JPR, 11.82 million PC graphics cards shipped in the first quarter of 2026. Note, that's shipped, not sold, there's an important difference which we'll come to in a moment. But that's only very slightly down on the 11.9 million units JPR estimates for the last quarter of 2025.

However, it's well up on the 9.2 million units the research outfit has inked in for Q1 2025. Year-on-year, then, things are looking pretty healthy for PC graphics. Or are they?

As 3D Center points out, "it's important to note that these figures represent shipments to graphics card manufacturers, not shipments to retailers or their sales figures. Therefore, this result could be partly due to graphics card manufacturers stockpiling in anticipation of the memory shortage (they wanted to quickly buy up supplies at a lower price)."

In other words, we'll have to see what the data looks like over the next few quarters to be sure. Meanwhile, what of AMD's ongoing struggle to make a dent in Nvidia's market domination?

Nvidia is shipping these things at getting on for a rate of 10-to-one versus AMD GPUs. (Image credit: Future)

Here, the news isn't great, though there's a pretty major caveat. JPR puts AMD at a mere 8% market share in these latest figures, or exactly the same as the previous quarter.

However, when JPR originally released its Q4 2025 figures, it had AMD down for just 5% of the market. For this latest release, AMD's Q4 numbers were revised, adding an extra 400,000 GPU shipments to its tally for the quarter and thus taking AMD to 8% and a total of one million units in the updated figures.

That's a pretty huge revision for AMD's numbers and does somewhat undermine the overall credibility of JPR's data. The company has form when it comes to data errors. Like the time when it wrongly included a load of Intel data centre chips as gaming GPUs and thus implausibly decided that Intel was matching AMD for GPU market share.

When JPR originally released its Q4 2025 data, there was some scepticism. Some observers pointed out that AMD earned $843 million in gaming revenue or 22% of Nvidia's reported $3.7 billion in gaming revenue in that quarter. Moreover, AMD graphics card don't extend across the whole market and it's extremely likely that the average selling price of an AMD GPU is much lower than that of an Nvidia GPU.

With all that in mind, the conclusion is that it is very hard to imagine AMD achieving 22% revenue share with just 5% unit sales of the PC graphics market. The confusing factor here is that AMD and Nvidia's "gaming" revenues also including console chip sales. And there, AMD has both Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox, while Nvidia is essentially limited to Nintendo Switch sales.

Anywho, make of it all what you will. As it stands, it looks like the PC graphics card market is probably doing OK despite RAM and SSD prices getting silly. But we'll have to wait and see how things pan out later in the year before we can assume everything is going to keep on being dandy.

Linux driver for vintage AMD GPUs gets an update with a helping hand from Copilot AI, keeping old hardware alive and kicking

Nick Evanson — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 14:31:39 +0000

In the midst of the RAMpocalypse and the billions of dollars being thrown at AI, it's easy to become blind to the fact that the use of machine learning can be highly beneficial in lots of different scenarios. Case in point: an update to an old AMD GPU Linux driver was created with the help of Microsoft's Copilot.

As reported by Phoronix, the driver is R600 Gallium3D, an open-source package for Mesa, that's exclusively for AMD's Terascale architecture GPUs. These first appeared in 2007, with the Radeon HD 2000-series, before bowing out with the HD 6000-series three years later (though a variety of rebadged chips continued to appear in later Radeon models).

Since AMD no longer offers any kind of official support or updates for this driver set, it's down to the coding community to keep these alive, and Gert Wolny seems to be one of the very few coders working on the R600 drivers these days. Since it's obviously not a full-time, paid job, you'd naturally expect anyone in this situation to be getting help from any source available.

That's precisely what's happened in this instance, where Wolny has leaned on GitHub Copilot to help out with tidying up the shader compiler code. This process is called refactoring, and it essentially irons out hiccups, bloated code, duplication, and so on without changing what it all fundamentally does.

This is something that AI is quite good at, as it can quickly spot things among the vast sea of code lines that the human brain could potentially miss. Microsoft has a short tutorial on Copilot refactoring if you're interested in learning more about what it can do.

Admittedly, none of this is likely to be noteworthy to most PC gamers, because it's only for old hardware that can't be used to run any of the latest games. But if you do have a penchant for vintage hardware, running on Linux to avoid having to deal with Windows spitting the dummy out over drivers, then it's surely good news for you.

One question worth considering is how long it will be before AI is used to handle the whole process of keeping older hardware alive and kicking, rather than just doing a spot of code spring cleaning. Given how rapidly we've gone from AI simply being a topic of academic interest to now defining today's world of computing, the answer is likely to be 'not very long at all.'

2026 is shaping up to be one of the worst years ever for new graphics cards as Nvidia's RTX 50 Super Series refresh rumoured to be pushed out to 2027

Jeremy Laird — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 16:15:13 +0000

Safe to say, as we approach the midpoint of 2026, it hasn't exactly been a vintage year for GPU launches. We'll come to the details, but so far you're looking at a couple of very minor revisions of existing GPUs. And now comes a rumour that our only real hope for something slightly exciting this year has been punted out to 2027.

Yup, the latest word on Nvidia's on-again-off-again RTX 50 Super Series GPUs is that they won't appear until early 2027. As spotted by Videocardz, the usually well-informed Taiwanese website Benchlife says that although there were some previous indications of a late 2026 launch, their understanding is that the RTX 50 Super GPUs won't be seen until CES 2027 in January at the earliest.

So far in 2026, we've had the launch of the AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE and the Nvidia RTX 5070 12 GB for laptops. The first is a revision of an existing GPU with slightly knocked-down specs, and the second merely an existing GPU with some more video memory—a chipset so momentous, Nvidia "launched" it by mentioning it as an aside in the release notes for a driver update.

One might point to the Intel Arc Pro B70. But that's a $1,000 AI GPU with the gaming performance of a $400 desktop graphics card. So, it's hard to see how it's relevant. And Nvidia's new RTX Spark is an APU with CPU cores, not a pure GPU. And, anyway, it's just a rebadge of the DGX Spark chip announced over a year ago and finally released in October.

As for the rest of the year, well, the AMD Radeon RX 9050 budget GPU is expected, but that's supposedly based on the same Navi 44 chip as the RX 9060 and RX 9060 XT. Beyond that, there's a purported Nvidia RTX 5050 9 GB, which again is a tweaked version of an existing GPU.

AMD's underwhelming Radeon RX 9070 GRE looks set to be the most exciting GPU launch in 2026 (Image credit: Future)

As we reported earlier today, AMD is now not expected to launch its next-gen RDNA 5 graphics chips until late 2027 or even 2028. And if Nvidia's revised RTX 50 Supers really do arrive early next year, it's hard to see how Nvidia's actual next-gen graphics architecture, Rubin, arrives any earlier than RDNA 5.

In other words, if the RTX 50 Supers come in early 2027, Nvidia is hardly going to replace them with brand-new Rubin just a couple of months later. All of which means that 2026 is almost certainly going to be incredibly slim pickings for new GPUs, and there's a chance 2027 mightn't be all that much better.

If AMD RDNA 4 and Nvidia Rubin do slip to 2028, then the best we can hope for is tweaks of existing GPUs, including the RTX 50 Super Series, in 2027.

All I can say is, props to you if you managed to bag an RTX 4090 at something close to its MSRP back when it launched in October 2022. Putting multi-frame gen to one side, it's otherwise still the second fastest GPU today. And it now looks likely that by the time something faster comes out, it will have been either the fastest or second fastest graphics card you can buy for six years or more. That's an incredible run.

Tech leaker claims that the RTX 50 Super refresh is still on, despite the RAMpocalypse, and it'll be joined by a 12 GB RTX 5060

Nick Evanson — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 15:22:19 +0000

Back in November of last year, rumours were abounding that Nvidia had cancelled the expected Super refresh of its RTX 50-series of graphics cards, though at the time, I thought the whole thing was nonsense. However, six months on, and there's still no sign of them thanks to the RAMpocalypse, but it might not be totally game over, if one person is to be believed.

This is all according to MEGAsizeGPU on X, who has a pretty decent track record of dropping hints and tidbits that eventually come true. "RTX 50 Super is back on track," they write, before adding something extra. "This time includes 5060 12G (or maybe it will have a new name as 5060 super)."

RTX 50 Super is back on track. This time includes 5060 12G ( or maybe it will have a new name as 5060 super )June 5, 2026

Nvidia has done two lots of RTX Super refresh in the past, starting with the RTX 20-series (2080, 2070, 2060 Supers) and then again with the RTX 40-series (4080, 4070 Ti, 4070 Supers). In all cases, the Super variant of a given RTX graphics card sported a GPU that had more shader units than the original model, either by using a complete version of the same processor die or a more heavily cut-down chip from the next tier up.

For example, the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti uses a full AD104 die with 7680, whereas the RTX 4070 Ti Super sports an AD103 chip with 8448 shaders. The full version of that GPU, with 10240 shaders, is used in the RTX 4080 Super.

Nvidia will have lots of Blackwell dies sitting in its inventory that just can't be used in any current product, because they just don't have sufficient functional parts and/or operating clock speeds to meet an SKU's requirements. Hence, the need for a Super refresh, in which they can be used.

(Image credit: Future)

The exception to this is the GB203 in the RTX 5080, which is already a full die, but the main point of interest for the RTX 50 Supers isn't so much the shader count as how much VRAM will be on the graphics cards. Current Blackwell gaming cards use 2 GB GDDR7 modules, but it's generally expected that the Supers will use 3 GB ones. So instead of having 16 GB, the RTX 5080 Super would have 24 GB.

This is where MEGAsizeGPU's RTX 5060 claim comes in. At the moment, this is an 8 GB graphics card, using four 2 GB modules. However, with 3 GB chips, the total amount of VRAM would increase to 12 GB, putting it on par with the much-loved RTX 3060 (and the RTX 4070 and 5070).

I still believe that Nvidia will release an RTX 50 Super refresh at some point in the near future, pushing the RTX 60-series further down the road until the gaming PC market is in a better position to switch to a newer GPU. As to exactly what those Supers will be like, here's my current thinking:

RTX 5080 Super - 10240 shaders, 2.7 GHz boost clock, 24 GB VRAM
RTX 5070 Ti Super - 9718 shaders, 2.6 GHz boost clock, 16 GB VRAM
RTX 5070 Super - 6272 shaders, 2.5 GHz boost clock, 16 GB VRAM
RTX 5060 Super - 3840 shaders, 2.5 GHz boost clock, 12 GB VRAM

(Image credit: Future)

Why do I think the 5070 and 5070 Ti Supers won't have more VRAM than this? The answer is the RAMpocalypse and the limited supply of GDDR7. No company other than Nvidia is using it, but DRAM manufacturers are favouring memory production for the AI market, not gaming, so rather than using six modules on the 5070 Super's 192-bit memory bus, it'll be reduced to 128-bits in size so that four 3 GB modules can be used.

In the case of the RTX 5070 Ti, I reckon that Nvidia won't change the VRAM count at all, again for supply reasons.

Of course, one person saying the Super series is back on and me slapping down a handful of considered GPU specs means very little in the grand scheme of things, so we'll just have to wait and see if the refresh actually appears. And even if it does, will it be this year or early 2027? Assuming PC gaming hasn't been DRAM-priced out of existence by then.

AMD's next-gen RDNA 5 GPUs not out until late 2027 or even early 2028 according to new report citing graphics card makers at Computex

Jeremy Laird — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 11:01:42 +0000

A new report citing graphics card makers at the Computex show claims AMD's next-gen RDNA 5 GPUs won't appear until at least late next year and perhaps not until early 2028. AMD's current RDNA 4 graphics cards, including the Radeon RX 9070 XT, were released in March 2025.

Dutch website Tweakers says it spoke with several graphics card manufacturers at Computex. One reportedly said that the expectation was that RDNA 5 would arrive in the second half of 2027. But another thought that too optimistic, predicting a late 2027 or early 2028 launch window.

Historically, both AMD and its main rival in the PC graphics market, Nvidia, have released new GPU families on a two-year cadence. But that has been slipping slightly of late.

AMD's first RDNA 3 GPUs, topped by the Radeon RX 7900 XTX, were released in December 2022. RDNA 4 didn't follow until March 2025. If RDNA 5 doesn't land until late 2027, that'll mean a full year has been added to the launch cycles since RDNA 3 in 2022.

For what it's worth, we're not necessarily expecting Nvidia to stick to the traditional two-year cadence with its next-gen Rubin graphics cards, either. Nvidia also slightly slipped with the RTX 5090, which arrived in January 2025, following the RTX 4090's release in October 2022.

For what it's worth, at Computex Nvidia said it planned to release the Vera Rubin iteration of its RTX Spark chip in 2028. That's an APU with a CPU and graphics, not a pure GPU. But it's the closest we currently have to an indication regarding Nvidia's plans for next-gen PC gaming graphics.

Of course, you could actually argue that the later AMD's RDNA 5 and indeed Nvidia's Rubin arrives, in some ways the better. The PC hardware industry is currently being suffocated by elevated chip prices driven by the AI boom. If pushing RDNA 5 out makes it more affordable, that could be preferable to an earlier release at sky-high prices.

All that said, if the AI boom keeps booming, we could end up with RDNA 5 being both late and very expensive. PC gamers haven't had much luck recently, what with the prices of so much hardware spiralling out of reach. So, here's hoping that by the the RDNA 5 finally surfaces, we're back to something resembling a normal and functional hardware market.

AMD says that no decision has been made about bringing FSR 4.1 to RDNA 3.5 GPUs, which seems to contradict AMD also saying that it has no current plans to do so because of hardware reasons

Nick Evanson — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 12:41:41 +0000

Like all the major players in the PC industry, AMD had a big presence at Computex 2026, and all its top staff were busy conducting interviews with the press and media. In one such case, the senior confirmed that there are no current plans to bring AI-powered FSR 4.1 upscaling and frame generation to RDNA 3.5 GPUs. However, this prompted another figure to step in and declare that no such decision had actually been made.

Let's start at the beginning. Yesterday, HardwareLuxx reported on various discussions it had with David McAfee, AMD's corporate vice president and general manager of its client division, while at Computex. When they got on to the subject of FSR, McAfee reportedly said that the company had no current plans to bring its all-singing, all-dancing FSR 4.1 to GPUs based on the RDNA 3.5 architecture.

You won't find those chips inside graphics cards; these are integrated GPUs housed in certain Ryzen AI 300/400/Max processors and AMD's latest Ryzen Z2 Extreme APUs for handheld gaming PCs. As things currently stand, they have to use FSR 3.1, which is entirely shader-based and doesn't have anything like the quality of FSR 4.

Changing the code so that it could run on such GPUs would mean sacrificing some of the performance gains from using its AI-generated upscaling and frame generation, as the architecture doesn't sport the same level of matrix processing as RDNA 4. But given the capabilities of the smaller RDNA 3.5 chips, it would probably be too much of a performance drop to be worth using.

So when Frank Azor, who handles AMD's client and graphics marketing, stepped in via X to respond to Digital Foundry's report on HardwareLuxx's interview, I expected him to say much the same thing.

I wasn't there to hear the exact words said however I will share that no such decision as being reported and implied here has been made. We are not ready to speak to any other potential future product plans at this time. We continue to listen to our customers and we hear you.June 4, 2026

Except he didn't: "I wasn't there to hear the exact words said however I will share that no such decision as being reported and implied here has been made. We are not ready to speak to any other potential future product plans at this time. We continue to listen to our customers and we hear you."

Depending on who you want to believe, AMD either does or doesn't have any plans currently in place for giving RDNA 3.5 GPU owners a slice of FSR 4.1 goodness.

AMD has confirmed that it is working on bringing official FSR 4 support to RDNA 3 GPUs sometime in July and RDNA 2-based products in early 2027, so why not RDNA 3.5? Looking at the ISA (instruction set architecture) reference document, there's nothing that immediately stands out as being a barrier when comparing it to the same information for RDNA 3.

However, Jack Hynh, general manager of computing and graphics, specifically mentioned Radeon RX 7000-series graphics cards, and that rather confirms my suspicions that FSR 4.1 will not be an option for any iGPU, purely because they don't have enough horsepower to run the AI algorithms at the required speed.

As a lifelong gamer, I spend a lot of time thinking about how to push gaming experiences forward across CPUs, GPUs, software, and games.My team and I have been working hard to evolve @AMD FSR 4 and bring it to more cards.We power over 1 billion gaming devices worldwide. It’s… pic.twitter.com/91Z3vXpQapMay 14, 2026

Which is perfectly understandable, because there are relatively few Ryzen AI Max-level iGPUs out in the wild, which probably could cope with FSR 4.1, compared to those in laptops and handheld APUs. Why AMD doesn't just simply come out and say this, instead of mincing its words, and having its staff contradict each other and confuse the picture, really puzzles me.

The thing is, that's exactly what HardwareLuxx says David McAfee told it: "During our conversation, we discussed FSR 4.1 on RDNA 3, and it was mentioned that there are currently no plans to implement it on RDNA 3.5. This surprised us as well, so I inquired further, since many PC handhelds would particularly benefit from it. Technical aspects were then explained, such as the lower processing power of the integrated solutions and the memory bandwidth, which have implications for FSR 4.1."

So who to believe? I think there's only one viable solution: Put McAfee and Azor in a ring and have them battle for tech glory. Whoever's left standing is the one we put all our upscaling and frame generation hopes and dreams on. I've got a fiver on McAfee.

The excess of Computex feels a little more tone deaf than usual this year, as the pricing elephant in the room becomes harder to ignore

Andy Edser — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 14:36:45 +0000

Computex is, to a degree, always about excess. It's a tech show, after all. All the big names are fighting for coverage of their latest products, and as a result, we always see outrageous graphics cards covered in exotic materials, some eye-wateringly expensive gaming rigs, and enough RGB lighting to sink a battleship. I know that doesn't quite work as a metaphor, but you know what I mean.

This year has been no exception. But as I've sat here updating our Computex 2026 liveblog with all the latest goodies, it's been difficult to square all the uber-shiny new releases with the state of the tech industry right now. Price rises are wracking the gaming hardware market as we speak, and revelling in ultra-exotic materials and sheer excess feels… slightly wrong? Tone deaf? A little out of touch with the gamer on the street?

That's not to say we shouldn't be interested, of course. We all like a slice of excess in theory, and there's an argument to be made that PC gaming, for many years now, has been something of a luxury pursuit. But 24K gold-plated gaming mice? Crystals on GPU coolers? $3,000+ motherboards with "rocket thruster-grade thermal materials"?

Somehow, this year, it all feels a little… gauche?

Now, I don't want to be a party pooper. Many of the exotic products we've covered have been part of various anniversary celebrations, like this undeniably impressive Asus ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 Edition 20. And I'm not gonna lie, I've been drooling over it.

I love an overbuilt GPU, and I can even get on board with the fact it's got a curved AMOLED screen for seemingly very little reason. Staring through the shop window at the sweeties I can't afford has been a lifelong habit of mine, and I'm sure I'm far from alone. This is a hell of a display piece—and I'm breathing so heavily, I've fogged up the glass.

(Image credit: Future)

But it all comes crashing back down to earth when I see what a regular RTX 5090 costs at this point. My colleague Nick Evanson updates our GPU price guide every week, and he's just finished searching. The cheapest RTX 5090 we can find right now from a retailer we trust is… $4,300. As for the special edition Astral? I genuinely dread to think.

And of course, we've written many, many times about the reasons behind the current prices. The RAMpocalypse being the biggest, but we've also covered the supply chain problems, the war in Iran, and the gradual frog-in-boiling-water effect that has all contributed to making our hobby more expensive than it used to be. Along with many other reasons, naturally.

As a result, it feels a bit bleak out here in the world of PC gaming hardware right now. I hate to be a downer, but when you search for good prices every week like we do, and spot that decent deals are becoming much harder to find, it's difficult not to feel a touch bitter looking at all the shiny stuff I'm never, ever going to be able to reasonably afford.

(Image credit: Future)

Still, that's not to say there've been no well-priced products on display. In our quest to show you the most interesting releases from this year's event, we've been sprinkling in some of the less flashy, yet much more obtainable products that most PC gamers might be able to buy without taking out a loan.

Like this Arctic air cooler, for example. It starts at $50, it's got a twin fan/tower design, and it's rather handsome in a utilitarian, rugged sort of way. Sure, you probably missed it in among all the exotic gaming hardware, but it's a very reasonably priced thing.

Or this microATX case with a ferrofluid display for $199. Okay, so it's not cheap as far as regular cases go, but it's got a standout feature that looks more visually impressive than a lot of the mega-priced options splashed all over our feeds right now. I was expecting a much higher price tag based on the gimmick value alone, but hey, I'm happy to be surprised.

And then there's Corsair's new "accessibly priced" TC80 gaming chair, which seems to have struck a chord with many of you. We don't have an exact MSRP just yet, but if it's as well-priced as some of Corsair's other budget offerings, it could be your next affordable gaming throne.

(Image credit: Corsair)

And that's just a small selection. So yes, while we're duty-bound to point at a 256 GB RAM kit for $2,500+ and drop our jaws alongside the rest of you, it's perhaps worth remembering that there are still affordable PC gaming products on the market, depending on what you're searching for.

They don't make the headlines quite as easily, but they're there if you look hard enough.

As for the industry as a whole, though? Well, the consumer tech market has been hit pretty hard, there's no denying it. And while I like to ogle at a bit of gold-plating as much as the next pleb, this year it's all felt a bit much. Here's hoping for… well, here's hoping things are a little better by the time Computex 2027 rolls around. I'm an optimist at heart, dont'cha know.

Galax shows off 'next generation' GPU concept with actual Swarovski crystals in it, and I fear it may not have got the memo on the state of the market in 2026

James Bentley — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 10:31:28 +0000

Galax's Hall of Fame (HOF) range has traditionally been loud and pricey, but its prototype next-gen GPU design at this year's Computex might be over the top, even for Galax. That's because its latest design uses Swarovski crystals for a unique look (and presumably a unique look if it ever makes it to market).

As spotted by Smizu_OC on X (via VideoCardz), Galax showed off this card beside two equally eye-grabbing RTX 5080 designs. The potential RTX 6090 in question is simply called a "next generation concept design" at its Computex booth, so one could argue it's an RTX 50-series Super prototype of some kind. But Nvidia would have to actually launch that series for this to happen, which seems pretty unlikely at this point.

HOF新デザインはスワロフスキー付きらしいwwwww https://t.co/bxgr6XpZtC pic.twitter.com/hp87mu8sHHJune 3, 2026

It's not clear yet how many Swarovski crystals are being used in the prototype, but there are crystal-like shapes in each corner of the GPU, so one can assume what those are. There are some on the back of the card, too, but without more information on the specific crystals, it's hard to say exactly how much it's worth.

I was sort of hoping it would look a little nicer, to be honest. I like the all-white look, but the crystals more or less feel slapped on. It reminds me of when I used to throw any old sticker onto my electric guitar just to cover up the horrible Fender knock-off I started with.

The concept isn't all about the looks, though. A placard to the left mentions a fully customised PCB with custom components, as well as proprietary fans, a quad fan configuration, and a large vapour chamber. It also mentions new HOF AI software for monitoring GPU temperature and RGB effects.

Speaking of AI, the sheer decadence of this card feels fitting for Computex but also a tad tone deaf, given that many cannot afford an RTX card right now. The explosion of AI into the mainstream has taken much of the memory with it and is threatening the supply of other components, too.

Still, decadence is part of the HOF series' "thing", so it's not too out of character, and Galax is likely looking for a marketing win right now, too. Just last month, it was announced that Galax would be entirely controlled by its parent company, Palit, but not before it was first suggested that the entire company would be closing (this turned out to be a miscommunication, according to Palit).

Still, a prototype is just that: something intended to show off. We have no guarantee we'll actually be able to buy what Galax has been cooking up, even if we could afford it (which, let's face it, we probably can't).

The overclocking headroom in AMD's Radeon 7000-series GPUs 'was certainly not accidental... the core of Radeon has to be all about value to the end user'

dave.james@futurenet.com (Dave James) — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 05:30:28 +0000

Having only just finished my testing and review of the Radeon RX 9070 GRE before I flew out to Taipei for Computex 2026, I wanted to take the opportunity when I sat down with AMD's David McAfee to talk about one of the most impressive things I've seen in all the Navi 48 GPUs I've played with: the overclocking headroom.

More specifically, the performance headroom you can squeeze out of the GPU when you undervolt it. David McAfee runs AMD's Ryzen and Radeon business, so I was keen to find out how that came about given that for generations of GPU that hasn't been the case.

"It was certainly not accidental," says McAfee. "I think that we understand that, both for CPUs and GPUs, overclockability is a core part of what many of our buyers, our gamers and enthusiasts, are looking for. I think that in years past, you know, the product definition would squeeze every bit of overclocking headroom out of the product and productise it just as a stock SKU, a pre-configured SKU. And that left the community with really no room to have have fun with the product and experiment and see what they could do."

But that is no longer the case and it's incredibly gratifying to note that was on deliberate and is a strategy going forward, too.

"Our strategy with this generation of products and going forward is very different," he says. "I was a part of the Ryzen journey from the very beginning, and stepping into the Radeon space, I think that it is the same sort of story arc that we want to create. Where Ryzen over the years was about giving users more for their money, being very community centric, and delivering the type of experience that they want out of that platform. And I think with Radeon it's the same thing.

"Sure, it's going to take us generations to build the perfect Radeon platform, but I think the core of Radeon has to be all about value to the end user and what they get out of that system.

"It's all about great experiences in a GPU. That ties into things like FSR and game support, and really interesting new technology integrated into high-profile game titles. And I think the last part of it is listening to the community and understanding that you know what users are going to want out of those products and cards is not necessarily something where every bit of performance is delivered out of the box, and it's not always cranked up to 11, there's still a little bit of room to go."

The blower is back: Cooler Master has made a GPU accessory that pushes hot air outside your case rather than onto your CPU

Jacob Ridley — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 02:27:21 +0000

Cooler Master is bringing back the blower-style GPU shroud with its new MasterFlow accessory. It's designed to sit atop of a graphics card and redirect the hot exhaust that is often pewed towards the CPU outside of the case instead.

If you've been building PCs for a little while now, you'll be familiar with the blower-style shroud. It used to be a mainstay of reference cards, such as Nvidia's GTX 10-series, but has been ditched in favour of more effective dual- or triple-fan setups, often with a heatsink exposed on both sides of the card.

Blower-style fans would push hot air outside of the case, via the expansion slots. Whereas modern GPU designs are more effective at cooling the GPU, they often send the hot air upwards towards the CPU, thus increasing temps. So Cooler Master had an idea:

"What we wanted to do is help to eliminate hot air from the GPU going into the CPU area," says Cooler Master representative Brett Buren at Cooler Master HQ in Taiwan.

"Obviously, with a lot of new GPUs, like 5080s and 5090s, they have a passage on the back of the GPU to let hot air escape. But the downside of that is that it interferes with the CPU."

Future

"So with a simple blower fan attachment, we're able to isolate that hot air and get it out of the case before it interacts with anything."

The Master Flow rest atop of a graphics card, in what is often an unused expansion slot, and collects the hot exhaust air. A small radial fan inside blows the air towards the slot, and reportedly this offers a big benefit for CPU temps: around a four to six degree improvement.

(Image credit: Future)

I picked it up at the event and it has some adjustment for a range of GPU sizes—sliding back and forth for a range of lengths.

For now, Cooler Master is planning to use the MasterFlow in its own prebuilt systems. I'm hoping to see this one land on the shelves for consumers, however, as it feels like it could come in useful for systems running at the very edge of acceptable thermals.

'One of my favourites': Even Jensen Huang recognises the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti as one of the best graphics cards Nvidia ever made

Nick Evanson — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 11:18:30 +0000

We live in some odd times when the CEO of a tech company can be seen working crowds, signing autographs, and generally giving off film star vibes, but that seems to be norm when it comes to Nvidia's Jensen Huang whenever he's in Taiwan. But it was during one such moment at Computex that he said something that would resonate with any PC gamer: declaring that the GTX 1080 Ti was a bit special.

The brief interaction was shared by MilGrauNews on X, where somebody (apparently the OP's girlfriend) handed Jensen an original GeForce GTX 1080 Ti for signing. "Oh, one of my favourites," he enthusiastically responded. "Oh, my god. This is one of the best. This changed everything."

A mina conseguiu um autógrafo do Jensen Huang, fundador e CEO da NVIDIA, na sua placa GTX 1080 TI Founders Edition.Será que agora ela vale uma grana num leilão? pic.twitter.com/yiv91vj0V4June 2, 2026

For once, Nvidia's CEO has said something that I wholeheartedly agree with, as the GTX 1080 Ti was outstanding for its time—and for many more years to come. To understand why, we need to go back to May 2016, when Nvidia launched its Pascal GPU architecture. The initial line-up of graphics cards sporting these chips topped out with the GeForce GTX 1080, but then three months later, the Titan X Pascal made an appearance.

That graphics card used a slightly cut-down GP102 GPU, with 3,584 shaders and 12 GB of GDDR5X. It was mighty powerful, but also outrageously expensive at $1,199, though certainly not the most costly that Team Green had released at that point (the $2,299 Titan Z from 2014 takes that award).

But in March 2017, Nvidia did something very special; something that it's never done since and will probably never do again. It launched the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, a GP102-powered graphics card that also had 3,584 shaders and just one GB of GDDR5X less than the Titan X Pascal.

What made the launch special was the price, just $699. Since it used faster VRAM chips than those on the Titan card, it actually had more memory bandwidth, so you were effectively getting an equally, or slightly more, capable graphics card for 42% less money.

This or the 1080 Ti? Silly question... (Image credit: Nvidia)

Nvidia would eventually go on to release the Titan Xp, in April 2017, that used a full-spec GP102 GPU, with 3,840 shaders for the same price as the first Pascal Titan. But, with the 1080 Ti being so good and so much better value, relatively few people were interested in it. I must admit that I was one such person and bought an Xp, but that was the last time I ever forked out for a range-topping Nvidia graphics card.

In many ways, Pascal marked the end of an era for Nvidia, because the GPU's successor (Turing) was the first to sport Tensor cores and ray tracing units, kick-starting the whole RTX shebang. Something else that the RTX 20-series cards pushed off the line was a noticeable hike in prices. The RTX 2080 Ti and RTX Titan, both released in 2018, were $999 and $2,499, respectively, and these days, all Nvidia models that use the biggest GPU in a given series are silly money.

I'm not suggesting that the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti was cheap, because that's still a big slab of money to hand over for a GPU even now. But what you got for all thatcash was, and still is to some extent, extremely good.

$700 doesn't even get you an RTX 5070 Ti these days (Image credit: Future)

Huang is absolutely right in saying that "it changed everything" because it marked a turning point when Nvidia realised that if PC gamers were happy to spend $699 on a graphics card, they would probably be just as happy to spend a bit more. And then more… and more. Until we're at the point where $699 will only get you a GeForce RTX 5070, although the RAMpocalyse is the biggest factor behind that.

The GeForce GTX 1080 Ti was indeed one of the best graphics cards Nvidia has ever made, but I suspect we will never see its like again.

Next-gen GPUs aren't around at Computex, but MSI's got a taste of what they might look like

dave.james@futurenet.com (Dave James) — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 11:23:38 +0000

Asus might be sticking 24 carat gold into its mice to celebrate its 20th anniversary and Gigabyte is slapping satellite-grade metals onto its motherboards for its own anniversary, but it's a diamond anniversary for MSI as it's jamming smooshed up diamonds into its next-gen GPU cooling solutions.

The next-gen graphics card cooler MSI had on-show at Computex today is a concept design for what the cards of tomorrow (or rather 2027 at the earliest) could look like. The new cooling feature set is estimated to cut maybe four degrees centigrade off the peak temperatures of a high-end GPU, but every little counts.

Those new features in short:

Full metal fan blades
Rifled heat pipes
Diamond-composite thermal pads
Diamond-copper composite contact plate

Switching from the plastic fan blades of its existing coolers means saying goodbye to potential warping of the blades at high speeds, allowing for a more rigid structure, which should reportedly increasing cooling efficiency.

And they feel really cool to the touch, too, though I wouldn't want to get a finger caught in one of them.

Future

Maybe more interesting is the rifled barrels of the heatpipes MSI is using on this new design. Inside the pipes there is a spiral structure which increases the contact area inside them, allowing for greater thermal transfer as opposed to the regular design.

Then we come to the diamonds. Mixed inside both the heatpads sitting atop the expensive memory modules and the base plate of the cooling array itself, is a diamond powder designed to increase the thermal conductivity within both components. In the baseplate it's a diamond-copper composite and you can see in the images that it looks kinda dirty by comparison with the standard all-copper version. But it also sometimes sparkles in the light. And cools a bit better, apparently.

Future

Now, as I said, these new features will only drop the temps by an approximate four degrees, but you've got to think that switching in more expensive materials and introducing more intricate manufacturing is only going to do one thing to the manufacturing price of associated cooling shrouds, and therefore to the price of the associate cards.

But this is a concept design in lieu of actual new GPUs to drool over, so while that RTX 5090 there does look pretty, you're not going to be able to buy one even if you did have the cash. Best just wait for the RTX 6090, eh?

AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE review (Acer Nitro)

dave.james@futurenet.com (Dave James) — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The AMD RX 9070 GRE is probably the most 2026 graphics card any GPU company could release this year. With the possible exception of Nvidia digging down the back of the sofa again and releasing another RTX 3060. The RX 9070 GRE was previously a China-exclusive card and represents a dumbing down of the Navi 48 GPU with less of that expensive ol' VRAM. But the most damning aspect is the fact AMD has given this weaker card a global release at the same starting price as the beefier RX 9070.

I get the rationale—because of memory and silicon constraints, graphics card prices are all higher than they were when this card originally launched in China—but still, releasing a weaker GPU at the same initial MSRP as another card, which has a more fully functional version of the same chip, is never going to feel good. It's becoming a common phrase for me, but this is just another damning indictment of the state of PC gaming hardware in 2026.

This is a card very much released for right now, giving AMD more options for its Navi 48 silicon (especially for chips that don't make the grade for full RX 9070/XT cards) without needing to offer the full 16 GB monty. And it is priced for right now, too, with Nvidia's RTX 5070 available at $600 and the RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB at $550. AMD is laser-focused on those two GeForce cards, but clearly also doesn't want to completely torpedo the RX 9070 by pricing it fully $100 lower at $499.

It is still an impressive card in its own right, getting mighty close to the RTX 5070 at stock speeds and regularly beating it with a simple, pain-free undervolt. So, while I'm not necessarily loving the optics of it being priced at the same MSRP as the unquestionably better RX 9070, it's the $550 card I would recommend right now, with the $50 delta between them being just enough. But if retailers lose their collective minds and regularly price it at the same level as the cheapest RX 9070 cards—which could absolutely happen, too—the RX 9070 GRE's value-proposition entirely evaporates.

✅ You can find it at or below MSRP: The RX 9070 GRE rapidly loses relevance as soon as it strays above its $549 price tag. With the superior RX 9070 costing $600 right now, there isn't a lot of wiggle room for retailers or manufacturers.

✅ You're happy tweaking: The extra level of performance you can extract from the RX 9070 GRE with some easy undervolting is tangible, and levels up the card.

❌ You can find the RX 9070 for the same price: With 16 GB of faster VRAM and a more powerful version of the Navi 48 GPU, the straight RX 9070 is easily the better card.

❌ You want compute power, too: The RDNA 4 architecture just doesn't have the same general compute performance as equivalent Nvidia GPUs. If you're rendering or hoping for a GenAI card, this is not the way.

Features

3.5

Performance

Thermals

4.5

Sound

4.5

Value

Software

We scored the RX 9070 GRE out of five in six distinct categories.

AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE features

(Image credit: Future)

	RX 9070 GRE	RX 9070	RTX 5070
GPU	Navi 48	Navi 48	GB205-300
Shaders	3072	3584	6144
Lithography	TSMC N4P	TSMC N4P	TSMC 4N
Transistors (B)	53.9	53.9	31.1
Die size (mm²)	356.5	356.5	263
Memory size (GB)	12	16	12
Memory type	GDDR6	GDDR6	GDDR7
Memory bus	192	256	192
TDP (W)	220	220	250
MSRP (US$)	$549	$549	$549

Sporting the same Navi 48 GPU as both the RX 9070 and the RX 9070 XT, the GRE is obviously cut from the same silicon. Andy covered the RDNA 4 architecture in more depth in his tech dive, and I added some extra notes in my original RX 9070 XT review, too. The chip at the heart of this GRE, however, has lost another eight compute units (CUs) compared with the next card up, which in turn had lost eight CUs compared with the top-end RX 9070 XT. That means you're getting 3072 shaders, making it over 500 and 1000 shaders behind its other Navi 48 brethren respectively.

That theoretically allows AMD to use GPUs that may not have been able to run either 56 or 64 CUs at full speed to create another graphics card, and still get almost the same amount of cash for it, too. All it has to do is fuse off those errant, potentially dysfunctional CUs (too much to hope that it's a soft-block, potentially circumvented by some ingenious vBIOS hacks) and ship that GPU out as an RX 9070 GRE.

With 12 GB of GDDR6, as opposed to the 16 GB used by the other Navi 48 cards, and slower memory at that, AMD is also able to save on the manufacturing costs of the RX 9070 GRE. Which is vital right now given the skyrocketing pricing of memory, whether server, system, or video memory.

Like the other RDNA 4 GPUs, the RX 9070 GRE benefits from a drastically improved ray tracing engine, which means that these latest AMD cards are able to better deal with the rigours of that fancy lighting feature than any other Radeon GPU of times past. They're far closer to how Nvidia has been building and running its RT Cores, and that means they no longer lag so far behind GeForce cards in terms of ray traced gaming performance.

The other big feature of RDNA 4 is the support for FSR 4, AMD's most up to date, machine-learning powered upscaling engine. When it was first introduced it represented a step change in the Radeon upscaler, making FSR far closer to the image fidelity and stability that Nvidia's similar DLSS feature offers. But it wasn't built into a lot of games at the beginning, though that is starting to change, and will only grow as time moves on. Though it is notable that FSR support is still a secondary concern for many games developers, despite AMD's reports of how straightforward it is to implement.

Right now it is only available for RDNA 4 cards, but AMD is finally committing to opening support to RDNA 3 and later RDNA 2 GPUs.

Nipped and tucked, but RDNA 4 still delivers

Features

3.5

AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE performance

(Image credit: Future)

While AMD's pricing of the RX 9070 GRE should point us towards the equivalently priced RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB, for me it's the performance delta between the GRE and the straight RX 9070, and the delta between it and the RTX 5070, which are more interesting.

The Navi 48 GPU at its heart ought to be able to best an RTX 5060 Ti's GB206 GPU, which is getting on for half the size and with fewer than half the transistors inside it. I don't care that we're talking about 12 GB vs 16 GB in terms of memory, the RTX 5060 Ti with its 128-bit memory bus shows what a weak mid-range card it is at this price by comparison.

And so it is, at every level you're looking at around 15 - 20 fps dropped between the parity priced AMD and Nvidia cards. There is no contest.

1 / 3

1080p gaming performance

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RX 9070 GRE | 12 GB

RX 9070 | 16 GB

103

RTX 5070 | 12 GB

RTX 5060 Ti | 16 GB

RX 9060 XT | 16 GB

Black Myth Wukong (1080p High) Data
Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| 12 GB	90 Avg FPS, 78 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 \| 16 GB	103 Avg FPS, 89 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 \| 12 GB	95 Avg FPS, 82 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060 Ti \| 16 GB	75 Avg FPS, 65 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT \| 16 GB	73 Avg FPS, 63 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RX 9070 GRE | 12 GB

RX 9070 | 16 GB

RTX 5070 | 12 GB

RTX 5060 Ti | 16 GB

RX 9060 XT | 16 GB

Cyberpunk 2077 (1080p RT Ultra) Data
Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| 12 GB	63 Avg FPS, 52 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 \| 16 GB	70 Avg FPS, 58 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 \| 12 GB	72 Avg FPS, 56 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060 Ti \| 16 GB	51 Avg FPS, 41 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT \| 16 GB	49 Avg FPS, 39 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RX 9070 GRE | 12 GB

123

RX 9070 | 16 GB

138

108

RTX 5070 | 12 GB

123

RTX 5060 Ti | 16 GB

RX 9060 XT | 16 GB

F1 24 (1080p Ultra high) Data
Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| 12 GB	123 Avg FPS, 89 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 \| 16 GB	138 Avg FPS, 108 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 \| 12 GB	123 Avg FPS, 96 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060 Ti \| 16 GB	90 Avg FPS, 71 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT \| 16 GB	95 Avg FPS, 61 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RX 9070 GRE | 12 GB

123

RX 9070 | 16 GB

125

RTX 5070 | 12 GB

125

RTX 5060 Ti | 16 GB

117

RX 9060 XT | 16 GB

106

Homeworld 3 (1080p Epic) Data
Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| 12 GB	123 Avg FPS, 65 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 \| 16 GB	125 Avg FPS, 62 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 \| 12 GB	125 Avg FPS, 64 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060 Ti \| 16 GB	117 Avg FPS, 65 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT \| 16 GB	106 Avg FPS, 65 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RX 9070 GRE | 12 GB

124

RX 9070 | 16 GB

143

RTX 5070 | 12 GB

139

RTX 5060 Ti | 16 GB

RX 9060 XT | 16 GB

Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition (1080p Ultra) Data
Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| 12 GB	124 Avg FPS, 80 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 \| 16 GB	143 Avg FPS, 76 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 \| 12 GB	139 Avg FPS, 88 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060 Ti \| 16 GB	98 Avg FPS, 42 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT \| 16 GB	96 Avg FPS, 42 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RX 9070 GRE | 12 GB

RX 9070 | 16 GB

106

RTX 5070 | 12 GB

RTX 5060 Ti | 16 GB

RX 9060 XT | 16 GB

The Talos Principle 2 (1080p Ultra) Data
Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| 12 GB	92 Avg FPS, 49 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 \| 16 GB	106 Avg FPS, 74 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 \| 12 GB	92 Avg FPS, 57 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060 Ti \| 16 GB	75 Avg FPS, 41 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT \| 16 GB	73 Avg FPS, 37 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RX 9070 GRE | 12 GB

102

RX 9070 | 16 GB

112

RTX 5070 | 12 GB

104

RTX 5060 Ti | 16 GB

RX 9060 XT | 16 GB

Total War: Warhammer 3 (1080p Ultra) Data
Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| 12 GB	102 Avg FPS, 46 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 \| 16 GB	112 Avg FPS, 41 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 \| 12 GB	104 Avg FPS, 53 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060 Ti \| 16 GB	83 Avg FPS, 54 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT \| 16 GB	94 Avg FPS, 72 1% Low FPS

The cheaper RX 9070 GRE is getting very close to the 1080p performance of the RX 9070, and it's practically a tie with the pricier Nvidia RTX 5070.

But the pricier RTX 5070 and RX 9070 are interesting in just how close they are in performance terms to the RX 9070 GRE. Against the RTX 5070 the two cards are not far off being on a level, trading blows across parts of our benchmarking suite. On the whole, though you'd have to say the Nvidia card more consistently leads the GRE overall, but there's surprisingly little in it, certainly not enough that you'd actually feel it in most games. It is clear, however, that the 3584 core Navi 48 chip inside the straight RX 9070—with its 16 GB VRAM quotient and 256-bit memory bus—is absolutely the better option.

Upscaled gaming performance

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RX 9070 GRE | 12 GB

RX 9070 | 16 GB

111

RTX 5070 | 12 GB

107

RTX 5060 Ti | 16 GB

RX 9060 XT | 16 GB

Black Myth Wukong (1440p High + Upscaling (quality)) Data
Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| 12 GB	95 Avg FPS, 82 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 \| 16 GB	111 Avg FPS, 96 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 \| 12 GB	107 Avg FPS, 81 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060 Ti \| 16 GB	86 Avg FPS, 72 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT \| 16 GB	78 Avg FPS, 69 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RX 9070 GRE | 12 GB

130

RX 9070 | 16 GB

149

102

RTX 5070 | 12 GB

122

RTX 5060 Ti | 16 GB

RX 9060 XT | 16 GB

102

Cyberpunk 2077 (1440p RT Ultra + upscaling (quality)) Data
Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| 12 GB	130 Avg FPS, 78 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 \| 16 GB	149 Avg FPS, 102 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 \| 12 GB	122 Avg FPS, 97 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060 Ti \| 16 GB	96 Avg FPS, 79 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT \| 16 GB	102 Avg FPS, 73 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RX 9070 GRE | 12 GB

249

122

RX 9070 | 16 GB

261

114

RTX 5070 | 12 GB

176

113

RTX 5060 Ti | 16 GB

136

RX 9060 XT | 16 GB

190

113

F1 24 (1440p Ultra high +upscaling (Quality), 2x FG) Data
Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| 12 GB	249 Avg FPS, 122 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 \| 16 GB	261 Avg FPS, 114 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 \| 12 GB	176 Avg FPS, 113 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060 Ti \| 16 GB	136 Avg FPS, 89 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT \| 16 GB	190 Avg FPS, 113 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RX 9070 GRE | 12 GB

115

RX 9070 | 16 GB

123

RTX 5070 | 12 GB

127

RTX 5060 Ti | 16 GB

118

RX 9060 XT | 16 GB

110

Homeworld 3 (1440p Epic + upscaling (quality)) Data
Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| 12 GB	115 Avg FPS, 63 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 \| 16 GB	123 Avg FPS, 64 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 \| 12 GB	127 Avg FPS, 63 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060 Ti \| 16 GB	118 Avg FPS, 63 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT \| 16 GB	110 Avg FPS, 62 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RX 9070 GRE | 12 GB

164

RX 9070 | 16 GB

197

RTX 5070 | 12 GB

144

RTX 5060 Ti | 16 GB

115

RX 9060 XT | 16 GB

135

The Talos Principle 2 (1440p Ultra +upscaling (quality), 2x FG) Data
Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| 12 GB	164 Avg FPS, 60 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 \| 16 GB	197 Avg FPS, 90 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 \| 12 GB	144 Avg FPS, 65 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060 Ti \| 16 GB	115 Avg FPS, 41 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT \| 16 GB	135 Avg FPS, 59 1% Low FPS

There are a couple of instances where, when using upscaling, the RX 9070 GRE takes a healthy lead in terms of frame rates over the RTX 5070.

Though the GRE is still not far off, and if the price gap between either the RX 9070 or RTX 5070 increases then the GRE will become a more tempting option. At MSRP vs. current pricing of the RX 9070 specifically, with the GRE you're getting roughly 86% of the performance, but you are paying around 92% of the price.

At the higher resolutions the GRE notably struggles against the other two cards, though if you're aiming specifically for 4K gaming with anything in the $600 range you are 100% relying on some heavy upscaling. At 1440p though it still shines.

Undervolting performance

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RX 9070 GRE | Undervolted | -130mV | 2700 Mem

RX 9070 GRE | Stock

RX 9070 | Stock

RTX 5070 | Stock

Black Myth Wukong (1440p High) Data
Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| Undervolted \| -130mV \| 2700 Mem	69 Avg FPS, 42 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 GRE \| Stock	62 Avg FPS, 55 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 \| Stock	73 Avg FPS, 64 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 \| Stock	68 Avg FPS, 60 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RX 9070 GRE | Undervolted | -130mV | 2700 Mem

103

RX 9070 GRE | Stock

RX 9070 | Stock

111

RTX 5070 | Stock

107

Black Myth Wukong (1440p High + Upscaling (quality)) Data
Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| Undervolted \| -130mV \| 2700 Mem	103 Avg FPS, 89 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 GRE \| Stock	95 Avg FPS, 82 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 \| Stock	111 Avg FPS, 96 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 \| Stock	107 Avg FPS, 81 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RX 9070 GRE | Undervolted | -130mV | 2700 Mem

RX 9070 GRE | Stock

RX 9070 | Stock

RTX 5070 | Stock

Cyberpunk 2077 (1440p RT Ultra) Data
Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| Undervolted \| -130mV \| 2700 Mem	44 Avg FPS, 34 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 GRE \| Stock	38 Avg FPS, 23 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 \| Stock	43 Avg FPS, 36 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 \| Stock	45 Avg FPS, 36 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RX 9070 GRE | Undervolted | -130mV | 2700 Mem

145

RX 9070 GRE | Stock

130

RX 9070 | Stock

149

102

RTX 5070 | Stock

122

Cyberpunk 2077 (1440p RT Ultra + upscaling (quality)) Data
Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| Undervolted \| -130mV \| 2700 Mem	145 Avg FPS, 73 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 GRE \| Stock	130 Avg FPS, 78 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 \| Stock	149 Avg FPS, 102 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 \| Stock	122 Avg FPS, 97 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RX 9070 GRE | Undervolted | -130mV | 2700 Mem

RX 9070 GRE | Stock

RX 9070 | Stock

RTX 5070 | Stock

F1 24 (1440p Ultra High) Data
Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| Undervolted \| -130mV \| 2700 Mem	89 Avg FPS, 49 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 GRE \| Stock	81 Avg FPS, 52 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 \| Stock	90 Avg FPS, 67 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 \| Stock	78 Avg FPS, 60 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RX 9070 GRE | Undervolted | -130mV | 2700 Mem

262

126

RX 9070 GRE | Stock

249

122

RX 9070 | Stock

261

114

RTX 5070 | Stock

176

113

F1 24 (1440p Ultra high +upscaling (Quality), 2x FG) Data
Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| Undervolted \| -130mV \| 2700 Mem	262 Avg FPS, 126 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 GRE \| Stock	249 Avg FPS, 122 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 \| Stock	261 Avg FPS, 114 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 \| Stock	176 Avg FPS, 113 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RX 9070 GRE | Undervolted | -130mV | 2700 Mem

103

RX 9070 GRE | Stock

101

RX 9070 | Stock

104

RTX 5070 | Stock

112

Homeworld 3 (1440p Epic) Data
Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| Undervolted \| -130mV \| 2700 Mem	103 Avg FPS, 63 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 GRE \| Stock	101 Avg FPS, 61 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 \| Stock	104 Avg FPS, 62 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 \| Stock	112 Avg FPS, 64 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RX 9070 GRE | Undervolted | -130mV | 2700 Mem

118

RX 9070 GRE | Stock

115

RX 9070 | Stock

123

RTX 5070 | Stock

127

Homeworld 3 (1440p Epic + upscaling (quality)) Data
Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| Undervolted \| -130mV \| 2700 Mem	118 Avg FPS, 64 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 GRE \| Stock	115 Avg FPS, 63 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 \| Stock	123 Avg FPS, 64 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 \| Stock	127 Avg FPS, 63 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RX 9070 GRE | Undervolted | -130mV | 2700 Mem

101

RX 9070 GRE | Stock

RX 9070 | Stock

107

RTX 5070 | Stock

100

Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition (1440p Ultra) Data
Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| Undervolted \| -130mV \| 2700 Mem	101 Avg FPS, 68 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 GRE \| Stock	92 Avg FPS, 63 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 \| Stock	107 Avg FPS, 74 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 \| Stock	100 Avg FPS, 68 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RX 9070 GRE | Undervolted | -130mV | 2700 Mem

RX 9070 GRE | Stock

RX 9070 | Stock

RTX 5070 | Stock

The Talos Principle 2 (1440p Ultra) Data
Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| Undervolted \| -130mV \| 2700 Mem	65 Avg FPS, 35 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 GRE \| Stock	61 Avg FPS, 22 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 \| Stock	74 Avg FPS, 53 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 \| Stock	64 Avg FPS, 42 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RX 9070 GRE | Undervolted | -130mV | 2700 Mem

183

RX 9070 GRE | Stock

164

RX 9070 | Stock

197

RTX 5070 | Stock

144

The Talos Principle 2 (1440p Ultra +upscaling (quality), 2x FG) Data
Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| Undervolted \| -130mV \| 2700 Mem	183 Avg FPS, 69 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 GRE \| Stock	164 Avg FPS, 60 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 \| Stock	197 Avg FPS, 90 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 \| Stock	144 Avg FPS, 65 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RX 9070 GRE | Undervolted | -130mV | 2700 Mem

RX 9070 GRE | Stock

RX 9070 | Stock

RTX 5070 | Stock

Total War: Warhammer 3 (1440p Ultra) Data
Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| Undervolted \| -130mV \| 2700 Mem	91 Avg FPS, 48 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 GRE \| Stock	82 Avg FPS, 51 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 \| Stock	96 Avg FPS, 43 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 \| Stock	81 Avg FPS, 53 1% Low FPS

With a super-easy undervolt, the RX 9070 GRE is able to post performance on par or beyond the RTX 5070, and alongside the straight RX 9070.

The pricing maths start to make more sense when you factor in the level of performance headroom built into this card, however. With a little oh-so-simple undervolt I was able to push the RX 9070 GRE with a few percentage points of the performance of the RX 9070. And with the GPU consistently topping the 3 GHz mark, you're looking at generally a performance lead over the RTX 5070, too.

I still find the performance headroom of Navi 48 GPUs surprising, and while AMD's lower order RX 9000-series cards don't have as consistent a level of overclocking/undervolting performance to them, every Navi 48-powered card I've tested is happy to let you pull back its core voltage in exchange for giving up a whole lot more clock speed and around 10% extra frame rate performance in games.

Undervolt and watch it fly

Performance

AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE thermals

(Image credit: Future)

It's probably no surprise that a mid-range graphics card sporting a triple fan cooling array actually trends to the pretty chill, but that's where we're at with at least the Acer Nitro RX 9070 GRE I've been testing. There are no Made by AMD (MBA) cards for this generation, so all RDNA 4 GPUs are clothed in their manufacturer's cooling shrouds, and you're likely to be getting arrays designed for beefier cards slapped onto the RX 9070 GRE.

System performance

Peak temperature (°C)

Average temperature (°C)

RX 9070 GRE | 12 GB

RX 9070 | 16 GB

RTX 5070 | 12 GB

RTX 5060 Ti | 16 GB

RX 9060 XT | 16 GB

Thermals Data
Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| 12 GB	62 Peak temperature (°C), 59 Average temperature (°C)
RX 9070 \| 16 GB	57 Peak temperature (°C), 55 Average temperature (°C)
RTX 5070 \| 12 GB	79 Peak temperature (°C), 76 Average temperature (°C)
RTX 5060 Ti \| 16 GB	67 Peak temperature (°C), 65 Average temperature (°C)
RX 9060 XT \| 16 GB	57 Peak temperature (°C), 48 Average temperature (°C)

RX 9070 GRE | 12 GB

2674

RX 9070 | 16 GB

2349

RTX 5070 | 12 GB

2693

RTX 5060 Ti | 16 GB

2687

RX 9060 XT | 16 GB

2849

Peak power (watts)

Average power (watts)

RX 9070 GRE | 12 GB

287

244

RX 9070 | 16 GB

270

248

RTX 5070 | 12 GB

284

251

RTX 5060 Ti | 16 GB

207

182

RX 9060 XT | 16 GB

182

146

Power Data
Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| 12 GB	287 Peak power (watts), 244 Average power (watts)
RX 9070 \| 16 GB	270 Peak power (watts), 248 Average power (watts)
RTX 5070 \| 12 GB	284 Peak power (watts), 251 Average power (watts)
RTX 5060 Ti \| 16 GB	207 Peak power (watts), 182 Average power (watts)
RX 9060 XT \| 16 GB	182 Peak power (watts), 146 Average power (watts)

4K frames per J

1080p frame per J

RX 9070 GRE | 12 GB

0.22

0.53

RX 9070 | 16 GB

0.26

0.6

RTX 5070 | 12 GB

0.24

0.61

RTX 5060 Ti | 16 GB

0.23

0.62

Performance per watt Data
Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| 12 GB	0.22 4K frames per J, 0.53 1080p frame per J
RX 9070 \| 16 GB	0.26 4K frames per J, 0.6 1080p frame per J
RTX 5070 \| 12 GB	0.24 4K frames per J, 0.61 1080p frame per J
RTX 5060 Ti \| 16 GB	0.23 4K frames per J, 0.62 1080p frame per J
RX 9060 XT \| 16 GB	N/A

The RX 9070 GRE uses the same coolers as the RX 9070/XT cards, with more power-hungry GPUs, the cooling noise and thermal load is impressively light.

From what I can tell, without having the cards cheek-by-jowl, this Acer GRE is using the exact same Frostblade 4.0 cooler as its RX 9070 XT stablemate, and I've tested at a solid ~60°C when under load. That makes it cooler than the similarly triple-fanned Palit RTX 5060 Ti we've tested, and waaaaaay cooler than the Founders Edition RTX 5070.

And that's true whether you indulge in undervolting or not. I actually found it running a teensy bit more frosty when I'd pulled back the power, even though the GPU is generally running at over 300 MHz faster than at stock levels.

Chillers built for better GPUs means cool GPUs

Thermals

4.5

AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE sound

(Image credit: Future)

I have found only the tiniest smattering of coil whine. That's something I regularly listen out for with AMD GPUs, and in this generation with Nvidia cards, too. But, with the RX 9070 GRE I've been testing, I'm only detecting the very occasional electrical fizz when the frame rate in a settings screen spikes to ludicrous levels—in games I never heard the power componentry sing its siren song.

The actual fan noise is blessedly relaxed, too. The GPU may be running cool, but it's not because Acer has tuned those three fans to run at turbine settings. Even under sustained load, and even with the card sitting in an open test rig right next to me, the fan noise never got to a distracting level at all.

It will sound different in a closed PC case, though there should also be moving air around and/or across the GPU to help shift that hot air, too.

Cool also means quiet

Sound

4.5

AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE value

(Image credit: Future)

This is what's going to make or break the AMD RX 9070 GRE: its true value once released into the wild. That goes beyond just the initial MSRP quoted by AMD, and has everything to do with what the retailers and manufacturers end up charging PC gamers in the real world. This is the issue we had around the other Navi 48-powered graphics cards, where we were given MSRP numbers that melted away scant hours after the cards launched.

It's potentially harder for that to happen in the current environment. With the RX 9070 GRE given a $549 starting price, and the RX 9070 currently available for $600, there isn't a lot of wiggle room for perfidious retailers to spike the price unnecessarily. As soon as you get start to eat into that $50 price delta the smart money will surely switch to the faster 16 GB card.

But, while the GPU market has plateaued in terms of pricing over the past few months—albeit at disappointingly higher levels than the tail end of 2025—that's no guarantee the current status quo will be preserved. There have been a few rumblings recently that the prices of AMD cards are going to get bumped in the near future, putting them back alongside their Nvidia competitors, and if that happens then the GRE's $549-$600 price tag might look ever more tantalising.

I will reiterate that the notion of value is a tough one here, considering that its $549 price tag is the same as the RX 9070, but then I think we've all had to readjust our pricing perceptions in the face of the RAMpocalypse and its fallout. Time will tell how well the RX 9070 GRE is able to hold to its MSRP. History would tell us that it's not going to be easy.

The value prop could evaporate quickly

Group 1

RX 9070 GRE (Acer Nitro)

AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE software

(Image credit: Future)

Acer has its own Intelligent Space application you can use in conjunction with your Nitro card that will offer up some AI tools you can use with your hardware and potentially suggest performance tweaks, but if I'm honest I really wouldn't bother. AMD's own Adrenalin software is good enough to do all the GPU tweaking you could want.

And hey, if you want some AI shenanigans you can also download a 34 GB AMD AI Bundle along with your drivers. If you want to do some local AI things, you're getting tools such as ComfyUI, Ollama, and LM Studio. They're good ways to get the most out of your local hardware in an AI sense if you want to get away from the token drains of cloud AI.

But let's go back to Adrenalin, because AMD's driver software is way better than the old days, though is not without its quirks. I still get frustrated by the fact the Adrenalin software's shortcuts have a tendency to tread all over existing app's own shortcuts, such as Photoshop and Google Docs, and that the UI isn't the most intuitive to navigate. But it's still functional, and when it comes to tweaking your GPU I've been more than happy to do all of my undervolting with the RX 9070 GRE via Adrenalin alone.

You're also getting a good data overlay in the Adrenalin software, which you can enable via those troubling shortcuts or inside the software itself. That allows you to see exactly what's going on with your CPU and GPU to help you troubleshoot any issues you feel you might be having with your system.

Adrenalin is ace now, and so is FSR4

Software

As if ROG Astral 50-series graphics cards could get any beefier, Asus has just announced a CHONKY anniversary update

Jess Kinghorn — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 15:09:03 +0000

As hardware goes, graphics cards can be on the heftier side. Asus ROG's Astral cards were already a case in point, but the company has just unveiled an anniversary edition well-deserving of the two C's in 'thicc'.

During this year's Computex, Asus announced the ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 Edition 20. The GPU isn't only CHONKY, but makes the most of its expanded surface area with a curved AMOLED display and "a quad-fan design that delivers up to 20% improved airflow." The main drawback is that this big boy graphics card will likely gobble up not only the contents of your wallet, but all of your PCIe slots too.

The Edition 20 series celebrates the ROG (Republic of Gamers) sub-brand's 20th anniversary. The full ROG Edition 20 lineup encompasses a number of other PC components, including a mother board and even an NUC, marking all of the hardware with a black-gold colourway. Asus Chairman Jonney Shih said during his opening speech at Computex 2026, "Twenty years on, we didn't just change the game, we transformed the world around it."

No firm release window for the ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 Edition 20 has yet been announced. So far, Asus has only said, "Many limited-edition items and the exclusive Armoury Crate Edition 20 software theme will be released as limited-time offerings throughout 2026."

Pricing details are also thin on the ground. However, judging by the ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 most recent flirtation with all that glitters—specifically, the $7,000 gold-plated Asus ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 Dhahab OC Edition—it will likely cost a pretty penny. The slightly less powerful Asus ROG Astral RTX 5080 Dhabab Core edition still went for $2,589. With those kinds of numbers, it hardly seems worth saving up my pennies.

Future

This card, along with the other ROG Edition 20 components, is limited edition, just as last year's ROG Matrix RTX 5090 was. There were only 1,000 models of that one, and of course limited supplies tends to mean higher prices.

Still though, the ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 mounted on the corresponding Edition 20 the open-frame ROG GR20 PC case was a thing of beauty to behold on the Computex showfloor. I'd be inclined to consider an open concept set up like this show piece were it not for the fact my home office is an absolute dust magnet—and I'm not made of PCIe slots, either.

AMD announces global rollout of the RX 9070 GRE, which is slower than the standard model for the same original MSRP

James Bentley — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 10:40:11 +0000

With Computex 2026 in full swing, we've already been hit by many stark reminders that the memory crisis is upon us. None more so than AMD announcing the RX 9070 GRE, a less powerful (previously China-exclusive) version of the RX 9070 for the 9070's original MSRP (the 9070 moves up to $619 after launch)

The 9070 GRE has 12 GB of VRAM, 48 compute units, a boost frequency of 2790 MHz, and is recommended for 1440p play. AMD says you can expect 100 fps in Arc Raiders, 144 FPS in Forza Horizon with Ray Tracing, and 86 fps in Horizon Forbidden West at 1440p on Ultra.

The RX 9070, on the other hand, is recommended for 4K and down by AMD. According to its own metrics, you can expect 64 fps in Arc Raiders, 112 fps in Forza Horizon with ray tracing and 63 fps on Horizon Forbidden West at 4K on Ultra.

In our testing of the RX 9070 OC, we found 4K play to be viable in the likes of Warhammer 3 (around 60 fps) and Metro Exodus Enhanced (70 fps), but less so in the likes of Cyberpunk 2077 without a helping hand from FSR.

The GRE comes with 96 ROPs, as opposed to the 128 in the 9070 and 3072 Stream processors (versus 3584). The GRE has 48 ray accelerators and 96 AI accelerators (versus 56 and 112). Both have a 220W power draw and recommend a 650W PSU at a minimum.

(Image credit: AMD)

The GRE cards are nothing new for AMD. They were traditionally less powerful cards sent to the Chinese market, but have since become popular in their own right for their price-to-performance ratio. The 9070 GRE is different to the norm, though, as it shows the extent of the memory crisis. You are getting less GPU for the same amount of dollars (technically, that is. MSRP has sort of gone out of the window over the last few years).

If you want a 9070 GRE for yourself, they're available from June 2 at an MSRP of $549. AMD does point out that, when compared to the RTX 5060 Ti, the GRE performs better in Arc Raiders, Overwatch 2, Battlefield 6, Marvel Rivals, Cyberpunk 2077, and more.

The RTX 5060 Ti originally had an MSRP of $429, but the 16 GB model fetches around the mid $500s, according to our price watch. Whether or not the GRE will be a good deal for gamers will largely depend on the actual price at market, and that will be anyone's guess.

Still, if AMD can offer more options to the market and use up its supply of hardware more efficiently, launching GRE cards worldwide certainly doesn't seem like an awful idea. If we've all got to deal with the memory crisis, companies will need to be smart with their products if they want people to actually use them.

Nvidia announces that a DLSS 4.5 update for Ray Reconstruction is finally on its way, promising better ray-traced and path-traced graphics for 'similar performance' as the old model

Nick Evanson — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 10:26:05 +0000

At this year's Computex event, Nvidia announced something that many PC enthusiasts have been waiting for. No, not its Arm-powered RTX Spark laptop chip, but a forthcoming update for DLSS Ray Reconstruction, one that brings it on par with the rest of the DLSS 4.5 package.

Back in January, Nvidia launched DLSS 4.5, with a significantly upgraded Super Resolution (upscaling) algorithm that uses a transformer model instead of a convolutional neural network to improve visual fidelity at the expense of some performance. At the same time, Dynamic Multi Frame Generation (DMFG) was also announced, but that took a while to finally arrive.

(Image credit: Nvidia)

However, one upgrade was noticeable by its absence, and that was anything new on the Ray Reconstruction (RR) front. This is Nvidia's AI-powered ray tracing denoiser, a system that tidies up ray-traced scenes, but what makes it somewhat unique is that it also runs DLSS Super Resolution at the same time.

As things currently stand, you have one of two choices when playing ray-traced games with DLSS: You can either have DLSS 4.5 transformer upscaling or DLSS Ray Reconstruction; you can't have both. What that means is that you have no way of enjoying the benefits of the newer upscaler, because RR uses an older one that employs a convolutional neural network.

In August, that will no longer be the case, because DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction will make an official appearance in at least 27 games, including Cyberpunk 2077 (naturally), Doom: The Dark Ages, Alan Wake 2, Pragmata, Resident Evil Requiem, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Hogwarts Legacy, and Crimson Desert.

This second-generation RR algorithm not only employs a transformer model for its upscaling stage, but the AI denoiser also leverages a larger training dataset, processing 20% more parameters, to give "improved lighting accuracy, better temporal stability, and clearer motion in ray-traced and path-traced content".

While it'll be great to finally have a denoiser+upscaler that's as good as the rest of the DLSS 4.5 suite, Nvidia has certainly taken a long time to bring it out. Admittedly, it's not like we're utterly swamped with ray-traced games that fully support DLSS, but I think I would have preferred to have seen it before DMFG.

Radeon GPU owners will probably know that AMD also has an AI denoiser, as part of its FSR Redstone project, but so far, there's been no word on when we're going to see that being used in more than just the one game that it's currently employed in (Black Ops 7).

This supply chain Sankey diagram for an Nvidia AI megachip is a handy guide to understanding just how easy it is to ruin the prices of graphics cards

Nick Evanson — Fri, 29 May 2026 10:42:58 +0000

Graphics cards are one of the most powerful components in your gaming PC, and probably the most expensive piece, too. What you might not realise is just how many critical threads there are behind making them, but if you're keen to know more, then one company has produced a visual guide to help you grasp the intricacies of it all.

Business data firm Veridion shared its creation via a post on Reddit, and while it shows the supply chains for making Nvidia's H200 AI megachip, many of these sources are still relevant for the manufacturing of common or garden graphics cards.

The supply chain of an Nvidia H200 chip from r/nvidia

For example, all GeForce RTX 50-series cards sport a GPU that's been fabricated and packaged by TSMC, and the majority of them have GDDR7 VRAM made by Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron (the exception being the RTX 5050, which uses GDDR6, though that's still made by the same companies).

However, it's worth noting that this Sankey diagram is for just the H200 chip. A chart for an entire graphics card would have to include all the suppliers of the printed circuit boards, the electrical components that are mounted on the PCB (resistors, capacitors, video output sockets, etc), as well as everything required for the cooling system. In other words, a supply chain Sankey for, say, a GeForce RTX 5070 Ti would be even more complex.

Every step in the whole chain has a degree of vulnerability to it. If any one of them ran into problems meeting demands, it would potentially impact the output rate of the factory that puts it all together. You might think that the likes of Asus, MSI, or Gigabyte keep vast quantities of components in stock to prevent this from happening, but as I discovered when I visited MSI's motherboard factory, it's nowhere near as much as you might think.

That said, there's not a major lack of graphics cards on shelves right now, so that aspect of the supply chain doesn't appear to be a concern. However, one only needs to look at the current price tags of said cards to see that there's another side to the threads in the supply chain web that's of a far more pressing concern.

(Image credit: Samsung)

I am, of course, talking about what happens when any one supplier suddenly decides to ramp up its prices. We all know that the reason why graphics cards are so ridiculously expensive right now is down to Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron ramping up their GDDR7 price tags, but if key suppliers to TSMC did something similar, the situation would be even worse, as it would increase how much Nvidia has to pay to have its GPUs made.

No guesses as to who that price increase would be passed on to.

Such is the nature of the immense supply chain behind every complex piece of hardware in your gaming PC. When it's all running smoothly and not being squeezed by forces outside of our control, we get affordable, nice goodies. But when a handful of people decide to throw billions of dollars at something that can't spell basic words, it all goes wonky donkey, leaving the world of PC gaming in the lurch.

This RTX 5060 Ti graphics card is just $30 more than an RTX 5060 and it's the best GPU deal I've seen in a long time

Nick Evanson — Thu, 28 May 2026 12:36:56 +0000

The 8 GB version of the new RTX 5060 Ti is a lot cheaper than the 16 GB one, and while the extra VRAM will be useful in the future, it's certainly not worth paying $180 more for it, despite the clear benefits. This is a great little GPU for the money.

Key specs: 4608 shaders | 2617 MHz boost | 8 GB GDDR7

RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB price check: Best Buy $379.99 | Newegg $379.99 | Walmart $379.99 | B&H $394.99 View Deal

If you're looking to get a sensibly priced 1080p/1440p-level graphics card, there's only one clear choice right now: This GeForce RTX 5060 Ti for $380 at Amazon. It's also the same price at Newegg, Best Buy, and Walmart, so you should have no problems picking one up.

What makes this deal stand out is that current GPU prices are pretty grim, but here you're only paying $30 more than you would for an RTX 5060. Yes, it's an 8 GB version, and I'll address that in a moment, but the 16 GB variants start at an absurd $560. It's also the only GeForce RTX 50-series card at MSRP.

Join us on WhatsApp for daily deals, direct to your phone.

You can buy a Radeon RX 9060 XT 8 GB card for less, $360 at Amazon, and while AMD and Nvidia's models are almost perfectly matched in performance, the latter's DLSS 4.5 tips the scales in favor of the RTX 5060 Ti. Not necessarily because the upscaling and frame generation algorithms are better, but simply because more games support DLSS 4.5 than FSR 4.

1 / 3

Gaming performance

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB Palit Dual

RX 9060 XT 8 GB Asus Prime

RTX 5060

020406080

Black Myth Wukong (1080p High) Data
Product	Value
RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB Palit Dual	74 Avg FPS, 62 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT 8 GB Asus Prime	71 Avg FPS, 58 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060	64 Avg FPS, 48 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB Palit Dual

RX 9060 XT 8 GB Asus Prime

RTX 5060

015304560

Cyberpunk 2077 (1080p RT Ultra) Data
Product	Value
RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB Palit Dual	52 Avg FPS, 35 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT 8 GB Asus Prime	41 Avg FPS, 26 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060	46 Avg FPS, 30 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB Palit Dual

RX 9060 XT 8 GB Asus Prime

RTX 5060

0255075100

F1 24 (1080p Ultra high) Data
Product	Value
RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB Palit Dual	90 Avg FPS, 73 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT 8 GB Asus Prime	82 Avg FPS, 66 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060	73 Avg FPS, 39 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB Palit Dual

108

RX 9060 XT 8 GB Asus Prime

111

RTX 5060

109

037.575112.5150

Homeworld 3 (1080p Epic) Data
Product	Value
RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB Palit Dual	108 Avg FPS, 32 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT 8 GB Asus Prime	111 Avg FPS, 63 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060	109 Avg FPS, 53 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB Palit Dual

101

RX 9060 XT 8 GB Asus Prime

RTX 5060

037.575112.5150

Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition (1080p Ultra) Data
Product	Value
RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB Palit Dual	101 Avg FPS, 65 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT 8 GB Asus Prime	93 Avg FPS, 64 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060	87 Avg FPS, 47 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB Palit Dual

RX 9060 XT 8 GB Asus Prime

RTX 5060

020406080

The Talos Principle 2 (1080p Ultra) Data
Product	Value
RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB Palit Dual	69 Avg FPS, 37 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT 8 GB Asus Prime	66 Avg FPS, 35 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060	52 Avg FPS, 34 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB Palit Dual

RX 9060 XT 8 GB Asus Prime

RTX 5060

0255075100

Total War: Warhammer 3 (1080p Ultra) Data
Product	Value
RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB Palit Dual	81 Avg FPS, 59 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT 8 GB Asus Prime	90 Avg FPS, 42 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060	78 Avg FPS, 57 1% Low FPS

When you're clearly getting so much more performance over an RTX 5060, spending $30 is a no-brainer, and I'd be happy to pay just ten bucks more over an RX 9060 XT to have access to the full DLSS suite. The RTX 5060 Ti overclocks quite nicely, too, so with a bit of time and tweaking, you'll be able to squeeze a bit more zap out of the card.

There's nothing you can do about the 8 GB VRAM limit, of course, and there are definitely cases where there is a noticeable gap, in terms of frame rates, between having eight and 16 gigs of video memory.

What that means is that over the years of using that card, there will be an increasing number of games getting released where you'll have to turn down the graphics settings more than you would if you had 16 GB of VRAM. There's no way to avoid this, other than to pay a small fortune for a graphics card that has more memory.

We live in some strange times when an 8 GB RTX 5060 Ti is the best graphics card worth buying right now, but that's the RAMpocalypse for you.

👉Check out all of Amazon's graphics card deals here👈

It looks like Nvidia's AI inference GPU won't see the light of day this year, which could actually be good news for PC gamers

Nick Evanson — Wed, 27 May 2026 15:13:40 +0000

Last September, Nvidia announced a new product to join its all-conquering collection of AI offerings, Rubin CPX. What made this GPU notable was that it was the company's first attempt at making a processor purely for AI inference. However, while Nvidia's Vera CPU and the other Rubin GPU are seemingly racking up the orders, it's all gone very quiet on the CPX front, and that's potentially a brief respite for PC gamers.

Korean publication The Elec drew my attention to this via a short report on the matter, claiming that sources have told it that the whole thing has ground to a halt. "The industry views the project as effectively cancelled," it writes.

The evidence for this is the apparent lack of printed circuit board (PCB) and DRAM module orders, specifically for Rubin CPX installations. Where Vera Rubin, Blackwell, and older AI superchips all use high bandwidth memory (HBM) for the GPU's local storage, because of the bandwidth demands of AI training, CPX uses 128 GB of GDDR7 mounted directly on the PCB, rather than the processor's package.

In any case, no PCB or GDDR7 orders equivalent to those required for a CPX setup strongly suggests that Nvidia has either sidelined the project for the moment or abandoned it entirely. Rubin CPX wasn't expected to be available until the end of this year, but while we're still a good number of months away from the start of the final quarter, you'd think that production would be scaling now, if demand were high.

So what's happened? The most likely cause was Nvidia entering into a $20 billion non-exclusive technology licensing deal with Groq (not to be confused with Elon Musk's Grok). That company's language processing unit (LPU) design is purely for inference, more so than Rubin CPX, and Nvidia said earlier this year that it was working on integrating the LPU into its Rubin platform.

Nvidia's RTX 50-series graphics cards all use GDDR7, bar the RTX 5050. (Image credit: Future)

If you're wondering why I'm even mentioning any of this, when it seems to have nothing to do with PC gaming, it's down to the fact that Groq's LPU doesn't use GDDR7 or even DRAM in general: it's packed with 500 MB of SRAM inside.

Nvidia's Rubin GPU still uses mountains of HBM, of course, but the removal of the need for equally copious amounts of GDDR7 could mean that GeForce RTX 50-series graphics cards won't balloon in price due to VRAM supply constraints.

We'll still be suffering the RAMpocalypse, naturally, because AI and the enormous demand for DRAM and SSDs isn't going anywhere just yet. But in these grim times, I'll take any sliver of hope as good news—simply because the alternative isn't worth contemplating.

Potential DLSS 5 references have been found in the latest Nvidia driver, but it's all gone quiet on the AI image enhancement front

Andy Edser — Wed, 27 May 2026 14:30:05 +0000

I think it's fair to say that Nvidia's DLSS 5 reveal earlier this year didn't go entirely to plan. Or, to put it in stronger terms, it caused a huge amount of internet debate, with voices across the industry weighing in on whether this kind of image-altering AI generation tech had a place in our games.

Hell, it even split the PC Gamer team in half. Anyway, it's all gone quiet on the DLSS 5 front since then, but the latest GeForce Game Ready Driver (610.47) has a few new profile entries that appear to make reference to it (via Videocardz).

The new entries were spotted by Warkratos on the Guru3D forums, and come in the form of three additions: "Enable DLSS NR override", "Enable DLSS NR SL override", and "Override DLSS NR presets."

The presumption here is that the NR designation is a reference to Nvidia's neural rendering tech, and therefore comes in preparation for DLSS 5's eventual release. And no, before you ask, enabling the new entries via Nvidia Profile Inspector does not turn on DLSS 5 in your games. A shame, but thems the breaks.

Other than those aforementioned image quality reveals (and some clarification from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang after the response), we know relatively little about DLSS 5—beyond the fact that it may not be as clever as we initially thought.

(Image credit: Nvidia)

Still, it certainly seems like a potential game-changer in the most literal sense of the term, but I suppose it makes sense that the company would want to keep any further developments under its hat until it's more ready for primetime.

I'd wager that the next time we see something from Nvidia regarding the controversial tech, it'll be a lot more watered down than the version we saw earlier this year. The company has been keen to point out that developers will have creative control over how far the AI enhancements are allowed to go, so perhaps we might have a tamer demo in store sometime in the future.

Computex 2026 begins next week, and Nvidia will be hosting one of the keynotes. While no mention has been made of a DLSS 5 appearance, perhaps we might see something more then. Or, given the version just a few months ago was said to require two RTX 5090s to run, perhaps any further reveal is still a long way off while Nvidia works out the finer details.

DLSS 5 was initially said to be coming in the autumn of this year, but that may have changed in the months since, especially given the hubbub around its initial reception.

All we have is speculation for now, but these entries seem to show that Nvidia is working away in the background on its neural rendering tech, with an eye towards future releases. Fingers crossed it all works out in the end, ey?

007 First Light joins an ever-expanding list of 2026 games without up-to-date AMD FSR or Intel XeSS support

Nick Evanson — Wed, 27 May 2026 13:09:20 +0000

If you're the owner of a recent Nvidia GeForce RTX graphics card, you probably won't have given much thought to the fact that all the big game releases this year support the majority of the DLSS AI technology suite. On the other hand, if it's an AMD Radeon or Intel Arc card in your gaming PC, you're probably wondering why today's games seem to be short-changing you, and for 007 First Light, it's another one to add to the list of 'Where's my FSR 4/XeSS?'

Now that IO Interactive's new Bond adventure is out in the wild, I've finally had the chance to dig into what upscaling and frame generation systems it supports. Well, as Nvidia notes in its latest GeForce blog, you get DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution and Multi Frame Generation.

IO Interactive

The game's options interface is somewhat clunky, but you can easily switch between DLAA for pixel-perfect anti-aliasing or scale the frame all the way down with Ultra Performance upscaling.

That's not the case with AMD FSR, though. You get Quality, Balanced, and Performance modes only: no native AA or Ultra Perf to be seen. Oh, and no FSR Frame Generation, either. More importantly for RX 9000-series owners, you don't get FSR 4, just version 3.1.5. And Intel's XeSS is notable by its complete absence.

007 First Light isn't the only 2026 game to have such limited options. Forza Horizon 6 does have a decent spread of FSR and XeSS upscaling modes, including Native AA, but it too is only FSR 3.1.5, and there's no sign of AMD or Intel's frame gen algorithms.

Pragmata does have FSR 4.1 but no frame gen, and no XeSS whatsoever. Resident Evil: Requiem is a little better with the full suite of FSR (3 and 4) and DLSS 4 (4.5 via the Nvidia App), but it's another game without XeSS support.

And let's not even begin to mention being able to use path tracing or any kind of AI-based ray tracing denoiser on an AMD or Intel GPU. Sure, the latter doesn't have the high-end hardware nor the software to cover both, but the latest Radeon cards certainly do (though AMD still hasn't released its FSR Redstone denoiser yet).

The more conspiratorial among us may think that this is some kind of deliberate plot by Nvidia, contractually requiring developers to exclude implementing competitors' technologies. Well, you can doff your tinfoil hats, because that's not the case.

"Nvidia does not and will not block, restrict, discourage, or hinder developers from implementing competitor technologies in any way," says Keita Iida, vice president of developer relations. "We provide the support and tools for all game developers to easily integrate DLSS if they choose and even created Nvidia Streamline to make it easier for game developers to add competitive technologies to their games."

Wherefore art though, oh AMD FSR Ray Regeneration? (Image credit: AMD)

The decision not to fully support the latest version of FSR or XeSS, incorporating the full set of performance-enhancing features, is one that's entirely down to the developers. IO Interactive and Playground Games chose to skip FSR 4 and AMD's frame gen in 007 First Light and Forza Horizon 6, respectively.

One could argue that Nvidia's sheer dominance of the discrete graphics card market means that it makes sense for a game studio to only target the most common GPU feature set, but if you've already done some of the work to implement FSR or XeSS, then why not the full suite?

Yes, FSR 3.1 frame generation isn't the best out there, with every other system available producing noticeably superior results. But I'd argue that it's better to let gamers choose for themselves as to what they want to use; if they'd prefer to have superior frame rates over perfect graphics, that's fine. Just give them the option.

As things currently stand, only one group of PC gamers has that freedom, and it's the RTX crowd.

Taiwanese buyers of Gigabyte's new RTX 5090 can register to receive a 'gold item', because nothing says wealth like Nvidia's most expensive gaming GPU

Andy Edser — Wed, 27 May 2026 12:13:57 +0000

The RTX 5090 is many things. Powerful, very much so. Large, also true. Expensive? Most definitely. If you've got the cash to flash, though, why not throw some 999 pure gold into the mix?

That's the limited promotion Gigabyte is running for its 40th anniversary edition Aorus GeForce RTX 5090 Infinity 32G variant in Taiwan. Taiwanese buyers who purchase the model during the "Infinity" event can register to receive 1 gram of the shiny stuff, which appears to come in a handy dandy display case (via Videocardz).

I guess because the RTX 5090 sits in your rig, where others might not notice it. A little see-thru plastic box containing one of the world's most luxury-defining materials, though? Yes, that should show your mates just how committed you are to the ultra-high-end lifestyle.

Prospective gold-receivers need to show an invoice for the card dated between May 25 and June 7 of this year, so if you're reading this in Taiwan, the clock has already begun to tick. The promo terms describe a "gold item"—but the page above lists it as "1 gram of 999 pure gold" (via machine translation), so it's not clear if you're getting a lump in the middle of the display, or something gold-plated and etched in the design itself.

And as for the GPU? Well, it looks pretty sweet if you ask me. It's got twin fans in a moulded, jet-engine style configuration, an almost-tasteful level of RGB, and a max boost clock of 2730 MHz—323 MHz more than the Founders Edition card. It's also listed on Taiwanese websites for around NT$165,000, the equivalent of roughly $5,250. Bargain.

An Asus RTX 5090 variant coated in gooooooooold. (Image credit: Asus)

If you're really into your gold (and your mega GPUs), though, this Gigabyte variant has some serious competition. Who can forget the outrageous Asus ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 Dhahab OC Edition, a $7,000 GPU replete with 6.5 grams of gold plate?

Or if you're not feeling so flush, how about the $2,500+ RTX 5080 edition? It turns out there are options for those with a penchant for the shiny, the truly 4K-ready, and the deep of pocket. Still, happy 40th anniversary, Gigabyte. Will a traditional card and a box of chocolates do?

The Nvidia Control Panel is no more, an ex-control panel, kicked the bucket, run down the curtain and joined the choir invisib... okay, it's being retired

Andy Edser — Wed, 27 May 2026 10:26:55 +0000

We are gathered here today in solemn reverence to celebrate our old friend, the Nvidia Control Panel. Okay, so it's not actually dead. Nvidia has announced its "retirement", but we all know what that means. Yep, it's a short walk and a sharp drop, and I'm going to miss the cantankerous old rogue.

"After 20 years of dedicated service, the classic Nvidia Control Panel is officially retiring for Game Ready and Studio Drivers. For Nvidia RTX Pro users, the Nvidia Control Panel will continue to be supported until we have migrated professional features to the Nvidia app," says the green team in the release notes for the latest GeForce Game Ready 610.47 driver.

"Existing installs of the Nvidia Control Panel will remain on users’ systems, unless they perform a clean installation, and users who still need the Nvidia Control Panel can continue to download it from the Microsoft Store, but we won’t be adding features, fixes, or other changes."

So, there's a life support option if you never perform a clean install, or indeed if you feel like resurrecting the old beast from its eternal slumber via the Microsoft Store.

That being said, the writing's been on the wall for a while now. The Nvidia App is the new hotness, and Nvidia says it's got all the modern functionality of the Control Panel while "running faster and more efficiently."

(Image credit: Nvidia)

And in that, the company has a decent point. While I'm pretty sure the Nvidia App can't do everything the Control Panel can, as someone who interacts with it on a daily basis, I can say it's pretty good. A little charmless, perhaps. But otherwise, it's a perfectly decent interface between you, your games, and your graphics card.

I do have a couple of thoughts, though. For one, what about the millions of performance and fix guides permeating the internet that start off with the phrase "Open the Nvidia Control Panel, and adjust XYZ"? There are likely equivalent settings in the NV app, but for beginner users, it can still be a cavalcade of esoteric labels that don't immediately describe their purpose.

And two, the Nvidia App can be quite an online-focused affair in a way the old Control Panel was not. Besides the greyed-out checkbox in the Privacy settings labelled "required data" (something Nvidia explains is "Data that is necessary for Nvidia App to operate and cannot be switched off"), it can also lag quite badly on an unstable connection. In my personal experience, anyway.

(Image credit: Nvidia)

Still, change comes for us all. I'll miss the Control Panel's classic rotating 3D image preview, the charmingly old-school HDCP menu that shows a rendering of an ancient Nvidia GPU plugged into what looks suspiciously like a plasma TV, and of course, the old Global Settings and Program Settings tabs with all of their many intricacies.

But is it progress? Perhaps. You can pry the Windows Control Panel from my cold, dead hands, though. That old clunker simply refuses to die, although I don't think it'll be that long before I write a similar obituary.

The wind of change blows straight into the face of time, or something along those lines. Rest easy now, brave soldier. Your watch has ended, and I salute your service.

If this breakdown of the full cost of producing your favourite graphics card is accurate, then prices for certain GPUs are going to make 64 GB DDR5 kits look cheap

Nick Evanson — Fri, 22 May 2026 13:04:14 +0000

Every week, I search through all of the major online retailers for the best graphics card deals, hunting down the lowest prices for the latest Arc, GeForce, and Radeon GPUs. Although a handful of models are wildly over their MSRP, many are still within an acceptable margin above it. However, according to a breakdown of the total cost of making a graphics card, certain GPUs are about to get a lot more expensive.

That's according to the figures presented by Igor's Lab, and while the report focuses on the current price and production cost of the Radeon RX 9070 XT for the European market, the same circumstances apply across all cards and sectors.

The primary reason why we've seen significant price hikes for certain graphics cards is, of course, the heavily constricted supply of DRAM modules, better known as the RAMpocalypse. AMD and Intel use GDDR6 across all their graphics cards, while Nvidia uses GDDR7 for almost all RTX 50-series models (the RTX 5050 being the exception).

These are manufactured by the same companies that produce High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) for AI data centers, and since the growth of those has exponentially increased in recent times, demand for memory chips, of any kind, is significantly outstripping the supply. However, that's only one element of the total production cost for a graphics card.

You need to add in the cost of the GPU itself, and since all of them in the latest cards are made by TSMC—which has increased wafer prices—vendors are having to pay AMD, Intel, and Nvidia more for them. Then you've got all the other components and materials used in the entire graphics card, before you come to the cost of putting it all together and then packaging it.

And there's more: Every graphics card is manufactured in Asia, predominantly China and Taiwan. Therefore, they need to be shipped and distributed for sale in other countries, so freight costs, import duties and other taxes and insurance have to be included in the final price tag.

Graphics card vendors also need to cover the cost of research & development, marketing and advertising, warranty claims, credit, currency conversion, and so on. Lastly, and most importantly to them, they need to make a sufficient profit from it all. Inflation naturally causes all these aspects to rise in price over time, but the volatile nature of geopolitics and conflicts throws in a variety of spanners into the works.

The type of graphics card most affected by all of this is the high-end model, due to its increased number of costly materials and components, especially VRAM. Hence, the likes of the RTX 5070 Ti, RTX 5080, and RTX 5090 are currently sporting minimum price tags that are 20%, 29%, and 90% over their respective launch MSRPs.

However, the RX 9070 and 9070 XT are currently only 9% and 17% overpriced (in the US, at least), and Igor believes that this won't remain so, once inventory levels of old stock eventually get replaced.

One GPU plus eight VRAM chips equals a whole lot of money (Image credit: Future)

"The RX 9070 XT is currently less of a typical product in price comparisons and more of an indicator of a delayed price surge. This is precisely why the card still seems relatively attractive in May 2026, even though it's objectively not cheap. The real news, therefore, isn't that graphics cards have become more expensive. The real news is that part of the price increase may not have fully reached store shelves yet."

The global supply of memory chips isn't going to improve any time soon (if anything, it could actually get worse, as the push for new AI servers gets ever more frantic), and there is no sign of any positive changes in import policies or fuel prices on the horizon. Paying $700 for an RX 9070 XT could well become a thing of the past very soon.

The latest 100% Chinese-made GPU may still lag behind an RTX 3060 but it could be the start of something big in graphics cards

Nick Evanson — Thu, 21 May 2026 16:37:31 +0000

If you want to buy a graphics card for your gaming desktop PC, you'll be selecting the GPU that powers it from just one of three manufacturers: AMD, Intel, or Nvidia. What you might not know is that there are two more options, though neither is really worth considering. Not yet, at least, because Lisuan's new LX 7G100 is perhaps the first 100% Chinese-made graphics card capable of running a modern DirectX 12 game.

YouTube tech channel 潮玩客 (chaowanke) is the first to have its hands on the Lisuan graphics card (via Videocardz), and in the review, the team put the GPU through a raft of gaming benchmarks, pitching it against an Arc B580, GeForce RTX 3060 and RTX 4060, and a Radeon RX 6600 XT.

The overall results are perhaps not entirely unexpected, with the 7G100 falling well short of the mark. For example, in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, at 1080p Medium, the Lisuan graphic card averages 71 fps, with 1% lows of 46 fps. In contrast, the slowest of the western trio, the RX 6600 XT, hit 159 fps on average.

It's a similar story across all of the games that chaowanke tested, and the only test in which the 7G100 came close to the competition was in 3DMark's FireStrike and Steel Nomad, where it narrowly edged out the RTX 3060. Other than them, it was notably slower. Off the top of my head, I'd say the performance figures are more akin to a GeForce GTX 1660, but my memory is wobbly at the best of times.

Anyway, while that might seem like a miserable showing, there's definitely promise in the GPU architecture. The chip contains no support for hardware ray tracing or matrix units with which to accelerate AI upscaling, but it was able to run modern games with nary a hiccup, which is a considerable improvement over China's other home-grown gaming GPU, the Moore Threads MTT S80.

Unfortunately, Lisuan is caught between a rock and a hard place with pricing. The performance suggests it should be dirt cheap, but if the LX 7G100 was sold for peanuts, the company would have little return for investing in the development of its GPUs. This is almost certainly why it has actually pitched its 'Founders Edition' card at roughly 3,300 yuan, which equates to a fraction over $485.

The Lisuan is miles behind the old RTX 3060 in games but it does keep up in some benchmarks (Image credit: Future)

It knows it won't sell very many, so the only way to generate some decent income is to charge a pretty penny for a card that's of only interest to GPU enthusiasts and collectors. While Moore Threads took a long time to get its act together concerning drivers, Lisuan has done things properly: Get the software right now, bring better chips to market later.

None of the big three GPU makers is going to be worried about what Lisuan has achieved, but none of their first graphics cards was very good either. China's PC industry has made great strides in recent years, especially in areas such as memory, SSDs, peripherals, and monitors, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if the graphics card market looks decidedly different by the end of the decade.

Another quarter, another quarterly update from Nvidia that doesn't mention gaming

Jacob Fox — Thu, 21 May 2026 13:43:43 +0000

In a tale as old as Blackwell, Nvidia has managed to make it through yet another quarterly report with nary a mention of gaming. Well, okay, there was one mention of gaming, but that was basically just to say it's now being considered subsumed under—you guessed it—an AI segment of the business. Along with the other segment which is, er... also AI.

"We have 2 market platforms," says CFO Colette Kress. "Datacentre and edge computing... Edge computing highlights devices for agentic and physical AI. Including PCs, gaming consoles, workstations, AI RAN base stations, robotics, and automotive."

Heck, graphics cards for gaming don't even get a specific mention—they'll come under "PCs", I assume. And the "gaming consoles" the company mentions is presumably refers to the Nintendo Switch 2, which does feature an Nvidia GPU.

If we look to Nvidia's earnings report, we can see that edge computing revenue totaled $6.4 billion (up 29% year-on-year), compared to a record $75.2 billion in datacentre revenue. With GPUs for PC gamers presumably making up just a small part of that $6.4 billion figure, I suppose it's easy to see why Nvidia would drop all mention of them. Especially considering this is an earnings report talking to investors and the city primarily, and they only care about one thing, AI monies.

Still, it doesn't hurt any less, does it? We are your origin, Jensen, damn it!

It also doesn't seem like the company is expecting things to change anytime soon, given Nvidia EVP and CFO Colette Kress says "demand for AI infrastructure continues to expand at an unprecedented pace." All steam ahead on the AI train seems to be the guiding line.

It makes sense from a business perspective, and just by being a small part of the company's revenue doesn't mean it will abandon PC gaming or anything like that. It's just a question of whether the PC gaming division will get the attention it deserves or whether it will be left in the wake of AI acceleration. Not to be too much of a doomer about all this, but if DLSS 5 is anything to go by, I'm not holding my breath.

Advanced Shader Delivery banishes long loads and shader stutter on first time launch, but only for certain games and there are a number of other caveats too

Jess Kinghorn — Mon, 18 May 2026 11:45:01 +0000

I've got good news for many folks gaming on a Team Red rig: Microsoft's Advanced Shader Delivery is now supported by AMD RDNA 3, 3.5, and 4 GPUs. In other words, graphics cards from the Radeon RX 7000, 8000, and 9000 series now support this tech, via the latest Adrenalin drivers.

Advanced Shader Delivery was first announced back in 2025, exclusively for the ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X handhelds. To put it very simply, rather than your game of choice taking its time to compile and cache shaders the first time you launch it, this tech does all of that before you ever hit 'play'—but only so long as you're downloading games via the Xbox app.

Microsoft previously explained it had "partnered with teams across Xbox and at AMD to precompile [shader] data and distribute it at download." If you fancy a more technical deep dive than this, the Unreal Engine tech blog has the goods. Now, PC gamers running Windows on AMD hardware, who are also Xbox Insiders, can enjoy the same freedom from long load times and stuttering on a selection of 'key titles' that support the tech.

A number of recent releases benefit from this rollout to laptops and desktops with discrete AMD GPUs. According to the DirectX Developer Blog, a close partnership with the Forza Horizon 6 development team means that the game "showcases the advantage of ASD by dramatically improving loading times by 95%" from day one. The team claims that, on a machine with an AMD Radeon RX 7600 GPU and an AMD Ryzen 7 5800 CPU, ASD reduces the game's first-time load from 1.5 minutes to 4 seconds.

This latest rollout is part of a 'public preview' for Xbox Insiders, and not every game supports the tech. A full list of titles available via Xbox Wire here; besides Forza 6, supported title highlights include Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Silent Hill f, and Ninja Gaiden 4. In-game, you'll see a tiny ‘Precompiled shaders installed’ message in the launch window of supported titles—but, much like the faster load times, it's very much 'blink and you'll miss it'.

(Image credit: Konami )

The DirectX Dev blog post concludes with a 'call to action,' pointing game devs towards another post that "details how you can leverage the latest AgilitySDK to take advantage of the benefits of ASD." There are also plans to bring ASD to more devices, including an independent hardware vendor kit. Whether that means there are plans to bring ASD to GPUs besides anything on Team Red remains to be seen, though.

There's also currently no word on whether we'll see the streamlining shader tech come to Steam, Epic, or GOG. Presumably, any fresh implementation of the tech would still need to be tied to Microsoft's ecosystem, at least for the time being. Otherwise, freedom from long, first-time loads and shader stutter is why I'm happy to be a console gaming double agent.

I really hope you weren't considering a GPU upgrade this year, as Nvidia may raise the price of the already pricey RTX 5090 by as much as $300

Jess Kinghorn — Fri, 15 May 2026 15:49:54 +0000

As far as the memory shortage is concerned, we're yet to see much light at the end of the tunnel. Case in point, there's mutterings about yet another hardware price spike, and this time it may mean the already pretty expensive Nvidia RTX 5090 GPU could go up in price by as much as $300.

To be clear, no consumer-facing increase has yet been announced. However, a source on Board Channels reports that add-in-card (AIC) partners in China have been warned of a 2,000 RMB (or $300) price increase. If true, this increase will likely trickle down into a sharp uptick that PC gamers will feel as well. Reportedly, the price increase affects both the RTX 5090 and its China-exclusive RTX 5090D V2 variant, which enjoys 24GB of GDDR7 memory (via VideoCardz).

For comparison's sake, the model of the RTX 5090 available to those with the cash in the UK and US enjoys 32 GB GDDR7. With that much memory, rumours of a price increase are far from surprising, especially as the PS5 has already seen a significant price increase for similar reasons. The price of the Nintendo Switch 2 will also increase later this year. The Steam Machine is still hoping to launch this year, too, but who knows at what price amid the memory supply crisis. At the very least, there's no word yet on similar price increases for Nvidia's other 50-series cards.

Current pricing for the RTX 5090 isn't really in the ballpark of affordable to begin with. If you've been keeping up with Nick's graphics card price watch, you'll note that a reasonably priced RTX 5090 hasn't featured in some time. You may also have seen Best Buy asking for an eye-watering $5090 for the high-end GPU. That's a particularly egregious example, though the MSRP $1,999 card has been venturing closer to the $3,500 mark since the start of the year.

Still, if you've been looking to upgrade your rig recently, then you don't need me to tell you how much the memory supply crisis has impacted component pricing—though, those still a little unclear on the situation should give our Jacob's RAMpocalypse explainer a read.

(Image credit: Nvidia)

The short version is that the AI industry is hungry for memory chips, causing an outsized demand that leaves the capacity of even major memory manufacturers like SK hynix at 'essentially zero right now'. Like many other major players, SK hynix has various capacity-expanding projects in the works, though these likely won't have a meaningful impact on supply until 2028 at the earliest.

Limited supply means higher prices, with HP recently warning that memory now makes up around 35% of the cost of its PCs. Worse still, the limited supply situation has also given rise to pretty convincing counterfeit DDR5 modules as well. Alas, running a gaming PC without RAM or a GPU isn't really an option—unless playing Snake in the BIOS is your idea of a good time.

If Subnautica 2 won't let you select 4K resolution, there's a remarkably easy fix

Andy Edser — Fri, 15 May 2026 10:45:14 +0000

Subnautica 2 is here, and its sales figures are already impressive. However, it's important to bear in mind that it's an early access game (albeit a very good one) and that bugs are definitely present. For example, the game can refuse to provide a 4K resolution option, even if it's running on a machine with a 4K monitor.

Have no fear, though, because the fix appears to be very simple. Select fullscreen in the graphics settings menu, which will default your resolution to 1080p, hit apply, and then restart the game.

Bing bang bosh, a 4K option magically appears. If you've got the monitor to handle it, that is. I've personally tested this method alongside our Rob, who was also plagued with this particular issue, and it works perfectly on both of our machines.

Gaming PCs can be finicky beasts, though, so some have taken to Reddit with alternative methods. One suggestion is to set your UI scale to 100% in the Windows 11 display settings menu, which also apparently fixes the bug.

Another redditor suggests a slightly more involved method. Reach_or_Throw says that accessing the game's .exe file properties menu and navigating to the Compatibility tab, before checking the box in the high DPI settings marked "Override high DPI scaling behaviour", also fixes the issue after a restart.

Comment from r/subnautica

If that doesn't work you could always take a dive into the config settings, which are stored in:

C:\Users\[name]\AppData\Local\Subnautica2\Saved\Config\WinGDK\GameUserSettings.ini

There are entries marked "LastUserConfirmedDesiredScreen" for width and height that you can manually set, too. Remember to save afterwards, and hopefully that does the trick if all else fails.

However, the simple fix listed above seems to squash the bug on our systems, so hooray for that. Subnautica 2 certainly has its quirks, but otherwise it's been a relatively smooth ride in our testing so far. It even runs pretty well, especially if you're prepared to drop a few settings from Epic to High for a mega frame rate boost.

Early access often leads to troubled waters, but at least these stormy seas seem to be easily quelled. I've run out of water gags now, so I'd best get back to it. Hopefully, it's all plain sailing from here.

Nvidia's solution to the AI energy problem is mini data centers next to local power substations and, of course, selling even more GPUs

Jeremy Laird — Thu, 14 May 2026 14:21:04 +0000

That something as superficially straight forward as plain old energy supply is turning out to be a major limiting factor in the AI revolution is one of those delightful unexpected quirks that keeps us all on our toes. Who'd have thought in just a few short years the world would be spooling up more GPUs than the power grid can cope with?

One possible partial solution, apparently, is moving those GPUs nearer to the actual power supply. This is something Nvidia and a gang of collaborators plan to pilot later this year in the form of roughly 25 small data centers located next to power substations in the USA.

Now, at first glance, you might think this is a bit of a zero sum game. How would putting GPUs nearer the actual power supply reduce the amount of power required?

Nope, it's not reduced losses from shorter cables or anything like that. Indeed, it's not about reducing power consumption at all. Instead, the idea is load balancing.

In other words, across a group of substations power load will vary, some experiencing heightened demand, others less so. What Nvidia and its partners plan to do is ramp up compute at the small data centers near substations under lesser load while trimming it back at stations under heavier load.

Your local substation stuffed full of these could be interesting, buy sadly it'll be AI chips. (Image credit: Nvidia)

It also allows spare capacity of, say, five megawatts, available from a local substations to be used that wouldn't normally be even close to sufficient for larger data centers. “There are 55,000 substations in the U.S., and if they each have five, 10, or 20 megawatts of spare capacity, that number adds up pretty fast,” says Marc Spieler, senior director of energy at Nvidia.

Call me a cynic, but it's easy to see how Nvidia thinks this is a super idea. After all, it inherently involves building even more GPUs than you'd normally need for a given level of compute performance from a large monolithic data center. All just to build in the redundancy required to be able to spool up some of the smaller data centers while winding down others.

In short, it's funny how just about every solution when it comes to AI involves Nvidia selling even more GPUs. Kerching!

Anywho, according to the EPRI (Electric Power Research Institute), data centers could be guzzling up to 17% of US electricity generation by 2030, more than double current usage. So something will have to be done to accommodate that huge spike in power consumption. Likely the only certainly is that whatever the solution, it'll involve more Nvidia GPUs.

AMD bringing FSR 4.1 ML-powered upscaling to RX 7000 series in July, RX 6000 series in 2027

Jacob Ridley — Thu, 14 May 2026 14:19:28 +0000

It's been a long time coming but AMD has announced it is bringing FSR Upscaling 4.1 to 7000/6000 series graphics cards.

In a tweet, the company's GM of computing and graphics and VP, Jack Huynh, said it will roll out FSR 4.1 on 7000-series cards (RDNA 3) this July.

Anyone with a 6000-series card (RDNA 2) will have to wait a while longer. FSR 4.1 will be available sometime in "early 2027".

As a lifelong gamer, I spend a lot of time thinking about how to push gaming experiences forward across CPUs, GPUs, software, and games.My team and I have been working hard to evolve @AMD FSR 4 and bring it to more cards.We power over 1 billion gaming devices worldwide. It’s… pic.twitter.com/91Z3vXpQapMay 14, 2026

The company had previously limited support for the newer, smarter upscaling technology to the latest 9000-series graphics cards. It harnesses machine learning, similar to Nvidia's DLSS, to improve results. Specifically, the version currently available on the 9000 series (RDNA 4) is designed for FP8 support on RDNA 4's 2nd Generation AI Accelerators.

The 1st Generation AI Accelerators found in RDNA 3 support INT8 (8-bit integer), and not FP8 (8-bit floating point). AMD also introduced INT8 support in the RDNA 2 compute unit. The lack of FP8 support does not preclude FSR 4.1 from working on these cards, though, as Sony's PSSR upscaling technology was confirmed by Mark Cerny to be based on AMD's tech and use INT8 instead.

PSSR and FSR 4.1 are not identical, but through this, it was shown to be possible to run FSR Upscaling 4.1 INT8 on older AMD graphics cards, too. AMD actually published the source code for FSR 4 INT8 onto Github, which was quickly snapped up by modders, compiled into a dll, and then used it to enable FSR 4 on older graphics cards.

So, essentially, modders beat AMD to the punch. The lack of FSR 4 support on older cards has been a sore spot ever since.

(Image credit: AMD)

Now AMD is righting that wrong, if only a little slowly. Huynh says of the move: "I’m grateful to our fans. Your enthusiasm and ideas inspire us to keep pushing gaming forward."

Also worth noting that AMD FSR Upscaling 4.1 is not the same as FSR Redstone. These updates pertain to the former, not the latter as a whole. FSR Redstone is the name given to the full suite of ML-powered technologies, including Upscaling, Frame Generation, Ray Regeneration, and Radiance Caching. The full ML-powered suite is only supported on RDNA 4, though you can use a different Frame Generation tech without ML on older cards.

It's tough to get your head around all the codenames and versions at times—classic AMD.

Even if you have an RTX 5090, I don't recommend using ray tracing in Forza Horizon 6. Not because of the performance hit, simply because it's just not worth using

Nick Evanson — Thu, 14 May 2026 12:05:00 +0000

These past few days, I've been testing Forza Horizon 6 across various gaming PCs, monitor resolutions, settings, and whatnot. Overall, everything is peachy—the game looks and runs very well, even on older hardware, and you don't have to lean on upscaling or frame generation to get a decent frame rate. But there's one setting that has left me somewhat disappointed, even though it's an option I tend to enable wherever possible.

As you've already picked up from the headline above, it's the game's ray tracing options. There are two specifically: one for reflections and the other for global illumination. They both work as intended, producing pixel-perfect lighting and images in shiny surfaces.

Extreme preset

Extreme+RT preset

Use the image comparison thingy above to see what I mean. On the left, FH6 is using the Extreme preset, which sets every option bar one (reflection quality) to its maximum value. On the right, it's the same preset but with ray tracing being used.

My issue with both is that neither lifts the game's visuals to a level worth using them. Ray-traced reflections are definitely better-looking than screen-space ones, which typically pop in and look a bit odd.

The thing is, most of the time, you're hammering past the scenery at such a rate of knots that you barely have a moment's notice to take it all in, and the flaws of screen space reflections are gone from view before your brain really registers that something is amiss.

That's not the case for ray-traced global illumination (RTGI), which should matter everywhere, but the option in Forza Horizon 6 just feels very... meh. I suspect that this is in part due to the nature of the game world. It's 'open world' in the genre sense, but it's also 'open' in the sense that having buildings, objects, and the environment in general being all correctly lit doesn't really stand out, because you can't really get near to them

However, this doesn't explain why Forza Horizon 6's RTGI implementation scrubs out details on surfaces in some cases. Just check out the doorway area to see what I mean.

Normally, I'm the kind of PC gamer who will twizzle every graphics knob to the maximum setting, and then experiment with upscaling and frame generation to get the performance I want. With an RTX 5090, at 4K with DLSS Quality, the difference between the Extreme and Extreme+RT presets is roughly 36%, in terms of frame rate loss.

This video compares Forza Horizon 6 with maximum graphics settings but no ray tracing (left) against the same configuration but with ray tracing (right)

That's not a trivial hit, but it's not a massive one either, and easily recoupable with a touch more upscaling, and it disappears altogether with frame generation. But I'm not happy with how RTGI looks in Forza Horizon 6, and the screen space reflections don't bother me, so all my post-testing driving in the game has been without ray tracing enabled, despite having the hardware to cope with it all.

Still, it makes a change from having a setting that gives you prettier graphics but then swallows up half of your performance, forcing you to lean on frame generation to get something approaching a modern PC gaming frame rate. You might find it all very nice to use, and if that's the case, you'll be pleased to know that at lower settings/resolutions, the ray tracing options are very accessible.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a dinky minivan to hoon around Tokyo. I want to see if I get two wheels off the ground mid-corner. Wish me luck.

Intel's Big Battlemage Arc Pro B70 GPU benchmarked in games, ends up bang-on Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB performance

Jeremy Laird — Tue, 12 May 2026 13:41:27 +0000

At last the mystery is over. Just how good is Intel's Big Battlemage GPU at gaming? According to the first round of comprehensive benchmarks, we're talking RTX 5060 Ti performance.

Yep, the Intel Arc Pro B70 has been benched and the results are pretty much as expected, disappointing and instructive, all at the same time.

If your home address in the last year or so has been No 1, Under Rock Avenue, allow me to recap. The Intel Arc Pro B70 uses the Big Battlemage GPU, otherwise codenamed G31.

It's the larger sibling to the G21 GPU as seen in the Intel Arc B580, Intel's second generation of graphics architecture, itself known variously as Battlemage or Xe2. And to the best of our knowledge, it was designed for gaming. But it won't ever be sold for that task.

Instead, Intel loaded B31 up with 32 GB of VRAM and is serving it up as a relatively low cost card for running local AI models, where "low cost" in this context means about $1,000 bucks.

In most games, the B70 is about bang-on RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB performance according to PCGamesHardware's numbers. (Image credit: PCGamesHardware)

And yet the tantalising question remains, how good would G31 have been at gaming? And now we have an answer. Or at least as close to an answer as we're likely to get.

German website PCGamesHardware has run the Arc Pro B70 through its paces in a whole raft of games. And the results are pretty clear. In traditional raster gaming, it's near-as-dammit identical to an Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB board.

Enable ray tracing or path tracing and it falls a fair bit behind the RTX 5060 Ti. In other words, it's definitely not the RTX 5070 killer—or at least RTX 5070 close competitor—we'd been hoping for.

So far, that's the "as expected" and "disappointed" bits ticked off. Yes, we were previously hoping for RTX 5070 grunt once, but more recently expectations were trimmed down to RTX 5060 levels and, disappointingly, that's where G31 has landed.

The "instructive" bit lands in terms of understanding why G31 never got released as a gaming GPU. RTX 5060 Ti performance isn't terrible. But that only scans at a certain price point.

And here's the thing. G31 is a pretty big GPU. It measures 368 mm2 using a TSMC N5-class production node. The RTX 5060 Ti? It's based on the GB206 GPU, which comes in at just 181 mm2 courtesy of a similar TSMC node. And smaller chips are much cheaper chips.

Even perfect performance scaling based on the Arc B580 wouldn't make the G31 GPU competitive. (Image credit: Future)

In short, the RTX 5060 TI will be dramatically cheaper to make. To put those numbers into further context, the GB205 chip in the RTX 5070 only measures 263 mm2. Even the RTX 5080's GPU, GB203, is only very slightly larger than G31 at 378 mm2.

So, yeah, that's RTX 5080 GPU-sized silicon with RTX 5060 Ti performance. Not great. Little more needs to be said regarding Intel's decision not to pitch it as a gaming GPU, albeit it's all testament to how brutally efficient Nvidia's GPUs are.

The one possible caveat is that presumably Intel hasn't leant that hard into optimising drivers for G31, so you'd think there was some performance left on the table.

However, looking at PCGamesHardware's numbers, even a best case scenario for G31 wouldn't get the job done. Why? Well, G31 has 32 Xe cores to G21's 20. That's 60% more cores.

According to the benchmarks, G31 is 34% faster than G21 in raster gaming, while the RTX 5070 is 87% faster. Even with perfect scaling then, which was always unlikely, G31 would be quite a bit slower than an RTX 5070, let alone the more comparable, in terms of die size, RTX 5080.

Better drivers would never close that gap. So, the G31 chip really is a non-starter as a gaming GPU. It's simply too big and expensive to be remotely relevant. The technical reasons are a story for another day. But in the meantime, it's all a bit of a pity, isn't it?

AMD reportedly planning a new budget graphics card with a surprising number of cores

Jacob Fox — Tue, 12 May 2026 09:31:15 +0000

How's about some positive whispers from the hardware grapevine amidst the relentless talk of increasing prices? Admittedly these whispers are not quite as positive or exciting as a new mid-range GPU might be, but the word on the street is that we'll soon be seeing a new low-end card in the form of the AMD Radeon RX 9050.

According to VideoCardz, it has received information about the graphics card, and that includes not just information about its existence but also its specs—although it notes thes are "preliminary and only single-sourced". On this front, things are quite strange, as it will share the same Stream Processor (SP) count as the RX 9060 XT, not RX 9060.

	RX 9050*	RX 9060	RX 9060 XT
Stream Processors	2,048*	1,792	2,048
Game clock	1,920 MHz*	2,400 MHz	2,530 MHz
Boost clock	2,600 MHz*	2,990 MHz	3,130 MHz

*Rumoured

The RX 9050 will apparently have the same Navi 44 GPU as you'll find in both the RX 9060 and RX 9060 XT, but it will have the latter's full 2,048 cores. The RX 9060, which we might expect the RX 9050 to ape, uses the same GPU but has 1,792 cores.

The low-end sacrifice seemingly comes in the form of clock speed, as VideoCardz's information has it that the RX 9050 will be rated a few-hundred MHz lower than both the RX 9060 and RX 9060 XT. That goes for both game clock and boost clock, with the former being a more vague estimate at how the GPU will likely run during workloads such as gaming.

AMD could be trying to make use of a surplus of Navi 44 chips that are up to scratch when it comes to cores, just like the RX 9060 XT, but don't quite make the cut for an RX 9060 or RX 9060 XT when it comes to clock speeds. These would be ones that for whatever reason can't reach the latter GPUs' higher clock speeds and remain cool and stable.

It could also in part be strategic if there's simply room in the market for a lower-end GPU. It'll be interesting to see how these RX 9050 GPUs (assuming this leak is legit) overclock, undervolt, or whether some of them could push up towards RX 9060 clock speeds with a BIOS swap.

(Image credit: Future)

The card is, of course, expected to have just 8 GB of GDDR6 memory, and this will run over a 128-bit memory bus. The memory bandwidth will reportedly be 288 GB/s and speed will be 18 Gbps, both matching the RX 9060. I don't even think the avid anti-8 GB crowd will complain about this one, though, given we're talking an entry-level card.

Obviously we'd all like to see higher-end cards going for cheaper but that's not the market we're in right now. Nor does it seem to be the market we'll be in for some time, so until things change, I'm all for giving as many options as possible to consumers on a budget, and this seems like a good way of doing so.

It's an interesting choice re the core count and clock speed, so (assuming it comes to fruition) we'll just have to see how it pans out. Who knows, we might even get more than we expect with overclocks—but I'm getting ahead of myself again.

Nvidia RTX 5050 review (Palit Dual edition)

dave.james@futurenet.com (Dave James) — Fri, 08 May 2026 15:10:06 +0000

What do you do as a PC gamer who is looking for a good-value budget graphics card? In these times of ever spiking component pricing that's not an easy question to answer, especially when the current generation of GPUs haven't really moved the needle on in terms of performance at the bottom end of the market. But the RTX 5050 is probably the reluctant answer I would give to anyone aiming to buy the best budget graphics card right now.

Nvidia's RTX 5050 is the lowest-spec RTX Blackwell GPU in this generation, using a smaller GPU than the last-gen RTX 4060, but also higher clocks and more cache to make up the difference. It's nominally $50 cheaper than the older card launched at, and effectively performs at a similar level. Which I guess is progress of sorts.

But the reality is this remains a near $300 card right now, and if anyone out there was looking for an upgrade to their old RTX 4060 card, they're going to have to look a lot higher up the stack and spend a good deal more, because even the RTX 5060 can't always take a significant performance lead.

The similarly priced Intel Arc B580 does present an alternative, however, with a larger VRAM array and often higher gaming performance—sometimes hitting RTX 5060 levels. But it's not as reliable in that performance, with huge frame rate variance between games, and still regular driver issues at launch for new games. Though there is always the argument that if you spend more, you get more, and here if you can stretch to the $360 of the RX 9060 XT 8 GB card then that will deliver higher gaming performance, but in relative terms that feels like a stretch in this budget end of the hobby.

In a world where the RTX 5050 had released at $199, really bringing previous generation RTX 4060 GPU performance down to a lower tier, we would have been talking about something genuinely appealing. But the original pricing, comparative performance, and the subsequent price hikes, have made it a default budget pick, not a desirable one.

Buy if...

✅ You need a new, affordable graphics card right now: The RTX 5050 fulfils its brief as a budget GPU, and if you have a hard limit of around $300 or £250 this is the most reliable card at this level.

Don't buy if...

❌ You have any card from the RTX 40-series: The RTX 5050 effectively trades blows with the bottom rung of the Ada architecture ladder, and lies around the price you might have paid for that card many years ago now.

Features

Performance

2.5

Thermals

Sound

Value

Software

2.5

We scored the RTX 5050 out of five in six distinct categories.

Nvidia RTX 5050 features

(Image credit: Future)

	RTX 5050	RTX 4060	RTX 5060
GPU	GB207-300	AD107-400	GB206-250
Lithography	TSMC 4N	TSMC 4N	TSMC 4N
Die size (mm²)	121	159	181
Transistors (B)	15.1	18.9	21.9
Shaders	2560	3072	3840
SM count	20	24	30
RT cores	20	24	30
L2 cache (MB)	32	24	32
Memory size (GB)	8	8	8
Memory type	GDDR6	GDDR6	GDDR7
Memory bus	128	128	128
Memory bandwidth (GB/s)	320	272	448
Boost clock (MHz)	2572	2460	2497
TDP (W)	130	115	145
MSRP (US$)	$249	$299	$299

It feels like a sad indictment of the state of PC graphics cards when you look at the specs of the RTX 5050's GPU in relation to both the RTX 4060—the weakest of the desktop GPUs in the Ada era—and the RTX 5060. On one hand you've got the tiny GB207 GPU able to match what is nominally the tier above from the last generation, but on the other it's only theoretically $50 lower priced and in reality about the same.

What we're left with is a bottom rung RTX Blackwell chip designed to perform at around the same level as the bottom rung of the Ada generation, but simply be a lot cheaper to manufacture. While barely passing those savings on to us PC gamers.

The GB207 is 24% smaller than the AD107, has 20% fewer transistors, and 17% fewer CUDA cores. But is relying on higher clockspeeds, more cache memory, and more power to make up for the deficit in GPU logic.

Though what Nvidia will say is that you are getting access to its DLSS 4 suite of upscaling features, which means the RTX 5050 gets access to Multi Frame Generation, which recently got boosted up to 6x. The issue here is that when you get down to this level of GPU, where arguably a little performance boost would be more than welcome, frame gen isn't the panacea you might hope it would be. You still need good baseline frame rates before you can enable frame gen without it being a laggy mess.

It will enable you to get to around 60 fps at 1440p in something like Cyberpunk 2077, and a single player title like that isn't so beholden to ultra-low input latency. So sticking frame gen on isn't that big of a hit in some games, especially after upscaling has boosted your frame rate to a more acceptable level.

A weak GPU that just about does enough

Features

Nvidia RTX 5050 performance

(Image credit: Future)

The gaming performance of the RTX 5050 is, essentially, fine. It would be great if we were talking about a ~$200 graphics card rather than a near $300 one, though. The original idea with the RTX 5050 was to create a low-end RTX Blackwell GPU that was cheaper than the RTX 4060 but delivered similar performance. That's generally been the hope going for generation-on-generation frame rate gains; the effective GPU tier down gets the same performance as the higher tier one from a previous generation.

The issue is that the RTX 5050 is, in reality, the same price and therefore the same effective GPU tier as the RTX 4060 was. That was the bottom rung of the Ada architecture, and this is the bottom rung of the RTX Blackwell generation, and both became essentially $300 GPUs in their lifetime.

1 / 3

1080p gaming performance

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Nvidia RTX 5050 | 8 GB

Nvidia RTX 4060 | 8 GB

Nvidia RTX 5060 | 8 GB

AMD RX 9060 XT | 8 GB

Intel Arc B580 | 12 GB

020406080

Black Myth Wukong (1080p High) Data
Product	Value
Nvidia RTX 5050 \| 8 GB	50 Avg FPS, 38 1% Low FPS
Nvidia RTX 4060 \| 8 GB	50 Avg FPS, 42 1% Low FPS
Nvidia RTX 5060 \| 8 GB	64 Avg FPS, 48 1% Low FPS
AMD RX 9060 XT \| 8 GB	71 Avg FPS, 58 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc B580 \| 12 GB	43 Avg FPS, 34 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Nvidia RTX 5050 | 8 GB

Nvidia RTX 4060 | 8 GB

Nvidia RTX 5060 | 8 GB

AMD RX 9060 XT | 8 GB

Intel Arc B580 | 12 GB

015304560

Cyberpunk 2077 (1080p RT Ultra) Data
Product	Value
Nvidia RTX 5050 \| 8 GB	32 Avg FPS, 23 1% Low FPS
Nvidia RTX 4060 \| 8 GB	31 Avg FPS, 22 1% Low FPS
Nvidia RTX 5060 \| 8 GB	46 Avg FPS, 30 1% Low FPS
AMD RX 9060 XT \| 8 GB	41 Avg FPS, 26 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc B580 \| 12 GB	39 Avg FPS, 32 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Nvidia RTX 5050 | 8 GB

Nvidia RTX 4060 | 8 GB

Nvidia RTX 5060 | 8 GB

AMD RX 9060 XT | 8 GB

Intel Arc B580 | 12 GB

0255075100

F1 24 (1080p Ultra high) Data
Product	Value
Nvidia RTX 5050 \| 8 GB	54 Avg FPS, 24 1% Low FPS
Nvidia RTX 4060 \| 8 GB	63 Avg FPS, 42 1% Low FPS
Nvidia RTX 5060 \| 8 GB	73 Avg FPS, 39 1% Low FPS
AMD RX 9060 XT \| 8 GB	82 Avg FPS, 66 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc B580 \| 12 GB	70 Avg FPS, 44 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Nvidia RTX 5050 | 8 GB

Nvidia RTX 4060 | 8 GB

Nvidia RTX 5060 | 8 GB

109

AMD RX 9060 XT | 8 GB

111

Intel Arc B580 | 12 GB

037.575112.5150

Homeworld 3 (1080p Epic) Data
Product	Value
Nvidia RTX 5050 \| 8 GB	96 Avg FPS, 58 1% Low FPS
Nvidia RTX 4060 \| 8 GB	96 Avg FPS, 65 1% Low FPS
Nvidia RTX 5060 \| 8 GB	109 Avg FPS, 53 1% Low FPS
AMD RX 9060 XT \| 8 GB	111 Avg FPS, 63 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc B580 \| 12 GB	63 Avg FPS, 34 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Nvidia RTX 5050 | 8 GB

Nvidia RTX 4060 | 8 GB

Nvidia RTX 5060 | 8 GB

AMD RX 9060 XT | 8 GB

Intel Arc B580 | 12 GB

0255075100

Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition (1080p Ultra) Data
Product	Value
Nvidia RTX 5050 \| 8 GB	65 Avg FPS, 43 1% Low FPS
Nvidia RTX 4060 \| 8 GB	71 Avg FPS, 46 1% Low FPS
Nvidia RTX 5060 \| 8 GB	87 Avg FPS, 47 1% Low FPS
AMD RX 9060 XT \| 8 GB	93 Avg FPS, 64 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc B580 \| 12 GB	86 Avg FPS, 56 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Nvidia RTX 5050 | 8 GB

Nvidia RTX 4060 | 8 GB

Nvidia RTX 5060 | 8 GB

AMD RX 9060 XT | 8 GB

Intel Arc B580 | 12 GB

020406080

The Talos Principle 2 (1080p Ultra) Data
Product	Value
Nvidia RTX 5050 \| 8 GB	46 Avg FPS, 28 1% Low FPS
Nvidia RTX 4060 \| 8 GB	49 Avg FPS, 30 1% Low FPS
Nvidia RTX 5060 \| 8 GB	52 Avg FPS, 34 1% Low FPS
AMD RX 9060 XT \| 8 GB	66 Avg FPS, 35 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc B580 \| 12 GB	45 Avg FPS, 25 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Nvidia RTX 5050 | 8 GB

Nvidia RTX 4060 | 8 GB

Nvidia RTX 5060 | 8 GB

AMD RX 9060 XT | 8 GB

Intel Arc B580 | 12 GB

0255075100

Total War: Warhammer 3 (1080p Ultra) Data
Product	Value
Nvidia RTX 5050 \| 8 GB	54 Avg FPS, 40 1% Low FPS
Nvidia RTX 4060 \| 8 GB	50 Avg FPS, 36 1% Low FPS
Nvidia RTX 5060 \| 8 GB	78 Avg FPS, 57 1% Low FPS
AMD RX 9060 XT \| 8 GB	90 Avg FPS, 42 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc B580 \| 12 GB	64 Avg FPS, 49 1% Low FPS

The RTX 5050 shows at 1080p that it's only achieving RTX 4060 performance for around the same price, while the Intel B580 shows how inconsistent it is.

But it's also not exactly equal. The newer GPU has less actual graphics logic inside it and sometimes that tells. The higher clock speed and cache of the RTX 5050 generally gives it performance parity with the RTX 4060, but there are definite times where the RTX 4060 has a not-insignificant lead.

And then Intel's Arc B580 wants to have its say, too. When it's good, Intel's 12 GB graphics card can really stick the boot into Nvidia's weakest RTX Blackwell card. Just look at the 1440p frame rates in our test suite. But then you can also see, in Black Myth Wukong and Homeworld 3, where it actually lags behind the RTX 5050.

Real-world gaming performance

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Nvidia RTX 5050 | 8 GB

Nvidia RTX 4060 | 8 GB

Nvidia RTX 5060 | 8 GB

AMD RX 9060 XT | 8 GB

Intel Arc B580 | 12 GB

020406080

Black Myth Wukong (1440p High + Upscaling (quality)) Data
Product	Value
Nvidia RTX 5050 \| 8 GB	57 Avg FPS, 49 1% Low FPS
Nvidia RTX 4060 \| 8 GB	58 Avg FPS, 50 1% Low FPS
Nvidia RTX 5060 \| 8 GB	73 Avg FPS, 62 1% Low FPS
AMD RX 9060 XT \| 8 GB	76 Avg FPS, 68 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc B580 \| 12 GB	51 Avg FPS, 39 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Nvidia RTX 5050 | 8 GB

Nvidia RTX 4060 | 8 GB

Nvidia RTX 5060 | 8 GB

AMD RX 9060 XT | 8 GB

Intel Arc B580 | 12 GB

0255075100

Cyberpunk 2077 (1440p RT Ultra + upscaling (quality)) Data
Product	Value
Nvidia RTX 5050 \| 8 GB	61 Avg FPS, 40 1% Low FPS
Nvidia RTX 4060 \| 8 GB	40 Avg FPS, 32 1% Low FPS
Nvidia RTX 5060 \| 8 GB	81 Avg FPS, 54 1% Low FPS
AMD RX 9060 XT \| 8 GB	90 Avg FPS, 60 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc B580 \| 12 GB	77 Avg FPS, 42 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Nvidia RTX 5050 | 8 GB

Nvidia RTX 4060 | 8 GB

Nvidia RTX 5060 | 8 GB

101

AMD RX 9060 XT | 8 GB

146

122

Intel Arc B580 | 12 GB

134

037.575112.5150

F1 24 (1440p Ultra high + upscaling (Quality), 2x FG) Data
Product	Value
Nvidia RTX 5050 \| 8 GB	82 Avg FPS, 55 1% Low FPS
Nvidia RTX 4060 \| 8 GB	87 Avg FPS, 52 1% Low FPS
Nvidia RTX 5060 \| 8 GB	101 Avg FPS, 11 1% Low FPS
AMD RX 9060 XT \| 8 GB	146 Avg FPS, 122 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc B580 \| 12 GB	134 Avg FPS, 61 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Nvidia RTX 5050 | 8 GB

Nvidia RTX 4060 | 8 GB

100

Nvidia RTX 5060 | 8 GB

113

AMD RX 9060 XT | 8 GB

102

Intel Arc B580 | 12 GB

037.575112.5150

Homeworld 3 (1440p Epic + upscaling (quality)) Data
Product	Value
Nvidia RTX 5050 \| 8 GB	94 Avg FPS, 56 1% Low FPS
Nvidia RTX 4060 \| 8 GB	100 Avg FPS, 62 1% Low FPS
Nvidia RTX 5060 \| 8 GB	113 Avg FPS, 61 1% Low FPS
AMD RX 9060 XT \| 8 GB	102 Avg FPS, 51 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc B580 \| 12 GB	64 Avg FPS, 33 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Nvidia RTX 5050 | 8 GB

Nvidia RTX 4060 | 8 GB

Nvidia RTX 5060 | 8 GB

AMD RX 9060 XT | 8 GB

127

Intel Arc B580 | 12 GB

037.575112.5150

The Talos Principle 2 (1440p Ultra +upscaling (quality), 2x FG) Data
Product	Value
Nvidia RTX 5050 \| 8 GB	68 Avg FPS, 24 1% Low FPS
Nvidia RTX 4060 \| 8 GB	74 Avg FPS, 46 1% Low FPS
Nvidia RTX 5060 \| 8 GB	84 Avg FPS, 41 1% Low FPS
AMD RX 9060 XT \| 8 GB	127 Avg FPS, 78 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc B580 \| 12 GB	71 Avg FPS, 43 1% Low FPS

When you bring upscaling and frame generation into the equation the RTX 5050 becomes capable of around 60 fps at 1440p, but it still doesn't look great against the previous generation card.

Therein lies the problem for the Intel architecture; gaming inconsistencies. It's hard to get behind Intel's graphics cards for the general user because they aren't 100% reliable for the average PC gamer. There will always be games where it doesn't quite deliver, or has major performance or visual issues around launch, and maybe for a while after, too.

The RTX 5050, on the other hand, is absolutely rock solid in its performance. Nvidia holds 90%+ of the GPU market, and so PC devs will obviously target GeForce GPU performance as a key part of game optimisation. Intel GPUs? Less so.

The performance of the AMD RX 9060 XT 8 GB cards are more of a concern here, however. AMD's modern frame rates are also super consistent, with far less of the variance of old generations of its graphics architecture, and the RX 9060 XT is consistently out in front of both the RTX 5050 and RTX 5060. But it is also another $60 at least more expensive.

Almost RTX 4060 performance for the same money

Performance

2.5

Nvidia RTX 5050 thermals

(Image credit: Future)

There is no Founders Edition shroud for the RTX 5050, which means you're having to rely on the cooling solutions of whichever vendor's card you end up with. Here, I'm testing a Palit Dual version of the RTX 5050, which is designed to be the cheapest, reference priced version of Nvidia's card.

The fans and the shroud—including the faux-brushed-metal-but-resolutely-very-plastic backplate—are all a bit cheap-feeling, but I am absolutely okay with that as they very much do the job. Compared to the MSI RTX 4060 we're comparing it to, the card remains pretty consistently cool, without the spiking peak temperature you can see with the RTX 4060.

But you can see the little GPU at the heart of the RTX 5050 is having to work hard to hit the necessary performance when you compare it to the positively chill RX 9060 XT. Those thermal figures show how effective the Asus cooler is and how cool the RDNA 4 chip runs.

System performance

Peak temperature (°C)

Average temperature (°C)

Nvidia RTX 5050 | 8 GB

Nvidia RTX 4060 | 8 GB

Nvidia RTX 5060 | 8 GB

AMD RX 9060 XT | 8 GB

Intel Arc B580 | 12 GB

020406080

Thermals Data
Product	Value
Nvidia RTX 5050 \| 8 GB	68 Peak temperature (°C), 67 Average temperature (°C)
Nvidia RTX 4060 \| 8 GB	75 Peak temperature (°C), 68 Average temperature (°C)
Nvidia RTX 5060 \| 8 GB	64 Peak temperature (°C), 62 Average temperature (°C)
AMD RX 9060 XT \| 8 GB	51 Peak temperature (°C), 48 Average temperature (°C)
Intel Arc B580 \| 12 GB	70 Peak temperature (°C), 67 Average temperature (°C)

Nvidia RTX 5050 | 8 GB

2682

Nvidia RTX 4060 | 8 GB

2595

Nvidia RTX 5060 | 8 GB

2659

AMD RX 9060 XT | 8 GB

2945

Intel Arc B580 | 12 GB

2793

07501,5002,2503,000

GPU frequency Data
Product	Value
Nvidia RTX 5050 \| 8 GB	2682
Nvidia RTX 4060 \| 8 GB	2595
Nvidia RTX 5060 \| 8 GB	2659
AMD RX 9060 XT \| 8 GB	2945
Intel Arc B580 \| 12 GB	2793

Peak power (watts)

Average power (watts)

Nvidia RTX 5050 | 8 GB

150

128

Nvidia RTX 4060 | 8 GB

156

128

Nvidia RTX 5060 | 8 GB

170

154

AMD RX 9060 XT | 8 GB

175

164

Intel Arc B580 | 12 GB

218

191

075150225300

Power Data
Product	Value
Nvidia RTX 5050 \| 8 GB	150 Peak power (watts), 128 Average power (watts)
Nvidia RTX 4060 \| 8 GB	156 Peak power (watts), 128 Average power (watts)
Nvidia RTX 5060 \| 8 GB	170 Peak power (watts), 154 Average power (watts)
AMD RX 9060 XT \| 8 GB	175 Peak power (watts), 164 Average power (watts)
Intel Arc B580 \| 12 GB	218 Peak power (watts), 191 Average power (watts)

4K frames per J

1080p frame per J

Nvidia RTX 5050 | 8 GB

0.22

0.53

Nvidia RTX 4060 | 8 GB

0.22

0.59

Nvidia RTX 5060 | 8 GB

0.24

0.61

AMD RX 9060 XT | 8 GB

0.22

0.56

Intel Arc B580 | 12 GB

0.2

0.51

00.20.40.60.8

Performance per watt Data
Product	Value
Nvidia RTX 5050 \| 8 GB	0.22 4K frames per J, 0.53 1080p frame per J
Nvidia RTX 4060 \| 8 GB	0.22 4K frames per J, 0.59 1080p frame per J
Nvidia RTX 5060 \| 8 GB	0.24 4K frames per J, 0.61 1080p frame per J
AMD RX 9060 XT \| 8 GB	0.22 4K frames per J, 0.56 1080p frame per J
Intel Arc B580 \| 12 GB	0.2 4K frames per J, 0.51 1080p frame per J

You can see that even though it's sporting a pretty basic cooler, the RTX 5050 runs relatively cool and draws the least power of all the latest GPUs.

The li'l GB207 GPU runs pretty chill

Thermals

Nvidia RTX 5050 sound

(Image credit: Future)

The dual-fan design of the Palit cooler, with the second fan being a blow-through design that is there to just push air over the heatsink extending off the back of the short PCB, means that not only is the card relatively cool, it's also quiet. I've been running it on an open test bench, which means I'm right next to the card, and even on extended runs, such as with Metro Exodus, the sound remains consistent and consistently quiet.

This isn't a card that's going to bother you with fan turbine noise during a gaming session.

It's also not a GPU that's going to bother you with excessive coil whine either, something that some other RTX Blackwell cards have suffered with, especially plumbed into our Seasonic PSU.

The dual-fan array is impressively quiet under load

Sound

Nvidia RTX 5050 value

(Image credit: Future)

This is arguably the core of the issue for the RTX 5050: its value. But it's also not the easiest thing to actually get a bead on, considering we have to almost entirely rethink our notions of graphics card value in the light of the RAMpocalypse and AI being the only thing to spend silicon budgets on these days.

First, let me revisit the situation the RTX 5050 and its mini GB207 GPU were designed for: The idea was to have a bottom-end RTX Blackwell card that could deliver essentially the same performance as the RTX 4060, but for a lower price in terms of both MSRP and manufacturing.

That's a largely laudable endeavour on the part of Nvidia, except that even at the $249 MSRP it wasn't exactly a whole GPU tier below the RTX 4060, and not long before the RTX Blackwell generation launched you could buy an RTX 4060 for around the same price. So even in the expected market conditions, Nvidia was essentially bringing the RTX 5050 in at the same price and performance.

With the current memory pricing crisis and AI-generated bottlenecks, however, prices of GPUs have only really gone one way, and the RTX 5050 is now a $300-odd graphics card. And that completely kills the theoretical value proposition between it and the old RTX 4060. But, that is now purely a theoretical thing, as the RTX 4060 is no longer reliably on sale new, and even if it is, is priced higher than the RTX 5050.

In recent times, the RTX 5050 has hovered around the $260 mark, and that makes it a far better value card, especially against the current-gen competition. The Intel Arc B580 is resolutely stuck at $290, but I just don't find it a consistent enough GPU for reliable gaming performance, particularly for new games.

The real competition, and the one that gives me most pause in my recommendation for the RTX 5050 as the budget pick right now, is the AMD RX 9060 XT 8 GB. That's a $360 card that comfortably outshines both the RTX 5050 and the RTX 5060, but it does mean you have to spend another $60 - $70 on your purchase. For me, I think that's probably worth it if you can, but if you are stuck at a hard limit of $300 for your new GPU purchase, then I would say the RTX 5050 is the best budget graphics card you can buy today.

In the new world order I guess this is a value-proposition

Value

Nvidia RTX 5050 software

(Image credit: Future)

As a budget GPU, there's not a lot of software that comes with the RTX 5050. This Palit version offers a download of Thundermaster, its overclocking app, which is largely a poor man's MSI Afterburner, with mostly the same features but an underwhelming UI.

Outside of that, it's all about the Nvidia App. This is the main software offering from Nvidia that comes optionally bundled with its graphics drivers, and is where you can control various things from the DLSS override settings, and automatic game settings, to the overlay, overclocking, and in-game filters.

Nvidia's software has come on a long way and the app is genuinely a worthwhile piece of software to have installed alongside your GeForce GPU.

Little bundled software, but the Nvidia App is genuinely good

Software

2.5

Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| 12 GB	33 Avg FPS, 30 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 \| 16 GB	40 Avg FPS, 30 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 \| 12 GB	37 Avg FPS, 30 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060 Ti \| 16 GB	28 Avg FPS, 25 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT \| 16 GB	25 Avg FPS, 22 1% Low FPS

Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| 12 GB	10 Avg FPS, 5 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 \| 16 GB	20 Avg FPS, 17 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 \| 12 GB	21 Avg FPS, 17 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060 Ti \| 16 GB	15 Avg FPS, 12 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT \| 16 GB	14 Avg FPS, 11 1% Low FPS

Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| 12 GB	33 Avg FPS, 23 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 \| 16 GB	44 Avg FPS, 32 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 \| 12 GB	39 Avg FPS, 30 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060 Ti \| 16 GB	27 Avg FPS, 21 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT \| 16 GB	30 Avg FPS, 22 1% Low FPS

Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| 12 GB	63 Avg FPS, 50 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 \| 16 GB	72 Avg FPS, 56 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 \| 12 GB	79 Avg FPS, 55 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060 Ti \| 16 GB	58 Avg FPS, 50 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT \| 16 GB	46 Avg FPS, 41 1% Low FPS

Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| 12 GB	26 Avg FPS, 10 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 \| 16 GB	39 Avg FPS, 24 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 \| 12 GB	35 Avg FPS, 24 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060 Ti \| 16 GB	27 Avg FPS, 18 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT \| 16 GB	25 Avg FPS, 19 1% Low FPS

Product	Value
RX 9070 GRE \| 12 GB	42 Avg FPS, 29 1% Low FPS
RX 9070 \| 16 GB	52 Avg FPS, 36 1% Low FPS
RTX 5070 \| 12 GB	44 Avg FPS, 30 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060 Ti \| 16 GB	33 Avg FPS, 22 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT \| 16 GB	30 Avg FPS, 20 1% Low FPS

Product	Value
RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB Palit Dual	50 Avg FPS, 43 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT 8 GB Asus Prime	48 Avg FPS, 43 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060	44 Avg FPS, 37 1% Low FPS

Product	Value
RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB Palit Dual	33 Avg FPS, 25 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT 8 GB Asus Prime	26 Avg FPS, 17 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060	23 Avg FPS, 12 1% Low FPS

Product	Value
RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB Palit Dual	59 Avg FPS, 47 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT 8 GB Asus Prime	51 Avg FPS, 41 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060	45 Avg FPS, 13 1% Low FPS

Product	Value
RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB Palit Dual	87 Avg FPS, 42 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT 8 GB Asus Prime	75 Avg FPS, 58 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060	89 Avg FPS, 52 1% Low FPS

Product	Value
RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB Palit Dual	75 Avg FPS, 53 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT 8 GB Asus Prime	68 Avg FPS, 49 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060	63 Avg FPS, 45 1% Low FPS

Product	Value
RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB Palit Dual	57 Avg FPS, 40 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT 8 GB Asus Prime	60 Avg FPS, 44 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060	55 Avg FPS, 40 1% Low FPS

Product	Value
RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB Palit Dual	79 Avg FPS, 68 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT 8 GB Asus Prime	76 Avg FPS, 68 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060	73 Avg FPS, 62 1% Low FPS

Product	Value
RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB Palit Dual	93 Avg FPS, 66 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT 8 GB Asus Prime	90 Avg FPS, 60 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060	81 Avg FPS, 54 1% Low FPS

Product	Value
RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB Palit Dual	131 Avg FPS, 104 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT 8 GB Asus Prime	146 Avg FPS, 122 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060	101 Avg FPS, 11 1% Low FPS

Product	Value
RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB Palit Dual	113 Avg FPS, 46 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT 8 GB Asus Prime	102 Avg FPS, 51 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060	113 Avg FPS, 61 1% Low FPS

Product	Value
RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB Palit Dual	103 Avg FPS, 71 1% Low FPS
RX 9060 XT 8 GB Asus Prime	127 Avg FPS, 78 1% Low FPS
RTX 5060	84 Avg FPS, 41 1% Low FPS

Product	Value
Nvidia RTX 5050 \| 8 GB	33 Avg FPS, 28 1% Low FPS
Nvidia RTX 4060 \| 8 GB	33 Avg FPS, 28 1% Low FPS
Nvidia RTX 5060 \| 8 GB	44 Avg FPS, 37 1% Low FPS
AMD RX 9060 XT \| 8 GB	48 Avg FPS, 43 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc B580 \| 12 GB	31 Avg FPS, 25 1% Low FPS

Product	Value
Nvidia RTX 5050 \| 8 GB	17 Avg FPS, 10 1% Low FPS
Nvidia RTX 4060 \| 8 GB	19 Avg FPS, 14 1% Low FPS
Nvidia RTX 5060 \| 8 GB	23 Avg FPS, 12 1% Low FPS
AMD RX 9060 XT \| 8 GB	26 Avg FPS, 17 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc B580 \| 12 GB	25 Avg FPS, 18 1% Low FPS

Product	Value
Nvidia RTX 5050 \| 8 GB	34 Avg FPS, 22 1% Low FPS
Nvidia RTX 4060 \| 8 GB	40 Avg FPS, 23 1% Low FPS
Nvidia RTX 5060 \| 8 GB	45 Avg FPS, 13 1% Low FPS
AMD RX 9060 XT \| 8 GB	51 Avg FPS, 41 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc B580 \| 12 GB	47 Avg FPS, 26 1% Low FPS

Product	Value
Nvidia RTX 5050 \| 8 GB	68 Avg FPS, 35 1% Low FPS
Nvidia RTX 4060 \| 8 GB	65 Avg FPS, 41 1% Low FPS
Nvidia RTX 5060 \| 8 GB	89 Avg FPS, 52 1% Low FPS
AMD RX 9060 XT \| 8 GB	75 Avg FPS, 58 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc B580 \| 12 GB	55 Avg FPS, 34 1% Low FPS

Product	Value
Nvidia RTX 5050 \| 8 GB	46 Avg FPS, 33 1% Low FPS
Nvidia RTX 4060 \| 8 GB	50 Avg FPS, 34 1% Low FPS
Nvidia RTX 5060 \| 8 GB	63 Avg FPS, 45 1% Low FPS
AMD RX 9060 XT \| 8 GB	68 Avg FPS, 49 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc B580 \| 12 GB	63 Avg FPS, 44 1% Low FPS

Product	Value
Nvidia RTX 5050 \| 8 GB	29 Avg FPS, 21 1% Low FPS
Nvidia RTX 4060 \| 8 GB	33 Avg FPS, 22 1% Low FPS
Nvidia RTX 5060 \| 8 GB	41 Avg FPS, 21 1% Low FPS
AMD RX 9060 XT \| 8 GB	47 Avg FPS, 27 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc B580 \| 12 GB	34 Avg FPS, 22 1% Low FPS

Product	Value
Nvidia RTX 5050 \| 8 GB	37 Avg FPS, 27 1% Low FPS
Nvidia RTX 4060 \| 8 GB	36 Avg FPS, 27 1% Low FPS
Nvidia RTX 5060 \| 8 GB	55 Avg FPS, 40 1% Low FPS
AMD RX 9060 XT \| 8 GB	60 Avg FPS, 44 1% Low FPS
Intel Arc B580 \| 12 GB	44 Avg FPS, 35 1% Low FPS

Product	Value
Nvidia RTX 5050 \| 8 GB	4614 GPU index score, 4900 Overall index score
Nvidia RTX 4060 \| 8 GB	4917 GPU index score, 5181 Overall index score
Nvidia RTX 5060 \| 8 GB	6379 GPU index score, 6526 Overall index score
AMD RX 9060 XT \| 8 GB	7553 GPU index score, 7499 Overall index score
Intel Arc B580 \| 12 GB	7117 GPU index score, 7173 Overall index score

Product	Value
Nvidia RTX 5050 \| 8 GB	6184
Nvidia RTX 4060 \| 8 GB	6033
Nvidia RTX 5060 \| 8 GB	8618
AMD RX 9060 XT \| 8 GB	9660
Intel Arc B580 \| 12 GB	7894