While many of us have been staying home, technology vendors have still been hard at work bringing new products to market. While the most noteworthy have been Microsoft and Sony with their next-generation consoles, we have also seen a ton of new high profile PC components, with more to come.
The NVIDIA GTX 3900 and GTX 3800 videocards have already cemented themselves as the new must-have components for gamers, despite the challenge of getting one. The pre-orders were plagued with bots, and we have seen the product selling on sites like eBay for far above their market value. NVIDIA says that the problem isn't in supply, but in demand. But, as we have noted before, some of that demand has been inflated because of scalpers, creating a three point scenario.
NVIDIA might want to focus on the issue, because AMD is rumored to be on the verge of announcing their next generation of videocards, believed to be called the Radeon RX 6900, RX 6800, and RX 6700. While we have no official information yet, these new cards will need to at least try to compete with the current GTX cards, or they will have little chance of success. But, if they can compete with NVIDIA, and the company has enough stock, they could do some damage to NVIDIA's bottom line - and possibly image.
Videocards aren't all that AMD has up its sleeves, with new desktop processors in the Zen 3 family on the horizon. An event is expected where the company will show off its 5000 series processors, looking to continue the brand's massive growth. Intel is also expected to announce plans for the 12th Generation Rocket Lake processors in the near future.
The big takeaway here is that, if you are looking for bleeding edge technology, right now is a wait and see timespan, as everything is in flux. We will see over the next few weeks if inventory opens up from NVIDIA, and new hardware is announced from AMD and Intel.
Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.
Avram's been in love with PCs since he played original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple II+. Before joining Tom's Hardware, for 10 years, he served as Online Editorial Director for sister sites Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag, where he programmed the CMS and many of the benchmarks. When he's not editing, writing or stumbling around trade show halls, you'll find him building Arduino robots with his son and watching every single superhero show on the CW.