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It's been a rough summer for anyone trying to put together a budget gaming PC, thanks to this unforgiving semiconductor shortage. It seems like we have some relief in that regard. Components are becoming easier to find, and graphic card prices are back to being affordable. So if you planning to build a budget gaming PC, now's a great time.
You might spot some entry-level GPUs like the RTX 3050 or RTX 3060 selling for above MSRP at some retailers. Even the best budget GPU, the Nvidia RTX 3050, is dropping to a reasonable price. If you keep a lookout, chances are you'll find one. High prices still didn't stop us from putting together a $400 gaming PC that doesn't need a graphics card.
Crucial components like SSDs, RAM, and CPUs aren't as hard to find. Intel and AMD have more budget CPUs than ever and competitive ones. Regarding SSDs and RAM, you're practically swimming in affordable options, even at decent capacities.
Our budget PC build does not include peripherals like monitors, mice, keyboards, etc. It can run most new games at 60fps at 1080p on high settings, though. Most of the budget went into a decent CPU and GPU since those two components greatly affect the system's overall performance. While the RAM we chose isn't fancy, it is fast enough to keep up with our CPU choice.
If you want to step up from the budget guild, our main gaming PC build guide has a higher budget and delivers more frames. But you've come to the right place if you're after a more affordable setup with a discrete GPU.
CPU
(Image credit: Intel)
Intel Core i5 12400F
Alder Lake's finest on a budget
Performance Cores: 6 | Efficient Cores: 0 | Threads: 12 | Base Clock: 2.5GHz | Turbo Clock: 4.4GHz | L3 Cache: 18MB | Processor Base Power: 65W | Maximum Turbo Power: 117W | PCIe lanes: 20
Incredible value and performancePCIe Gen 4 and Zen 2 architectureIncludes Wraith Stealth coolerCan be hard to find at the MSRPGetting on a bit nowWe're big fans of the Core i5 12400, and the only difference with the Core i5 12400F is the lack of onboard graphics. For that omission you can pick this chip up for slightly less at checkout, and seeing as we're recommending a discrete GPU below we don't really need the onboard graphics anyways. That's a smart saving.
This is also a smart chip. This is one of Intel's latest 12th Gen Alder Lake processors, and while it doesn't contain the new Efficient Cores that make more high-end Alder Lake chips so special, the Performance Cores here do put some work in. In fact, they're exceptionally good for gaming, with really great single-threaded performance.
So we like the Core 15 12400F a lot, and since Intel has released cheaper chipsets for its 12th Gen chips it's become a bit of a favourite for us on more budget builds like this one. You also net yourself some sweet benefits with Intel's new 12th Gen platform, though we will be skipping DDR5 for this build since it's so pricey.
Read our full Core i5 12400 review (the one with integrated graphics).
GPU
(Image credit: Gigabyte)Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050
A great graphics card for 1080p gaming
GPU Cores: 2,560 | Base Clock: 1,552MHz | Boost Clock: 1,777MHz | Memory: 8 GB GDDR6 | Memory Clock: 14Gbps | Memory Bandwidth: 224GB/s
DLSS and ray tracing supportWay faster than an RX 6500 XTShould be at least RTX 2060 performanceLong term stock and pricing unknowableIt's not been a great few years to buy into PC gaming or build your own machine. However, things are finally improving. Stock can still be hit or miss, but prices have started to become reasonable again.
The RTX 3050 is a great card for 1080p gaming at the right price. It's an improvement on older Nvidia cards, though you can't find those in stock or at reasonable prices nowadays even if you wanted one. So it's the RTX 3050 or... the AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT. Despite the RX 6500 XT often being available at MSRP more consistently, we still can't really recommend it right now. It's just not much of an improvement over cheaper cards from many years ago, while the RTX 3050 is at least marginally better.
So have a look around for the RTX 3050 and see if you can't find a half decent deal. Perhaps the $249 MSRP is a bit hopeful, but somewhere between that and $300 wouldn't be a half-bad buy in 2022.
Read our full Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 review.
Motherboard
(Image credit: ASRock)Asrock B660M Pro RS
A good budget B660 board that offers great value for money
Chipset: Intel B660 | Memory: 2x DIMM, 128GB, DDR4-5333 | Expansion slots: 1 x PCIe 4.0 x16, 1 x PCIe 3.0 x16, 1 x PCIe 3.0 x1 | Rear USB ports: 4 x USB 3.2 Gen1 Ports | Storage: 1x M.2, 4x SATA, 2 x USB 2.0 Ports | Network: Gigabit ethernet | Lighting: Rear RGB lighting
Affordable B660Cheap platform for Alder LakeDDR4 supportLimited expansionMissing some of Alder Lake's newest featuresThis is as cheap as we want to go for the motherboard while still offering room for expansion and upgrades down the line. It's a fairly parsimonious board, but that's not necessarily a bad thing when we're targeting a budget build.
The B660 chipset offers exactly what we need for a gaming machine, with some admirable USB connectivity and speedy PCIe 4.0 support. That's pretty important when you want to run the latest SSDs at their top speed, which might play more into game performance and load times with the arrival of DirectStorage technology. In the meantime, it's also nice to run your SSDs super-fast for rapid file transfers.
Though importantly this motherboard ditches the more expensive DDR5 memory standard for widely available and very cheap DDR4 kits. That means you don't just save on the motherboard, you also save on your memory, too.
Memory
(Image credit: Corsair)Corsair Vegeance LPX 16GB (2x 8GB) DDR4-3200
Plenty of memory for most games
Capacity: 2x 8GB | Speed: 3200MT/s | Timings: 16-18-18-36 | Voltage: 1.35V
Sufficient for most tasksSome overclocking headroomGreat value for moneyNot the fastest RAM aroundLacks RGB (not necessarily a bad thing)This slim, no-nonsense memory kit from Corsair lets us deliver a huge amount of memory and increases our clock speeds, too, without going off the deep end with our budget. While indeed not the fastest RAM available by any stretch, lacking the flair of many RGB RAM kits, it's practical and sensible, which is what we need for this build.
Of course, there are tons of options for memory kits, and this is just a suggestion. Memory prices have really dropped recently, but there's always the potential for higher quality RAM savings. You could technically get away with 8GB of RAM, but we'd recommend sticking to 16GB and staying in the realm of 3,200MHz instead.
Just make sure to pay attention to the frequency and timing, as well as the price. If you need some additional pointers when looking for memory, our guide to the best RAM for gaming can help point you in the right direction.
SSD
(Image credit: WD)WD_Black SN770 500GB
Deent capacity and low cost makes the SN770 a winner
Capacity: 500GB | Interface: M.2 PCIe Gen4 x4 | Sequential IO: 5000/4000MB/s read/write | Random IO: 460K/800K IOPS read/write
Decent capacityGen4 without breaking the bankEasy installationYou might use up 500GB pretty quick1TB is temptingYou can't have a PC without storage, and you're going to need space for your OS as well as whatever games you want to keep on hand. Thankfully, with memory and SSD prices dropping in pretty rapid order, we've finally found a way to slot an M.2 SSD into our budget build. Not only are M.2 NVMe SSDs easier to install, but they offer better performance than their SATA counterparts. And when you get 500GB for so little nowadays WD_Black drive is great value.
This drive isn't exactly what anyone would call the top-of-the-line performance, but this is still one of the best SSDs for gaming if you're on a budget. Definitely one of the best ways into PCIe 4.0 performance.
You just might want to upgrade to a larger model someday. Luckily, that ASRock B660M motherboard has space for a few SSDs, and at least one at PCIe 4.0 speeds, so you could add a larger, cheaper PCIe 3.0 drive to your PC with ease at a later date.
Power Supply
(Image credit: EVGA)EVGA GA 550W 80+ Gold
More than enough power for a budget PC
Output: 550W | Efficiency: 80 Plus Gold | Connectors: 24-Pin ATX, 1x 8-Pin (4+4) EPS12V, 2x 8-Pin (6+2) PCIe, 6x SATA, 3x Molex, 1x Floppy | Modular: Yes
Small, inexpensive, efficientCan power most buildsModularBigger GPUs may need more powerThe various upgrades to our budget rig draw more power than previous builds, so we've had to go with a slightly larger PSU. So as long as you're sticking with a major vendor, you should be okay to choose from a few good options.
This modular unit from EVGA has more than enough juice for our needs. Unless you're planning to put a second GPU in your rig, which would be a little silly nowadays, or more likely upgrade later down the line to a more powerful GPU, there's still modest headroom here. However, you'll need to look at the best power supply units for PC gaming if you want to take your upgrades much further.
Case
(Image credit: Corsair)Corsair Carbide Series 100R
Understated and attractive
Type: ATX mid-tower | Motherboard Compatibility: ATX, Micro-ATX, Mini-ITX | Drive Bays: 2x 3.5-inch internal, 4x 2.5-inch SSD | Front Ports: 2x USB 3.0, Audio | Max GPU Length: 414mm | Dimensions: 471mm x 200mm x 430mm | Weight: 4.8 kg
Does what you needInterchangeable SSD/HDD traysLacks the latest bells and whistlesSomewhat unexciting to look atBuy it now(Image credit: ABS)Your best chance of getting hold of the best graphics cards and CPUs right now is to buy one of the best gaming PCs or best gaming laptops.
Cases can be extremely subjective, and while it's easy to spend more than this, you'll be hard-pressed to find a better one for less. We've settled on this relatively spacious and inexpensive case from Corsair, which is something of a go-to for us when we consider cheaper cases. It lacks many of the bells and whistles that a more expensive case can provide, but it gets the job done without cutting too many corners.
This Corsair model is getting on a bit now, but it's still worth looking at as it's so cheap.
There is a certain temptation to max out your budget on a pretty looking case, but it's important to remember this piece of your build will have no impact on performance than the other stuff you should be spending money on. Buy something that does what you need it to do and is easy to work with.
Or go ahead and make a fashion statement; just don't expect higher framerates.
Components
Budget gaming PC build guide FAQ
What do I do if I can't find GPU stock?
One thing you might have noticed is that GPU stock can be running either low or is priced too high. It probably will be for at least another couple of months, too. Trust us; we are just as frustrated with all the hardware shortages as you are.
There are a few techniques to buying a new GPU in the silicon drought, but if you're in a rush, the best gaming PCs offer a shortcut to a high-performance machine with less of a premium than some individual graphics cards today.
What if I need to spend some of my PC budget on peripherals?
Like our other build guides, the money we've allowed for this budget gaming PC build doesn't include anything that lives outside of the case. If you're upgrading, this shouldn't be too much of an issue, but if you're starting from scratch, you'll need to make sure you set aside extra cash for a Windows license, a monitor (or two), and a keyboard and mouse.
If you're struggling with those additional expenses, you can opt for a smaller SSD or memory kit—both of which are easy to upgrade in the future when you have a bit more cash at your disposal.
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YouTuber Dan Allen has apologized for breaking multiple NDAs and revealing information on games in development after being revealed as the person behind the popular leaks account The Real Insider.
The Dan Allen Gaming YouTube channel is a general-interest channel featuring guides, walkthroughs, reactions, and other game-related information—all very innocuous. The Real Insider, on the other hand, seemed to have more behind-the-scenes access: Since being activated earlier this year, the account has revealed information about numerous upcoming games and events, most recently Ubisoft's big Assassin's Creed presentation, which the account leaked almost in its entirety.
(Image credit: The Real Insider (via Twitter))But things went sideways earlier this week thanks to a classic social media blunder: In response to a Twitter inquiry aimed at The Real Insider, Allen replied from the wrong account. He quickly deleted the tweet, but of course it was caught and shared. Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier also posted a series of tweets noting links and similarities between the two accounts: Nothing fully definitive, but "quite a coincidence," as he put it. Those tweets have since been deleted but were also saved for posterity by RhasegonVT.
Faced with all that, Allen quickly copped to being The Real Insider and apologized for his behavior in a now-deleted tweet. "I'm sorry to everyone for my actions," he wrote. "I'm ashamed and disappointed in myself. I'll be taking some time to reflect on my poor decisions, which will never occur again. To everyone that has supported me over the years, I'm truly sorry I let you down."
Many followers responding to his apology said they hope he'll bounce back from this "mistake" and resume his streaming career; others expressed doubt that anyone would be able to come back from this sort of credibility-shredding incident. Both the Dan Allen Gaming and The Real Insider Twitter accounts are now gone, but the Dan Allen Gaming YouTube channel, for now, remains online.
(Image credit: Dan Allen Gaming (via Twitter))It's undoubtedly embarrassing to be caught out like this, but Allen's real problem may be much more serious. Getting early access to the kind of information he was leaking often (and in the case of Ubisoft, always) requires signing legally-binding non-disclosure agreements. They vary from company to company but essentially state that if you share the information you're being given out of turn, you can be held responsible in all kinds of interesting, unpleasant, and potentially very expensive ways.
These NDAs are serious enough that I don't sign any of them without passing them through our legal department first (and yes, we have a legal department) to ensure that I'm not going to accidentally bankrupt the company by CCing the wrong person into an email. Allen clearly didn't have those concerns—you don't bother involving lawyers if you're going to just pour your secrets all over the internet anyway—but there's no way he got the info he shared without signing the required paperwork.
Regardless of the sincerity of his apology, by copping to being The Real Insider he's also admitted to violating multiple NDAs, some of which (based on my own experience) carry heavy penalties. It's possible that Ubisoft's legal team will take it easy on him; it's also possible that social media humiliation will very soon be the least of Allen's worries.
I've reached out to Ubisoft and Dan Allen for further comment, and will update if I receive a reply.
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Hear that? That's the sound of modders applauding in unison because their jobs just got a bit easier. Nvidia announced RTX Remix, a free modding platform that lets quickly create RTX mods for "classic games" such as Portal and The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. This allows for a more straightforward way to capture and mod content that takes advantage of all the Nvidia RTX goodness.
(Image credit: Nvidia)It lets you import game assets into the RTX Remix at the touch of the button (in compatible games) and converts the assets into commonly used USD (Universal Scene Description). This lets those assets easily be modified or replaced using apps like Unreal Engine, Blender, Nvidia's own Omniverse apps. According to the blog post, Remix makes it "easy to remaster supported DirectX 8 and DirectX 9 games with fixed function graphics pipelines."
Or, as the CEO of Nvidia, Jen-Hsun Huang, put it, "Start the game, and capture the game into USD, which is loaded into Omniverse." This makes one of the most complex parts of the modding process, the capturing of assets, a whole lot easier.
During the GeForce Beyond broadcast, we saw RTX Remix work its magic on Morrowind to up-res textures and assets. It also added AI-enhanced ray tracing, and textures to the 20-year-old RPG, essentially making it look like a brand new game.
The most exciting part is that RTX Remix mods can easily be exported and shared with other players online. All the mods will take advantage of Nvidia's Reflex and upcoming DLSS 3 tech. Nvidia also claims that RTX Remix will work with existing game mods from popular mod sites like Nexus Mods, enhancing that content as well.
The RTX Remix Runtime editor packaged in every RTX mod will give modders the ability to highlight changes to any assets making it easier to diagnose problems and for mod teams to review in-progress mods before going live.
And if that wasn't cool enough news, Portal with RTX on was announced during the presentation. It's a Portal completely re-made using RTX Remix. Both Portal with RTX DLC and RTX Remix will be coming soon. Modders can sign up for information and updates here.
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You know what they say, you wait ages for a bus and then two come at once. Nvidia has announced not one but two RTX 4080 graphics cards: the RTX 4080 12GB and RTX 4080 16GB.
While these may sound like two very similar graphics cards with only moderately different memory specifications, when you really get down to the silicon, you might actually consider them to be entirely different graphics cards altogether. That's because the 16GB model comes with many more CUDA Cores than the 12GB model—9,728 to 7,680, respectively—and is priced accordingly.
The cheaper of the two, the 12GB model, will start out at $899. That's $200 more than the original RTX 3080 10GB, though Nvidia is reporting performance around or even better than that of an RTX 3090 Ti, its best GeForce GPU today, at 40 TFLOPs.
The more expensive model is the RTX 4080 16GB, which starts out at $1,199. It comes with 9,728 CUDA Cores, a near-27% increase over the 12GB model. This, Nvidia says, is enough to double the performance of the RTX 3080 Ti for 10% less power. A mighty claim, though at 49TFLOPs the RTX 4080 16GB is nowhere close to actually doubling the 34.1TFLOPs that the RTX 3080 Ti can muster.
There's more to gaming performance than raw TFLOPs, of course, but in this case, Nvidia is citing frame rate data from Microsoft Flight Simulator, Warhammer 40,000 Darktide, and Cyberpunk 2077 with a new ray tracing mode enabled while also using its new DLSS 3 upscaling technology.
(Image credit: Nvidia)This will help out the RTX 40-series specifically, as these cards can take advantage of a new technology called DLSS Frame Generation to actually create new frames, rather than infer and add information to an already rendered frame.
So we'll have to get these cards in the PC Gamer labs to see what sort of performance they can really muster head-to-head, but we should expect a big leap in rasterised and ray tracing performance—Nvidia has made big improvements to its RT Core with the RTX 40-series and how it schedules work on Ada Lovelace GPUs for optimal performance.
Both the RTX 4080 16GB and RTX 4080 12GB will be available from November, and from the pictures we know to expect Founders Edition shrouds available. The RTX 4080 release date is roughly a month on from the release of the even larger RTX 4090. That comes with 16,384 CUDA Cores and 24GB of GDDR6X memory, but will set you back $1,599.
And that's not even the largest GPU that Nvidia can reportedly muster. While nothing announced uses this loadout yet, CEO Huang mentioned over 18,000 CUDA Cores were possible from Ada Lovelace on TSMC's 4N process node. That's one massive GPU, but I wonder if we'll ever see it in the GeForce lineup.
But where does this leave the RTX 4070? Where we'd usually see that tier of card, we're instead seeing two models of RTX 4080 for a higher price than the original RTX 3080. So I do wonder when we'll see a cheaper option for the RTX 40-series, and what shape it'll take when we do. So far Nvidia appears to be keeping the RTX 30-series around to plug that gap.
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The way the "New GeForce RTX Family" is being presented, it sure looks like the current-gen RTX 30-series cards will sit alongside the new RTX 40-series GPUs for a good while yet.
"The best gaming platform in the world just got better," says Jen-Hsun Huang at the GeForce Beyond Special Broadcast from GTC. Introducing us to the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 graphics cards, starting at $899 for the cheapest new Lovelace card, Nvidia is leaving a lot of PC gamers out of the next-gen mix.
But by keeping the RTX 30-series cards around alongside the RTX 40-series, it can carry on presenting the RTX Family as a complete ecosystem of GPUs.
"Our 30-series, starting at $329, are the best GPUs in the world serving mainstream gamers," says Huang. "RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 GPUs, starting at $899, deliver the ultimate performance to enthusiasts."
Interestingly, none of the Ti cards are listed on the new family slide, and neither are the RTX 3090 cards.
In light of the price and performance of the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080, there is really no room for those high-end cards, especially as there's no amount of price cutting that could really be done to make them work, given how costly those big chunks of silicon would still be to produce.
Keeping the RTX 3060, RTX 3070, and RTX 3080 around, however, can aid Nvidia to deliver on different price points all the way up to the RTX 40-series stack when it doesn't have Lovelace-based cards to do so. Yet.
We can maybe wish for some price cuts on the RTX 3070 and RTX 3080 in the days to come, but I feel they might be as cheap today as they're going to get. Fingers crossed I'm wrong.
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The new Windows 11 update is rolling out from today, and if you're a PC gamer with a penchant for windowed gaming or using a controller there are some upgrades in this version you'll want to check out.
The headline feature for gamers in this update is something called Controller Bar. Essentially it's a popup bar that works in conjunction with Windows 11's integrated Xbox functionality to deliver a list of your most recently played games and launchers—all accessible via a few button presses on any controller you may have plugged into your machine. If you have an Xbox controller plugged in, you need only hit the Xbox button to bring it up.
Think of it as one way to make your PC a little more controller friendly, even if ultimately the controller experience on PC isn't all that great. At the very least, the new Controller Bar should allow you to boot your PC and load into the controller-friendly Steam Big Picture mode without relying on a mouse or keyboard at any point—a win for living room PC setups away from the desktop.
That's not all Microsoft has packed into the new release build. There are also improvements to the windowed gaming experience for older games; those running in the DX10 and DX11 APIs. These are set to "receive dramatically improved display latency, Auto HDR, and variable refresh rate (VRR)" while in windowed mode on the new OS version, which were previously features only available if you went fullscreen. That should come in handy if you want to dual-wield a DX11 game and, say, Discord or OBS, and switch between them with ease.
These features are already offered out freely to DX12 games but you can expect some improvements to these newer games. One such improvement is that AutoHDR—Microsoft's algorithm for turning SDR games into HDR games—is going to be more widely available.
DirectStorage also receives expanded support across more storage configurations, including RAID 0, which gives us some inkling of its eventual hardware support when it arrives. That tech was initially set to be released sometime soon with Forspoken. However, that game was unfortunately delayed until next year and seemingly pushed DirectStorage's launch back with it.
(Image credit: Microsoft)That about wraps up the gaming-specific upgrades headed to Windows 11 with the new 2H 2022 update, but there are other improvements previously announced now making it to the OS. These include: more natural sounding narrator voices, improved focus features, system-wide live captions, Smart App Control, and new driver and memory security enhancements.
Further to these, Microsoft is also going to start rolling out smaller updates as and when they're ready to go. We can expect the first batch in October. These will include some of the more must-have features for the OS this year, such as File Explorer tabs, an update to the Photos app, suggested actions for Copy, taskbar overflow, and more sharing options for devices.
Window shopping(Image credit: Microsoft)Windows 11 review: What we think of the new OS
How to install Windows 11: Safe and secure install
What you need to know before upgrading: Things to note before downloading the latest OS
Windows 11 TPM requirements: Microsoft's strict security policyAnd if none of that takes your fancy, well, I don't blame you. It's not the single most exciting upgrade to an OS, but that's how Microsoft is crafting Windows 11—bit by bit. Since its release nearly one year ago, Windows 11 has become a better OS, though still feels like not quite the overhauled OS we'd love it to be.
Still, if you're keen to try these new features out immediately, you can. Just head to the Windows Update settings on your PC and hit "Check for updates." If you don't have Windows 11 yet, you'll first need to run your machine past the Microsoft system requirements to see if your PC is a good fit, but otherwise should be able to follow the same process.
Though it may not be an altogether terrible decision to wait just a little longer before hitting update: Microsoft OS updates aren't always the smoothest.
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The new Windows 11 2H22 update is now available and can be downloaded on your PC via your system settings, but you should know that some of the OS' most anticipated new features won't be available from the get-go.
File Explorer tabs and taskbar overflow are two such features, which are set to launch at a later date in October as Microsoft shifts to a more ad-hoc update process for its OS. That's admittedly not ages to wait, but it does feel like there's not a huge amount else of note in the 2H 2022 update to get excited about.
For all the features and redesigns in Windows 11, File Explorer tabs is my favourite so far. A fairly self-explanatory feature, File Explorer tabs take the pain out of working with multiple files and folders and helps clean up the desktop by collecting your entire file directory within a single window.
File Explorer tabs have been available to try out as a part of the Windows Insider build for a while now, though has been a fairly buggy feature over its time in testing. At one point the inclusion of tabs even killed off dragging the File Explorer window from anywhere on its left side, a bug that has thankfully been patched out with later revisions. File Explorer tabs actually appear to work rather well in the latest Insider build I'm using, but I'm guessing they still didn't make it in time for inclusion in the 2H 2022 update available from today.
It's a feature that Windows users have been clamouring for, though will have to wait a little longer to experience en masse.
Another feature coming at a later date is taskbar overflow, which was first revealed for Insiders to test out in July. It's a pretty simple idea, you fill up your taskbar with apps and Windows will offer up more space in a pop-up window. I don't personally find I use it all that much, if ever, but I certainly know people that will put it to good use. Not saying they're disorganised, but… This feature is also set for a release sometime next month.
(Image credit: Microsoft)Here's the full list of upcoming Windows 11 updates set for October:
- Enhancements to File Explorer, including bringing tabs to File Explorer to help you organize your File Explorer sessions like you do in Microsoft Edge. The new homepage in File Explorer gives you quick access to your favorite and recent files, you can pin important files for quick and easy access—even including information at a glance of colleagues’ actions on your shared files through the power of OneDrive and personalized suggestions based on your Microsoft 365 account.
- Photos app: In an update to the Photos app in Windows 11, we will be introducing a new photos-managing experience that brings a gorgeous gallery, simplifying browsing, finding, management and consumption of your collection of photos. It also allows you to easily backup your photos with OneDrive, enjoy powerful experiences on Windows devices and offers a delightful "Memories" experience.
- Suggested Actions on Copy: Copy phone numbers, future dates and get suggested actions such as making a call with Teams or Skype or adding an event in the Calendar app.
- Taskbar Overflow: Taskbar will offer an entry point to an overflow menu that allows you to view all your overflowed apps in one space.
- Share to more devices: Discover and share to more devices including desktops using nearby share.
In lieu of these features, expect new DX11 and DX10 features for gamers and a new Controller Bar rolling out today. There are also some new security and accessibility features available from today in the 2H22 update, though do note that one major security upgrade, Smart App Control, is only available on fresh installations of Windows 11. That means any existing Win 11 user will be out of luck.
To grab the new update, just head to your Windows settings and hit "Check for updates". Microsoft does often prefer to stagger its update rollout a little, however, and as a result it may take a little longer to show up. That could be for the best, as Windows updates do have a tendency to, how do I say this politely, break stuff at launch.
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I've been in love with Overwatch, its characters, and its world since day one. It launched when I was still at school, so I had all the time in the world between homework and revision to delve into the cinematics, the gameplay, and the fan art. I adored it all, and played countless hours of the game on PlayStation before moving to PC in my third year of university. I pored over patch notes and YouTube videos. Eventually I got to give Jeff Kaplan my opinions on the 3-2-1 experiment after an interview about the development of Overwatch 2. For years I even wore a bronzed OW logo badge on one of my jackets. But now I'm scared of what it's become.
Overwatch dies on October 2. The game that got me into FPSs is just going to cease to exist, and that's a very hard thing for my brain to accept. There's no going back to the way it once was once Overwatch 2 comes out, and the changes Blizzard is making, even before its launch, aren't going down well with fans.
As a Widowmaker player, for instance, her new sound design has left me baffled. One of the core strengths of Overwatch has always been the audio. Listening to your surroundings, you could determine the distance of the enemy, what character it was by their distinctive footfalls, and even when to time your abilities. But Widowmaker's shots are so much more hollow now. Before I could tell if I had hit my target just by the sound alone, but in the betas I was confused and disorientated by new shot noises that didn't make sense to me. I'll learn how to play her again in time, but this is just one of many issues. For other players it's Mercy's new jump, or the confusing sizes of tanks with the introduction of Junker Queen and rework of Doomfist, or tank's new responsibilities as a single, not dual role.
(Image credit: Activision Blizzard)Changes have to be made between iterations of these games, but they're slightly alienating because I'm not familiar with the feeling of Overwatch anymore. These changes I can deal with, just about, but then came the battle pass.
The battle pass has made waves within the Overwatch community as it's the basis of Overwatch 2's free-to-play structure. Overwatch 1 was a paid experience with the loot boxes as its ongoing earner. Many players defended the loot boxes as they were purely aesthetic. No heroes locked away, no game changing mechanics, just D.Va can be a massive bug now if she likes. That's being changed with the Overwatch 2 battle pass.
Heroes will be locked behind the battle pass upon arrival. And it's not an early reward either. One of the screenshots of new healing hero Kiriko reveals that you'll have to hit tier 55, out of 80, before you can unlock her. You can no longer just play the hero upon release you must grind out the $10 battle pass. Or you could pay $40 and get the initial Watchpoint Pack to celebrate Overwatch 2's release, allowing you to earn Kiriko right away with some other benefits like skins and Overwatch coins. Hey Blizzard, remember when I paid over $40 to just own the game and it's continued updates and paid for aesthetics down the line as I wanted? Now that was a good time.
(Image credit: Activision Blizzard)I'm just exhausted from loving something that keeps changing underneath my feet. Overwatch is and will always be one of my favourite games. I adore it, but I want it to do better. I want Blizzard to treat it better. The world has the potential to be so rich and Overwatch 2 feels like such a great opportunity to revive the competitive scene, improve the player experience, and support those players who kept playing when it was in low-maintenance mode. But here I am, terrified Overwatch 2 is going to come out and I'm not going to like it anymore. I'm going to be tired of grinding battle passes, with an obligation to play to keep up rather than playing for fun.
Overwatch upon its original release was unique in its take on FPSes but things have changed. Games like Apex Legends and Valorant have caught up. It's now following their trends rather than making its own, and Overwatch 2 might be suffering for that reason. The battle pass structure is iterated in every free-to-play game now and so feels worn out, and Overwatch 2 is now carrying that baggage.
(Image credit: Activision Blizzard)The faster pace is good, it makes Overwatch more competitive in-game and against the other shooters. But it will alienate some tank players devoted to knowing their main and off roles. With just one tank, the styles of play for an entire role have changed to one allowing aggression and the other allowing protection, to one person doing potentially both. The lessons Overwatch taught hero shooters have been taken on board by the rest of the industry. Its diverse cast, its vibrant world, its dynamic, varied shooter gameplay. But the lessons Overwatch 2 has learned from the industry are just kind of stale.
I have hope that the launch will be successful. I'll play Overwatch 2, I'll even buy the battle pass to give it all a chance, an opportunity to quell my fears, and to teach myself what the game has evolved into after years of development. I'm just so scared I'll go through what Battlefield fans went through with 2042 or what Halo fans went through with Infinite. Is it my turn to be disappointed? I hope not.
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You didn't know you needed it, but Portal is going RTX on. That's just one of many juicy announcements coming from Nvidia's keynote today. Why the company has decided to revive an 15-year-old game with ray tracing may not be clear at first, but what we're really seeing here is a shift of focus, to make modding a much more accessible hobby for the average gamer.
(Image credit: Nvidia)"Nine of the ten most popular competitive games owe their existence to mods," Jen-Hsun says. In order to accommodate the thousands of modders working away on improving the graphics of already established games, Nvidia has now announced RTX Remix. It's an Nvidia Omniverse tool that seems almost like magic to an ex-environment art student like myself.
Apparently, it's as simple as this: "Start the game, and capture the game into USD, which is loaded into Omniverse." In case you're wondering, USD stands for Pixar Univeral Scene Description.
That's exactly how Portal RTX is being delivered, and I have to say it's looking stunning. They even showed the tool working to improve the look of Morrowind, which is a feat in and of itself.
Alongside a small teaser for the upcoming RTX 4090, CEO Jen-Hsun Huang also gave us the rundown on an improved version of Nvidia's deep learning super sampling tech, in the form of DLSS 3.
Combining the upcoming flagship 40-series GPU with Nvidia DLSS 3 tech, Jen-Hsun assures us we'll see the Portal RTX mod running three times faster than we'd see it on the RTX 3090 Ti. Though we've not seen it running on the RTX 3090 Ti yet, so we can't give you any exact numbers.
Either way, it looks like it might be time for a cheeky replay of a 2007 Valve classic, then. This time, in some impressively implemented ray tracing glory.
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At GTC 2022 Nvidia unveiled the next step for its Deep Learning Super Sampling technology and it promises huge improvements to frame rates thanks to a complete rethinking of how it works. In fact, Nvidia claims its new DLSS 3 is capable of quadrupling frame rates compared to native. This is on top of the new GPUs offering 2–3 times the ray tracing performance of the previous generation.
Nvidia showed off its new DLSS 3 tech in Cyberpunk 2077, which saw the frame rate shoot up from 22fps at native 4K up to 85fps with DLSS 3 using a new Ray Tracing: Overdrive Mode. That's a tasty improvement for sure, although Nvidia promises even higher improvements in Portal with RTX, which saw a 550% increase in performance according to a graph on its updated DLSS mini-site.
Where the first iterations of DLSS worked with a combination of the low-resolution current frame and a high-resolution previous frame to build the high-resolution current frame. This is essentially done on a pixel-by-pixel basis. With DLSS 3, the new 40-series GPUs are capable of producing entirely new frames rather than just pixels.
There are four components to this new way of working though, and that means you're going to need either an RTX 4090 or one of the new RTX 4080s in order to access this new DLSS technology. Core to this is a new Optical Flow Accelerator, which works with the game engine motion vectors, which show how pixels are changing, the convolutional AI frame generator and its Reflex super low latency pipeline to build those frames.
It processes the current frame and the previous frame to see how the pixels are changing to produce entire new frames. And it does so without processing the graphics pipeline, and that means it can benefit games that are both GPU-bound and CPU-bound.
(Image credit: Nvidia)As can be seen from the graph above, DLSS 3 can have a massive impact to games. We'll have to see how this plays out when we get the new cards in our test rigs, but these are promising numbers at the very least. We'll have to see if there's any lag with creating several frames at once, but given Reflex gets a mention in the creation of the frames, we'd assume this is covered.
As Jensen succinctly put it when finishing off the segment on DLSS 3, "DLSS is one of our greatest neural inventions." And from the improvements shown in the games at GTC, he looks pretty spot on.
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Fortnite Chapter 3 Season 4 is finally here, and players new and old can enjoy the Reboot Rally. This event is aimed at helping newcomers and lapsed players get to grips with Fortnite's gameplay and challenge styles that have changed drastically over the years, and there are a bunch of tasty new rewards to get your hands on.
Alongside this new mode, the map has had a refresh with new POIs and NPCs, some of which you can hire to fight alongside you—you can see why that's going to be a big advantage in solo matches. There's also a new battle pass that includes the much anticipated Spider-Gwen skin. With all that in mind, let's take a look at how to get involved in the Reboot Rally.
How to take part in Fortnite: Reboot Rally
Reboot Rally is a limited-time event that runs until October 3 at 9 am ET/ 6 am PT/ 2 pm BST, so there's plenty of time to get all four rewards. To earn all of the rewards in Reboot Rally, you must be either:
- A new player or a player who's played fewer than two hours of Fortnite in the 30 days prior to September 18, 2022.
- An active player who has played more than two hours of Fortnite prior to September 18, 2022.
Image 1 of 2(Image credit: Epic Games)Image 2 of 2(Image credit: Epic Games)Regardless of whether you're a new or active player, you must team up with someone of the opposite status to earn your rewards. To access the event, open the Friends tab in the lobby sidebar and select Reboot Rally. You'll then see returning and new friends you can team up with to complete quests and bonus goals.
You can team up with more than one person, too, if you have a good mix of new and active players. Quests for the event can be found on the Quests page, and you'll all earn points as you complete them. They mostly involve completing quests from the Daily Quests list and rallying your friends, which you can do from the Reboot Rally menu.
The rewards for Reboot Rally are all fire-related and actually look quite rad. You'll need to collect points by completing quests to unlock them so here's how many points you'll need for each:
- Barb-B-Q emoticon: 50 points
- Fresh Forged wrap: 100 points
- Red Hot revenge pickaxe: 150 points
- Fiery Descent glider: 200 points
You'll all earn points simultaneously and each of you can focus on different quests if you choose, so grab your pals and jump in.
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Bungie's war against cheat makers rages on. The developer has been locked in a battle with AimJunkies since early this year, filing a copyright infringement complaint against the business and its parent company Phoenix Digital. A Seattle judge dismissed the infringement claims in May, agreeing with AimJunkies that its software was an original creation. Bungie was given the opportunity to amend its complaint, which it did a few weeks later.
Now, AimJunkies has returned—not only with a response but a whole-'donkey' counterclaim—and it doesn't look good for the Destiny 2 developer. It claims that Bungie hacked key member James May's personal computer, combing through files unauthorised "on several occasions" across two years to build evidence for its initial lawsuit, as well as circumventing Phoenix Digital's own terms of service by reverse engineering the cheat software.
As reported by TorrentFreak, Bungie's current license agreement allows the company the right to certain files on players' computers for its anti-cheat. However, the agreement that May signed back in late 2019 did not include that permission. The countersuit claims the developer had no right to go poking around anyone's files unknowingly.
May's lawyers are accusing Bungie of "unauthorised and clandestine surveillance of private records" on his computer, calling its conduct "intentional, malicious and willful." The counterclaim alleges that Bungie's actions violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, using evidence provided by the developer in its own lawsuit as proof that private files were accessed. It goes on to say that May's computer was also fraudulently accessed to "conduct further surveillance" on other members working on AimJunkies, as well as Phoenix Digital itself.
NEW: AimJunkies (a #Destiny2 cheat seller) has now countersued Bungie with claims that the game developer circumvented cheat’s technological protection measures, theft of the defendant's computer data, and unauthorized access with intent to defraud. pic.twitter.com/v2fqOHOMsrSeptember 20, 2022
See moreNot only that, but the counterclaim is accusing Bungie of secretly purchasing AimJunkies' software and reverse engineering it, despite Phoenix Digital's terms of service expressly prohibiting it. It claims that an employee made a purchase under the alias Martin Zeniu in early 2020, which was then reverse-engineered by Bungie.
"Among the specified terms to which such purchasers agree are agreements that, “You shall not modify, hack, decompile, disassemble, reverse engineer, derive source code, or create derivative works of our software, in part or in whole," the counterclaim read. "You shall not transmit our software or display the software’s object code on any computer screen or to make any hard copy memory dumps of the software’s object code.”
It's a pretty wild situation—Bungie has been on a tear against cheaters and other ne'er-do-wells in its game for a hot sec and has mostly been successful. But AimJunkies has fought back and done a pretty good job of it, and if the allegations within the counterclaim are true, Bungie may have messed up. Hacking is no joke, even if it is in the pursuit of protecting your brand.
The counterclaim is demanding a trial by jury, as well as damages paid out to both May and Phoenix Digital and the destruction of anything Bungie retrieved during its time accessing May's computer and AimJunkies' software.
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It looks like the hacker behind last weekend's historic leak of GTA 6 info has racked up quite the wanted level. They're now the target of an FBI investigation, according to a press statement put out by Uber.
Uber, which also fell victim to an enormous hack last week, wrote in a statement that there are "reports over the weekend that this same actor" who was responsible for the attack on Uber also "breached videogame maker Rockstar Games". "Reports" is a bit of an understatement: the GTA leaker claimed responsibility for the Uber hack as well.
Uber goes on to say that it is "in close coordination with the FBI and US Department of Justice on this matter and will continue to support their efforts".
In other words: because of its proximity to the Uber hack, the GTA 6 leak and its perpetrator are now under active investigation by the United States' primary federal law enforcement agency.
Uber says it believes the hacker (or hackers) is "affiliated with a hacking group called Lapsus$" which has also breached Microsoft, Cisco, Samsung, Nvidia and Okta. Lapsus$, according to Uber, tends to use the same techniques over and over when it performs its hacks. That makes sense: in both the Uber and Rockstar hacks, the attacker gained access to company data via the company Slack channel.
Earlier this year, a 16-year-old from Oxford in the UK was accused of being one of the leaders of the Lapsus$ group, and of amassing a personal fortune of around $14 million (about £10.6 million) from his illicit activities. The youth, who went by the name 'White' and 'Breachbase' online, was eventually doxxed by rival hackers and arrested before being released under investigation.
When contacted by Yung Labs engineer Sam Curry, a person (fairly convincingly) claiming to be the hacker behind the Uber attack—and therefore possibly the GTA leaks too—claimed to be just 18 years old. Uber says it's working with "leading digital forensics firms" to track down its attacker, and with the FBI involved too it feels like the attacker is in way over their head.
PCG has reached out to Rockstar for comment and will update if we hear back.
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Nvidia has announced a massive bump in ray tracing performance with its next-gen Ada Lovelace graphics cards, and it's not all derived from the huge number of CUDA Cores that Nvidia has stuffed into its next-gen GPU (though it will have up to 18,000 of those).
One important part of that speed-up is a new technology that Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang calls Shader Execution Reordering (SER). This "reschedules work on the fly" giving a 2/3X speed up for ray tracing on Ada Lovelace cards. Huang likens this to an engineering development of the same import as out-of-order execution was for CPUs, which is an important feature in pretty much every CPU today.
Then you have the obvious improvement: a new RT Core. The RT Core is the main driver of ray tracing performance in Nvidia's RTX graphics cards, and it had already seen one major overhaul with the RTX 30-series. With Ada Lovelace it will be bigger and better again, offering 200 RT TFLOPS performance and two times the ray-triangle intersection throughput.
That's partially down to two new hardware units in the RT Core: a new opacity micromap engine, which "speeds up ray tracing of alpha test geometry by a factor of two times", and a new micromesh engine, which "increases geometric richness without the BVH build and storage cost."
Then there's the new Tensor Core. Tensor Cores are the accelerator behind instructions used for machine learning and those similar, and this new 4th Gen Tensor Core offers 1,400 TFLOPS of Tensor programming and the Hopper FP8 transformer engine, right out of the Hopper architecture Nvidia previously announced for data centres.
(Image credit: Nvidia)So this whole change essentially amounts to a big shift in ray tracing performance, and Huang explains it has been necessary to boost Ada Lovelace's ray tracing performance because "ray tracing is notoriously hard to parallelize." Essentially, ray tracing requires access to lots of different things on the GPU, at different times.
That's where SER comes in, as this block improves efficiency in ray tracing "by rescheduling shading workloads on the fly to better utilise the GPU resources".
"We're seeing up to two to three times increase in ray tracing and 25% in overall game performance," Huang continues.
The other part of the ray tracing puzzle, though not directly related to the GPU's hardware per se, is the release of DLSS 3.0, which Nvidia expects to once again help push frame rates higher with RTX features enabled, as DLSS has done so before. Of course we have more options than DLSS for super resolution nowadays, but it has proven a useful and adept option so it's good to see more improvements are on the way.
And of course, what use is information on the new Ada Lovelace architecture without word of the actual graphics card you can buy built around it: the RTX 4090. That's arriving on October 12 for $1,599. There are also two models of RTX 4080 on the way, a 12GB model and a 16GB model, starting from $899.
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Nvidia has just revealed the new RTX 4090 at today's GeForce Beyond Special Broadcast, one of the worst-kept secrets in tech. I mean, you could almost say that about any new bit of tech coming out of either the Nvidia, AMD, or Intel silicon skunkworks, but due to the voracious nature of PC gamers, the new Lovelace generation of RTX 40-series GPUs has been more leaky than an especially perforated teabag.
"Ada is a quantum leap for gamers," says Jen-Hsun. He's promising twice the performance of the RTX 3090 Ti in Flight Sim, and up to four times the performance in specific ray traced environments thanks to its new Lovelace architecture.
The new GeForce RTX 4090 is, as expected, a frankly monstrous GPU, and it's $1,599 and coming October 12. With a specs list that would make a data center blush, too, though there's still nothing concrete about those aside from the confirmation of 24GB of GDDR6X memory.
Jen-Hsun Huang held the card aloft during his GeForce focused intro to the GTC keynote, a conference traditionally dedicated to AI and more professional exploits than engaging in a little light frag fest of an evening.
And his arm looked like it was going to snap at the sheer weight of the damned thing.
With 16,384 CUDA cores and 24GB of GDDR6X memory, expected to be running at a heady 21Gbps, this is a beast of a graphics card. Though still one that comes in around the same 450W power demands as the RTX 3090 Ti, the previous top Nvidia GPU, but with twice the performance.
(Image credit: Nvidia )As you might expect, the price tag is accordingly massive. At $1,599 this is the stuff of ultra-enthusiast dreams, and normal human gamers' nightmares. Though it is at least lower than the RTX 3090 Ti started out life priced at.
So, when can you bankrupt yourself chasing ludicrous gaming frame rates? Huang announced that it would be on the shelves on October 12. Whether there'll be much stock of the RTX 4090 around launch… well, that's going to be tough to say until launch. Suffice to say that release day stock generally vanishes in a matter of minutes, and the chances are that such a massive slice of graphics silicon as the AD102 GPU inside the RTX 4090 will not be easy to manufacture.
As such, I doubt there's a massive number of complete GPUs coming out of TSMC's 4N foundries, and Nvidia's not going to flood the market with hugely expensive new cards, when it has a whole load of hugely expensive old cards still, y'know, flooding the market.
Image 1 of 6(Image credit: Nvidia)Image 2 of 6(Image credit: Nvidia)Image 3 of 6(Image credit: Nvidia)Image 4 of 6(Image credit: Nvidia)Image 5 of 6(Image credit: Nvidia )Image 6 of 6(Image credit: Nvidia)Nvidia RTX 40 series specs RTX 4090 RTX 4080 RTX 4080 (!?) GPU (rumoured) AD102 AD103 AD104 CUDA Cores 16384 9728 7680 Base Clock 2235 2210 2310 Boost Clock 2520 2510 2610 Memory Bus 384-bit 256-bit 192-bit Memory Type 24GB GDDR6X 16GB GDDR6X 12GB GDDR6X Memory Speed 21Gbps 22.5Gbps 21Gbps TDP 450W+ 320W+ 285W+ Your next machine(Image credit: Future)Best gaming PC: The top pre-built machines from the pros
Best gaming laptop: Perfect notebooks for mobile gamingIt wasn't just the RTX 4090 that got its first reveal, however, as the RTX 4080 has also appeared at the Special Broadcast. Or should I RTX 4080s? In a bold move, Nvidia has announced an RTX 4080 with 16GB and a lower-specced RTX 4070 with 12GB. Except it's also called an RTX 4080.
Weird, huh?
These second- and third-tier cards will launch after the RTX 4090, and will likely be there to go head-to-head with AMD's Navi 31 GPUs when they arrive sometime in November. They're also not cheap, either, priced at $1,199 and $899 respectively.
It's going to be a fun, GPU-filled end of the year, people. And an expensive one.
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An AMD blog post went up yesterday to remind potential customers of the RDNA 3 GPUs set to launch November 3, right as Nvidia gets ready to reveal its anticipated GeForce 40-series GPUs. In particular, the post talks of "energy prices skyrocketing," and the need for more energy efficient graphics cards with the same level of graphical prowess.
The post specifically calls out Nvidia's 30-series in that "there is a cost savings benefit as well, as seen when comparing the thermal design power across the current lineup of AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series graphics cards versus NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3000 Series products."
It's true performance per watt has been a major focus for AMD's graphics card lineups, with its 5000-series cards improving 50% over the previous generation of GCN architecture, and the 6000-series upping that by another 65%.
It's worth noting that in our tests, we saw Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3080 ran at 0.32 frames per jule at 4K, and 0.44 frames per jule at 1080p, whereas the RX 6800 XT was 0.22 at 4k and 0.45 at 1080p.
Last month, the company confirmed a chiplet-based RDNA 3 GPU architecture for its upcoming RDNA 3 design, which alongside adaptive power management technology that the company has been refining, we can expect the performance per watt numbers to be pretty darn impressive.
It was during the design process for RDNA 2 that AMD began implementing such tactics. "We leveraged the dense CPU L3 memories to implement AMD Infinity Cache," the post reminds us. That helped them create "a high-density, low-power cache, to make frequently used data in gaming workloads more easily accessible, dramatically increasing bandwidth while reducing the power needed for memory and cutting latency."
Your next upgrade(Image credit: Future)Best CPU for gaming: The top chips from Intel and AMD
Best gaming motherboard: The right boards
Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits
Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game ahead of the restThat efficiency is set to improve even further with the next generation of graphics cards. Essentially, by mimicking some of the physical makeup of the company's Zen CPU micro architectures, AMD is on track to improve the efficiency of its graphics cards by another 50%. We'll be hearing more about RDNA 3 on November 3, so keep an eye out for more information regarding efficiency.
Either way, the post is a nice little reminder of the importance of efficiency just as we set ourselves up to hear about Nvidia's flagship GPU monster, the RTX 4090. As you're watching the keynote, AMD wants you to remember that power isn't everything—and that running a GPU can be expensive.
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The best VR headset is all about fully immersing you in to another world with as little headache as possible. This means headsets that are easy to use, affordable, and comfortable will be at the top of the list. The options out there can be a bit daunting, especially when comparing headset specs without context. But don't worry; I got my hands on all the popular headsets from Valve, Meta, HTC, and more to let you know which ones are worth your hard-earned cash.
Because of inflation, the best VR headset, Meta Quest 2, has risen by $100. Even with the price hike, it still provides the best wireless premium VR gaming experience. So, if you hate the idea of being tethered to a PC, Meta's headset is the answer to your prayers. If money is no object and you want the most over-the-top VR setup, the Valve Index is the closest thing to having a holodeck in your office.
Once you've secured one of the best VR headsets, the next step is figuring out the best VR games. Half-Life: Alyx shows what VR is capable of, but it'll push your PC majorly. There are plenty of other sci-fi titles to enjoy that aren't as intense, such as No Man's Sky (you'd do best to sit down for that one). Check out the best VR games on PC if you want to build your VR gaming library.
Regardless of your headset, there's no doubt that now is a great time to get into virtual reality.
Best VR headsets
Image 1 of 3(Image credit: Future)Image 2 of 3(Image credit: Future)Image 3 of 3(Image credit: Future)1. Meta Quest 2
The best VR headset
Display: LCD | Resolution: 3664 x 1920 | Refresh Rate: Up to 120Hz | Field of View: 100 degrees | Controllers: Oculus Touch | Connections: USB Type-C, 3.5mm headphone
Oculus Link tetheringImproved graphicsGreat priceSteady updatesMandatory Facebook loginFiddly strapUp until the recent $100 price increase, the Meta Quest 2 (previously the Oculus Quest 2) improved on the specs sheet of the original Quest and delivered it for cheaper. Now, at the same price, the Meta Quest 2 takes a small knock to its prowess, but it's still the best VR headset available right now. With a new LCD at 1832 x 1920 per eye, the Quest 2 offers exceptional clarity for what is priced like an entry-level headset, but is much more than that.
First off, yes, this is the same headset as the Oculus Quest 2. Meta owns Oculus, and with its big rebranding from Facebook it took the Oculus brand down with it. For the most part, the name has fully transitioned to the Meta Quest 2 listed some places today, though you can still find Oculus mentions while Googling your way to the headset. Why Meta decided to make the change, who can say. I personally preferred Oculus, for what it's worth.
The Quest 2 becomes more than a standalone VR headset with Oculus Link.
But let's talk about the Quest 2. So long as you keep the headset at a decent level with your eyes in the centre, the Quest 2 delivers a crisp and clear picture. Powering that is the Snapdragon XR2 System-on-Chip (SoC) from Qualcomm, which is a marked improvement over the Snapdragon 835 SoC used in the older Quest model. That also now comes with 6GB of RAM, a step-up from the 4GB on the original model.
You can either play games purpose-built for the standalone headset, and thus rendered by the onboard Snapdragon XR2 chip, or beamed from your PC using Oculus Link and a compatible USB Type-C cable. We've used the official Oculus Link cable, although it is really pricey. You can absolutely use a cheaper cable, but bear in mind that some won't deliver the length, bandwidth, or power that pricier cables can. That can be a bit of an issue, but not always.
The Quest 2 becomes more than a standalone VR headset with Oculus Link. It becomes an all-in-one VR Swiss army knife, capable of great on-the-move VR and gaming across SteamVR and Oculus Rift compatible titles. It's now capable of up to 120Hz refresh rate, thanks to a recent update, making it an even sweeter deal.
The official Oculus Link cable is really nice but so expensive. (Image credit: Future)There are technically two storage options to choose from: 256GB and 128GB. There is also a 64GB models, however, as this was all the storage cheaper option launched with. Meta replaced that with the 256GB model for the same price, so we don't recommend picking the 64GB model up unless it's going much cheaper than MSRP.
The less capacious unit of the three is what I've been testing, but even with significantly less space you'll have no issue keeping a half-decent catalogue of VR games, experiences, and apps installed.
The Quest 2 is one of the quickest headsets to get up and running on this list. With Inside-Out tracking and hand tracking built-in, you can go from unboxing to up-and-running in VR in just a couple of minutes. The first time setup process will have you removing your headset, memorising Wi-Fi passwords, putting the headset back on again, and then waiting around for a couple of updates. It's a little fiddly, but you need only do it once and it's relatively quick to complete.
There is a major hitch with recommending the Oculus Quest 2, however: its plan for virtual world domination via compulsory Facebook account login. The Oculus Quest 2 requires a Facebook account, though researchers have managed to bypass it. The company says it's to better serve you, the customer, with services and products, although for a good while there the only discernible 'benefit' was direct to feed screenshots. Not great. Meta did seemingly look to be rid of this mandatory login, but it's currently still in place.
If you're not a fan of Meta's (née Facebook's) practices then you'd best scroll further down the list for a VR headset worth investing in.
If it doesn't bother you, the Quest 2 is a quick and easy device to jump into VR. Most tethered headsets require the use of an external sensor, or two. The Oculus Quest 2 is a self-contained unit capable of tracking controller, hand, and headset movement without further kit, as did its predecessor. The inside-out tracking on the Quest 2 manages to keep up exceptionally well, and without fear of falling out of eyeline with the sensors.
The standalone experience is admittedly still hampered by the low-power silicon, and there's no getting around that. The Quest 2 not only deals with the processing onboard, but it's also trying to conserve battery power to ensure a half-decent run. That's roughly around two hours of battery life for gaming.
As an all-round VR headset for a wide range of uses, the Quest 2 is simply unparalleled. The fact that it's also the cheapest VR headset we recommend is just icing on the cake.
Read our full Meta Quest 2 review.
Image 1 of 3(Image credit: Future)Image 2 of 3(Image credit: Future)Image 3 of 3(Image credit: Future)2. Valve Index
The best VR headset for a premium experience on a gaming PC
Display: AMOLED | Resolution: 2880 x 1600 | Refresh Rate: 120Hz, experimental 144Hz mode | Field of View: ~130 degrees | Controllers: Index Controllers | Connections: DisplayPort, USB 3.0, USB 2.0
Best in class hardwareComfortable to wearVirtually no SDESetup is awkwardLimited support for finger-trackingThe Valve Index boasts some of the best visuals of any mainstream, commercially available VR headset, with a display resolution equalling the Vive Pro, Quest, and Odyssey+ but paired with a 120Hz refresh rate (up to 144Hz in a currently unsupported, experimental mode). The FOV, at 130°, is also best-in-class, and there's virtually no detectable screen door effect inside the headset.
All sound good? Yeah, the Valve Index is the granddaddy of VR headsets.
If the specs list wasn't enough, the Valve Index feels great to wear. It's a bit heavier than the Rift S—enough that the weight was noticeable in our side-by-side comparison—but the shape of the head strap better distributes that weight around your head. Not to mention it's built from carefully selected, high-quality materials, with top-notch weight distribution. The strap materials feel quality too—more like a padded extra-soft t-shirt than standard foam padding—never bothering me during extended play sessions.
But most importantly, the Index is comfortable because of how it delivers audio.
Built-in near-field speakers hover just next to your ears, powered by speaker drivers instead of the ones usually found in headphones. What this means is the Index's speakers offer outstanding three-dimensional surround sound, somehow also delivering a level of aural isolation without shutting yourself off completely to external noises. With zero pressure on your ears, there's less fatigue from staying in VR for an extended period of time, and they somehow don't bleed audio into the rest of the room, either.
The Valve Index is the granddaddy of VR headsets.
The other hallmark feature of the Index is its new controllers, which double as both typical motion controllers and hand/finger trackers. The Index controllers strap to your hands—meaning you can release your grip entirely without worrying about dropping them.
Finger tracking is one of the distinguishing features of Valve's Index, but there aren't many impressive implementations yet. The best use so far is the Aperture Hand Labs tech demo, which has you waving to, high-fiving, and playing rock-paper-scissors with a collection of quirky Portal-style robots. Where previous touch controllers could only articulate grip, the Index controllers let me give a thumbs-up, point with finger guns, or even offer a Vulcan salute.
Not a whole load of games use finger tracking right now, which means outside of Aperture Hand Labs and Half Life: Alyx, the feature can feel a little gimmicky. Still, there's a great deal of potential there for future games.
The Valve Index also boasts some impressive technology and handy convenience features like USB passthrough in the slot hidden behind the front panel. There are tons of cool third-party mods for this slot, including cooling kits.
(Image credit: Future)The Index is a roomscale VR experience, which means it requires two base station sensors positioned around your play area. The HTC Vive and Vive Pro, as well as the last-gen Oculus Touch controllers, all use base stations. But the competition is fierce. The Quest 2 and Vive Cosmos use inside-out tracking—that is, sensors on the headset instead of placed around your room. After growing accustomed to that more streamlined experience, setting up sensors for the Index was frustrating.
It does deliver a more responsive experience than any of the inside-out options, though; there's a reason the more recent Vive Cosmos Elite goes back to prioritizing the base stations.
After setting it the base stations, the roomscale setup can be a pain. With the Quest 2, the headset's cameras give you a digital view of your surroundings to draw your play area in seconds. But the Index's setup has to be done via Steam on your computer, before you even put the headset on. After calculating floor height, you click the trigger at four corners of your available space, which Steam then measures in order to determine your best play area. After using the Rift S, it just feels old-fashioned—like having to start your car with a crank.
And all those premium features come at a price. It's the best VR headset on the market... if you don't consider the value proposition. At nearly a thousand dollars, the complete Index package costs as much as three Quest 2s.
Read our full Valve Index review.
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Image 1 of 5(Image credit: HTC)Image 2 of 5(Image credit: HTC)Image 3 of 5(Image credit: HTC)Image 4 of 5(Image credit: HTC)Image 5 of 5(Image credit: HTC)3. HTC Vive Pro 2
The best display in a mainstream VR headset so far, but it'll cost you
Display: LCD | Resolution: 4896 x 2448 | Refresh Rate: 120Hz | Field of View: 120 degrees | Controllers: HTC Vive | Connections: DisplayPort 1.2, USB 3.0
Awesome displayPrecise trackingMature trackingRidiculously expensiveTakes time to setupGets hot in useThe HTC Vive Pro 2 brings with it a number of updates on the display front to make it one of the most impressive mainstream options around. The native resolution of 2448 x 2448 pixels per eye is incredible, and when coupled with the 120Hz refresh rate and 120-degree field of view, makes for one of the best viewing experiences around.
The Vive Pro 2 is one of the highest resolution mainstream headsets you can drop your money on and offers a significant edge over the Quest 2 as well, which settles for 3664 x 1920. It's great for high fidelity games, but a less obvious upgrade in more cartoony titles—meaning you really need high-resolution textures and models to truly enjoy the benefits this headset brings.
There's no obvious screen door effect either, and at this resolution it feels like the hardware side of VR has been solved.
Of course, at these kinds of resolutions, you'll need a high-end machine to get the most from this headset, with HTC recommending an Nvidia GeForce RTX 20-series or Radeon RX 5000-series GPU to maintain a smooth experience. For testing, we hooked up the headset to our high-end test PC, which is home to a GeForce RTX 3080 and an AMD Ryzen 9 5900X. We had no problems running any of the games on this setup, but, yeah, it's well up there in terms of specs.
It's very much a tethered experience, and while the cable that connects you to your PC is generous, there are still times when it gets in the way and yanks you out of your virtual world. If you pine for cable-free gaming, then the headset is compatible with the HTC Vive wireless adapter, but that costs an extra $349 (£359) and also limits the refresh rate to 90Hz—not exactly ideal.
The headset itself is comfortable to wear, although I did find myself getting hot after a while. There's plenty of foam padding to help keep things comfortable, although this acts as an insulator as well. It's not the lightest headset around, but it is really well-balanced, and so doesn't feel overly heavy.
At this resolution it feels like the hardware side of VR has been solved.
As for the software side of getting the Vive Pro 2 up and running, that's handled by HTC's setup app, which goes through the proceedings in a logical way before handing over control to Steam VR for the final configuration. This works well and highlights any issues as you go.
HTC has stuck with the satellite setup for the Vive Pro 2 to ensure you get accurate controller tracking, which means you'll need plenty of power sockets to get everything up and running. The full starter kit comprises the headset, two first-generation controllers, and a pair of Base Station 2.0 satellites.
Setup is still a bit of a pain, and requires mounting the satellites in a way so that they're not bouncing around in response to your own virtual shenanigans. They come with wall mounting brackets, which is probably the best solution. You'll need to place them near power sockets too, as each satellite needs plugging in, and you'll need an extra socket for the headset breakout box too.
It's not plug-and-play is what I'm saying.
The headset is available on its own, which is useful if you're upgrading from a first-generation setup. That full-kit is surprisingly pricey at $1,399 (£1,299), while the headset on its own will set you back $799 (£719). It's a pricey upgrade over the Valve Index and doesn't do enough beyond the improved display to really justify that cost. Still, if you're looking for the very best display around, particularly as an upgrade, there's certainly a case to be made for the Vive Pro 2. It's a shame the starter kit is so expensive really.
Read our full HTC Vive Pro 2 review.
Image 1 of 4(Image credit: HP)Image 2 of 4(Image credit: HP)Image 3 of 4(Image credit: HP)Image 4 of 4(Image credit: HP)4. HP Reverb G2
The best VR headset from the Windows Mixed Reality group
Display: LCD | Resolution: 4320 x 2160 | Refresh Rate: 90Hz | Field of View: ~114 degrees | Controller: Odyssey Controllers | Connections: DisplayPort 1.3, USB 3.0
Easy setup and long cableAccessible physical IPD ToggleNo screen door effectFOV below averageLimited tracking volumeThe HP Reverb G2 has won a place here with the best VR headsets, thanks in no small part to its fantastic resolution. If future-proofing your setup in terms of image fidelity is your main concern, it will not disappoint. With 2160p per eye, the Reverb G2 manages to completely alleviate the screen door effect that can cause issues with some lower resolution headsets—provided you have a powerful enough GPU to handle it.
You are able to step down the resolution per eye with relative ease if it surpasses the limitations of your hardware, though. And even playing in lower resolutions, you get to take advantage of great features like the highly inclusive, physical IPD toggle on the underside of the headset, the range of which is impressive compared to other options on the market.
The use of standard Mixed Reality controllers is a little disappointing, though. While they're battery operated for quick juice swaps, they forgo a lot of the more advanced features found in other designs like the Valve Index's finger-tracking knuckle controllers.
The Reverb G2's tracking solution does mean no base stations are necessary, and that means simpler setup, but also comes with some drawbacks. Visible light tracking means surrounding lighting conditions can really affect your experience. Don't expect it to work particularly well in a Sunroom, or in the dark, as the headset relies on a very particular lighting requirement to position you properly in physical space.
The hand tracking is a little limited without base stations, too, but HP counters this with fantastic IMU gyro sensors will predict movements beyond the tracking area, as long as they are fluid motions. Holding your hands still tells a different story, but this shouldn't make a difference in most in-game situations. It's possible to land steady sniper shots even when prone, as long as you don't pull the controllers too close to your face.
The Reverb G2 might not have all the fancy greebles of some of the other headsets on the list, but it has enough great features that do make it worth a look.
And speaking of invading your headspace, the headset is a snug fit. The Velcro strap gets caught in my hair a fair bit, but its a comfortable solution. It needs to be quite tight on to prevent slippage and, although it's not the heaviest VR headset around, there's a noticeable pressure on the cheeks. After extended periods of play this can make you feel strange due to interference with the sinuses. Either way it doesn't put any pressure on the bridge of the nose itself, and there's enough room to wear glasses inside comfortably.
Some users have complained of trouble with the curvature on the face gasket being too extreme, but there are 3D printed solutions out there if it doesn't fit right. Still, the Reverb G2's tether at least is a step up from the G1, in that it's now a singular cable as opposed to two adjacent cables. At 19.5 foot (6m), it's a little longer than a lot of other top VR headsets, but the jelly feel means it catches on itself, making it a little awkward to untangle.
The off-ear, BMR powered headphones are brilliant, however. Not only is the sound quality incredible, it also helps with keeping you cool and immersed without anything more pressing up against the side of your face. They're similar to the headphones used on the Index, and hopefully we'll see more headsets utilise the tech going forward.
The HP Reverb G2 works seamlessly with Steam VR, though I do have some gripes with its reliance on Windows Mixed Reality. Essentially there is no way to stop it from opening on startup if you've left the headset plugged in, aside from uninstalling it—which I don't want to do because it does include some cool features. Other than that, I've no real complaints on the software front when it comes to actually using the set on a day-to-day basis.
The Reverb G2 might not have all the fancy greebles of some of the other headsets on the list, but it has enough great features that do make it worth a look for the money.
Read our full HP Reverb G2 review.
Image 1 of 3(Image credit: Future)Image 2 of 3(Image credit: Future)Image 3 of 3(Image credit: Future)5. HTC Vive Cosmos Elite
HTC goes back to base stations for improved accuracy
Display: LCD | Resolution: 2880 x 1700 | Refresh Rate: 90Hz | Field of View: 110 degrees | Controllers: 1st-gen Vive Controllers | Connections: DisplayPort 1.2, USB 3.0
High resolutions displaysAccurate trackingIncludes Half-Life: Alyx and Viveport InfinityFirst-gen controllers and base stationsNot massively innovativeThe HTC Vive Cosmos Elite is attempts to address some of the problems with the original HTC Vive Cosmos, while maintaining the core specifications of that model. Chiefly the dual 4.3-inch 1440 x 1700 displays running at 90 Hz.
it comes bundled with the Half-Life: Alyx and 6-months of Viveport Infinity subscription, which at the very least means there are lots of things to try out with your new headset.
The Cosmos Elite is essentially the original Cosmos, with the first generation base stations and controllers, but a different faceplate attached to the headset. If you've already bought the Cosmos, you can upgrade it with a new faceplate for $200, although you'll need to buy your own base stations separately to use it. The modularity means you can even add the wireless adapter, although at $350 for that alone, this solution can get expensive quickly.
The Cosmos Elite replaces the inside-out tracking of the original Cosmos, returning to base stations in order to improve accuracy. It's added to the price, and made the setup a little trickier—each one needs its own power connector, and should be mounted above head height, but angled downwards so as to encompass the floor. They have standard fittings for attaching to tripods and light stands, and the bundle even includes wall mounting brackets (complete with wall plugs and screws).
The best of virtual realityYou'll also need a 6 x 6 ft space as a minimum, which can be difficult to set aside.
You don't need to plug absolutely everything in to use the HTC Vive Cosmos Elite, but if you're trying to recharge both controllers at the same time, that equates to a total of five power plugs, against the Cosmos Elite's three necessary sockets. You can use spare USB ports from your PC, though.
The main cable (the one you'll be tripping over the most) needs power connects to your graphics card via DisplayPort and connects to your machines via USB 3.0. It's a long, sturdy 16 ft cable, but I found it twisted easily, and it's weightiness has a tendency to disrupt the immersion.
The headset is a little heavy at 2lbs, but the foam padding makes for comfortable experience, bar a little forehead pressure, but the headband attaches firmly. The fact that you can easily flip the display up away from your face is also useful for reorienting yourself and for cooling off since it runs a little hot.
General hand tracking works well apart from the odd hurdle, and the controllers—which are the same as that of the original Vive—are comfortable enough. The trackpad is great and the buttons that have a satisfying click to them, though the two side buttons that detect when you squeeze the controller took a bit of getting used to. All in all the lack of innovation tends to hold the headset back.
The original launch price of the Cosmos Elite was prohibitively high at $899, which is one reason it didn't fare better in our review. Still, if you're looking for a premium VR gaming experience, you're going to have to pay a chunk for it, whichever solution you go for.
Read our full HTC Vice Cosmos Elite review.
Best VR headset FAQ
What are VR lighthouses?
To keep track of your movements, your VR headset needs to use some method of sensing both the headset itself as well as the controllers in your hands. The first VR headsets used what are known as lighthouses, individually placed sensors, or positional trackers, which plugged into your PC.
This is the most accurate method of tracking but is cumbersome, and unless they're permanently installed in a room, you'll need to set them up each time you want to play, and that includes calibrating them anew every time.
What is inside-out tracking in VR?
Inside-out tracking means you don't need external sensors as the headset can keep track of both itself and the controllers around it. Originally this method wasn't as effective, wasn't quite as responsive, and broke immersion in-game. But with the best VR headset, the Oculus Quest 2, the tech is almost on par with the lighthouse in terms of responsiveness now. And is certainly far more convenient.
Are there wireless PC VR headsets?
The Quest 2 is a wireless headset, but you officially need to plug it into your gaming PC via a USB Type-C cable to enjoy the best VR headset experience with your rig. But there are now easily accessible ways to do that wirelessly. However, you do need to have a Wi-Fi 6 router to deliver the level of throughput you require not to spend the entire time vomiting your guts up due to incessant lag.
The old Vive did have a wireless module you could add to the system, which was almost effective, though, in our experience, the connection dropouts would not be something we could put up within the long term.
The Valve Index could be due to its own wireless module as some patents have emerged, indicating a wireless head strap has at least been considered for the company's stellar goggles.
Jargon buster - virtual reality busted
Field of view (FOV)
The field of view refers to the amount of an environment that's visible to an observer; in VR, it's the extent of the game world that's visible in the displays. A broader FOV in a headset is integral to a feeling of immersion.
Head-mounted display (HMD)
Broadly any wearable mounted on the head with graphical capabilities but often used to refer to VR headsets specifically.
Inside-out tracking
Systems used to track a user's movements in VR that originate in the headset, as opposed to outside-in tracking, where external sensors are used to track movement. Tracking, and the method used, is crucial to enable either three degrees of freedom (being able to look around in any direction in VR) or six degrees of freedom (being able to look around and move your body in any direction in VR).
Latency
The delay between an input and a response, in VR, the delay between user input through a controller, moving your head, or other methods, and the response on the headset displays. Low latency is vital to reducing nausea in VR, which is most intense when there's a delay or stuttering between moving or looking and the display reacting.
Resolution
Resolution is the measurement in pixels, horizontal and vertical, of an image or display. Higher resolution in VR is essential because the displays are so close to the user's eyes, which emphasizes jagged lines, pixelation, and the screen door effect.
Refresh rate
The number of images a display is capable of displaying per second, measured in hertz. The high refresh rate is essential for VR similarly to latency, as a low refresh rate can cause stuttering (or even the appearance of freezing), which can cause nausea.
Screen door effect (SDE)
The fine mesh-like effect of viewing an image rendered in pixels at close range, where the grid between pixels is visible. Higher resolutions (or proprietary solutions like that built into the Odyssey+) mitigate this effect.
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AMD's next-generation RDNA 3 graphics cards will be unveiled on November 3, and the company is teasing impressive performance per watt from its brand new GPU architecture.
We've been expecting this moment for quite some time; AMD has reiterated multiple times throughout this year that RDNA 3 graphics cards will launch this year. Well, would you believe, this year is nearly up, and in just over a month we'll see what AMD has to muster against Nvidia's RTX 40-series, expected to be unveiled later today.
Join us on November 3rd as we launch RDNA 3 to the world! More details to come soon! #RDNA3 #AMD pic.twitter.com/oftq1FjrgtSeptember 20, 2022
See morePresumed to be called the Radeon RX 7000-series—though that's not confirmed—this next-generation is already shaping up to be a doozy. Impressively, AMD has kept a great deal of information about its next-generation cards under wraps, but it has unveiled some promising performance per watt numbers.
AMD's CEO Dr. Lisa Su also recently confirmed that AMD would be pursuing a chiplet architecture for its RDNA 3 GPUs—a heavily rumoured approach that could be quite radical for GPU development in the long run. Though unlike some rumours (call it wishful thinking) it seems these cards will use chiplets to combine a GPU block with the necessarily I/O die required to hook it up to a wider system and extract top performance, rather than hook up two GPUs in some kind of multi-GPU behemoth.
Hey, maybe some day we'll see that. For now, we have RDNA 3 to look forward to in the imminent future.
Also confirmed for RDNA 3 is the use of a 5nm process node from TSMC, a new compute unit design, an optimised graphics pipeline, and a next-gen version of AMD's impressive Infinity Cache—first introduced with RDNA 2 GPUs. So plenty to look forward to on the day.
Expect to hear more at the event, which can't come soon enough.
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Sony's stitched mascot Sackboy looks to definitely be heading to PC, as a Steam database update has all but confirmed a port of Sackboy: A Big Adventure.
Rumours around the port have been rife for a few months—a SteamDB entry appeared back in October 2021, which was theorised to be the game based on references to Project Marmalade, its original codename. That same name also appeared as part of the massive Nvidia GeForce leak a month prior. Then in June, some very convincing screenshots of PC Sackboy appeared on Reddit, further solidifying that this was something that was happening.
Now, as VGC reports, the SteamDB entry has received a little update. An icon has been added, showing a happy, zoomed-in Sackboy taken from A Big Adventure's key art. It all but confirms that Sackboy is heading to PC sometime soon, though it's uncertain when. The icon update came alongside language support, which usually signals that a game isn't far off releasing. I'd hazard a guess we'll be seeing the port before 2022 closes out, though we could see it pushed into early 2023.
The whole thing is rather exciting, and it marks yet another PlayStation exclusive making its way over here. The past 18 months have seen Sony dedicate itself to bringing its games over to PC—we've had the likes of Horizon, Days Gone, God of War and Spider-Man receive ports and for the most part, they've been pretty damn good. Sackboy: A Big Adventure is sitting at a fine score of 79 on Metacritic, touted as a fun platformer with a lovable mascot. I would've personally preferred to see LittleBigPlanet get ported—just think of all the cool mods you could have!—but it's still nice to see that Sony wasn't just blowing hot air when it said it was dedicated to PC as a platform.
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Intel's ever wholesome CEO Pat Gelsinger sent out a tweet yesterday showing a picture of him gleefully holding a super finished-looking Intel Arc A770 graphics card, and boy does he look happy. The GPU, sent out by Raja Koduri (aka. Mr Intel GPU) marks a milestone for the company in finally having its much anticipated Arc graphics card lineup near shipping-ready, or the A770 is at least.
Got a surprise delivery on a rainy Sunday evening from @RajaXG – an Intel Arc A770. We are now getting first batch of A770 cards ready for retail …excited! pic.twitter.com/r75BASxLtFSeptember 19, 2022
See more"Got a surprise delivery on a rainy Sunday evening," Gelsinger says. He appears to have been so excited about receiving his very own Arc A770, he missed out an entire word: "We are now getting first batch of A770 cards ready for retail," he fumbles.
Omitting 'the' may have been for brevity, but I like to imagine him excitedly pawing at his phone screen to get the tweet up as soon as possible.
It's been quite the lead up to this moment. After a whole bunch of obstacles including speculation that it might have already been the end of the road for Intel Arc, we can understand the frantic tweet. Koduri's response to the speculation made it clear that the rumours were unfounded and as is everything appears to be going ahead as planned.
Well, as much as it can considering the number of Intel Arc delays we've seen. And after the A380's less-than-ideal reception, along with some potential Intel partners hesitating before the flagship drop, here's hoping this Intel Arc 7 GPU can make up for all the foibles.
Now that we've seen the sleek Arc A770 graphics card sitting snugly in Pat's hand, Intel GPU guru Tom Petersen's words are rolling around in my head: "Yeah, we're definitely competitive or better than Nvidia with ray tracing hardware," he claims, with Arc 7 said to be capable of ray tracing performance matching that of Nvidia's 20-series cards at the least.
Petersen also reckons the Arc A770 will be faster than or similar to the RTX 3060, at least when you switch on DX12. It shouldn't be long now before we have one in our hands to put one through its paces against these claims.
Your next upgrade(Image credit: Future)Best CPU for gaming: The top chips from Intel and AMD
Best gaming motherboard: The right boards
Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits
Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game ahead of the restApparently the Intel Arc A770 should be coming to market for less than $399 a pop, though should theoretically cost less than the RTX 3060 it's going up against at around $329. The RTX 40-series announcement is expected later today, but that likely won't have any competition for Intel in the more entry-level market just yet.
Still, if Intel's Arc 7 cards manage to live up to all the talk, it could see the company truly breaking into the competitive GPU market. That'll mean lots more choice for you when you come to buy a new graphics card. Though of course that all depends on whether you're able to get in there before they sell out on launch day.
I'm sure we all remember the Nvidia 30-series Launch fiasco, but hopefully we shouldn't be seeing as many crypto miners scouring for the Intel Arc launch, especially since proof-of-work is all but dead after the ethereum merge. Intel told us that it expects to have plenty of GPUs available, at least, but will be starting with only a "moderate supply" of graphics cards.
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The Taliban has announced that a much-discussed ban on PUBG: Battlegrounds—for "promoting violence" and "misleading youth"—will take effect in Afghanistan within three months, Khaama Press reports. The decision was announced following a recent meeting between Afghanistan's Ministry of Telecommunications, a Sharia law enforcement official, and security representatives.
The Taliban actually ordered this PUBG ban back in April this year, but the details and timeline of its implementation have only just been worked out and announced. Afghan telecommunications companies and internet service providers have 90 days to put the ban into action. The ban is focused on PUBG's mobile version and will also affect TikTok, which companies will have one month to block.
PUBG has been singled out for its violent content, but both apps are charged with "misleading the younger generation" and "wasting people's time". I guess I can't argue with that last one.
PUBG has been a runaway success in Afghanistan. At the beginning of 2021, the game was swallowing up big chunks of the country's mobile internet traffic at peak times, when it was attracting somewhere in the vicinity of 100,000 Afghan players at once. It's been a source of national moral panic for about the same length of time. Still, given its popularity, you can't help but wonder if some enterprising soul will give the game a makeover and a new version for the Afghan market, much like the "patriotic version" PUBG got in China.
The ban is part of a rolling tide of repression that the Taliban has implemented since returning to power in Afghanistan in August last year. The group has also banned over 23 million websites for "immoral content". Of course, as Khaama Press' original report points out, Afghan internet users can get their hands on VPNs without much hassle. If the Taliban really wants to cleanse the scourge of PUBG from Afghanistan, it's probably going to have to try harder.
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Today at 8am Pacific Time (that's 4pm in the UK) Nvidia will be broadcasting its Keynote from GTC 2022. This is of interest to PC gamers because this is when we expect Nvidia to unveil its GeForce RTX 40-series GPUs. This new family will use the latest Ada Lovelace architecture, which is the follow-up to the Ampere architecture found in the current RTX 30-series cards.
If you visit that page right now, you'll find a trailer sitting in its place that doesn't have a whole load of information on there, other than a joke about Jensen's love of spatulas—something that came to light after the Nvidia CEO launched the Ampere generation from his kitchen during lockdown.
The post-it note asking whether it's pronounced "T. I." or "Tie" is a nice touch as is the RTX On key on the keyboard.
There's not a lot of hard info at this point, other than the spiel underneath the video, that says we'll "Learn about the latest breakthroughs in gaming, creating, and graphics technology -- from NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang." There's also a reference to the GeForce Beyond phrase that it teased the event with a couple of weeks ago.
If the rumours are to be believed, then we may only see one card on show, the GeForce RTX 4090, with the other cards in the stack turning up later in the year and into 2023 for the more affordable models.
There's no word on price at this point, and there's no guarantee that we'll see such information in the keynote, but it's worth bearing in mind that the RTX 3090 had a sticker price of $1,499. Given the RTX 4090 is expected to be a lot more powerful, don't be surprised if it's more in line with the RTX 3090 Ti, which officially launched at $1,999. Gulp.
We don't have long to wait until the new card(s) are announced. And who knows, with crypto-mining basically dead, these may actually be available at something like their MSRPs.
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Need to know
What is it? A bright, knowingly daft point and click adventure that picks up after 1991's Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge.
Expect to pay $25/£19.49
Released September 19, 2022
Developer Terrible Toybox
Publisher Devolver Digital, Lucasfilm Games
Reviewed on Intel i7-8550U, GeForce MX150, 16GB RAM
Multiplayer? No
Link Official siteThe infamously bewildering ending to 1991's Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge left players longing for resolution that subsequent Monkey Island games never delivered. Three decades later, and after effectively saying it would likely never happen, key members of the original Monkey Island team—including series creator Ron Gilbert—have finally made the game that picks up after the closing moments of LeChuck's Revenge. Of course, they immediately subvert our 30-year-old expectations about what happens next.
Return to Monkey Island's mischievous opening confidently asserts that this is the authentic Monkey Island experience we've come for: sharp, self-aware, and brilliantly silly. It'll bombard you with gags, but the characters you meet are more than comedic props, and the cunning stream of interwoven puzzles has been modernised to keep the pace up without losing the satisfaction of problem solving. It's a massive success.
(Image credit: Devolver Digital)The opening prologue whips you through an homage to classic Monkey Island moments before thrusting the shamboling Threepwood back into his past. Older, tireder and more challenged by holding his breath, Guybrush has grown in tandem with us, as have Monkey Island's classic characters and locales. Everything and everyone here has gone on a journey. Wally the cartographer has been reshaped by finding his confidence without losing his charming spirit, and even LeChuck seems to have found a softer side despite remaining the furiously irritated villain we adore.
Everything is different, but familiar in Return to Monkey Island, from its characters and narrative to its revised systems for interaction and puzzle solving. It can temporarily transport you to the '90s—at least if you also have cosy memories of staying up too late solving pirate puzzles—but it isn't stuck there.
The story is consistently engrossing and energetic, but spoiling too many details would be beneath LeChuck himself, so I'll keep things general. After starting out in the first game's Mêlée Island, Guybrush takes to the seas to explore vintage locations such as Monkey Island itself, as well as entirely new lands including the tormented, eerie Terror Island and Brrr Muda, a place inspired by the Viking age. Guybrush is once more in pursuit of Monkey Island's infamous secret. LeChuck, too, has returned to the quest. And both, of course, remain besotted by Elaine Marley. Neither, meanwhile, has gained any real sense of what the secret of Monkey Island actually is.
(Image credit: Devolver Digital)
All that is the same, but with the passage of time new figures have risen to power, upsetting the traditions and conventions of Guybrush's world. The old guard of established sea dogs now exist on the fringes, replaced by youthful upstarts eager to reset the rulebook. Even voodoo is no longer in favour, with younger generations favouring "dark magic" in its place.A great many of Return to Monkey Island's best moments come from the new characters, who are almost universally brilliant. Highlights include the oddly charismatic Putra, undead galley chef to LeChuck, who serves both rasping sass and all manner of delightfully gross food gag set-ups as she gradually develops an affection for Guybrush. Or there's Mêlée's town's new locksmith, Locke Smith. Deliberately absurd name aside, Locke is stern and cool to the bone, and endures Guybrush at best, delivering all kinds of opportunities for laughs as she dismisses the protagonist's puns about 'locks' of hair, or extinguishes his enthusiasm for treasure hunting as he is bewildered by a map lacking any X to mark a spot.
This is a game constructed from the familiar as much as the new, of course. Much of Return to Monkey Island is built from settings that have undergone a subtle revolution. Visit this game's version of the Scumm bar, and at a glance everything appears the same. The overall composition is unchanged, right down to where people are seated. But let your eyes linger just a little longer, and it's apparent the original scene has been entirely reskinned.(Image credit: Devolver Digital)The odd broken pane of glass in a window suggests plenty of pirate misbehaviour still takes place, but the Scumm Bar is not the tattered dive it once was. The once stained, pockmarked walls have been given a lick of vibrant paint, framed art hangs everywhere, and new clientele demand more ornate meals. Move through to the back of the bar, and a trio of hip, snarky youngsters now fill the seats that once belonged to the three ageing Pirate Leaders. It's a scene many of us may have seen play out in real life, as a beloved, imperfect drinking den succumbs to gentrification, and is suddenly all kinds of terrible; namely young, clean and fashionable. Meanwhile, the new locations in Return to Monkey Island are original by nature, but couple perfectly with the series' established tone and lore.
Back to the fut-arrrr
The overall design hasn't evolved much: This is a straightforward point-and-click adventure game that plays just as genre devotees expect. Conversing with the game's cast delivers the story, nudges you in the right direction, and seeds your mind with goals and hints, guiding you through puzzles that see you variously hunt down keys, outwit those who stand in your way, extract information from the environments, and unpick a path to whatever Monkey Island's secret might ultimately be.
This is a straightforward point-and-click adventure game that plays just as genre devotees expect.
But while this is a conventional point-and-click at a fundamental level, that's not to say it lacks inspiration. Far from it, there's an abundance of clever ideas, and fresh feeling puzzles with a playful spirit. Your inventory soon fills with all manner of daft items, from books of undead (and awful) poetry, avocado-based grog alternatives, and a few too many abandoned human skulls. Many of Return's finest puzzles, meanwhile, are those anchored primarily in conversation. One of the most memorable asks that you learn to spin a good pirating tale by determinedly reeling off badly delivered stories to unimpressed characters across the game world. Their feedback helps you hone your craft: a puzzle about writing in a game that is all about its writing.(Image credit: Devolver Digital)Compared to the previous Monkey Island games, though, the puzzles here play out a little faster. It's not that this is a profoundly easier Monkey Island. Rather, you're less likely to get stuck on individual snarls or weird leaps of logic. The solutions are never as obtuse as the infamous monkey wrench puzzle from LeChuck's Revenge, for example. Thanks to a few small additions, Return to Monkey Island kept me feeling smart and capable more than overwhelmed or confused.
For those who just want to enjoy the world and humour, there's a Casual mode that simplifies the puzzles and emphasises the narrative. The more significant change to me, though, is the addition of contextual action descriptions. Hover over interactive objects, and the description of what you can do provides much more flavour than in past games. Whereas previously you might have got 'pick up' text when hovering over all manner of objects in the Scumm Bar's kitchen, now two pointers might appear that are specific to an individual item. Hover over the chef's mop, for example, and 'admire the mop' appears as an option for the left mouse button, while 'surreptitiously abscond with the mop' is displayed with a symbol for the right click.
It's a subtle tweak, but the additional text does much more than simply inject more delightful personality, tone and laughs into a game already rich in those things. The extra context doesn't make puzzle solving any easier, but it does provide more explicit information on what clicks might lead to, helping keep progression through the game more pacey and engaging. Rarely will you find yourself desperately clicking anything and everything with every available command in the hope of a hit; once a stalwart of interacting with even the best adventure games.
(Image credit: Devolver Digital)Then there's the hint system. It can be ignored by those who want the satisfaction of getting themselves unstuck, but for those of us who would normally head to Google, the in-game hints maintain immersion in the world. It's much better than pulling up an external guide, and you can choose how subtle or explicit the clues you digest are. Another small improvement for time-pressed players is Guybrush's run speed. Despite his age, he can move faster than ever. You'll mainly want to stroll leisurely, taking the experience in. But making the umpteenth pass through Mêlée's town centre? Sprint it.
The solutions are never as obtuse as the infamous monkey wrench puzzle from LeChuck's Revenge.
The most obvious and contentious modernisation is the art. Yes, it's not pixelated. But this is a Monkey Island for 2022, and the look suits Gilbert's world. Almost every screen bristles with more to see than is first apparent—incidental animated background moments such as busy columns of ants in the undergrowth, for example—making each island feel like a living place. The occasional shooting star feels like a detail from a '90s game, but looks contemporary. There are some gorgeous lighting effects and the scenes are framed exquisitely.
Importantly, the art is also functional: Items and details pop, and the way forward is never too obvious nor too obscure. There's no accounting for taste. If you don't like the art, you don't like it. But it works.
The audio too, is remarkable, reworking the classic score with variety and energy. The sound effects—from muttered conversations just offscreen to audiobeds rich in detail—are equally wonderful, creating a sense of space in the 2D scenes.
(Image credit: Devolver Digital)Its faults are mostly surface level things. Selecting or interacting with items in the inventory can be clunky and imprecise, and a shade too many puzzles send you back and forth across the entire game world. While the voice acting is largely outstanding, on very rare occasions lines seem to fall ever so slightly late, perhaps a quirk of the technology that lies beneath.
None of that should deter Monkey Island fans. Those who haven't played the Monkey Island games, however, may want to heed the implication of the title. You don't need to get the in-jokes to enjoy the story, and there's a surprisingly engrossing interactive scrapbook that provides a lively summary of the series' previous events, but to really enjoy Return to Monkey Island is to titter at the self-referential gags, or roll your eyes knowingly at Guybrush's deliberately bad lines and choices. Walking into a familiar building to find an unexpected interior is only delightful if you know the existing lore. Half of the fun is in getting the jokes or references before they're even fully revealed. As a Monkey Island fan, it's hard for me to imagine what a newcomer's experience would be like. But for those lifelong followers of Guybrush's misadventures, this is as good as it's been for a very long time: funny, captivating, superbly paced, contemporary and packed with neat ideas and eccentric characters. This is what we've been waiting for since LeChuck and Guybrush emerged from… well. If you know, you know. And if you don't, it's time to go back to the originals.
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Whether you need a simple clue to help push you in the right direction or want to read the complete answer to the September 20 (458) Wordle as quickly as possible, you'll find all that as well as a range of guides and tips right here.
Today's Wordle was a good reminder to treat "obvious" pairs with caution. I leapt upon two early yellows and immediately grouped them together, trying to guess all the ways they could fit into this word and… they weren't a pair at all. I'd made a problem for myself, when I should have stayed open-minded.
Wordle hint
Today's Wordle: A hint for Tuesday, September 20
According to a popular saying, great minds think like this. More formally, today's answer is used to describe any two things that are similar to each other in some way. You'll need to find three vowels today.
Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day
If there's one thing better than playing Wordle, it's playing Wordle well, which is why I'm going to share a few quick tips to help set you on the path to success:
- A good opener contains a balanced mix of unique vowels and consonants.
- A tactical second guess helps to narrow down the pool of letters quickly.
- The solution may contain repeat letters.
There's no time pressure beyond making sure it's done by midnight. So there's no reason to not treat the game like a casual newspaper crossword and come back to it later if you're coming up blank.
Wordle answer
(Image credit: Josh Wardle)What is the Wordle 458 answer?
Let's save your win streak. The answer to the September 20 (458) Wordle is ALIKE.
Previous answers
Wordle archive: Which words have been used
The more past Wordle answers you can cram into your memory banks, the better your chances of guessing today's Wordle answer without accidentally picking a solution that's already been used. Past Wordle answers can also give you some excellent ideas for fun starting words that keep your daily puzzle solving fresh.
Here are some recent Wordle solutions:
- September 19: TRICE
- September 18: STICK
- September 17: CHUTE
- September 16: PARER
- September 15: DOUBT
- September 14: THYME
- September 13: ALPHA
- September 12: BOOZE
- September 11: TIBIA
- September 10: LOFTY
Learn more about Wordle
Every day Wordle presents you with six rows of five boxes, and it's up to you to work out which secret five-letter word is hiding inside them.
You'll want to start with a strong word like ALERT—something containing multiple vowels, common consonants, and no repeat letters. Hit Enter and the boxes will show you which letters you've got right or wrong. If a box turns
️, it means that letter isn't in the secret word at all. 
means the letter is in the word, but not in that position. 
means you've got the right letter in the right spot.You'll want your second go to compliment the first, using another "good" word to cover any common letters you missed last time while also trying to avoid any letter you now know for a fact isn't present in today's answer.
After that it's just a case of using what you've learned to narrow your guesses down to the right word. You have six tries in total and can only use real words (so no filling the boxes with EEEEE to see if there's an E). Don't forget letters can repeat too (ex: BOOKS).
If you need any further advice feel free to check out our Wordle tips, and if you'd like to find out which words have already been used you'll find those below.
Originally, Wordle was dreamed up by software engineer Josh Wardle, as a surprise for his partner who loves word games. From there it spread to his family, and finally got released to the public. The word puzzle game has since inspired tons of games like Wordle, refocusing the daily gimmick around music or math or geography. It wasn't long before Wordle became so popular it was sold to the New York Times for seven figures. Surely it's only a matter of time before we all solely communicate in tricolor boxes.
Best external hard drives in 2022
in Gaming News
Posted
When we say the best external hard drive, you have to remember that nowadays, HDD spinning platter drives aren't the fastest for gaming. In 2022, SSDs will be a faster, more efficient, and long-term solution to storage that can keep up with any tasks you throw at it, and right now, external SSDs are nowhere near as expensive as they once were. It's easier and safer nowadays to recommend a 1TB portable SSD over most hard drives.
An external hard drive with spinning platters (rather than the solid state memory chips in SSDs), will still be cheaper and a good option if you're looking for masses of external storage. But the best external drive balances speed and capacity, and SSDs do offer us just that.
If speed is an absolute priority over storage capacity, I'd recommend picking up one of the best external SSDs for the straight throughput of smaller drives (up to 1TB). NVMe SSDs inside your PC are up to 10x faster than HDDs but are more expensive—check out our HDD vs. SSD comparison for the key differences. Beyond 1TB, an HDD isn't completely redundant. For a serious chunk of storage space, it'll be best to go the spinning plater route—need 8TB of portable storage? Knock yourself out.
We've benchmarked a ridiculous number of external hard drives trying to narrow them down to the best of the best. Whether you're looking to bolster your gaming desktop PC's storage or find some more space for your gaming laptop, you'll find the best external HDDs below. Grab one of these, and you'll never have to worry if you or Call of Duty update again.
Best external hard drives
1. Samsung T7 Shield
The best external SSD
Storage: 1TB | Connectivity: USB 3.1 Type-C | Sequential read speed: 484MB/s | Sequential write speed: 482MB/s
The T7 Shield is Samsung’s new portable NVMe SSD that’s about as big as a playing card. Thankfully, it's a lot more durable. It is designed for the "creative professionals and consumers on the go," which means you can use it outside or stuff it in a bag without worrying about breaking it or compromising your data.
The Samsung T7 is aimed at content creators who travel and, for whatever reason, might end up a little wet or with a bit of dirt on their person. We've all been there. It’s rated to IP65 durability classifying it as dustproof and water resistant. Water resistant isn’t the same as waterproof, so if it gets dropped into a toilet, you’re running a 50/50 shot of it working, depending on how long it was submerged.
To test it, I left the SSD on my patio in the rain for a couple of hours since absent-mindedly leaving things outside feels more like a real-world situation I’d end up in. That's a more common day-to-day scenario than editing videos in the desert, as some of these rugged drives’ marketing materials would have you think.
The T7 Shield is compatible with game consoles, too. Great if you're looking for a nondescript way to expand your storage. I mostly used it to keep the games I use for benchmarking laptops and PCs. But loading games like Horizon Zero Dawn from the SSD didn't present any issues, nor did I see any dips in performance after playing for about an hour.
The drive comes with a USB Type-C to Type-C cable and a USB Type-C to Type-A cable and works on PC, Mac, consoles, and Android devices. The T7 is available in beige, black, and blue and is offered in either 1TB ($160) or 2TB ($290) capacities. The pricing for the 1TB isn't bad, but almost $300 for a 2TB still feels too expensive even if it's priced the same as others on the market.
It's a great tiny little drive you never have to really worry about breaking during your day-to-day. While it may be overkill for some in this rugged form factor, if you are one of those content creators working in extreme conditions or just a drop-prone klutz like yours truly, it's a safe bet.
2. WD My Passport 4TB
The best regular portable HDD
Storage: 4TB | Connectivity: USB 3.1 | Sequential read speed: 177MB/s | Sequential write speed: 187MB/s
We like WD’s My Passport. It’s not as compact or as fast as Samsung’s T5, and it can’t withstand an armageddon like LaCie’s XtremKey can, but at up to 4TB for $100, it offers copious storage space at a good value. We also like that Western Digital fares well each time cloud backup provider Backblaze releases a hard drive reliability report.
The 4TB model is compact and weighs just 250g. You probably wouldn’t want to try and jam one into a shirt pocket, but they’re almost as portable as a smartphone, just a little chunkier. The 1TB Passport is slightly thinner and weighs 170g if you don't need as much space. It is, undoubtedly, the minivan of external hard drives. No external power supply is needed to use WD’s drive—just plug in the USB cable and start backing up your files. You can also install WD’s backup software to automate the process.
WD also goes the extra mile with password protection and hardware encryption. And if you’re looking to make a fashion statement, you can select a My Passport in a range of color options.
3. Seagate Expansion Desktop Drive 8TB
The biggest external HDD we'd recommend
Storage: 8TB | Connectivity: USB 3.0 | Sequential read speed: 146MB/s | Sequential write speed: 168MB/s
If you need to go big when you leave home, Seagate's 8TB Expansion drive is the way to go. It's not exactly the best external hard drive; you don't get the best speeds when you're transferring files—although they're not too far behind the WD My Passport—what you get is masses of space and a very reliable drive. While there's no real point in getting a Seagate with less than the maximum capacity, its speeds are quickly eclipsed by other drives, the 8TB version strikes a nice balance between capacity and efficiency.
It hits around 150MB/s during both read and write tests, which is about mid-range for HDDs, but in terms of price you can get this drive for around $130 (£120), or even go up to 10TB if you're feeling particularly storage hungry. That's way better than you'll find on SSDs and actually beats most internal HDDs if you start comparing them.
It's USB 3.0 compatible too, so you've got a drive that'll plug into most PCs and laptops. In fact, if you're a regular laptop user, this is super handy for extending the pitiful storage you find in most machines. Just as a word of warning, though: this does require external power and comes with its own power unit, so it's slightly less portable than other drives.
4. ADATA SE800 1TB
Fast and affordable portable SSD
Storage: 1TB | Connectivity: USB 3.2 Type-C | Sequential read speed: 1GB/s | Sequential write speed: 1GB/s
NVMe inside? Yep. TLC NAND memory? Affirmative. IP rating for increased robustness including waterproofing? Check. All for an attractive price? Confirmed. The Adata SE800 Ultra FAST 1TB really does have quite a bit going for it.
It starts with that NVMe SSD, bridged to a USB interface. In this case, it’s a 10Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2 interface rather than a 20Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 connection. But this drive is still claimed to be good for 1GB/s data transfers in both directions. Lest you have forgotten, that’s around twice as fast as any SATA-based drives, including internal SSDs connected natively via SATA.
It’s also nice to see that Adata has equipped the SE800 with TLC rather than QLC NAND memory. The latter is typically slower and offers lower write endurance. All very nice, but what is really unusual is the SE800’s IP68 rating, a characteristic hinted at by the pop-off cover over the USB Type-C port. It means the drive is rated as impervious to dust ingress and can survive immersion in up to 1.5 meters of water for 30 minutes.
That makes it unique among these SSDs and, what’s more, given the competitive pricing you’re getting that IP rating effectively for free. Performance-wise, in testing the Adata delivers in the headline 1GB/s spec for sequential transfers while notching up 4K random throughput that’s comparable to the competition at 21MB/s for reads and 40MB/s for writes. The only slight chink in the SE800’s armor is that sustained performance drops down to around 260MB/s after around 15GB of internal drive traffic. That’s a little off the pace of some alternatives. But it’s not enough to spoil an otherwise highly appealing package.
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5. LaCie Rugged 2TB
The toughest external hard drive on the market
Storage: 2TB | Connectivity: USB 3.0 / USB Type-C / Mini-USB | Sequential read speed: 110MB/s | Sequential write speed: 110MB/s
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When you think about what external hard drives are actually used for, then suddenly durability becomes essential. While it might look like a doggy chew-toy, the LaCie Rugged portable HDD is as tough as they come, and even has a rubber cover around the edges to dampen the shock from any impacts. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME, but you can drop this thing from a fair height and it'll stay perfectly intact.
The speeds it operates at are respectable, if on the lower end of the scale, hitting about 110MB/s in read and write tests. You can pick up the LaCie relatively cheap too, although you are paying a little more for durability, so you're looking at about $110-120 for a 2TB model, and $100 for a 1TB. We'd recommend the 2TB, purely because this will last you so long it'll store your files for years.
If you're someone who is a little careless with how they pack their bag, or you genuinely take your PC files on more extreme outings, then this is the external HDD for you. It comes in all kinds of variations, to suit all connection types, including USB 3.0, mini-USB, USB Type-C and multi-input versions.
Best external hard drive FAQ
What type of external hard drive is best?
Your two main options for external drives are a traditional spinning platter hard drive (HDD), and solid state drive (SSD). Your SSD is more akin to a standard USB stick where you're storing all the data in little flash memory chips rather than writing it onto a metal platter. That makes them more robust, but also more expensive and lower capacity.
Hard drives are still valuable in that they can provide cheap, seriously large volumes of data storage. And if you don't need to access that data quickly or regularly they're just fine. Transfer speeds of hard drives really are a fraction of what you'll get from a quality SSD.
An SSD, however, is far quicker and generally smaller, which makes them more portable. Their speed means that they're far better suited to being an extension of your game library in that you can actually play directly from the SSD itself.
Which lasts longer: SSD or HDD?
Generally SSDs are the more durable of the two. They don't have any moving parts and are more resistant to temperature and shock... such as being tossed in a bag and dropped. But carefully looked after, a hard drive can last for years without problem.
What are the disadvantages of SSDs?
The main disadvantage is their price/capacity metric. They are more expensive to make, therefore you will get less storage capacity for your money with an SSD than with a hard drive.
The other disadvantage is that it is much harder, often impossible, to recover lost data from a solid state drive. Though if you've shattered your HDD to pieces then the same could be said for it, too!
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