In November last year we wrote about Computex and the Outlook of PC Hardware in 2022, detailing processor, graphics, and other component upgrades you can look forward to acquiring for your upgrade needs. Assuming supply chains improve this year, which we are seeing early signs of happening, this year is going to be very exciting indeed.
CES 2022 wrapped up earlier this month and with it a bunch of teaser announcements were released related to the hardware we both knew and suspected was coming down the pipe. Here is a quick summary of the exciting things we can now confirm for you from the previous Computex article.
Faster CPUs
We already knew Intel’s Alder Lake CPUs were just being released at the time we wrote the last article, but now we have a plethora of additional CPU related news to share.
Start with Intel, a new offering of Alder Lake CPUs, mostly in the mid-range, were launched. These processors are seriously fast – fast for anything you really can throw at them in fact. Are you a gamer needing a fast single core for games? Check. Are you a video producer needing the core count but still in a reasonable consumer package? Check. While power hungry and hot, the mid-range especially is quite price competitive.
AMD is working on several competitive offerings to counter Intel called Zen 4, due to be released in the second half of this year (probably late Q3 or Q4). Of course, Intel has a new series named Raptor Lake that is already being readied to counter that counter.
As a gamer, both of these series are going to be especially interesting to watch for potential buys as both are expected to increase CPU cache sizes dramatically. Cache is the part of a CPU where information can be stored briefly for processing and reused for subsequent tasks. This part of a processor benefits just about any game out there. Â Â
Faster Graphics
Speaking of cache, AMD is kicking off the year with updates to their GPUs (and a mid-step upgrade for their existing CPUs) using Infinity Cache. As you might have suspected, this will also help boost gaming performance and catch up with what Intel again, as well as keep pace with Nvidia on the GPU front.
The second half of the year is going to get even more exciting though with the release of AMD’s next generation of graphics cards named RDNA4. Nvidia will also be (probably at the exact same time) releasing their next generation of cards called Lovelace.
If what we’ve heard is going to come true, the performance of graphics cards this year is going to be an insane 2-3x the performance of the previous generation, which is absolutely mind-blowing (and will be probably be mind-blowing on the wallet too).
Other Hardware
In the earlier Computex article we covered a bunch of other hardware, including the faster PCI Express 5.0 standard now available on Intel’s platforms, Thunderbolt 4 (and the suspected Thunderbolt 5), Wireless 6E, and a review of the new DDR5 memory standard.
You’ll want to read the Computex and the Outlook of PC Hardware in 2022 article to see what else you’ll want in your PC this year! Also be sure to check it out if you’re especially interested in a GPU upgrade, as there’s some important information in there regarding increased power supply needs.
