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The selection for the Shacknews Best Hardware of 2020 award was a bit different than expected. In hindsight, things that happen unexpectedly are a running theme in 2020, so maybe we should have seen it coming. In a year in which both Microsoft and Sony launched their next-gen consoles and Apple decided to ditch Intel CPUs in favor of ARM-based solutions for its Macbook lineup, industry stalwarts seemed to be the clear favorites to take home. this particular award. However, the lackluster launches of the aforementioned consoles and some uncertainty surrounding the transition to ARM-enhanced productivity software on the Apple platform have our staff looking in a different direction.
The PC gaming community spent most of 2020 awaiting announcements of new graphics cards from NVIDIA and AMD with great anticipation. Next-gen consoles had been scheduled to arrive this holiday season, and along with them, a shift towards more demanding software. The imminent release of the PC version of Cyberpunk 2077 got big, and like Crysis, Half-Life 2, and Quake before it, CD Projekt Red’s RPG inspired a generation of gamers to update their rigs in advance.
Video cards using the new Ampere architecture from NVIDIA and RDNA 2 from AMD were launched in the last quarter of 2020 to rave reviews. These new cards (especially the flagship models) are extremely fast and can deliver uncompromising 4K gaming performance. In reality, acquiring one of these cards turned out to be more difficult than a $ 2 steak, as the rampant riot and consumer disappointment reached dizzying heights. While this may have been enough to disqualify a new GPU in most years, it turns out that the circumstances presented for 2020 made it difficult to buy almost anything new in the tech world, including mobile phones and game consoles. Next Generation. So these new video cards get a pass.
While it doesn’t match the performance of the more famous RTX 3080, NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 3060 Ti is arguably the most impressive GPU on the market right now. If you can hook a card with this GPU at or around MSRP, you can expect performance to outperform the venerable GTX 1080 Ti and RTX 2080. This would be unthinkable just a few months ago and the RTX 3060 Ti does it while enjoying the power. that their older brothers must swallow to keep running.
For gamers still clinging to GTX 970s, GTX 1070s, RX 480s, and similar cards, the RTX 3060 Ti is an attractive upgrade, bringing incredible raster gaming performance and access to NVIDIA’s wonderful DLSS upscaling technology. In games using DLSS, this new GPU can outperform what you’d get from a GTX 1080 Ti by up to 50% while using a third of the power. In a year where new consoles are struggling to run next-gen games at 4K 30 fps, NVIDIA’s new RTX 3060 Ti can run circles around them for less than $ 400. Not everyone can be without new ones. $ 800 + video cards, so we expect the RTX 3060 Ti to make a much bigger impact on PC gaming next year (if they are ever easily available).
Take a look at the other 2020 Shacknews Awards winners in our Year of the Games: 2020 article.
