Digital Foundry Looks At The Best Video Cards & CPU's in 2017

I found the Digital Foundry YouTube channel this year and have been sharing many of their videos since. They did some end of year wrap up videos and two I wanted to highlight were the best CPU's of the year linked above and the PC Graphics Review below. The CPU video is pretty interesting as AMD and Intel have been locked in bitter competition making for a very wide and interesting selection but the GPU story isn't as compelling with the Nvidia 1080 leading the pack. It's a great card it's just that it's expensive and there aren't many great alternatives. Hopefully AMD or Intel can release something to give Nvidia a run for their chips but outside of that 2018 might be Nvidia's year again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrO7s2IrWSY&list=WL&index=31

Travis Admin wrote on 01/03/2018 at 04:24pm

As for that AMD and Intel bitter competition...
https://www.neowin.net/news/security-flaw-patch-for-intel-cpus-could-result-in-a-huge-performance-hit

For most desktop users it will be negligible but this may drive some change in the market

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 01/03/2018 at 11:55pm

I know when I read that I was really surprised. I wonder if this performance workload hit will effect gaming as much as it seems?

Travis Admin wrote on 01/04/2018 at 03:24am

It kinda depends on the game apparently. Depending on who you listen to, anyway. CPU intensive games that do a lot of asset swapping would be hit the hardest.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 01/04/2018 at 03:28am

Yikes. That's a lot of shooters if I understand how texture loading works. I'll talk to one of my game dev friends because I'm interested how much this might impact things.

Travis Admin wrote on 01/04/2018 at 03:32am

Here's something: http://www.pcgamer.com/serious-intel-cpu-design-flaw-may-require-a-windows-patch-but-probably-wont-affect-gaming-performance/

Travis Admin wrote on 01/04/2018 at 04:46am

Microsoft got the patch out for Windows 10 already, and here's some anecdotal evidence: GTAV with everything cranked, driving super fast in the rain and doing crazy stuff still stays at a steady 60fps and that one is pretty CPU intensive.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 01/04/2018 at 04:57am

Was the 60fps on your system? If so that's good news if that's what you got before the patch!

Travis Admin wrote on 01/04/2018 at 05:10am

And further anecdotal evidence, Wolf 2 is the same as ever.

Travis Admin wrote on 01/04/2018 at 05:11am

And yeah sorry I had this page open already and missed your question. Yes, it was my system. It's v-sync so I can't tell if there's a frame loss past that.

Travis Admin wrote on 01/04/2018 at 05:23am

No Man's Sky, which I know is CPU intensive, doesn't seem to suffer either.

This is all on a Skylake i5, and from what I've read Skylake and newer will probably see fewer issues.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 01/04/2018 at 05:26am

That’s awesome to hear.

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