Who received 2024? I can assume of some contenders for the crown, each corporations and people, capable of lay a stake to having a bumper yr in PC {hardware} land. However this is not Time journal and bumper earnings do not solely earn our adorning love right here at PC Gamer. As a lot as it has been a yr of recent applied sciences and large-scale investments to make a enterprise capitalist vibrate with pleasure, a lot of what is occurred has been main as much as the Subsequent Massive Factor.
In fact, I am speaking about AI. It is undeniably the most important pattern in expertise and even PC avid gamers aren’t capable of escape its clutches.
Copilot+ landed on Home windows 11 this yr, simply once we thought we would shaken off clingy Cortana for good. This new function guarantees to revolutionise the desktop expertise and make you a greater particular person, or one thing alongside these traces, however a few of its most promising options are but to launch to the lots or solely accessible on dangerous dev builds. Copilot+ wants extra time within the oven.
Furthermore, I’ve examined a number of laptops with NPUs, or Neural Processing Models, included contained in the silicon to speed up AI, and I’ve come away questioning what the fuss was all about. Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm all rushed to incorporate these inference-friendly models of their newest cellular chips, and it is true that they may show helpful someday, however my very own expertise simply making an attempt to benchmark it reveals they’re nonetheless some methods off benefitting mainstream PC customers.
So, AI is not solely profitable me over right here. It may need been the yr the AI PC launched, however it’s not been the yr of the AI PC.
To not point out we have already got AI-accelerating silicon inside our PCs already. I could not discuss concerning the yr’s greatest winners with out mentioning Nvidia and our man Jensen Huang—at instances the world’s most dear firm and the newest CEO-turned-celebrity.
In the event you invested $10,000 in Nvidia again in January, it might be value $16,760 as we speak. That is a 167% share worth improve in just below 12 months. To place that in perspective, Nvidia’s skyrocketing share worth noticed it overtake Apple because the world’s most dear firm this yr, twice.
Nvidia is the straightforward choose because the winner for 2024. Although, making an attempt to come back at this from a PC gamer’s perspective, solely a small quantity of its success might be attributed to its GeForce gaming division, or has even manifested in our personal gaming PCs. It made $3.3 billion of a complete $30.8 billion income for the GPU biz in Q3, 2024. The RTX 40-series has reportedly been promoting properly, which is a shock contemplating the RTX 50-series is poised to take the reigns in 2025, however it was the refreshed Tremendous variants that launched at the beginning of the yr that I needs to be judging Nvidia by.
The Tremendous GPUs have been a great launch, it should be stated. The RTX 4070 Ti Tremendous might be the most effective graphics card of all the Ada Lovelace technology, with loads of reminiscence, a large reminiscence bus, and a aggressive wattage. The RTX 4080 Tremendous rectified among the previous pricing errors of the RTX 4080, and the RTX 4070 Tremendous is clearly in style from its fast stand up the Steam {Hardware} Survey.
There’s not stiff competitors from anybody else within the graphics card house proper now. Nonetheless a lot I might suggest a few of AMD’s mid-range graphics playing cards for his or her unbelievably good performance-per-dollar as of late, nobody seems to be shopping for. AMD is not even within the prime 10 for the Steam survey. In the meantime, Intel has impressed with its second-generation Battlemage Arc B580—a card on the extra inexpensive finish of the spectrum that has been acquired extraordinarily properly by some—however we bumped into heaps of points throughout testing that we could not gloss over.
The place AMD stands an opportunity for claiming the crown is with its CPUs. It is extra one CPU, actually, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D.
The 9800X3D is the most effective gaming CPU cash can purchase proper now. This eight-core, 16-thread processor comes with 96 MB of L3 cache, 64 MB of which is hooked up to the highest of the core chiplet, referred to as a CCD (core advanced die). It is a intelligent design made in partnership with the world’s essential chip manufacturing facility, TSMC. This chip dominates in our gaming benchmarks, delivers strong multithreaded efficiency, and does not draw an excessive amount of energy. All of which suggests Intel’s newest, the Core Extremely 200S-series, is left within the mud.
Ah, Intel. We have been at all times going to finish up right here in some unspecified time in the future on this article.
From one perspective, trying on the firm’s financials and management, Intel is likely one of the greatest losers of the yr. The corporate has misplaced a reliable CEO with an engineering background to what some recommend was a scarcity of conviction from the board of administrators in his plan for renewed manufacturing prowess. Although, for the document, Pat formally retired.
You can too make a case that, if not Intel, a few of Intel’s prospects are the most important losers of the yr. Intel’s continued instability points noticed high-end 14th Gen processors burning out en masse and the difficulty was solely caught and rectified when it was too late to avoid wasting of them. The injury was already completed. The chips have been largely changed free-of-charge however Intel’s popularity amongst PC builders has taken a success.
As if Intel’s issues weren’t stacking up already, Arrow Lake launched to little fanfare. These chips ship on their promise of dramatically diminished energy consumption, however in doing so regressed in gaming efficiency. Intel has famous 4 failures of Arrow Lake in a current weblog submit and guarantees to repair these chips subsequent yr, however there is no denying it has been a catastrophically dangerous yr in gaming PCs for the unique chip agency.
There’s a silver lining for Intel in each the Lunar Lake and Battlemage launches. The previous an x86 chip that genuinely can compete with Arm for battery life, and the latter a much-needed price range graphics card that does not suck. Although in our testing of the B580, and possibly we’re simply the unfortunate ones, however Battlemage bumped into a number of points that Intel has stated it is working to repair. In order that’s not fairly a win we are able to get behind as a lot as others.
Yep, it is a dangerous yr for Intel, and one made worse by elevated competitors from ARM-based processors.
A broadside of ARM chips, is how one may describe this yr, as Qualcomm, Apple, and Amazon quantity these main tech corporations bringing ARM processors to mass availability. By way of Apple and Qualcomm, which means precise processors you should purchase in a pc to be used at residence, and that are roundly celebrated for spectacular efficiency.
That is uppercase ARM, that means the instruction set structure, although even lowercase Arm, the corporate behind it, has been on a streak. Following a failed buyout by Nvidia and an IPO earlier to this yr, chip designer and licenser Arm has been going from power to power with ever-more prospects, type components, use instances, and licensees.
Gaming is not wherever near being the all-round easy expertise that Qualcomm touted it to be earlier than the discharge of the Elite X chips, however you possibly can see the foundations forming for processors to compete with Intel and AMD in gaming PCs. That promise is not alone sufficient to make me hand Arm the most important winner of 2024 cap and celebratory mace, not in the least as a result of Arm and Qualcomm do not even get on anymore, however uppercase ARM has simply loved considered one of its greatest and greatest years to this point.
That covers off the foremost PC gamers, however we should not ignore the smaller guys right here. And after I say smaller guys, I principally imply the multi-million greenback firms that create the precise programs and peripherals we use commonly.
I say this as a result of I do assume there’s one thing to be stated for Asus as one of many greatest winners of the yr, contemplating the launches of each the ROG Ally X and the ROG Zephyrus G16. That is the most effective gaming handheld and greatest gaming laptop computer all wrapped up for the yr, as we’re solely simply starting to see newer handhelds that includes Lunar Lake and Strix Level filter by way of. Nonetheless, the case in opposition to Asus is fairly sturdy, too, contemplating the corporate’s tough strategy to customer support that left prospects reeling. It is making adjustments to resolve that now, however I dare say that precludes the corporate from getting an enormous thumbs up general for the yr.
You can too make the case for 2024 because the yr of the analogue gaming keyboard, however that could be increasing this text’s remit just a little too far…
Trying again and it is powerful to name anyone firm or particular person as the massive winner. There are normally extra sides to the story, extra components to contemplate, and differing opinions on what went unsuitable or proper. You could possibly simply as a lot give out the award to the ephemeral idea of PC avid gamers having a great time with some depraved new merchandise as you could possibly chastise all the trade for chasing earnings and ignoring issues.
Like, certain, you could possibly say Jensen Huang is the most important winner—he is the longest serving Silicon Valley CEO with the foresight to double down on AI earlier than it was cool—and it might be completely truthful and properly deserved. I am studying The Nvidia Approach proper now and the person hustled to get the place he’s as we speak. However what number of instances has Jensen even talked about gaming in his keynotes this yr?
However I perceive why I am unable to bottle it with some flaky reply concerning the true winners and losers have been the video games we performed alongside the best way. If I used to be compelled to choose a winner, off the again of a single product alone, it might be AMD. The Ryzen 7 9800X3D is progress, ingenuity, and efficiency at its most interesting—and completed for the most effective motive possible: to easily make your gaming PC sooner. Effectively deserved, AMD.