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Report: PC Hardware Sales Eclipsed $30 Billion USD In 2016

Posted on January 23, 2017 by Rae Michelle Richards

Industry analyst firm JPR recently released a report estimating that total worldwide hardware sales eclipsed the $30 billion mark. In terms of geography Asia lead the way with an estimated growth rate of 7% which will continue right through 2019, commanding $11.3 billion USD of the total existing market share. For those of us who are interested in the health of the PC hardware industry JPR’s publically available figures are full of interesting statistics.

2016 saw a number of new pieces of hardware released that made waves in enthusiast news circles. Arguably one of the biggest stories of the year came towards the mid-point with the launch of new Graphics Cards from both Nvidia and AMD. Team Green proved that the Geforce brand is still the place for hardcore enthusiasts looking for the bleeding edge performance with the expensive Geforce 1070 and Geforce 1080 video cards. AMD shot back just a couple of weeks later with the Polaris powered Radeon 480 which brought the performance of Nvidia’s high end last generation 9 Series cards for under $200 USD. AMD and Nvidia might not be fighting tooth and nail for power or performance anymore but their offerings certainly cover a wide variety of products at different price points.

Graphics cards aren’t the only PC hardware segment that saw innovation last year and will continue to see new products. Intel released their new 7000 series processor line, it doesn’t follow the traditional tick-tock pattern that Intel has been known but it does provide additional video encoding performance. AMD is expected to release its Ryzen platform at the Games Developer Conference late next month, the manufacturer’s first large platform update since 2013 – featuring the brand new AM4 motherboard design and enhanced performance versus the previous generation.

John Peddle, president of JPR had this to say about the upcoming launch of the Ryzen platform:

“We are also very excited about the prospects for the AMD Ryzen CPU platform and think it will be adopted at all three hardware tiers. Of course Intel CPUs currently offer superior power and value for gamers of every budget level, and their integrated graphics now rival game consoles.”

Despite JPR’s report that the PC hardware industry has eclipsed such a large sales amount reports of PC sales have been declining for several consecutive quarters – according to the Inquirer total sales were down 3.7% leading up to the Christmas season. It is an important distinction to make that JPR’s report about the industry surpassing a huge sales amount includes high end accessories like Ultra HD Monitors, gaming headsets, gaming mice and Curved Displays.

How do you feel about the state of the PC hardware industry? Sound off in the comments and let us know.

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Supposed NVidia Geforce 1060 VS Radeon 480 Benchmarks Leak Ahead of Launch

Posted on July 12, 2016 by Rae Michelle Richards

Nvidia’s latest attempt to absolutely dominate the mid-range GPU market kicks off in one week, on July 19^th the graphics card manufacturer will launch the Geforce 1060. Reviewers who have units are under NDA until launch day according to several other hardware blogs, but it appears that official benchmarks straight from team green have leaked ahead of the card’s release. If the 1060 performs as well as these benchmarks imply will it be enough to stop the waves of hype / stock shortages created by the success of AMD’s Radeon RX 480?

*prepare your loads of salt to be taken before looking over these numbers*

Alright ready? These supposedly official benchmark compared an unspecified Geforce 1060 (presumably the 6GB model, but whether any overclock settings were used is unknown) against the Radeon RX 480 and last generation’s Geforce 960.

In terms of games tested Nvidia selected 3 Direct X 12 titles – Forza Motorsport: Apex Beta, Rise of the Tomb Raider and Ashes of the Singularity. Their selection of Direct X 11 titles gives a wider variety of benchmarks with 9 titles ranging from last year’s Star Wars: Battlefront & Crysis 3 from Electronic Arts to CD Projekt Red’s highly demanding The Witcher III: Wild Hunt.

How are the results? Well apparently the Geforce 1060 is faster than the Radeon RX 480 in every game tested aside from two – The Division and Fallout 4, where the scores was less than a 1% difference.

AMD’s Radeon 480 was unveiled last month and released on June 29^th for $199 USD for the 4GB model and $249 USD for the 8GB model. Demand for these cards have been red hot for the past few weeks with shortages in places like Canada leading to retailers charging a premium on markets like Ebay and Amazon. It could be a while before you can simply walk into a shop and pick up a 480 off the shelf.

Here are the leaked benchmarks:

Do you think that hardware reviewers will find a huge difference between the Geforce 1060 and Radeon 480 when the NDA drops next week? As a Radeon 480 owner I’m interested to see what the competition brings to the table but I’ve already made my choice for my current-generation VR card.

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Will The New Radeon 480 Fry Your Motherboard? Probably Not

Posted on July 4, 2016 by Rae Michelle Richards

AMD’s latest graphics card – the Radeon 480 – promised the performance of Nvidia’s previous generation near top end Geforce 970 for the shockingly low $199 USD. After only a few days users began reporting that the 480 was drawing more power from the PCI-Express port than it was drawing from the power supply connector. Is this a harm to user’s machines? AMD has issued a statement along with a promise to address the issue with an upcoming driver update.

I’ve been following the AMD Polaris architecture for months now and, of course, I got swept up into the hype surrounding the potential performance of the card. Benchmarks aside, the Radeon 480 looks to be the entry point for VR Early Adaptors who didn’t plunk down the coin for the Geforce 970 last year.

So, if you are looking to upgrade your graphics card should you be concerned about the amount of power that the 480 might draw from your board? Well, the bad news is that the card is going to draw more power than the PCIE specification. The card will pull just 75W from the six pin connector and the remaining 90W from the PCIE connector – 15 Watts over the recommended power consumption for a PCI Express slot.

YouTuber OzTalksHW tried out the Radeon 480 on an older motherboard and found similar issues to what testers have found – if are running a motherboard from the last five years or so you should be fine dealing with the power spike. If you’re running a motherboard from 2009 or prior you may experience random system shutdowns.

PCWorld spoke with anonymous motherboard manufacturers who said that random spikes shouldn’t be an issue but a sustained increased power-load could lead to damaged hardware. It should be noted that while discussions of this “power-gate” has been rampant on sites like reddit but the net hasn’t been flooded with reports of fried motherboards. AMD has said in a statement that a driver fix is expected to be issued tomorrow.

Here is the full statement:

“As you know, we continuously tune our GPUs in order to maximize their performance within their given power envelopes and the speed of the memory interface, which in this case is an unprecedented 8Gbps for GDDR5. Recently, we identified select scenarios where the tuning of some RX 480 boards was not optimal. Fortunately, we can adjust the GPU’s tuning via software in order to resolve this issue. We are already testing a driver that implements a fix, and we will provide an update to the community on our progress on Tuesday (July 5, 2016).”

I’ve ordered a Radeon 480 and will gladly post some benchmarks using some of the most demanding titles that I own as well as some VR benchmarks. Unfortunately, these benchmarks will not include comparisons of other graphics card as my main gaming rig is currently down for repair 🙁 .. RIP previous graphics card.

Do you already own the Radeon 480? If so let me know what you think about it in the comments below.

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