Tom's Hardware Steam Giveaway - XCOM 2!

[Jsimenhoff]

General Info on How To Enter

Spoiler

• 
  ■ These giveaways now span 2 full weeks instead of 1. This means there's more time for you to enter!
  ■ There are now two ways to enter to win! Each person can only win once.
  • 
    1. Enter the raffle via the gleam widget. All we ask for there is a name and a contact email. There will only ever be 1 copy of the game up for grabs with this method.
    
    2. Take part in the discussion in this thread! A discussion prompt will be provided each time. Just answer the prompt to be eligible to win! Eligible participants will be randomly selected to receive a copy of the game.

[widget="https://gleam.io/tG2rj/toms-hardware-steam-giveaway-xcom-2", 600][/widget]

Hey everyone! We've got another great Steam giveaway for you!

Up for grabs are three (3) copies of XCOM 2. As always, one will be awarded via the raffle (found above) and two will be given away to participants who answer the discussion prompt below.

XCOM 2 is the sequel to the award-winning strategy game, XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Twenty years have passed since humanity lost the war against the alien invaders and a new world order now exists on Earth. After years of lurking in the shadows, XCOM forces must rise and eliminate the alien occupation.

And now, for the discussion prompt:

Will AMD's next-gen Zen core microarchitecture live up to the hype?

The Steam Giveaway will run until 12 p.m. EDT on Friday, September 9th. The game will be awarded to the winners as a Steam gift. A Steam account is required to receive the prize and play the game.

 

[computers_are_freaky]

Mmm... honestly this is just my opinion, but going by AMDs hype for Polaris vs what it could actually do (they said gtx 950 performance for 60W, still haven't seen any sign of that yet, among other things) then I wouldn't expect it to be equal to their claims, but isn't that kind of what everything we hear about is like. A mix of slight hyperbole and our hopes often leave us dissapointed. I think the best way to handle these sort of situations is to hope for the best, but plan for the worst.

 

[huvik]

Does anything in this industry ever live up to the hype before launch?

 

[Math Geek]

i'm hoping for around haswell performance at 30% less than current skylake cpu's. 8C/16T at such prices would force intel to drop those prices a bunch and then we all win.

but rumors so far seem to point to around haswell performance with more cores and threads.

 

[Jsimenhoff]

Does anything in this industry ever live up to the hype before launch?

The second generation Core microarchitecture largely lived up to its hype. I would also say most iterations of Nvidia's Ti graphics offerings have also lived up to their hype.

It's rare but sometimes the markerters lose out to reality

EDIT:

Samsung's line of SSDs and some of Intel's past offerings have also lived up to their hype!

 

[clonazepam]

I must be living under a rock. Besides a Tom's Hardware article, I haven't heard a single peep about AMD's Zen architecture in my usual circles.

I bought AMD's 1st top of the line APU chip purely out of curiosity, and a desire to be more familiar with it. I did the research, knew what to expect, and it met those expectations. I enjoyed doing a custom build with it, modding the case, PSU, CPU cooler, tinkering with it, and overclocking.

We already know going in that the performance Zen offers can be had elsewhere, so the really interesting points, at least for me, will be seeing just how truthful AMD is about Zen's performance gains over previous AMD offerings. For me at least, I believe the casual user would have a hard time distinguishing 2016 systems versus systems from 2006 and 2011 in double blind studies involving general web browsing, word processing, etc. With a competent GPU, they'd be hard pressed to tell a difference in performance in many blockbuster games. This is especially true with resolutions above 1080P.

Here's to hoping that AMD offers excellent price to performance ratio and the latest in connectivity and motherboard features. If you find a need there, then the additional performance and price are great bonuses.

These opinions are based on a typical user who's not necessarily using their PC directly, to earn a living. If time is money, then of course you should consider having the latest and greatest to get those renders and other jobs processed.

Zen could be a real value winner. I'm definitely looking to purchase in the future. A lot of it curiosity, a desire to be familiar with it, and take over the role of that tired, aging 1st gen AMD APU.

 

[why_wolf]

Probably not as every article I see about Zen seems to keep feeding the hype fire. Some of this is on purpose from AMD marketing of course, the rest is just fan boys, lazy bloggers and of course uninformed authors who somehow ended up writing a tech article when they know nothing about it.

Fingers crossed it will achieve Haswell level performance but for a nice 10-20% off Intel prices. Since the CPU advancement is largely stalled out now on everything but power efficiency that means everyone who doesn't need/want the bleeding edge can get a nice savings with very little downside in terms of CPU power.

I somehow doubt Intel will change their prices at all. They'll likely drag their feet until the day AMD actually manages to grab a big chunk of the market.

 

[kireato]

I don't think anyone believes AMD will be able to outperform Intel with Zen. Even if the architecture is as good as they say, it still isn't as good as Intel's newest architectures and more importantly they don't have the process to be able to match Intel. If anything, from the rumors, I'm worried about the single threaded performance so I'm far from being hyped about how Zen will perform.

That said, I think AMD really managed to make the best of their limited resources when they positioned their Polaris lineup and I expect them to position their Summit Ridge CPUs in an interesting manner too. That's where people have (or at least in my opinion should have) expectations; we're all hoping AMD to be competitive once again and I think AMD will live up to the hype. AMD doesn't really have much of a choice either; it needs Zen to be successful.

 

[jsgrant31]

I don't think Zen will live up to the hype. I'm thinking (at least of I recall correctly) about how the Fury X was supposed to be pretty groundbreaking and it didn't manage to out-perform the 980 Ti. I feel like Zen has been hyped even further and longer. The community expectations are likely higher, and if Zen can't approach the latest i7/i5 in price/performance it'll probably be considered a disappointment even if it is a half decent CPU.

 

[vitius]

Will AMD's next-gen Zen core microarchitecture live up to the hype?
whatever we will say here are just speculations! so, i would just throw my opinion after testing some zen architecture.
but anyway, amd is still a strong company and there are competent engineers that work everyday to make interesting products for their customers.
so yes, i hope that amd will have a break in sales and be a stronger competitor against intel.

 

[duckandchicken]

Iam AMD user for years, when AMD lag behind their price is very nice for the job. If Zen get that performance then it's force Intel lower the price and change the way they do with the socket and chipset.
May the p/p be with Zen

 

[Deleted member 217926]

Zen looks decent in that it may come close to Haswell clock for clock. The problems I've seen relate to the architecture and clock speeds. As in it may equal Haswell clock for clock but top out in the 3.5Ghz range. It won't be very competitive with a large clock deficit and an IPC equal to a 3 to 4 generation old Intel arch. Better than the current FX series in that an i3 won't beat it but no where near competitive in the high end.

 

[ZeroRequiem]

Will it live up to the hpye? Most definitely no BUT,
it will be a huge step forward for AMD because let's be honest the currently available AMD CPUs are rather old.

It's gonna be interesting to see how Intel gonna adjust the prices afterwards.

 

[Maarsch]

Don't give me this game, as I already have it. Although I don't have any of the DLC, so if that's included I suppose I'm up for it.

But what is ratio of lived up to- / hype these days?
No man sky didn't
Polaris didn't
Did pascal?
The witness didn't
VR . . . isn't widely enough available to live up to any hype and by the time it is the hype will be over
Titanfall didn't
Star Wars battlefront didn't
And the hype on the last guardian has come and gone 4-6 times now

Is someone tracking this kinda thing?
And can we use that data to get people to calm their tits and remain merely excited.

 

[chimera201]

Will AMD's next-gen Zen core microarchitecture live up to the hype?

Well I never got hyped for it in the first place. So it doesn't matter to me. Whatever comes out it will only be a small step forward or will be priced higher than current gen. Basically you are still going to get what you pay for. The rule never changes.

 

[EvilFlash]

AMD markets its products so people believe that with the same performance, AMD's products have other benefits as well as lower in price. This hasn't exactly worked out so well. Following this, people have been wary of actually GETTING hyped for their products. I personally believe the Zen lineup may actually turn out to be good. Also, the AM4 socket is a real step forward for APUs.

 

[xFeaRDom]

I believe the AMD Zen will live up to the hype that it currently has, although people claim the tests against Intel CPUs are set up, and this could or could not be true, but for the price and performance of AMD CPUs the hype will definitely carry on, due to the higher performance they claim to have improved compared to their older CPUs.

AMD Zen lineup will probably be equal to some of the older Intel CPUs from 2014, maybe 2015 depending on the specifications and efficiency of the chips, which will probably be within a good price-range, as the AMD CPUs tend to take the lower end of the market, but still have good price-performance ratios.

I cannot judge too much, as I have never owned anything from AMD, the power increase and price-performance ratio may force some people over to AMD, as it could eventually take back the throne from Intel.

 

[JohnBonhamsGhost]

considering the price vs performance of the RX cards i would hope the Zen series will also follow this trend.
most of what i've read about Zen sounds a lot like the last couple series of Intel while being even less power hungry and offering more cores/threads for substantially less money. hopefully we'll soon be able to get high performance 8 core/16 thread DDR4 setups for a sane amount of money.

it's been hard, but i have been holding out upgrading through this entire year waiting to see some actual reviews and price ratios of the first available boards & chips.

 

[iapascual]

I think Zen can live up to the hype for some time.

The interesting part of Zen is that it can become a real alternative to Intel Core. I hope AMD keeps investing and advancing the architecture after the launch, otherwise one year after that Intel will strike back and AMD will no longer be a good alternative.

 

[glez13]

I don't know. AMD has already basically stretched the facts in the past to make the performance of some of their products seem competitive. So I can't really trust what we know so far about Zen. For sure it will be an improvement but can't simply trust their own benchmarks.

 

[nimbian]

I wish AMD could. We might see better increases from Intel if AMD was breathing down their necks again. Given what I've seen from their charts and stats they are obviously shaping their numbers to put them in the best light. I unfortunately believe that when push comes to shove they will fall short

 

[brandonclone1]

Hype has everything to do with perception. If they pull off good marketing, advertising, and fancy packaging for their new processors then yeah! Otherwise, they will likely fall a step behind Intel because that's how AMD rolls.

 

[giogi]

of course! AMD is a strong company that has impressed the world with many innovations. this time they may have figured out something that will beat intel at least in some way

 

[jaged]

I don't know if I'm just so desnsitized to media hype now but I seriously doubt it will. I always have high hopes for releases like this and who knows, maybe this time it will be that good but history says......

 

[GreatMaster]

remember the day when amd launched the cpu with more than once core that dominated?
nowadays amd has also an embeded GPU into its CPU, lots of experience, lots of work done, and lots of great things to impress the hardware enthusiasts.
even if it will not beat the strongest intel CPU from its market segment then they will compete in lower segment with lower prices and better performance.
i love AMD