An extremely unfortunate PC builder is the latest to fall victim to Amazon's prolific returns scams, after the Nvidia RTX 5070 they received from the website turned out to be a DVD re-writer, a mousepad, and the busted logic board from an early 2000's Kenwood AV receiver.

what i got sent instead of a 5070 from r/pcmasterrace

The victim was gifted a brand new MSI Ventus 2X variant of the RTX 5070 from Amazon by a friend at a cost of 605 euros ($700). A few days later, when the package arrived, it weighed the same as the real thing, but it certainly did not have a graphics card inside. Instead, the customer received what appears to be a broken logic board from an old Kenwood AV receiver, a DVD rewriter, and what seems to be a mousepad.

"This was shipped and sold by Amazon," u/luutherr told Tom's Hardware. They also provided us with proof of purchase and confirmed the item was a gift from a friend, making the scam all the more galling. That means someone in the middle is the bad actor. In reality, what most likely happened was a scam-swap, where someone previously bought the item, emptied its real box contents, and filled it back up with junk that weighs the same. They then filed for a return, probably citing personal preference as the reason.

Since the box still carried the same weight and the product wasn't returned because of a defect, it ended up back on sale after passing some basic checks. Someone else buys it, and Amazon or the seller unknowingly sends that person the fake item, completing the circle. Believe it or not, this whole process actually used to be worse before Amazon ended its commingling program last year, which sellers exploited to avoid being traced.

In the end, the same system that delivered OP the wrong product should come in handy for delivering justice. A simple return request should get them their money back, but it will certainly erode the customer's trust in the platform. We would say this is a reminder to always stay vigilant when buying PC hardware with prices that seem lower than usual. But since this was bought from the official MSI store and sold directly by Amazon, it's simply a consequence of deceitful human nature.

We're keeping an eye out for the lowest-priced GPUs and keeping those listed here for you. The sad state of the memory industry, which is besieged by insanely large memory orders for AI data centers and AI GPUs, has led to increasing prices for gaming graphics cards. Nvidia is purportedly allocating memory based on the amount of money it can make per GB of VRAM, which has made the situation dire for some models. To help you navigate the pricing crisis, we have compiled this GPU index to monitor the availability and pricing of recent graphics card releases from the current and previous generations.

We update this guide constantly with the best prices in the U.S. for each SKU of GPU from the most recent two generations of Nvidia, AMD, and Intel cards. We're listing the lowest price for an available graphics card, regardless of the manufacturer, so it could be an Asus, Zotac, MSI, Sapphire, Gigabyte, Powercolor, or ASRock-branded card, but it will be the cheapest.

A word of warning: with this list, sometimes the retailers switch to third-party sellers automatically. You must be super vigilant and check sellers to ensure legitimacy. For older generation graphics cards, it can often be difficult to find these cards brand-new and on sale from first-party retailers like Amazon, Newegg, and Best Buy, and they are more often than not listed by third parties. Check prices against the current generation of GPUs to understand if you are getting a good deal, or if you're in fact better off paying a little extra for the very latest graphics cards.

Also, check out our list of the best graphics cards and our GPU benchmark hierarchy to see evergreen performance data to help you make an informed decision when choosing a new GPU for your system.

Nvidia RTX 50-Series: Lowest Graphics Cards Prices

The latest 50-series graphics cards from Nvidia include the current most powerful consumer GPU - Nvidia's GeForce RTX 5090. The RTX 5090 uses the new Blackwell architecture and comes with a massive 32GB of GDDR7 VRAM, and given the current prioritization for models with lower amounts of VRAM to boost profits, it's a problem getting your hands on one at anything even in the vicinity of a reasonable price.

The 50-series range doesn't have the most impressive gen-on-gen performance uplifts on pure rasterization power compared to the 40-series, but it does support new software and tech such as 5th Gen Tensor cores, 4th Gen Ray Tracing cores, DLSS 4.5 with Multi-Frame Generation tech, and Reflex 2. Some of those technologies, like DLSS and frame gen, can help wring the most performance out of those lower-tier cards with less VRAM.

There are 8GB variants of the RTX 5060 and 5060 Ti, available at near MSRP prices, with the higher-tier GPUs like the RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5080 in poor supply at any reasonable price.

Nvidia RTX 40-Series: Lowest Graphics Cards Prices

Nvidia's 40-series Ada Lovelace architecture graphics cards include the powerful GeForce RTX 4090 and 4080 Super. The 4090 combines a massive 24GB of GDDR6X VRAM and Nvidia's 4th generation of Tensor cores for increased ray-tracing ability.

The RTX 40-series cards also feature support for Nvidia's DLSS 3 software for AI frame generation, which helps to increase frame rates on higher resolutions and settings. In general, Nvidia cards are the best choice for ray tracing, with more features than the competition. You'll also generally pay more for Nvidia GPUs relative to similarly performing AMD GPUs.

Unfortunately, RTX 40-series GPUs are no longer being produced, so stock levels have dried up on many card variants. Any available cards for sale have a high chance of being either second-hand or ex-mining hardware, yet still ask for exorbitant prices. Be extra vigilant when shopping for 40-series graphics cards, and buy from a reputable seller. Prices for 40-series cards are also much higher than they should be. They can be a good choice for a second-hand purchase if you can get one at the right price and accept all associated risks.

AMD Radeon RX 9000-Series: Lowest Graphics Cards Prices

AMD's competition to Nvidia includes the Radeon RX 9060, RX 9070, and RX 9070 XT graphics cards with MSRP prices of $269, $549, and $599, respectively. Finding one of these GPUs for that price, however, could prove to be a struggle as prices of Radeon graphics cards rise due to ever-expanding memory price hikes. These new cards go toe-to-toe with Nvidia's RTX 5070 and RTX 5070 Ti and offer a great alternative to Team Green.

The RX 9070 XT comes with 16GB of GDDR6 VRAM for those texture-heavy games and provides a large generational increase compared to RDNA 3. Improvements to AI and ray tracing tech have made this generation of AMD cards perform much better in games with ray tracing, but they still fall behind Nvidia in overall performance for ray/path tracing.

There are also 8GB and 16GB versions of the RX 9060 XT available, and they are selling for a fair price at the moment. However, 8GB of VRAM means the card isn't terribly futureproofed, as game requirements continually grow regarding shader and texture memory requirements.

AMD Radeon RX 7000-Series: Lowest Graphics Cards Prices

AMD's 7000-series GPUs are still a great option for a graphics card in your gaming rig if you can find one at a good price. Not the best choice if you're looking for pure ray-tracing performance, but if you want raw computational performance, they are a winner. Combined with AMD's FSR software, these 7000-series GPUs can still crank out high frame rates in the latest games.

The RX 7900 XTX in particular represents a great blend of power and performance, with it being the halo-tier card from the 7000-series and AMD not replicating a super-high-end card for the 9000-series. The RX 7900 XTX still ranks highly in our GPU Benchmark Hierarchy charts.

Here are all the lowest prices for the 7000-series models currently available.

Intel Arc GPUs: Lowest Graphics Card Prices

Intel's entry into the GPU market has been a little hit-and-miss. In some titles, these cards perform relatively well, but in older DirectX games, the cards suffer from some poor performance issues.

Frequent driver updates have made many improvements to the performance of Intel's Arc lineup and turned them into a much more viable choice for a budget gaming PC build. The prices of these GPUs have hit a price sweet spot that has been abandoned by Nvidia and AMD, especially for 1080p gaming. The Arc series of GPUs should certainly not be discounted when considering any budget gaming system build.

Intel's most recent launches include the Arc B580 and Arc B570, with the cards having 12GB of VRAM for the B580 and 10GB for the B570. Pricing is very competitive with the Intel cards, but the manufacturer's variety is limited, as is stock.

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Amidst the current DRAM and NAND shortage, one PC component has seemingly become cheaper than ever, at least for now. Graphics cards, historically the primary victim of shortages and scalpers, are now increasingly selling at MSRP, and sometimes even below that! We've sourced one such deal for you: PNY's overclocked RTX 5070 is on sale for just $489 on Walmart right now, a whole $60 less than even its suggested pricing. This is the cheapest RTX 5070 we've ever seen, so hurry before it sells out!

• Check out RTX 5070 GPUs on Walmart

The RTX 5070 needs little introduction to regular readers; we mulled including it as the second best GPU in our roundup, but it lost out to the RX 9070 due to that card's extra VRAM capacity. However, at this price, the RTX 5070 feels like a no-brainer given Nvidia's arguably superior software stack that powers convenient features like RTX HDR — options that AMD simply can't match yet.

It sits right in the middle of our GPU heirarchy charts across all resolutions and with ray tracing. The card offers excellent 1440p performance, with consistent 60 FPS numbers at maxed out settings, with respectable 4K chops, especially if you're willing to be lenient with (multi) frame-gen.

Specs-wise, you're looking at the GB205 GPU containing 6,144 CUDA cores clocked at up to 2.58 GHz (boost), fabricated on TSMC's 5nm process. The RTX 5070 has 12GB of GDDR7 memory saturated across a 192-bit wide bus. The PNY model in question has a bog-standard stealthy design, with a triple-fan setup but no RGB. You get 3x DP 2.1b ports and 1x HDMI 2.1b for screen connectivity, and the card is rated at 250W, which it gets through the single 16-pin 12VHPWR connector.

The RTX 5070 originally launched with an MSRP of $549 — with AIB variants selling for much more — so a discounted price of only $489 on Walmart right now for this OC edition is a great deal, especially when you consider how chaotic the rest of the PC parts landscape is at the moment. Secure a solid GPU before these cards get hit in the aftermarket of the AI boom as well.

If you're looking for more savings, check out our Best PC Hardware deals for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals, Hard Drive Deals, Gaming Monitor Deals, Graphics Card Deals, Gaming Chair, Best Wi-Fi Routers, or CPU Deals pages.

Love them or hate them, the Nvidia RTX 5070 and AMD RX 9070 are two of the more affordable current-generation graphics cards you can buy from Team Red or Team Green for the time being (inflated pricing or not). At least that's true until the RX 9060 series debuts and the RTX 5060 goes truly mainstream and sells regularly at MSRP. In this face-off, we’ll pit the two latest '70 cards against each other to see which is the best option.

The RTX 5070 is Nvidia’s latest generation mid-range GPU solution, which is supposed to be sold at an MSRP of $549. But gamers, particularly in the U.S., will be hard-pressed to find a model selling at that price. The RTX 5070 shares many traits with its predecessor, the RTX 4070, featuring the same bus width and memory capacity, but a massive upgrade to GDDR7, boosting memory speeds to 28 Gbps. The process node used is also identical, but the RTX 5070 is taking advantage of Nvidia’s latest generation Blackwell architecture.

The AMD RX 9070 is a smaller sibling to the RX 9070 XT, sporting the same MSRP as the RTX 5070 and similar availability problems, despite there reportedly being significantly more cards in circulation, at least at launch. The RX 9070 comes with AMD’s latest RDNA4 architecture and is considerably faster than its predecessor, the RX 7800 XT. Helping its performance is the fact that it shares the same memory specs and performance as its bigger brother. The main attributes AMD limited on the vanilla 9070 are the core count and clock speeds (compared to the 9070 XT).

Pricing

In a perfect world, we would be comparing the RX 9070 and RTX 5070 at MSRP, but that isn't reality, and we don't know when availability will reach a point where cards will be regularly stocked at MSRP.

All we can report on is today's pricing. In the states, the RTX 5070 is more readily available, with AIB partner cards available at roughly $60-$70 over MSRP. By contrast, the cheapest RX 9070 we could find as of this writing was marked up $150 above MSRP. Both GPUs have an MSRP of $550.

This is compounded by the number of SKUs each GPU has. The RTX 5070 has significantly more options to choose from, and thus more models available near MSRP. The RX 9070 has relatively few models to choose from, with the PowerColor Hellhound OC being the only model at the moment that's anywhere near MSRP.

🏆 Winner: Nvidia

For now, the RTX 5070 is the winner in this round, due to its better availability and its current pricing. But in a better world, this part of the face-off would be a tie since both GPUs have the same MSRP.

Performance

Overall performance between the RTX 5070 and RX 9070 is surprisingly close, even in ray tracing workloads at 1080p and 1440p. 1080p gaming is where the two GPUs are closest overall, with virtually indistinguishable performance on average across all of our games. Surprisingly, the RX 9070 starts to pull ahead at 1440p and takes a noteworthy lead at 4K resolution, despite relying on inferior GDDR6 memory and having a technically inferior (albeit slight) memory bandwidth handicap.

The 1080p ultra results are nearly neck and neck between the two GPUs in our three geomeans. At best, the RX 9070 pulls out a 0.33% win in our 15-game rasterization geomean. Moving on to some examples of per-game performance, Final Fantasy XVI (DX12) is 16% faster, and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 (DX12) is 31% quicker on the RX 9070. Conversely, the RTX 5070 has a monster 28.2% performance lead in Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, likely due to unoptimized drivers from AMD for the RX 9070.

Thanks to RDNA4’s massive advancements in ray tracing capabilities, the RX 9070 runs in the same ballpark as the RTX 5070. In F1 24, the RX 9070 outperforms the RTX 5070 by a noteworthy 9%.

1080p medium shows a very slight performance bias towards the RX 9070. For example, the RX 9070 is 6% faster in our 15-game geomean. One interesting twist is that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle runs noticeably faster on the RX 9070 when tuned down to medium settings, outperforming the RTX 5070 by 11%. At ultra settings, the RTX 5070 is actually slightly faster in the same title.

Moving to 1440p reveals a slight performance bias towards the RX 9070, except in Ray Tracing benchmarks. Our 15-game rasterization geomean demonstrates an 8.2% lead in favor of the RX 9070, but our ray tracing geomean shows a mere 0.23% lead for the RDNA 4 GPU. Per game performance bias is similar to 1080p, although AMD makes a major comeback in Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, with the RTX 5070 being “only” 15% quicker than the RX 9070 rather than 28.2%.

4K Ultra is where the RX 9070 really starts to pull away from the RTX 5070. Across all three of our geomeans, the RX 9070 was on average 11% quicker than the RTX 5070 (including ray tracing). The only two games where the RTX 5070 edged out the RX 9070 were Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 (DX12) and Cyberpunk 2077 (DXR), with an extremely slim margin. Games where the RX 9070 excelled the most were MSFS 2024 (DX12), The Last of Us, Part 1 (DX12), and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (DXR), by 31.5%, 31.6%, and 41.4%, respectively.

Professional Benchmarks

Overall, the RTX 5070 and RX 9070 perform very similarly in our professional benchmarks, on average. However, when diving into individual benchmarks, the differences vary significantly. Some benchmarks favor Nvidia heavily, while others favor AMD heavily.

In Blender, the RTX 5070 is 68% faster than the RX 9070 on average. In Procyon AI Vision, the RTX 5070 is 2.2x faster than the RX 9070, but in SPEC and MLPerf, the RX 9070 is just as fast as the RTX 5070 or faster, depending on the benchmark. Similarly, the RX 9070 is 70% faster than the RTX 5070 in Spec WS4.0, as indicated by our overall geomean.

🏆 Winner: AMD

The RX 9070's slight edge at 1440p and more substantial lead in 4k is enough to give it a win over the RTX 5070. Technically, the RTX 5070 would probably win if we put all the professional benchmarks together in a single geomean. But most people are going to be gaming with these cards, and that is where our priority is for this face-off.

Features, Technology, and Software

The RX 9070 and RTX 5070 are very different GPUs from a design perspective, despite sharing the same price class and competing directly against each other. The RTX 5070 is more or less a minor upgrade over the RTX 4070, featuring the same process node and a moderately improved architecture over Ada Lovelace, relying on features like x3 and x4 frame generation to provide more generational performance improvements. The RX 9070, on the other hand, is a significant upgrade over its predecessor (the RX 7800 XT at the very least), taking advantage of a more advanced GPU architecture (RDNA4) and more advanced process node to provide traditional gen-on-gen performance improvements. Memory designs are also very different between the two GPUs.

The memory subsystems on the RTX 5070 and RX 9070 arguably could hardly be any more different. The RTX 5070 relies on a moderately large 48MB L2 cache and super-fast 28 Gbps GDDR7 memory modules on a 192-bit interface to provide the GPU with enough memory bandwidth for rendering and compute tasks. The RX 9070, on the other hand, takes advantage of a massive 128 MB (L3) Infinity Cache on a larger 256-bit interface, but uses older, slower GDDR6 (not even G6X) memory modules operating at 20 Gbps to get the job done.

According to our performance benchmarks, it appears that AMD’s memory design is better suited for maintaining performance at higher resolutions. However, both are equally capable at lower resolutions such as 1080p. We saw that the RTX 5070 and RX 9070 were more or less the same in performance at 1080p, but moving up to 4K ultra, the RX 9070 took a noticeable lead. Nvidia’s implementation most likely gets overwhelmed at 4K, where data that would normally fit at 1080p (or similar) resolutions in the L2 cache (or the 12GB of VRAM) doesn’t fit at 4K. (There’s a chance other architectural differences are boosting AMD’s high-resolution performance, but it is likely that AMD’s memory sub-system is at least helping to some degree.)

VRAM capacity is another area where the RX 9070 technically outperforms the RTX 5070, with 16GB in total compared to 12GB on the RTX 5070. However, this isn't always a net win for AMD. Nvidia in the past has always had superior memory compression, which can make up several gigabytes worth of capacity deficit compared to AMD. AMD never talks about memory compression in its architectural announcements, so we're assuming RDNA4 still has an inferior memory compression system compared to Nvidia.

Compute-wise, the RX 9070 gains a slight edge over the RTX 5070, featuring six more TFLOPS of FP32 performance (36.1 vs 30.9), and 42 more TFLOPs of FP16 performance (289 vs 247). However, TFLOPs have never been a good indicator for gaming performance at all.

One of AMD’s largest achievements with RDNA4 is its drastically improved ray-tracing performance. For the first time ever, AMD’s GPUs are now going toe-to-toe with Nvidia in ray-tracing. Previously, Nvidia had a noticeable advantage in ray-tracing, mainly because it developed real-time ray-tracing rendering before AMD got on board, giving Nvidia a head start.

AMD was able to achieve ray-tracing parity thanks to significant enhancements to RDNA4. AMD has doubled the ray / triangle and ray / box intersection rates of RDNA 4 compared to RDNA 3, indicating that each RT unit in RDNA 4 is twice as powerful. This has led AMD to match Nvidia in most modern ray-tracing games.

However, there are still some pitfalls AMD needs to address. Namely, path-tracing is still a weak point for AMD and an area where Nvidia still has a huge advantage. We didn’t test any path-tracing games in our comparison here, but if you look at our review of the RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT, there is a significant performance margin between RDNA4 and competing Blackwell GPUs (to the point where previous generation RTX 40 series GPUs of the same tier are faster).

We haven’t done FSR 4 testing yet (at least at the time of writing), but other reviewers have revealed that AMD’s latest iteration of FSR is a significant leap up from prior generations and is roughly on par (if not better) than DLSS 3.x upscaling. This makes a lot of sense considering FSR 4 is AMD’s first upscaler using machine learning / AI-based upscaling just like DLSS.

However, AMD still has yet to provide a true competitor to DLSS 4, which now takes advantage of a very complex transformer AI model and has other features such as 3x and 4x frame generation, and a more optimized 2x frame generation mode, which AMD can’t compete with. AMD is also rumored to be working on a ray reconstruction competitor for FSR, but it's not out yet.

Nvidia still has a significant advantage in the software department. Not only does the Green Team have more tools at its users' disposal, such as RTX Chat, RTX Broadcast, and more, but its software is generally of better quality. Software has notoriously been a sore spot on AMD’s side, particularly for the enterprise realm, where its ROCm software suite pales compared to Nvidia’s enterprise suite of tools.

🏆Winner: Nvidia

AMD may have an advantage in pure hardware, but Nvidia still outperforms AMD in terms of path tracing or full ray tracing), and software.

RTX 5070 vs RX 9070 Verdict

In the end, depending on real-world pricing when you buy, you can't go wrong with either the RTX 5070 or RX 9070. Both GPUs offer something different to gamers, whether that's stronger raw performance or more advanced features. Sadly, availability also plays a significant factor and will inevitably be a reason gamers choose one GPU over another until the current market shenanigans are behind us.

The RTX 5070 and RX 9070 represent one of the closest competitions we've seen in the mid-range space in quite a while. In the past, even with the RX 7000 series, AMD was only the optimal choice when its GPUs were cheaper than Nvidia's counterparts. With the RX 9070, AMD has made huge strides in improving its weakest points, namely, ray-tracing and upscaling quality, to the point where the RX 9070 might be a better choice even if it's slightly more expensive than the RTX 5070 if you're primarily interested in native 1440p and 4k gaming frame rates.

Many RTX 5060 and RTX 5060 Ti users encounter blank screens when restarting their systems. Nvidia has released an update to resolve this problem, not through a new driver, but as a firmware update for the GPU, also known as the vBIOS. The report strictly advises that only users experiencing this problem should update their firmware.

The problem likely stems from how Nvidia's vBIOS communicates with the system's BIOS/UEFI. If your motherboard does not support UEFI boot mode, Nvidia recommends contacting the customer service of your GPU manufacturer for a legacy vBIOS update. The exact culprit hasn't been specified, but the fact that Nvidia is providing a fix strongly implies that part of the problem is within their domain.

Nvidia's RTX 50 GPUs have struggled with stability and compatibility, starting with the problematic R570 branch of drivers, which even affected older RTX 20/30/40 series GPUs. Having experienced these issues first-hand, it took Nvidia multiple weeks to address most of them with the 576.02 update. If your RTX 5060 or RTX 5060 Ti throws a black or blank screen on reboot, you may need to update its vBIOS. An abrupt power outage during firmware updates can potentially brick your GPU, so proceed cautiously.

Fortunately, Nvidia's provided utility can verify compatibility with your system's firmware and determine if a vBIOS update is necessary. Nvidia recommends only installing this update if you're encountering blank screens. To apply the fix, you must first boot into the Operating System, which might be a hassle given the current predicament. Nvidia suggests the following temporary workarounds to boot with a display:

• Completely power down your system before booting.
• Ensure you are using the latest SBIOS from your motherboard vendor.
• Ensure you are in UEFI boot mode and not Legacy/CSM.
• Boot using an alternate graphics source (secondary card or integrated graphics).
• After powering on your system, wait for your operating system to load with the graphics driver installed.

If you've been waiting to make the leap to the Nvidia GeForce RTX 50 series, upgrading an existing rig or building from scratch, then this 10% saving on the Zotac Solid OC GeForce RTX 5070 12GB GPU could be perfect for you.

Now just $629.99 at Newegg, you can grab one for the lowest price we've seen on this model since its launch.

It also matches the same best price ongoing at Amazon right now, although that card is now out of stock, so Newegg is your best bet.

As we noted in our RTX 5070 review, this card is primarily a 1440p card. It can handle some 4K and obviously does well at 1080p, but it's primarily aimed at the 1440p gaming market.

As you might expect, the 5070 easily outstrips the previous generation RTX 4070 across the board, offering a decent generational performance increase at the same theoretical price.

This Zotac version comes with the same Nvidia Blackwell architecture and DLSS 4 support, housed in Zotac's IceStorm 2.0 cooling, replete with BladeLink Fans.

It has 3x DisplayPort 2.1b outputs with UHBR20 and 1 HDMI connector. It consumes around 250W of power, so you'll need at least 650W from your power supply (recommended) to put it to use.

Naturally, the OC stands for overclocked. The OC edition offers a 2542 MHz engine clock as standard, compared to the 2512 MHz from the standard SOLID edition. At this cheaper price, the OC version is only $20 more than the standard, and the regular SOLID is also out of stock, making the step-up a no-brainer.

MSI is invoking the past with several new RTX 5060 series SKUs unveiled at Computex 2025, Benchlife reports. The new RTX 5060 Ti TwinFrozer Retro and RTX 5060 Cyclone take direct inspiration from MSI's GPU cooler designs dating back to the early 2010s.

The RTX 5060 Ti TwinFrozer Retro is a callback to the TwinFrozer cooler design MSI invented in the early 2010s. This cooler nomenclature was responsible for cooling many of MSI's GeForce GPUs, including the GTX 500 series, 600 series, and 700 series. The RTX 5060 TwinFrozer Retro takes inspiration from the TwinFrozer II cooler on the GTX 400 and 500 series, featuring a metallic color theme with the heatsink exposed on the bottom of the shroud.

The RTX 5060 Ti TwinFrozer Retro takes the original TwinFrozer aesthetic and weaves it in with MSI's latest cooling technologies. The card boasts copper-aluminum composite fins, a no-solder-hole design, 7-bladed Stormforce fans, a nickel-plated copper baseplate, and a metal backplate. MSI is also allegedly using a hybrid copper/aluminum fin design to improve cooling efficiency further.

MSI's RTX 5070 Cyclone is another model with "retro" roots. The original Cyclone-cooler was popular with the GTX 400 and GTX 500 series, sporting a large single-fan cooler design. The Cyclone coolers were infamous for their janky look, with a cooler that seemed tailor-made for function over form. These coolers only encapsulate parts of the GPU that need to be cooled, such as the GPU core and memory, leaving most of the PCB exposed to the naked eye.

Unlike the aforementioned TwinFrozer Retro, MSI rebooted the Cyclone series already with the RTX 40 series. The RTX 4060 Cyclone 8G OC marked the official reboot of the series, being the first Cyclone GPU made in twelve years. The RTX 5070 Cyclone Visual represents MSI's next-generation Cyclone coolers in this new era for the sub-brand, featuring several differences over the previous RTX 4060 model.

Most notably, the new RTX 5070 Cyclone Visual (as the name implies) sports a screen directly on the fan hub, where users can show images and presumably GIFs. The cooler itself is almost a perfect representation of the original Cyclone coolers with exposed heatpipes on the top and a circular heatsink design that mimics the fan in the middle. The PCB has been formed to fit over the heatsink like a glove with a circular protrusion on the right to align with the tip of the heatsink in that area.

New, possible details about a potential RTX 5080 Super have emerged, thanks to an X posting from well-reputed hardware leaker Kopite, who has a solid track record when it comes to all things Nvidia. The RTX 5080 Super is alleged to address GPU memory limitations with 24GB of fast GDDR7 memory, and a TGP (Total Graphics Power) that's rumored to exceed 400W. The leaker has not shared any details in regards to pricing and availability.

GDDR7 memory modules are currently available in 16Gb (2GB) and 24Gb (3GB) densities, with even higher capacities down the pipeline. The denser option directly translates to a 50% increase in VRAM capacity, even if the memory bus width remains the same.

Despite sharing the same 256-bit bus width as the RTX 5080, the RTX 5090 Mobile achieves its 24GB configuration with denser memory modules. The remainder of the Blackwell family sticks with standard 16Gb modules, similar to GDDR6X. However, this new leak suggests Nvidia might be eying transitioning to denser 24Gb options for the RTX 50 Super refresh.

The RTX 5080 Super reportedly employs the full-fat GB203 die, similar to the RTX 5080, with 10,752 CUDA cores or 84 Streaming Multiprocessors. The 256-bit interface enables eight memory modules, which have been populated with 24Gb (3GB) modules for 24GB of GDDR7 memory, rated at 32 Gbps. This puts the memory bandwidth at an impressive 1 TB/s, or 6.6% faster than the stock RTX 5080. Nvidia is also said to increase the power requirements for the RTX 5080 Super over 400W.

At Computex 2025, Razer has taken the covers off its brand new Razer Blade 14, the company's thinnest-ever 14-inch laptop. Available in different configurations, the new Blade 14 includes Nvidia's GeForce RTX 5060 or 5070 laptop GPUs, paired with AMD's Ryzen AI 9 365 processor.

Razer says it has fully redesigned the Blade 14, creating the company's thinnest-ever laptop, measuring just 15.7mm at its slimmest points. The Blade 14 weighs in at just 1.63 kg, too, and is milled from a single block of T6-grade aluminum.

Despite the small form factor, Razer has employed new "Thermal Hood" design, paired with a large vapor chamber. The company claims that this will provide "ample ventilation and additional thermal headroom for maximum operating performance," thanks to better heat management and airflow.

The new Blade 14's battery life is rated for up to 11 hours of on-screen time, thanks to a 72 Whr battery. The thin-and-light also offers ample connectivity options, like two USB 4 (Type-C) connectors, HDMI 2.1, Bluetooth 5.4, and Wi-Fi 7.

Under the hood, the new Blade 14 comes with Nvidia's latest 50 series mobile chips, with RTX 5060 and RTX 5070 flavors. Both mobile GPUs possess a TGP of 100W, with an additional 15W "Dynamic boost"

That means any prospective buyers will get all the benefits of the Nvidia Blackwell architecture, as well as DLSS 4's multi-frame generation.

That's paired with AMD's Ryzen AI 9 365 processor, which sports 10 cores and 20 threads, and possesses a 2 GHZ base clock, which can be boosted up to 5 GHz in optimal conditions. RAM is not user-upgradable, and can be configured between 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB of LPDDR5X at 8000 MHz.

That all powers a 14-inch, three layer OLED display running at 2880 x 1800. The panel supports Nvidia G-Sync and has a refresh rate of 120Hz, as well as a 0.2ms response time. The display also offers a 1M:1 contrast ratio and wide 100% DCI-P3 color coverage.

Whether all that will be enough to knock the Asus TUF Gaming A14 off its perch as the top 14-inch model in our best gaming laptop rundown remains to be seen.

As mentioned, Razer is also adding an RTX 5060 option to its Razer Blade 16, paired with the same processor and RAM options as the Blade 14. However, the display differs, instead sporting a QHD+ 240 Hz OLED display.

If you were wondering where to buy the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060, it launched yesterday along with the long-awaited driver, which has precluded reviews and testing ahead of release. While carefully controlled previews of the 5060 point to performance gains of up to 25% over the 4060, real-world performance is yet to be established.

Prices for the Blade 14 start at $2,299.99 for the RTX 5060 model. The 5070 version is $2,699, and you can also spec up to 2TB of SSD storage.

Following some very closely guarded previews, the new Nvidia RTX 5060 is now available to buy, delivering budget performance to users and just 8GB of VRAM starting at $299 (MSRP). It's a 1080p card that promises decent framerates, but we're yet to complete unfettered testing to determine where it ranks among the best GPUs and our overall GPU benchmarking hierarchy.

Unveiled in April, the 5060 follows the RTX 5060 Ti, which launched April 16 at prices of $429 and $379 for the 8GB or 16GB model, respectively. Like the Ti, the 5060 includes DLSS 4, including Multi Frame Generation and Super Resolution, as well as Nvidia Reflex. The drivers were released on May 19 alongside the card, which has precluded reviews going out ahead of release.

Over the weekend, select outlets published preview articles with strict criteria about which games could be tested and using which settings.

As you might imagine, these very favorable conditions yielded up to 25% performance boosts over Nvidia's RTX 4060. Reportedly, Nvidia only sanctioned Avowed, Doom: The Dark Ages, Marvel Rivals, Cyberpunk 2077, and Hogwarts Legacy as review titles, with comparisons limited to the RTX 3060 and RTX 2060 Super, with resolution fixed at 1080p, ultra image quality, DLSS in quality mode, and ray tracing. Settings were also limited to running frame generation exclusively.

This has naturally yielded fairly positive results thus far for obvious reasons. From the available figures, the 5060 trails the Ti variant by around 15% on average when using 2x DLSS, but appears to show performance increases of up to 25% over the RTX 4060 running titles like Cyberpunk 2077.

Naturally, we'd recommend waiting for full reviews (including our own, which is on the way) before making the purchase. However, if you'd like to look at stock or have no qualms about taking the plunge, here's where you can buy one.

Where to buy the Nvidia RTX 5060 in the US

• Newegg
• B&H Photo
• Best Buy

Use our handy table to check what's in stock and what models are available at which retailer. Check back daily as this list is update with the latest offers and pricing.

Click on the price, to be taken directly to retailer and model listed.

It's the final day of Computex 2025, and things are winding down here. We'll still be bringing you updates, pictures from the floor, and more, and some recaps of all the biggest and best announcements.

In the meantime, sit back, relax, and wind down with us as we close out another year of Computex.

I come to Taiwan for the tech, but the affordable, high-quality coffee is what keeps me going

Taipei is great for a lot of reasons. But as a bit of a coffee addict and snob, I really appreciate the abundance of coffee shops and roasters here. And the coffee (like most food here) is pleasantly affordable.

This iced Americano (unfortunately, the cold brew was sold out) from one of my favorite spots, Coffee Moon, was the equivalent of about $3. And that’s on the expensive end. Major chains, like Louisa Coffee (I recommend the egg and peanut butter breakfast sandwich), tend to be cheaper. There are a lot of Starbucks here as well, but I’m not a fan – especially when there are so many other options.

I picked up some fresh-ground coffee for my travel-friendly Aeropress at Ikari Coffee (I like to think this chain is the Ikari Warriors retirement plan) for about $6 – enough for a week’s worth of early mornings and late nights, and then some. It’s going to be hard to go back to the $5 Dunkin’ cold brew when I get back home, even if the sizes are much bigger.

-Matt Safford

Picked up some spicy Guai Guai at 7-11, no Lisa Su or TSMC flavors to be found

There are plenty of tasty and interesting snacks to be had at Taipei’s night markets or the many (many) convenience stores. But I could help but pick up a couple of bags of spicy Guai Guai when I saw them today.

For those not in the know, this brand of Cheetos-like (but usually sweet) snack is part of a tradition or superstition (take your pick) where engineers and tech workers place the snacks in and around important machines to help assure they function without problems. The phenomenon is so widespread that we’ve seen both TSMC- and AMD / Lisa Su-branded versions of the snacks debut (and reportedly quickly get bought up) in the last couple of years. And of course, both companies have seen new levels of success in the past several years. Maybe someone should tell Intel’s new CEO to invest in some blue Guai Guai.

Unsurprisingly, I couldn’t find any of the TSMC or Ryzen varieties of the snacks, so these spicy ones will have to do. I’m going to leave them sitting on my laptop overnight, because it has a bad habit of blue-screening every week or so. Maybe the snacks will keep that from happening until I get home (or at least until I’m done reporting from Computex). If it doesn’t work, I may have to ask AI for some help with my crash dumps.

-Matt Safford

I both love and hate Taipei’s PC and component ads

I’ve been on the ground (and sweating) in Taipei for a few days now, and one of the first things that always strikes me here is the plethora of billboards and signs for various laptops and PC components.

Sure, a lot of this gets ramped up ahead of Computex, and many are in and around the Guang Hua Digital Plaza area, where there are dozens (perhaps hundreds) of shops and storefronts that sell pretty much everything PC related, from high-end gaming laptops to obscure PC cases, and entire stores dedicated to MSI, Asus, Aorus – there’s even a store that pretty much only sells Transcend storage devices and media.

But the ads exist away from the main tech district as well. Today I was walking to a record shop in an arts district, looked up and saw, of all things, a slim vertical billboard for power supply maker, Seasonic.

And later, as I was headed into an MRT (subway) station, making my way back to my hotel, there was a big banner for AMD’s Ryzen 9000 CPUs above the train platform.

The only other place I’ve seen ads like this for PC components and the latest laptops is in Tokyo’s famous Akihabara neighborhood during a visit in 2015 – where I bought a random wafer of chips at the back junk tech store that, sadly, was far too fragile to survive the trip home.

On the one hand, it’s cool to see the PC hardware we obsess over getting the kind of treatment and attention that is more typically afforded to the latest attempt at a blockbuster movie or a tech startup flush with cash and looking to build brand recognition. And I certainly find ads for components more interesting and less annoying than most ads I see walking around our office neighborhood in Midtown Manhattan.

But considering how much I already spend on PC hardware and related tech, I am not sure I’d want to be regularly be surrounded by ads reminding me that the Ryzen 9 9950X3D exists, making my perfectly capable 7950X feel outdated and inadequate, or that my RAM or storage isn’t as fast as it could be.

Sure, signs and billboards that are more targeted to my PC interests are cool to see here in Taipei, but I really don’t need any more “help” deciding when it’s time to upgrade. After all, if I spend all my money on new tech, I won’t have any left over to buy old records.

-Matt Safford

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang shows off Nvidia RTX 5060

The Nvidia keynote is underway and most of what CEO Jensen Huang is talking about has to do with AI development, not desktop computing. However, he just showed off the new RTX 5060 on stage, flashing an Asus-branded RTX 5060 GPU and an MSI laptop with RTX 5060 inside.

Huang didn't share any details about the cards, but lots of information has already come out. For example, we reported yesterday that the RTX 5060 is 25% faster than the 4060 with frame generation enabled.

While he spoke, Huang stood in front of a digital scene of a pond in a European city (it looked like Italy). He said that an RTX card (perhaps the 5060) was rendering only 1 out of every 10 frames in the scene, which showed candles floating over water. Instead, he said DLSS was generating 9 out of every 10 frames.

This is probably all we'll hear about PC gaming during this keynote.

"You know, when you're CEO, you have many children, and GeForce is here, and now all of our keynotes are 90% not GeForce," Huang said. "But it's not because we don't love GeForce. GeForce RTX 50 series just had its most successful launch ever, the fastest launch in our history. And PC gaming is now 30 years old. So that tells you something about how incredible GeForce is."

Intel demos Panther Lake

Day 1 of Computex 2025 is in full swing, and Intel is demoing working Panther Lake Core Ultra 300 silicon for its laptops, the first to use its 18A process node. We've been shown real-time rendering and AI applications ahead of its early 2026 launch.

• Intel demos running Panther Lake systems, touts performance and power efficiency improvements

Nvidia NVLink expansion

One of Nvidia's biggest announcements at Computex 2025 is a new NVLink Fusion program which allows customers and partners to use NVLink in their own custom rack-scale design. Here are all the details...

• Nvidia announces NVLink Fusion to allow custom CPUs and AI Accelerators to work with its products

Morning folks, Stephen here picking up the live blog until 1pm ET - we're all over the Computex trade floor bringing you the latest insights and news, so stay tuned!

Getting strong "secret government operation" vibes from this scene outside of the Grand HiLai Hotel near the main Computex buildings today. I get it, arm, you're the future of efficient computing (maybe). Please don't call the black helicopters on me.

- Matthew Safford

New Acer monitors

Acer has unveiled the new Nitro PG271K monitor, featuring 4K at 72Hz, with DFR for 1080p at 144Hz, 0.5ms response time (GTG), USB-C, and HDMI ports.

There's also a new 32-inch ProCreator and a new portable PD163QT. Gamers will love the new Nitro GA341CUR W0, a 34-inch UWQHD display with a 240Hz refresh rate.

Nvidia G-Sync comes to Samsung's big screen

Samsung has announced that it is finally adding support for Nvidia G-Sync in its 2025 OLED TV lineup, starting with the S95F.

The return of Windows 7

We've all seen broken McDonald's order consoles running Windows 98 or some other such monstrosity, but how about this Computex display board that appears to have malfunctioned, revealing Windows 7 underneath.

Intel's new Arc Pro B50 breaks cover

Intel has just unveiled its brand new Arc Pro B50, a compact graphics card for workstations with 16GB of VRAM and a starting price of $299. There's also a new Pro B60 with a hefty 24GB with a price tag of roughly $500 per unit.

• Intel launches $299 Arc Pro B50 with 16GB of memory, 'Project Battlematrix' workstations with 24GB Arc Pro B60 GPUs

MSI's new AI-powered 500 Hz beast

MSI's new X50 is a QD-OLED monitor and a 500 Hz refresh rate, but the headline is actually its new AI Care Sensor, which can detect when you're not looking at the monitor, powering down accordingly to reduce burn-in.

• MSI’s new 500 Hz QD-OLED monitor leverages AI tech to save it from burn-in

Maxsun dual-GPU card

Alongside the aforementioned new Intel Arc Pro offerings, there's a brand new partner card from Maxsun that jams two Arc Pro B60 chips onto a single graphics card, replete with 48GB of total VRAM, or 96GB in a two-card configuration.

Cheaper than a 50 Series...

Want to score some Computex swag without splashing out thousands on the best graphics card? Head on down to the Nvidia truck and buy a Jensen Huang shirt for $37 instead.

Nvidia's new supercomputer

Nvidia announced at Computex that it would be working with Foxconn to build an AI supercomputer in Taiwan featuring 10,000 Nvidia Blackwell GPUs.

• Nvidia teams up with Foxconn to build an AI supercomputer in Taiwan

MSI's new desktop AI supercomputer

As promised, MSI has unveiled its new EdgeXpert MS-C931 supercomputer, powered by Nvidia DGX Spark and capable of 1,000 TOPS FP4 performance.

• MSI unveils EdgeXpert MS-C931 desktop AI supercomputer powered by Nvidia DGX Spark

Nvidia: No evidence of AI chip diversion

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says there is no evidence of AI chip diversion to blacklisted nations, in response to questions at Computex. Huang said countries and companies understand the rules and want to continue doing business with Nvidia.

• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says ‘There’s no evidence of any AI chip diversion’

Noctua's triple-fan RTX 5080

Check out ASUS' new Noctua triple-fan RTX 5080, as well as it's new external GPU dock, which we've been having a look at over on the floor.

• Asus unveils Noctua triple-fan RTX 5080, new external GPU dock, and more at Computex

Some holiday snaps...

Computex 2025 isn't all motherboards and silicon; here are some snaps of the locale here in Taipei.

Asus's RTX 5060

The RTX 5060 (and the long-awaited RTX 5060 driver) are now here, as is Asus' new RTX 5060 laptop lineup.

• Asus adds the RTX 5060 to its gaming laptop lineup, tweaks TUF A14 with better cooling

Asus ups the ante with the 610 Hz ROG Strix Ace XG248QSG gaming monitor

The ROG Strix Ace XG248QSG is the latest among the growing trend of 500 Hz+ gaming monitors. Asus is targeting the 24.1-inch ROG Strix Ace XG248QSG at the esports gaming crowd, and you’ll need one of the best graphics cards for gaming to get the most out of its insane 610 Hz refresh rate.

While Asus touts the 610 Hz refresh rate, it is achievable through overclocking – the panel has a native refresh rate of 600 Hz. Another thing to note is that this monitor uses a TN panel. TN panels aren’t known for their prowess in color reproduction, brightness, or viewing angles. However, Asus says that the ROG Strix Ace XG248QSG uses the latest iteration of its “Super TN” panel to combat some inherent deficiencies; notably improved color and boosted brightness levels (up to 370 nits).

Although the ROG Strix Ace XG248QSG doesn’t have RGB lighting effects that we typically expect from ROG products, it does have an attractive design, and is adjustable for height, tilt, and swivel. As for connectivity, you’ll get DisplayPort 1.4, two HDMI 2.1 ports, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.

• Asus debuts 24-inch 610 Hz Full HD gaming monitor with a Super TN panel

Wood you believe it? Asus' ProArt GeForce RTX 50 family brings wood grain finishes, USB-C connectivity, and even M.2 support

Wood grain trim isn’t usually associated with PC components, let alone graphics cards. But that’s exactly what we have in store with the Asus RTX 50 Series ProArt series. All the graphics cards have a wood grain finish for the fan shroud, giving them a classy look over the more exhaustive use of RGB that we see in many high-end graphics cards.

But it goes beyond the wooden aesthetics; all four members of the ProArt RTX 5080 family include USB-C ports for connecting monitors of peripherals to offer “better versatility for content creation workflows.” The ProArt GeForce RTX 5080 OC goes one step further by including an M.2 slot for plugging in an SSD.

If you’re looking for a top-performing graphics card that offers more than just good looks as a side dish, the ProArt family seems like a good option to pursue – that is, if Asus can keep pricing in check.

• Asus RTX 5080 ProArt comes with a wood grain finish and M.2 slot option

This could be the new fastest SSD

At the moment, the Crucial T705 is the fastest consumer SSD on the market, hitting random reads and writes of 1.55 and 1.8M IOPS respectively. However, today at Computex, Crucial announced its successor, the T710 which promises to be 28 percent faster in reads and 42 faster in writes.

We have a full article with lots of details on the Crucial T710 right here.

The T710 will be available at an undetermined price in 1TB, 2TB, 4TB and 8TB capacities. It will come with and without a heatsink. The heatsink itself will be a slim 11mm thick.

The drive is one-sided and also promises low enough power to work well in a laptop, without massively draining the battery. It uses an SMI SM2508 SSD controller and 276-layer G9 TLC NAND to achieve these results.

Teamgroup is known for its radical cooling concepts that it demos at Computex every year, and 2025 is no exception. This year the company had a triple-M.2 all-in-one liquid cooler for those of you that simply can't cram enough storage into your rig. The company also had a new dual M.2 SSD and CPU cooler on display, too. Yes, the cooled liquid flows from the rad to the SSD first, thus preventing it from getting pre-heated liquid flowing from the CPU.

Good morning!

Good morning and welcome back to day two (one) of Computex 2025! Stephen here for the next eight hours, keeping you posted with everything going on at Computex, including live insight from the floor here in Taipei! While you were sleeping, here's what you missed...

• Asus debuts 24-inch 610 Hz Full HD gaming monitor with a Super TN panel
• Crucial announces T710 SSD with 14.9 GB/s of performance, X10 portable SSD up to 8TB
• MSI brings AMD-based AMD gaming handheld, updated mid-range gaming laptops to Computex

New Razer Blade 14

Razer has unveiled its new Blade 14 laptop at Computex. Sporting the Nvidia RTX 50-series (either the 5060 or 5070), it's the thinnest-ever Razer laptop of this size. There's also a new 5060 option for the larger Razer Blade 16.

• Razer unveils new Blade 14 laptop with Nvidia RTX 50 series GPUs and 3K 120Hz OLED display

Ascent GX10 special edition?

The Asus Ascent GX10 costs around $2,999 for the privilege of Nvidia GB10 packed into a tiny form factor. How much the markup is on this one is anyone's guess...

InWin celebrates 40 years with... this...

InWin is celebrating 40 years with this insane ChronoMancy case. It looks a bit like a prosthetic leg, is over 1 meter tall, and opens up like Iron Man's suit when you wave a magic wand at it. Standard...

• InWin celebrates 40 years with the ChronoMancy — futuristic 1.1m case opens with the wave of a wand

Unlimited poweeeeeeeer

The new Asus Pro Workstation is a 3000W power supply capable of powering four Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 cards by itself. It's so powerful you can even plug it into a standard U.S. outlet...

• Asus introduces 3000-watt PSU — enough capacity to power 4 RTX 5090s

Some colorful cases

Hyte's 2025 offering is a new X50 computer case that stands out thanks to its loud, vibrant colorway and design language reminiscent of a Smeg fridge. Check out the full details...

• Hyte’s new X50 PC case comes with a rounded aesthetic, high-performance mesh, and fun colors

Cherry's next generation switch

Alongside three others, Cherry has unveiled its brand new IK inductive switch, using patented inductive sensing technology it claims yields no mechanical wear and 50% less power consumption than magnetic switches.

• Cherry unveils next-generation keyboard switches with inductive sensing technology — claims no mechanical wear and 50% power reduction

MSI drops some insane gaming laptop artwork:

NZXT's new cases

NZXT has revealed not one but two stunning new cases, the H9 Flow and the H3 Flow. The former is a dual-chamber chassis with built-in fans and a controller hub, while the H3 is a Micro-ATX case. Despite this, it still features capacity for 10 fans!

• NZXT goes big and small at Computex with the H9 Flow and H3 Flow cases

AMD up next

Keeping on top of time zones during Computex is always a challenge - next on the agenda is AMD, who will host their Computex livestream and keynote tonight/tomorrow. It kicks off at 11 am UTC+8 on May 21, or 11 pm ET on May 20 if you're stateside. You can watch along over on YouTube!

Cooler Master's new panoramic case

The new Cooler Master MasterFrame 360 Panoramic is more fish tank than PC case, with a three-sided glass design that gives you unparalleled viewing of your internal hardware. There's also a new budget version of the QUBE 500, and more...

• Cooler Master unveils new pre-built PC with a 360 x 360mm radiator, new QUBE 500, and more

Turn any device into a Stream Deck...

One definite sleeper announcement from Computex 2025 is Elgato's new Virtual Stream Deck app, which lets you turn any device into a Stream Deck...

• Elgato now lets you turn any device you want into a Stream Deck

Corsair Air 5400

New from Corsair, the Air 5400 is the company's first triple-chamber design that can accomodate up to 360mm AIO cooling solutions, dumping the heat from the CPU directly out of the case.

• Corsair’s Air 5400 features a triple-chamber design for high-performance cooling

Phison's new controller could take the SSD speed crown

Earlier this week, we reported about the Crucial T710 SSD, which uses an SMI SM2508 SSD controller and boasts 2.2 million and 2.3 million read and write IOPS respectively. However, Phison seems ready to power drives which could close the T710 out of the water, thanks to its E28 controller.

We just reported that the Phison E28 controller promises 3 million read IOPS and 2.6 million write IOPS. That's along with 14.8 GB/s and 14 GB/s sequential reads and writes.

The controller is made using TSMC's 6nm process and it supports up to 32GB of TLC NAND. The E28 also boasts an eight channel layout that runs at 4200 MT/s and support for AES-256, TCG Opal and Pyrite encryption.

We visited Phison at Computex 2025 and grabbed a picture of a test system running CrystalDiskMark. In the pic above, you can see that the sample drive on display returned a 14,942 MB/s sequential read and a 14,149 MB/s write.

TeamGroup shows off thermoelectric SSD cooler

As we talked about in our article on TeamGroup's new Computex offerings, the company is showing a new SSD cooler that uses Peltier technology aka thermoelectric cooling. The company says that its AI-Flow X cooler will offer better cooling thanks to both this technology and to AI.

This looks very promising, but thermoelectric cooling has been known to have some drawbacks, such as generating heat. We'll have to see how this implementation fares.

Thermaltake embraces wood-accented cases

At Computex, Thermaltake is showing off its latest cases, which have Nordic, wood-grain accents. You could almost say that it's like going to Ikea, but hopefully with much easier building.

The new designs are available on several case lines, including the Tower 600, TR100, View 380/ 380 XL, View 270 and View 170 lines. The wood accents are either in light or dark wood.

No word yet on exact pricing or availability.

Adata courts enterprise customers with new Trusta brand

Adata is known for its SSDs and RAM, particularly under the XPG gaming sub-brand. Now the company is launching a new sub-brand aimed at enterprise customers.

Trusta (we guess they want you to trust it) will launch with two SSD lines: the T7 and the T5. We covered these in greater detail in our article about Trusta.

The T7P5, Trusta's flagship SSD, boasts sequential read and write speeds of 13,500 and 10,400 MB/s and uses either a U.2 interface or connects via E3.S or E1.S, all enterprise standards.

The T5 series has the T5P4B, T5S3B and T5S3 models. These connect weither via PCIe Gen 4 M.2 or 2.5-ich SATA connections.

AMD Keynote Underway and We're Blogging it

AMD's Jack Huynh, SVP and GM of Computing and Graphics, is delivering the company's Computex keynote. He started his presentation by talking about gaming and FSR. We're blogging the whole event at a separate AMD Computex live blog.

Good morning!

Day 2 is well underway here in Taipei and we have got a packed schedule to bring you. Stephen here taking you through the next eight hours, but first, a look at some of the things you may have missed overnight...

While you were sleeping:

The highlight overnight was the AMD keynote. The company unveiled its new Radeon RX 9060 XT and Ryzen Threadripper 9000, as well as the new Radeon AI Pro R9700, a PCIe 5.0 GPU for workstations and pro users.

• AMD launches Radeon AI Pro R9700 to challenge Nvidia's AI market dominance

The new RX 9060 XT launches on June 5, priced at $299, priced squarely in the firing line of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 which launched earlier this week.

• AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT launches on June 5, starting at $299

The AMD livestream broke before the keynote finished, but you can catch up on all of our coverage up to that point as it happened.

• AMD Computex 2025 Keynote

A display on your memory module?

A new innovation from V-Color adds a programmable LCD screen to its DDR5 DIMM modules. According to V-Color, the screen can be used to display information like capacity, speed bin, temperature, and voltage, all controlled through the company's app. The screen is on the side, so there are some obvious limitations, including how much capacity the format supports, but it still tops out at 48GB and also features programmable RGB LEDs.

• V-Color puts displays on memory modules

Another Jensen Huang signature...

The Nvidia CEO dropped by and added his mark to the flagship ZOTAC Gaming GeForce RTX 50 Series on display:

Zotac's low-profile RTX 5060

New from Zotac at Computex is this low-profile RTX 5060. They carry the same GPU and VRAM as the full-sized boards, but offer only three display outputs and a neat single-fan setup.

• Zotac preps low-profile GeForce RTX 5060, Mini-ITX RTX 5060

113 GB/s speeds

We got a demo of Phison's Apex RAID setup, and it did not disappoint. Using 32 new PCIe Gen 5 SSDs in a RAID configuration, they clocked read and write speeds of 113.6 GB/s and 104.6 GB/s, respectively...

• Phison's Apex RAID demo showed us blistering 113 GB/s speeds in Computex demo

I spent way too much money on Guai Guai merch at the Computex store

Every trade show seems to have its own shop of overpriced merch. I’ve seen them at CES, GTC, IFA, and elsewhere, and never really been tempted to buy anything – until today. When I arrived at the Nangan Convention Center this morning, a half hour before the trade show opened to press, I wandered down the narrow entrance area, looking for the giant inflatable Guai Guai bag that’s typically there every year.

What I found was not only the big bag advertising the tech-protecting snacks, but a whole table of Guai Guai-themed merchandise. And I knew instantly that I couldn’t walk away without buying something – or, more likely, some things.

But the shop wasn’t open yet, so a couple of hours later, when I had a half hour between meetings, I returned and snapped up a green glass coffee mug, two omamori magnets (the actual omamoris were sadly already sold out), and a small travel bag. At checkout, I was also given a bag of Computex 2025 Guai Guai and a foldable fan as free gifts with my purchase.

Was it the most sensible 2,644 NTD I’ve ever spent? Probably not. But I knew if walked away from this very specific trade show swag, that I would regret it. And hey, who couldn’t use something else in their lives these days that “keeps everything alright?”

If I make it back to Computex next year, I’ll consider that a success for my lucky Guai Guai Computex swag. But if I am here again in a year (Computex 2026 is scheduled to run from June 2-5), maybe I’ll skip the Computex shop for the sake of my wallet.

–Matt Safford

More Jensen autographs...

Add another Jensen Huang autograph to the roster!

Catch up on AMD

Missed the AMD Keynote at Computex? Don't worry, everyone did, because the livestream broke. Here's a great way to catch up:

New from Colorful

A G-Helmet PC case, RTX 50-Series laptops, and more, Colorful unveiled some of the most eye-catching tech of Computex 2025...

• Colorful unveils new RTX 50-Series laptops, wild G-Helmet PC case, and more at Computex

The latest from be quiet!

be quiet! showed off the latest it has to offer including new keyboards, coolers, and PC cases. There are awesome new wooden bases for the 900 series, and an upgrade to the Pure Loop 3.

• be quiet! shows off new keyboards, coolers, and PC cases at Computex 2025

Lian Li embraces tempered glass

A new range of cases and more from Lian Li reveal that the company is embracing tempered glass on its front panels, eschewing the mesh that has served it well in previous years.

We got a look at the new Lancool 4, Lancool 217 INF, O11D Mini V2, DAN Case B4, Vector V100, and Vector V200 cases, along with the HydroShift III AIO.

• Lian Li is replacing mesh front panels with tempered glass on its new Lancool cases

Check out Noctua's thermosiphon cooler

Many of us use AIO (All-in-One) coolers that have a pump on top of the CPU that circulates coolant through a radiator where a fan blows the heat away. At Computex, Noctua is showing off a different kind of AIO, one without a pump at all.

Noctua's protoype thermosiphon cooler has liquid on top of the CPU where the heat from the CPU causes the coolant to boil. When the coolant turns into a gas it naturally moves through the pump up to the radiator where it is cooled and turns back into a liquid again.

Once it's a liquid again, the coolant flows downward back to the water block on top of the CPU and the cycle continues. Noctua is demonstrating this with a 360mm radiator.

So what's the point? By eliminating the pump, you cut the noise. Is the noise from your AIO's pump significant? I guess it depends on the product and how sensitive you are to noise and how much other noise there is in your system. Even the thermosiphon cooler still needs fans (3x 120mm fans actually).

Finally, a real solution to the melting cables problem

The next-gen of Seasonic Prime power supplies will have a feature that deals with the problem of melting 12VHPWR connectors. As you may know, many people with RTX 40 and 50 series cards have had problems with melting connectors because their 12VHPWR connectors weren't plugged in properly. Then the GPU calls for an unbalanced power load and the cables melt and disaster ensues.

At Computex, Seasonic showed a prototype PSU with a set of sensors that alerts PC users of a malfunction if there's an abnormal voltage output. There will be an external device that connects to the PSU and shows this alert. The PSU will also power down to prevent melting. The PSUs with this tech, unfortunately, aren't due out until 2026.

Thermaltake shows off Minecraft-themed AIO cooler

Look at this! It's almost as good as having a Chicken Jockey ride on top of your CPU.

Thermaltake has a Minecraft-themed, 360mm AIO cooler on display at its booth and it's called the Minecube 360 ARGB. The cooler has four, 3.95-inch displays surrounding the pump. In the display, each of these had a Minecraft scene, but it seems like you could put any image you want on there.

The 360mm radiator has three Thermaltake SWAFAN EX12 ARGB fans on it that use magnetic quick connections and daisy-chain together. The entire thing is controlled by TT RGB software.

We don't have more details about the Minecube so we don't know the pricing or availability. We also don't know if it comes with any addition Minecraft-themed parts. One of the two units on display had some plastic Minecraft trees and blocks on the case, but we don't know if they come with the cooler.

Thermaltake shows off cool case mods

As usual, Thermaltake's booth was filled with case mods from some of the leading modders. The company hosts an invitational where artists from around the world turn its cases into all kinds of neat things. This year, the Black Myth Wukong case was the most impressive.

Here's what we saw.

Good morning and welcome to Thursday live from Taipei, it's a little after five local time and we've been pacing the trade floor. Stephen here for the next eight hours to take you through everything we've find. But first, we'll catch you up on what you may have missed overnight.

The return of an icon

MSI has unveiled plenty of new incredible tech at Computex, but the pick of the bunch might be the return of its iconic TwinFrozer and Cyclone cooling platforms, which have been deployed on a new RTX 5060 Ti and RTX 5060, respectively.

• MSI's RTX 5060 Ti TwinFrozer Retro and RTX 5070 Cyclone graphics cards go heavy on nostalgia

AMD FSR Redstone

New technology from AMD brings a major update to FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR). Dubbed Redstone, it has new features it hopes to rival Nvidia's DLSS using three new features: neural radiance caching, machine learning ray regeneration, and machine learning frame generation.

• AMD's FSR Redstone uses machine learning to achieve parity with Nvidia DLSS

A new solution to melting connectors

Seasonic has unveiled new Prime power supplies that seek to solve overheating and melting power connectors by using sensors, a microcontroller, and firmware to keep on top of things, letting you monitor voltage output and current, as well as shutting down the system automatically if things get out of hand.

• Seasonic’s next-generation Prime PSUs to will try to stop connectors from melting

Old dog, new Tryx

Tryx's new Arcvision case features an embedded, curved display in the lower-left corner. The panoramic illusion is some of the most impressive stuff we've seen in case innovation at this year's event!

• Tryx's new PC case has an embedded curved display

Zalman goes with the grain

Seems like everyone is adding wood to their PC components these days, and the latest manufacturer to jump on the trend is Zalman with its new ATX and micro-ATX cases.

• Zalman shows off woodgrain ATX and Micro-ATX cases

The most egregious branding ever

Thermal Grizzly has unveiled a new bench table made in partnership with overclocking royalty der8auer. The "der8enchtable" is a modular, user-friendly benchtable is designed to facilitate fast and efficient PC hardware testing. Maybe we should get one of those...

• Thermal Grizzly’s open-air der8enchtable is designed for dedicated PC tinkerers

A $50,000 cooling solution

Enermax's immersion-cooled workstation can support four Nvidia RTX 5090s and up to 3,300 watts of power, using two-phase liquid immersion to keep temperatures under control. It looks incredible and surely performs, but the privilege will cost you $50,000 before you add any components.

• This $50,000 immersion-cooled workstation can support four Nvidia RTX 5090s

Zotac Zone 2 coming... soon?

Zotac has taken the covers off its new Zone 2 handheld, replete with a 7-inch AMOLED display and AMD Ryzen AI HX 370 APU. While we expect this to be the second iteration of its Zone handheld, it's officially a prototype at this stage and there's no pricing or launch info.

• Zotac Zone 2 demoed with Manjaro Linux and an AMOLED panel — 12-core Zen 5 CPU and 32GB RAM under the hood

HighPoint’s RocketStor 6542AW offers nearly a petabyte of external storage using eight 122TB SSDs

How does nearly a petabyte of storage sound to you? Although I’m probably going to sound like the 640K remark often (and probably mistakenly) associated with Bill Gates, I don’t think I could ever come close to filling the 976GB of storage that’s possible with the HighPoint RocketStor 6542AW.

Even though the RocketStor 6542AW is relatively compact (measuring 9.25 x 927 x 4.84 inches), it is home to eight 2.5-inch NVMe bays with hot-swap support. If you’re considering throwing in garden variety M.2 SSDs, slow your roll; it only supports U.2 and U.3 SSDs. To demonstrate the full power of the RocketStor 6542AW, Highpoint installed Solidigm D5-P5336 122TB PCIe 4.0 SSDs. Each SSD is rated for 7,400 MB/s reads and 3,200 MB/s writes. Although the external storage has a CDFP port that offers sustained transfer rates of up to 32 GB/s, the D5-P5336 SSDs are limited to “just” 28 GB/s.

If you want a RocketStor 6542AW, the price for the external storage solution is $1,799. However, if you max out at 976GB, you’ll need to add eight Solidigm D5-P5336 priced at roughly $16,000 each.

• This 976TB external storage solution with 28 GB/s transfer speeds likely costs over $130,000

Lian Li shows off power supplies with rotating power outlet

Worried about where to mount the power supply in your case? Lian Li's new RS series has you covered. The power supplies have outlets that can rotate, allowing you to put them in from either the back or the side.

These power supplies also have dual 24-in and 8-pin connectors on the front and left so you can choose to plug in from either location. There's also a mount below the rear connector set (CPU, PCIe, SATA connectors) that can hold a bundled USB hub.

The hub has both USB and fan controller ports so you can plug internal devices and coolers into it.

Good morning and welcome to the final day of Computex 2025 live from Taipei. Things are winding down here, so stay tuned for some more floor shots, recaps, and our awards.

Liquid-cooled RTX 50 series from Maxsun

Maxsun has unveiled one of its wildest graphics card yet, a concept RTX 50-series with liquid cooling and a full RGB LED shroud.

• Maxsun shows off liquid-cooled RTX 50 series GPU covered in RGB lighting

3,000W power supplies

3,000 W power supplies are taking over Computex. First we saw a 3,000 Asus PSU earlier in the week. Then we saw two from Super Flower.

• Super Flower shows off not one but two 3000W PSUs at Computex 2025

More power supplies

If 3,000W is a little over your requirements, how about this Lian Li offering with a rotatable power outlet for maximum flexibility...

• Lian Li flexes new PSU with rotatable power outlet at Computex 2025

The Best of Computex 2025

Computex is in the books, and it's the moment you've all been waiting for. Let's take a look at our winners in the Tom's Hardware Best of Computex 2025 Awards. Starting with AMD...

AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9000 Series

The new AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9000 Series is here. The flagship Ryzen 9 9995WX boasts 96 cores and 192 threads, with peak boost clocks of 5.4GHz and 300W TDP.

• AMD Announces Threadripper HEDT and Pro 9000-Series CPUs: 96 cores and 192 threads for Desktops and Workstations

AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT

The new AMD RX 9060 XT starts at $299 for the 8GB version, or $349 for the 16GB model. It has Navi 44 architecture and even beats the RX 9070 in boost clock speed (3,130 MHz). Could this be the value GPU of 2025 we've been waiting for?

• AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT launches on June 5, starting at $299

Phison E28 SSD controller

Phison's new E28 SSD controller delivers big efficiency gains thanks to a 6nm process note, but still delivers 14.8 GB/s of sequential read/write performance and 2.5 / 3.0 million random read/write IOPS. A wave of E28-powered SSDs are expected later this year.

• Phison's E28 controller's 14.8 GB/s, 3,000K IOPS, and 7W power draw could make it the new king of PCIe 5.0 performance

Asus ProArt RTX 5080

Asus wins for this creative take on the RTX 5080, accented with wood in a way that makes the card really stand out. After a week filled with wooden cases, a wooden GPU housing is a breath of fresh air.

• Asus RTX 5080 ProArt comes with a wood grain finish and M.2 slot option

Crucial T710 SSD

The new T710 promises 28 percent read speed increases and 42 percent faster write speeds over the T705, the best SSD for speeds right now.

• Crucial announces T710 SSD with 14.9 GB/s of performance, X10 portable SSD up to 8TB

Predator Triton 14 AI

The Triton 14 AI weighs 3.5 pounds and features a 14.5-inch 2880 x 1800 OLED screen. Under the hood there's a Lunar Lake Core Ultra 9 288V CPU with RTX 5070 graphics.

• Acer has a new pair of 14.5-inch laptops for gaming on the go

Corsair Air 5400

Corsair's Air 5400 case is an eye-catching design with a triple-chamber layout that dumps CPU heat directly out of the case via a 360mm AIO radiator.

• Corsair’s Air 5400 features a triple-chamber design for high-performance cooling

SilverStone FLP02

A highlight of the whole show and massive hit with our readers, SilverStone's FLP02 is a throwback case that even has faux floppy drives on the front.

• SilverStone reveals late-80s style tower PC case — proudly beige but thoroughly modern inside

Seasonic Prime Power Supplies

Seasonic's Prime Power Supplies feature sensors to detect voltage problems and even shut down your system to prevent damage, overheating, and dreaded melting connectors.

• Seasonic’s next-generation Prime PSUs to will try to stop connectors from melting

Asus ROG Falcata

The ROG Falcata is a split layout gaming keyboard with HFX V2 magnetic switches, and our limited hands on time had us massively intrigued.

• Asus ROG Falcata brings split layout and magnetic switches to competitive gaming

Cooler Master Elite case line

Cooler Master's case line-up stands out so much we have the whole lot an award. Each should cost less than $100, even the eye-catching curved glass models.

• Cooler Master plans to launch a curved-glass case for around $70 – at least outside of the U.S.

Lian Li V200

Lian Li's $110 case has two glass panels, touch controls, and a massive 8.8-inch screen embedded in the bottom chamber.

• Lian Li is replacing mesh front panels with tempered glass on its new Lancool cases

MSI X50 Gaming Monitor

MSI's X50 Gaming Monitor is a QD-OLED panel with a 500Hz refresh rate and 1440p resolution, and even has an AI sensor than can power down the panel when it senses you've walked off.

• MSI’s new 500 Hz QD-OLED monitor leverages AI tech to save it from burn-in

Asus ROG Strix Ace XG248QSG Monitor

Another incredible monitor we saw this year is the 610 Hz overclocked Asus ROG Strix Ace XG248QSG, sporting 1080p resolution.

• Asus debuts 24-inch 610 Hz Full HD gaming monitor with a Super TN panel

Thermaltake MineCube 360 Ultra ARGB AIO

Thermaltake's MineCube 360 is a 360mm AIO cooler with a 720 x 720 resolution screen that will show you delightful Minecraft screens.

V-Color Xfinity Manta DDR5 RAM

Our favorite RAM module from Computex is this V-Color Xfinity Manta DDR5 RAM that features a full-color LCD screen you can use to show stats like voltages, clock speeds, and more.

• V-Color puts displays on memory modules

Mark your calendars for Computex 2026

Computex 2025 is coming to a close. Its organizers have announced that next year's show will run from June 2 - June 5, 2026.

This year's show started on May 20, a bit earlier than usual. Next year, it's returning to a more standard timeframe.

That gives you about a year to come up with your Computex 2026 bingo card. And for our intrepid editors on the ground to recover from the jet lag.

— Andrew E. Freedman

AIO screens get even more complicated

Over at Antec's booth, we saw the Vortex View AIO cooler, which features a 360 mm radiator and a 5-inch display. While screens have been popping up on a lot of cooling pumps, this one stands out; the large screen is connected to the pump via a ball joint, allowing you to rotate it and angle it exactly how you want. It even gives you the option to place it either horizontally or vertically.

The cooler works with both Intel and AMD processors, including LGA 1851, LGA 1700, AM4, and AM5 sockets.

• Hands-on with the Antec Vortex View — a wild AIO cooler with a screen that rotates a full 360 degrees

Next on the schedule: Memorial Day

With Computex 2025 wrapped up, we turn our attention to Memorial Day sales. It's a great time to score some new hardware at bargain prices, and the deals are already coming thick and fast. Here are some of the highlights so far!

• AMD Ryzen 9950X3D: Now $699 (normally not available)
• Samsung 990 Pro (4TB): Now $309
• Alienware RTX 5090 Desktop: Now $4899
• Newegg: Up to 46% off SSDs
• Amazon: Save up to 40% on tech deals
• Best Buy: Up to $300 off laptops, monitors, & more
• Dell: Up to $700 off gaming PCs
• Lenovo: Save up to 59% on Lenovo laptops
• HP: Save over $50% on HP, HyperX, Omen, and Victus in the Memorial Day sale
• SK hynix Platinum P41 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD: now $124 at Newegg (was $156)
• AMD Ryzen 5 9600X Processor: now $198 at Newegg (was $279)
• Samsung 990 Pro 2TB SSD: now $169 at Amazon (was $249)
• Intel Core Ultra 7 Processor 265K: now $269 at Amazon (was $404)
• Dell S3222DGM, 32-inch 2K 165 Hz Monitor: now $259 at Best Buy (was $329)
• MacBook Air 13 (2025, M4 chip): 16GB / 256GB: was $999, now $899 at Amazon
• MacBook Air 13 (M4, 2025): 16GB / 512GB: was $1199, now $1099 at Amazon

Earlier in the week, we reported on an Nvidia driver change which opened up crazy new possibilities for PC DIYers. However, the dreams of Intel Core 2 system makers enjoying outlandish high jinks with Nvidia RTX50 GPUs have now partially evaporated. Twitter(X)-based tech enthusiast Bob Pony, who first surfaced the driver change, is back, but his tales of “struggles,” aren’t exactly the news we wanted to hear.

To recap, the latest Nvidia GeForce driver re-enabled support for Intel processors dating back to the Core 2 era, as it no longer required CPU support for the POPCNT instruction. That is all well and good, and Pony took to Twitter yesterday to “happily confirm that it's possible to use an NVIDIA RTX 50 series graphics card in an old system such as an Intel Core 2 Quad.” Specifically, they partnered their old Core 2 Quad Q9450 with an unashamedly modern RTX 5060 Ti. “It works!” Pony celebrated, and tipped followers to avoid trying the same with an RTX 5060 non-Ti due to its PCIe x8 interface.

What happened next is that Pony quickly went from fiddling around in Windows 11 to trying to get some modern games running on their May-to-September combo.

Despite withholding pre-release RTX 5060 drivers from reviewers, Nvidia has reportedly given select outlets access to its upcoming RTX 5060 driver to create strict "preview" articles about the new mid-range Blackwell GPU. One such outlet, Ascii.jp, published an article benchmarking the RTX 5060 against the RTX 5060 Ti (8GB and 16GB) and other graphics cards in Doom: The Dark Ages, Cyberpunk 2077, and Marvel Rivals.

GameStar Tech claims there are strict Nvidia guidelines for the RTX 5060 previews. According to the German publication (machine translation), "The reason for this unusual situation: Nvidia has decided to only make the driver, which is essential for GPU testing, available in advance under certain conditions and to a very limited number of media outlets worldwide. This includes us."

The news outlet goes on to state, "What's particularly crucial is that we weren't able to freely choose which graphics cards and games we would measure and with which settings for this preview."

Apparently, previews could only compare the RTX 5060 to the RTX 3060 and RTX 2060 Super. The list of allowed titles is reportedly limited to Avowed, Doom: The Dark Ages, Marvel Rivals, Cyberpunk 2077, and Hogwarts Legacy. Meanwhile, the settings must be configured to 1080p resolution, ultra image quality, DLSS in quality mode, and ray tracing.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Benchmarks

Surprisingly, Ascii's RTX 5060 "preview" only included Doom: The Dark Ages, Cyberpunk 2077, and Marvel Rivals. However, the Japanese outlet did compare the RTX 5060 to several generations of GeForce x060-class GPUs, including the RTX 2060, RTX 3060 (12GB), RTX 4060, RTX 5060, and both variants of the RTX 5060 Ti.

Graphics settings were also limited to running frame generation exclusively, with the RTX 3060 and RTX 2060 running FSR 3 frame generation (since they don't support the DLSS counterpart).

Across all three titles, the new RTX 5060 trails the RTX 5060 Ti by 15% on average using 2x DLSS frame generation. If it wasn't obvious, take these results with a massive grain of salt. Frame generation is not a perfect multiplier of native performance, so there is bound to be a bit of variance between all six GPUs.

However, the RTX 5060 and RTX 5060 Ti comparisons can be taken with more weight since they rely on the same GPU architecture and use identical frame generation techniques. We wouldn't be surprised if the performance difference between the two GPUs is very similar with frame generation turned off.

In Doom: The Dark Ages, the RTX 5060 was 17% faster than the RTX 4060, 35% faster than the RTX 3060, and over three times faster than the RTX 2060.

Focusing on the RTX 5060's performance against the RTX 5060 Ti, the RTX 5060 Ti 8GB was 15% faster than the RTX 5060 (again using 2x frame gen). The 8GB and 16GB variants perform the same in this title. Ultra nightmare settings were used for the graphics settings, with DLSS used on the RTX 4060 and above (FSR 3 was used on the older GPUs).

In Cyberpunk 2077, the RTX 5060 was 25% faster than the RTX 4060, 81% faster than the RTX 3060, and nearly four times faster than the RTX 2060. Against the RTX 5060 Ti, the 8GB variant was 15% faster than the RTX 5060, and the 16GB variant was 17% faster.

RT overdrive was used for the graphics settings with the DLSS 4 transformer model using the Quality preset on the RTX 4060 and above. The RTX 3060 and RTX 2060 exclusively used FSR 3 frame generation, with no notes on whether or not the two GPUs used FSR 3 upscaling.

In Marvel Rivals, the RTX 5060 was 16% faster than the RTX 4060, 48% faster than the RTX 3060, and 85% faster than the RTX 2060. Compared to the RTX 5060 Ti, the Ti variant was 14% faster than the vanilla RTX 5060. Again, the 16GB had worse performance than the 8GB variant of the RTX 5060 Ti in this title so that we can chalk it up to the margin of error.

Image quality was set to best with the DLSS 4 transformer model used on the RTX 4060 and above. This time, DLSS upscaling was used on the RTX 3060 and 2060 in conjunction with FSR 3 frame generation (though there are no notes on what version of DLSS was used on these GPUs).

This is the first time Nvidia has greenlit a "preview" of its future GPU products. Traditionally, reviewers are given one to two weeks (sometimes more) with a pre-release driver to create a review of a future Nvidia GPU that will go live before the GPU launches. For the RTX 5060, Nvidia has opted to stop reviewers from starting their GPU testing until launch day (May 19) when the card releases, forcing reviewers to publish their reviews days after the RTX 5060 release. In the meantime, Nvidia is using "preview" articles to stir hype for its upcoming mid-range GPU.

Acer is kicking off its Computex announcements with a pair of 14-inch gaming laptops. The company's two new gaming laptops, the Predator Triton 14 AI and Helios Neo 14 AI, are both being targeted at both gamers and creative professionals.

The Triton 14 AI is extremely sleek (0.68 inches at its thickest point), but to get there, Acer is using a productivity-class processor. The Intel Core Ultra 9 288V is one of Intel's "Lunar Lake" processors with integrated RAM. This chip runs between 30W at base power, which isn't as powerful as most gaming laptop processors. We saw a similar case in the Razer Blade 16, which opted for a 28W AMD Ryzen chip to enable a thinner design.

Acer is using graphene on the CPU to serve as the thermal interface material, which the company says outperforms regular thermal paste by 14.5%.

Acer is pairing Lunar Lake with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Laptop GPU using Nvidia's Studio drivers, which are optimized for creative applications. The system goes up to 32GB of RAM (on the CPU) and 2TB of storage.

The Triton also features a 14.5-inch, 2880 x 1800 OLED touchscreen that runs up to 120 Hz and is Calman verified.There's also a haptic touchpad built into the wrist rest, similar to the MSI Titan and Dell XPS 13, that supports a stylus, which seems limited in terms of writing.

The system looks sleek, with a sparse design and a silver hinge with diamond cut edge designed to reflect different colors from different angles. Despite the slim design, you still get some gaming accouterments, like a per-key RGB keyboard.

If you want a more traditional gaming laptop, the Helios Neo 14 AI is a bit more conventional in its components. Here, Acer is using Intel's H-series "Arrow Lake" chips, going up to an Intel Core Ultra 9 285H, though still using up to 32GB of RAM, up to 2 TB of storage, and up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Laptop GPU. It's also thicker than the Triton at 0.82 inches.

The Helios Neo will have two screen options. You get a 14.5-inch panel either way, but one is 2880 x 1800 at 120 Hz with a MUX switch (that typically requires rebooting the system), while a lower-res 2560 x 1600 option is faster at 165 Hz and uses Nvidia's Advanced Optimus to switch between the integrated GPU and the discrete one.

The Predator Helios Neo has a metal lid with an RGB logo that you can customize, as well as a three-zone RGB keyboard.

Of the two laptops, only the Triton is certified as a Copilot+ PC. The Lunar Lake NPU, at 48 TOPS, is far more powerful than the Arrow Lake's 13 TOPS. Microsoft's Copilot+ PC requirements demand a minimum of 40 TOPS.

Acer is also using Computex to update its Predator Orion 3000 to the latest chips from Intel and Nvidia, including up to an Intel Core Ultra 7 265F and Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070.

The company hasn't announced North American pricing or release dates for any of these machines. Acer said it will release that information for the U.S. and Canada "closer to market availability." In Europe, the systems will launch in July, which might give us a rough window of when to expect them elsewhere.

Two outlets have benchmarked Nvidia's newest RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell GPU, revealing its full capabilities against the RTX 5090 and other GeForce GPUs. Privaterbok on Reddit revealed eight benchmarks on the new workstation GPU, featuring 3DMark and Geekbench 6 benchmark runs.

The Redditor published benchmark runs of the Blackwell-based workstation GPU in TimeSpy, TimeSpy Extreme, Steel Nomad, Port Royal, and Geekbench 6. On average, the RTX Pro 6000 is roughly 10-15% faster than a stock RTX 5090, and even faster with an overclock, according to RTX 5090 data from Videocardz.

For benchmark comparisons, we paired the Redditor's RTX Pro 6000 GPU benchmarking data against the best RTX 5090 results from 3DMark's browser. All of these 3DMark results take advantage of highly overclocked RTX 5090s, giving us an idea of what the workstation GPU is capable of compared to the fastest consumer GPU Nvidia makes currently on full tilt.

The RTX Pro 6000 at stock speeds loses to the overclocked RTX 5090 results, with the RTX 5090 being roughly 5-10% quicker on average. Looking at the overclocked RTX Pro 6000 results, the GPUs are on more equal footing, though the RTX Pro 6000 still loses in Time Spy with the RTX 5090 being 5% quicker. However, in Time Spy Extreme, the workstation GPU gains a slight win with a score 1% better than the RTX 5090.

These are by no means perfect comparisons; each 3DMark RTX 5090 score probably comes from a different person with different setups and different overclocks.

Geekbench 6 is more straightforward; we took the RTX 5090 results straight from the Geekbench website, which are officially validated. In Geekbench 6, the RTX Pro 6000 is anywhere between 9% and 15% faster than the RTX 5090.

Level1Techs also put the RTX Pro 6000 through some gaming-centric benchmarks, with several runs of Cyberpunk 2077. At ultra settings running at 4K with DLSS on auto (i.e., performance mode) with path tracing off, the RTX Pro 6000 achieved 127.02 frames per second, and with path tracing on 92.54 FPS

The RTX Pro 6000 is Nvidia's latest high-end workstation GPU (a Titan-like card) and successor to the RTX Pro 5000 (which was also Blackwell-based). The RTX Pro 6000 has 10% more CUDA cores than the RTX 5090 (24,064) and 96GB of GDDR7 memory. Outgoing pricing for the RTX Pro 6000 is in the $8,000 range.

Asus is bringing some snowy flair to its latest GPUs: the company just teased white editions across its lineup of RTX 50-series graphics cards. These include the premium ROG Astral as well as the TUF Gaming, and Prime series. These new variants will be showcased at this year’s Computex trade show, which kicks off next week.

The teaser only includes triple-fan (and quad-fan in case of the Astral) RTX 50-series graphics cards, which potentially means that Asus might not have plans to offer the same treatment for its dual-fan GPUs this year.

As of writing this article, the company’s website lists the above mentioned white GPUs across the RTX 5090, 5080, 5070 Ti and 5070. As for the RTX 5060 Ti and 5060, there are no fully white cards, but the Dual series is interesting with its dual-tone (black and white) finish.

New benchmarking figures appear to reveal that the NVIDIA RTX 5090 laptop GPU may not be all that it's cracked up to be, revealing some disappointing performance figures when compared to the 5090.

The RTX 5090 laptop GPU arrived in late March 2025, but its launch was plagued by several issues, including delayed review units. A few reviews were available soon after the GPU became available, like Tom’s Hardware’s review of the Razer Blade 16, but it took some time for us to see an RTX 4090 vs. RTX 5090 comparison on nearly identical units. Jarrod’s Tech has released a video evaluating two XMG Neo 16 laptops that were equipped with both GPUs, and the results are interesting, to say the least.

The XMG Neo 16 (2024) used an Intel Core i9-14900HX paired with 32 GB of DDR5-5600 RAM and an RTX 4090, while the newer XMG Neo 16 (2025) is equipped with an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX with 32 GB of DDR5-6400 RAM and an RTX 5090 GPU. Because of these specifications, one would expect the newer laptop to run faster, especially as it has a newer top-of-the-line laptop CPU, faster memory, and the RTX 5090. More than that, the newer GPU uses faster VRAM and has 50% more memory than the RTX 4090. Unfortunately, Jarrod’s Tech’s test results tell a different story.

A trio of Asus GeForce RTX 5060 graphics cards has been listed at Best Buy in the U.S. (h/t momomo_us). These RTX 5060 retail pages appear to have been published a week too early. Perhaps more importantly, they are coming in at prices significantly above the touted $299 starting price, ranging between $340 and an eye-watering $410.

The retailer listings, now deleted, provide prices and may confirm some key details of the yet-to-launch RTX 5060 graphics cards from the Asus Prime (regular and OC) and TUF (OC) families. Nvidia has officially stated it will launch the RTX 5060 exactly a week from now, so perhaps someone at Best Buy had a mix-up with their calendar.

We were also expecting pricing at or very close to $299, but these 8GB VRAM cards are priced at up to $110 more for the Asus TUF OC model. The best price is $340 for what is usually Asus’s lowest-tier Prime effort, without any factory overclock applied.

A closer look at the Asus RTX 5060 models?

Dropping thousands of dollars on one of the best gaming laptops might make you pause – and it should. But Lenovo goes a long way to be worthy of that money with its Legion Pro 7i Gen 10 ($3,204 as tested). This 16-inch beast packs an Intel Core Ultra 9 HX processor and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 graphics card, all topped off with a stunning OLED display. Add excellent build quality and eye-catching RGB lighting, and it has serious appeal. Naturally, no laptop is perfect, and there are a few drawbacks to weigh before forking over your next mortgage payment.

Design of the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10

Lenovo’s eclipse black chassis makes a bold statement – this Legion laptop is built to command attention. The rear shelf has a distinctly industrial, almost military-inspired vibe with massive hexagonal air vents lined with striking RGB lighting. If this machine is in the room, it’s impossible to ignore.

The lighting is divided into four zones – the front and rear edges, the keyboard, and the Legion lettering on the lid – and is all customizable through the Legion Space app. The front zone is comprised of 10 LEDs, the rear ups the ante with 18, and every key on the keyboard can be individually tweaked.

In the app, you can highlight specific LEDs within each zone to create custom sub-zones, then apply different lighting effects – spiral rainbow, rainbow wave, color change, color pulse, wave, smooth, raining, and solid – while adjusting their speed and direction. Brightness is the only setting that applies across all zones. I could have spent hours fine-tuning my setup and creating profiles for every situation.

Build quality is a real strength for this laptop. When many competitors opt for plastic on some of the chassis, Lenovo uses all aluminum, and it feels top-notch, especially when most gaming laptops use some plastic. The chassis is solid with no flex and the lid is impressively sturdy, showing only minimal give despite its size.

Measuring 14.33 x 10.86 x 1.04 inches and weighing 6 pounds, the Legion has a slightly larger footprint than the Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 (13.94 x 10.55 x 0.90 inches, 6.28 pounds) and the Gigabyte Aorus Master 16 (14.06 x 10.0 x 1.18 inches, 5.51 pounds). It’s particularly bulkier than the Razer Blade 16 (13.98 x 9.86 x 0.69 inches, 4.72 pounds).

The Legion offers a solid array of ports, including a Thunderbolt 4, a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C, three USB Type-A ports (one Gen 2, two Gen 1), a 3.5 mm audio jack, an HDMI 2.1 output, and a 2.5 Gbps Ethernet jack. On the wireless side, it supports Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. While it covers the essentials, the absence of Thunderbolt 5 is noticeable, especially since some competing flagship gaming laptops have started to include it.

Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10 Specifications

Gaming and Graphics on the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10

Our Legion review unit features an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX processor, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 GPU (175 W maximum graphics power), and 32GB of memory.

Playing Crysis Remastered at 2560 x 1600 with everything set to Very High or “Can it run Crysis?” settings, I saw framerates in the mid-90s in jungles and 100 to 125 frames per second in open scenes. The game was smooth and stutter-free.

We’re stacking the Legion up against three 16-inch gaming laptops: the Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 (Core Ultra 9 275HX, RTX 5080, 175 W, $3,299 as tested), the Gigabyte Aorus Master 16 (Core Ultra 9 275HX, RTX 5080 175 W, $3,099 as tested), and the Razer Blade 16 (AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, RTX 5090 160 W, $4,499.99 as tested). While the Razer commands a higher price with its RTX 5090, its GPU is actually rated for lower power than the RTX 5080s in the other models and Razer unusually pairs it with a 28 W CPU.

In Shadow of the Tomb Raider (Highest detail preset), the Legion hit 163 FPS at 1080p, landing in last place behind the Gigabyte (185 FPS) and Asus (177 FPS). While the Razer edged it out at 166 FPS, its RTX 5090 truly shined at 1440p, pulling ahead with 162 FPS. The Legion, on the other hand, managed only 101 FPS at 1440p, trailing the Asus (112 FPS) and Gigabyte (114 FPS).

The Legion fell behind in Cyberpunk 2077 (Ray Tracing Ultra preset), managing 30 FPS at 1080p and 50 FPS at 1440p. Among the RTX 5080 laptops, the Gigabyte was the top performer, hitting 62 FPS at 1080p and 38 FPS at 1440p. The Razer’s RTX 5090 led the pack with 66 FPS at 1080p and 43 FPS at 1440p.

The Legion did slightly better in Far Cry 6 (Ultra preset), achieving 117 FPS at 1080p and trailing only the Gigabyte (120 FPS), though its 1440p result of 98 FPS left something to be desired next to the Asus (103 FPS) and the Gigabyte (113 FPS). The Razer slipped behind since this game is more CPU-limited.

In Red Dead Redemption 2 (Medium preset), the Legion’s 109 FPS at 1080p easily trounced the Razer (94 FPS). Those were the only two laptops to complete the test at that resolution due to RTX 50-series driver issues at the time of review. At 1440p, its 67 FPS fell between the Asus (77 FPS) and the Gigabyte (54 FPS).

Last, the Legion trailed in Borderlands 3 (at the game’s “Badass” preset), its 136 FPS at 1080p not getting anywhere close to the Asus (156 FPS) or Gigabyte (172 FPS).

The Legion’s gaming performance slightly lagged behind the Asus and Gigabyte despite all three using the same CPU and GPU wattage. That said, even the Asus and Gigabyte showed variations, suggesting multiple factors – cooling efficiency, drivers, and software optimizations – play a role in final performance.

Since we test laptops in their default configurations, our results reflect what users can expect out of the box. However, since these numbers were lower than we'd hoped, we tried performance mode. Enabling performance mode in the Legion Space app led to noticeable gains. At 1080p, frame rates jumped from 163 to 205 FPS in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, from 109 to 126 FPS in Red Dead Redemption 2, and from 136 to 178 FPS in Borderlands 3, which would put it far ahead of the competition. Given the potential for such improvements, opting for performance mode might be worth the increased fan noise.

To stress-test gaming laptops, we run the Metro Exodus benchmark 15 times at RTX settings to simulate half an hour of gaming. The Legion achieved 113 FPS across all runs, with deviations of less than two FPS between runs indicating consistent thermal performance. During the test, the P-cores on the Legion’s Core Ultra 9 275HX processor ran at an average frequency of 4.46 GHz and temperature of 71 degrees C while the E-cores averaged 2.04 GHz and 64 degrees C. The GeForce RTX 5080 had an average boost clock of 1.6 GHz and temperature of 63 C.

Productivity Performance on the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10

We tested the Legion with a Core Ultra 9 275HX processor, 32GB of RAM, and two 1TB PCI Express 4.0 SSDs (non-RAID).

In the Geekbench 6 CPU test, the Legion led single-core scores with 3,103 points, edging out the Asus (3,017 points) and the Gigabyte (2,049 points). Its 19,597-point score in multi-core testing was also the highest, narrowly beating the Asus (19,597 points) and dominating the Razer (16,025 points).

The Legion also produced the highest score in our 25 GB file transfer test, averaging 2,030 MBps. The Asus was second-fastest, with 1,841 MBps, while the Gigabyte trailed with 665 MBps.

The Legion narrowly missed the top score in our Handbrake video transcoding test, completing it in 2 minutes and 21 seconds versus the Gigabyte’s 2 minutes and 17 seconds. The Razer’s 28 W AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 CPU wasn’t competitive here, taking 3 minutes and 5 seconds.

Display on the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10

The Legion’s OLED display is a true joy for gaming, streaming, and everything else. Its exceptionally vibrant color, sharp detail, and brilliant brightness evoke the same kind of longing you get eyeing high-end TVs in an electronics store. One look, and you’ll know it’s a screen you won’t want to go without.

I found Foundation on Apple TV breathtaking with its deep, inky black space scenes, warm, glowing desert landscapes, and intricately detailed character outfits. Gaming is just as immersive – the jungles in Crysis Remastered appear even more vibrant and alive than I recall.

The 2560 x 1600 resolution strikes a balance – it’s crisper than 1080p but more manageable than 4K for gaming performance. The screen also boasts a 240 Hz refresh rate and Nvidia G-Sync for the smoothest possible visuals. The only potential drawback? Its glossy finish, which can show dust and distracting reflections in bright environments.

The Legion and Razer stand out as the only two OLED-equipped contenders, offering comparable color reproduction – 138.9% of DCI-P3 for the Legion and 144.6% for the Razer. Where the Legion truly shines is in brightness, hitting an impressive 465 nits compared to the Razer’s 372 nits. It’s even brighter than the IPS panels on the Asus and Gigabyte.

Keyboard and Touchpad on the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10

The Legion’s keyboard is eminently usable for gaming and productivity, delivering a crisp, non-mushy feel. The tactile response tells my fingers exactly when a key is pressed or released. I typically make a few errors in typing tests, but on MonkeyType, I hit 116 words per minute without missing a stroke.

The number pad’s usability is somewhat inhibited by small keys, but the rest of the keyboard has a standard layout. The typeface looks the part of a gaming laptop without going overboard. I appreciate the “O” key being the Legion logo. Although our unit isn’t so equipped, Lenovo offers switchable WASD keycaps for a unique look. (It’s a $25 option.)

The per-key RGB backlighting is bright and laser sharp; numerous lighting patterns can be set in the Legion Space app.

The Legion’s touchpad also works well, offering a large surface and satisfying clicks. Touching the pad with my palm while gaming caused no unintended clicks or movement.

Audio on the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10

Although the Legion’s sound quality isn’t groundbreaking, it delivers an audio experience that should satisfy most users, particularly for gaming. Four strategically positioned speakers – two firing upwards near the display hinges and two beneath the palm rest – offer a surprisingly convincing sense of surround sound. Playing Crysis Remastered, I could tell when bullets were hitting to my left or right. The sound is short on bass, though, preventing explosions from sounding dangerous or exciting.

The sound is less well-adapted for music playback. While volume isn’t an issue – the laptop gets about as loud as a budget Bluetooth speaker – the speakers struggle with frequency separation. Vocals don’t stand out and the overall range feels constrained.

Tweaking settings in the Nahimic app can help. For music, disabling the Voices boost seemed to lift some of the midrange muddiness, and reducing the default bass boost from +4 dB to +2 dB opened the mix a little. Still, the changes weren’t drastic, and most users will likely get by just fine sticking to the default settings. My reference music included the album Atlas by Jason Ross and “To Love Again” by Blonde Maze.

Upgradeability of the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10

Accessing the Legion’s innards requires removing 10 Phillips-head screws. Carefully note their length, as the four along the front edge are shorter than the others. I used a plastic pry tool to pop the clips around the sides first, then the front.

The massive 99 WHr battery is replaceable. A large black heatsink must be removed to access the two M.2 drives, the M.2 wireless card, and the two SODIMM slots, a tedious process because of the many tiny Phillips-head screws securing it. Still, the Legion is about as upgradeable as gaming laptops get.

Battery Life on the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10

Our battery life test consists of simulated web browsing, streaming video over Wi-Fi, and running OpenGL tests, all with the screen brightness set to 150 nits. The Legion’s time of 4 hours and 37 minutes was dead last behind the Gigabyte (5 hours and 2 minutes) and well behind the Asus (6 hours and 30 minutes) and Razer (7 hours and 21 minutes). Given this Lenovo has the highest capacity battery available in a laptop (99 WHr), it’s not doing a particularly good job of power management.

Heat on the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10

The Legion’s cooling system consists of two large fans that vent directly out the back, plus a small auxiliary fan in the chassis center. The fan noise is impressively unobtrusive; I could still pick up subtle in-game audio with the speakers set to 30% volume. For lighter tasks, the laptop stays nearly silent and never gets more than mildly warm.

During the Metro Exodus stress test, we measured surface temperatures of 93 degrees Fahrenheit between the keyboard G and H keys, 63 F on the touchpad, and a maximum temperature of 96 F on the laptop’s underside.

Webcam on the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10

Lenovo deserves praise for its excellent 1440p webcam, which delivers a sharply detailed and well-lit picture. While there’s no sliding privacy shutter, there's a webcam kill switch on the laptop’s right edge. When this switch is activated, the webcam isn’t even recognized by the laptop.

The laptop has neither an infrared sensor nor a fingerprint reader for Windows Hello which is a huge miss when many apps (and Windows itself) can use biometric logins.

Software and Warranty on the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10

Lenovo includes plenty of software on the Legion – some good, some not so good. The Vantage app is the same one you’ll find on other Lenovo laptops, offering system updates, battery charge settings, a security advisor, and support access. Another app, Legion Space, serves as a central game library and offers settings for Nvidia Optimus, performance modes, and lighting settings. Lastly, the Nahmic app provides audio settings.

Unfortunately, ads are pervasive on this laptop. The Lenovo Subscription Marketplace app is one big ad, and the Lenovo Now app is even worse, essentially a wizard that walks you through different entertainment service offerings. Ads also exist in the Vantage app, with a tile on the main screen offering security subscriptions and several items on the side menu advertising Lenovo’s Smart Performance and Smart Lock services. Legion Space isn’t exempt either, offering different game deals on its main screen – and this one just happens to start automatically with Windows, so you see it right when you log in.

While some of the apps can be removed, you’ll miss out on many settings if you remove Vantage and Space, so there is no way to have a truly ad-free experience.

Lenovo backs the Legion with a one-year warranty. Three years would have been better at this price.

Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10 Configurations

The Legion Pro 7i was available as a configurable model on Lenovo’s website and from Best Buy at the time of this review. All models include a Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU and the 16-inch OLED display. For $2,619, the base model includes a GeForce RTX 5070 Ti (12GB) graphics card, 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD, while our model steps up to an RTX 5080 (16GB) and adds a second 1TB SSD for $3,204 (discounted from $3,559 at the time of this review).

Further available upgrades include an RTX 5090 (24GB), 64GB of RAM, and a PCI Express 5.0 SSD.

Bottom Line

The Legion Pro 7i Gen 10 is an outstanding 16-inch gaming laptop, meeting the demanding performance needs in this class while surpassing expectations with its stunning OLED screen and premium metal chassis. Its drawbacks – a lack of biometric features, middling battery life, and ads in the included software – are relatively minor in the grand scheme of things.

One note on the performance: Out of the box it's fine, but to really compete with the likes of other RTX 50-series laptops, you'll want to turn on Lenovo's performance mode.

What sets the Legion apart is its well-rounded appeal. Unlike the Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 and the Gigabyte Aorus Master 16, it features a metal build, while the Razer Blade 16, though all-metal, comes at a significantly higher price. Moreover, the Legion offers the most extensive RGB customization we’ve seen. Aside from battery life, it doubles as an excellent daily-use machine, thanks to its comfortable keyboard and quiet fans. It's a formidable contender.

A new report claims that Nvidia has recently raised the official prices of nearly all of its products to combat the impact of tariffs and surging manufacturing costs on its business, with gaming graphics cards receiving a 5 to 10% hike while AI GPUs see up to a 15% increase.

As reported by Digitimes Taiwan (translated), Nvidia is facing "multiple crises," including a $5.5 billion hit to its quarterly earnings over export restrictions on AI chips, including a ban on sales of its H20 chips to China.

Digitimes reports that CEO Jensen Huang has been "shuttling back and forth" between the US and China to minimize the impact of tariffs, and that "in order to maintain stable profitability," Nvidia has reportedly recently raised official prices for almost all its products, allowing its partners to increase prices accordingly.

Despite the hikes, Digitimes claims Nvidia's financial report at the end of the month "should be within financial forecasts and deliver excellent profit results," driven by strong demand for AI chips outside of China and the expanding spending from cloud service providers.

The report states that Nvidia has applied official price hikes to numerous products to keep its earnings stable, with partners following suit. As an example, Digitimes cites the RTX 5090, bought at premium prices upon release without hesitation, such that channel pricing "quickly doubled."

The report notes that following the AI chip ban, RTX 5090 prices climbed further still, surging overnight from around NT$90,000 to NT$100,000, with other RTX 50 series cards also increasing by 5-10%. Digitimes notes Nvidia has also raised the price of its H200 and B200 chips, with server vendors increasing prices by up to 15% accordingly.

According to the publication's supply chain sources, price hikes have been exacerbated by the shift of Blackwell chip production to TSMC's US plant, which has driven a significant rise in the price of production, materials, and logistics.

There is some hope that the measures could be temporary; however, following the news that the US and China have agreed on a trade deal that should cut tariffs by 115%, thanks to a 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs. As with latent price increases being passed on to consumers, however, it could be some time before prices start to fall.

The RTX 5090 is not only good for gaming and AI — it also excels at password cracking. Hive Systems updated its password cracking benchmark suite with 12 RTX 5090 graphics cards — Nvidia's fastest and best graphics card for gaming currently, and found all twelve cards working together can break simple eight-character passwords in under 15 minutes.

Hive Systems is in its 5th year of benchmarking password cracking times on GPUs; the last update they made was in 2024, featuring the RTX 4090. Rather than cracking an actual password itself, the outlet cracks hashes, which are scrambled versions of reproducible text generated by software.

Hashes are a popular method for securing customer passwords against hackers by storing customer passwords as hashes on servers. When hackers go to steal a password database from a company's server that is secured with hashing, all they will see are hashes of the passwords they represent rather than the actual passwords themselves.

Cracking passwords with this method involves making a list of all possible combinations of characters to make a password, then matching them to a stolen database featuring password hashes. Graphics cards are particularly good at this methodology due to highly parallelized computing capabilities.

With 12 RTX 5090s, Hive Systems found Nvidia's latest flagship can crack the hash equivalent of eight-character passwords featuring numbers only in just 15 minutes. Passwords comprised of eight lower-case letters, the dozen RTX 5090s were able to crack in 3 weeks.

On the other end of the spectrum, passwords taking advantage of numbers, upper and lowercase letters would take 12 RTX 5090s 62 years to crack, and 164 years to crack with symbols added into the mix.

For a generation-on-generation perspective, a single RTX 5090 can crack a numerical-only password hash with eight characters in three hours. A single RTX 4090 can accomplish the same task in four hours, representing a 33% performance improvement for the RTX 5090 over the RTX 4090 in this specific scenario.

However, as the password complexity increases, the RTX 5090 becomes faster and faster in comparison. Moving up to a hash representing an eight-character password made up of numbers, upper and lowercase letters combined with symbols, the RTX 5090 is allegedly twice as fast as the RTX 4090. But cracking a password that complex would take the RTX 5090 a millennium to accomplish.

Hive Systems' research demonstrates the dangers of low complexity passwords and how adding just a bit of complexity in the form of symbols, capitalized letters, and numbers can make a huge difference for security. The good news is that cracking hashes in the way Hive Systems demonstrates requires hackers to have a stolen database of password hashes in the first place. Without this, hackers can't brute-force hack password hashes.

Assembling your own PC isn't for everyone, but if you want to play the latest and greatest PC games now, then you're probably looking at picking up a prebuilt gaming PC with all the components pre-assembled and essential software already installed and configured for you. There are lots of brands to choose from, MSI, Dell, Corsair, and many more, but what often determines your choice is price, and today we have a deal on MSI's Aegis ZS2 build.

Good to game as soon as you plug it in, the MSI Aegis ZS2 gaming desktop is now only $1,899 at B&H Photo after a $400 discount. Stacked with the latest and greatest parts, the MSI Aegis ZS2 contains an AMD Ryzen 7 9700X processor, an Nvidia RTX 5070 graphics card with 12GB of GDDR7 VRAM, 32GB of 6000 MHz DDR5 RAM, a 2TB SSD for your games library, and a 360mm AIO cooler to keep that CPU nice and chilled.

The big benefit of choosing a prebuilt PC is the warranty and support, where if a part fails, you don't have the hassle of troubleshooting every component; the whole PC is covered under a single umbrella, and can save you a lot of time and stress if your PC should unfortunately go wrong. This is great for people buying a PC who might not have the technical know-how to fix it themselves.

There are plenty of ports for connectivity, which include 4x USB 2 Type-A, 5x USB 3.2 Type-A, and 1x USB 3.2 Type-C. Along with WiFi 6E, there is Bluetooth and a gigabit Ethernet connection. This PC build configuration is pretty good bang-for-buck value, compared to similar-spec prebuilt PC builds.

With the retail embargo lifting tomorrow, reviews of AMD's China-exclusive RX 9070 GRE have gone live. Hardware publication EXPreview has published its review of a custom model from XFX, providing us with insight into the card's performance and where it stands versus the competition. Positioned as an intermediary between the RX 9070 and the soon-to-launch RX 9060 XT, the RX 9070 GRE is a series of hits and misses. It trails the RTX 5070 in rasterization, and its pricing doesn't really add to its value versus AMD's own RX 9070.

Around 10 days ago, the RX 9070 GRE unexpectedly became available for pre-order across major Chinese online stores. AMD later officially confirmed the card, but it is currently region-locked, with no word on when it might hit the global market. Under the hood, it carries a cut-down Navi 48 GPU wielding 3,072 Stream Processors (48 CUs) — roughly 25% fewer than the RX 9070 XT. It offers 12GB of GDDR6 memory at slower 18 Gbps speeds, but that is likely an artificial limitation.

The GPU launched at 4,199 RMB ($575). For context, the RX 9070 and RTX 5070 both debuted at 4,499 RMB ($625). Saving $50 means you'll be missing out on exclusives, like RTX HDR, VSR, Smooth Motion, and MFG found on the RTX 5070, and the extra VRAM and compute power with the RX 9070 that can enable 4K gaming. The RX 9070 GRE does not have an MBA (Made By AMD) variant, similar to other RX 9070 GPUs. The model under review is the XFX RX 9070 GRE Snow Wolf, a pure-white card with a triple-fan cooler and dual 8-pin connectors. Internally, the card is equipped with 20 Gbps GDDR6 modules from Samsung, so you might be able to extract some performance gains by memory overclocking.

Across a suite of games at 1440p, the RTX 5070 appears to be on average 5-10% faster than the RX 9070 GRE in raw rasterization performance. Based on our testing, we expected this to translate to a 15-20% performance gap versus the RX 9070, expanding to almost 30% versus the RX 9070 XT. The RX 9070 GRE easily outperforms the RTX 5060 Ti, which is expected with the price difference between the two. What's interesting is the raytracing performance, where the RX 9070 GRE appears to — surprisingly — keep pace with the RTX 5070 in a handful of titles.

The latest Steam Hardware survey from April shows Nvidia’s RTX 50 series GPUs making their first appearance almost four months after launch. Conversely, despite their apparent retail popularity, AMD’s RX 9000 GPUs are nowhere to be found on the list. While the absence of RDNA 4 is confusing, it might all boil down to a lack of adequate supply at MSRP.

The April Steam Hardware survey reflects a return to normality after the previous survey was skewed by an unexplained surge of Chinese users, knocking several statistics off the charts. Typical figures for operating systems, system specifications, and CPU/GPU vendor, among others, remained unchanged. Nvidia still reigns supreme in the GPU market with a 74.39% share, while Intel leads the CPU arena at 60.35%, closely followed by AMD.

Several new GPUs have gained traction among gamers, per the Steam Hardware survey, including Nvidia’s RTX 5080 (0.38%), RTX 5070 Ti (0.28%), and RTX 5070 (0.38%). The RTX 5090 being excluded from this list is self-explanatory, as that GPU is far out of the reach of the average user. After exhaustively searching the list, we found no GPU from AMD’s RX 9070 family. That’s quite telling since this has recently been one of AMD’s most successful GPU launches, coupled with Nvidia’s many shortfalls this generation.

There is a new AMD GPU on the survey, though — new to the survey statistics, at least. AMD's RX 7800 XT appears for the first time in the April 2025 figures, landing at 0.27% (the same as the 5070 Ti). The RX 7900 XT, 7900 GRE, 7600 XT, and 7600 all remain missing in action, along with virtually all Intel Arc GPUs (other than the integrated "Arc Graphics" that sits unchanged month-to-month at 0.22%).

Nvidia's RTX 50-series product stack has seen a decline in demand in the German market. According to ComputerBase, most RTX 5080, RTX 5070 Ti, and RTX 5070 AIB partner models are selling for at or below their respective MSRPs. The only exception is the RTX 5090, which is still in high demand and is struggling to stay on store shelves.

A table of RTX 50-series pricing shows what the GPUs were selling for last week, versus what they were selling for in March: At the end of March, the cheapest RTX 5080 models were priced at €1,169, versus last week's price of €1,119 (which matches the MSRP).

Here we have a gaming laptop at a reasonable price, with components from previous generations, but still able to offer adequate performance for modern games on reasonable graphics settings. You're not going to be running Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K ultra settings, but you will be able to run anything at sensible settings on its 144Hz 1080p screen.

Available at Walmart, you can pick up this great gaming laptop deal on MSI's Thin 15.6-Inch Gaming Laptop for just $699. This is a drop in price of $300 from its original list price of $999. Grabbing a gaming laptop for under $1000 is not bad, but for under $700, well, that's even better.

The MSI Thin 15 comes with an RTX 4060 mobile graphics card, an older GPU from Nvidia's previous 40-series generation of graphics processors, which is the bare minimum anyone should consider for a gaming laptop these days. The 16GB of DDR4 RAM is also fine for gaming and browsing purposes, but the only real negative of this laptop is the tiny 512GB SSD. Sure, the storage size is small, but luckily, the SSD is also the easiest thing to upgrade on a laptop usually, and you can pick up 1TB SSDs pretty cheap.

Inside the MSI Thin gaming laptop is the aforementioned 8GB RTX 4060 mobile GPU, an Intel Core i5-13420H CPU (8-core CPU made up of 4x P-cores, 4x E-cores, and 12 threads), 16GB of DDR4 memory, and a 512GB NVMe SSD for OS and games storage.

Melting RTX 50 issues keep emerging like there's no tomorrow, and this probably won't change until Nvidia tightens up the power delivery or revises the design altogether. A user at Quasar Zone reported thermal damage on MSI's preventive yellow-tipped 12V-2x6 power cables, which were originally meant to simplify cable seating and prevent melting, via Harukaze. Thankfully, the accompanying RTX 5090 remains unharmed, at least by visually inspecting its power connector.

This issue is not newfound, as the 12VHPWR connector has also wreaked havoc on a handful of last-gen RTX 40 GPUs as well. RTX 50 GPUs draw power through the six 12V terminals on the 12V-2x6 connector, each with a strict current limit of 9.5A. Naturally, GPUs have load-balancing capabilities, but reference RTX 50 models are unable to determine per-pin current measurements, preventing effective load distribution across the pins, and that's a design choice Nvidia made.

Consequently, a poor connection on some pins forces the entire load through the correctly seated ones. Several reviewers have witnessed this firsthand, with individual pins spiking to more than 150 degrees Celsius.

The affected user owned an MSI RTX 5090 Suprim, which came bundled with MSI's yellow-tipped 12V-2x6 cables (4x 8-pin to 16-pin), serving as a foolproof visual aid for ensuring proper connector seating. Likewise, power was supplied by an ATX 3.1 compliant 1,300W supply from Superflower, so the PSU wasn't the source of the problem. Either way, all it took was a small gaming session with the GPU at 400W for the user to discover an entire 12V terminal row on their cable, burnt to a crisp.

It has only been a few months since Nvidia officially announced its RTX 50-series graphics cards, but rumors are already pointing to a potential Super series refresh. According to a post on the Chiphell forums, a hit-and-miss source for hardware leaks, Nvidia might already be working on an RTX 5080 Super with 24GB and an RTX 5070 Super with 16GB of VRAM.

The key enabler behind these rumored memory configurations is said to be Nvidia’s use of 3GB GDDR7 memory modules. These modules essentially allow for more flexible VRAM amounts than the traditional 8GB or 16GB increments. By leveraging 3GB chips, Nvidia can gain the ability to offer configurations like 18GB (6×3GB) and 24GB (8×3GB) VRAM for its desktop class GPUs without making any major PCB redesigns.

This can also help Nvidia make refreshes or upgraded versions (like the aforementioned Super variants) easier to deliver without changing much hardware or firmware. With the higher amount of VRAM, these graphics cards will potentially have the ability to handle larger textures at higher resolutions, and more complex scenes with fewer performance drops.

Earlier this month, reports suggested that Nvidia has added SK hynix as a GDDR7 supplier for its RTX 50 series GPUs, after previously only sourcing from Samsung. On Chiphell, a user recently got their hands on a Gigabyte Gaming OC RTX 5070 Ti with SK hynix memory and found its overclocking potential similar to what we've seen from Samsung, via UNIKO's Hardware. While thermal and efficiency data are missing, this is nonetheless a positive indication.

Each generation, Nvidia casts a wide net to broaden its memory supplier base, ensuring multiple options. This is a common approach with many products, especially SSDs, many of which often ship with revised controllers or NAND flash modules later in their lifecycle. This shouldn't impact the average consumer as Nvidia likely validates all memory chips to run at a minimum of 28 Gbps (or 30 Gbps for the RTX 5080), at defined power, voltage, and temperature settings.

A user at Chiphell secured an RTX 5070 Ti from Gigabyte (SK hynix memory) earlier this week. Several days later, they attempted to increase the power limits by flashing a BIOS that was designated for the Aorus Master RTX 5070 Ti (Samsung memory), resultantly bricking the card. Fortunately, the damage wasn't permanent as their GPU was equipped with a dual BIOS, allowing them to switch to the secondary firmware.

Either way, to test the limits of their GPU's memory, the user achieved a memory clock of 2,125 MHz (34 Gbps) with overclocking, aligning with the majority of Samsung overclocks we've witnessed. This tells us that GDDR7 modules from SK hynix are just as capable as ones from Samsung when it comes to overclocking - with this sample.

RTX 5060 Ti 16GB vs RTX 4060 Ti 16GB Introduction

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB and RTX 4060 Ti 16GB represent the new and old guards of the 16GB realm for Team Green. Both of these are mainstream GPU offerings, ostensibly priced in the $430–$500 range. We weren't particularly impressed with the 4060 Ti 16GB at launch, but our feelings have tempered over time — helped by an unofficial $50 price cut — with both having appeared on our list of the best graphics cards.

The Nvidia Ada Lovelace 4060 Ti 16GB card originally launched over a month after the initial RTX 4060 Ti 8GB card, with a $100 price premium. Throughout the ensuing two years, the 8GB card has been more readily available, though as noted already, street prices on the 16GB card did drop by $50 at times. 

Conversely, the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB and 8GB variants technically launched at the same time on April 16, 2025, with only a $50 price gap. So far, the 16GB models have been far more widespread in the U.S., to the point where we have not yet been able to purchase an 8GB card at retail for testing.

Given the ongoing concerns with having only 8GB of VRAM, we feel it makes the most sense to compare the new and old 16GB xx60 Ti cards. We'll look primarily at performance, as well as power, features, and pricing. In theory, this should be a very easy win for the new Nvidia Blackwell GPU, but let's see how they actually stack up.

RTX 5060 Ti 16GB vs RTX 4060 Ti 16GB Specifications

Specifications for the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB and RTX 4060 Ti 16GB are mostly similar, with a few key upgrades for the newer GPU. While both the GB206 and AD106 dies have a maximum of 36 SMs (Streaming Multiprocessors), the 5060 Ti uses the fully enabled chip while the 4060 Ti disables a pair of SMs. That cascades through the GPU shaders, tensor cores, RT cores, and TMUs, giving the 5060 Ti a theoretical 6% advantage. However, clock speeds also factor into performance, and the 5060 Ti comes with a 2,572 MHz boost clock compared to 2,535 MHz on the 4060 Ti, another 1.5% advantage.

The core counts are a "hard" spec, but the clock speeds are a bit fuzzy. Power limits also come into play, and the 5060 Ti has a 180W TGP compared to 165W on the 4060 Ti 16GB. In practice, across our 21-game test suite, the 5060 Ti 16GB averaged clock speeds of 2,776 MHz compared to 2,725 MHz on the 4060 Ti 16GB — a slightly larger 1.9% advantage in favor of the newer card. Combined with SM and core counts, that gives the 5060 Ti 16GB an 8% advantage in raw compute.

That's pretty negligible in terms of a gen-on-gen increase, but architectural updates can further impact the real-world performance. More pertinent than the raw compute is the memory subsystem. The RTX 5060 Ti 16GB has 28 Gbps GDDR7 memory while the RTX 4060 Ti 16GB has 18 Gbps GDDR6 memory. That means the newer part has a 56% advantage in raw memory bandwidth — though architecture and timings can still play a role.

Taken together, based on the specifications, you should expect to see the newer GPU outperform its predecessor by anywhere from 8% to 56%, depending on whether a particular game or workload relies more on raw compute, memory bandwidth, or a blend of the two. In practice, compute tends to be the more important metric. As such, we'd expect a 15~25 percent lead from the 5060 Ti. Let's see how things go in actual benchmarks.

RTX 5060 Ti 16GB vs RTX 4060 Ti 16GB Gaming Performance

For most people, gaming performance will be the most important factor in choosing a graphics card. We have a test suite of 21 games, 6 of which have ray tracing enabled and 15 with pure rasterization. Upscaling and frame generation are disabled for all these tests, as we view those as "performance enhancers" rather than baseline features that should be compared.

Both the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB and RTX 4060 Ti 16GB support Nvidia's various DLSS features, though the 5060 Ti also offers MFG (Multi Frame Generation) — which can smooth out performance but definitely doesn't improve the actual feel of games that support it as much as the numbers might suggest. The experience of DLSS 3 framegen in our view tends to be inflated by about 50–60 percent (meaning, divide the resulting number by 1.5–1.6 to get a realistic view of what it feels like), while MFG 4X is about a 170–200 percent inflation (divide by 2.7–3.0).

Those are fuzzy approximations, but basically if you get less than a 50% "increase" in framerates via framegen, we would argue that it actually feels like a step backward. Likewise, less than a 170% increase from MFG 4X would be a net loss. Or to put hard numbers on it, if the base performance is 60 FPS, framegen needs to run at 90 FPS or more and MFG 4X needs to run at 160 FPS or more. Some would argue even those figures are too generous, but our main point is that "FPS" inflation via frame generation techniques has been heavily abused as a true indication of performance.

The charts and tables provide all the important numbers, so we're not going to dig into every single result. We're mostly interested in the overall trends, recognizing that individual games can come in above or below the averages. That's why we have an extensive 21 game test suite, with equal weighting given to each result via a geometric mean calculation.

The nice thing about comparing two Nvidia GPUs, even though they're different architectures, is that relative performance ends up being pretty consistent across both rasterization and ray tracing games. AMD and Intel GPUs vary quite a bit more, depending on what specific games are used.

Overall, the 5060 Ti 16GB outperforms the RTX 4060 Ti 16GB by 16% at 1080p medium, 17% in the ray tracing suite, and 16% in the rasterization suite. That means the 5060 Ti and 4060 Ti generally aren't CPU limited, even at 1080p medium. The minimum FPS (1% lows) shows similar consistency. Looking at the individual games, the 5060 Ti 16GB leads by 6% (Assassin's Creed Mirage) to as much as 29% (A Plague Tale: Requiem).

Bumping up to 1080p ultra settings, most of the deltas are virtually unchanged. The 5060 Ti 16GB still leads by 16% overall, 17% in the ray tracing suite, and 16% in the rasterization games. Minimum FPS ends up slightly closer overall at 18%, but with a wider 23% spread in our ray tracing tests and 16% in the rasterization games. Across all 21 games, we measured an 8% (Starfield) to 26% (Plague Tale: Requiem and Space Marine 2) delta in favor of the 5060 Ti.

Given the memory bandwidth advantage, the 5060 Ti 16GB should increase its overall lead at higher resolutions, and it does — just not by much. It's 18% faster overall at 1440p ultra, and 18% in both the rasterization and ray tracing suites. The various games show an advantage of 9% (Starfield) to 29% (Plague Tale and Space Marine 2, again).

Finally, at 4K ultra, we see the biggest lead for the 5060 Ti 16GB. Across the full 21-game suite it's 21% faster than the 4060 Ti 16GB, with a 20% lead in the ray tracing games and a 22% lead in the rasterization tests. The smallest advantage improves to 12% (Avatar), with the biggest lead being 33% (Space Marine 2).

RTX 5060 Ti 16GB vs RTX 4060 Ti 16GB AI and Content Creation Performance

Looking at other potential workloads, we have various disciplines that all loosely fall under the content creation umbrella. AI workloads include Stable Diffusion image generation, LLaMa text generation, image classification, inference, and other tasks. We also have 3D rendering via Blender, video transcoding using SPEC Workstation 4.0, and the Viewport test suite from SPEC Workstation 4.0.

Many people — particularly gamers — may never do any of these tasks on their PC, though it's worth nothing that Nvidia's push for "neural rendering" techniques can also extend into AI-powered NPCs. That's not something we can directly benchmark at present, but there's potential for the AI performance to become more important in the coming years if AI NPCs catch on in some major games.

Of all the content creation tasks, we think the AI tests deserve the most attention. As noted above, such workloads could become a bigger part of how people use their PCs and graphics cards in the future, even within games. Overall, the 5060 Ti 16GB delivers about a 24% lead in AI workloads compared to the RTX 4060 Ti 16GB. It's also worth mentioning that none of these AI tests at present leverage the FP4 support that was added to the tensor cores in the Blackwell architecture, so there's potential for even more of an AI deficit if future applications make use of that number format.

Video transcoding ends up being a virtual tie, indicating there's not a huge difference between the NVENC/NVDEC blocks in Ada and Blackwell. The 5060 Ti takes a 4% lead by virtue of running at slightly higher clock speeds, though Nvidia did supposedly improve the encoding quality — that's not something these tests measure, unfortunately.

3D modeling using Blender basically matches what we saw in gaming performance. Overall, the 5060 Ti 16GB runs 20% faster than the 4060 Ti 16GB, with a spread of 14% to 29% in the three different scenes. SolidWorks agrees with that number, while 3ds Max shows an even larger 31% lead for the 5060 Ti.

Those last two are part of the SPEC Workstation 4.0 Viewport tests, which show a 17% lead overall for the 5060 Ti, with a range of 1% (Creo) to as much as 31% (3ds Max). Most of the SPEC Workstation tests are truly for professionals, however, so we wouldn't put too much weight on them. Most paid professionals will have a workstation equipped with a workstation GPU (e.g. Nvidia RTX 6000 Ada Generation or the new RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell).

RTX 5060 Ti 16GB vs RTX 4060 Ti 16GB Features and Software

The vast majority of Nvidia features and software tools are available on both the RTX 4060 Ti 16GB and the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB. As such, it's easy to think that the two are "tied" in features. However, there are a few noteworthy exceptions.

First, the Blackwell RTX architecture adds support for Multi Frame Generation. We don't love the way the numbers are used to indicate massive performance improvements (i.e. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang tried to claim that an "RTX 5070 is as far as an RTX 4090" at the launch event), but MFG isn't inherently bad. There are games where it works better, and the additional frame smoothing can make games feel better, subjectively. It's a nuanced discussion, in other words, and not the "fake frames BAD" mentality that often gets tossed around.

Blackwell RTX, and by extension the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB, is also supposed to have better support for so-called neural rendering (i.e. Microsoft's Cooperative Vectors API). We don't yet know precisely how much better it might be compared to older GPUs, but we do know Cooperative Vectors is supposed to work with all RTX GPUs — and that it's supposed to be better on Blackwell RTX.

As noted earlier, the RTX 5060 Ti also has support for FP4 (and FP6) numerical formats in its tensor cores. Making proper use of FP4 presents challenges for AI models, but various algorithms have demonstrated superior performance and reduced memory requirements with a "negligible" drop in overall inference quality. As AI continues to evolve, it's reasonable to expect the use of FP4 to become more commonplace.

We've seen that with FP8 support as well. First introduced with the RTX 40-series GPUs, the use of FP8 modes was relatively rare for most of the past 2.5 years. However, Nvidia's new DLSS Transformers algorithms for upscaling (super resolution) and ray reconstruction appear to leverage native FP8 support. It's why the performance hit for DLSS Transformers tends to be substantially lower on RTX 40- and 50-series GPUs compared to RTX 30- and 20-series GPUs.

But Nvidia giveth and Nvidia also taketh away. Blackwell graphics cards no longer have PhysX support, so the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB simply can't run PhysX in older games that used the feature. (Not many recent games have used GPU PhysX, so this mostly applies to games like the Batman: Arkham series and Mirror's Edge, all of which are at least 10 years old now.) 32-bit CUDA support was likewise retired, which again mostly impacts older apps that are no longer being actively updated.

RTX 5060 Ti 16GB vs RTX 4060 Ti 16GB Pricing

The RTX 4060 Ti 16GB launched in July 2023 with an MSRP of $499, $100 more than the 8GB variant. The RTX 5060 Ti 16GB came out in April 2025 with a $429 MSRP. On paper, that clearly suggests a pricing advantage for the 5060 Ti 16GB. In practice, it's also an advantage when shopping around for new cards, but that's because the 4060 Ti 16GB (and the rest of the RTX 40-series) has been retired.

Since both GPU lines are made using TSMC's 4N process node, there's no reason for Nvidia to continue producing the older chips, and in fact all indications are that wafer orders for Ada Lovelace may have ended in the fall of 2024. Supplies have completely dried up and prices have shot up as a result.

The availability of RTX 50-series GPUs has been relatively poor compared to what we saw with the 40-series launch. Sure, the RTX 4090 sold out for the first few months, but eventually it reached the point where you could expect to find some models selling slightly below the base MSRP, and all of the other 40-series GPUs eventually dropped below the base MSRP by late 2023 and early 2024. So far, the RTX 50-series has rarely even approached MSRP, often selling at 20% to 50% above the minimum suggested price.

At present, the least expensive RTX 5060 Ti 16GB card we can find is an Asus Dual RTX 5060 Ti 16GB for $492.98 at Newegg. That's about 15% above the base MSRP that Nvidia set, but Nvidia can't force its add-in board (AIB) partners to actually sell cards at MSRP. With ongoing GPU shortages, it's little surprise that nearly all 50-series GPUs are "overpriced" relative to MSRP.

As bad as that might seem, the RTX 4060 Ti 16GB is in an even worse state. With production of those GPUs likely halted last year, only limited supplies remain. Mostly, it's third-party marketplace resellers on Newegg, Amazon, and similar storefronts trying to make some serious money. Even the 8GB cards start at $575 (MSRP is supposed to be $400), while the cheapest RTX 4060 Ti 16GB costs $679. Yeah, that's a bad choice unless for some reason you specifically need the older hardware.

RTX 5060 Ti 16GB vs RTX 4060 Ti 16GB Final Verdict

This was pretty much a foregone conclusion, but the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB easily beats the RTX 4060 Ti 16GB in every conceivable metric. There's only one potential advantage to the 4060 Ti, and it's nebulous at best: It supports PhysX and 32-bit CUDA (though both are likely deprecated and will fade away in the coming months).

In contrast, the 5060 Ti 16GB offers about 20% higher gaming performance on average, across nearly all tested resolutions and settings. It's also about 20% faster in AI workloads and 3D rendering, and about 17% faster in a selections of professional applications. That's largely thanks to having 56% more memory bandwidth, courtesy of GDDR7, though other architectural upgrades and slightly increased core counts also factor into things.

The real kicker is the price. Unless you're lucky enough to find an RTX 4060 Ti 16GB on a steep discount, the 5060 Ti 16GB costs quite a bit less at popular online retail sites like Newegg and Amazon. Just say no, in other words. Slower performance, missing new features, and a price that's currently 38% higher? Pass. It's also a poor proposition when you look at total system cost (using $750 for the price of the rest of the PC). The 5060 Ti 16GB delivers 24% more performance per dollar than the RTX 4060 Ti 16GB in that case (using MSRPs for both, which benefits the 4060 Ti).

If you're wondering about power use and efficiency, even though the TGP (Total Graphics Power) on the 5060 Ti 16GB is 15W higher on paper, in practice it averaged lower power use in our testing. Power use was 1W higher at 4K ultra (a setting both GPUs struggle with), 5W lower at 1440p ultra, and 8–9 watts lower at 1080p. With 21% higher performance at 4K, that works out to much improved overall efficiency.

Hopefully it goes without saying, but just because the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB offers more performance and costs less than a new 4060 Ti 16GB, that doesn't mean people who already own the prior generation card should be in a rush to upgrade. A 20% performance uplift combined with a few new features might be nice to have, but we generally only recommend upgrading if you can get at least a 50% performance improvement, and doubling performance is often possible if you're upgrading from a card that's a couple of generations old.

Let's also not forget that there are 8GB variants of both GPUs. Again, just say no to such cards. Unless you can score a particularly impressive deal, the lack of VRAM is increasingly becoming a problem for 8GB cards. Sure, older and lighter games can run just fine on such GPUs, but it's the newer games that need faster hardware, and they're having problems. The 4060 Ti 16GB and 8GB offer nearly identical performance in our test suite at 1080p, but the 16GB card pulls ahead by 7% at 1440p, and by 36% at 4K — with the most demanding newer games exceeding those averages. We anticipate the story will be largely the same with the 5060 Ti 8GB.

So there you have it: While the generational gains of the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB over the RTX 4060 Ti 16GB aren't as large as we've seen with prior architectural upgrades, the lack of progress on process nodes and the relatively similar die sizes and transistor counts mean we shouldn't expect 50% performance improvements at the same price going forward. 20% more performance for an ostensibly 14% lower price is about as good as we're likely to see. That's about 40% more performance per dollar, which beats any of the other RTX 50-series GPUs.

If you're a PC enthusiast or gamer who likes to showcase your high-end hardware, there's a good chance you've seen or even used a vertical bracket for your GPU. While it can certainly enhance the aesthetics of your rig, you might want to reconsider, especially if you own a Gigabyte RTX 50-series (codenamed Blackwell) graphics card.

According to a discussion thread on Quasar Zone, a popular Korean community forum for PC hardware and games, one user noticed thermal gel oozing out of their one-month-old RTX 5080 GPU. After purchasing the card, the user reported playing World of Warcraft for two hours daily. Notably, the GPU was mounted vertically using a riser kit.

While this could have been an isolated incident, further comments in the thread suggest that the melting thermal gel issue is also affecting other Gigabyte models, including the Gaming OC, Windforce, and Aorus Master series.

It's worth noting that Gigabyte launched its RTX 50-series lineup with server-grade thermal conductive gel in place of traditional thermal pads. The company claims this material provides “better heat dissipation efficiency without shifting for long-term usage.” However, it’s possible that Gigabyte didn’t fully account for vertical mounting, although thermal gel is typically non-conductive and considered safe in most scenarios.

Igor's Lab has discovered a worrying trend among all Nvidia Blackwell RTX 50-series graphics cards, including even faux-budget GPUs like the RTX 5060 Ti. According to a lengthy blog post the outlet published, most if not all RTX 50-series AIB partner cards are allegedly prone to high-temperature hotspots in the power delivery area, which could potentially damage these graphics cards after extended heavy use.

The problem lies in the construction of power delivery systems for the affected graphics cards. Igor's Lab states that several components that make up the power delivery system, such as the FETs, coils, drivers, and traces connecting everything together, are grouped too close together, creating temperatures that can potentially deteriorate the power delivery system over the course of a card's life, potentially killing the card after just a few years of use.

Every day, I scan through retailers and keep an eye on stock levels and pricing for the most popular PC components. I've started to notice that the stock levels of the 50-series graphics cards from Nvidia are trickling in more regularly. But the better supply has not resulted in better pricing for said cards. The markup from AIB's especially, is well above the MSRP price set by Nvidia, making this deal almost respectable in the current climate.

If you're not comfortable building your own PC, then buying a prebuilt PC is your best option. But you will pay extra for the privilege, and you may not always get the very best components. Sometimes PC building companies make savings by switching to OEM parts like the power supply, memory, and storage. This, of course, is not always the case. This deal lists all the hardware used in the build, so you can check for yourself what's inside and how much the parts cost individually.

Grab the ABS Eurus Aqua Gaming PC for $2,599 at Newegg, which saves you $300 off the list price of $2,899. The ABS Eurus Aqua packs one of the best CPUs for gaming - the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, as well as Nvidia's GeForce RTX 5070 Ti graphics card, 32GB of DDR5 6000MHz memory, and a 2TB M.2 NVMe SSD.

Despite launching just a week ago, Nvidia's RTX 5060 Ti 8GB struggles in numerous games. In-depth testing by Australian reviewer Hardware Unboxed reveals a stark difference between the RTX 5060 Ti 8GB and its 16GB sibling. Despite sharing the same "RTX 5060 Ti" moniker, unsuspecting customers drawn by the $50 savings could snap up the 8GB model, unaware of its limitations. Testing shows a significant performance drop-off, frame time stutters, texture pop-in issues, and in some cases game crashes.

Nvidia opted to not send any reviewers the 8GB cards, so Hardware Unboxed bought a unit for independent testing. Considering many RTX 5060 Ti owners won't upgrade for several years, 8GB will become increasingly restrictive, and there's only so much upscaling and frame generation can do.

Both RTX 5060 Ti models use the GB206 die with 4,608 CUDA cores and a 128-bit interface. The RTX 5070 vs RTX 5060 Ti 16GB may favor the latter in memory capacity, but our testing and current street prices show the RTX 5070 wins that matchup. Despite the lackluster gen-on-gen improvements, the RTX 5060 Ti is still no slouch, landing within 10% of the RTX 4070.

As decent as the 16GB model might be, it's almost a no-brainer that slapping a limited 8GB frame-buffer would gimp the RTX 5060 Ti heavily. That's a memo Nvidia seemingly didn't get — or filed in the trash can while talking up neural rendering.

When it comes to the best gaming laptops, there’s been a heavy focus on systems featuring Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs for the past two years. However, Nvidia launched new “Blackwell” gaming GPUs for laptops as part of the new RTX 50 Series. As a result, a new wave of gaming laptops is starting to hit the market, and Asus is among the first to jump on the bandwagon.

Enter the ROG Strix Scar 16, a 16-inch class gaming laptop featuring an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX processor, 32GB of RAM, and an RTX 5080 GPU. While the RTX 5080 isn’t the top entry in Nvidia’s laptop GPU family, as you’ll see, it still packs a punch. However, you will pay a significant price premium ($3,299 as reviewed) to enjoy the latest that Nvidia has to offer.

Design of the Asus ROG Strix Scar 16

Asus’s ROG family of products is often infused with rather outlandish design touches that help them stand out from the crowded field of gaming laptops, and the ROG Strix Scar 16 is no exception. The first thing you’ll notice when removing the laptop from the box is the ROG logo on the lid, which initially looks like a standard reflective chrome badge. However, as soon as you turn the machine on, it lights up in all its RGB glory to add color to the black exterior of the laptop.

But that’s not the only illumination on the aluminum lid – Asus also has included a diagonal strip of white LEDs that dance around with a scrolling effect when the laptop is in standby mode. Asus calls it AniMe Vision, which features an array of 810 LED lights that shine through the milled holes in the lid. When the laptop is turned on, flashes of light display “STRIX” branding by default. There are several premade animations you can select from, or you can import a GIF of your own to customize your laptop further.

Wait, there’s more! An RGB light ring runs around the entire perimeter of the bottom half of the enclosure, and the keyboard features per-key RGB lighting. The ROG Strix Scar 16’s lighting can be configured using Aura Sync in Armory Crate.

The ROG Strix Scar 16 features a 16-inch 2560 x 1600 display with thin bezels along the sides. The top bezel is thicker to accommodate the 1080p webcam and infrared sensors for Windows Hello that are front and center. The bottom bezel is larger still, roughly twice as wide as the top bezel, and incorporates ROG STRIX branding.

The keyboard deck and the chassis bottom are constructed of plastic. Although I would have preferred an aluminum unibody at this price point, the plastic at least feels high quality.

A massive touchpad sits below the keyboard and features Asus’ virtual NumberPad feature. After pressing NUMLK on the top right-hand corner of the touchpad, it lights up with a full number pad that you can use to make quick entries in apps like Calculator or Microsoft Excel. It works well enough, and I find it a suitable alternative to including a full physical number pad on the keyboard, especially if it’s a feature you won’t use frequently.

The ROG Strix Scar 16 is a big laptop, and Asus thankfully puts the space to use by incorporating a large assortment of ports for connectivity. You’ll find just two USB 3.2 Type-A ports on the right side. However, the bulk of the connections are on the left side, which is home to a proprietary power connector, a full-size 2.5 GbE LAN port, an HDMI 2.1 port, another USB 3.2 Type-A port, two Thunderbolt 5 ports, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Regarding wireless connectivity, the ROG Strix Scar 16 has an Intel BE200 card, which combines Wi-Fi 7 with Bluetooth 5.4.

The ROG Strix Scar 16 measures 13.94 x 10.55 x 0.90 inches and weighs 6.28 pounds. For comparison, the Razer Blade 16 is 13.98 x 9.86 x 0.69 inches and weighs 4.72 pounds, while the 5.67-pound Alienware x16 is 14.36 x 11.41 x 0.73 inches. The Gigabyte Aorus Master 16 weighs 5.4 pounds and measures 14.06 x 10.0 x 1.18 inches.

Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 Specifications

Gaming and Graphics on the Asus ROG Strix Scar 16

The ROG Strix Scar 16 features high-end hardware, including an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX processor, a GeForce RTX 5080 laptop GPU, and 32GB of DDR5-5600 memory. The Core Ultra 9 275HX has 8 performance cores and 16 efficiency cores. The performance cores have a base clock of 2.7 GHz and a maximum turbo clock of 5.4 GHz, while the efficiency cores have a 2.1-GHz base clock and a maximum 4.6 GHz turbo clock. The RTX 5080 has a 175W TGP and a 1,500 MHz boost clock.

I had time to play various games on the ROG Strix Scar 16, but I spent most of my time running and gunning in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. The game is a visual masterpiece with its lush environment, high-quality textures, realistic reflections, and intricate detail of real-world objects. With the resolution set to 1440p and the detail setting cranked to “Ultra,” I averaged between 70 and 100 fps in the game, depending on how much action took place on-screen.

The ROG Strix Scar 16 started strong in our Shadow of the Tomb Raider (Highest setting) benchmark, delivering 177 fps at 1080p. Performance at 1600p fell sharply to just 112 fps. The Aorus Master 16 (Core Ultra 9 275HX, RTX 5080) took the crown at 1080p (185 fps), and scored slightly more than Asus at 1600p (114 fps). For comparison, the Blade 16 (Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, RTX 5090) delivered 166 fps at 1080p, but vastly outperformed at 1600p (161 fps). The x16 (Core i9-13900HK, RTX 4080) was at the back of the pack, achieving 117 fps at 1080p and 79 fps at 1600p.

Cyberpunk 2077 (Ray Tracing Ultra settings) was the most recent game added to our benchmark suite, so the x16 didn't make the cutoff for testing. However, we do have a showdown between the systems with Blackwell GPUs. The ROG Strix Scar 16 hit 61 fps at 1800p and 35 fps at 1600p. The Aorus Master 16 performed similarly, with 62 fps at 1080p and 38 fps at 1600p. The Blade 16 surpassed those numbers by around 10 percent at both resolutions, with 66 fps at 1080p and 43 fps at 1600p.

Far Cry 6 (Ultra settings) saw another flip-flop in the rankings, with the Aorus Master 16 besting all competitors, including the RTX 5090-equipped Blade 16. It averaged 120 fps at 1080p and 113 fps at 1600p. The ROG Strix Scar 16 was a few ticks behind at 112 fps and 103 fps, respectively. The Blade 16 performed more in line with the x16 at 1080p (each hitting 97 fps), while its 94 fps at 1600p was enough to earn second place.

Red Dead Redemption 2 (Medium settings) proved to be a challenge for the ROG Strix Scar 16, and is a testament to the early driver issues that have plagued Nvidia’s RTX 50 Series laptops GPUs (as we noted in our Blade 16 review). The system would not run the benchmark at 1080p resolution. It would, however, run at 2560 x 1600, and we recorded 77 fps at that resolution. The Aorus Master 16 fared even worse, managing just 54 fps at 1600p.

The Aorus Master 16 won the Borderlands 3 (Badass settings) benchmark showdown by default — our Blade 16 couldn't even run the benchmark, achieving a heady 172 fps at 1080p and 121 fps at 1600p. The ROG Strix Scar 16 was the next-closest competitor with 156 fps and 113 fps at 1080p and 1600p, respectively.

We use Metro Exodus for our stress testing, running the in-game benchmark 10 consecutive times using the RTX preset. During the test, the ROG Strix Scar 16's efficiency and performance cores averaged 3.11 GHz and 4.61 GHz, respectively, with a CPU temperature of 74 degrees Celsius. The RTX 5080 averaged 1.845 GHz with a core temperature of 72 degrees C.

Productivity Performance on the Asus ROG Strix Scar 16

Thanks to its use of a Core Ultra 9 275HX processor, 32GB of DDR5-5600, and a fast Western Digital SN8000S PCIe 4.0 SSD, the ROG Strix Scar 16 proved to be a top performer in our productivity suite.

The ROG Strix Scar 16 quickly shot to the top of the Geekbench 6 synthetic CPU benchmark charts. It recorded a single-core score of 3,071 and a multi-core score of 19,597. This put it slightly ahead of the Aorus Master 16 with the same processor, which came in at 3,049 and 19,175, respectively. The Blade 16 with its Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor was a bit behind the rest of the pack (2,922, 16,025). The x16 was one of the last laptops we tested with Geekbench 5.x, so it is not represented here.

Switching gears to our file transfer test, which involves copying 25GB of mixed-media files, the ROG Strix Scar 16 delivered a speedy 1,841.40 MBps. For comparison, the Omen 16 led the pack at 1,913 MBps, while the Blade 16 came in at 1,729.51 MBps. The Aorus Master 16 was dead last at 665.26 MBps.

We use our Handbrake benchmark to transcode a 4K video file to 1080p, with the Aorus Master 16 and ROG Strix Scar 16 handily besting the competition — it wasn’t even close. The former took just 2 minutes and 17 seconds to finish the operation, while the latter took 2 minutes and 22 seconds. The x16 with its older processor took over 4 minutes on the test.

Display on the Asus ROG Strix Scar 16

Asus equipped the ROG Strix Scar 16 with a 16-inch 2560 x 1600 display with Mini LED backlighting. Given its gaming aspirations, the panel refreshes at up to 240 Hz, which makes it a great dance partner for the RTX 5080.

Our tests showed that the ROG Strix Scar 16’s panel covered 81.2 percent of DCI-P3 and 114.7 percent of sRGB. The Mini LED backlighting allowed the laptop to stand far above its peers in brightness, as we saw 457.2 nits with SDR content. Brightness with HDR content topped 1,200 nits, which tracks with Asus’s claim of 1,200 nits.

I played several games on the display, including Forza Horizon 5, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, Call of Duty: Warzone, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Action was smooth and tear-free, with vibrant colors all around.

Keyboard and Touchpad on the Asus ROG Strix Scar 16

Asus outfitted the ROG Strix Scar 16 with a full-size keyboard, offering 2mm of key travel. Four media keys are tacked on to the right side of the keyboard: Play, Pause, Previous Track, and Next Track. There are also five programmable “M” keys at the top of the keyboard deck that correspond with volume up/down, microphone off, power mode (which cycles through Silent, Performance, and Turbo), and a shortcut for Armoury Crate. The function of each button can be configured using Armoury Crate.

Using the keyhero.com typing test, I achieved 90 words per minute at 97.93 percent accuracy with the keyboard. It’s not my best performance with a laptop keyboard, as my fingers had to stretch a bit more than I’m used to, which slowed me down a bit.

You’ll find a rather large glass trackpad below the keyboard, which I found to operate smoothly, with a satisfying click response. As previously mentioned, the touchpad includes Asus’ nifty NumberPad feature, which instantly displays a touch-enabled number pad when you tap the NUMLK.

Audio on the Asus ROG Strix Scar 16

The ROG Strix Scar 16 features four speakers (two tweeters plus two woofers). I found the audio quite good, with loud and clear volume (I didn’t go past 80 percent to save my hearing) and adequate bass.

I played some tunes with the laptop, including “Something in My Heart” by Röyksopp. The electronic drums and bass synth sounded pleasing to me along with the quavery vocals. The real test, though, was with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, where the sound effects were particularly poignant, from the whip cracks to Indy’s feverish punches, to the grunts he makes when he jumps from ledges. I still prefer to opt for one of the best gaming headsets when listening to music or gaming, but you won’t be disappointed by the audio system in the ROG Strix Scar 16.

Upgradeability on the Asus ROG Strix Scar 16

The ROG Strix Scar 16 is one of the easiest laptops that I’ve ever had the opportunity to open. When I first flipped the laptop over to expose its bottom panel, I was perplexed as to how to open it -- there were no visible screws to remove. I started poking around at the rubber feet to see if those needed to be removed, but they wouldn’t budge. Then, I noticed a small latch at the front of the chassis with an arrow on it.

I pushed the latch in the direction of the arrow, and it slid over, revealing a red indicator. This red indicator signified that the bottom panel was unlatched. I then slid the panel toward me and was able to lift it off the chassis, exposing the interior. It’s a simple system, and I’m surprised that more manufacturers haven’t integrated something similar.

With the bottom panel removed, you can access the system's upgradeable components. Unlike more compact ultraportables that have RAM soldered onto the motherboard, the ROG Strix Scar 16 has two SO-DIMM slots — our review unit had both slots occupied with 16GB DDR5-5600 SO-DIMMs.

In addition, two M.2 slots accommodate full-length 2280 SSDs (only one was populated on our review unit). Even better, the ROG Strix Scar 16 supports the PCIe 5.0 interface, although our review unit was equipped with a Western Digital SN8000S 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD. However, it’s nice to know that the option is available if you want to upgrade to a faster SSD interface.

Battery Life on the Asus ROG Strix Scar 16

The ROG Strix Scar 16 uses a 90 Whr battery. To see how long the laptop can operate on a charge, we ran it through our usual endurance benchmark — our test browses the web, streams videos, and runs light OpenGL tests with the brightness set to 150 nits.

In the end, the ROG Strix Scar 16 lasted 6 hours and 30 minutes. That put it in second place behind the Blade 16, which lasted 7 hours and 21 minutes.

The x16 (5:37) and Aorus Master 16 (5:02) were further back in the pack when it comes to endurance.

Heat on the Asus ROG Strix Scar 16

The ROG Strix Scar 16 does an excellent job of exhausting heat generated by its top-shelf hardware components with its twin internal fans. While running the Metro Exodus stress test, the bottom of the chassis was warm to the touch but not uncomfortable. The fans audibly spun during the entire test, but the sound was not objectionable and was easily overpowered by the internal speakers (or a pair of the best headphones, if you wish).

Our temperature measurements showed that the keyboard was 102.9 degrees Fahrenheit between the G and H keys, while the touchpad was much cooler at 82.7 degrees F. The underside of the chassis measured 119.6 degrees F, and the hottest part of the keyboard that we measured was between the F5 and F6 keys (120.3 degrees F).

Webcam on the Asus ROG Strix Scar 16

Like most new laptops arriving on the market these days, Asus has outfitted the ROG Strix Scar 16 with a 1080p webcam. Given the $3,300 price tag, it would have been nice to have seen some more impressive hardware – video and images came out slightly grainy, although overall colors and skin tones were accurate.

The camera is more than adequate for videoconferencing, but I’d look for a third-party setup if you’re into game streaming.

Software and Warranty on the Asus ROG Strix Scar 16

Asus includes several apps with the ROG Strix Scar 16, including the oft-maligned Armoury Crate. Armoury Crate is an all-in-one software utility for controlling performance profiles to adjust RGB effects for the chassis and keyboard (with Aura Sync). It can even control the AniMe display on the lid using AniMe Vision. AniMe Vision allows you to upload your own GIFs to customize the LED display on the lid.

Other apps preinstalled include MyAsus, which allows you to register your device, perform system upgrades, and run hardware diagnostics. CapCut is a short-form video and graphics editing app, ScreenXpert is a window manager for use across multiple displays, while GlideX is a screen sharing app.

The most annoying preinstalled app, however, is McAfee. The app continually bombards you with pop-ups and warns that your trial period will soon end. I’d immediately ditch the app and rely on Microsoft Defender or any less resource-intensive anti-malware app.

The ROG Strix Scar 16 comes with a one-year warranty from Asus.

Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 Configurations

The ROG Strix Scar 16 is available in two configurations from Asus, with our review unit being the cheapest offering. The system features an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX processor, 32GB DDR5 memory, 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD, RTX 5080, and a 16-inch 2560 x 1600 Mini LED 240Hz display. As configured, this system costs a staggering $3,299.99.

Currently, the only other configuration is this same system with an RTX 5090 instead of the RTX 5080 – all other specifications are the same. The premium to jump from the RTX 5080 to the RTX 5090 is substantial, as the flagship system costs $4,299.

Both systems are only available directly from the Asus online store.

Bottom Line

The Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 has a strong foundation, with a solid chassis, plentiful ports (including 2.5 GbE), Wi-Fi 7 connectivity, a fast SSD (which is further futureproofed with PCIe 5.0-enabled M.2 slots), and a vibrant 1600p Mini LED panel.

The wildcard with this laptop comes down to the RTX 5080 graphics card. While overall performance was strong, lingering driver issues still prevent consistent playback with some popular video games. It’s likely that future driver issues may lessen or even completely resolve these performance and compatibility issues. However, if you’re spending over $3,000 on a new gaming laptop, you don’t want any barriers to entry in whatever game may be in your library.

RTX 5070 vs RTX 5060 Ti Introduction

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 and RTX 5060 Ti 16GB are the two most recent GPUs launched by Team Green. Since the beginning of 2025, Nvidia has released five Blackwell RTX 50-series GPUs — six if you want to count the RTX 5060 Ti 8GB as a separate entry.

To say that supplies have been limited and insufficient to keep up with demand would be a gross understatement, but the same applies to any of the best graphics cards right now. In fact, of all the Blackwell RTX GPUs, the 5070 and 5060 Ti are currently the most readily available; just don't expect to find most models at MSRP.

Our GPU benchmarks hierarchy ranks all the graphics cards by performance, and naturally the more expensive cards come out ahead of their less expensive siblings. But how do the RTX 5070 and RTX 5060 Ti 16GB stack up? We'll look at the performance, approximate pricing — because no GPU prices are reliably set in stone right now — as well as other aspects of the cards to help you decide which one might be right for your gaming PC.

Most of the features between the two GPUs will be identical. Both use the Blackwell architecture and support DLSS 4 and MFG, for example. Still, let's start with the specifications to see how the 5070 and 5060 Ti stack up.

RTX 5070 vs RTX 5060 Ti Specifications

As you'd expect, the RTX 5070 offers more raw performance on paper and in practice. It uses a GPU that's 45% larger, with 41.6% more transistors. More importantly perhaps, it has 33% more SMs, tensor cores, RT cores, and related computational units. It also has 50% more memory bandwidth and a 50% wider memory interface, plus 50% more L2 cache.

Memory interfaces don't scale as well as core logic on modern process nodes, and there are other aspects of the Blackwell GPU — the video encoders/decoders, display outputs, etc. — that don't really change, which explains why the chip size and transistor counts don't necessarily scale linearly.

Clock speeds aren't quite the same, at least on paper. The 5060 Ti has a 2572 MHz boost clock and the 5070 has a slightly lower 2512 MHz boost clock. But we're also looking at the 5070 Founders Edition with reference clocks, and a PNY 5060 Ti 16GB OC that has a 2692 MHz boost clock. Plugging in those numbers gives the 5070 30.9 teraflops of FP32 compute and the PNY 5060 Ti has 24.8 TFLOPS. That means the 5070 'only' has 25% more compute on paper — which isn't actually all that accurate.

In our full suite of gaming benchmarks, the 5070 Founders Edition averaged clock speeds of 2826 MHz while the PNY 5060 Ti 16GB OC averaged 2776 MHz. That means despite theoretically 180 MHz lower clocks, in practice Nvidia's 5070 card came out 50 MHz ahead.

That means the 5070 FE offers about 34.7 TFLOPS compared to 25.6 TFLOPS, a 35.5% advantage. Practically speaking, though, the 5070 should be up to 35% faster in games that are compute bound, and up to 50% faster for games that are memory bandwidth bound — and potentially the 5060 Ti could close the gap if VRAM capacity comes into play.

RTX 5070 vs RTX 5060 Ti Gaming Performance

There are multiple facets of performance to discuss. We'll start with gaming performance, as that's what the majority of people looking at the RTX 5070 and RTX 5060 Ti 16GB care about the most. We have an expanded test suite of 21 games, with 15 rasterization benchmarks and six ray tracing benchmarks — slightly more than the 18 games we use in our GPU hierarchy (we're planning to add these into the hierarchy but haven't tested every GPU yet).

The charts group things together by overall performance (geometric mean across all 21 games, where each gets equal weighting), rasterization-only performance, and ray tracing-only performance. We also have separate tables that show the percentage differences below the charts (sorted in reverse order due to the vagaries of Excel).

It's safe to say that neither the RTX 5070 nor the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB are primarily targeted at native 4K ultra gaming. The 1440p result works as a proxy for 4K with DLSS quality mode upscaling, and the 1080p result stands in for 4K with performance mode upscaling, though there would be potential differences. Upscaling does have some overhead, but since we're looking at two Nvidia GPUs we can expect a pretty consistent delta cause by DLSS. CPU bottlenecks would potentially affect performance at lower resolutions as well, which we can see by the results.

At 4K, the RTX 5070 leads the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB by 32% on average, with a performance difference of -5% (Indiana Jones and the Great Circle) to +43% (A Plague Tale: Requiem). Indiana Jones is known to want a lot of VRAM — you can even run the ultra setting on cards with less than 12GB — while various other games appear to want more memory bandwidth.

Dropping to 1440p, the 5070 lead shrinks fractionally to 31% overall, and this time there are no performance deficits. There may be a few other games out there that can push beyond 12GB of VRAM use, but from our test suite — a rather demanding suite overall, we'd say — 12GB remains sufficient in all games for 1440p, and in all but one of the games for 4K.

1080p starts to run into CPU limits, even more so at medium settings, which shrinks the delta between the 5070 and 5060 Ti to 28% at ultra settings and 24% at medium settings. That's still a sizeable gap, with a few of the games showing basically equivalent performance due to the CPU bottleneck (Baldur's Gate 3, Flight Simulator 2020, Spider-Man 2, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, and Stalker 2 end up tied in one or both cases).

Looking at the rasterization and ray tracing performance, overall there's not much difference at the various resolutions and settings. 4K ultra does run into VRAM limits on one of the RT games, so that the gap is slightly narrower there than at 1440p and 1080p, and our RT test suite does end up with lower FPS than the rasterization games at ultra settings. Medium settings with RT enabled actually runs faster on average for our test games, but only Control and Cyberpunk are truly demanding RT games in our title selection.

RTX 5070 vs RTX 5060 Ti Content Creation Performance

Our content creation test suite consists of a variety of test that all loosely fall into the "professional" category. We have multiple AI tests, 3D rendering benchmarks, video transcoding performance courtesy of SPEC Workstation 4.0, and the SPEC Workstation 4.0 Viewport benchmarks (basically the same tests as SPECviewperf).

As expected, the RTX 5070 generally walks away with the content creation crown. It's 45% faster in the Blender 3D rendering benchmarks, 33% faster in MLPerf text generation tokens per second, and 20–43 percent faster in the Procyon and SPEC AI tests that we ran. The 5060 Ti 16GB did have a faster time to first token in MLPerf, though it's possible that's due to updates to the benchmark (we'll recheck the 5070 in the near future, once our test rig isn't busy).

For SPEC Workstation 4.0's Viewport tests, there's another instance of the 5060 Ti 16GB garnering a win — it's 2% faster in Creo. But overall the 5070 still has a 23% lead. Handbrake video transcoding meanwhile ends up as a tie, which is expected as the fixed function encoding and decoding hardware is the same, so the only difference would be GPU clocks during that test.

Neither GPU is specifically marketed as a professional solution, though we anticipate there will be professional variants of both chips (with more VRAM and drivers that enable additional accelerations in some of the SPEC Viewport tests). Mostly, the AI results are interesting as a hobbyist solution, though it's possible future games might leverage the AI hardware more.

RTX 5070 vs RTX 5060 Ti Conclusion

Which is better: RTX 5070 or RTX 5060 Ti 16GB? Price, as we said at the start, will arguably be the biggest factor in deciding between the RTX 5070 and RTX 5060 Ti 16GB. It's also the one thing that we can't really pin down at present. Since the 5060 Ti launched just a few days ago, pricing and availability are more likely to fluctuate in the near term. The 5070 has been out for a month now, and we have a better idea of what to expect.

First, let's talk about MSRPs and performance. On paper, Nvidia gives the 5060 Ti 16GB a $429.99 MSRP and the 5070 has a $549.99 MSRP — so $430 and $550. That means the 5070 is supposed to cost 28% more than the 5060 Ti 16GB. And based on the performance results, that's exactly in line with what you get.

Linear performance scaling generally means you're better off buying the more expensive card — we would normally expect to see diminishing returns. So if you buy an RTX 5060 Ti 16GB at MSRP and get 0.171 FPS/$ across our gaming tests, versus the RTX 5070 with 0.170 FPS/$, we give the win to the 5070. The reason is because the GPU doesn't exist in a vacuum; there's the rest of the PC to consider.

Alternatively, let's talk current street prices. These will change dramatically over time, but we can currently find an RTX 5060 Ti 16GB for $509.98, or an RTX 5070 for $619.98. That's the second pair of tables in the above gallery, which obviously skews in favor of the 5070 at current prices. And that's what you need to look at, first and foremost.

Finally, imagine a PC where the CPU, motherboard, SSD, RAM, PSU, and case together cost $750 for example. Now you're looking at a total cost of $1,180 for the 5060 Ti 16GB compared to $1,300 for the 5070 build (using the base MSRPs for the GPUs). That works out to just 10% more total money for about the same 25~30 percent performance uplift. It's what the last set of tables above show, and again, it favors the 5070 heavily.

Given the 25~30 percent performance advantage of the RTX 5070 over the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB, spending up to 30% more on the RTX 5070 would make sense. It's the clear winner at current online prices, or at the given MSRPs. In fact, we would argue that it's worth spending up to 40% more for the 5070 compared to the 5060 Ti, as we normally expect diminishing returns.

We don't know where prices will end up, in the U.S. or elsewhere, but you can use the above 30–40 percent figure as a guideline. If the RTX 5070 were to cost $550, we wouldn't recommend spending more than $425 on the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB — and $400 would be better. Conversely, if the best price you can find on the RTX 5070 ends up being $700, then the 5060 Ti 16GB would be worth $500 to at most $540. (And you can replace the dollar signs with whatever monetary symbol you choose.)

Long-term, we expect both GPUs will trend toward about a 30% higher price for the RTX 5070 vs RTX 5060 Ti 16GB. Anything less makes the slower card very difficult to justify, even if it does technically offer more VRAM. So unless you specifically need a card with 16GB, perhaps to run a particular LLM, the RTX 5070 offers the better overall value right now, and will probably continue to do so in the future.

The latest addition to the Nvidia R570 branch of GPU drivers, 576.02, has resolved many stability problems troubling RTX GPUs for the past three months, including crashes and black screens.

Adding to the mix is increased synthetic performance, as reported by ComputerBase, whose data suggests an up to 8% performance bump in 3DMark Steel Nomad. Alas, it's not all sunshine and rainbows, as it appears a new set of stability woes has surfaced with these new drivers, as indicated by user reports.

It is important to understand that improved synthetic performance might not directly reflect real-world tests, such as games and content creation. Either way, with the onset of enablement drivers (R570) for the RTX 50 series in February, a wide range of stability problems affected nearly all RTX GPUs. I personally had to roll back to an older 566.xx release to get RTX HDR working properly. Fast forward to March, and back-to-back hotfixes ironed out most of these quirks for Blackwell.

RTX 40 and RTX 30 GPUs, still plagued by crashes linked with G-Sync and Frame Generation, had to hold out until the latest 576.02 release that is said to fix most of these problems. ComputerBase did some testing and revealed that these drivers also deliver better synthetic performance on RTX 50 GPUs. This is further backed by several user reports at r/Nvidia, though the numbers could vary.

We're looking at uplifts ranging between 6%-8%, depending on the GPU in 3DMark's Steel Nomad benchmark. The most notable performance shifts can be observed with the RTX 5070, RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5080, while the RTX 5090 remains largely unchanged.

We won't say no to free performance, but user reports still indicate lingering game crashes, black screen issues, stuttering, and other anomalies across the RTX GPU stack. Some of the mentioned game titles include Monster Hunter Wilds, FFVII Rebirth, and Black Myth Wukong, just to name a few. That's to say, there have been mentions of increased gaming performance with several games, so it's hard to draw a decisive conclusion.

The general consensus is that you should update to the latest drivers. In case you face any stability problems, try downgrading to the 572.xx release or 566.xx, but this comes with the trade-off of losing access to certain features.

GPU Benchmarks Introduction

Tom's Hardware exhaustively benchmarks every GPU to find out which are worthy of our list of the best graphics cards. Our GPU benchmarks hierarchy ranks current and previous generation graphics cards by performance. Whether it's playing games, running artificial intelligence workloads, or doing professional video editing, your graphics card typically plays the biggest role in determining performance — even the best CPUs for gaming take a secondary role.

Our 2026 GPU Hierarchy testing spans three generations of Nvidia and AMD graphics cards, as well as Intel's Arc B-series GPUs.

Our testing has been made easier by the fact that no truly new gaming GPUs have been introduced in almost a year. If you haven't already upgraded your graphics card after the GeForce RTX 50-series and Radeon RX 9000-series launches in 2025, well, you're still looking at the exact same products now.

AMD did make its formerly China-only Radeon RX 9070 GRE available globally after Computex 2026, but in our review, we found that $549 product to be too expensive given the level of performance it delivers and the compromises made to hit its price point. Check out that coverage for all the details.

Most of the products we recommend remain at elevated prices compared to their MSRPs, but this is just life in mid-2026. It's admittedly cold comfort, but unless you're shopping for an RTX 5090, graphics card prices haven't risen much more than they already did earlier this year.

Compared to the doubling or tripling of prices we've seen for RAM kits and SSDs in 2026 versus last year, a GPU upgrade remains a relatively affordable (and self-contained) option, either as a boost for an existing PC or part of an all-new parts list.

Let's dive into our ranking of GPUs past and present so you can figure out how all those cards stack up.

Our full GPU hierarchy using traditional rendering (aka rasterization) comes first, and below that we have our separate ray tracing hierarchy. We've also mashed up these results into one overarching ranking for the complete pictures.

The results are all collected at native resolution, without enabling DLSS, FSR, or XeSS upscaling or frame generation.

As a brief refresher of the cards in this version of our hierarchy, Nvidia's cutting-edge Blackwell architecture and its DLSS 4 suite of tech upgrades the quality of both upscaling and ray reconstruction on RTX 50-series GPUs. It also adds Multi Frame Generation support. As of mid-2026, MFG can add anywhere from one to five AI-generated frames in between natively rendered ones.

Even if you're not into framegen, DLSS 4.5 upscaling and its transformer neural network architecture can offer a big boost in image quality at the same output resolution compared to earlier DLSS versions. That tech can benefit all GeForce RTX GPUs going back to the RTX 20-series, albeit at a heavier performance cost on older hardware compared to earlier DLSS versions.

Nvidia's Ada Lovelace architecture powers its prior-gen RTX 40-series cards. Ada introduced DLSS Frame Generation, which can double output frame rates in supported games. Ada cards don't benefit from MFG, though.

AMD's Radeon RX 9000 series cards, powered by its latest RDNA 4 architecture, get a big boost to both ray-tracing and AI capabilities with dedicated RT and matrix math accelerators. AMD uses those capabilities to enable its FSR 4 upscaler and its much-improved image quality in a small but growing range of titles, whether through native support or with driver-level overrides.

The FSR Redstone update last year brought ML Frame Generation to RX 9000-series cards. Like FSR 4.x upscaling, ML Frame Generation can be directly integrated in games or enabled through a driver override.

Meanwhile, the last-gen RDNA 3 architecture powers seven RX 7000-series seven desktop cards. Until very recently, RX 7000-series cards couldn't officially run FSR 4 upscaling, but an official version of that tech will be made available for those cards in July 2026.

Intel's Battlemage-powered Arc B580 and Arc B570 offer major improvements in performance and efficiency compared to its Alchemist architecture. Battlemage only serves the entry-level end of the graphics card market today. Intel introduced a larger Battlemage chip in the form of the Arc Pro B70 earlier this year, but that product is intended for AI and professional visualization, and it's priced like it.

On page two, you'll find our 2025-2026 test data for posterity. Page three has our 2024–2022 benchmark suite, which covers previous-generation GPUs running an older test suite and a Core i9-12900K. Page four has an even older 2020–2021 test suite with only raster games, running on a Core i9-9900K testbed. The legacy tables are no longer being actively updated. There's also the "Ancient Legacy GPU hierarchy" (without benchmarks, sorted by theoretical performance) for reference purposes.

The following tables sort everything solely by our performance-based GPU benchmarks, from fastest to slowest. Factors including real-world pricing, graphics card power consumption, overall efficiency, and features aren't factored into the rankings here. The latest results use an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D testbed. Here are the tables and benchmark results — rasterization games first, then ray tracing games, and finally the content creation results.

GPU Benchmarks Hierarchy 2026: The tests

For our latest GPU benchmarks, we test every card at a mix of high and ultra settings, depending on the game. We test across three resolutions: 1080p, 1440p, and 4K.

All the scores are expressed as percentages relative to the top-ranking 1080p ultra card, which is of course the GeForce RTX 5090.

Our 2026 test suite comprises the following games. 11 are raster titles, and of those, four have RT support. We test another four games that either require RT to run (DOOM: The Dark Ages and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle) or look best with RT (Assassin's Creed Shadows and Grand Theft Auto V Enhanced.)

• Black Myth Wukong (+RT)
• Alan Wake II (+RT)
• Apex Legends
• Counter-Strike 2
• Fortnite
• Arc Raiders
• Stalker 2
• DOOM: The Dark Ages (RT required)
• Grand Theft Auto V Enhanced (RT only)
• Marvel's Spider-Man 2 (+RT)
• Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (RT required)
• Marvel Rivals
• Assassin's Creed Shadows (RT only)
• Cyberpunk 2077 (+RT)
• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

GPU Benchmarks Hierarchy 2026: Raster gaming

The FPS score is the geometric mean (equal weighting) of all 11 games. Note that the specifications column links directly to our original review for the various GPUs.

Rasterization GPU Benchmarks, Key Findings

• Unsurprisingly, the RTX 5090 takes the top spot across the board, but prices remain stratospheric in mid-2026. It's also difficult to fully engage the GB202 GPU for pure raster gaming unless you're playing at 4K.
• Among current cards, the RX 9060 XT 8GB and RTX 5060 duke it out for the best performance per dollar at 1080p.
• The Radeon RX 9070 is the 1440p raster value champ. The recently introduced RX 9070 GRE sits just behind, and the RTX 5070 is a somewhat distant third.
• At 4K, the RX 9070 XT is the cheapest way to get into 4K 60 FPS native gaming. But the RX 9070 and RTX 5070 are also strong options among current GPUs if you're willing to enable a dash of upscaling.

Overall, if you're only interested in native raster gaming, Radeons are a strong choice in 2026. But Nvidia offers superior DLSS 4.5 upscaling and Multi Frame Generation support across all RTX 50-series cards, which makes matching your GPU's performance to your monitor's refresh rate a snap.

FSR 4.x upscaling isn't on par with DLSS 4.5 yet, and FSR ML Frame Generation is limited to a 2x framerate boost where it's available.

Rasterization GPU Benchmarks Rankings 2026

Remember that we're not including any upscaling or framegen results in the above table. DLSS, FSR, and XeSS offer differing image quality, and we want to keep things directly comparable.

Don't buy any of the cards at the top of our hierarchy without a high-refresh-rate 2560x1440 or 4K monitor to match. Even one of our best gaming CPUs, like the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, can only do so much when a powerful card becomes CPU-bound.

In general, if you're still running a 60 Hz fixed-refresh-rate monitor, it's entirely possible that you're not seeing all the frames your graphics card can generate. Practically any current-gen graphics card from the RTX 5060 on up is good enough for high-refresh-rate gaming at 1080p in 2026 even without upscaling or framegen, and the RTX 5070 or RX 9070 will give you the same experience at 1440p.

In this era of upscaling and framegen, a high-resolution monitor is no longer an obstacle to the best gaming experience. Upscalers work best with higher-than-1080p output resolutions, and the advent of the DLSS 4.5 upscaling model especially means that you can get both smooth performance and crisp image quality from surprisingly modest graphics cards.

But if you don't have a high-refresh-rate 1440p or 4K monitor to begin with, you can't take full advantage of the free boost to both performance and image quality that AI-powered upscaling offers, nor can you enjoy the full smoothness boost of framegen. Check out our list of the best gaming monitors for a potential upgrade if you're still rocking a 1080p 60 Hz display from the 2010s.

On to our 2026 raster results. Among currently available graphics cards, Blackwell rules the top three spots. The RX 9070 XT ends up fourth, just behind the potent (but much more expensive, as of June 2026) RTX 5070 Ti.

Moving into the midrange, the RX 9070's strong raster performance gives it the edge over the RTX 5070, but it's close. And the 5070 has the full arsenal of DLSS 4.5 features at its disposal in virtually every modern game.

Given the image quality and smoothness advantage of DLSS 4.5 upscaling and MFG, the 5070 got the nod in our most recent round of best graphics card picks after our 2026 retests.

The recently introduced RX 9070 GRE lands between the 5070 and the lower-end 5060 Ti and 9060 XT, a position for which Nvidia has no current-gen answer (and no easy path to one.) But AMD may have priced the GRE too high at $549, and we're already seeing big price drops on that product that might make it uniquely appealing in a market where the RTX 5060 Ti is its direct price competition.

The formerly midrange RTX 5060 Ti 16GB is hopelessly overpriced for the performance it offers in mid-2026, and the formerly somewhat affordable 8GB model is also selling for elevated prices now, making the entire 5060 Ti family impossible to recommend.

The RX 9060 XT 16GB holds down the entry-midrange 16GB position by itself, and its $459 price tag isn't so absurd as to make it un-recommendable. But as RX 9070 GREs start going on sale for $500-ish, the step up is going to look mighty tempting.

As we move further down the stack, the $300-ish Arc B580 represents Intel's best card right now, but it remains very much a budget part in mid-2026, trading blows with the RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 4060. The only reason it lands as high as it does in our results is that its 12GB of VRAM prevents its performance from totally plummeting at 4K, as it does for those older 8GB cards.

The RTX 5060 is 24% faster than the Arc B580 at 1080p and 17% faster at 1440p, and its prices are proportionately higher. The scarce RX 9060 XT 8GB is a whole 30% faster at 1080p and 23% faster at 1440p, for similarly more money.

We don't think the potential longevity afforded by the B580's 12GB of VRAM is worth the massive performance tradeoff versus current-gen 8GB GPUs. Save up a few more bucks and grab an RTX 5060 or RX 9060 8GB instead (and enjoy the more widely adopted DLSS 4.5 or FSR 4 versus XeSS while you're at it).

The $250 Arc B570 is still a good value in mid-2026, and as the only modern, decent graphics card available for (well) under $300, it's still worth a look if you can't stretch to an RTX 5050. But recent software ills that took months to fix have led us to consider it more of a gamble than a product worthy of a recommendation, even though those issues did eventually get corrected.

Ray Tracing GPU Benchmarks 2026

For 2026, we're testing a range of RT titles that present a progressively more difficult workload to the GPUs under test.

Grand Theft Auto V Enhanced, DOOM: The Dark Ages, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle are all relatively lightweight RT titles that will run on a wide range of RT-ready hardware. Spider-Man 2, Cyberpunk 2077, and Assassin's Creed Shadows represent greater challenges to compute resources, VRAM, or both. And Black Myth Wukong and Alan Wake II still bring even the most powerful graphics cards to their knees at native resolutions.

Our results for those more demanding games represent more of a jumping-off point for upscaling and framegen rather than native performance. But lighter RT titles mean that you can explore the differences in image quality that ray tracing offers without crushing your GPU flat.

In any case, graphics cards at the top of our RT tests are ready for practically any RT game. But as you'll see, that's still quite the high bar to clear in 2026.

Ray Tracing GPU Benchmarks, Key Findings and Notes

• The RTX 5090 really comes into its own with RT enabled, as expected.
• AMD's RX 9070 XT outperforms the RX 7900 XTX in our RT tests, showing that the ray-tracing improvements in RDNA 4 deliver.
• Even with those improvements, the RX 9070 XT can only manage a tie with the RTX 4070 Ti with RT in play, coming in eighth place overall.
• Maintaining 60 FPS in RT titles (as a good foundation for upscaling and framegen enhancements) is a very tall order. Among recent products, you'll want:
  • an RTX 5060 Ti 16GB, RTX 5070, or RX 9070 GRE to handle ~60 FPS RT at 1080p without running out of VRAM
  • An RTX 4070, an RTX 5070 or RX 9070 at 1440p, or an RX 9070 XT or RTX 5070 Ti for the best possible experience
  • An RTX 5080, RTX 4090, or RTX 5090 at 4K

Ray Tracing GPU Benchmarks Rankings 2026

The RTX 5090 and RTX 4090 lead our RT results. But if you want to enjoy high-end RT without a 4090- or 5090-sized bankroll, the RTX 5070 Ti proves itself as the last card with a reasonable price-to-performance ratio before things get crazy.

The 5070 Ti leads the RX 9070 XT by a wide margin in our RT tests, and it's anywhere from 10%-15% behind the absurdly overpriced RTX 5080 across the board. But if you want the absolute best RT performance possible without stepping up to a 4090 or 5090, the extra cash for a 5080 is your best — and only — option.

That said, you should really explore DLSS 4.5 upscaling and MFG on the 5070 Ti before spending big to step up to a 5080.

The RX 9070 XT remains AMD's fastest RT GPU, outpacing the 7900 XTX across all tested resolutions. It leads the RDNA 3 halo card by about 10% across the board, which is an impressive generational leap considering its 33% deficit in CUs versus the XTX.

But the 9070 XT can only trade blows with the RTX 4070 Ti and RTX 5070 with Nvidia competition in the picture. It beats out the 5070 at 1080p and 1440p, but DLSS 4.5 upscaling and MFG give Blackwell gamers more flexible options for boosting performance with only minimal impact to image quality versus both RDNA 4 (and Ada).

Of course, the RX 9070 XT has FSR 4 upscaling and framegen at its disposal in compatible titles, but support for those features isn't as widespread as DLSS.

Meanwhile, the RX 9070 comes in slightly behind the RTX 5070 at 1080p and 1440p for RT. Even though its 16GB of VRAM prevents the 9070's 4K RT performance from completely nosediving, the average frame rate at that resolution isn't high enough to make it a 4K RT choice.

At 1080p, the RX 9070 GRE presents an intriguing RT option for Radeon gamers, delivering a near-60-FPS average baseline that would make a great FSR 4 foundation. But its 12GB of VRAM quickly becomes a liability at 1440p versus the 9070, and 4K is out of the question.

Overall, our demanding 2026 RT test suite shows that the bar for entry to a good RT experience remains high, especially as elevated prices on the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB mean that the first "real" RT-ready Blackwell card at 1080p and up is the RTX 5070. And on the Radeon side, you really want an RX 9070 GRE or RX 9070 for the best experience.

Test Setup and Hardware for GPU Benchmarks

We've used several different PCs for our testing over the years. The latest update switches to an AMD Zen 5 processor: the unparalleled Ryzen 7 9800X3D and its 3D V-Cache-enhanced performance.

Here are the specifications for our latest GPU test PC.

Tom's Hardware 2026 GPU Benchmarks Testbed

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D
CPU Cooler: Thermalright Phantom Spirit 120 SE
Memory: G.Skill Trident Z5 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5-6000 CL30
Motherboard: Asus TUF Gaming X670E-Plus Wifi
SSD: Inland Performance Plus 4TB
PSU: MSI MPG Ai1600TS 1600W

We test across the three most common gaming resolutions, 1080p, 1440p, and 4K, using a mix of high and ultra settings, depending on the title. Where possible, we use 'reference' cards for all of these tests, like Nvidia's Founders Edition models and AMD's reference designs. Most midrange and lower GPUs don't get reference models, however, and in some cases we only have factory-overclocked cards for testing. We do our best to select cards that are close to the reference specs in such cases.

For each graphics card, we follow the same testing procedure. We run one pass of each benchmark to "warm up" the GPU after launching the game, then perform our actual test runs across each resolution.

We carefully review our test data and check for anomalies. For example, we always expect the RTX 5080 to be faster than the RTX 5070 Ti. If it's not, and we're not in a CPU limited situation, we'll recheck both cards to ensure that our standings our accurate. We also check and retest in cases of subtler issues, as when a transient hitch or frame-time spike causes a large dip in 1% low FPS.

Due to the length of time required for testing each GPU, updated drivers and game patches inevitably come out that can impact performance. We periodically retest a few sample cards to verify our results are still valid, and if not, we go through and retest the affected game(s) and GPU(s). We may also add games to our test suite over time, if one comes out that is popular and conducive to testing. See what makes a good game benchmark for our selection criteria.

GPU Benchmarks: Individual Game Charts

The above tables provide a summary of performance, but for those that want to see the individual game charts, for both the standard and ray tracing test suites, we've got those as well. These charts only cover current-gen GPUs for readability.

These charts are up to date as of June 2026.

GPU Benchmarks — 1080p

GPU Benchmarks — 1440p

GPU Benchmarks — 4K

GPU Benchmarks — Power, Clocks, and Temperatures

Most of our discussion has focused on performance, but for those interested in power and other aspects of the GPUs, here are the appropriate charts. We'll run these from highest to lowest settings, as 4K ultra tends to be the most strenuous workload on most of these GPUs.