Good morning everyone. It's a fairly mild Saturday here and as I sit enjoying my first cup of coffee I'm noticing how quiet it is. No mowers, blowers or chanisaws as folks keep on property management. No skid steers and back-up alarms, trenchers and traffic control as the street is torn apart to underground some new phone lines. One hopes this includes fiber for some internet speeds to finally take this place out of 2005. Of course it is the weekend so the crews won't be out. Even just the occasional bird and the whoosh of a car going by. Maybe it'll be a pretty chill day.
If you're looking for a new GPU there are a few coming right up. These are less powerful models but perhaps the price will entice. For instance the 7900 XTX is currently still in the $900 - $1300 range. Even refurbished cards don't see much of a price drop. But, if you're like me and play at 1440p or don't mind a little bit of frame loss at 4k you might keep an eye our for upcoming GRE (Golden Rabbit Edition) models. The 7900 GRE looks like a little bit more powerful 6800 XT and it set to launch at $649. The price gap pretty enormous compared to even the the 7900 XT around $800. Also launching soon is the 7800 XT. This will be a higher end 1080p and middle of the range 1440p card and it'll also have a GRE variant.
I'm using a 6800 non XT and I happen to think that 1440p is still the sweet spot for PC gaming. It's more affordable than 4k by a long shot and the pixel density is miles above 1080p while still retaining higher frame rates and ultimately using fewer resources than 4k. Not to mention these upcoming GRE models, while cut down, still contain the newest features AMD has available. So perhaps if you've been holding out on upgrading, keep an eye out. Here's a fairly dense article from Tom's Hardware that show some GRE specs. Hopefully when reviews come out we can really begin to see if it's worth having even more SKU's in the market.
What are we playing?
AJ: Wild Guns and Tiny Tina's Wonderlands.
Scrooloose: Diablo 4 mostly when I've got the time this weekend.
Greywolfe: i'm currently winding down a very terrible visual novel called major\minor. DO NOT PLAY OH GOD. the plot's banal, the writing is terrible, the characters are bland, just everything about it is awful. [and that's not even getting into the self-insert of the developer into the game.] AVOID. having said that, i'll do a second playthrough to get the true ending and see how miserable /that/ is. :P