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GEAR OF THE YEAR

HOW TO SUM UP 2023’s hardware highlights? It definitely wasn’t the year of the GPU. Every graphics card this year has either been a bit disappointing or a lot overpriced. Storage tech hasn’t exactly blown us away in 2023, either. Sure, you can now buy a PCIe Gen 5 drive, but while the peak numbers look amazing, more nuanced metrics of storage performance, like random access, aren’t all that. And what’s with the Gen 5 drives needing active cooling?

The CPU side of the equation has been a bit better, especially thanks to AMD’s nifty X3D chips with gaming-friendly 3D V-cache. However, we’ll have to wait for late next year for something really compelling from Intel. Screen technology took a huge step forward, too, and not just with the arrival of a critical mass of OLED options. Samsung also moved the game on—for those who can afford it— with the first dual-4K gaming panel. It’s stunning.

We’ve seen some very nice new peripherals too, with the best gaming keyboard for years, an outstanding mouse, and a fantastic set of cans. But if you demand true novelty in 2023, it has to be the new breed of handheld gaming PCs powered by AMD’s amazing Phoenix APU. Even a few years ago, devices like the OneXPlayer OneXFly simply would not have seemed possible.

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Maximum PC
Holiday 2023
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