At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Great sound for shooters Ultra simple setup No bells and whistles Microphone can be mounted on the left or right Cons Expensive Poor availability Our Verdict Fostex upgrades the T50RP MK4g a microphone and thus the adds the “Plus” title. Reduced to the essentials—the sound and a functional microphone—the Fostex T50RP MK4g is a fantastic gaming headset that shines with its spatial audio, especially in competitive shooters. On the whole, however, it’s not easy to recommend to everyone because it’s very specialized and there are cheaper headsets with more functions. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Fostex T50RP MK4g+ Retailer Price $249.99 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Fostex is a traditional Japanese manufacturer of high-end audio equipment that is probably only known to enthusiasts. The most expensive headphones, for example, cost well over $2,000. In 2024, the company launched a new edition of one of its most popular studio headphones: the Fostex T50RP MK4. What the manufacturer probably didn’t expect was that these headphones would become an insider tip among Japanese gamers. In order to better appeal to this target group, Fostex printed a second package for the device and simply added a “g” to the product name—for “Gaming”. A few months later, the manufacturer added a “Pro”, enclosed a microphone and then released the third version, the “T50RP MK4g Pro”. So why do Japanese gamers go for a wired headset that costs around $250? Two reasons: Firstly, it’s ideal for shooters and secondly, it does away with extraneous bells and whistles—in fact, it has none at all. So how do the headphones sound? Really quite balanced. Somewhat emphasized in the middle, incredibly detailed, but overall very balanced. Fostex T50RP MK4g: Design It starts with the packaging: The Fostex T50RP MK4g comes in a simple printed cardboard box and lies there wrapped in bubble wrap. The scope of delivery includes a microphone into which the 2-meter-long cable with 3.5mm combo jack plug are integrated. If you want to separate the signal into output (headphones) and input (microphone) because your PC has separate sockets, you will need an appropriate splitter. Most consoles and laptops, however, have a suitable socket. Unboxing the Fostex T50RP MK4g is straightforward, if unexciting.Eugen Wegmann The technical data, including a small connection diagram, is simply printed on the box. A compact instruction manual is included, but the function is actually self-explanatory. It’s a wired headset. Plug goes in, sound comes out and goes in through the microphone. No witchcraft. The simplicity is also reflected in the weight: without the microphone, the model weighs just 330 grams. The headphones themselves are just as simple as the packaging and scope of delivery: They’re completely black, the earpiece shells are made of admittedly somewhat cheap-looking plastic, and the headband and ear pads are covered in artificial leather. The two metal rails for adjusting the length of the headband are probably the most striking feature. Cables protrude between them, connecting the two earpieces and giving the headphones a touch of non-utilitarian industrial design. Probably the most interesting feature of the Fostex T50RP MK4g is that you can connect the microphone to the left or right shell, as both sides have a socket. The microphone can be connected to both the left and right shell.Eugen Wegmann The headset also has a small remote control on the cable, which you can use to mute the microphone and adjust the headphone volume. Fostex has opted for a slider rather than a wheel which is rather unusual, but works well enough. In terms of construction, the Fostex T50RP MK4g are semi-open headphones, which means that they let through more ambient noise than closed headphones, but less than open headphones. This compromise allows for a reasonably natural sound without letting too much outside noise through. The fit is also more comfortable than with most closed headphones, which is certainly helped by the thick, soft ear pads. Eugen Wegmann Inside, Fostex uses magnetostatic drivers, sometimes also called planar-magnetic drivers. In terms of both price and quality, the technology lies somewhere between the most widely used (electro)dynamic drivers and the more expensive and rarer electrostatic drivers. Fostex T50RP MK4g: Sound So how do the headphones sound? Really quite balanced. Somewhat emphasized in the middle, incredibly detailed, but overall very balanced. While balance is often desirable in many other areas, it is rarely the case with audio products. This is because in the most common use case—music in the consumer segment—balanced sound often goes hand in hand with a certain flatness, which is certainly also dependent on current trends. For example, if you look at the current music landscape, you’ll realize that it has, by and large, had a bias towards bass for over 10 years. Balanced headphones like the Fostex T50RP MK4g can’t reproduce this particularly well because they simply don’t have enough oomph in the bass. But that’s hardly surprising, because the Fostex is primarily a studio headphone. People use them for mixing in recording studios, where this characteristic is explicitly desired. It just so happens that this sound profile is also ideal for competitive shooters, where the focus is less on how much power a weapon has and more on where the opponents are located. The emphasized mids are particularly helpful here, while the bass and treble play a subordinate role. What’s more, the headphones offer incredibly good spatial audio, i.e. they can show very well where something is located in the game – without any virtual surround sound or similar technologies that simulate spatiality. It’s really fascinating and the main reason why these headphones have become an insider tip. Eugen Wegmann Fostex T50RP MK4g: Microphone Basically, there is not much to criticize about the microphone of the Fostex T50RP MK4g. It’s largely an ordinary condenser microphone on a flexible arm and with a small foam pop guard. It sounds good—no more, no less. It’s more than adequate for communication via Discord and the like. My only real criticism is its omnidirectional characteristic: this means that the microphone picks up sounds from any direction (more or less) equally loudly, including ambient noise that doesn’t come from the direction of your mouth, such as street noise through an open window. Fostex would probably have done better with a cardioid pattern. Is the Fostex T50RP MK4g worth it? With the upgrade to the headset, Fostex has finally nailed it with the T50RP MK4g, at least for all those who don’t want any unnecessary bells and whistles. The company remedies most of the criticisms in my original conclusion with the microphone alone. What remains is that the Fostex T50RP MK4g is still a rather expensive product for a relatively limited target group. This is because the vast majority of gamers will prefer a wireless headset for its flexibility alone, allowing them to do little things around the house while they wait for the next match without missing it or having to pull the cable out of the socket. The biggest problem for American consumers is availability. Being a bit of a niche Japanese band, Fostex products aren’t sold everywhere and lack of availability is even more pronounced with the T50RP MK4g than with the basic model, as it’s currently only available from a very limited number of suppliers in the U.S. Read...

Arguing over the best hardware of the year is usually fun. That’s as true as ever in 2025, when Brad Chacos, Adam Patrick Murray, Will Smith, and Alaina Yee (hi, it’s me) rolled up our sleeves and got down to the messy business of naming our top hardware picks. This annual tradition on The Full Nerd always involves twists and turns, especially given our individual differences on how we define “best.” But you can see the effect of a multitude of wearying trends—tariffs, AI, increased memory costs—on the debates. In past years, alliances formed faster and positions softened less. More shouting happened, too. But Brad had no reason to invoke journalistic integrity this time around. We all saw the bright spots for hardware clearly; so too with the ugly news in the industry. Instead, we argued more gently. We rallied together to remember Gordon Mah Ung, the creator and long-time host of The Full Nerd, with a new award category in his honor. And we all left feeling satisfied with the winners. Mostly. Here are the results. (Note: This list is separate from PCWorld’s nominees for the best PC hardware and software of 2025. The winners of “Nerdies,” as we like to call these awards, are chosen by The Full Nerd crew alone, and focus more specifically on enthusiast tech. If you’d like to catch our show in real time, be sure to subscribe to the Full Nerd channel on YouTube!) Welcome to The Full Nerd newsletter—your weekly dose of hardware talk from the enthusiasts at PCWorld. Missed the surprising topics on our YouTube show or latest news from across the web? You’re in the right place. Want this newsletter to come directly to your inbox? Sign up on our website! And The Full Nerd 2025 award winners are… As long-time viewers of the show may have expected, we once again slightly retooled the categories for this year. We expanded on “accessory,” choosing to make that slot open to components or accessories. And as mentioned, our team decided to honor Gordon with a brand-new category, meant to embody his love for (and fascination with) any technology that furthered innovation. No restrictions on how niche or widely applicable. The categories we brawled over this year: Best CPU Best GPU Best PC component / accessory Best trend Worst trend Gordon Mah Ung Wild Card Best CPU: AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 (Strix Halo) Will mini-PCs powered by chips like Strix Halo (such as this GMKtec model) become the norm? Time will tell. Christoph Hoffmann If you define “best” as hardware that pushes boundaries, then no other CPU stood out as clearly as AMD’s boundary-shattering Ryzen AI Max+ 395 (aka Strix Halo). Was it only available in select products? Sure. But it showed how CPUs with integrated graphics don’t have to play second fiddle to typical discrete GPU setups.  Strix Halo (and future chips like it) could upend our assumptions about what a good gaming PC looks like. In this mobile processor, AMD packed in a Radeon GPU capable of similar performance to Nvidia’s RTX 4070 or 5070. A maximum of 128GB of embedded memory can fuel it as well. And so devices we saw sporting the AI Max+ 395, like the Framework desktop and the ASUS Rog Flow Z13, weren’t just beasts at gaming. They also represent form factors that haven’t really packed such a strong punch before. For example, the Flow Z13 is a tablet notebook capable of gaming in ways that far exceeds other tablets. So while Adam believes in Strix Halo’s promise for handheld gaming PCs, the overall TFN crew anticipates a big splash across the board. Enough so that Brad thinks that Nvidia’s partnership with Intel came about in part to compete on this front. Best GPU: AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT Adam Patrick Murray / Foundry Despite Will’s valiant attempt to elevate the Tegra T239 (the Switch 2’s SoC) above all other GPUs, our debate rapidly focused on Nvidia and AMD’s major PC graphics card launches this year. In contrast to the muted rivalry on the CPU side, the two largest consumer GPU makers took off their gloves, with Nvidia launching its ferocious 50-series lineup and AMD its own monstrous 9000-series offerings. Ultimately, AMD’s Radeon RX 9070 XT took the top spot, despite back-and-forth over the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090’s sheer insanity and the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti’s mix of performance, value, and availability. Team Red earned this second award for 2025 due to the 9070 XT’s combo of strong raw performance and major strides with its FSR upscaling tech.  True, FSR Redstone can’t quite deliver the same polish as Nvidia’s more seasoned DLSS enhancements. But AMD had another thing going for it that held sway with this judging panel: better support on Linux. You may not yet be able to officially call 2025 the year of Linux, but the operating system sure commands more attention these days. Best PC accessory: MSI MPG 272URX QD-OLED 4K monitor Matthew Smith / Foundry Sometimes when you pair a PC with the right accoutrements, you might not even notice that you lack flagship hardware in your rig. Other times, the right secondary equipment elevates the utter joy of owning blazing-fast parts. Our winner for 2025’s best component or accessory is an example of the latter—and what a beautiful one at that. Despite its unpronounceable name, MSI’s MPG 272URX QD-OLED monitor breaks barriers. It’s among the first 4K OLED displays to sport a refresh rate at 240Hz, blending gorgeous, rich color with buttery-smooth output. You can’t get much better than this for rapid refresh rate 4K monitors—and as our reviewer says, it’s not just a superb 4K gaming monitor, but a fantastic all-around display for office tasks, HDR movies, and creative work, too. Also getting nods as runners-up: The ASUS Rog Falcata, an excellent off-the-shelf option for a luxe ergonomic mechanical keyboard, and SilverStone’s vintage-vibes FLP-02 PC case, which brings back the best of the 90s and all its beige glory. Best trend: Linux gets gud Pexels A long-standing joke has been the awaited rise of Linux. (We even asked “Is this the year of Linux?” while among the nerdiest of nerds at a Micro Center opening earlier this year.) But by the end of this year, the meme felt…real. A confluence of circumstances led to this strange new world. Windows 10’s death sparked interest in alternative operating systems, thanks to Windows 11’s bloat and outright incompatibility with older yet still usable hardware. A greater number of newbie-friendly distros exist. And, perhaps most importantly, demographics have also shifted among the user base, with friendlier voices becoming louder, setting a more pleasant tone for the Linux-curious. We’ve seen this trend up close and personal on The Full Nerd’s own Discord server, with an influx of Linux users who discovered us through our Dual Boot Diaries show. Our newest members have added more depth and dimension to our community, offering a wealth of knowledge (and a wide variety of distro suggestions) to the uninitiated and experienced alike. Worst trend: AI ruins everything RIP affordable tech. Thanks, AI.Zoomik / Shutterstock.com Last year, we voted for “enshittification” (pardon our French) as the worst trend of the year, a phenomenon driven by AI’s growing insertion into, well, everything. You couldn’t turn any direction without running into an app or service that had deteriorated in quality. You could argue that this year, AI models and the insertion of AI-powered features have improved. That’s true to a degree, but not enough to fix the messy output, buggy software, or otherwise worsened quality of the tech we use daily. (Even more aggravating, we’re often now paying companies for subscriptions that use our data to train AI models.) More concerning, AI has contributed to a sudden, rapid decline in affordability and accessibility of consumer PC hardware—most notably memory, which has exploded in price (and is found in just about everything we take for granted in life nowadays). We’re now unsure of the future for the PC as we know it, with all of us feeling some degree of concern about building, upgradability, and affordability in the coming months. The idea that we could return to a time when only the very well-to-do could afford modern technology is unsettling. Gordon Mah Ung Wild Card: “What is a frame?” AMD For decades, enthusiasts only discussed gaming in terms of frames, and simple terms at that: Those rendered natively by a graphics card, and their quantity per second. But more recently, companies and gamers alike have begun to challenge that approach, digging with greater precision into the details. And that matches Gordon’s brand of fine-tuned nerdery. So whether flipping on Nvidia’s multi-frame generation tech or firing up programs that record microstutter in games, rethinking what constitutes high-quality gaming performance is exactly the kind of thing that Gordon would have loved. I think he would have been championing these new approaches himself, even. In this episode of The Full Nerd As you already know, in this episode of The Full Nerd, we duke it out over the best hardware of 2025—but the results detailed above leave out the twists and turns (and random alliances) in our discussions. Plus hilariously choice quotes, courtesy of one Will Smith. For example: Adam: All right, tell us why the 5090 is the best GPU of 2025.Will: It’s real fast, Adam. You should catch the full episode (including the preshow!) for more of these debate hijinks. We may not have forced chat to break any ties (especially in ways that Brad still has not forgiven me for), but we still had lots of fun despite the bummer year. Also, stay tuned for not just one but TWO streams next week! (Details in my sign-off below.) Willis Lai / Foundry Missed our live show? Subscribe now to The Full Nerd Network YouTube channel, and activate notifications. We also answer viewer questions in real-time! Don’t miss out on our NEW shows too—you can catch episodes of Dual Boot Diaries and The Full Nerd: Extra Edition now! And if you need more hardware talk during the rest of the week, come join our Discord community—it’s full of cool, laid-back nerds. This week’s ominous nerd news According to analysts, we’ll soon see laptops reflect the ongoing woes with memory availability and affordability. I am not looking forward to a regression in configuration options. Nor am I happy to hear that RAM pricing hurts so bad that DDR4 compatible processors (like the AMD 5800X3D) now cost a ton, too. Never thought I’d cross my fingers for AMD to start producing more Zen 3 chips soon, but here we are. Thiago Trevisan / IDG Mid-range laptops may return to 8GB RAM as default: I hate it. I also hate that Windows 11’s bloat is the reason budget laptops aren’t yet set to slide back down to 4GB. Also, Kingston says to buy your RAM now: In an interview with our very own Mark Hachman, a company representative warns that prices will only go up. We all knew this to be true, but still. Ouch. &*#% yeah: I’m glad we have science proving the benefits of swearing. I plan to make use of this knowledge when struggling through my push-ups next Tuesday. A $100 Steam Machine with Bazzite? This project sounds absolutely up Will’s alley. I hereby nominate him for giving it a go and reporting back to us on how it went. You can get a Raspberry Pi to train you in chess: Here’s a neat project, courtesy of my German colleagues at PCWelt. But as miraculous as Raspberry Pis can be, I don’t think they can do the impossible. (That is: Train me in chess.) Adam Patrick Murray / IDG Feels like the pandemic again: Never thought I would have sold an old webcam for far more than I paid, but such was 2020. Now apparently 5800X3D owners have the same option. I don’t even have a wall big enough for a 100-inch TV: But you know what, I’d still be interested in seeing one of these OLED competitors up close. Who needs windows or sunlight, right? That’s nuts: Micron said in a recent earnings call that it can only meet about 50 to 66 percent of demand. Makes more sense now why Crucial got axed so abruptly, I guess. Who needs a graphics card, anyway? Each year, Mike Crider updates his handy guide to games that don’t need a graphics card. It’s a perfect thing to keep in your back pocket when helping dole out tech advice during the holidays (as we all inevitably do). What even happened over there: If you can’t handle depressing PC carnage, avoid this story about a man who apparently lost 50 SSDs to a destructive young child. The pictures are brutal. Coming next week… By the way, we have a surprise for you all next Monday—we’re having a tribute stream to Gordon starting at around 11am Pacific! Come hang out for a variety show, set to span several hours. What exactly we’ll be doing? A little building, a little chatting, and more! ?? And of course, on Tuesday, it’s time for us to score how well we did at foreseeing the future. Will has a lot of 2025 predictions on the board. Like double the rest of us. I for one am interested to see how accurate he was. Catch you all soon! ~Alaina This newsletter is dedicated to the memory of Gordon Mah Ung, founder and host of The Full Nerd, and executive editor of hardware at PCWorld. Read...

Many of the one million-plus viewers who settled into the Big Bash League after the Ashes on Thursday may be wondering why there is different technology used for the Tests in this country and for Cricket Australia’s Twenty20 competition. Read...

Motorola provides telecommunications, surveillance and military technology to the Israeli military and illegal Israeli settlements. Read...

Don’t want to deal with rearranging your living room furniture to place Dolby Atmos speakers in just the right place? Dolby’s new and more flexible Atmos technology lets you decide where your speakers go, and the feature has arrived in a soundbar for the first time.  Slated to take the spotlight at CES next month, the LG H7 soundbar is just one component of the manufacturer’s new and modular Sound Suite system, which also incorporates surround speakers (in two sizes) and a subwoofer.  LG hasn’t announced pricing or shipping details for the Sound Suite quite yet (hopefully we’ll learn more once CES kicks off in early January), but what we do know is that the system works with Dolby Atmos FlexConnect, a Dolby technology that lets you place FlexConnect-enabled Atmos speakers whenever you like in a room.  TCL was the first home-entertainment manufacturer to partner with Dolby on its new “Atmos-anywhere” technology, with TCL’s Dolby Atmos FlexConnect TVs and speakers arriving in stores back in August.   Dolby Atmos FlexConnect gear only plays nice with components that also employ the technology. For example, TCL’s Atmos FlexConnect speakers must be paired with specific and similarly equipped TCL QD-Mini LED TV models, meaning you can’t use the TCL Atmos FlexConnect speakers with just any TV. A similar limitation applies with LG’s Dolby Atmos FlexConnect equipment, except this time, the LG H7 soundbar itself can serve as the main hub for LG’s FlexConnect speakers, meaning you can use LG’s new FlexConnect gear with any TV, providing you’re using the H7 soundbar. LG also says it will bring FlexConnect to its 2026 lineup of “premium” TVs and to select 2025 models via a software update, good for users who elect to buy LG’s new Dolby Atmos FlexConnect satellite speakers or subwoofer without the soundbar. Powered by LG’s Alpha 11 AI Processor Gen 3, the LG H7 soundbar boasts an AI Sound Pro+ mode that intelligently up-mixes stereo audio to multi-channel sound while automatically adjusting its audio signature depending on the content you’re watching.  Also included in the LG Sound Suite are M7 and M2 surround speakers as well as the W7 subwoofer (we’re awaiting more details on those speakers). If you combine the H7 soundbar with four M7 or M2 speakers plus the subwoofer, you’ll wind up with a full-on 13.1.7-channel configuration, LG says.  The overall LG Sound Suite system boasts an ultra wideband-enabled “Sound Follow” feature that positions the “sweet spot” wherever you’re sitting, while Room Calibration Pro tailors the audio depending on the acoustics of the room.  This news story is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best smart speakers. Read...

This JBL PartyBox Encore Essential portable Bluetooth speaker has been the heart of nearly all my friend and family gatherings in the past year. The best news for you, though, is that it’s on sale right now! Act fast and you can get it for 39% off on Amazon, an incredible discount that brings it down to one of its best prices ever: $200 (was $330). View this Amazon deal The JBL PartyBox Encore Essential is one of the best portable Bluetooth speakers for parties and events. It’s large, fairly heavy, and loud. Seriously, it gets really loud. To set the mood, it even features a dynamic light show feature that’ll dazzle your guests, but you can turn it off and ignore it if that’s not really the vibe you want to put out. It comes with a built-in handle, too, so it’s easy to move around. That said, although it’s a “portable” Bluetooth speaker, don’t expect it to be small or light enough that you can carry it with you when you go, say, hiking—it’s definitely not for that. It’s more for indoor venues or your backyard patio. You could take it to the pool, though, and you won’t have to worry about water damage because it’s IPX4 splash-proof. Measurement-wise, it’s 12.9 inches tall, 10.9 inches wide, and 11.5 inches deep. It ain’t massive, but it’s pretty hefty. If you want to take things to the next level, you can wirelessly pair it with two other speakers using JBL’s True Wireless Stereo technology. But for the most part, it’s an incredible speaker on its own—and this is a fantastic deal, so get it now for just $200 before this deal expires! Save $130 on the JBL Partybox Encore Essential while you canBuy now at Amazon Read...

Imagine it’s the year 2030 and Nvidia has just announced its newest RTX 7000-series graphics cards. But the cheapest of the cards is priced over $2,000 and the top model is nearly double that. The series offer minimal uplift on rendering performance, but they’re incredibly good at accelerated upscaling and frame generation. Plus, memory bandwidth is almost double over the last-gen models. Let’s continue the hypothetical: Nvidia’s new xx60-series cards aren’t expected for months while Nvidia stockpiles enough defective GPUs. But don’t worry if you can’t afford these new cards or don’t want to wait. Why? Because GeForce Now offers the full upgrade right now for an “affordable” monthly fee, especially with an annual sub locked in. I wrote the above as a nightmare scenario, but it’s odd how close it sounds to the launch of the RTX 50-series. It’s a history that seems likely to repeat and accelerate as Nvidia’s gaming division becomes an ever-more-minor side hustle to its AI initiatives. Nvidia could effectively give up on gaming in the near future, and that might be the most financially sensible thing to do if the AI bubble doesn’t burst. But what would happen if they did? Just follow the money The numbers behind my pessimistic prognosis paint a stark picture. Nvidia’s Q3 2025 revenue topped $57 billion. Guess how much of that money came from data centers? A whopping $51.2 billion. That’s just shy of 90% of its total revenue and represents a 25% increase over the previous quarter and a 66% increase year on year. How much revenue do you think Nvidia pulled in from gaming? A measly $4.3 billion by comparison. That’s down 1% on the previous quarter, and that’s despite having the most powerful graphics cards available and with stock and prices being far more favorable than they were earlier in the year. It’s still up 30% on last year, but the difference in potential between data centers and gaming is staggering. Nvidia Indeed, gaming makes up less than 8% of Nvidia’s total revenue as of now, and although the overall income from gaming continues to increase, it’s miniscule in comparison to its data center take. Bullfincher highlights how quickly that’s changed, too: just a few years ago, gaming represented over 33% of Nvidia’s total revenue. Where do you think it’s going to be in another five years? Assuming the AI bubble doesn’t pop as catastrophically as it could, gaming is going to become a tiny footnote on Nvidia’s balance sheet. Will Jensen Huang even bother doing gaming hardware keynotes at that point? Mark Hachman / IDG Nvidia might be the biggest megacorp in this space, but its contemporaries show similar gaming red flags on their balance sheets. AMD made just over $9 billion this past quarter, but $4.3 billion was from data center sales while only $1.3 billion came from gaming. That’s much better than last year—when data centers brought in $3.5 billion and gaming just $462 million—but data centers are still a far bigger portion of AMD’s revenue than gaming. These numbers make a compelling case for giving up some interest and investment in gaming hardware development. It doesn’t mean they’re going to stop make gaming GPUs entirely. (Or does it?) But if you’re Jensen Huang facing off against shareholders who are demanding the revenue numbers go up as much as possible as fast as possible, what are you going to sell them on: a new gaming GPU that has historically low margins, or a new generation of data center hardware to feed into the accelerating AI bubble with untold potential? You could even argue that Nvidia’s increasing focus over the past few years on DLSS and ray tracing over pure rasterization performance is an early sign of it putting its eggs in the data center basket. A canary in the RAM mines The biggest side effect of all these new data center builds hasn’t been GPU scarcity, surprisingly. (At least, not to the degree we saw during the cryptocurrency craze.) Rather, it’s skyrocketing memory prices. RAM kits have increased in price by over 200 percent in some cases, making large capacity kits more costly than top-tier GPUs. Some modest RAM options are even more expensive than gaming consoles. Consumer RAM is shooting up in price because all the major memory manufacturers are inundated with orders for data center memory, like HBM and LPDDR. Some have begun pivoting their fabrication lines to these higher-margin memory types, leading to shortages of NAND chips—and, consequently, shortages of consumer memory and SSDs. Nor Gal / Shutterstock.com Those shortages are making RAM and SSDs far more expensive. And yet, despite the increased margins and diminishing supply versus demand, Micron just closed its Crucial brand of consumer RAM and SSDs. It was profitable, it was popular, it had a distinct market niche that served consumers and gamers for decades. But even Micron didn’t see the point of keeping it going when it could instead make heaps more cash from selling Micron NAND chips and server memory. And if Micron is so willing to pull out of the consumer space due to AI-driven demand, how much more will Nvidia be tempted to do the same? What’s stopping Nvidia from reaching the same conclusion? For further proof of this future, Nvidia is rumored to be cutting its gaming GPU supply in 2026 due to memory shortages. It’s especially notable how Nvidia appears to be cutting the more affordable mid-range graphics cards first, leaving ultra-budget and ultra-high-end lines intact for now. Is this just the first step in Nvidia leaving gamers behind? Where things could go from here There are some intriguing comparisons to make between Nvidia and other big businesses that found growth and revenue in avenues that weren’t where they started. IBM went from being the name in computing hardware to one that largely runs in the background. It sold off its core hardware businesses and became a software and services company that’s still worth tens of billions of dollars. It recently spun off again, creating a separate company to handle IT services while the core business refocused on cloud computing and AI. Nvidia could do that: spin or sell off its gaming divisions and license its GPU technology to that spun-or-sold-off subsidiary. Notice the lack of graphics cards in this Nvidia promo image.Nvidia Perhaps Nvidia could even end up like Adobe. In the mid-2010s, the developer of Photoshop launched Creative Cloud and slowly pushed all its once-in-perpetuity software licenses into a subscription model that’s still going on today. Could that apply to Nvidia’s GeForce Now streaming service? It had 25 million subscribers as of 2023 and ran on GPUs designed for data center server racks. Nvidia could leave dedicated desktop and laptop GPUs behind entirely and pivot its gaming divisions into software/hardware-as-a-service firms. If gaming goes a similar way to TV and movie streaming, it’s possible Nvidia could even pull a Netflix and slowly de-emphasize its DVD-like hardware business in favor of powering it all from the cloud. Gaming won’t die, but it will change As much as this article is heavy on the doom, Nvidia is unlikely to exit gaming entirely. People want to play games and there’s money to be made there, so someone will keep tapping that market. But how that revenue is extracted may change—dramatically so. Microsoft is already talking about making the next Xbox more of a PC/console hybrid. And with the latest Xbox consoles being the third wheel of this generation, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see the future of Xbox focus more on streaming games than buying/owning them. Xbox Game Pass already has over 37 million subscribers—that’s more than the number of Xbox Series X/S consoles sold this generation. Nvidia could do something similar. Or it could spin off. Or it could stop making gaming GPUs entirely. The only thing we know for sure is this: when a gaming company starts making astronomical amounts of money due to AI-driven demand, it’s hard to imagine it wouldn’t be tempted to dive head-first into an AI-first strategy at the expense of gaming. Further reading: PC vs. consoles? Gaming’s future is blurrier than ever Read...

Imagine it’s the year 2030 and Nvidia has just announced its newest RTX 7000-series graphics cards. But the cheapest of the cards is priced over $2,000 and the top model is nearly double that. The series offer minimal uplift on rendering performance, but they’re incredibly good at accelerated upscaling and frame generation. Plus, memory bandwidth is almost double over the last-gen models. Let’s continue the hypothetical: Nvidia’s new xx60-series cards aren’t expected for months while Nvidia stockpiles enough defective GPUs. But don’t worry if you can’t afford these new cards or don’t want to wait. Why? Because GeForce Now offers the full upgrade right now for an “affordable” monthly fee, especially with an annual sub locked in. I wrote the above as a nightmare scenario, but it’s odd how close it sounds to the launch of the RTX 50-series. It’s a history that seems likely to repeat and accelerate as Nvidia’s gaming division becomes an ever-more-minor side hustle to its AI initiatives. Nvidia could effectively give up on gaming in the near future, and that might be the most financially sensible thing to do if the AI bubble doesn’t burst. But what would happen if they did? Just follow the money The numbers behind my pessimistic prognosis paint a stark picture. Nvidia’s Q3 2025 revenue topped $57 billion. Guess how much of that money came from data centers? A whopping $51.2 billion. That’s just shy of 90% of its total revenue and represents a 25% increase over the previous quarter and a 66% increase year on year. How much revenue do you think Nvidia pulled in from gaming? A measly $4.3 billion by comparison. That’s down 1% on the previous quarter, and that’s despite having the most powerful graphics cards available and with stock and prices being far more favorable than they were earlier in the year. It’s still up 30% on last year, but the difference in potential between data centers and gaming is staggering. Nvidia Indeed, gaming makes up less than 8% of Nvidia’s total revenue as of now, and although the overall income from gaming continues to increase, it’s miniscule in comparison to its data center take. Bullfincher highlights how quickly that’s changed, too: just a few years ago, gaming represented over 33% of Nvidia’s total revenue. Where do you think it’s going to be in another five years? Assuming the AI bubble doesn’t pop as catastrophically as it could, gaming is going to become a tiny footnote on Nvidia’s balance sheet. Will Jensen Huang even bother doing gaming hardware keynotes at that point? Mark Hachman / IDG Nvidia might be the biggest megacorp in this space, but its contemporaries show similar gaming red flags on their balance sheets. AMD made just over $9 billion this past quarter, but $4.3 billion was from data center sales while only $1.3 billion came from gaming. That’s much better than last year—when data centers brought in $3.5 billion and gaming just $462 million—but data centers are still a far bigger portion of AMD’s revenue than gaming. These numbers make a compelling case for giving up some interest and investment in gaming hardware development. It doesn’t mean they’re going to stop make gaming GPUs entirely. (Or does it?) But if you’re Jensen Huang facing off against shareholders who are demanding the revenue numbers go up as much as possible as fast as possible, what are you going to sell them on: a new gaming GPU that has historically low margins, or a new generation of data center hardware to feed into the accelerating AI bubble with untold potential? You could even argue that Nvidia’s increasing focus over the past few years on DLSS and ray tracing over pure rasterization performance is an early sign of it putting its eggs in the data center basket. A canary in the RAM mines The biggest side effect of all these new data center builds hasn’t been GPU scarcity, surprisingly. (At least, not to the degree we saw during the cryptocurrency craze.) Rather, it’s skyrocketing memory prices. RAM kits have increased in price by over 200 percent in some cases, making large capacity kits more costly than top-tier GPUs. Some modest RAM options are even more expensive than gaming consoles. Consumer RAM is shooting up in price because all the major memory manufacturers are inundated with orders for data center memory, like HBM and LPDDR. Some have begun pivoting their fabrication lines to these higher-margin memory types, leading to shortages of NAND chips—and, consequently, shortages of consumer memory and SSDs. Nor Gal / Shutterstock.com Those shortages are making RAM and SSDs far more expensive. And yet, despite the increased margins and diminishing supply versus demand, Micron just closed its Crucial brand of consumer RAM and SSDs. It was profitable, it was popular, it had a distinct market niche that served consumers and gamers for decades. But even Micron didn’t see the point of keeping it going when it could instead make heaps more cash from selling Micron NAND chips and server memory. And if Micron is so willing to pull out of the consumer space due to AI-driven demand, how much more will Nvidia be tempted to do the same? What’s stopping Nvidia from reaching the same conclusion? For further proof of this future, Nvidia is rumored to be cutting its gaming GPU supply in 2026 due to memory shortages. It’s especially notable how Nvidia appears to be cutting the more affordable mid-range graphics cards first, leaving ultra-budget and ultra-high-end lines intact for now. Is this just the first step in Nvidia leaving gamers behind? Where things could go from here There are some intriguing comparisons to make between Nvidia and other big businesses that found growth and revenue in avenues that weren’t where they started. IBM went from being the name in computing hardware to one that largely runs in the background. It sold off its core hardware businesses and became a software and services company that’s still worth tens of billions of dollars. It recently spun off again, creating a separate company to handle IT services while the core business refocused on cloud computing and AI. Nvidia could do that: spin or sell off its gaming divisions and license its GPU technology to that spun-or-sold-off subsidiary. Notice the lack of graphics cards in this Nvidia promo image.Nvidia Perhaps Nvidia could even end up like Adobe. In the mid-2010s, the developer of Photoshop launched Creative Cloud and slowly pushed all its once-in-perpetuity software licenses into a subscription model that’s still going on today. Could that apply to Nvidia’s GeForce Now streaming service? It had 25 million subscribers as of 2023 and ran on GPUs designed for data center server racks. Nvidia could leave dedicated desktop and laptop GPUs behind entirely and pivot its gaming divisions into software/hardware-as-a-service firms. If gaming goes a similar way to TV and movie streaming, it’s possible Nvidia could even pull a Netflix and slowly de-emphasize its DVD-like hardware business in favor of powering it all from the cloud. Gaming won’t die, but it will change As much as this article is heavy on the doom, Nvidia is unlikely to exit gaming entirely. People want to play games and there’s money to be made there, so someone will keep tapping that market. But how that revenue is extracted may change—dramatically so. Microsoft is already talking about making the next Xbox more of a PC/console hybrid. And with the latest Xbox consoles being the third wheel of this generation, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see the future of Xbox focus more on streaming games than buying/owning them. Xbox Game Pass already has over 37 million subscribers—that’s more than the number of Xbox Series X/S consoles sold this generation. Nvidia could do something similar. Or it could spin off. Or it could stop making gaming GPUs entirely. The only thing we know for sure is this: when a gaming company starts making astronomical amounts of money due to AI-driven demand, it’s hard to imagine it wouldn’t be tempted to dive head-first into an AI-first strategy at the expense of gaming. Further reading: PC vs. consoles? Gaming’s future is blurrier than ever Read...

Data is one of the most important possessions we have these days. Whether it’s crucial documents for work or those irreplaceable photos and videos of the kids, these digital files are precious and need to be protected. But, with so many threats now targeted at us every day, how can we keep our data safe from corruption, theft or even being held to ransom by online hackers? ESET Cybersecurity software has the answers. Keeping your data safe from thieves and hackers It seems like hardly a week goes by without some cyber-attack being reported on the news. These range from raids on government departments, to online retailers or banks being targeted by hackers, all of which can leave us feeling vulnerable. After all, if the security on those companies couldn’t protect it, what can we do? Well, the truth is it can be easier to secure one device or user than it is to cover a complicated organisation, but you need the right tools. ESET HOME Security software provides exactly that, without needing a business-sized budget. Save 30% on ESET HOME Security Its 24/7 real-time protection means your PC or mobile device is constantly monitored to ward off malware, viruses, or other potential hazards. There are also security restrictions in place so no outside party can copy your data to an external device. ESET’s detections rates have been shown to be higher than that of its main rivals, while also delivering less false positives, meaning you’re getting top-class levels of protection.   Of course, one of the most alarming threats in recent years is that of ransomware. This is software that takes over your machine, encrypts everything and return it until you pay a ransom. Essentially, your data becomes a hostage on your own device. ESET Cybersecurity software works to prevent this by employing a Ransomware Shield that blocks the delivery methods of attacks, plus its Ransomware Remediation technology uses backup of files and restoration tools to quickly get you up and running if you do suffer an attack. This isn’t restricted to just internal drives though, as you can also encrypt and protect external USB drives, something many alternative software packages can’t offer. ESET Secure online banking and identity protection A common vulnerability for many users is when logging onto their bank accounts or crypto-wallets. Cybercriminals can target keystrokes or intercept data as it passes across the web, making it easy for them to hack accounts. ESET Cybersecurity protects against this by offering plug-ins for the most popular browsers, which then encrypt any data traffic so that it’s unreadable to anyone but the intended recipient. On the Premium and Ultimate packages, you also get an unlimited VPN that encrypts and protects all your online activities from prying eyes. Web monitoring ensures no unseen dangers on pages and will instantly warn against unsafe search results that might take you to fake sites. There’s also dark web monitoring that looks for any data breaches or illegal selling of your personal data, preventing the risk of identity theft. With all these protections in place, you might worry that it will have a large impact on the performance of your device. Again, ESET has you covered, as its software has won multiple awards for its speed, beating out several of its main rivals in a recent AV Comparatives benchmark test. So, not only are you staying safe, but you’re also not slowing down. Peace of mind without worrying your wallet Premium protection doesn’t need to come at premium prices, which is something ESET proves. In fact, until January 5th, PCWorld readers can take advantage of a fantastic offer that reduces the cost of a yearly subscription by a massive 30%. This means you can sign up today to the ESET HOME Security Essential (1 device) tier for only $34.99 (usually $49.99), ESET HOME Security Premium (1 device) for $55.99 (usually $79.99), or ESET HOME Security Ultimate (5 devices) for $125.99 (usually $179.99). Protecting your data is one of the most sensible investments you can ever make, getting 30% off the cost only makes it better. Save 30% on ESET HOME Security View Deal Read...

The sport of cricket operates on one DRS framework using multiple technology packages with varying levels of accuracy. Read...