AMD VS INTEL

 PG. 68 STEP-BY-STEP

PC GAMING, right now, is at a standstill. The computing world has been rocked twice—once by the pandemic, and then again by cryptocurrency. Our humble GPUs have been snapped up and thrown into the deep, dark abyss of crypto mining, toiling away on inane calculations generating value from nothing. Whatever your stance on cryptocurrency, whether you believe it’s the future of decentralized finance or a meritless environmental disaster, it’s impossible to deny the impact it has had on the industry. As the availability of new GPUs has dwindled, enjoying our humble pastime is all but impossible. This generation’s mid-range graphics cards are now priced like last year’s flagships. Budget options are coming in at $400, and the whole market, although slowly recovering after multiple government crackdowns, is still a place of desolation when it comes to sourcing that most vital of PC components.

So where do you turn, when the GPU’s time in the sun is currently stifled? To integrated graphics? Given that processors are currently one of the few areas cryptocurrency can’t make a quick buck, it’s not a bad shout. For years, we’ve championed integrated graphics as “just enough” for entry-level 1080p gaming, but as GPUs became more affordable, development in iGPUs stagnated, until now.