2022 TECH PREVIEW

PANDEMIC ASIDE, 2021 has been one heck of a year. Our world of technology is still forever advancing, regardless of the silicon shortages. We’ve seen new graphics cards, processors, screens, peripherals, cases, cooling solutions, and ever crazier announcements and launches over the past 12 months. The tech landscape has really changed quite dramatically, companies have thrived, died, and survived as various economic impacts of the silicon shortage have finally hit home. And yet, the long advancing march of technology still trundles on ever forwards.

So, 2022 is set up to be quite the year. Hopefully, its arrival will signal not only the end of the pandemic and its many impacts but also the end of the chip shortages too. With a host of new fabs and technologies opening up across the globe, supply chains refortifying, and crypto mining on the decline on anything that isn’t an ASIC, you might finally be able to buy a graphics card at a reasonable price (as long as the scalpers don’t get there first), or at least by the time you’re reading Tech Preview 2023 anyway.

So then, with the past year out of the way, it’s time for us fine folk to give you our best predictions for the next year. We’ve already seen the launch of gaming changing new technology with the likes of Intel’s hybrid Alder Lake parts, JEDEC’s DDR5 RAM, and more, but what else does the future hold for tech-heads? Well, we got some of the best people in the business to give you the inside scoop on what we might see going forward into the next year and beyond.

CPUS & GPUS

CPUS: ZEN 4 TAKES ON RAPTOR LAKE IT’S INTEL VERSUS AMD ALL OVER AGAIN

2022 IS SHAPING UP to be potentially one of the more exciting years in the CPU realm. After AMD’s Zen 3 CPUs claimed the overall performance crown in 2020, Intel responded in late 2021 by finally releasing a desktop CPU built on something better than 14nm—Alder Lake used the Intel 7 process, aka the artist formerly known as Enhanced 10nm SuperFIN. For 2022, we’ll be getting two more contestants for the CPU battlegrounds: AMD Zen 4 and Intel Raptor Lake.

Zen 4 represents the next big jump for AMD and will be the first Ryzen desktop solution to move on from socket AM4. Zen 4 will move to a new AM5 socket, with plenty of features that required a change in sockets. Will AM5 also ditch the CPU pins and move to an LGA design? All signs indicate that will happen. Zen 4 will target general IPC and feature improvements, and will also be the first x86 CPU to move to TSMC’s N5 5nm process technology.

The move from