The Full Nerd ep. 179: AMD, Nvidia, and Intel’s biggest news at Computex 2021

In this episode of The Full Nerd, Gordon Ung, Brad Chacos, Alaina Yee, and Adam Patrick Murray blitz through all the news out of Computex, including AMD’s announcement of Zen 3 APUs and a launch date for FidelityFX Super Resolution; Nvidia’s reveal of the RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 3070 Ti; Intel’s surprise unveiling of a new gaming mini-PC (kinda); and more.

First up is AMD, which dished out much for gamers to look forward to during its 40 minute presentation. The reveals came and furious: the launch of Radeon RX 6000 series mobile GPUs and new, finely tuned high-end all-AMD laptops; confirmation of two Ryzen 5000 APUs becoming available to DIY builders; FidelityFX Super Resolution’s launch date, expected frame rate boosts, and supported graphics cards; and the company’s 3D V-Cache technology, which increases performance in its upcoming CPUs by up to 25 percent. The info that we sort through is jam-packed with hardware and features sure to please PC fans across the board, including those that still use older Nvidia graphics cards. Yep, you read that right.

Next we dig into Nvidia’s main announcements—the official confirmation of GeForce RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 3070 Ti graphics cards. Rumored for weeks, these cards got June release dates, with the $1,200 RTX 3080 Ti hitting shelves just days after on June 3. (You can read all about Team Green’s new gaming flagship card in our GeForce RTX 3080 Ti review.) The more affordable $600 RTX 3070 Ti follows a week after on June 10, and we’ve got plenty to say about both.

Of course, Intel took the wraps off hardware of its own, too, adding 5GHz and 5G to its lineup of Tiger Lake mobile chips. Perhaps more tantalizing (though less practical) was a sneak peek of the company’s newest gaming NUC, codenamed Beast Canyon—a modular small-form-factor PC that follows in Ghost Canyon’s footsteps, but takes up more room with a volume of 8L. Can it succeed, given that it’ll go up against full DIY SFF builds?

But that’s not all. Even after crowning a winner of Computex’s big announcements, we take a few moments to discuss other notable announcements, like Alienware’s mysterious Element 31 cooling, which allows the company to make ultra-thin gaming laptops. And we also tease our talk with Intel about Tiger Lake H and why Team Blue believes it to be the best gaming laptop CPU.

You can take in all this juicy news in the video embedded above. You can also watch The Full Nerd episode 179 on YouTube (subscribe to the channel while you’re there!) or listen to it on Megaphone.fm if you prefer the audio alone.

Speaking of audio, you can subscribe to The Full Nerd in iTunes (please leave a review if you enjoy the show). We’re also on Pocket Casts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or you can point your favorite podcast-savvy RSS reader to: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/IDG8935300959