2018 was an amazing year for PC hardware with multiple launches, some of which were being anticipated for years. We got new products in almost every segment like motherboards, RAMs, SSDs, new processors from both AMD and Intel, and obviously, NVIDIA finally launched its much anticipated RTX graphics cards with ray tracing features, we even saw Corsair launching ‘fake RAM’ with RGB lighting and no actual RAM.
If anything, this makes us even more excited about 2019 and for what it has in store for us when it comes to PC Hardware launches. Here, we’ll be taking a look at some launches that are expected to happen in 2019 and are worth watching out for.
NVIDIA RTX 2060 and GTX 1160
NVIDIA introduced its RTX series of graphics cards last year, these cards have dedicated RT cores for Ray Tracing capabilities. This really broke some grounds in mainstream PC gaming graphics. It’s still not a finished product because of its high price and relatively lower frame rates with ray tracing enabled, but it’s a start and it’s only going to get better.
In 2019, NVIDIA is expected to launch two new graphics cards, the RTX 2060 and GTX 1160.
RTX 2060 will be the cheapest card in the ray tracing-enabled RTX series of GPUs. The performance of the RTX 2060 is expected to be somewhere between that of a GTX 1070 and GTX 1070 Ti, so the pricing will be a crucial factor for this card as GTX 1070 and 1070 Ti with almost similar performance and being from the older generation could be available for quite less and turn out to be better value for money for PC gamers.
Other GPU launch expected from NVIDIA is the GTX 1160. This card is expected to lure the mid-range GPU customers. It’ll compete against AMD’s Radeon 500 and Navi series of cards. Although this card won’t have the ray-tracing features, it’ll still deliver a significant boost in the frame rates and could be a smart choice for users planning to upgrade their GPUs and don’t want to burn a hole through their pockets.
Release Dates: The RTX 2060 is expected to be launched in early 2019 at CES, there’s still no exact release dates for the GTX 1160 though.
AMD Navi Graphics Cards
AMD has been trying hard to catch up with NVIDIA in the PC graphics segment. It’s RX Vega 56 and Vega 64 GPUs, although great cards, couldn’t compete in the market because of unstable stock as a result of the cryptocurrency mining craze. But since the crypto mining has cooled up a bit and the recently launched RX 590 proving to be a great alternative to NVIDIA’s GTX 1060 6GB, AMD has started to get back on track.
AMD is expected to launch its Navi GPUs based on 7 nm process in the early parts of this year. This mid-range series will have Radeon RX 3080, 2070, and 3060 competing against its rival NVIDIA’s RTX 2070, RTX 2060, GTX 1070, and GTX 1060. These cards will be offering “Next Generation memory” along with improved scalability. The Navi cards will be competitively priced and will surely give NVIDIA a run for their money. Since Turing-based RTX cards are quite expensive and with the stocks of older Pascal-based cards fading rapidly, AMD might have a good chance of tapping this particular segment due to its aggressive pricing with comparable performance.
Release Dates: AMD is expected to release the details of Navi GPUs at CES in Las Vegas at the start of the year.
AMD 3rd Generation Ryzen 3000 series (Zen 2)
AMD is going to launch its third generation of Ryzen processors based on AMD’s 7nm Zen 2 architecture. The expectations from this are very high and this processor will prove to be quite crucial in AMD’s CPU war against Intel. These chips are going to have a higher core count with some rumors reporting that the ream Ryzen series could feature up to 16 cores.
The performance is expected to improve from the second generation processors due to higher frequencies and IPC (instructions per cycle). These factors will make AMD even more competitive in the desktop processor market as it could improve its performance in gaming and lightly-threaded workloads. AMD already has an advantage when it comes to value for money, so any improvements in the performance provided it doesn’t affect the price that much, could prove to be great for them. One major feature of these new processors is that they’re going to be backward compatible with older AM4 motherboards, which is great news for existing Ryzen owners planning to upgrade their PC.
Release Dates: There’re rumors that AMD will reveal the details about Ryzen 3000 series at CES, with a complete launch somewhere in the first half of 2019.
Intel 10nm Sunny Cove Processors
2017 saw Intel revealing its new timeline for 2019 dropping its Cannon Lake 10 nm architecture for its new 10 nm architecture, named Sunny Cove. There were rumors that Intel could be working on a 10-core chip to compete against AMD’s 3rd Generation Ryzen CPUs, which could prove to be an actual topic of concern for AMD if the rumors turn out to be true.
Sunny Cove is a result of complete architectural redesign and with a smaller manufacturing process, it’s expected to improve the performance drastically.
Release Dates: Intel Sunny Cove will probably be launched in the parts of 2019. We can still expect more 14nm Coffee Lake CPUs from Intel with an increased core count from 8 to 10.
AMD X570 chipset
AMD launched its last chipset, the X470, in early 2018 and with the Zen 2 based 3rd generation of Ryzen chips expected to launch soon, rumors of a new chipset, named X570, have started popping up. There were some slides that were leaked showing the X570 chipset. Most of the improvements in the previous chipsets have been in their physical designs, like better cooling and memory compatibility.
Some rumors have stated that the X570 could support PCI-E 4.0, and if that’s true, X570 will be the first desktop chipset to do so. PCI-E 4.0 delivers twice the bandwidth of PCI-E 3.0.
Release Dates: The X570 chipset is expected to launch at the same time as the Ryzen 3000 series, which is at the beginning of the year.
So this is it, PC Hardware launches to be excited about in 2019. Let’s just hope the actual products turn out to be as good as they’re speculated to be.
FURTHER READING:
New Fantastic Four Game Being Developed by Marvel?
Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2060 6 GB Listed By Canadian Retailer for $395
NVIDIA Titan V Supports Raytracing in BFV Despite NOT Having RTCores