Welcome to The Full Nerd e-newsletter, your weekly dose of hardcore PC {hardware} speak

Welcome to the primary version of The Full Nerd e-newsletter—your weekly dose of hardcore {hardware} speak from the PC fans at PCWorld. In it, we dig into the most popular matters from our YouTube present, plus all of the juiciest PC information and tidbits seen throughout the net. 

In one of the best custom of the present, seize a pleasant chilly one (or your favourite snack meals) as you down this data. It’s Friday, y’all!

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On this episode of The Full Nerd…

On this week’s episode of The Full Nerd podcast…Brad Chacos, Alaina Yee, Will Smith, and Adam Patrick Murray speak for over two hours (!) about microstutter in gaming, AMD’s new Radeon GRE graphics card, and what to anticipate from Computex—the largest PC occasion of the yr.

• What if I advised you that changing your graphics card for higher gaming efficiency wasn’t essential? That’s the intriguing facet advantage of minimizing microstutter in video games, a geeky rabbit gap we dive into with Will.

  Frames per second (FPS) is definitely a careless metric for gauging a sport’s smoothness—as a substitute, tiny hiccups in body pacing can have an even bigger impact on fluidity. We people are extremely delicate to those disturbances. However as Will explains, you possibly can measure the best framerate to scale back microstuttering in your video games. Compensate for badly paced body timing, and your gaming can be much more pleasurable, even at decrease body charges. The holy grail: Tuning a sport to really feel as excellent as Doom: The Darkish Ages does out the gate.

• Only one nation acquired a brand new card from AMD final week—the Radeon RX 9070 GRE hit cabinets in China as a present unique. This contemporary 9000 sequence card matches in slightly below the RX 9070, and is minimize down accordingly. Contained in the 9070 GRE you’ll discover about 25 % fewer stream processors, and it additionally sports activities much less GDDR6 reminiscence (12GB) at slower speeds (18Gbps).

  Preliminary opinions say the cardboard is about 5 to 10 % slower than an Nvidia GeForce GTX 5070 in normal raster efficiency, however surprisingly, the AMD RX 9070 GRE holds its personal in ray tracing. Brad’s take? At $50 cheaper than its RX 9070 sibling, this GRE variant appears affordable, if unexciting. Whether or not that pricing holds if it involves the U.S. stays to be seen, although…

• Talking of costs, the vibe round Computex 2025 feels a bit gloomy. What is meant to be a sleepy present could develop into down proper lifeless. It’s a miserable thought, as Computex usually showcases what to anticipate for product releases later within the yr. And as Brad factors out, U.S. residents probably received’t study costs for something introduced, given the continuing fluctuations with U.S. tariffs.

  Nonetheless, the information isn’t all darkish clouds. We positively know to anticipate Nvidia’s RTX 5060 graphics card, and the workforce debates what Intel may unveil. One potential juicy rumor: A three way partnership between Nvidia and chip maker Mediatek. The thought of an Arm-based processor with supercharged built-in graphics is sufficient to brighten Will’s day, as he continues to hope for a refreshed Nvidia Protect TV console.

• Our Q&A section will get somewhat further spicy when producer Willis lobs a query to me and Will that raises each our hackles. The supply of our ire? A sudden coverage shift on Nintendo’s half, one that enables the console maker to brick Switches in the event that they’re jailbroken or modified.

Wish to hear us chat dwell about these matters and extra? Subscribe to The Full Nerd YouTube channel, and remember to activate notifications. We additionally reply viewer questions in real-time—together with people who ask for our tackle one of the best variant of yogurt.

Want much more {hardware} speak throughout the remainder of the week? Our Discord neighborhood is filled with cool, laid-back nerds—come be a part of within the dialog!

This week’s scorching nerd information

Antec / TechPowerUp

We love {hardware}. We love software program. We love all of the cool stuff meant for our nerdy brains. 

This week is an enormous ol’ mixture of vibes—come for the quirky cool stuff, bear with the alarming (however fascinating as heck) reviews.

• CPU-level ransomware is feasible: Malware can now be stashed inside a CPU’s microcode. Yeah.
• Why Doom: The Darkish Ages feels so buttery-smooth: Our very personal Will Smith dives into the nitty-gritty of measuring microstutter in video games—and places numbers to why the most recent Doom feels so good throughout gameplay.
• Fractal Meshify 3 and three XL circumstances are headed our means: An replace to make a fan-favorite case extra trendy appears good, however will it really feel good to construct in?
• Antec is releasing an AIO cooler with a 5-inch (!) IPS show: Take my cash. Simply take it now. The display rotates a full 360 levels. I already know which photograph of my cat I’m placing on it first.
• Nvidia’s RTX 5090 can crack an 8-digit password in 3 hours: Seems, Nvidia’s flagship GPU is ready to guess a password when you’re watching a film. Much more worrying? Cybersecurity agency Hive Thoughts’s experiment additionally appears at how briskly AI instruments can crack passwords. Suppose minutes as a substitute of hours.
• Large demand for Ryzen X3D chips sparked a loopy quarter for CPUs: Who wants sports activities when you possibly can watch the quarterly numbers for CPU market share? (We’re dissatisfied Warriors followers right here.) Staff Crimson’s positioning is especially fascinating, however Arm’s surge is noteworthy, too.
• The Asus software PC players use to enhance safety has a safety difficulty itself: Be careful for an exploitable distant execution vulnerability in Asus DriverHub—replace your software program now!
• Nintendo warns it may possibly brick Swap consoles if it detects hacking: I’ll offer you a touch as to what riled me and Will this week on the episode. If it’s the concept of hardware-as-service, sprung on you lengthy after you obtain the system, you’re heading in the right direction.
• This Asus RTX 5080 Doom-inspired GPU prices as a lot as an RTX 5090: Itching to spend $2,000 on a graphics card and might’t discover an RTX 5090? Properly, there’s all the time this head-turner.
• Nvidia could elevate GPU costs by 10 to fifteen %: Probably short-term, positively horrible. All of it boils right down to how tariffs proceed to play out.
• Zotac teased AMD Strix Halo mini-PCs for Computex: I like all the things about mini-PCs, particularly once they pack in gaming efficiency. Zotac is delivering, not simply with AMD graphics, however Nvidia RTX fashions, too.
• Samsung’s new OLED gaming monitor is 500Hz: Is it loopy costly? Yeah. Is it additionally loopy slick? Heck yeah.

Additionally: if you happen to heard about 89 million Steam accounts leaking, don’t stress—however improve your safety to your account if you happen to nonetheless have a weak password and/or haven’t but enabled two-factor authentication.

And it’s not PC {hardware}, however this clear turntable from Audio-Technica appears so neat. It’s $2,000. I personal one file. I need it.

That’s it from me for this week—catch you all on the opposite facet of Computex. A phrase to the clever…don’t play ingesting video games based mostly on the phrase “AI” in the course of the keynote speeches. Far too hazardous to your well being.

-Alaina

This text is devoted to the reminiscence of Gordon Mah Ung, founder and host of The Full Nerd, and govt editor of {hardware} at PCWorld. Need The Full Nerd e-newsletter to come back on to your inbox each Friday morning? Join on our web site!