Despite the many launches of new CPUs and graphics cards late last year, 2021 is already going to be a pretty busy year for PC gaming hardware. Not only do we have Intel’s new 11th Gen Rocket Lake processors for the end of March, but 2021 will also be the year Intel finally enters the graphics card arena with their new desktop Xe GPUs. That’s not all, as we’ll likely see Nvidia’s RTX 30 series GPUs make their way into gaming laptops, plus significantly faster game loading times thanks to Microsoft’s DirectStorage technology. So, to help you stay on top of everything that’s coming up, I’ve put together this handy guide to all the exciting new hardware we’re most excited about in 2021.
Most of this year’s new PC gaming hardware announcements will likely come next week, when CES 2021 (aka: tech Christmas) kicks off January 11th. Here, hardware makers will reveal the precise lineup of new gaming monitors, laptops, SSDs, and the like, and I’ll be covering all those announcements in detail next week. But for now, here’s the big picture of what’s coming in hardware land for 2021, and human beings alive are looking pretty exciting. If you’ve been thinking about upgrading your PC recently, this will almost certainly be the year to do it.
Can actually buy last year’s best hardware
Between the launches of AMD’s Ryzen 5000 CPUs, their ray tracing-capable Radeon RX 6000 graphics cards, and Nvidia’s next-gen RTX 30 series GPUs, the end of last year should have been a good time to upgrade your PC … if we could actually buy those damn things before they were all picked up by bots.
AMD’s Ryzen 5 5600X, for example, destroyed its Intel competition in my CPU gaming tests when it first came out in early November, and Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, RTX 3070, and RTX 3080 GPUs all showed massive performance improvements over their RTX 20 series predecessors. The only problem was that they all sold out within seconds and prices have remained stunningly high ever since.
As with the major GPU drought of 2017/2018, the stock shortages that plague the second half of 2020 will (hopefully) eventually disappear in 2021, although we still don’t know. While the 2017/2018 price surges were driven by a surge in cryptocurrency mining, many of the current stock woes are the result of Covid-related slowdowns early last year. AMD and Nvidia have both said they are working hard to keep up with demand, but it could still be a few months before things settle down. But once it does, potential upgraders will have a great time equipping their new PC.
Of course, I keep my eyes peeled for new arrivals every week in our regularly updated graphics card deals and CPU deal posts, so make sure to look for those if you want to get your hands on one.
Intel’s 11th Generation Rocket Lake CPUs
If you’re thinking about upgrading your CPU and motherboard this year, it’s probably best to wait for Intel to release their new 11th generation Rocket Lake CPUs anyway, which is currently out sometime before the end of March 2021.
While Intel’s existing crop of 10th Gen Comet Lake CPUs offers some great performance improvements over their 8th and 9th Gen Coffee Lake chips, Rocket Lake is introducing some crucial new pieces of technology that will make it a much better foundation for a ‘next- gen’-pc than what came before. Chief among these is PCIe 4.0 support, which doubles the amount of bandwidth available on your PC to churn through all that data. It’s been a staple on AMD’s side of the fence for a few years now, but 2021 will finally bring Intel to the attention so you can take full advantage of new PCIe 4.0 SSDs like Samsung’s 980 Pro and WD’s Black SN850, as well as PCIe 4.0 compliant graphics cards.
PCIe 4.0 support will also be key to unlocking the potential of Microsoft’s upcoming DirectStorage technology (more on that below), which, among other things, will drastically reduce game load times to bring them more in line with their super-fast console counterparts. . You’ll likely need a PCIe 4.0 SSD to take advantage of it, but at least it won’t be limited to just AMD systems anymore.
To make sure everyone gets the full swat of what PCIe 4.0 has to offer, Intel has confirmed that their Rocket Lake CPUs will also be accompanied by a new 500 series motherboard chipset. It’s possible their existing Z490 motherboards will get a BIOS update at a later date to add PCIe 4.0 support (assuming Intel doesn’t switch to a different new socket type for Rocket Lake, of course), but unless you use Comet Lake bought last year and are desperate for a new upgrade, I would advise waiting for a good 500 series board to ensure full compatibility.
I’m also curious how Rocket Lake’s gaming performance compares to AMD’s recently released Ryzen 5000 CPUs. While AMD’s new processors were miles ahead of Intel’s 10th Gen Comet Lake chips when I tested them late last year, I’ll be impressed if Intel manages to reclaim their crown with their Rocket Lake lineup, as it won’t be only a significant improvement in speed from generation to generation, but also an even more solid foundation for gaming that you will enjoy for years to come.
Intel’s Xe graphics cards
2021 is also the year when Intel’s highly anticipated Xe GPUs will arrive, bringing much-needed competition for Nvidia and AMD into the legacy graphics card arena. There’s still a lot we don’t know about Intel’s Xe GPUs, such as how much they’re going to produce and how much they’re going to cost, but we do know they come with GDDR6 memory and accelerated ray tracing support.
This should put them on a fairly level playing field with Nvidia’s RTX 30 GPUs and AMD’s Radeon RX 6000 cards, and I can’t wait to see them stack up against each other. With fingers crossed, we’ll hear more about what Intel has in store for their Xe GPUs at their CES 2021 press conference next week on Monday, January 11 at 1pm PST (9pm GMT).
Nvidia’s RTX 30 GPUs come to gaming laptops
It’s not 100% confirmed yet, but I’ll be eating my RTX 3080 if Nvidia’s new GPUs don’t come to gaming laptops this year too. It’s one of those inevitable hardware improvements that you know will happen at some point, and I’m excited to see what they’re going to do for all those ever-increasing 300Hz refresh rates that add up these days, as well as op-ray tracing along the way.
I mean, with the world still as it is right now, it’s not like many of us will need powerful laptops for playing games outdoors, but if 2020 taught me anything, it’s that being able to play games in another room in my house is an absolute godsend if you work from home all the time. It’s nice to have that separation sometimes, and a gaming laptop is a great way to accomplish this if you don’t want another PC clogging up your living room.
Again, we’ll likely hear more about which of Nvidia’s RTX 30 series will get the laptop treatment at their CES press conference next week on Tuesday, January 12 at 9am PST (5:00 pm GMT), so stay tuned for more details. .
Cheaper Nvidia RTX 30 and AMD RX 6000 desktop GPUs
Speaking of Nvidia’s CES 2021 press conference, here we hope we also get a glimpse of what they’ve lined up for their regular desktop RTX 30 family. The RTX 3060 Ti is a great graphics card at £ 369 / $ 399, but it’s still pretty expensive when these things go, and it would be great to see Nvidia’s RTX lineup expand even further to in the potential RTX 3050 area. Of course, the RTX 3060 Ti’s name alone suggests that there will be at least a regular RTX 3060 one day, but the dream is to run those RT cores through Nvidia’s entire next-gen lineup.
The same goes for the rest of the RX 6000 family from AMD. We’ve already seen what the RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT can do for the 1440p and 4K side of the market, and I’m excited to see what their budget lineup is from (presumably) RX 6700 and maybe even RX 6600 and RX 6500 cards can do for the 1080p end of the spectrum. Again, it would be great if we got ray tracing support across the board here, but we’ll have to wait and see if this actually works out.
AMD’s CEO Dr. Lisa Su will deliver a CES 2021 keynote speech next week on Tuesday, January 12 at 11am PST (4pm GMT), so fingers crossed we’ll get some more juicy announcements.
Microsoft’s DirectStorage technology
This is considerably less sexy than a lot of new graphics cards, I’ll admit, but the implications of Microsoft’s new storage API will likely have a huge impact on future games. This is exciting because it means we should be able to reap all the benefits of those super-fast load times that console folks keep banging about, as well as generally better, more efficient performance across the board.
Based on the super-fast Xbox Velocity architecture found in Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and Series S consoles, DirectStorage is set to streamline your PC’s entire IO system (or input-output) when it finally arrives so your PC things in your RAM and GPU can load banks much faster than before and thereby reduce load times dramatically.
Microsoft also hopes that DirectStorage will theoretically give developers the ability to create larger, more detailed worlds than ever before, as the old bottlenecks that prevent them from realizing their vast open-world visions will be gone. Of course I believe this when I see it, but it’s nice to dream about what could be, isn’t it?
Sadly, you’ll likely need a PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD to take full advantage of it, as that’s included in both new Xboxes, but here’s hoping older PCIe 3.0 SSDs will be able to make some use of it as well. We should know more when Microsoft releases their developer preview of DirectStorage later this year.