Welcome to the primary version of The Full Nerd publication—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 show, plus all of the juiciest PC information and tidbits seen throughout the net.
In the perfect 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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In this episode of The Full Nerd…
Willis Lai / Foundry
In 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 informed you that changing your graphics card for higher gaming efficiency wasn’t mandatory? That’s the intriguing aspect 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 a much bigger impact on fluidity. We people are extremely delicate to those disturbances. But as Will explains, you possibly can measure the perfect framerate to scale back microstuttering in your video games. Compensate for badly paced body timing, and your gaming will probably be much more pleasing, even at decrease body charges. The holy grail: Tuning a sport to really feel as excellent as Doom: The Dark Ages does out the gate.
- Just 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 collection card matches in slightly below the RX 9070, and is reduce down accordingly. Inside 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).
Initial 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 that pricing holds if it involves the U.S. stays to be seen, although…
- Speaking of costs, the vibe round Computex 2025 feels a bit gloomy. What is meant to be a sleepy present might 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 doubtless received’t be taught costs for something introduced, given the continued fluctuations with U.S. tariffs.
Still, the information isn’t all darkish clouds. We positively know to anticipate Nvidia’s RTX 5060 graphics card, and the crew debates what Intel may unveil. One potential juicy rumor: A three way partnership between Nvidia and chip maker Mediatek. The concept 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 Shield TV console.
- Our Q&A section will get just a little additional 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 permits the console maker to brick Switches in the event that they’re jailbroken or modified.
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This week’s sizzling 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 a giant ol’ mixture of vibes—come for the quirky cool stuff, bear with the alarming (however fascinating as heck) studies.
- CPU-level ransomware is possible: Malware can now be stashed inside a CPU’s microcode. Yeah.
- Why Doom: The Dark 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 newest Doom feels so good throughout gameplay.
- Fractal Meshify 3 and 3 XL cases are headed our way: An replace to make a fan-favorite case extra trendy seems good, however will it really feel good to construct in?
- Antec is releasing an AIO cooler with a 5-inch (!) IPS display: Take my cash. Just take it now. The display screen rotates a full 360 levels. I already know which picture of my cat I’m placing on it first.
- Nvidia’s RTX 5090 can crack an 8-digit password in 3 hours: Turns out, Nvidia’s flagship GPU is ready to guess a password when you’re watching a film. Even extra worrying? Cybersecurity agency Hive Mind’s experiment additionally seems at how briskly AI instruments can crack passwords. Think minutes as a substitute of hours.
- Huge demand for Ryzen X3D chips sparked a crazy quarter for CPUs: Who wants sports activities when you possibly can watch the quarterly numbers for CPU market share? (We are disillusioned Warriors followers right here.) Team Red’s positioning is especially fascinating, however Arm’s surge is noteworthy, too.
- The Asus tool PC gamers use to improve security has a security issue itself: Watch out for an exploitable distant execution vulnerability in Asus DriverHub—replace your software program now!
- Nintendo warns it can brick Switch consoles if it detects hacking: I’ll provide you with a touch as to what riled me and Will this week on the episode. If it’s the thought of hardware-as-service, sprung on you lengthy after you got the system, you’re heading in the right direction.
- This Asus RTX 5080 Doom-inspired GPU costs as much as an RTX 5090: Itching to spend $2,000 on a graphics card and might’t discover an RTX 5090? Well, there’s at all times this head-turner.
- Nvidia may raise GPU prices by 10 to 15 percent: Possibly short-term, positively horrible. It all boils right down to how tariffs proceed to play out.
- Zotac teased AMD Strix Halo mini-PCs for Computex: I really 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.
Also: if you happen to heard about 89 million Steam accounts leaking, don’t stress—however improve your safety in 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 transparent turntable from Audio-Technica seems so neat. It’s $2,000. I personal one file. I would like it.
That’s it from me for this week—catch you all on the opposite aspect of Computex. A phrase to the smart…don’t play consuming video games based mostly on the phrase “AI” in the course of the keynote speeches. Far too hazardous to your well being.
-Alaina
This publication is devoted to the reminiscence of Gordon Mah Ung, founder and host of The Full Nerd, and government editor of {hardware} at PCWorld. Want The Full Nerd publication to come back on to your inbox each Friday morning? Sign up on our website!