Welcome back all you glorious PCWorld fans for this week’s roundup of the biggest and
most intriguing news to hit the PC community. We’ve got a good bit to cover this go around,
starting with Microsoft finally giving us an official release date for Windows 11.
Next, Nvidia releases a very important update for its Broadcast software that should make
running it a little less stressful on your system. Then, EVGA finally gives hard data
on what went wrong with Amazon's New World Beta bricking graphics cards.
And finally, the newest Steam hardware survey gives us a glimpse of what the modern GPU market
share is looking like. An action packed week for sure, so let’s jump right in!
Windows 11 has seemed to make its way into almost every weekly round-up for one reason or another,
but up until now, we haven’t known when to expect the operating system. Well, that all changed this
week. Personally, I was guessing we’d see it on November 11th - I mean 11/11 release for Windows
11 seems pretty on the nose and a haha kinda thing - but that didn’t pan out. Luckily you don’t
have to wait that long! In fact, from the time this video goes up it’ll be roughly one month.
Those eager to get their systems updated to the official build of Windows 11 will be able to on
October 5th. Of course, if you’re impatient you can go ahead and try the early release builds,
but that’s not my speed so you do you. For all the Windows 11 coverage be sure to keep a tab
open to PCWorld.com - we’ve got lots of awesome articles to dig through!
The Broadcast software package has been a big selling point for Nvidia since its launch last
September, and despite its overwhelmingly positive response it hasn’t been without criticism. This
past week we saw the release of version 1.3 which addresses a couple of those issues. The main
issue being with background noise removal. What would happen is that it would cut out voices if
someone got a bit too excitable and yelled. I personally know a few folks who have had this
one cause them some ire - although I didn’t mind their yelling getting muted while gaming.
The other issue, which is a bigger one from my standpoint, is the reduction of resource
requirements. Using more than one of the Broadcast features at the same time would really hit your
GPU hard. With the version 1.3 update Nvidia is reporting around a 40 percent reduction in
VRAM usage which should translate to better gaming performance while using Broadcast.
Remember when Amazon’s The New World Beta was killing graphics cards?
Yeah, it wasn’t that long ago, but it seemed to be very heavily focused on hitting EVGAs
GeForce RTX 3090 FTW cards. There was a lot of speculation thrown around about what could have or
couldn’t have been the cause of the issue. But our very own Gordon Mah Ung
stayed persistent in getting answers from EVGA and that’s just what he got.
In terms of affected units, EVGA claimed that the total body count was about two dozen
GeForce RTX 3090 cards that were to be believed to have failed from playing The New World Beta,
all of which were early production run cards built in 2020. But what caused it?
As Gordon wrote, “Under an X-ray analysis, they appear to have “poor workmanship” on soldering
around the card’s MOSFET circuits that powered the impacted cards.”
While EVGA declined to give Gordon a total number of RTX 3090s they’ve sold,
they did let him know that the affected cards were effectively less than 1 percent of their total.
All cards that were affected have been replaced immediately.
The last topic concerns the wider graphics card market and Jarred Walton from Tom’s Hardware has
reported on the latest Steam Hardware Survey, showcasing dedicated graphics card market share
according to Steam. Now, admittedly Steam’s Hardware Survey is NOT an exact science or
end-all of the discussion, but it is a very interesting metric to watch and gives an idea
of market trends. To be quite honest, outside of Jon Peddie Research’s quarterly releases
it’s the best metric we have to go from so it deserves some attention.
The interesting number to look at here is the current generation of graphics cards market
share from both AMD and Nvidia. According to the report, the current GeForce RTX 30 Series
is enjoying a pretty substantial 7.75 percent of the market while the Radeon RX 6000 Series
is only at .43 percent. The GTX series of cards still make up the largest segment
as a whole with 44 percent of the market. It seems the RTX lineup, that being the 20 and
30 series, is now up to right at 24 percent of the market - and I can almost guarantee
that Nvidia will use that number to court more developers to use DLSS.
And with that we bring this week’s roundup to a close and wrap it all up in a nice little bow.
We've got Windows 11 officially launching on October 5th, so you won’t be waiting long now
for that fresh operating system experience. Nvidia Broadcast users, both old and new alike, now have
a great update to smooth issues out and increase performance. We finally get hard answers on the
issues that plagued EVGA and their RTX 3090s with Amazon’s The New World Beta. And Steam’s
Hardware Survey shows us a glimpse of how the distribution of modern graphics cards is going.
Thanks for joining me this week,
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