GPUs, CPUs, builds and the silicon arms race · page 7
That is more than the RTX 5090's $1,999 launch price. We checked the launch figure, today's shelf prices, and what a plain RTX 5080 costs instead.
Aliteq Team · Jul 31 · 6 min
16GB used to be plenty. In 2026 it stutters. Here's the honest RAM answer — the capacity to buy, the speed that matters, and why 64GB is a waste for gaming.
Aliteq Team · Jul 31 · 11 min
AMD's Ryzen 7 9800X3D is 35% faster than Intel's flagship in games, for less money. Here's the honest best-gaming-CPU answer for 2026, and when you should ignore it.
Aliteq Team · Jul 31 · 11 min
The RTX 5090 is the fastest card money can buy. It's also terrible value for pure gaming. Here's the 4K GPU you should actually buy in 2026, and why the $999 card beats the $1,999 one for most people.
Aliteq Team · Jul 31 · 11 min
18GB of VRAM, the same core, hardware reportedly already sitting with board partners — and still no release date. Here's the real reason, and what I'd buy instead this week.
Aliteq Team · Jul 31 · 6 min
Two 16GB cards, similar money, same 1440p target. One leans on DLSS 4, the other on raw value. Here's which mid-range GPU to actually buy in 2026.
Aliteq Team · Jul 31 · 11 min
8GB used to be plenty. In 2026 it's the bare minimum — and whether it's enough for YOU comes down to the resolution you play at. Here's the straight 8GB vs 12GB vs 16GB answer.
Aliteq Team · Jul 31 · 11 min
Intel's $250 Arc B580 undercuts everyone at the entry level, and the 16GB mid-range from AMD and Nvidia finally makes sense. Here's the best value graphics card at every budget tier in 2026.
Aliteq Team · Jul 31 · 11 min
RTX 5070 or RX 9070 XT? One wins on features, the other on raw frames and VRAM. Here's the honest 1440p gaming GPU answer for 2026, based on what you actually play.
Aliteq Team · Jul 31 · 12 min
One builder added a used V100 SXM2 and a bare adapter to an RTX 4080 PC and got 32GB of VRAM. The speed is real. So are the noise, the legacy driver and NVIDIA's dropped Volta support in CUDA 13.
Aliteq Team · Jul 31 · 8 min
Two 3090s give you 48GB, but not double the speed for chat, because llama.cpp's default multi-GPU mode makes the cards take turns. What the benchmarks say, rechecked in October 2026.
Aliteq Team · Jul 21 · 11 min
a graphics card, a games console, a $45 hobby board, a hard drive and a retro handheld all got more expensive this year for one identical reason. I've written them as six stories. they're one — and here's what I'd actually do about it.
Aliteq Team · Jul 20 · 9 min
three price rises in five months, up to $100 on the 16GB Pi 5, and a seven-fold jump in memory costs behind all of it. I still think the cheap end of the range is the best value in computing — but the top end is a harder sell now.
Aliteq Team · Jul 20 · 8 min
Raspberry Pi's CEO says the Pi 6 won't land before early 2028 and won't have an NPU. I think telling people that plainly is the most useful thing they could have done — even though it's not what anyone wanted to hear.
Aliteq Team · Jul 20 · 8 min
NAS drive prices climbed roughly 46% between September and January, driven by the same AI datacenter demand squeezing memory everywhere. here's the honest buy-now-or-wait call.
Aliteq Team · Jul 20 · 6 min
the EU forced Nintendo to make the Switch 2 battery user-replaceable, and it costs about 1% of capacity. I'd take that trade every single time — and I suspect every handheld maker is about to face the same choice.
Aliteq Team · Jul 19 · 7 min
both give you ~128GB of unified memory for local AI, and their memory bandwidth is almost the same — 273 vs 256 GB/s. so the $2,700 gap buys something else entirely. here's what, and who it's actually for.
Aliteq Team · Jul 19 · 6 min
the Framework Desktop and its Ryzen AI Max+ 395 twins hand you ~96GB of GPU memory for less than one RTX 5090 costs today — enough to load models no single consumer GPU can touch. whether they actually run fast comes down to one word: bandwidth.
Aliteq Team · Jul 19 · 7 min