Maximum PC - UK (2019-09)

maximumpc.com SEP 2019 MAXIMUMPC 51

R&D

examining technology and putting it to use

TIP OF THE MONTH

MAKE – USE – CREATE

STEP-BY-STEP GUIDES TO IMPROVING YOUR PC

CHRISTIAN GUYTON

STAFF WRITER

SUPED UP

I’ve been toying with the idea of

a GPU upgrade, but decided to

hold off until the new AMD and

Nvidia cards landed. I’m I glad I

did; I imagine there’s more than

a few angry PC gamers trying to

get their RTX 2070 cards refunded

now Nvidia has officially revealed

the Super variant, boasting

moderately better performance

at exactly the same price.

So, the original 2070 and

2080 have been marked for

death, though the RTX 2060

Super won’t be pushing out its

predecessor. It was with mild

annoyance that I noted the specs

and benchmarking scores for the

Super cards, as I was hopeful that

the threat of new cards from AMD

would kick Nvidia into overdrive.

However, it feels like the Super

GPUs only stand to secure Nvidia’s

position as top dog in the graphics

market; there’s no real innovation,

just a mild performance bump,

and a continuation of reliance on

the ray-tracing USP.

Looking at the details of the

new RDNA cards, it sadly looks

as though AMD isn’t attempting

to shake things up too much

either. One possible glimmer of

excitement comes from Intel,

which is promising to make an

appearance in the GPU game

next year. Will it go budget and

compete with AMD, or go high-

end in an attempt to bring down

Nvidia? Only time will tell.

WRITE BETTER WITH GRAMMARLY

If you use your PC for word processing, you might be familiar

with Grammarly, a program for simplifying and improving

your writing. Well, there’s a Chrome extension, too—install it,

and it actively works to turn whatever typing you do online into

concise, typo-free writing worthy of Hemingway himself. It

works for messages, comments, documents, and even social

media posts, and the standard version is completely free.

↘ submit your How To project idea to: [email protected]

62

Design your own

celestial bodies in

Abode Photoshop

54

Build a better

home server

with Docker

66

Build your own

NAS box, with the

magic of open source

©^

CR

ED

ITS

TO

CO

ME