I’ve been driving a lot these
last few months, and gotten
tired of my cell running out of
charge when moonlighting as
a GPS. I know in-car chargers
exist, I just didn’t have one
when needed. Which is why
I turned to the Garmin GPS
that has been languishing in
my glovebox for... well, for
quite a while. It worked fine,
mostly, even if the interfaceYou may remember a few
months ago I mentioned
diving back into Final Fantasy
XIV after a long time away
from MMOs. Now, a few
months and over 100 hours of
playtime later, it’s safe to say
I’m enjoying myself. FFXIV
is in a great spot right now,
thanks to its third expansion,
Shadowbringers. I’ll admit
it was a bit of a slog havingfelt a tad clunky, right up to
the point where I found myself
driving on a road that the
Garmin didn’t know existed.
Much confusion ensued as
it saw me gliding across
seemingly open country.
Afterward, I discovered that I
hadn’t updated it since 2011.
Ah, yes, manual updates.
I had completely forgotten
about those.to play through a few years’
worth of content in order to
catch up to Shadowbringers,
but the pay-off has been so
worth it. Its story functions
as both a continuation of the
ongoing saga and a great
standalone adventure—taken
alone, it’s among the best
stories the whole Final
Fantasy series has offered.
Needless to say, I’m hooked.ALAN DEXTER
Executive EditorBO MOORE
Hardware LeadI’VE HAD THE GOOD FORTUNE to play about
with both of the new Radeon cards, and I’m
impressed. No, not Titan RTX impressed,
more of a sort of quiet, begrudging nod of
acknowledgement to Team Red on a job
well done. The RX 5700 might genuinely be
one of the best value 1080p cards available
right now, and it’s more than capable of
punching above its weight at 1440p in
many games. I have a real soft spot for its
clean, stripped-back design, too. It’s all
right angles and smooth, brushed metal—
nothing flashy, but it still looks right at
home inside just about any build.
Its big brother, the RX 5700 XT, doesn’t
quite nail the aesthetics. With its odd dent
(is it for airflow? A thumb grip for waving
it around? Who knows?) and horizontal
lines covering its metal shroud, it doesn’t
look as good. It’s powerful, though,comfortably outpacing Nvidia’s
similarly priced RTX 2060
Super at 1440p. I’m considering
getting one for my home PC—a
rig I primarily use for online
gaming—but I might have to
wait until there are some nicer-
looking variants. Come on,
Sapphire, I’m waiting on you.
Nvidia is still king when
it comes to high-end GPUs,
though. Even the Radeon VII,
AMD’s workstation graphics
solution, doesn’t even touch
the performance of the RTX
2080 and better cards. With
Intel promising (threatening?) a venture
into the GPU market within the next two
years, AMD needs to show its teeth and
put out a proper gaming competitor to thelikes of the already one-year-old RTX 2080
Ti. For now, though, I’m pleased to see that
Team Red is still alive and kicking when it
comes to graphics cards.They might not blow anyone away, but I really love
the new Radeon cardsAMD or Not to Be
The closest you’ll get to an RX 5700 XT teardown
from us. We’re not wrecking ours.CHRISTIAN GUYTON, STAFF WRITER©^
AMD92 MAXIMUMPC OCT 2019 maximumpc.com
in the lab