Guide to new graphics cards for 2022

The most influential companies in the sector met at the beginning of the year to announce their new products for 2022, among which are the expected graphics cards. In this post we collect all the releases of new GPUs, features and price drops that all gamers are waiting for

The technology event, CES, took place on January 4 in Las Vegas, and it brought together the biggest names in the industry, including Intel, AMD and Nvidia, whose CEOs were responsible for giving their respective conferences. These conferences were eagerly awaited, since the interest in knowing what would happen with graphics cards in 2022 was on everyone's lips

Intel's conference was eagerly awaited, as its GPU line was considered the hope of the industry, in terms of stock and prices, but it seems that the main battle is still between AMD and Nvidia. We, as consumers, can always use competition between brands, however, the potential benefits of this have been reduced because of chip shortages which, as you know, is one of the causes of price increases due to lack of stock

Intel in its own category

Although Intel was considered to be the hope of the sector this year, the company is going for processors, one of its strong points, and is making a splash with the i5-12400F 4.4 GHz, but in terms of graphics, it is still a bit on the same line. It promises GPUs but no date, however, it announces a mining chip, with a very striking name 'Bonanza Mine', a low-voltage and low-power ASIC, which could hurt the manufacturer Bitmine.

AMD with half-hearted launches

One of the most interesting options announced by this company was AMD RX 6500 XT and, after a few weeks of its launch, everything is disappointment. This is because, despite having been announced as a low-end option, it is surprising that it is not able to beat the RX 480...a card from 2016, and it is also not very cheap, because in our country it will cost practically 330€. It has 4Gb, which seems quite scarce for many titles, in fact, it was the company itself who stated some time ago that 4Gb were insufficient for the current generation of games. You won't be able to enjoy raytraicing with it either, and on top of that, it is limited to four PCI Express 4.0 interface lanes

AMD doesn't seem to be doing much for our desktop PCs right now, instead focusing on notebooks, and releasing a bunch of GPU variants for them. The top of the line of these options will be AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT (yes, it's getting harder and harder to remember names) and, as interesting lower-end options, we'll have AMD Radeon RX 6500M and RX 6300M, which will be Navi 24-based, like the desktop AMD RX 6500 XT. In addition, they are launching the RX 600S series, also for notebooks, with more efficient GPUs, lighter and with less power consumption, but losing some performance

As a fact of special interest, AMD's CEO said that the RX 7000 would arrive in 2022, but we doubt that this will be in the short term, as soon would be from late summer surely. In addition, before this big jump, they will launch another model to compete directly with the Nvidia RX 6050, which would affect the Navi 21 and 22 chips

Nvidia launches a top of the range for gamers

Nvidia's big bet, the RTX 3050 model comes out this week starting at 279€, a very interesting graphics card, if the expected prices are maintained. It will leave AMD's Radeon RX 6500 XT, which we mentioned has been a disappointment and, of course, will enable raytracing and DLSS, but needless to say because the cores responsible for these actions are only available in the RTX.

On the other hand, the company announced the star of its conference, the RTX 3090 Ti model, which is a barbarity, clearly designed for gamers who want the most the market can offer. A marvel with 24 GB GDDR6X at 21 Gbps and 40 Teraflops of performance in the processor, come on, top of the range. Of course, the price is better not to talk about it.

It is rumored that the Nvidia RTX 4080 and 4090 could arrive in September, but this will probably depend on how the chip stock continues, and other factors that affect the manufacture and price of graphics cards

The expected price drop for graphics cards

For more than a year now, the market for graphics cards and other products requiring chips has been affected not only by the health crisis and the problems resulting from it, but also by other factors that have caused prices to rise sharply. The main factors that had an impact on this rise were: the shortage of chips, high demand and low supply, the rise of cryptocurrencies and their mining, the increase in the cost of some raw materials and transportation, and speculation, which would really come from several previous points.

Currently, companies are suffering losses, and this includes Nvidia, AMD and Intel, and a few days ago, another resounding fall has been that of cryptocurrencies. Specifically Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency, has plummeted, and it is affecting the graphics card industry because Ethereum is mined with GPUs, and it is now becoming less and less profitable to do so. This is driving the price of graphics cards down, but we can't be sure it will hold

What would be interesting would be to increase the supply of stock, because companies are launching very few desktop graphics, as has been the case with AMD, although with the result that is giving the RX 6500 XT, perhaps it is preferable to better models than more stock

And, as usual since this chip crisis began, it seems that it will be easier to find great graphics cards in complete PC assemblies, rather than individually. We leave you our guide with the tips to get the graphics card you really needin the best conditions