Assassin's Creed Shadows has had a bit of a rough time of late, with Ubisoft initially pulling out of the Tokyo Game Show entirely and delaying the launch of Shadows to February 2025, attributing its absence at the show to the buggy, incomplete nature of the 2025 entry into the Assassin's franchise. In the announcement confirming the launch delay and the Tokyo Game Show Absence, Ubisoft also communicated that it would be shaking up the Assassin's Creed launch and monetization strategy significantly. Apparently as part of that monetization switch-up, Ubisoft has also changed the price of the Assassin's Creed Shadows Collector's Edition, cutting it by a whopping $50.

Ubisoft confirmed the price change on Discord in an official Q&A, announcing that, due to dropping the three-day early access that Collector's Edition buyers would originally have received, the Collector's Edition would now cost $229.99 instead of the previous price of $279.99. Meanwhile, the Collector's Edition will still include all the other paraphernalia and real-world loot that it originally bundled. The aforementioned delay and changes to the monetization strategy not only saw the cancellation of the Season Pass model previously used by Ubisoft, but it also meant that all Assassin's Creed Shadows players would also get the game's first expansion for free along with the base game.

MSI is preparing to launch its MPG 321URX QD-OLED monitor this month—we first spotted this model during an official expansion of the company's QD-OLED gaming monitor lineup—utilizing Samsung Display Gen 3 panels. The announcement outlined an initial MSRP of $1199 for MSI's MPG 321URX gaming monitor, although a time-limited special introductory offer of $949 was later advertised. ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) released its Swift OLED PG32UCDM gaming monitor (in USA and UK markets) late last week—competing at a $1299 price point with MSI's 321URX model. The two companies are attempting to outdo each other—earlier this month MSI pledged a 3-year warranty on its OLED panel products, semi-forcing ASUS into matching that generous offer—they previously advertised a two-year period for ROG Swift OLED monitors.

Monitors Unboxed has investigated alleged permanent MSI MSRP price cuts—affecting the MPG 321URX, as well the 49-inch 491CQP and 27-inch 271QRX QD-OLED models. The manufacturer appears prepped to undercut its competition to the tune of $350 (MPG 321URX vs. PG32UCDM): "I've gotten a second update from MSI regarding the MSRP of their QD-OLEDs. They have decided to change their mind and offer their previously lowered pricing permanently, instead of just as an introductory price. That means the official MSRPs of their products are as follows (read more after the jump)." At the time of writing, MSI's MPG 321URX QD-OLED is available to pre-order at a few North American and UK e-tailers, although a couple of listings state the item is "coming soon," or due in stock by early April.

A series of price cuts on Best Buy for the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti (8 GB) sees the card now drop to $344, down from its $399 MSRP, reports VideoCardz. This new low price puts it within just $15 of the recently launched AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT. For the vast majority of gamers playing at 1080p, this is great news. In our testing, the RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB is on average 18% faster than the RX 7600 XT in gaming without ray tracing; and a staggering 45% faster with ray tracing enabled. Both the RTX 4060 Ti and the RX 7600 XT are recommended by their makers for maxed out gaming at 1080p, including with ray tracing. Best Buy has the cheapest RTX 4060 Ti in the market right now, with the Gigabyte RTX 4060 Ti Gaming OC listed at $344.

Both the RTX 4060 Ti and the RTX 4060 appear to be designed to withstand a great degree of price cuts, to compete against the RX 7600 XT and RX 7600. The RTX 4060 Ti, much like the RX 7600 XT, features a small ASIC, and just four GDDR6 memory chips for its 128-bit memory bus, a simpler 8-lane PCIe interface; and in our opinion, a simpler VRM design than the RX 7600 XT. The bill of materials would boil down to the ASIC costs; while the RTX 4060 Ti uses a 188 mm² silicon built on the newer 5 nm node; the RX 7600 XT uses a larger 204 mm² albeit based on the older 6 nm node.

NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4070 12 GB graphics card finds itself embattled against the recently launched AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT, and board partners from NVIDIA's ecosystem plan to do something about it, reports Moore's Law is Dead. A GIGABYTE custom-design RTX 4070 Gaming OC graphics card saw a $549 listing on the web, deviating from the $599 MSRP for the SKU, which hints at what the new pricing for the RTX 4070 could generally look like. At $549, the RTX 4070 would still sell for a $50 premium over the RX 7800 XT, probably banking on better energy efficiency and features such as DLSS 3. NVIDIA partners could take turns to price their baseline custom-design RTX 4070 product below the MSRP on popular online retail platforms, and we don't predict an official price-cut that applies across all brands, forcing them all to lower their prices to $549. We could also see NVIDIA partners review pricing for the RTX 4060 Ti, which faces stiff competition from the RX 7700 XT.

PB Tech New Zealand has lowered the price of a Galax GeForce RTX 4070 1 CLICK OC X2 12 GB graphics card to stay competitive with the initial batch of freshly released AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT cards. This particular custom NVIDIA model is not quite as fancy as its triple fan sibling that sits in TPU's database, but the promotional price of NZ$999 (~$588 USD) could be enough to tempt customers away from Team Red's new mid-range offerings—starting with Sapphire's reference model at NZ$998.99. For NZ$1018.99 (~$600 USD) you reach the first tier of custom design RX 7800 XT models—ASRock's AMD Challenger 16 GB OC, PowerColor's Hellhound edition and a Sapphire Pulse Gaming 16 GB card.

VideoCardz notes that e-tailers outside of New Zealand have not been observed lowering prices of GeForce RTX 4070 graphics cards, although a smattering of shops in North America have adjusted their charges for GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB in reaction to the arrival of competing AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT models. We hope to see that market trend apply to the GeForce RTX 4070 series as well—a sole case isolated to the southwestern Pacific territory (where launch prices tend to be greater than elsewhere) is not enough.

MicroCenter has reduced the price of PowerColor's Fighter Radeon RX 7600 graphics card to $229, representing a nice $40 saving over the original launch price of $269. A digital download version of Bethesda's upcoming epic, Starfield, is also included as a bundled incentive (Standard Edition is worth $69.99) to purchase the budget friendly model that is based on Team Red's Navi 33 XL GPU.

The offer is limited to in-store purchases—it seems that MicroCenter has nullified the option to get the discounted PowerColor Fighter card delivered to your address of choice. Other retailers in North America appear to be selling Radeon RX 7600 cards for around $260. This price bracket is also occupied by Intel's Arc A750 and A770 8 GB models, following consistent price cuts in order to attract cautious buyers to the nascent Alchemist GPU architecture.

Sony has implemented a time limited price reduction for its PlayStation 5 Standard/Disc Edition console in Spain, Portugal, France and Italy—according to billbil-kun (writing for Dealabs magazine) the time limited summer promotion is going to reach Germany, Great Britain and the United States shortly. The campaign has been running since mid-July, and customers in eligible regions have (so far) enjoyed a €75 reduction, bringing the standard PS5 model's price down to as low as €450 (~$498). Dealabs believes that that some of these regional offers have already ended (as of July 24).

The article seems to source some insider information, with very specific discount figures presented for the next batch of participants—German customers are set to get the aforementioned standard European €75 reduction, bringing the PS5's price down to €474.99 (from €549.99). UK gamers get £75 off, so £404.99 total (reduced from £479.99). US folks are lined up for a less generous $50 cut—due to Sony not implementing PS5 price increases for that market—resulting in $449.99 (instead of $499.99). Billbil-kun reckons that the following retail outlets will be taking part in the campaign's next phase: PlayStation Store/PlayStation Direct, Amazon, MediaMarkt, Target and GAME UK. The timing of these temporary cuts could point to Sony responding to Microsoft's unpopular decision to jack up asking prices for the Xbox Series X console, as well as Game Pass subscription fees.

Best Buy has slashed $100 off of the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X's normal asking price—North American customers can obtain these 6-core/12-thread processors for $199.90 a piece. Amazon US price matching the consumer electronics store's offer earlier today, but their stocks were depleted at some point this afternoon. AMD's Ryzen 5 7600 (non-X) processor is still stuck at MSRP ($229), so its X-model sibling presents a better deal at its current lower price. Buyers will have to splash out extra on a CPU cooling solution, since Team Red does not include a Wraith Stealth or Prism air cooler as standard with the Ryzen 5 7600X's retail package. AMD + Bethesda's Starfield Game Bundle partnership campaign kicked off last week, and all of the AM5 desktop Ryzen 7000-series models qualify for the active promotion. This plays a part in boosting customer interest, but a nice discount also goes a long way—hence the quick run on Amazon's supplies of the Ryzen 5 7600X.

Chips and Cheese published their very in-depth review of AMD's Radeon RX 7600 GPU last weekend - a team member (Jiray) took it upon themselves to actually buy the card, since a sample unit was not supplied for evaluation. The site's exploration of this graphics processing unit on an architectural level revealed a couple of positive aspects - which comes as a minor surprise since the Radeon RX 7600 received a generally lukewarm reception upon launch at the end of last month. Thanks to the Radeon RX 7600's Navi 33 XL GPU being a monolithic chip it seems to outpace—in terms of cache and memory latency performance—chiplet-based designs as featured in the vastly more powerful (and expensive) Radeon RX 7900-series cards.

Factoring in the smaller space that the RDNA 3 Navi 33 die occupies - it seems that it gains an advantage over the flagship card. Chips and Cheese reports that AMD's RX 7900 XTX takes up to 58% longer to access and pull data from its pool of Infinity Cache, when contrasted with the recently released sibling. The RX 7600 GPU exhibits 15% lower VRAM latencies compared to the RX 7900 XTX when retrieving data from the onboard GDDR6 VRAM chiplets. The review points to a greater disparity between current high-end and mid-range cards when looking back at equivalent models from the preceding generation: "The difference is especially large with RDNA 3. With RDNA 2, the RX 6900 XT had 151.57 ns of Infinity Cache latency compared to 130 ns on the RX 6600 XT, or a 16.5% latency penalty for the larger GPU." Chips and Cheese reckons that AMD's Navi 31's "chiplet configuration may be causing higher latency."

Newegg is selling AMD's top-of-the-range Ryzen 9 7950X3D CPU for $629.99 - so $70 below the usual asking price in the USA - although buyers will have to venture onto the e-tailer's Ebay store in order to pick up some fancy 16-core silicon action, Newegg's main site lists the CPU for the regular sum of $699.99. This weekend's sudden discount represents the lowest ever price for Ryzen 9 7950X3D only two months into its product lifespan. According to Ebay's tracking stats (for this particular product page) only four units have sold in the past 24 hours, and that a "limited quantity" of AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D CPUs are available to purchase.

TPU's February review of this processor was filled with praise (plus awards: Editor's Choice & Innovation), but the high asking price was a point of contention. This weekend's (likely temporary) discount now gives the potential buyer a little bit of extra value - with the CPU's per core price dropping just under $40, and per thread cost being slightly south of $20. AMD's Ryzen 7000X3D series has been through a bumpy batch since late April - some owners have reported hardware burnouts and AMD is currently working on fixes. Buyer perception could have been affected by recent publicity, so it is possible that Newegg is attempting to get some surplus stock out of the door.

Two years and a half into its storied career, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 GPU has finally dropped below MSRP in one European territory. German customers will be stoked to jump on e-tailer CaseKing's new offer - ZOTAC's Gaming GeForce RTX 3070 Twin Edge LHR graphics card is currently available for 449 EUR (not counting additional fees), so a saving of 50 Euros from the recommended retail price (499 EUR/$499). 3DCenter seems to be the first hardware news outlet to report on an RTX 3070 GPU dropping under RRP. The RTX 3070 and 3060 Ti models have been best sellers for NVIDIA (and board partners) since late 2020, yet buyers have long complained about unreasonable asking prices, and semi-generous discounts have been very late in arriving - just in time for the succeeding model.

3DCenter has created an overview of the graphics card market in Germany and Austria, and its findings for May 2023 indicate a trend where: "GPU prices in Euros have consistently dropped by ~10% since the end of January, in single cases up to 20%." The overview places the RTX 3070 8 GB in a price bracket position between AMD's Radeon RX 6750XT 12 GB and RX 6800 16 GB (non-XT) SKUs, which brings recent marketing strategies to mind - Team Red thinks that their cards offer the buyer more VRAM for their money when cross examined with the competition.

Prices of the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT RDNA3 graphics card continue on a downward trend, with the cheapest street price now touching $762. This is $137 below the AMD MSRP for the RX 7900 XT of $899, or a 15.23% reduction. At this price, the RX 7900 XT is priced already below several custom-design GeForce RTX 4070 Ti models. At stock frequency, the RX 7900 XT beats the RTX 4070 Ti by around 6% in conventional raster 3D graphics that makes up the majority of the gaming graphics workload, while its ray tracing performance is closer to that of the previous-generation RTX 3080 Ti or RTX 3090. The specific model in question is the XFX Speedster MERC 310 Radeon RX 7900 XT, with the $762 price surfacing on Amazon for $771.09 with a $10 checkbox coupon that's visible to buyers in the U.S.

NVIDIA's fresh faced GeForce RTX 4070 graphic card range has not been flying off shelves around the world, and Team Green could be pivoting their approach somewhat after receiving lower than expected sales figures via company reports. Their component suppliers have already mentioned that the entire GeForce RTX 40 family is on a comfortably steady production schedule - with no instructions received from HQ to up the ante. In the latest development this week, individuals with insider knowledge of factory schedules in China have claimed that NVIDIA has informed board partners (AICs) that output for the GeForce RTX 4070 line is getting paused for a month. The temporary cutoff in factory output will allow, they hope, for the currently sitting stock to get cleared out. A substantial surplus of GeForce RTX 4070 cards could disrupt distribution networks and overstock warehouses.

Industry watchdogs have theorized that NVIDIA's board partners are having a difficult time offloading their premium tier RTX 4070 custom cards onto paying customers. The Founders Edition and closer-to-reference models have sold quite respectable numbers according to early analyses, but more expensive options are considered to be too expensive by the customer base. There is apparent crossover in pricing with the fancier GeForce RTX 4070 Ti range, and a savvy buyer will tend toward superior silicon rather than a shiny cooling solution combined with a factory-issued overclock. A computer hardware retailer in the UK, Novatech, has chosen to cut the price of a Palit RTX 4070 Dual model by £40/$50, as reported yesterday. The asking price has since returned closer to RRP - at the time of writing it stands at £579.98.

Jack is back… and he's punching his way onto Steam! The action RPG is now available on the platform: here's everything you need to know about it. Many of you will be familiar with STRANGER OF PARADISE FINAL FANTASY ORIGIN's Jack Garland: expert swordsman, skilled white mage, destructive black mage, deadly dragoon, powerful pugilist… and that's not even half of it. We can now add one more achievement to his impressive resume: available on Steam! Yes, get ready for some chaotic FINAL FANTASY carnage! Read on and we'll tell you everything you need to know about the game and its Steam release.

What is STRANGER OF PARADISE FINAL FANTASY ORIGIN?
Some of you unfamiliar with the game may be wondering what this game is all about. Long story short, it's about action - brilliantly brutal, fast-paced action that tests your reactions and battle strategy in equal measure. Developed by KOEI TECMO GAMES (Nioh series), STRANGER OF PARADISE FINAL FANTASY ORIGIN is a dark and visceral action RPG that presents a bold take on the FINAL FANTASY series, while celebrating its amazing 35 year legacy! You play as Jack Garland, who along with his allies Ash, Jed, Neon and Sophia, sets off from the Kingdom of Cornelia to defeat Chaos. If you're a fan of the original FINAL FANTASY game, some of those names may be ringing a bell, but we'll let you discover what it all means.

Industry analysts have been busy with reviews of the PlayStation VR2 headset's launch sales figures, and have concluded that the numbers are a big disappointment according to findings published in a Bloomberg article. The research firm IDC is predicting that the PS VR2 is unlikely to break above 270,000 unit sales - timed from its launch this year on February 22 to the end of March. This is a substantial shortfall when lined up against the expected sales figures - Sony was reported to have an estimate of 2 million units sold going into the next financial year, but it was cutback to 1.5 million in the recent past. Francisco Jeronimo, IDC's Vice President of data and analytics cites a number of factors for the sluggish start: "Consumers around the world are facing rising costs of living, rising interest rates and rising layoffs - VR headsets are not top of mind for most consumers under the current economic climate."

Gamers were surprised by the higher than expected pricing for the PlayStation VR2 headset - at an MSRP of $550 it exceeds the asking price of the PlayStation 5 - and the home console is a necessary component in hosting the VR2's functionality. The virtual reality device has been a critical darling, although reviewers have been quick to question the price tag. It has been praised for an impressive specification and feature set, which includes dual 2,000 x 2,040 OLED displays, class leading eye-tracking tech and innovative Move wand controllers. The analysts share similar views about the high MSRP - Jeronimo predicts that Sony will need to take drastic action in order to right its sales ship: "I suspect a price cut on the PS VR2 will be needed to avoid a complete disaster of their new product." A price cut would perhaps appeal to a more mainstream buyer, coupled with the PlayStation VR2 being part of an ultra familiar gaming brand, but VR headset manufacturers as a whole are experiencing a slowdown in sales. Gamers were slow to adopt the first iteration of Sony's virtual headset, and that pattern appears to be repeating for the new model.

In the wake of its Ryzen 7000X3D series announcement, AMD cut the price of its Ryzen 7 7700X 8-core/16-thread "Zen 4" processor. The Ryzen 7000X3D series is available from February 28, however, the 8-core 7800X3D will only be available from April 6. Despite this, sales prospects of the 7700X could be affected, as the SKU faces cannibalization not just from the 7800X3D, but also the recently launched 65 W Ryzen 7 7700, which has shown decent overclocking potential with motherboard-level power limit unlocks. What's interesting is that the 105 W 7700X at $299 puts it below the 65 W 7700 that launched at $325, which means that the 7700 could get even cheaper. This series of price-cuts and SKU re-positioning could make AMD competitive against Intel's 13th Gen Core i5 SKUs such as the i5-13600 and i5-13500 6P+8E models.

Intel cut the baseline prices of its Arc A750 performance-segment graphics card. The card now starts at USD $249, down from its launch price of $289 for the first-party reference-design card. Among the handful custom-design board partners for the A750 are Acer, Gunnir, and ASRock. The A750 targets maxed-out AAA gaming at 1080p, although the card is capable of higher resolutions with the Intel XeSS performance enhancement.

Based on the 6 nm ACM-G10 silicon, the A750 is endowed with 3,584 unified shaders across 28 Xe Cores or 448 EUs, 224 TMUs, 112 ROPs, and 8 GB of 16 Gbps GDDR6 memory across the chip's full 256-bit wide memory interface (512 GB/s memory bandwidth). The card has a typical board power of 225 W, draws it from a combination of 8-pin and 6-pin PCIe power connectors; and has modern display outputs that include HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort 2.1. The Arc "Alchemist" family of GPUs meets the full DirectX 12 Ultimate feature-set, including real-time ray tracing. They also have regular driver updates with day-zero optimization for big game releases.Many Thanks to TumbleGeorge for the tip.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card has been out since mid-November and is a great performer in many resolutions and titles. However, with NVIDIA setting its price tag at $1200, it is an expensive product to afford and represents a considerable price jump compared to older xx80 GPU generations. According to MyDrivers, NVIDIA could lower the price starting in mid-December, to better suit the needs of consumers and have a competitive product. With AMD's RDNA3-based graphics cards releasing in the following days, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX costing $999 is a direct competitor to GeForce RTX 4080. If NVIDIA plans to cut the massive MSRP of the RTX 4080, then we expect it to be in the range of Radeon RX 7900 XTX to create better market competition.

Of course, this is only wishful thinking and a rumor that MyDrivers has reported, so we have to wait until the middle of this month to find out if NVIDIA announces the alleged price cut.

AMD Ryzen 7000-series "Zen 4" desktop processors got their first round of price-cuts on leading retailer Newegg, as the company has a hard time justifying their launch-prices in the wake of Intel's 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" and declining demand in the PC components market. The new pricing sees the top Ryzen 9 7950X 16-core/32-thread chip priced at USD $574, down from $700 (an 18% price-cut). The 12-core/24-thread Ryzen 9 7900X sees its price go down from $550 to $474 (down 14%).

The 8-core/16-thread Ryzen 7 7700X gets a $50 price-cut sending its price down from $400 to roughly $350. The 6-core/12-thread Ryzen 5 7600X gets a similar $50 cut, which means the chip can now be had for roughly $250, down from its $300 launch price. All four SKUs face stiff competition from the aggressively priced 13th Gen Core SKUs, which include the i9-13900K, the i7-13700K, and the i5-13600K. Prices of Socket AM5 motherboards are another big put-off as they're a major contributor to platform costs, which is restricted to DDR5 memory. The Intel platform currently includes entry-level chipset options, as well as motherboards with DDR4 support.

NVIDIA is working with its board partners to introduce price-cuts for the higher-end of its GeForce RTX 30-series "Ampere" graphics cards, in addition to game bundles. This would see the flagship GeForce RTX 3090 Ti drop in price from $1,999 to $1,499, a 25% price-cut. The RTX 3090 (non-Ti) sees its price cut from $1,499 down to $1,299, or a 13.3% cut. The RTX 3080 Ti slides from $1,199 down to $1,099, an 8.3% cut. The RTX 3080 12 GB will finally be available at or below its MSRP of $799, while remaining inventories of the original RTX 3080 10 GB sticks to $699.

In addition to these price-cuts, NVIDIA is bundling "Ghostwire Tokyo" and "DOOM Eternal" Year One Pass (base game + two DLCs), with these cards as part of a game bundle. NVIDIA is competing with not just a sudden drop in demand stemming from the crypto-currency mining crash; but also crypto miners flooding the market with used cards.

It seems like NVIDIA wants the market to absorb inventories of its high-end GeForce RTX 30-series SKUs, such as the RTX 3090 Ti, so the company could make room for high-end SKUs from the RTX 40-series "Ada" series. Prices of the RTX 3090 Ti have tanked to as low as $1,599 for the Founders Edition, from its launch MSRP of $1,999. This $400 price-cut is probably triggered by crypto-currency miners flooding the market with high-end RTX 30-series graphics cards at attractive prices, which gamers are all too happy to lap up. The crash in demand from miners, compounded by drop in demand from gamers buying up cards in circulation, has forced NVIDIA to renegotiate its semiconductor foundry allocation with TSMC in the short-term.

AMD's current generation flagship desktop processor, the Ryzen 9 5950X, can be had for a steal, with prices now ranging between $520 and $550. Prices of the 16-core/32-thread processor based on the "Zen 3" microarchitecture, have been on a sharp decline since the launch of the Core i9-12900K "Alder Lake," falling from the $750 launch price to $600 in early-March, with current (late-April) prices looking like $549 on Amazon, and $519 on the venerable MicroCenter website, with even lower prices expected in-store. At $520-550, prices of the 5950X would compare with the Core i9-12900 (non-K), but still be higher than the $385 Core i7-12700K. The 12-core/24-thread Ryzen 9 5900X can be had for $399 on Newegg.

When EVGA brought the $299 GeForce RTX 2060 KO graphics card to CES, we knew they couldn't pull it off without NVIDIA's blessings. With AMD claiming that its upcoming $279 Radeon RX 5600 XT outclasses the entire GeForce GTX 1660-series, including the GTX 1660 Super and range-topping GTX 1660 Ti, NVIDIA had to do something, and that something is a formal price-cut on its GeForce RTX 2060 down to USD $299.

When it launched a year ago in January 2019, the GeForce RTX 2060 commanded a $349 price-point, which was largely unfazed by AMD's introduction of the Radeon RX 5700 at the same price. The RX 5700 is faster than the RTX 2060, but NVIDIA probably counted on ray-tracing to sell the card. The new RX 5600 XT changes the landscape dramatically, if AMD's performance claims hold true. The entire GTX 16-series is outclassed at a sub-$300 price matching that of the top GTX 1660 Ti part, and there's no ray-tracing hardware to bail them out, either. NVIDIA could cut prices, but those would pancake the already cluttered product-stack. The only other option (which NVIDIA took), was to cut prices of the RTX 2060. It remains to be seen what AMD's next move is. With the RX 5700-series, it pulled off a last-minute price-cut ahead of launch.

In a bid to clear out inventories of its 7th and 9th generation Core X HEDT processors based on the "Skylake-X" silicon, Intel is preparing to halve prices of leftover inventory in the retail channel. The move is triggered by the company's own recent launch of the 10th generation Core i9 "Cascade Lake-X" processors that are compatible with existing socket LGA2066 motherboards. With "Cascade Lake-X," Intel halved the Dollars-per-core metric across the board (i.e. doubled the performance-per-Dollar), resulting in its top 18-core i9-10980XE being priced under the $1000-mark, half of what the i9-9980XE once commanded.

With prices of Core X "Skylake-X" chips being halved, you can expect the market to be flooded with 7th and 9th generation chips that are priced marginally lesser than their 10th gen "Cascade Lake-X" siblings. The single-thread performance (IPC) is identical between the three generations. All that's changed with "Cascade Lake-X" is the introduction of the DLBoost instruction-set that speeds up AI applications (irrelevant to gamers), and an improved Turbo Boost algorithm that spreads boost clocks across more cores, including Favored Cores capability that will come alive with Windows 10 2H19 update. If you've been on one of the cheaper 8-core or 10-core LGA2066 chips, your upgrade options just increased.

This week on TechPowerUp News: Intel 6th gen. Core "Skylake" processors freeze over under certain kinds of stress; AMD's big price-cut for the super-small Radeon R9 Nano, and the fabled 5.10 GHz Intel Xeon processor.