News Tom’s Hardware Best of 2022 Awards

[Admin]

From CPUs to GPUs, 3D printers, laptops and other PC components and accessories, these hardware products rose above the rest.

Tom’s Hardware Best of 2022 Awards : Read more

 

[hotaru251]

the one-trick gaming pony Ryzen 7 5800X3D by 4%

yes, the 5800x3d isnt "best" in multiple things, but a one trick pony?

the things still a beast for gaming AND production :|

and fact 13900k is 2x its price <_< (4% in a non listed game isnt worth $300)


off that bit: might check out that soldering iron...been wanting to get 1 for the vehicle.

 

[PlaneInTheSky]

You have almost all the tech people buy and never use in 1 article.

-Raspberry Pi
-3D printer
-soldering iron
-360° camera

Only thing that is missing is VR goggles.

 

[cknobman]

Really dissapointed with the your picks for graphics card and gaming laptop.

Giving a best of year award to a graphics card costing double what it should is crap.
Alienware's are overpriced and underperforming compared to its competitors.

Were any of your selections influenced by vendors or financial incentives?

 

[Udyr]

Were any of your selections influenced by vendors or financial incentives?

CIA wants to know your location.

 

[HideOut]

Best SSD, Samsung Gen 4 drive thats wildly to expensive? *but includes a link you can use so THG gets a kickback.

Perhaps when all current platforms include PCIe Gen 5 a Gen 5 drive would have been a better choice. Many out there for about the same money that do about 7GB/sec, or 2.5G faster than the one you chose.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Really dissapointed with the your picks for graphics card and gaming laptop.

Giving a best of year award to a graphics card costing double what it should is crap.
Alienware's are overpriced and underperforming compared to its competitors.

Were any of your selections influenced by vendors or financial incentives?

How do you determine what it "should" cost? Because the market is speaking loudly that even $1600 is "too cheap" for what the RTX 4090 delivers. It's undoubtedly not all from the gaming sector. When Nvidia sets a price of $1600 as the baseline and nearly every card currently available for the past two months has been sold for $2000+, you were never going to see $1200, or the mythical $800 that you've pulled out of GOK. If you were to say the RTX 3090 was too expensive at $1500, I could agree with that. It was 10% faster than a 3080 for theoretically more than double the price.

Now the market has shifted and you get a card that's over 50% faster than the previous generation "$2000" card, 30% faster than the new $1200 card, and anywhere from 25% (rasterization games) to 94% (ray tracing games) to 240% (Blender) to five times or more faster in AI training and inference compared to AMD's latest and greatest. And that should cost less than a grand? I mean, it would be lovely if it did, but it's never going to happen. Graphics cards are now for more than just gaming, and even if you're mostly interested in gaming, the absolute fastest card at any time is not going to ever drop below $1000 again. That's the reality we now live in.

 

[Bamda]

All I can say is you better have deep pockets if you go shopping using this list. LOL

 

[itchyeyes]

Much as I like gaming, it would be really nice if these categories weren’t all so gaming centric. People do use computers for other things.

 

[USAFRet]

I was with you until that 3D printer.

Its main claim to fame is 'fast'.
Which is NOT a bad thing, but its not even finished yet. Barely out of kickstarter phase.

Give it a year of refinement, and then we'll see.

 

[drivinfast247]

You have almost all the tech people buy and never use in 1 article.

-Raspberry Pi
-3D printer
-soldering iron
-360° camera

Only thing that is missing is VR goggles.

2 Raspberry Pi are running OctoPi for my 3d printers and I used my soldering station 3 times this month so far. Lol

 

[Co BIY]

You have almost all the tech people buy and never use in 1 article.

-Raspberry Pi
-3D printer
-soldering iron
-360° camera

Only thing that is missing is VR goggles.

The 3D printer is to the Tech World what the bumper winch is to the 4WD world.

Wanting one and usefully using one are very different.

 

[RodroX]

For me the Best Hardware 2022 is the one I can get in stock where I live, at a decent price, and that gives me the performance I want/need for my uses.

Thats why this year, after many consideration, I ended up buying nothing but a 2 tower air cooler (AK 620, which I hope I will get some free time to install soon).

This was for me the year many PC gamers and enthusiast around the world were waiting for. Sadly, the greediness of many hardware makers and the global economic situation did a disaster all around the globe.

I can only hope for a better 2023.

On the other hand Argentina is on the world cup 2022 final, so thats good news for me .

Cheers!

 

[vMax]

Intel 13th gen was exceptional and finally provide compitition so badly needed and AMD had to drop prices so win win for consumers on the CPU side....Hope this continues...

On the GPU, yes the 4090 is without doubt the best GPU and for once as a halo product being only $100 more than the previouse 3090 was not too bad...still expensive but understandable as the best. Sadly everything below especially the 4080 are so over priced as is the 7900XTX which needs to be at least $100 and the 7900XT at least down to $750..

 

[husker]

Really dissapointed with the your picks for graphics card and gaming laptop.

Giving a best of year award to a graphics card costing double what it should is crap.
Alienware's are overpriced and underperforming compared to its competitors.

Were any of your selections influenced by vendors or financial incentives?

I hate to break it to you, but the best is for people who can afford it. Trying to change the definition of "best" to meet some kind of a cost compromise means you will no longer be choosing the best.

 

[Brian D Smith]

Well....isnt' that something. Top CPU...from the review you would think it should read "Top CPU for Gaming"....that's all they talk about! It's the GPU that most important for gaming. I didn't notice anything about productivity. That's what some of us are interested in. 32 nice sweet AMD threads would shine there (no neutered 'efficiency cores').

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Well....isnt' that something. Top CPU...from the review you would think it should read "Top CPU for Gaming"....that's all they talk about! It's the GPU that most important for gaming. I didn't notice anything about productivity. That's what some of us are interested in. 32 nice sweet AMD threads would shine there (no neutered 'efficiency cores').

The full linked review shows that the 13900K also leads in many non-gaming workloads. There are some that the 7950X wins, certainly, but also some that the 13900K wins — Cinebench, POV-Ray, PCMark 10's workload (not sure exactly what's in that), C-Ray, LuxMark, Handbrake x264, LAME, SVT-HEVC, WebP, Lightroom. If you factor in higher single-threaded performance, higher gaming performance, and just slightly lower multi-threaded, it's easy enough to see why the 13900K would end up as the preferred option. But if you do a lot of Blender/V-Ray, Adobe Photoshop/Premiere Pro, or, ironically, stuff that leverages AVX-512, then the 7950X might be the better choice.
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i9-13900k-i5-13600k-cpu-review/6

 

[Brian D Smith]

Exactly...but it's not like they say that in the 'Top' article.
My multi-threaded productivity needs have me eyeing the 7950x.
All they talk about is gaming...and one needs a top end GPU for that...the CPU doesn't matter so much.

 

[digitalgriffin]

How do you determine what it "should" cost? Because the market is speaking loudly that even $1600 is "too cheap" for what the RTX 4090 delivers. It's undoubtedly not all from the gaming sector. When Nvidia sets a price of $1600 as the baseline and nearly every card currently available for the past two months has been sold for $2000+, you were never going to see $1200, or the mythical $800 that you've pulled out of GOK. If you were to say the RTX 3090 was too expensive at $1500, I could agree with that. It was 10% faster than a 3080 for theoretically more than double the price.

Now the market has shifted and you get a card that's over 50% faster than the previous generation "$2000" card, 30% faster than the new $1200 card, and anywhere from 25% (rasterization games) to 94% (ray tracing games) to 240% (Blender) to five times or more faster in AI training and inference compared to AMD's latest and greatest. And that should cost less than a grand? I mean, it would be lovely if it did, but it's never going to happen. Graphics cards are now for more than just gaming, and even if you're mostly interested in gaming, the absolute fastest card at any time is not going to ever drop below $1000 again. That's the reality we now live in.

There is "the best" and then there is "the best" In terms of bang for the buck while playing 1440p, the AMD 6600XT is a good buy. While the 4090 is the best of the best, it's out of the range of 95% of us. Who of us can stomach a $2000 price point+psu+high end CPU that isn't going to be top of the heap in 1 year?

I personally don't fault you for citing it as the best. You do conscientious work in your picks and recommendations. But I have to agree that it's relative to how deep your wallet is.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

There is "the best" and then there is "the best" In terms of bang for the buck while playing 1440p, the AMD 6600XT is a good buy. While the 4090 is the best of the best, it's out of the range of 95% of us. Who of us can stomach a $2000 price point+psu+high end CPU that isn't going to be top of the heap in 1 year?

I personally don't fault you for citing it as the best. You do conscientious work in your picks and recommendations. But I have to agree that it's relative to how deep your wallet is.

Oh, absolutely. And the RX 6600 cards were last year launches so sort of get disqualified. Honestly, most of our "best of the year" awards focus on the new, faster, more expensive, "exciting" stuff just because of that last bit — giving an award to something that came out more than a year ago (Aug 2021 for the 6600 XT) feels boring. LOL. But I do note in our Best GPUs that the RX 6600 and 6650 XT are two of the best values going right now. They're also still slower than an RTX 2080 from four years ago. ¯\(ツ)/¯

 

[JohnBonhamsGhost]

All they talk about is gaming...and one needs a top end GPU for that...the CPU doesn't matter so much.

so you're either not into gaming or just don't understand how it works with a PC and high end(high resolution, high frame rate, high quality) gaming.

you would be wasting your money with the highest performing graphics cards if you don't have a CPU with processing power to take advantage of those cards.