News Tom's Hardware Best of 2021 Awards

[Admin]

Despite industry shortages, the tech industry produced some amazing products in 2021. From CPUs to laptops to 3D printers and microcontrollers, these are our favorites.

Tom's Hardware Best of 2021 Awards : Read more

 

[Oldcompsci]

What good is giving out rewards for products nobody can buy? What a lousy year for PC hardware ... wanted to get excited about it, but once I saw the prices and availability it was clear that we had another full year of excuses instead of results. Hey industry ... let's make 2022 about results.

 

[lazyabum]

Best GPU of 2021, The one that's available and affordable.

 

[syadnom]

I'm pretty accepting of the list EXCEPT for the CPU. AMD CPUs dominated the year and still do in performance/watt. Alder lake edges out AMD by a little bit at often twice the power draw.

 

[dalek1234]

I started reading, go to "Best CPU - Intel Alder Lake", and stopped reading. Sometimes I forget that Tom's is a marketing mouthpiece for Intel. This statement about Alder Lake is the strangest thing I've heard in all of 2021

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

I started reading, go to "Best CPU - Intel Alder Lake", and stopped reading. Sometimes I forget that Tom's is a marketing mouthpiece for Intel. This statement about Alder Lake is the strangest thing I've heard in all of 2021

Do note that Zen 3 was the best CPU last year, because it launched last year. I still think Alder Lake is a far more impressive design than Zen 3, though. It has a lot of parts and technologies coming together, and while power is higher than Zen 3, so is performance.

 

[jacob249358]

If you are going to even include a GPU and say, ¨if you could get it at close to msrp¨ don't choose the 3060. It should either be the 3060 ti or 3080 without a doubt.

 

[logainofhades]

I'm pretty accepting of the list EXCEPT for the CPU. AMD CPUs dominated the year and still do in performance/watt. Alder lake edges out AMD by a little bit at often twice the power draw.

In gaming, which is what this site is mostly tailored to, the 12600k is the best price/performance chip of the bunch.

 

[mitch074]

Do note that Zen 3 was the best CPU last year, because it launched last year. I still think Alder Lake is a far more impressive design than Zen 3, though. It has a lot of parts and technologies coming together, and while power is higher than Zen 3, so is performance.

Compute to watts ratio of Alder Lake isn't too good compared with AMD's one year old arch, but compute to money is, indeed, better. Intel caught up and overtook at the finish line on desktop processors (still lagging behind on mobile and server chips) on Windows 11.
But, considering AMD used to sell all their SKUs at half the price they're selling now, and still made a killing, if by ANY chance their inventory starts stagnating they can drop the price.
Thing is, they don't need to - they're selling everything they have at any price they want. And they can't produce more for now.
To put things in perspective, they're forcing Intel to externalize some of their mainstream SKU production - when Intel was denigrating AMD a few months back for being fabless...

 

[Why_Me]

Compute to watts ratio of Alder Lake isn't too good compared with AMD's one year old arch, but compute to money is, indeed, better. Intel caught up and overtook at the finish line on desktop processors (still lagging behind on mobile and server chips) on Windows 11.
But, considering AMD used to sell all their SKUs at half the price they're selling now, and still made a killing, if by ANY chance their inventory starts stagnating they can drop the price.
Thing is, they don't need to - they're selling everything they have at any price they want. And they can't produce more for now.
To put things in perspective, they're forcing Intel to externalize some of their mainstream SKU production - when Intel was denigrating AMD a few months back for being fabless...

That matters for laptops, not desktops and especially not gamers.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

If you are going to even include a GPU and say, ¨if you could get it at close to msrp¨ don't choose the 3060. It should either be the 3060 ti or 3080 without a doubt.

Same reason as on the CPU: RTX 3080 and 3060 Ti launched last year and are thus ineligible.

 

[jacob249358]

Same reason as on the CPU: RTX 3080 and 3060 Ti launched last year and are thus ineligible.

Oh wow, I didn't even realize that.

 

[mitch074]

That matters for laptops, not desktops and especially not gamers.

As desktop hardware is currently a scam, I recommend everybody around me to buy a laptop; those that do, tend to gravitate towards AMD hardware and have been very surprised by the performance. Note, I've been building desktop computers since 1995; Intel, AMD, Cyrix, VIA... You name it, I've (re)built it. Now is not the time to build a gaming PC.
I'll be nursing my 2700X + RX480 until the end of 2022, and I'll evaluate the hardware then : if Intel's GPU are the best bang for buck then, I'll get one; if AMD's AM5 socket is good, I'll switch to it, or maybe I'll go Intel - or I'll get myself a Ryzen 6900X to squeeze a few more years from my AM4 system, again, best bang for buck.
And, running Linux, I sure as heck ain't gonna get an Nvidia card : their driver is utter crap when compared with Intel's or AMD's.