The best devices for gaming (Tech Awards 2020)
Gaming is a huge deal these days and just about everyone is a gamer these days. On the one hand, you have hardcore gamers with cutting-edge PCs, extra-light mice, and the reflexes of a cat; and on the other hand, you have your casual gamers who are content to lazily tap away on their phones or tablets. Regardless of what kind of games you play or what device you play them on, gaming has become a huge part of a lot of people’s lives. To help you get the most out of your gaming sessions, these are the award categories that the editors have assessed for this segment to play your favourite games on:-
- Best Graphics Card
- Best Desktop CPU
- Best Motherboard
- Best Gaming Notebook
- Best Wi-Fi 6 Router
- Game of the Year
Other segments include the Best devices for Home, Mobility devices, Work and Gaming (this article). Not to forget, our Readers’ Choice results for the Best Tech Brands.
Read on and find out who the winners are in each category! For this segment, we begin with what’s arguably the most important component in every gaming PC – the graphics card.
Best Graphics Card
NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 2080 Super is very, very fast, but if you’re looking to take things up a notch with factory overclocks and custom cooling solutions, there are plenty of cards out there vying for your money. This means cards that are slightly faster and cooler, complete with fancy add-ons like RGB lighting and even extra fan headers. Clock speeds don’t matter that much though, and all the cards produce near-identical results in games. Instead, things like thermal performance and design matter more.
To make the cut for this year’s awards, the cards must be at least high-end representatives of their respective brand line-ups, given that it’s not always possible to obtain the flagship model for review locally.RELATED VIDEOThe Most Anticipated Games of 2020FEATURED BY
Nominees:
- ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 2080S A8G Gaming
- EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 Super XC Ultra, Overclocked
- GALAX GeForce RTX 2080 Super EX 1-click OC
- Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2080 Super Gaming OC
- MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Super Gaming X Trio
- Palit GeForce RTX 2080 Super White GameRock
- Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 2080 Super Triple Fan
And the winner is…
The ASUS card ultimately came ahead because of its strong performance in areas that really matter, such as cooling. Cooling is the one area where there’s an obvious and measurable difference between the cards, so ASUS scores big points here. On top of that, it comes with several value-added features to help it stand out, such as additional RGB and fan headers. The card also features a BIOS switch to change fan profiles and a toggle button to instantly switch off its LEDs. Overclocking performance may be lacklustre, but no one else did well either, and it seems unfair to assign too much weight to overclocking performance given the possible variances between samples. The biggest drawback is its price. At S$1,499, it’s significantly more expensive than even the MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Super Gaming X Trio, which costs S$1,288. Still, the fact remains that this is the best performing card in this shootout and the one with the richest feature set.
| Performance | Features | Value | Overall | Price (as tested) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 2080 Super Gaming Advanced | 9.0 | 8.5 | 7.0 | 8.5 | S$1,499 |
| EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 Super XC Ultra, Overclocked | 8.5 | 8.0 | 8.0 | 8.0 | S$1,119 |
| GALAX GeForce RTX 2080 Super EX 1-click OC | 7.5 | 7.5 | 8.0 | 7.5 | S$1,119 |
| Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2080 Super Gaming OC | 8.5 | 8.5 | 8.0 | 8.5 | S$1,220 |
| MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Super Gaming X Trio | 8.5 | 8.0 | 8.0 | 8.0 | S$1,288 |
| Palit GeForce RTX 2080 Super White GameRock | 8.5 | 8.0 | 8.0 | 8.0 | S$1,165 |
| Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 2080 Super Triple Fan | 8.0 | 8.0 | 8.5 | 8.0 | S$1,099 |
For more details on how we selected our winners, check out the full reviews and articles listed in the References section below.
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