Type of site | Technology website |
---|---|
Available in | English |
Owner | PC Perspective Publications LLC |
URL | pcper |
Commercial | Yes |
Registration | Optional |
Launched | 2004 |
Current status | Active |
PC Perspective (often shortened to PCPer) is a web site dedicated to news and reviews of personal computing and gaming hardware. [1] PC Perspective specializes in hardware that is most relevant to home users and enthusiasts. The site also has an active online community, a weekly podcast, and founder Ryan Shrout was the co-host of TWiT.tv's This Week in Computer Hardware. [2]
PCPer was founded by Ryan Shrout in 2004. [1] Shrout previously ran the AMD motherboard centric Amdmb.com, Athlonmb.com, and K7M.com websites. [3] [4]
PC Perspective was originally located at pcperspective.com, but quickly moved to pcper.com.
The PCPer website publishes news and reviews of consumer computing and gaming hardware, [5] [6] [7] which has been highlighted in Forbes, [8] [9] [10] PC World, [11] [12] Ars Technica, [13] [14] [15] [16] and Anandtech. [17] At the editor's discretion, products with exceptional reviews may be given Silver, Gold, or Editor's Choice awards. [18] PCPer has also been noted for purchasing professional level products in order to infer the performance of consumer products based on the same microarchitecture, [19] [20] and livestreaming benchmarking of new products. [21]
The PCPer website also hosts a leaderboard of suggested components for computers at various price points. [22]
PCPer also partnered with Polygon in 2016 on the construction and evaluation of computers for virtual reality gaming. [23]
Due to consulting done by some PCPer staff on products, some PCPer reviews include disclosure statements describing the consulting and review relationship and any potential conflict of interest. [24] With the departure of PCPer staff involved in private consulting and the transfer of ownership on January 1, 2019 to individuals not involved in any form of private consulting, the PCPer review disclosures statements have remained under the justification of providing readers with relevant information about published reviews. [25]
PCPer hosts a weekly podcast discussing the weeks technology news and reviews. Video podcasts have been produced since at least 2010, [26] with a successful Indiegogo fundraising campaign supporting production equipment. [27] PCPer also began in July 2017 to host a weekly video series answering reader's questions, [28] after reaching a set support level on Patreon. [29]
Ryan Shrout was the regular co-host of TWiT.tv's This Week in Computer Hardware with Patrick Norton [2] with other PCPer editors co-hosting as-well. [30] Sebastian Peak took over co-hosting duties when Shrout went on to work for Intel. [31]
Founder Ryan Shrout is also a consultant, [32] analyst for MarketWatch [33] [34] and contributor to EE Times, [35] [36] [37] [38] and CNBC, [39] [40] [41] and other publications; [42] often discussing technology related news. Shrout has also co-hosted The Tech Analysts podcast, discussing technology topics, with Patrick Moorehead since 2017. [43] [44]
In October 2018, Shrout announced he would leave PCPer and join Intel as the company's Chief Performance Strategist. [45] [46]
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational corporation and fabless semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that designs, develops, and sells computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets.
Athlon is the brand name applied to a series of x86-compatible microprocessors designed and manufactured by AMD. The original Athlon was the first seventh-generation x86 processor and the first desktop processor to reach speeds of one gigahertz (GHz). It made its debut as AMD's high-end processor brand on June 23, 1999. Over the years AMD has used the Athlon name with the 64-bit Athlon 64 architecture, the Athlon II, and Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) chips targeting the Socket AM1 desktop SoC architecture, and Socket AM4 Zen (microarchitecture). The modern Zen-based Athlon with a Radeon Graphics processor was introduced in 2019 as AMD's highest-performance entry-level processor.
The transistor count is the number of transistors in an electronic device. It is the most common measure of integrated circuit complexity. The rate at which MOS transistor counts have increased generally follows Moore's law, which observes that transistor count doubles approximately every two years. However, being directly proportional to the area of a die, transistor count does not represent how advanced the corresponding manufacturing technology is. A better indication of this is transistor density which is the ratio of a semiconductor's transistor count to its die area.
AMD Accelerated Processing Unit (APU), formerly known as Fusion, is a series of 64-bit microprocessors from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), combining a general-purpose AMD64 central processing unit (CPU) and 3D integrated graphics processing unit (IGPU) on a single die.
Unified Video Decoder is the name given to AMD's dedicated video decoding ASIC. There are multiple versions implementing a multitude of video codecs, such as H.264 and VC-1.
Graphics Core Next (GCN) is the codename for a series of microarchitectures and an instruction set architecture that were developed by AMD for its GPUs as the successor to its TeraScale microarchitecture. The first product featuring GCN was launched on January 9, 2012.
AMD PowerTune is a series of dynamic frequency scaling technologies built into some AMD GPUs and APUs that allow the clock speed of the processor to be dynamically changed by software. This allows the processor to meet the instantaneous performance needs of the operation being performed, while minimizing power draw, heat generation and noise avoidance. AMD PowerTune aims to solve thermal design power and performance constraints.
Zen is a family of computer processor microarchitectures from AMD, first launched in February 2017 with the first generation of its Ryzen CPUs. It is used in Ryzen, Ryzen Threadripper, and Epyc (server).
The Radeon 400 series is a series of graphics processors developed by AMD. These cards were the first to feature the Polaris GPUs, using the new 14 nm FinFET manufacturing process, developed by Samsung Electronics and licensed to GlobalFoundries. The Polaris family initially included two new chips in the Graphics Core Next (GCN) family. Polaris implements the 4th generation of the Graphics Core Next instruction set, and shares commonalities with the previous GCN microarchitectures.
Zen is the first iteration in the Zen family of computer processor microarchitectures from AMD. It was first used with their Ryzen series of CPUs in February 2017. The first Zen-based preview system was demonstrated at E3 2016, and first substantially detailed at an event hosted a block away from the Intel Developer Forum 2016. The first Zen-based CPUs, codenamed "Summit Ridge", reached the market in early March 2017, Zen-derived Epyc server processors launched in June 2017 and Zen-based APUs arrived in November 2017.
Kaby Lake is Intel's codename for its seventh generation Core microprocessor family announced on August 30, 2016. Like the preceding Skylake, Kaby Lake is produced using a 14 nanometer manufacturing process technology. Breaking with Intel's previous "tick–tock" manufacturing and design model, Kaby Lake represents the optimized step of the newer process–architecture–optimization model. Kaby Lake began shipping to manufacturers and OEMs in the second quarter of 2016, with its desktop chips officially launched in January 2017.
Socket AM4 is a PGA microprocessor socket used by AMD's central processing units (CPUs) built on the Zen and Excavator microarchitectures.
Radeon Pro is AMD's brand of professional oriented GPUs. It replaced AMD's FirePro brand in 2016. Compared to the Radeon brand for mainstream consumer/gamer products, the Radeon Pro brand is intended for use in workstations and the running of computer-aided design (CAD), computer-generated imagery (CGI), digital content creation (DCC), high-performance computing/GPGPU applications, and the creation and running of virtual reality programs and games.
Ryzen is a brand of multi-core x86-64 microprocessors designed and marketed by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) for desktop, mobile, server, and embedded platforms based on the Zen microarchitecture. It consists of central processing units (CPUs) marketed for mainstream, enthusiast, server, and workstation segments and accelerated processing units (APUs) marketed for mainstream and entry-level segments and embedded systems applications.
Zen+ is the name for a computer processor microarchitecture by AMD. It is the successor to the first gen Zen microarchitecture, and was first released in April 2018, powering the second generation of Ryzen processors, known as Ryzen 2000 for mainstream desktop systems, Threadripper 2000 for high-end desktop setups and Ryzen 3000G for accelerated processing units (APUs).
The Radeon RX Vega series is a series of graphics processors developed by AMD. These GPUs use the Graphics Core Next (GCN) 5th generation architecture, codenamed Vega, and are manufactured on 14 nm FinFET technology, developed by Samsung Electronics and licensed to GlobalFoundries. The series consists of desktop graphics cards and APUs aimed at desktops, mobile devices, and embedded applications.
RDNA is a graphics processing unit (GPU) microarchitecture and accompanying instruction set architecture developed by AMD. It is the successor to their Graphics Core Next (GCN) microarchitecture/instruction set. The first product lineup featuring RDNA was the Radeon RX 5000 series of video cards, launched on July 7, 2019. The architecture is also used in mobile products. It is manufactured and fabricated with TSMC's N7 FinFET graphics chips used in the Navi series of AMD Radeon graphics cards.
Socket AM5 is a zero insertion force flip-chip land grid array (LGA) CPU socket designed by AMD that is used for AMD Ryzen microprocessors starting with the Zen 4 microarchitecture. AM5 was launched in September 2022 and is the successor to AM4.