NEW GEAR IS COMING THICK AND FAST; PICK YOUR PARTS CAREFULLY

THE GRAPHICS CARD MARKET continues to be an odd beast: In the last few months, we’ve gone from having no affordable new cards to play with, to having almost too many options. And there are more on the way, meaning that the crowded landscape is going to get even more confusing.

Knowing what hardware to focus on is where we come in, and whether you’re upgrading an existing machine or building one from scratch, you can rely on us to tell you what really matters. When it comes to affordable graphics cards, there are a few options for anyone not interested in the first generation of RTX cards: from last-gen AMD and Nvidia cards, to the new GeForce GTX 1660 and 1660 Ti. You’ll find a review of the 1660 on page 76, while we show you how to build a whole system around the 1660 Ti on page 70.

The beauty of any build is that you can tweak it to suit you. For instance, you could use the cheaper non-Ti card in this month’s cover build if you’re trying to save cash, but you’ll probably have to dial back from the highest settings to hit smooth frame rates—something you shouldn’t have to do with the factory overclocked 1660 Ti we’ve used.

The rest of the build is simple enough, and a good guide for anyone looking to build a machine for the first time. You’ll end up with a system that can game brilliantly, but also turn its hand to more serious endeavors without breaking into a sweat. It’s a powerful machine that puts in a good turn in the value-for-money stakes.

If you’re a fan of older hardware, you should find the feature starting on page 24 interesting, as it shows you how to recreate some of the machines of your youth using emulation. The likes of the Commodore 64, Atari ST, and consoles from the ’90s can now strut their stuff for your entertainment, and it’s far easier to do now than it was.

One thing that older systems did very well was making the most of the storage they had available, and when you look at the size of Windows 10 with this in mind, Microsoft’s latest OS can appear bloated. The good news is that there are tools that can help you cut a lot of this bloat, and focus on the core functionality of Windows without a lot of the extras that you never use. On page 44, we show you how to use these tools to strip out apps you don’t need to create a trimmed, stripped-down install.

Our other big feature this issue looks at the viability of Google’s game streaming service, Stadia. It isn’t the first such service, and it probably won’t be the last, but what hurdles will it have to overcome to stand a chance, is it something that people actually want, and will having Google’s sizable funds behind it mean that it can succeed where so many others have failed? Turn to page 34 to find out.

Enjoy the issue!