While other long-running series struggle to reinvent themselves when the formula gets stale, Final Fantasy benefits from the way each game is something new. That said, we do love to see how Biggs and Wedge and crystals and all the other recurring elements are reinterpreted each time. Final Fantasy 16 going all grim and Game of Thrones-y wouldn’t have the same impact if characters hadn’t been riding bright yellow chocobos while swearing and hacking each other to gory bits.
Final Fantasy 15 reimagined the JRPG as a road trip across America, only instead of oversized roadside attractions being like the World’s Biggest Ball of Twine, they’re gigantic creatures you can hunt. The adamantoise, a chelonian monster that’s appeared in various forms since Final Fantasy 2, showed up in FF15 as a straight-up kaiju with a mountain on its back. Depending what level you were and how effectively you’d stacked buffs, fighting it could take hours.
The Ancient Adamantoise is just as tough to kill in Magic: The Gathering’s Final Fantasy crossover. It’s got a toughness of 20 and three points of ward you have to get through each time you attack it. However, it also tanks every point of damage you and your creatures would normally take, and it doesn’t heal back to full at the end of the turn. Just like the videogame superboss, it can be killed by repeatedly hitting it in the toe over the course of several hours.
Killing the Ancient Adamantoise in the videogame is worth that chunk of your limited time on Earth because it rewards you with an amulet that maxes out your hit points, some useful adamantite material for crafting spells with, and meat you can cook in one of FF15’s typically lavish meals by combining it with Kettier Ginger for a boost to your attack, HP, and regen.
That stack of rewards is also translated into Magic: The Gathering, where killing the Ancient Adamantoise will earn you 10 treasure tokens, each of which can be spent for a point of mana—though they enter tapped so you can’t use them straight away. Still, that’s a pretty good haul that will make your next turn a game changer. When your opponent drops eight mana on the Ancient Adamantoise, they’re not just playing a Big Boy—they’re throwing down a challenge. Topple this tortoise before they kill you with it, and the whole match might be yours.
(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast / Kevin Glint)
FF15 is also represented in cards representing a fishing minigame, and one of the 15 different Cids you can have in your deck all at once. Cid’s often an airship pilot or inventor in other games, but in FF15 he just runs the garage where you get your car repaired. Though eventually you can turn it into a flying machine, as seen in the art for Ancient Adamantoise, where it’s about to get chomped and taken back to the shop for maintenance yet again.
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Magic: The Gathering—Final Fantasy will be released on June 13. It’s the first of Magic’s Universes Beyond crossover sets to be legal in standard format, as will its follow-ups like Spider-Man and Avatar: The Last Airbender.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/1747876319_Final-Fantasy-15s-longest-boss-fight-is-coming-to-Magic-scaled.jpg18462560Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-05-22 02:00:002025-05-22 02:00:00Final Fantasy 15’s longest boss fight is coming to Magic: The Gathering, hopefully it won’t take 30 days to defeat
If you’re a maker of AIO liquid CPU coolers, it’s getting harder to stand out in the crowd. Just about every vendor has something that boasts an additional VRM fan, cable-free fan connections, or a massive LCD screen, so what more can you offer to the discerning buyer? Lian Li reckons that simplicity is what’s missing in the market, and its forthcoming Hydroshift 2 LCD-C CL cooler keeps things as simple as it can (even if the name has an awful lot of Ls and Cs).
We were given a demonstration of the new cooler at this year’s Computex event, and at first glance, the Hydroshift 2 LCD-C CL just looks like any other liquid cooler. The one thing that perhaps all coolers share is clunky RGB software, though, and despite the best efforts of the likes of Corsair with its iCUE package, changing the colours or patterns isn’t as straightforward or quick as changing the DPI on a gaming mouse, for example.
Well, that’s the first feature of Lian Li’s new cooler. The RGB LEDs in the fans and pump unit can be controlled via an app, but if such things give you the heebie-jeebies, then fear not, because all you need to do is twist a dial on the pump, and that’s a bingo! Fresh new colours and whatnot.
But let’s say that it’s not the software that you dislike, with RGB-toting AIO coolers, but all the wires that you have to use to connect the fans together, and then again to your PC to control them. The new Hydroshift sports cheaper versions of Lian Li’s SL Wireless range, which as the name suggests, uses a 2.4 GHz wireless connection for RGB and fan speed control.
Computex 2025
(Image credit: Jacob Ridley)
Catch up with Computex 2025: We’re stalking the halls of Taiwan’s biggest tech show once again to see what Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Asus, Gigabyte, MSI and more have to offer.
The fans themselves daisy-chain together via electrical contacts, rather than a nest of wires, making the whole setup and subsequent control as easy as pie. (Are pies easy? I’ve always found making decent pastry really quite hard!)
Anyway, the whole shebang is topped off with a 2.1-inch LCD screen, which you can probably adorn with a picture of your face, looking all smug and satisfied with how simple and easy the Hydroshift 2 LCD-C CL has been to rig up and use.
If that sounds like it’s right up your street, then you won’t need to wait very long to pick one up, because Lian Li is targeting May 29 as the launch date, with an MSRP of $180 for both black and white versions.
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Of course, we don’t know just how effective Lian Li’s new cooler is or how quiet the fans and pumps are, but having got our sticky paws on it at Computex, we can confirm that it is simple to use and looks pretty nice, to boot.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/1747840294_Hate-RGB-software-but-still-want-all-the-pretty-LEDs-scaled.jpg14402560Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-05-21 15:55:012025-05-21 15:55:01Hate RGB software but still want all the pretty LEDs on your AIO cooler? Lian Li might just have the very thing for you
When we talk about mechanical keyboard switches, everything refers back to Cherry. Even if you’re using a different brand’s switches, often you’ll end up explaining them in terms of Cherry’s naming scheme; “These feel like low profile reds” or similar is often pretty common jargon when describing how a board might feel. This is all about to receive a refresh as Cherry debuts its new switches, complete with some new naming schemes at this year’s Computex.
Now when you’re looking at Cherry’s keyboards there’s three distinct sets you want to keep your eyes out for. First up, you have the MK Series which feature magnetic switches for that slick feel and price action. These are touted as being super precise for gamers, giving us a different option over the standard mechanical switch that has a frictionless feel.
Then there’s the new IK series, for those who prefer the contactless feel of inductive switches with electromagnetic sensors. Cherry has booked these as the most energy efficient switch of its kind using 50% less power than regular magnetic switches and 5% less than hall effect. Thanks to that contactless nature, these shouldn’t ever really wear out and that power consumption makes them a great partner for a wireless keyboard travel setup.
Last but never least, there’s the familiar MX. These are the mechanical switches Cherry is known for that feature in recent boards like the MX 8.2 TKL Xaga, which is quite the fancy board, indeed. The MX range is still getting a shake up though, with Cherry introducing a few new switches under the banner – The MX Honey, Blossom, and Falcon.
Honeys are set to be the quiet kid in the new MX lineup featuring Cherry’s first tactile MX switch that’s also silent. Despite the silent nature these are said to still give a great tactile feel so this is a great choice for office goers, streamers, or just people who like quiet keyboards that still feel satisfying to use. It’s me, I’m people.
The MX Blossom is set to be the ultra light feel switch. There’s some nice evocative imagery there of cherry blossom petals floating down, so I’m guessing that’s the feel Cherry is going for here. These are going to be ultra light, easy to press, and quick to respond, so are probably aiming to be the preference for typists, and gamers who like a softer touch.
Meanwhile the Falcon is the community-inspired switch, a bit like that beautiful northern lights set. This one is for gamers and keyboard users of all stripes who really want to know when that key has been pressed. I’m guessing rather like how a fish knows it’s done for when a peregrine swoops in. These are snappy and crisp, these are bound to be a clacky retro switch. This is the keyboard you bring into the office when you just don’t like your coworkers.
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All these switches are set to come out in June this year. If we don’t get our hot little fingers on these bad bois at Computex, we’ll be sure to let you know how they feel as soon as we do.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/1747804187_Cherry-debuts-new-mechanical-magnetic-and-inductive-switches-with-a.jpg546970Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-05-21 04:53:172025-05-21 04:53:17Cherry debuts new mechanical, magnetic, and inductive switches with a whole new naming scheme to match
This is a bit of a weird one: Two years after announcing its planned closure in the aftermath of the Embracer Group’s $2 billion implosion, Campfire Cabal revealed today that it “was never shut down” at all, and that it is in fact working on a new addition to the Expeditions series of historical RPGs.
“If you follow the insider news, you are aware that it’s been a rough couple of years in the game industry,” the studio wrote. “Investment dried up, studios shut down, countless developers lost their jobs, and games were cancelled left and right.”
That’s putting it mildly. A quick catch-up on how we got here: Campfire Cabal was founded in September 2022 under Embracer’s THQ Nordic label to “focus on high-quality, narrative-driven RPGs.” But less than a year later a massive investment deal fell through at the last minute, and Embracer’s wings were suddenly and brutally clipped: Hundreds of people were laid off (although none of the executives responsible for the mess, of course) and numerous studios closed, including—apparently—Campfire Cabal.
“It is no secret that Embracer Group has recently entered restructuring,” creative director Jonas Wæver wrote in August 2023. “As part of this restructuring process, THQ Nordic has been told to close Campfire Cabal. This decision was not related to the work we’ve been doing at the studio but was made from a purely financial standpoint.”
Wæver said at the time that studio management and THQ Nordic “have not given up on Campfire Cabal,” and that “we are still pursuing our options for finding a good resolution to this situation,” although to my reading that came off almost entirely as forced optimism, especially given that his announcement was literally entitled “Studio Closure.” And yet, here we are.
“Though we did have to say goodbye to many of our colleagues, the studio survived and a compact team continued the project we had started in 2022. At the end of March of 2025, we received the green light to scale back up and transition into full production,” Campfire Cabal wrote today.
“We are extremely grateful that there were people within the group who fought to keep us alive through the turmoil, and that we can now emerge on the other side with renewed vigour.”
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Campfire Cabal also finally confirmed today that it’s working on a new Expeditions RPG, something previously assumed but never officially announced, and that it was responsible for a surprise Expeditions: Rome patch that dropped in November 2024. Details weren’t shared but, like previous games in the series, “it’s set in a new period of our history and in a new part of the world.”
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/1747768104_THQ-Nordic-studio-that-was-set-to-be-closed-in.jpg10801920Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-05-20 19:32:352025-05-20 19:32:35THQ Nordic studio that was set to be closed in 2023 somehow escaped the Embracer death spiral and is now working on a new RPG
Well, here’s a twist. Instead of making a movie based on a blockbuster game like Minecraft or Super Mario Bros, someone made one based on a $4 walking simulator you can finish in about 25 minutes. And just based on the trailer, it looks a lot more faithful to the source material than most game adaptations.
Both the film and the game it’s based on are called The Exit 8, and they both center around a sort of backrooms premise. In the game by Japanese developer Kotake Create, you walk down a Tokyo subway station corridor trying to find the exit. On your left are some framed posters, on your right a couple of doors, and overhead are fluorescent lights. Walk to the end of the corridor, make a couple of turns, and you find yourself back in that same corridor again.
But it’s not quite the same corridor, most of the time. Some detail of the corridor has changed: maybe one of the three doors is missing, maybe the exit sign is inverted, maybe the pattern on the tile looks different. Or maybe absolutely nothing has changed.
The rules posted on the wall of the tunnel are simple: if you notice a change (the game calls them anomalies), turn around and walk back the way you came. If you see no anomalies, continue forward. You have to choose correctly eight times in a row to reach the exit and escape the tunnel. Choose wrong, and you start over.
The Exit 8 is a neat mix of the backrooms and spot-the-difference, and it’s extremely unsettling: some of the anomalies are downright creepy, and by the way, you’re not alone down there in that tunnel. There’s a fellow with a briefcase walking through the same corridor in the opposite direction who completely ignores you—most of the time, at least.
It feels like a tricky game to make a movie about, but director Genki Kawamura has added some story elements, including the nameless main character getting a phone call with some life-changing news just before he finds himself stuck in this bizarre looping tunnel. We also see a child with him in a few of the shots from the trailer—in the game, you’re alone except for that stranger with the briefcase.
The hardest part of the game is when there are seemingly no anomalies and you start to invent some of your own. “Were the tiles different? Did that poster say that last time? Is something off about the lights?” As one Steam reviewer put it: “Pay four dollars to get gaslit for an hour.” (It’s a positive review.) I’m interested to see how much of that self-doubt the movie can emulate.
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The Exit 8 (the film) is screening at Festival de Cannes this month and will be released in August. The Exit 8 (the game) is on Steam. I’ve included the game trailer below, so you can compare it to the movie’s trailer at the top of the page. They’re both pretty freaky.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/1747732038_Dont-worry-theyre-not-just-adapting-blockbusters-this-trippy-Japanese.jpg15032292Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-05-20 04:47:142025-05-20 04:47:14Don’t worry, they’re not just adapting blockbusters: this trippy Japanese walking simulator you can get for $4 on Steam has been made into a movie, too
I remember how little time it took—just a few hours, really—for me to realize that The Witcher 3 was treating quests differently than any other RPG I’d played. In so many games, particularly ones released before The Witcher 3 in 2015, there’s a clear distinction in complexity and production value between the main quest and sidequests.
Even when veering off the critical path involved something more complicated than killing a dozen enemies and bringing them back to a nameless villager, the very best sidequests in the RPGs I’d played from Bethesda and Bioware and Square Enix rarely measured up to the stories CD Projekt Red was working into its least essential missions. Romantic tragedies in random Velen villages; murder mysteries in the heart of Novigrad; contracts that end up leading to haunted houses or Geralt on trial in front of a tribunal of monsters.
Some of the quests that The Witcher 3 casually offers on a notice board in some muddy shithole town rival the pinnacle of other RPGs’ storytelling. The thing most of these quests have in common is a critical choice of some kind: not a choice that influences the ending, or gives Geralt a few points on a “good” or “evil” progress bar, as Mass Effect had been doing in the years prior.
The Witcher 3’s writing has been praised many times over the last decade for being “morally gray,” but all that really means is that there isn’t always (or maybe even ever) a right or wrong decision. It’s not up to us to define who Geralt is—he’s already the Butcher of Blaviken, Yennefer’s on-off lover, Ciri’s adoptive father. But we do get to color him in, all of his nuance flowing from hundreds of minor dialogue options and paths chosen.
Is he a stern or gentle father? Does he fiercely stand up for persecuted dwarves and elves or avert his eyes? What regrets does he carry with him from the decisions he made when the outcomes were bad and worse?
The Witcher 3’s greatest trick was making these choices feel like they mattered to Geralt, and to us, without anything so obvious as a branching path or a pop-up saying “Geralt will remember this.” So it felt only right that as we celebrate The Witcher 3’s 10th anniversary to look back at some of the hard decisions that have stuck with me.
At the time I struggled with every one of these, but with hindsight I’m now prepared to tell you the Obviously and Objectively Correct decision in each scene. (Forget all that morally grey stuff from a second ago! This is how you mold the One True Geralt).
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Committing to Yennefer or breaking her heart in The Last Wish
The Last Wish – The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (4K UHD) – YouTube
Objectively correct choice: “I still love you, too.”
What makes it agonizing? The Witcher 1 & 2 building up Geralt’s relationship with Triss.
What choices are harder than matters of the heart? The Last Wish is one of The Witcher 3’s best quests, unfurling the long and stormy history of Geralt and Yennefer’s romance from the Witcher novels. They don’t know if their bond is due to a wish Geralt made to a powerful djinn, or if they’re truly in love—and this quest lets you decide one way or the other. It’s one of the most poignant scenes in the game, elegantly staged with Yen and Geralt sitting on the edge of a ship that’s been magically transported to the top of a mountain, pouring out their hearts with just the wind between them.
If you only know Geralt’s story from the games, you’ve likely romanced Triss Merigold before this point. The first time I played The Witcher 3 I broke up with Yen at the end of The Last Wish, choosing the option “Sorry, but I don’t want to be with you anymore.” But the more history you have with these characters, the more likely you are to see Geralt, Yen and Ciri as a messy but fiercely loving family unit who really do belong together. Committing to Yen and proving that the djinn never really controlled your destinies is the lore-appropriate storybook outcome… but if your Witcher canon begins and ends with the games, think about your past with Triss before you make the call.
Other outcomes: Yen confesses her love, but Geralt tells her the “magic’s gone,” ending the possibility of future romance.
Throwing the baby in the oven in Possession
Objectively correct choice: “Put the baby in the oven.”
What makes it agonizing? I mean, you’re throwing a baby in an oven.
Udalryk bursts into the room and demands you *not* throw his baby into a blistering hot oven
The Witcher 3 doesn’t often force you to make truly snap decisions, and this is one of the hardest—or at least most momentarily panic-inducing—in the game. In the quest Possession, Geralt is trying to break a curse by tricking a specter called a Hym. Cerys, the fierce daughter of the Craite clan, hands you the kidnapped baby of Skellige jarl Udalryk, who’s under the curse, just before the jarl bursts into the room and demands you not throw his baby into a blistering hot oven. This whole quest hinges on whether you trust Cerys. She wouldn’t really have you roast a baby to a crisp, right?
Turns out, no—the trick being played is on Geralt, and his fresh guilt attracts the Hym to latch onto the witcher instead of Udalryk. When Cerys reveals the baby’s all fine thanks to a bit of sleight of hand, the curse is broken and no babies were burned.
Other outcomes: Though you don’t know it in the moment, this quest will have a happy ending either way. You can choose to fight the Hym instead, but you’ll disappoint Cerys and receive a fist to the face from Udalryk for your caution.
Deciding Anna’s fate in Return to Crookback Bog
The Witcher 3: Return to Crookback Bog (killed the spirit) – YouTube
Objectively correct choice: Killing the spirit in the Whispering Hillock
What makes it agonizing? There’s no happy outcome for the Bloody Baron’s family, just sad and sadder.
The best questline in The Witcher 3, and one of the finest in RPGs, period, is the bleak story of the Bloody Baron, who seems like a one-note bastard of a side character until you discover the tragic family story lurking behind his anger. The Baron’s quests, Family Matters and Return to Crookback Bog, embody The Witcher 3’s approach to hard decisions, making it clear that sometimes trying to do the right thing can still lead to the wrong outcome, and sometimes there’s no right choice at all.
The “best” case scenario leaves the Baron’s wife Anna alive but out of her mind. To arrive at that result, you’ll have had to convince the Baron to bury their miscarried child, a botchling, and completed the Whispering Hillock sidequest, killing the spirit trapped there. As a result you’re dooming several orphans the spirit offers to save from the bog Crones, with their deaths driving Anna mad. You’ll last see the Baron and Anna setting off to visit a healer, with the Baron holding onto a faint chance of restoring her to her former self.
Other outcomes: Anna can be cursed by the Crones and turned into a hag. Even if you break the curse and cure her, she’ll die as a result, leading the Baron to hang himself.
Letting Triss be tortured in Count Reuven’s Treasure
Objectively correct choice: Kill ’em all.
What makes it agonizing? Several minutes of Triss screaming as they rip her fingernails out.
The quest to track down Dandelion and Ciri includes a detour to find Dijkstra’s stolen treasure, culminating in a showdown with some very nasty witch hunters. Triss offers to help: You’ll pretend to turn her over as a prisoner to sneak into the heavily guarded base. If you do, though, the scumbags are so eager to torture Triss that they’ll get right to it while you’re trying to play it cool and get some info out of their leader Caleb Menge.
Even though it was Triss’s idea, it just ain’t right letting her get tortured by dudes who so thoroughly deserve killing. As soon as they try to throw Triss in a cell, drop the act.
Other outcomes: If you stick out all the dialogue with Menge, Triss will kill him herself. It’s pretty badass, but you should rightly feel bad that things got that far.
Taking or leaving Iris Von Everec’s violet rose
THE WITCHER 3: Hearts of Stone – To take the Rose vs Not to Take + Olgierd’s reaction [4K] – YouTube
Objectively correct choice: Sorry lady, gimme that rose.
What makes it agonizing: What happens to us after we die? By what right do you take the last thing this woman can call her own?
You’re tasked with acquiring the violet rose Olgeird left her with, but taking it will consign her to a true, final death
If you’ve ever said something you’d later regret to a loved one, the Scenes From a Marriage quest in Hearts of Stone will smack you in the chest like a sack of bricks. Dashing Olgeird’s demon-summoning and faustian bargains were definitely his main issue, but the quiet, little ways he hurt his wife before the shit really hit the fan are what sticks with me. Put your damn book down and listen to her, man!
Iris von Everec now lives in a haunted purgatory, reliving the dissolution of her marriage in a bizarro version of their family home, with the titular scenes from the marriage showing all the ways Olgeird hurt her. You’re tasked with acquiring the violet rose Olgeird left her with, but taking it will consign her to a true, final death.
Taking one more thing from a woman who’s had everything ripped away from her feels utterly vile, but the alternative is leaving her in this pocket dimension to stew on all the ways she was wronged, with no hope for closure or resolution. Pull off the bandaid and take the flower, I say. — Ted Litchfield
Other outcomes: Iris paints a picture of herself holding the rose that Olgeird accepts instead of the real thing. Iris is trapped in a hell dimension of her own memories for, presumably, eternity.
Shaving Geralt’s beard or keeping it
The Witcher 3 – All Haircuts and Beards [All Styles] – YouTube
Objectively correct choice: Daddy Geralt, of course.
What makes it agonizing: Change is scary!
Finally we arrive at the ultimate crisis point in The Witcher 3: a choice that will send ripples throughout the entire Northern Kingdoms. When you visit a barber in The Witcher 3, you’re given the choice between a range of hairstyles and beard options, including taking Geralt back to his clean shaven Witcher 1 and 2 days.
If you played hundreds of hours of those RPGs before The Witcher 3, seeing Geralt with a beard may be jarring. He looks older. Don’t you long for the clean shaven Geralt? Isn’t that what he should look like? I understand that instinct, but it’s wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. The Witcher 3 is the end of Geralt’s journey; it’s about him embracing fatherhood and putting Ciri’s needs above his own. And it’s also about him looking so 10 out of 10 handsome with that beard that even Santa Claus and Hayao Miyazaki would be jealous. There’s only one proper outcome: letting go of the past and embracing the dad beard.
Other outcomes: You can give Geralt a ponytail, shaved temples and “friendly mutton chops” if you’re an absolute freak with no respect for the dignity of our favorite monster hunter.
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Something a little screwy has been going on with the new Nvidia RTX 5060 graphics card launch. It was revealed a few weeks ago that Nvidia wasn’t going to be helping sample cards for review testing of its budget-oriented RTX Blackwell GPU. Now, that’s not completely unprecedented for a card low down the stack which doesn’t have a Founder Edition to call its own. What is unprecedented, at least in my long experience, is the company refusing to allow review access to pre-release drivers to specifically block some media from having day one critiques of the hardware live at the time the cards go on sale.
I’ve had an RTX 5060 sat on my desk for the past few weeks, as MSI has been happy to oblige us with the hardware, however, no vendor has been allowed to give us access to drivers in order for those pre-release cards to actually function as intended. I mean, I’ve just been using mine as a paperweight.
But not all media has been blocked. Over the weekend, multiple sites had strictly controlled previews go live for the new RTX 5060 GPU, and those sites have had drivers ahead of time, and will have reviews going live for the embargo of 2pm today. Some of those sites are from the Future family of which we are part, yet it seems PC Gamer, and potentially Tom’s Hardware, have been singled out as publicatio non grata for this launch.
From talking to Nvidia reps before those previews came out it was intimated the company was restricting access because it thought certain media wouldn’t be favourable towards a low-end 8 GB graphics card and assumed they would manufacture ways to highlight the low VRAM failings of such a GPU.
Now, it has to be said that Nvidia owes us nothing and has zero obligation to support PC Gamer around new graphics card launches. We’re talking about a massive, multi-trillion dollar company now, and a GPU which will likely rise to the top of the Steam Hardware Survey in a handful of months no matter what we say; Nvidia doesn’t need us. And yet, in all my time as a PC hardware journalist, at many different sites and publications, Nvidia always has supported pre-release reviews.
And it has also consistently been a good sport about both favourable and unfavourable reviews, so long as they were fair, and honestly demonstrated why any conclusions had been drawn. I feel that’s how we’ve been all along with with the RTX 50-series reviews and yet we find ourselves black-listed by the company for this one.
Still, I’m a professional, I believe in giving our honest, independent opinions on PC gaming hardware and so, I’m going to be testing this card out live. Follow along with the live updates below as I go through benchmarking the card once public drivers are finally released.
Nvidia RTX 5060 specifications
Because we’ve not been allowed access to review drivers we also don’t have access to any reviewer’s guide material which would confirm the specifications of the GPU at the heart of the RTX 5060. But enough has been published and leaked so far that we can be pretty confident that we’re looking at another spin of the GB206 GPU used inside the RTX 5060 Ti.
This time around there are six fewer streaming multiprocessors making up the RTX Blackwell chip, so just 3,840 CUDA cores and the requisite number of RT Cores and Tensor Cores coming out of those 30 SMs. That’s a 25% increase in core count, and Nvidia has claimed a corresponding 25% increase in gen-on-gen raster performance, too.
Alongside that is the much maligned 8 GB of GDDR7 VRAM, which ought to have the same level of memory bandwidth as the RTX 5060 Ti’s 8 GB version because it’s running the same 128-bit aggregated memory bus.
To be honest, I don’t have that much of a problem with a low-end GPU in a range coming out with 8 GB of video memory. There will be some instances where it can have an impact, as shown when the ill-optimised The Last of Us port initially launched and struggled on 8 GB GPUs. But The Last of Us Part 2 showed that if the devs manage it correctly, even 8 GB can be enough for max settings.
Swipe to scroll horizontally
Nvidia RTX 5060 specifications
Header Cell – Column 0
RTX 5060 (*unconfirmed)
RTX 5060 Ti
GPU
GB206
GB206
TFLOPs
19
24
CUDA cores
3840
4608
SMs
30
36
RT cores (4th Gen)
30
36
Tensor cores (5th Gen)
120
144
Memory
8 GB GDDR7
16 GB / 8 GB GDDR7
Memory bus
128-bit
128-bit
Memory speed
*28 Gbps
28 Gbps
Memory bandwidth
448 GB/sec
448 GB/sec
Price
$299
$429 (16 GB) / $379 (8 GB)
Release date
May 19
April 16
AMD is also releasing new 8 GB graphics cards in this generation, with the RX 9060 XT, expected to launch at Computex this week, coming in both 8 GB and 16 GB configurations. Although we still don’t know what the price is going to be for that one.
That leaves it open as to whether we’re looking at competition for the RTX 5060 Ti or the RTX 5060 from a price perspective. Though we ought to be looking at Intel, too, when it comes to competition as the Intel Arc B580 could provide some interesting price/performance comparisons to Nvidia’s new card as well. That was a card I didn’t much trust at launch, but it’s drivers have definitely improved.
It only remains to be seen what sort of state Nvidia’s RTX 5060 launch drivers will be. Once I’ve got them installed and running through our benchmark suite, I’ll be able to let you know below…
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/1747659925_Nvidia-RTX-5060-review-live-weve-been-black-listed-for-this-scaled.jpg14402560Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-05-19 14:03:422025-05-19 14:03:42Nvidia RTX 5060 review live: we’ve been black-listed for this review, but I’m a professional so we’re doing this live!
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