The end of a hectic year is rolling around fast. It’s been one littered with heaps of hardware surprises, including the launches of stacks of new graphics cards, umpteen processors and mountains of peripherals. DDR4 memory has been slamming down in price. SSDs are no longer quite as eye-wateringly expensive. Meanwhile, 32-bit systems just aren’t cutting it and system requirements have taken a drastic leap.
Keeping abreast of the gaming hardware demands has been a tricky business, but everyone here at GD has been pooling their knowledge and helping each other buy the best of 2015’s gaming hardware. With that in mind, we want to know what hardware you decided to pick up this year and why.
I’ll get the ball rolling within mine. It was a relatively low-key year for me on the hardware side, although finally picking up a GeForce GTX 970 was cause for celebration. So, here we go…
MSI GeForce GTX 970 Gaming 4G
Really pleased with this buy. I upgraded from a GTX 750 Ti and the difference in performance was definitely worth the cash. For 1080p gaming on the living room telly it’s handling everything I throw at it with use, usually on Very High / Ultra. None of the big hitters have cause me any performance concerns this year, aside from Batman: Arkham Knight of course. I’m still thinking I might sell it next year though and pay the difference to upgrade to a Pascal GPU.
Steam Controller
I still don’t know where I stand on Valve’s Steam Controller. I flip-flop between love and hate every other day. I’m definitely impressed with the post-launch support Valve has been giving the controller, and the controller software is getting better and better. That said, I don’t believe the Steam Controller is the one-stop shop for all gaming solutions, falling apart during action games in particular, where access to the face buttons is finicky and inferior to my DualShock 4.
Anyway, over to you now, what gaming hardware have you bought in 2015, and what did you think of it? It can be everything from a new mouse right on up to a 4K monitor or a complete rig.
