The year isn't over yet, but I'm calling it already — 2024 was one of the worst showings for desktop CPUs, GPUs, and PC hardware in general. What was supposed to be a year of new game-changing AMD CPUs, Intel's comeback with Arrow Lake, and next-gen Nvidia and AMD graphics cards, has turned out (by all accounts) to be a nothingburger.

There isn't anything else on the horizon for the last quarter either. The 9000X3D CPUs will, most likely, take over as the fastest gaming CPUs, but apart from this foregone conclusion, we don't have anything to look forward to. The year started with the mostly palatable RTX 40 Super series from Nvidia in January, but it seems it all went downhill from there. Let's revisit some of the major disappointments of 2024.

5 Next-gen GPUs? Delayed to 2025

No new GPU architecture since late 2022

You might have gotten used to a flurry of new graphics cards every two years — the RTX 40 and RX 7000 series came out in late 2022, the RTX 30 and RX 6000 cards in late 2020, and the RTX 20 series two years before that. We all expected Nvidia and AMD to follow the two-year cadence in 2024, launching the RTX 50 and RX 8000 series in September, October, or December.

It has been confirmed now that we'll not be seeing new graphics cards from either of the companies before CES 2025. You might be wondering about Intel's Battlemage cards (somewhere in the back of your mind), but there's no indication yet that Team Blue is attempting to be first to market with its next-gen GPUs either.

The RTX 5080 will only have less than half the number of CUDA cores compared to the Blackwell flagship.

What we'll get at CES (or later) isn't something I'm looking forward to either. Reports suggest that Nvidia will be marking up the prices of the RTX 5090, RTX 5080, and RTX 5070, and the RTX 5080 will only have less than half the number of CUDA cores compared to the Blackwell flagship. AMD isn't even launching any high-end models next year, giving Nvidia free rein to charge what it wants. And Intel's just looking to put out something that offers a cheaper alternative without suffering from driver issues.

4 Intel's unstable Raptor Lake CPUs

Oh, what a year it's been for Intel

Intel's 13th and 14th Gen Raptor Lake CPUs have been in the wild since 2022 and 2023 respectively, but the major instability woes affecting their high-end chips came to light early this year. Game developers publicly called out these "defective" CPUs, motherboard manufacturers scrambled to get BIOS updates to remedy the issues, and Intel finally acknowledged the fundamental voltage errors its chips were encountering.

In September, Intel eventually figured out what was causing this "Vmin shift instability" — motherboard power delivery exceeding default Intel recommendations and elevated core voltages were at fault. The company extended the warranty of not only their Core i9 CPUs, but also Core i7 and Core i5 chips, so consumers could get replacements for their CPUs, many of which had suffered irreversible damage due to the entire fiasco.

The new Arrow Lake desktop CPUs signaling a turnaround might mean there's some hope on the horizon.

2024 has been one of the worst "rough patches" for Intel — from its terrible stock price and thousands of layoffs, to huge shake-ups in its manufacturing department and considering splitting into two companies, it's been a roller coaster of a year. The company's Lunar Lake mobile chips were a welcome bit of positive news for the company, and the new Arrow Lake desktop CPUs signaling a turnaround might mean there's some hope on the horizon.

3 The Ryzen 9000 nothingburger

Didn't turn out as expected

AMD talked up their Zen 5 Ryzen 9000 CPUs leading up to the launch, claiming huge performance uplifts and record power efficiency compared to Ryzen 7000 processors. However, what we got was, in all seriousness, a dud of a launch. Gaming performance was 2-3% better than previous-gen CPUs at best, and power consumption was way higher than what AMD claimed. In fact, the new CPUs are less power-efficient than the Zen 4 chips.

Gaming performance was 2-3% better than previous-gen CPUs at best, and power consumption was way higher than what AMD claimed.

AMD dropped the ball with Ryzen 9000, delivering one of the most unimpressive gen-on-gen upgrades we have seen in years. The company managed to save face to some extent, thanks to a new Windows version and BIOS updates increasing the power limits for more performance. The fact remains, though, that AMD launched unimpressive CPUs and marketed numbers that didn't exist at the time, later relying on software updates to salvage some of its lost reputation.

AMD is now readying the Ryzen 9000X3D launch, which might happen anytime between October 24th and November 5th. Many consumers are waiting to see what improvements the Ryzen 7 9800X3D will bring over the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, which is currently the fastest gaming CPU in the world.

2 Confusing 800-series AM5 motherboards

Some shady shenanigans are afoot

As it always happens, a new processor lineup needs a new series of chipsets. AMD announced the new X870E and X870 motherboards alongside the Ryzen 9000 CPUs, with B850 and B840 motherboards to come out at a later stage. At first glance, this might seem like nothing out of the ordinary — X870E, X870, and B850 would be replacing X670E, X670, and B650 respectively, with B840 being something new entirely.

The B840 chipset should have been launched as A820, and nothing else.

However, in reality, the X870 chipset, for all purposes, is just a refresh of B650E, and should have been named accordingly, not rebranded as an "X-tier" chipset. And that's not the worst part — the new B840 chipset has a striking resemblance to the older A620 chipset. Neither of them supports CPU overclocking and both lack any PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots. The B840 chipset should have been launched as A820, and nothing else.

You don't need to upgrade your motherboard if you're jumping from a Ryzen 7000 CPU to a Ryzen 9000 one (which you actually shouldn't do, for many reasons), since the older chipsets still support the new CPUs. These confusing naming schemes, however, are something consumers should be wary of, so they avoid horrible buying decisions such as picking up a B840 motherboard thinking it's a decent "B-tier" board.

1 Arrow Lake seems like the bare minimum

Intel has officially announced some concerning numbers

A lot is riding on Intel's Arrow Lake CPUs, which will start shipping on October 24th. Intel needs its next-gen desktop lineup to succeed, due to all the hits it's been taking this year. However, according to statements released by the company itself, the Core Ultra 200S chips will be slower than AMD's Ryzen 7000X3D CPUs in gaming.

Intel's new CPUs might perform more or less the same as its 14th Gen chips, while consuming much less power.

We already knew that Intel's 14th Gen CPUs slightly lag behind AMD's 3D V-Cache CPUs, but a whole new architecture still being slower than AMD's previous-gen CPUs was a bit underwhelming. Other performance numbers also show that Intel's new CPUs might perform more or less the same as its 14th Gen chips, while consuming much less power.

So, the company is basically fixing the high power consumption of Raptor Lake without providing any significant performance uplifts. With AMD's Ryzen 9000X3D chips landing around the same time, the gaming performance gulf between the two series will widen further. That said, third-party benchmarks and reviews are still not in yet, so we need to wait for some time before making final conclusions.

When will PC hardware launches become exciting again?

I feel like we've been going through a lull of mostly boring CPU and GPU launches for a while now. Graphics cards have been overpriced for years, CPUs haven't delivered strong gen-on-gen gains, and even PC games have been going through a sort of dark age. I can only hope the next year brings some much-needed inspiration for PC gamers. I know this hope is likely misplaced, but that's all I can do right now, isn't it?