Bethesda and AMD announce limited edition Starfield GPU and CPU at Quakecon
But you can't buy them
AMD and Bethesda have unveiled a limited-edition Starfield-themed Radeon RX 7900 XTX GPU and Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU at Quakecon 2023. Both are decorated according to the forthcoming open world space-me-do's "NASApunk" aesthetic, a blend of cool whites, blues and yellows which I will admit to finding rather attractive, as somebody who generally finds gaming hardware aesthetics an absolute turn-off. It's certainly better-looking than Nvidia's lurid Cyberpunk 2077 GPU from 2020, but if you're similarly beguiled, there's an unfortunate catch: only 500 of these GPU/CPU sets are being made, and they're exclusively available as part of a Quakecon giveaway.
So what's going on beneath that lustrous lunar coating and aura of cosmic adventure? Here's our James's RX 7900 XTX review: he summarised it as "the best of the current GPU generation, should you want a 4K card at a price that doesn't quite feel like a personal insult."
That's going back to December 2022, mind you: pestered for an update, James opined that "since that review I'd probably go for the Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti instead, if I wanted a 4K graphics card that was cheaper than the RTX 4080". He adds that the CPU has just had a price drop - as of yesterday, you can get the standard 78000X3D bundled with a copy of Starfield and a set of Gunnar glasses for £380.
I'm going to take this opportunity to pre-screen an article I'd like to write at some point: why does so much gaming hardware have to Look Like That? Specifically, why does every desktop chassis have to look like a sleeping cyborg predator? My current gaming PC is relatively bare and unthreatening, but it still has a glowing cleft down the front which vaguely resembles the mouth of some cross-dimensional invader. The Starfieldy CPU/GPU above at least looks like it's not going to take a chunk out of my leg.