nomz0rz tech blog

What’s the deal with Windows gaming handhelds?

A little project I’ve been following for quite some time is the GPD Win series of devices. GPD (or GamePad Digital) is a company that focuses on small ultra-portable devices that actually run a full blown x64 Windows operating system. Even though the concept has been around for decades, the idea of having a full-blown Windows desktop experience in your pocket is nothing short of amazing and certainly a feat of engineering. It’s truly mind-blowing how this thing can keep thermals and performance in check given the size of the device.

Here’s the kicker, we now have companies making devices such as the GPD Win 3 which are fully capable of actually running AAA games. Thanks to major improvements in hardware over these past few decades, we have actually gotten to a point to where this is a reality. Imagine sitting on a train-ride playing a AAA game such as Grand Theft Auto V, or the latest Assassin’s Creed game that you would only otherwise expect to be able to play at home on your trusty ol’ PlayStation, Xbox, or PC but on the go. The best part about all of this, the device is still a fully fledged PC. What this means is that not only can this be used for gaming, but literally anything else one can do on a PC. Whether that’s web browsing, coding, playing the myriad of indie games available only on PC, or even emulation. That’s right, devices like these are emulation beasts thanks to all of the optimization and main development of emulators on the Windows architecture.

This particular console rocks either an 11th gen i5 or i7 with the new Intel XE graphics which explains its performance. But there are other Windows handhelds on the horizon that are said to be using Ryzen architecture with integrated VEGA graphics. I think this is the future of PC hardware, having the ability to dock such devices to a larger display, a more powerful GPU, and dedicated gaming hardware, and undocking at a whim when one wants portability. The Switch had this concept nailed down, but this takes the idea to a whole new level.

The world is really weird right now. Bitcoin is at an all-time high, we have a world-wide pandemic with tons of people staying home, and a new GPU lineup by NVidia with great price-to-performance ratio. As one could imagine, this sounds like a recipe for disaster when it comes to stock availability for consumers. Turns out, this is completely true. Making matters worse, GPU prices online have completely skyrocketed. 

For reference, I helped build someone a budget gaming PC build a couple years ago; the GPU of choice was a GTX 970 which we secured for an extremely reasonable $100 on eBay. Imagine my surprise when the now 7 YEAR OLD mid-to-high range card is trending on eBay for over double the price. The worst part about all of this, is that people are willing to pay these prices even for hardware this old just so that gamers can get their hands on whatever they can.

With Bitcoin mining also being at an all-time high, the small stock that becomes available for sale when replenished is instantly decimated by bots and scalpers taking advantage of this situation. Whenever I ask how people I’ve met have secured any form a modern 30 series RTX GPU, they respond with something along the lines of: “I had hundreds of tabs open for hours just mashing F5 to refresh the page when stock is re-supplied and clicked buy before everyone else.” However, even this can prove to be a fruitless endeavor as botting has made this an exercise in inhuman feats of speed and endurance to compete with the speed at which bots buy the stock up. Doing just a couple Google searches, one can find just how many GPUs these miners and scalpers are buying at a time. It’s quite shocking.

Small Form Factor PCs (commonly referred to as SFFPCs) in my opinion are severely underrated. One look at r/sffpc shows you the beauty of space efficiency. Not only do systems like these reduce the stigma of PCs having to be huge, lumbering towers full of lightshows and custom liquid cooling, but they serve as a great example of what a real console replacement in the living room could look like, or even a minimal media PC that seamlessly blends in with other items on one’s living room setup with other devices such as set-top boxes, or audio receivers. 

Take a look at some of these beauties (courteously of r/sffpc)

Hi everyone, I’m nomz0rz. Nice to meet you!

For this blog, I hope to reach out to other like-minded individuals like myself and share news, reviews, and personal thoughts about gaming, gaming hardware, and tech news. I’m super passionate about this stuff and know a lot of you guys are as well.