Digital Foundry: The Best Gaming Hardware of 2025

High-Performance Handhelds

GPD Win 5: This device is a technical marvel, featuring the Strix Halo architecture. Despite utilizing powerful silicon, it maintains a compact form factor.
It can achieve approximately 93.5% of PlayStation 5 performance when running at 75 watts while tethered.
At a more balanced 30 watts, it remains an impressive competitor, delivering a console-like experience with VRR support.
ROG Xbox LIX: While the hardware design is ergonomic and well-built, it suffers from the limitations of the current Windows experience on handhelds.
Issues with sleep-wake behavior and stuttering persist, leading experts to prefer SteamOS or Bazite for a more fluid experience.

The console has proven to be a highly efficient platform, particularly due to the integration of tiny DLSS.
Despite a screen that lacks high-end responsiveness, the system provides a mature software ecosystem where developers optimize specifically for the hardware.

"When you start looking at the image quality of a game like Cyberpunk... you're going to be getting DLSS [performance] a lot, lot better than FSR 2."

Best CPU of 2025: The Ryzen 9 9950X3D stands out as the ultimate "everything" processor. It bridges the gap between high-end productivity and best-in-class gaming performance.
Graphics Cards: Blackwell (NVIDIA) and RDNA 4 (AMD) define the current landscape.
Blackwell offers unmatched high-end power with the RTX 5090, though the mid-range options have faced criticism regarding VRAM limitations and price-to-performance ratios.
RDNA 4 has improved ray-tracing capabilities and efficiency, though the rollout of new features like FSR 4 and Redstone has been inconsistent.