Five Things That (Pleasantly or Otherwise) Surprised Us in 2017

What surprised us!

Everyone likes a surprised around Christmas and the New Year. Well, perhaps not an unexpected relative turning up or a tax bill, but you get the idea.

We, therefore, re-visit some of the five stories over the year which surprised us, pleasantly or otherwise.

Bitcoin

I think it’s reasonably fair to say that they way Bitcoin rocketed this year surprised everyone. Being below $1000 at the start of the year, the value is currently somewhere between $15,000-$20,000.

While the volatility isn’t surprising, the fact that it has increased so much in value certainly is!

Ryzen

The whole start of the tech year was met with one whispered phrase ‘wait for Ryzen’. Well, we waited and boy was it worth it! AMD’s Ryzen processors have definitely been one of the major PC success stories of the year.

The fantastic performance and low price compared to Intel has seen many people make the switch to Ryzen. While Threadripper was perhaps not the challenger to Intel we had hoped, the Ryzen 3, 5, and 7 series have largely, all been excellent!

AMD Vega

Sticking with AMD and on a downbeat this time. After we had all finished whispering about Ryzen, next on the list was their new line of GPU, the Vega.

Alas in this instance, while the AMD Vega 56 was a great card, for the top end of the scale Nvidia still very firmly held the title. I think everyone who was looking forward to Vega was if we’re being honest, a little disappointed with the figures.

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and Fortnite

Definitely some of the break out games this year have been PUBG and Fortnite. With each clocking over 20 million downloads now, they have clearly been some of the best-received games of the year. While we appreciate that some people don’t like FPS games or indeed, just these types, it’s impossible to deny the impact they have had.

The Nvidia 1080ti

The Nvidia 1080ti landed in March 2017 and we have frankly been blown away. Even with it approaching it’s 1st birthday, it is still without a doubt still one of the best performance graphics cards you can buy. Surprisingly as well, the price of it (while around the $600-$700 marks) is quite substantial, it’s hard to understate just what a quality card you get for that money.

A year of surprises!

While I admit that we knew a lot of this was coming, the performances of the above were either massive above or massively below our expectations. Bitcoin is perhaps the best example of the former.

We look forward to another year of (hopefully) pleasant surprises!

What do you think? What surprised you this year? – Let us know in the comments!