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Virtual reality finally arrived. Self-driving cars started wandering streets and past red lights. SpaceX aborted a rocket launch four times within a week. Samsung started strong with the Galaxy S7 and finished with the Note7 nuking itself into orbit while you slept.

We had new graphics cards, and most of them were pretty damn good. Consoles broke the mould by releasing new hardware mid-cycle and becoming more like PCs than ever before. And, unsurprisingly, we found out once again that Einstein really knew his shit.

It's been a big year for tech. Let's break down this year's biggest moments.

The GTX 1070 has been one of the more popular cards released this year, and with good reason: it's pretty powerful. And as the months have passed, the GTX 1080 has come down in price, making it also a little more affordable.

But if you picked up an EVGA GTX 1070 or GTX 1080, you might have come a little stuck of late. Owners took to forums and YouTube to complain about thermal issues -- specifically, their card turning into flames.

If you've been watching all the news and hype around new graphics cards, you might have also been tempted to buy one. After all, who doesn't like the prospect of playing games in 4K at high frame rates, turning all the options up to maximum? But new GPUs are expensive, especially if you're after one from NVIDIA. Even their semi-affordable card, the GTX 1070, still costs around several hundred dollars.

Except for this one.

It's a big year if you're a PC gaming enthusiast. Alongside Intel's new Extreme Edition CPUs, both Nvidia and AMD have released new graphics cards. All price points from $300 to $1200 have been overhauled with new GPUs offering much-increased performance, more efficient power consumption and new VR-friendly feature-sets -- so here's how they all perform relative to each other.

While all everyone was wrapped up in E3 and the excitement around New Video Games, there was a ton of drama in the tech world when it came to graphics cards.

EVGA has since come out and taken a stance on the matter, declaring to all consumers that "What You See Is What You Get". But what exactly is going on?

Multi-card setups using SLI and CrossFire have always been in the minority, but the community remains vibrant enough that NVIDIA and AMD continue to support them. When you venture into triple and quad-card configurations though... that's when the waters get understandably rougher.

NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1080 is a top, top graphics card. Unfortunately, it's also priced like one: $1179 was the cheapest available after the retail embargoes lifted, with $1199 to $1299 the more common price point. Ouch.

Fortunately, if these first prices are anything to go off, the GTX 1070 will be much more affordable.

NVIDIA might be crowing about how their GeForce GTX 1080 is the new king of graphics cards, but for many gamers their interest lies more in the smaller Pascal sibling -- the GTX 1070.

We don't have an Australian price or release date yet. But after spending just over an hour with the card, I have something that's equally useful: benchmarks.

For the last week all the GPU buzz has been about NVIDIA's GTX 1080. The new king, the new top dog in performance, so on and so forth. But most people can't and won't buy the GTX 1080 -- it's too expensive. What's really interesting is where the much more affordable GTX 1070 will land -- and now we have an idea.

Nvidia's second Pascal gaming graphics card is finally breaking cover, after only a quick mention at the launch of the top-spec GeForce GTX 1080. It'll be out two weeks after its slightly more powerful counterpart, but its significantly lower price should make it especially attractive to anyone gaming at sub-4K resolutions.