Ryzen X3D CPUs are known to be a force in gaming, even without fast RAM. However, this doesn’t mean that optimized system memory settings can’t be used to achieve even better performance. After all, the cache is just that – a cache – and sooner or later the data has to be written to or read from the RAM. Not every gamer has the time [...]
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CPU, Memory & Mainboard
With the NZXT N9 X870E, NZXT is once again entering the realm of motherboard development – this time based on the current AMD X870E chipset and therefore the AM5 platform. The aim is to appeal to enthusiasts and design aficionados alike: In addition to modern technology, the full metal cover and the consistent white and black design with RGB [...]
AMD now has another ace up its sleeve with the Ryzen 9 9950 X3D, while Intel is stuck in a self-inflicted drought. The X3D technology, which comes with an additional 3D V-Cache, shows once again that AMD knows exactly where to start in order to squeeze the maximum gaming added value out of the existing architecture. The Zen 5 substructure is [...]
Ryzen HX3D series: top performance for mobile devices The AMD Ryzen HX3D series represents the high-end option in mobile processors and has been specially developed for powerful laptops and compact workstations. With a combination of up to 16 cores, 32 threads and the innovative 3D V-Cache technology, the HX3D series sets new standards in mobile [...]
Static overclocking of CPUs has been a thing of the past, inefficient and literally uncool, and not just since yesterday. Instead, dynamic OCs as an optimization of the boost behavior ex works are often the method of choice nowadays. Not least because AMD had completely deactivated static overclocking in the past with X3D CPUs especially popular [...]
Gaming was yesterday, in the truest sense of the word. I’ve linked yesterday’s article with the gaming benchmarks below. Today we finally have something for the working people, who of course also like to play games in the evening after work. But does the whole thing still fit together and can you finally do both properly on a single PC [...]
It’s the first time in 15 years that I’ve had to post a CPU launch article later, but I’m doing it anyway for two reasons. Firstly, I owe it to the readers without emotion, and secondly, after reading many other reviews, there were still things that could be added. After all, a purely repetitive publication of already known data [...]
The ASRock Phantom Gaming X870E NOVA WiFi is a high-quality motherboard for the latest generation of AMD processors and is aimed at users who expect modern technologies and reliable performance. It impresses with a simple but elegant look with a subtle color scheme and robust workmanship. Particularly striking is the efficient cooling performance [...]
Of course, it’s not just me who has my own personal opinion on Intel’s Arrow Lake S, but many other colleagues too. That’s why I’ve summarized the most important conclusions and assessments for me and put these summaries, which don’t necessarily have to coincide with mine, together again for discussion in the forum. I [...]
The time has finally come and the results for Intel’s new Core Ultra 200 series are on the table. I can already spoil the fact that we will see very interesting, but partly mixed results today compared to AMD’s Ryzen 9000 series, especially in the gaming sector. The tension curve was also extremely tense for me and so it ended up as it [...]
Intel’s Arrow Lake processors, which will soon be physically released to end users, represent a significant evolution for Intel and are intended as a response to AMD’s Zen 5 chips. These processors, which belong to the 15th generation of Core processors, will be available in desktop (Arrow Lake-S) and laptop (Arrow Lake-H) variants and [...]
I recently replaced the MSI MEG X670E Ace in my benchtable with the MSI MPG X870E Carbon WiFi because a new (old) chipset for the Ryzen 9000 feels better and Intel is also releasing a new chipset together with Arrow Lake S into the product cycle. Just between you and me: in terms of performance, this stunt is superfluous, but with USB 4.0 and WiFi [...]
It wasn’t easy to find the right attributes for AMD’s new Ryzen 9 9950X and the right headline for the test article. But while I was able to pull myself out of the noose elegantly with a relatively large amount of text, AMD will probably still have to sit, sweat and make a lot of improvements. There were certainly other reasons for the [...]
Testing the AMD Ryzen 5 9600X as a harbinger of AMD’s new Ryzen 9000 series would only really be a cracker if AMD had raised the bar to completely new heights in terms of either performance or price or both. That’s not exactly the case, but the test is still very interesting because you have to look at all the charts in their entirety [...]
Anyone who has been following me and my tests on igorslab.de for a while knows that whenever there is a new RAM IC on the market, I have to have it and test it immediately! After SK Hynix and Micron in particular have recently launched new memory chips on the market, Samsung is now following suit. Background and unboxing The 16 Gbit B-Die, which [...]
I already posted yesterday in a news item and briefly commented on what Intel officially published on the night of 22 July 2024 via Reddit as a kind of interim report. However, according to the unanimous opinion of all colleagues and readers, the whole thing is unsatisfactorily short and contains nothing substantial apart from the announcement of [...]
Analogous to my last news about Intel’s stability problems with the 13th and 14th generation K processors, the long-awaited statement from Intel appeared yesterday, which has now been published on Reddit and confirms my publication on Saturday. Sometimes you just have to push a little bit to get the blue giant to make a move 😉 Intel comments [...]
Today, AMD held a keynote at this year’s Computex. At this trade fair, AMD presented its new AI chip. The AMD Instinct MI325X. Let’s take a brief look at the history of AMD’s Accelarator and its future plans. it all started in 2020 with its AMD CDNA MI100 Accelerator. The first purpose-built accelerator for FP64 and FP32 HPC [...]
AMD unveiled some new things for you at this year’s Computex. There are the first technical specifications of its Ryzen 9000 series, small details about its Zen 5 technology, a new AI chip, but a few new chipsets have also been announced. There is also an update on the Ryzen 5000XT series. As you can see, they have a lot up their sleeve [...]
When a memory manufacturer launches new DDR5 memory chips on the market, a review from us is naturally not far away. After Micron introduced the 24 Gbit Rev B ICs in the middle of last year, there are now more new additions almost a year later, but this time with 16 Gbit and initially only in products of their own brand, Crucial. The [...]
After we published Aris’ article about the power consumption of the Core i9-13900K in Cinebench 23 on Monday, I’m following up today with a larger program scope. And yes, I’m deliberately using a Z690 board because I also used it for the launch of Raptor Lake S and the subsequent refresh. That makes the comparison much easier [...]
There’s been a lot of talk lately about Intel’s potential degradation issues with the high-end 13th and 14th generation CPUs, so I thought I’d use Powenetics and test an i9-13900K under three different power settings: Standard, Performance and Extreme. Then there’s the “Insane” profile, where you set the 4096 [...]
Even though Intel is currently being celebrated for the new BIOS profiles for CPUs from Raptor Lake onwards on all the Z790 mainboards – has anyone ever asked themselves what will happen to the Z690 mainboards, which are also compatible? There’s nothing yet, nothing has been announced and you slowly get the impression that those [...]
The problem with the Intel desktop processors of the 13th and 14th generation, i.e. Raptor Lake-S and Raptor Lake-S-Refresh, is not getting any smaller and the bad news does not stop. At this point, one could almost believe that Intel has simply left the whole thing to the motherboard manufacturers and is hoping to divert attention away from its [...]
Some of my articles mature like old wine and it’s certainly not wrong to look at them from time to time, even with current references. This is especially true now with regard to the current “drama” surrounding Intel’s CPUs and the move with the specs for the baseline. Nobody can pretend that Intel didn’t know anything [...]
I have not yet commented on the now ubiquitous investigations and explanations of the problems with Intel’s 13th and 14th generation K-CPUs, because pure speculation brings nothing but more speculation. As I also don’t use any special “OC features” from certain motherboard manufacturers in all launch reviews and also in my [...]
Some things are accidental discoveries and are actually so trivial that nobody even bothers to question the current flows in the PC and, above all, to measure them. We only ever measure the 12-volt rails and are happy. But with connectors such as the 12VHPWR or 12V2x6 over 6+2 pin, the 8-pin EPS and the 24-pin mainboard connection, does exactly [...]
A test is always particularly exciting when you come across unexpected problems for which the test subject is not actually responsible. This was also the case here. A RAM test, even if it’s a rather high-priced kit, now runs according to the same pattern for me and isn’t witchcraft. But this time I found myself trapped in an almost [...]
Intel has taken a significant step in its development with the new “Meteor Lake” CPU platform, marketed as “Core Ultra”. These processors are the first from Intel to use the “Intel 4” process, which is based on EUV lithography, and the first Intel client CPUs where parts of the SoC are manufactured by TSMC [...]
Much helps much, my grandma used to say. And before you throw something away, it’s better to make something new out of it. So say my grandma and Intel. After Raptor Lake is before Arrow Lake, and so the Raptor refresh comes almost exactly one year later. Says Intel and my grandma is silent. And so, in addition to a bit more clock, at least [...]
What hasn't been the noise in the leaf and video forest in recent weeks. There was even talk of a VRM disaster or a TIM gate (heat paste instead of lot), but if you look at everything carefully and carefully, the G... Thermal p aste instead of solder One of the reasons for the whole cooling problem is Intel's use of inappropriate (but arguably [...]
There are always challenges that the company has to overcome in connection with AGESA (AMD Generic Encapsulated Software Architecture). The exact causes of the problems with AGESA 1.0.7.0 are difficult to determine, but are believed to be due to a combination of faulty or inadequately tested code changes and insufficient communication between AMD [...]
The process with the destroyed Ryzen 7000X3D CPUs has of course already interested me and I didn’t want to just cover a news and that was it. So I took the damage picture from Reddit and put the back of the CPU in the right position first. We can see the destroyed Ryzen 7 and the dent along with the scorched copper pads in the picture. The [...]
I’ve been testing the Maximus Z790 Hero motherboard from Asus for a while now and today I finally and officially have the review ready for you. In our baseline article about DDR5 RAM tests, the board was already mentioned very positively and has therefore established itself as the backbone for the test system. Not least the reliability and [...]
Technology website Hardware Times reports that a significant number of users have complained about slow boot times on their Ryzen 7000 systems, which are based on AMD’s new AM5 chipset for Zen 4. Even the technology website itself has experienced these delays. AMD has now released a new BIOS update (AGESA 1006) that significantly reduces [...]
First and foremost, a warning to everyone not to replicate this. You will inevitably cause irreparable damage to your valuable CPU. The current version of the MSI Center allows for voltage and clock increases for the X3D CPU. Unfortunately, for those who are fully committed to experimenting here, we have sacrificed a CPU for the sake of science [...]
First of all, I owe an apology to G.Skill, since the test sample was already sent to us last year, but the review is now online a few months later. The reason for this is that until recently we revised our test methodology for RAM kits in order to be able to test better and faster. However, the waiting time also benefits the Trident Z5’s [...]
Sure, the title sounds lurid at first, but it actually contains everything that really characterized this review of the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, because this is where a highly efficient and in many areas really extremely fast CPU meets smaller, self-imposed hurdles. This may sound more dramatic at first than it really is in the end, and it [...]
Every day is a groundhog… er, Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB DDR5 kit day, of course. We have already presented the exterior of Corsair’s high-end RAM modules a fair few times, but, as with so many things, it is mainly the inner values that matter. I can therefore already tell you that today’s test subject relies on SK Hynix 16 [...]
Let’s first look back: Intel’s nevertheless very successful HEDT line ended in 2019 with the Core X series, almost 3 years ago. Since then, the company has launched three complete generations of mobile and desktop CPUs, but completely ignored the HEDT platform. In the meantime, the Core desktop chips of the 13th generation offer a high [...]
With DDR5-6600 CL32, the kit from today’s review is not only the fastest RAM kit in Corsair’s portfolio but even market-wide in Europe, at least at this point. The exterior is the familiar Dominator Platinum RGB design, which we had even looked at 2 times before in tests. Accordingly, we will focus especially on the inner values of the [...]
the Intel Alder Lake CPUs with their LGA1700 and Independent Loading Mechanism (ILM) including the bending problem have been around for 9 months now. The successor CPUs aka Raptor Lake might not be long away, but it has already been confirmed that they will use the same socket and thus most likely ILM as well. Existing motherboards with a 600 [...]
Intel Meteor Lake U, P and H – Exclusive block diagram and specs of the mobile 14. Generation | Leak
Intel’s Meteor Lake processors of the 14th generation are scheduled for launch in the second half of 2023, starting with the mobile product line. They will compete against AMD’s Ryzen 7000 family, namely Phoenix and Dragon Range in the notebook and Raphael in the desktop segment. Meteor Lake is already quite far, because there are [...]
Teamgroup has been offering some of the fastest memory modules for the platform with the T-Force DELTA DDR5 kits almost since the launch of Intel’s Alder Lake CPUs. At least on paper, other manufacturers have recently introduced even faster kits, but XMP specifications are not everything, as we know. Today, we will take another close look at [...]
So far you know me mainly from the forum as a helper with hardware problems. Since similar questions often come up, Andreas (ApolloX) asked me if we could create some tutorials. I’ll start here with an article about the possibilities Windows itself offers for troubleshooting. If you would like to create tutorials as well, please feel free to [...]
Today I want to talk about a guilty pleasure of mine, the overclocking of RAM, more precisely DDR5 and its timings. There is a strange difference between the specifications of JEDEC, the standard’s committee, and the Intel specifications of the Alder Lake CPUs of the 12th generation. And even though the exact functionality of the individual [...]
SK Hynix 16 Gbit M-Die is known to be the holy grail in terms of DDR5 overclocking, at least at time of writing. The prices for the fastest kits with clock rates in the XMP profile of over 6000 Mbps are still quite expensive. However, if you dare to work on the clock and timings of the RAM yourself anyway, cheaper kits with the same ICs are an [...]
There have been several Black Editions or Extreme Editions at Intel in the past, but Grey Editions? This marks the strict exclusivity for the Chinese market, at least in the case of the i5-12490F CPU. The grey sheep in Intel’s Alder Lake product family is thus a real rarity in the western market, and that alone is reason enough for me to do [...]
If it suddenly creaks under the backplate: Watch out for Mini-ITX, Socket AM4 and custom backplates!
The starting point of the misery was a mini-ITX build with custom water cooling. All of this is fully in line with the trend, and the fact that EKWB got it this time with the cooler used is just a coincidence. The manufacturer has included an extremely stable backplate in the scope of delivery, which is very praiseworthy in itself, and which is [...]
The Intel Core i9-12900KS has been on the market for a few weeks now and is, at least on paper, actually just an even more highly selected variant of the i9-12900K with a slightly higher clock and base power out of the box. Enthusiasts argue about whether this is a sensible expansion of the product portfolio. Overclockers are naturally keen on the [...]
