G.SKILL has announced new all-in-one CPU coolers with the name ENKI Series or added them to its product portfolio. The AiO cooler promises the highest cooling performance and relies on a specially adapted, convex cooling plate design to minimize the path of heat conduction from the CPU through the thermal paste into the cooling plate made of solid copper. On the other side of the cold plate, high density stair-shaped micro-fins are used to direct the coolant inlet-outlet flow for efficient heat transfer from the cold plate into the coolant.
To move coolant between the cooler head and radiator and to move around, high-flow hoses with an inner diameter of 8 mm are used. Each cooling hose is equipped with thick rubber walls for low evaporation of the coolant and enclosed in nylon braided sleeves for reasons of durability. The cooler is equipped with micro-channels with the smallest possible spacing, which are intended to increase the surface in order to enable better heat dissipation from the coolant into the fins. The 360 mm and 169 – mm variants have 3x to 4x more microchannels than typical coolers in designed on this scale. The 280 – mm variant should be in this area be even better positioned.
The AiO liquid cooler of the ENKI series is equipped with PWM fans with nine blades, which are suitable due to their high static pressure according to the manufacturer are to maintain a constant flow of air.
Every AiO liquid chiller of the ENKI series is equipped with 3-pin ARGB motherboard connectors, which enable customizable RGB lighting via the motherboard lighting control software . The AiO of the ENKI series is in the sizes 360 mm, 280 mm and 169 mm and has a 5 year limited warranty. The AiO liquid chiller line will be available from 2021 through G.SKILL sales partners. There is currently no information about the price.
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João Silva 16 mins ago Featured Tech News, Motherboard
It looks like Intel 11th Gen might be closer to release than we initially thought. There’s a new rumour going around the web, indicating that Intel will launch its 500-series motherboards on January 11th, the same day as the company’s keynote at CES 2021.
As per the Weixin post shared by @9550pro, Intel 500-series motherboards will be divided into three chipsets: Z590, B560, and H410. The three chipsets will be allegedly announced on January 11th.
Specifications of this motherboard series have yet to be confirmed, but it’s expected that these will be the last Intel desktop motherboards supporting DDR4 memory. Additionally, it will feature the LGA1200 socket, which allows these motherboards to support both 10th and 11th Gen Core CPUs, and it will be the first Intel desktop platform supporting PCIe 4.0.
intel 500-series motherboards released on January 11?https://t.co/oNnOtbj3a2 pic.twitter.com/luemtT81sl
— HXL (@9550pro) December 16, 2020
According to this report, Intel hasn’t set a date for the release of Rocket Lake-S yet, but according to other rumours, it will probably launch the new processors after releasing the 500-series motherboards, more precisely between the end of February and early March. If these launch dates are true, the motherboards will be available before the processors, exactly the opposite of what happened with the Comet Lake-S, where processors were available one month before the motherboards.
There’s no obvious reason behind Intel’s alleged decision to launch new motherboards first, but once they are available, people will at least be able to use them with a Comet Lake-S processor.
KitGuru says: Are you planning on upgrading your system in a near future? Will you be waiting for Intel to launch new CPUs first?
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Nvidia will host “a special brodcast event” on January 12th, 2021
Nvidia has scheduled a press event for January 12th that will focus on its RTX …
G.Skill enters the world of liquid cooling with ENKI series heatsinks. There are three models with radiators from 360, 280 is 240 mm. They will arrive in the course of 2021 – prices have not yet been announced.
by Manolo De Agostini published 17 December 2020 , at 10: 01 in the Peripherals channel G.Skill
G.Skill announced the entry into the world of AIO liquid coolers with solutions ENKI , name that recalls the ancient Sumerian god of water. Available in three versions with radiators from 360, 280 is 240 mm , ENKI series figure 9-blade PWM fans with hydraulic bearings, ARGB lighting and kit for editing on the main platforms of the moment.
In a press release, the company announces that it has designed “a convex cold plate to reduce the heat travel from the CPU via the thermal paste to the copper plate “. On the other side of the plate there are high density micro-fins to improve the transfer of heat to the circulating refrigerant in tubes with an internal diameter of 8 mm.
Hoses have thick rubber walls and are encased in nylon braided sleeves for durability. The 3-pin ARGB connector for connecting and managing the lighting on the pump head completes the whole from the motherboard software.
G.Skill ENKI liquid heatsinks will be available in 2021 accompanied in bundle by a tube of thermal paste and covered by a 5 year warranty.
Home/Component/Cooling/Phanteks launches Glacier One series AIO liquid coolers
Matthew Wilson 10 mins ago Cooling, Featured Tech News
Today, Phanteks is launching its very first line of all-in-one CPU liquid coolers. The Glacier One series includes the 240MP, 240MPH, 280MP and 360MP, all developed in collaboration with Asetek to ensure powerful cooling and quiet operation.
According to Phanteks, the Glacier One is optimised to offer the best noise-performance ratio on the market thanks to new silent Phanteks MP fans. These fans have a higher maximum RPM of 2,200 and are designed with radiators and heatsinks in mind.
The Glacier One coolers feature a tempered glass infinity mirror pump cap with smooth D-RGB lighting integration. There is also a white edition, the 240MPH, which comes with additional white HALO D-RGB fan frames to light up the MP fans.
The full cover pump cap has a low-profile design that can be mounted magnetically to the pump module to cover all mounting parts, which creates a clean and integrated appearance with the motherboard.
Here is the pricing for each Glacier One AIO cooler:
Glacier One 240 MP – Black – $124.99 / €124.90 / £114.99
Glacier One 240 MPH – White – $149.99 / €149.90 / £134.99
Glacier One 280 MP – Black – $139.99 / €139.90 / £129.99
Glacier One 360 MP – Black – $169.99 / €169.90 / £154.99
The Phanteks Glacier One series is available starting this month. Here in the UK, they can be found available for purchase at Overclockers UK.
KitGuru Says: What do you all think of the Phanteks Glacier One AIO lineup? Are many of you looking to upgrade your CPU cooler soon? Will you be considering one of these?
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EA Play is now coming to Xbox Game Pass for PC in 2021
EA Play has already joined Xbox Game Pass Ultimate on consoles a few months ago. …
It appears new 500 series chipset motherboards for Intel’s next-generation Rocket Lake processors are fast approaching, according to Weixin, a Chinese news outlet. Weixin claim that Intel might be releasing new Z590, B560, and H510 via its board partners before the Rocket Lake launch on January 11. Weixin also believes the Rocket Lake CPU launch will happen sometime in late February or early March. As this is a rumor, take everything with a pinch of salt.
If this is true, then the motherboard release will coincide directly with CES 2021 which also begins on January 11. But we still don’t know exactly why Intel is releasing Comet Lake supported motherboards a full month earlier than the CPUs intended release date. Potentially this could be good news if you are building a new Intel system in January and you want to use the new 500 series boards before upgrading to Rocket Lake a few months later. This could also enable the 500 series boards to be updated and for bugs to be addressed. But still, this would-be very niche and it would be highly doubtful lots of people will upgrade to a 500 series board before the CPUs launch. Not to mention, Intel’s 400 chipset boards like Z490 should be forwards compatible with Rocket Lake including having PCI-E 4.0 support which Rocket Lake CPUs will start supporting.
We can get an idea of what these new 500 series boards will support via our what we know about Intel’s upcoming Rocket Lake CPUs. The new chips will be supporting PCI-E Gen 4 out of the box, AVX-512 support, Thunderbolt 4, and more PCI-E lanes, specifically four more lanes dedicated to a single M.2 NVMe slot for storage, just like AMD’s Ryzen processors; and an upgrade in bandwidth for processor to chipset communication, from four lanes to eight lanes. Plus updated ports like HDMI 2.0b and USB 3.2 Gen 2.2 (20G). So Intel’s new 500 series boards will have to support all these features out of the box.
Besides these, we still don’t know exactly what features H510, B560, and Z590 themselves will offer over existing 400 series chipset motherboards, we’ll have to wait for that information once Intel talks about these boards next month during CES 2021.
In a press release, TeamGroup announces the imminent appearance of DDR5 memory chips for the broad market. The first modules should therefore have a capacity of 16 GB at a clock frequency of 4 . 800 MHz offer. It is also said that they are working with major motherboard manufacturers such as ASRock, Gigabyte, MSI and ASUS on the implementation of DDR5 memory to show that even the very first DDR5-based memory would outperform the fastest DDR4 modules .
An important advantage of DDR5 compared to DDR4 is the easier handling. Customers who want to use the full capacity of their main memory should no longer make settings in the BIOS in the future. Instead, you should simply plug in the new memory and use the computer as usual. Another advantage of DDR5 is that it supports higher capacities in the individual chips. In the future 64 Gbit instead of the previous 16 Gbit would be possible, which would enable higher storage capacities per RAM bar.
TeamGroup does not announce in the message when consumers will be able to purchase the new storage. However, it can be assumed that further information on this will be announced at the CES in January. At the moment there are no processors that support DDR5-based memory anyway. Support is expected to take place in autumn 2021 with the introduction of Intel Alder Lake or the introduction of AMD Zen 4.
BIOSTAR has now the introduction of its B 550 M-SILVER mainboards announced. The new motherboard has been specially designed for gamers and casual users. The B 550 M-SILVER has a Micro-ATX form factor and an LED ROCK ZONE -RGB lighting. The board is also designed for the operation of four DIMMs (DDR4 memory). It is possible to use the B 550 M with up to 128 GB of RAM to be equipped.
The AM4- Socket can be used with both Ryzen processors of the fourth generation and CPUs of the Vermeer series. Functions like PCI-Express-4.0-M.2 (64 Gbit / s), USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type C and WiFi 6 are also on board. According to the manufacturer, the digital PWM technology developed by BIOSTAR guarantees a stable power supply with faster transition power. In addition, functions such as Dr.MOS and 2.5Guard have been integrated. The motherboard is also equipped with the “AI TP Control” technology from BIOSTAR, which was specially developed for overclockers.
Furthermore, at the B 550 M-SILVER debug LEDs. These are intended to help users identify problems with the hardware configuration of their own system. In addition to two WiFi antenna connections with the support of WiFi-6, a mouse or keyboard with a PS / 2 connection can also be used. In addition, the B 510 M-SILVER motherboard has a GbE LAN connector that supports is operated by a Realtek RTL 6974 B chipset and supports Realtek 2.5GbE LAN. In addition, the B 510 M-SILVER offers a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type C – as well as one USB 3.2 (Gen.2), four USB 3.2 (Gen.1) and two USB 2.0 ports. The video output takes place via an HDMI, DVI-D or DisplayPort interface.
Both the recommended retail price and a possible publication date are still covered by the manufacturer.
Last year, AMD released the Ryzen 3000 series desktop processors in one of the most monumental hardware launches of the modern era. This final step completed the Red brand’s ascent back into the forefront of the desktop processor market that began with the launch of the first generation of Ryzen CPUs.
With the Ryzen 3000 launch came the AMD X570 chipset. Featuring PCIe 4.0 support, X570 was an impressive leap from generations past. It was also hot, with motherboards often including chipset cooling fans, and, more significantly, expensive. The high cost of the chipset increased the average cost of X570 motherboards considerably over previous generations.
While AMD has done a great job of maintaining motherboard compatibility with new generation processors, none of the previous-generation AM4 motherboards featured official PCIe 4.0 support, not even from the storage and PCIe controlled by PCIe 4.0 compatible CPUs. Enter B550, the more value-oriented little brother of X570. While the B550 chipset is PCIe 3.0 only, B550 motherboards support PCIe 4.0 from the CPU to the primary PCIe slot as well as the primary M.2 slot (dependent on a PCIe 4.0 ready CPU).
The Gigabyte B550M AORUS Pro features a 10+3 VRM design, Q-Flash Plus, and a formidable VRM thermal solution. With a surprisingly fleshed-out feature set and an attractively low price, the Gigabyte B550M AORUS Pro has a lot going for it, so let’s dive in and see if the performance lives up to the potential!
1x Q-Flash Plus button 1x HDMI port 1x DisplayPort 1.4 1x Optical SPDIF Out port 1x LAN (RJ45) port 1x USB 3.2 (Gen2) Type-C port 4x USB 3.2 (Gen1) ports 1x USB 3.2 (Gen2) Type-A ports 4x USB 2.0 ports 5x 3.5 mm audio jacks
DDR5 is slated for a 2021 release, and TeamGroup is working around the clock to be one of the first vendors to push out their products. The memory manufacturer has already started the validation phase with the top motherboard companies in the industry, including Asus, MSI, ASRock and Gigabyte.
Just to start things off, TeamGroup plans to release its first wave of DDR5 memory modules with a capacity of 16GB. The memory modules are rated for DDR5-4800 and only require a 1.1V DRAM voltage to operate. The specifications are not final, of course, but that’s what TeamGroup expects to put out.
TeamGroup’s press release mentions one very particular DDR5 trait. According to the company, users will no longer need to play with BIOS settings to get memory kits to run at their advertised frequency. As you know, the majority, if not all, high-speed DDR4 memory kits run at JEDEC’s baseline, and you either have to manually set up the memory or enable the XMP (AMP on AMD) profile inside the BIOS. Apparently, DDR5 will omit that step. However, it’s uncertain if DDR5 will run at the marketed frequency and timings right out of the box or there’s some kind of chip on the module itself that’ll handle the automatic configuration.
In the mainstream market, there are two processor families that have been rumored to support DDR5. Alder Lake-S, Intel’s first hybrid desktop chip, could also be the first mainstream processor to support DDR5 memory. We already know that Alder Lake-S will inhabit the new LGA1700 socket, so DDR5 support isn’t unlikely.
A previous roadmap claimed that AMD will support DDR5 on its next-generation processors too. By next-generation, it’s reasonable to assume that it’s the chipmaker’s Zen 4 parts, which could hit the market with the Ryzen 6000 moniker. Ryzen 5000 (Vermeer) was AM4’s last ride, meaning that Zen 4 will likely command a new socket, probably AM5 if AMD continues with the trend.
João Silva 26 mins ago Featured Tech News, Motherboard
Biostar has announced a new mATX motherboard as part of its B550 lineup. The B550M-Silver is a motherboard aimed at gamers and casual users, offering a neat package of features while also featuring a stylish design worth of showing off.
The Biostar B550M-Silver comes in a black and silver theme, following the design of its predecessors, and LED Rock Zone RGB lighting technology, allowing users to customise the RGB lighting to their liking and synchronise it with other devices. This motherboard features 4 DIMMs, allowing it to handle up to 128GB of RAM clocked at 4933+ MHz. Besides the wide memory compatibility, this board also supports PCIe 4.0 and USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 connectivity, while also being compliant with the WiFi 6 standard.
Featuring Biostar Digital PWM technology, Dr. MOS, and 2.5Guard, the B550M-Silver offer stable, reliable, and efficient operation in “any use case”. For those interested in overclocking, Biostar has implemented A.I. TP Control technology, providing a “user-friendly BIOS environment”. Additionally, if a problem occurs during boot after overclocking, the built-in Debug LED system can help users to identify the problem by turning on the corresponding LED light.
The rear I/O panel features multiple connectivity options including 2x WiFi Antenna ports made to support WiFi 6, a GbE LAN port powered by Realtek RTL8125B chipset, and a PS/2 keyboard/mouse port for legacy devices. The rear I/O panel also features 8x USB ports, with one being a USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port, another being USB-A 3.2 Gen 2. You also get four USB-A 3.1 Gen 1 ports and two USB-A 2.0 ports.
Other outputs in the rear I/O panel include a DVI-D port, an HDMI port, a DisplayPort, and 3x audio outputs powered by Realtek ALC1150.
Biostar hasn’t shared the pricing and availability of the B550M-Silver mATX motherboard, yet. You can learn more about it HERE.
KitGuru says: Are you in the process of changing your CPU and motherboard? Will you be considering the Biostar B550M-Silver?
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Sony plans to expand its ‘PlayStation Direct’ store to Europe
Though console manufacturers typically partner with retail stores in order to sell consoles, games, and …
Mustafa Mahmoud 44 mins ago Console, Featured Tech News, Online, Software & Gaming, Tech News
Though console manufacturers typically partner with retail stores in order to sell consoles, games, and accessories, Sony recently began to offer an alternative option, cutting out the middleman and allowing fans to purchase hardware and software directly from PlayStation. This service, dubbed PlayStation Direct, is currently only available in the US, though it would appear as though Sony has plans to expand the service to other regions, notably Europe.
PlayStation Direct is an online storefront operated by Sony directly. It allows fans to purchase a number of PlayStation products, including consoles, PlayStation exclusive games, and accessories from PlayStation themselves, cutting out the middleman (and presumably receiving all of the revenue as a consequence).
Since its launch in 2019, the PlayStation Direct store has only been available in the US. According to a recent job listing however, Sony has plans to bring the service to other regions, stating that “we are looking to build on the successful launch of new direct-to-consumer business in the US with the launch in Europe.”
Offering its own store could in theory allow for prices to be lowered, due to the fact that – as previously mentioned – cutting out the middleman means that partner stores won’t be taking a cut of the sales. Of course, Sony could also simply pocket the extra revenue.
Regardless, opening its own direct store (even if it is just online-based) shows a level of confidence on Sony’s part, indicating and highlighting the importance of the PlayStation brand. Hopefully this will lead to benefit consumers in the long run.
KitGuru says: What do you think of PlayStation Direct? Do you think prices will be lowered? Would you purchase games from the store? Let us know down below.
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Biostar introduces the B550M-Silver mATX motherboard
Biostar has announced a new mATX motherboard as part of its B550 lineup. The B550M-Silver …
Matthew Wilson 56 mins ago Competitions, Featured Tech News
This month, KitGuru and Corsair are teaming up to give away an incredible gaming PC. Between now and the 31st of December, you have the chance to win a 3XS Vengeance iCUE RTX PC, spec’d out with Corsair components, an Intel Core i9 processor and an RTX 3080 graphics card.
In total, this system is worth around £2,500, making this a dream high-end rig for many. You can see the PC build in the gallery below:
Here is the full specification list for the system:
Intel Core i9 10850K Processor
ASUS TUF OC RTX 3080 Graphics Card
ASUS ROG Strix Z490-F Motherboard
32GB Corsair Vengeance RGB RAM
Corsair Hydro H100i Cooler
1TB Corsair MP600 PCIe M.2 SSD
2TB Storage Drive
Corsair RM850X Power Supply
Corsair 120 Pro RGB iCue Fans
Corsair iCue Pro Lighting Node
iCue Enabled Corsair RGB Strips
Corsair 4000D Chassis
Windows 10
For full details on how to enter and the T&Cs, be sure to head over to our dedicated competition page, HERE.
KitGuru Says: Good luck to everyone entering, the competition ends on the 31st of December, so we’ll be back to announce the winner in January!
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Newly announced ‘The Callisto Protocol’ is set 300 years after PUBG
At the 2020 Game Awards, one of the more interesting game announcements was that of …
Biostar has announced the new B550M-Silver motherboard for gamers, mainstream users and content creators. The motherboard aims to offer high-performance within an accessible price point.
Like its name suggests, Biostar’s new offering features a black PCB with some passive heatsinks slathered in a silver color to accentuate the design. Powered by AMD’s B550 chipset, the B550M-Silver comes in a standard microATX form factor and with native support for Ryzen 5000 (Vermeer) processors. The motherboard is armed with four DDR4 memory slots that support frequencies over DDR4-4400 and a maximum capacity of 128GB of memory.
High-speed storage options on the B550M-Silver consist of one speedy M.2 PCIe 4.0 x4 slot and a standard M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 slot. Both accept SSDs with lengths up to 80mm, whether they’re SATA-or PCIe-based. However, you’d want to use the latter if you want to exploit the interfaces’ full performance. The motherboard also lands with six conventional SATA III connectors.
B550M-Silver (Image credit: Biostar)
In terms of expansion, the B550M-Silver supplies a single PCIe 4.0 x16 slot for AMD’s Radeon RX 6000 (Big Navi) or Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 30-series (Ampere) graphics cards. There’s also a PCIe 3.0 x16 slot that runs at x4 and a PCIe 3.0 x1 slot for you to connect your other devices that are less bandwidth hungry.
The B550M-Silver doesn’t suffer from slow Internet connectivity either. The motherboard has a 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet port, which is based of the Realtek RTL8125B controller. There is support for Wi-Fi 6 too, but you’ll have to buy your own wireless card to get that feature.
In case you plan to use the B550M-Silver with a compatible APU, the motherboard puts one DVI-D port, one HDMI port and one DisplayPort output at your disposal. The motherboard also comes with a PS/2 keyboard and mouse combo port, one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port, one USB 3.2 Gen 2 port, four USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports and two USB 2.0 ports.
The Realtek ALC1150 codec takes care of the audio workloads on the B550M-Silver. The motherboard has three standard 3.5mm audio jacks, but support 7.1-channel audio.
Biostar didn’t reveal when the B550M-Silver will be available or how much it’ll cost.
We’ve been pounding on Cyberpunk 2077 benchmarks with our GPU testing and CPU thread fixes. But what about memory? Does your PC’s memory configuration matter? Of course, the answer is yes, but we wanted to see just how much it matters.
We’ve run a handful of benchmarks on an Intel Core i9-10900K system, not because it’s necessarily the fastest CPU for playing Cyberpunk 2077, but because Intel’s Z490 platform tends to have better compatibility with memory kits. The results here should apply to X570 Zen 3 and Zen 2 CPUs and other platforms as well, but we haven’t taken the time to confirm that yet. Consider these preliminary findings as yet another data point if you’re trying to build the ultimate Cyberpunk 2077 PC.
Cyberpunk 2077 Memory Testing Hardware
Our test PC, with full specs listed on the right, is basically maxed out in nearly every area. The Core i9-10900K is Intel’s fastest current CPU (for gaming purposes at least), we’re using the RTX 3090 Founders Edition to ensure the GPU minimizes bottlenecks as much as possible, and we’ve got a high-end motherboard, liquid cooling, storage, and power keeping everything running.
Then we’ve got the three memory kits that we’ve used for testing. At the top of the ladder sits the 4x8GB Patriot Viper DDR4-4000 CL19 kit. We’ve run this in both 4x8GB and 2x8GB. Next, we have a Corsair 2x16GB kit rated for DDR4-3600 CL16. Finally, we have an old 2x4GB kit of DDR4-2666 CL16 memory from Corsair at the bottom end of the spectrum. It really is an old kit, as it was once used in an X99 Haswell-E build. This is something of the worst-case scenario for a modern platform.
We don’t have exactly matching memory kits of different capacities, but to test how much memory capacity matters compared to speed and timings, we used the 2x8GB and 2x16GB kits with the same detected timings and speed of the 2x4GB. The motherboard didn’t clear RAM timings when we swapped kits, so this is about as close as we can come to ‘equivalent’ speeds, with the only variable being capacity. However, the 4GB and 8GB sticks are single bank, while the 16GB sticks are dual bank, so there’s a slight advantage for the latter.
We’re using the same benchmarking methodology as in our other Cyberpunk 2077 performance articles. We walk around Night City just outside of V’s apartment, following the same route each time, and log frametimes using OCAT. We test at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K using the medium, ultra, and RT ultra presets. Each test is repeated twice, plus an extra run at 1080p that gets discarded, and we reboot after switching the graphics preset. Here are the results, broken down into medium, ultra, and RT ultra testing.
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Starting with 1080p medium, we see some of the largest differences between the memory kits. That makes sense as this is the setting most likely to hit CPU bottlenecks, which go hand in hand with memory bottlenecks. The fastest configuration is the 4x8GB DDR4-4000 CL19 kit, followed closely by the 2x16GB DDR4-3600 kit. 32GB of high speed memory ended up improving performance by up to 20 percent compared to the slowest kits, though capacity is also a factor. The 2x16GB DDR4-2666 kit is about 12 percent slower than the same kit running at DDR4-3600 speeds.
1440p doesn’t change things much, but 4K medium pushes the bottleneck over to the GPU enough that there’s only about a 3 percent spread from the fastest to the slowest kit. That’s almost margin of error for these tests, since Cyberpunk 2077 is an open world that doesn’t guarantee the same NPC behavior between runs.
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Bumping up to the ultra preset, 1080p remains similar to what we saw above, but now 1440p and 4K run into the GPU bottleneck and end up with only a 2 percent spread from fastest to slowest RAM. So, if you don’t have 32GB, you’re not necessarily giving up a ton of performance, especially since your GPU will be a major factor. We’re using an RTX 3090, but a more sensible choice like the RTX 3060 Ti would push the bottleneck over to the GPU much sooner (i.e., at 1440p medium or 1080p ultra, we’d likely get a very limited spread in performance).
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Given what we’ve seen so far, you might think enabling ray tracing and DLSS would end up with everything tied, regardless of resolution. That doesn’t happen at all at 1080p using the RT Ultra preset, and in fact, the spread is slightly larger this time (26 percent from the fastest to slowest GPU). Capacity clearly starts to matter more with ray tracing, and the 32GB DDR4-4000 kit is about 9 percent faster than the same kit with only 16GB (two DIMMs).
1440p RT Ultra does narrow the spread to 8 percent, and 4K RT Ultra only shows a 4 percent difference between the fastest and slowest memory kits. Still, 2x4GB is clearly scraping the bottom of the barrel, and given memory prices, most people with a rig capable of handling Cyberpunk 2077 should be using at least 16GB, if not 32GB.
Want to see more memory testing? Check out our Best DDR4 Memory guide. And if you want to see more Cyberpunk 2077 memory testing, like on the AM4 platform, let us know in the comments.
Last week I told you about the excellent AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT and AMD Radeon RX 6800, two graphics cards through which AMD managed to return to competition in the high-end segment. This is due to a combination of factors, the main culprits being the optimizations brought at the architectural level, the use of a mature manufacturing process, the integration of technologies whose usefulness has been demonstrated in the processor segment (Infinity Cache) and nu why not access to funds R&D significantly higher than 2-3 years ago.
Of course, the list of news doesn’t stop there, with AMD implementing a number of new or significantly improved technologies, such as Radeon Anti-lag, Radeon Boost, FidelityFX Super Resolution, Variable Rate Shading or Smart Access Memory. We will discuss the latter today. Of course, you will probably wonder why we did not treat this topic from the beginning, respectively why we dedicate an entire article to it. Well, the answer just takes time.
You see, when I developed the new methodology for testing video cards, I tested 11 graphics cards, of these being models from the previous generation Nvidia and AMD, the eleventh being, obviously, RTX 3080. At that time, I was moving for the first time in the history of LAB 570 from an Intel platform 8700 K), which I have been using for two years, on an AMD platform, 3900 XT being at that time one among the best AMD processors.
Since then and until now, we have tested 4 new models (RTX 3090, RTX 3070, RX 6800 XT and RX 6800), as well as 9 implementations of graphics cards from the RTX series 3060, from various partners. Basically, in two months I tested 11 graphics cards, all on the new test platform, based on AMD Ryzen 9 3900 XT.
Well, Smart Access Memory is a technology that builds on the new AMD processors in the Ryzen series 5000, launched two weeks ago, together with an X chipset motherboard 570 and a graphics card from would be AMD Radeon RX 6000. Smart Access Memory offers the processor the ability to access the entire amount of VRAM memory, which normally has access only to 11 MB.
However, although AMD first implemented this feature on AMD RX series graphics cards 6000, the technology itself has been around for some time in the PCI-E specifications, with most motherboards having the two necessary options (Above 4G Decode and Resizable Bar Support) present in the BIOS. As a result, we may soon see this feature used by any CPU / GPU combination, whether we’re talking about AMD, Nvidia or Intel.
Until then, however, in order to benefit from this technology, we need an AMD processor from the Ryzen series 5000. As a result, to test this function, we had to use such a processor for tests, which means that we did not have to test only RX 6800 XT, with and without SAM activated, but also the main competitors, ie RTX 3080 and RTX 3090, thus preparing us for the launch of AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT. This means, in our case, 5 more sets of tests, in addition to the 3 prepared for the launch of RX 6800 XT, which was not possible in the context of time had available from the moment I received the samples until the launch. Moreover, we changed the test methodology for DXR games, retesting 5 Nvidia boards without DLSS, respectively testing 3 situations for AMD 6800, 6800 XT, 6800 XT Rage Mode) which also consumed time.
Last but not least, although we can’t wait to move on to a new methodology based on an AMD Ryzen series processor 5000, this will not happen this year, because new models will be launched from Nvidia and AMD, custom RX models will appear 6800 XT and RX 6800 and last but not least a whole series of new games have appeared and it is possible to replace 1-2 games in the current methodology with new titles . After most of the major releases (3060 Ti, 6900 XT) will take place, we will retest all the references from the AMD Radeon RX series 6000, respectively Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 on a processor from the AMD Ryzen series 5000, we will add the new games, where appropriate and we will develop the video card testing methodology for 2021.
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