General Gaming Article |
- GTX 980 Ti vs. Fury X: Overclocking Showdown
- Newegg Daily Deals: Asus ROG 17.3-Inch Gaming Laptop, Corsair 650W PSU, and More!
- Gigabyte Teases Upcoming Z170 Chipset Motherboards
- AMD Cuts Revenue Forecast, Points Finger at Weak PC Sales
- Mushkin Rolls Out ECO2 Memory Line for Overclockers and Gamers on a Budget
- AMD Tracks Down Culprit of Noisy Fury X Cards, Fixes Problem
- VR Porn "Scene" Comes to Oculus Rift, Samsung Gear VR
| GTX 980 Ti vs. Fury X: Overclocking Showdown Posted: 07 Jul 2015 02:15 PM PDT How Much Is "A Lot"?AMD officially launched their Radeon Fury X last week, and in a few more weeks, we should see the air-cooled version (though exact specs for the vanilla Fury are not yet clear). With our initial Fury X review, we didn't have time to test everything as thoroughly as we'd like, but we've updated the original benchmarks—no more factory-overclocked EVGA 980 Ti comparisons, and everything is running in the same standardized test bed:
The change in test beds and comparison to the EVGA 980 Ti didn't affect the review, as we had already factored in those items, but we were also able to play around with the Fury X a bit more and run some overclocking tests. We've seen reports of up to 10 percent GPU core overclocks on Fury X around the web, but our particular sample proved unstable even with a mere eight percent overclock, despite maintaining low core temperatures. We ended up with an even less impressive seven percent stable overclock, which, as you might imagine, means real-world performance is only 3–5 percent faster than stock. There are two important limitations with the current state of Fury X overclocking that need to be addressed. First, there are no utilities (yet) that allow adjusting the core voltage. Bumping the voltage a bit is often the difference between almost stable and fully stable overclocks, not to mention given the liquid cooling and low temperatures, Fury X should still have room to go faster with additional voltage. The second is that there isn't currently a way to adjust HBM clocks. With 512GB/s of bandwidth it might not seem like a bottleneck, but considering Fury X has 45 percent more computational power than 390X but only 33 percent more memory bandwidth, that assumption may not be entirely correct. Interestingly, there are other posts circulating the Internet suggesting the HBM memory can be overclocked by as much as 20 percent, and that it actually makes a difference. These two limitations mean that this is only a preview of what Fury X overclocking may offer, and we are really hoping to see a lot more in the future. AMD needs to deliver better performance in order to compete with Nvidia's 980 Ti, as it only ties or trails the competition (depending on benchmarks, resolutions, and settings) currently, and that's only the stock-clocked 980 Ti. Factory-overclocked 980 Ti cards have existed since launch, with EVGA boasting a 10 percent core overclock initially, and now the Classified model comes with a nearly 20 percent factory overclock, and that's only that beginning. Zotac just sent us a sample of their 980 Ti AMP! Extreme, which comes with a 25 percent factory overclock on the core, and an extra three percent GDDR5 overclock for good measure. But we already managed a 20 percent core overclock on the reference card, and 11 percent GDDR5 overclock as well, so it will be interesting to see how far we can push some of these other 980 Ti cards. If you've wondered about the reasoning behind the initial review scores, overclocking is certainly a factor. Nvidia's Maxwell 2.0 cards (GTX 960/970/980 using GM204 and GTX 980 Ti/Titan X using GM200) have all proven very capable overclockers. For high-performance enthusiast cards, getting great out-of-box performance is expected, but being able to tack on another 15–25 percent through overclocking really pushes things over the top. Conversely, a product that offers competitive stock performance but only a small overclocking potential is typically less desirable, assuming all other factors are equal. With that said, we felt it would be enlightening to take another look at the Fury X vs. 980 Ti, this time with the best stable overclocks we could manage on each card. As usual, we want to note that nothing is guaranteed with overclocking, other than perhaps factory overclocks, so these results are more of a baseline than something you will experience. Your choice of case, power supply, and case fans can all play a role, not to mention ambient temperature, drivers, and VBIOS. We're far more confident in our 980 Ti results as being representative of the GPU than we are of Fury X, and hopefully AMD will help unlock the full potential of the card in the coming months. For now, however, despite the similar price, overclocking in particular will heavily favor Nvidia. Two Men Enter, One Man Leaves At stock clocks, the Fury X and 980 Ti are at least reasonably matched. AMD claims a couple of wins and two more ties at 4K, and on average we're looking at less than a 10 percent delta between the two GPUs—and an even smaller difference at higher resolutions. The average of our eight core games gives Nvidia a ten percent lead at 1080p, seven percent at 1440p, and only three percent at 4K. Minimum frame rates favor Nvidia a bit more—18, 14, and six percent at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K—likely thanks to the 6GB VRAM on the 980 Ti. And, of course, AMD is doing this with liquid cooling and lower temperatures, while still using a bit more power; they're running beta drivers as well, but that's how things currently stand. Throw in overclocking and the comparison becomes far more lopsided. At present, the best we're able to manage with the Fury X is a seven percent overclock, while on the reference 980 Ti we're able to hit +225MHz on the core and +900MHz (7,910MHz effective) on the GDDR5. That represents a 23 percent core overclock and a 13 percent memory overclock. And if you're wondering, the Zotac 980 Ti AMP! Extreme goes even further; we were able to hit 1,300MHz on the core and 8,300MHz on the memory—stay tuned for the full review. Looking at the overclocked results, it's a clean sweep for the 980 Ti right now. Even games that traditionally favor AMD (e.g., Hitman: Absolution) are ruled by the overclocked 980 Ti. The smallest lead we recorded for the 980 Ti OC is around five percent, in Hitman at 1440p and 4K. In games where the 980 Ti already held a lead, there can be a chasm between the two cards; Heaven, for instance, has a 28 percent lead at 4K and a 45 percent lead at 1080p. Ouch. On average, the 980 Ti OC leads the Fury X OC by 26 percent at 1080p, 21 percent at 1440p, and 15 percent at 4K in average fps; looking at minimum fps, right now 980 Ti OC leads by 39/32/24 percent over Fury X OC. About the only consolation prize is that the overclocked 980 Ti has peak power use for the system that's about 20W higher than the overclocked Fury X—426W vs. 408W—but that's partly due to the rest of the system working harder to provide the increased performance, and overclockers aren't usually ultra-concerned with needing a bit more juice to keep their system running at top speed. To the Victor Goes the SpoilsAnd there you have it: AMD has plenty of work to do if they want Fury X to match the GTX 980 Ti consistently. Improving performance by 10–15 percent is certainly possible, and we've already seen Nvidia do that with driver updates since the launch of the Titan X. However, at least right now, AMD seems to be taking the Titan X approach to clock speeds with Fury X, meaning all of the cards are full reference models running reference clocks; at least the pricing is also consistent, though finding the Fury X in stock is another matter. The 980 Ti, on the other hand, is open for experimentation, and factory core overclocks of 10–25 percent are readily available, often at only a minor price premium. Even if you stick with the reference cards, it looks as though nearly all 980 Ti GPUs will happily run at 1,200MHz base, with boost clocks hitting 1,400MHz or more in some cases. What we want to see from AMD in the coming weeks are two things. First, we want drivers that perform better than the current launch/beta 15.15 drivers. All indications are that AMD could net 10 percent or more performance with additional tuning, and that would be enough to match 980 Ti performance in most cases. Second, considering the "overbuilt" liquid cooling, we want to see voltage unlocks and HBM overclocking. If HBM can indeed be clocked 20 percent higher (600MHz base instead of 500MHz), and that results in another 10–15 percent improvement in performance, then we'd be looking at parity. That may not be the most exciting result if you want to argue about which graphics card is best, but stronger competition from Team Red can only help consumers in the long run. But until/unless these improvements come to pass, the GTX 980 Ti is the best choice for gaming enthusiasts. It's fast, it's available, and it can overclock like a Swiss watchmaker hopped up on muesli. Follow Jarred on Twitter. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Newegg Daily Deals: Asus ROG 17.3-Inch Gaming Laptop, Corsair 650W PSU, and More! Posted: 07 Jul 2015 12:44 PM PDT Top Deal: It can get awfully lonely sitting in a hotel room. Things are even worse when the TV only gets a few channels and you're stuck out in the middle of nowhere. Luckily, the high-speed Internet works, and you had the foresight to bring along a gaming laptop. You did bring one along, right? If you don't have one, then check out today's top deal for an Asus ROG G751JL-DS71 17.3-inch Gaming Laptop for $1,176 with free shipping (normally $1,199 - use coupon code: [0707USGMU88]).This laptop features an Intel Core i7 4720HQ processor, 16GB of RAM, 1TB HDD, Nvidia GeForce GTX 965M graphics, and Windows 8.1. Other Deals: Corsair RM650 650W Full Modular Active PFC Power Supply for $108 with free shipping (normally $110 - use coupon code: [0707USGMU32]; additional $20 Mail-in rebate) Samsung S24E510C Black 23.6-inch Curved 4ms LCD Monitor W/Game Mode Function for $230 with free shipping (normally $250 - use coupon code: [0707USGMU54]) G.Skill Ares 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory for $85 with free shipping (normally $90 - use coupon code: [EMCAVAV35]) NZXT H440 Razer Steel Mid Tower Case for $135 with free shipping (normally $140 - use coupon code: [0707USGMU14]) | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Gigabyte Teases Upcoming Z170 Chipset Motherboards Posted: 07 Jul 2015 12:32 PM PDT Skylake can't arrive fast enough We're all anxiously awaiting the arrival of Intel's Skylake-S processors, which are rumored to debut on August 5, 2015, at Gamescom. In the meantime, we're left to speculate about speeds and features, and drool over pictures of motherboards that will support the batch of CPUs from Intel. What, you're lacking a photo collection of Z170-based motherboards to stare at? Not anymore! Gigabyte bombarded the web with several pictures of a few of its upcoming Z170-chiset boards, including the GA-Z170X Gaming G1 (shown above) and GA-Z170X Gaming 7 (shown below), arguably the two hottest boards of the bunch. All of the Z170 boards Gigabyte showed off will feature Intel's LGA 1151 socket, as it's the only one that will support Skylake. According to WCCFTech, Gigabyte's flagship GA-Z170X Gaming G1 will also sport a 22-phase power design, water cooling-ready VRM heatsink, dual M.2 ports, dual SATA Express ports, dual internal USB 3.0 headers, dual GbE LAN ports, high end audio, and a new Turbo B-Block chip (allows for a greater range of BLCK adjustments going from 90MHz to 200MHz). The Gaming 7 board looks similar to the Gaming 1, though it loses some of the advanced features, such as a 4th PCI-E slot and VRMs that can be water cooled. Gigabyte is known for putting out colorful boards, though it appears to be moving away from pastel color schemes with Z170, at least for the initial batch. The company's mid-range offerings scale back the use of white, which is limited to well-placed accents The GA-Z170X Gaming 5's socket is powered by a 12 phase digital power design. Like its higher end brethren, it has four DDR4 memory slots. It also has three PCI-E 3.0 x16 slots with metal shielding and a fourth PCI-E 3.0 x1 slot. Other features include two M.2 ports, six SATA 6Gbps ports, two SATA Express ports, two USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 front panel headers, dual LAN ports, and 7.1 channel audio. Gigabyte didn't say how much it new boards will cost, though with Skylake-S barely four weeks away, we won't have to wait long to find out. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| AMD Cuts Revenue Forecast, Points Finger at Weak PC Sales Posted: 07 Jul 2015 11:47 AM PDT Dark times in Sunnyvale AMD on Monday announced that revenue for the second quarter ended June 27, 2015, is expected to drop 8 percent sequentially, compared to the company's previous guidance of a 3 percent decline, plus or minus 3 percent. The Sunnyvale chip designer blamed its financial struggles on weaker than expected PC demand in the consumer sector, which is negatively affecting its APU sales. Adding to its financial woes is a one-time charge of $33 million associated with moving several of its existing 20 nanometer designs to a "leading-edge FinFET node." The company didn't state whether TSMC, Globalfoundries, or both will be aiding the transition. Either way, this is an important time for AMD. Historically speaking, AMD has always been able to bounce back from financial situations that seem dire. And perhaps that will be the case going forward, as the move to FinFET nodes should result in products that are more competitive with rival Intel's offerings, though it won't happen overnight. To state the obvious, more competitive products are exactly what AMD needs right now. An article in USA Today underscores this notion by pointing out the growing gap between AMD and Intel. While AMD's revenue continues to decline, Intel is seeing revenue growth, albeit at a slow rate these days. Going back in time, AMD's revenue was more than a quarter of Intel's in 1990. The ratio held steady for a few years before dropping below 10 percent in the late 1990s. Then in the 2000s, AMD brought it back up to around 15 percent, which is where it stayed at for several years. At the time, Intel was infatuated with its Netburst architecture, while AMD was kicking out slower clocked but more efficient processors. Fast forward to today and AMD's revenue is again less than 10 percent of Intel's. AMD isn't incorrect in pointing the finger at weaker than expected PC sales, but that alone doesn't account for the company's financial situation. Simply put, Intel has the better processor options, and with Skylake-S right around the corner, that's probably not going to change this year. The good news for AMD is that Windows 10 is also right around the corner, which could lead to a spike in PC sales. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Mushkin Rolls Out ECO2 Memory Line for Overclockers and Gamers on a Budget Posted: 07 Jul 2015 10:20 AM PDT Only at Newegg Those of you new to the wonderful world of DIY computing missed out on an era when RAM makers were practically tripping over themselves trying to release new, high speed kits. These days memory announcements are few are far between, even with DDR4 trying to usurp DDR3, though they're not completely absent. Just ask Mushkin, one of the players that was around during the aforementioned era, and one of only a few companies to push high voltage kits at extreme overclockers. This time around Mushkin's new memory product is a bit more subdued -- it's the ECO2 line and it's intended for overclockers and gamers who don't have a king's ransom to spend on RAM. "We are excited to offer our newest ECO2 product, the ECO2 memory line for budget-conscious enthusiasts who want to maximize their gaming and user experience," said Brian Flood, Director of Product Development at Mushkin. "The success of our ECO2 SSDs proved to us that users are not just looking for another run-of-the-mill SSD or memory module, which is why we developed something more efficient and cost-effective, and the new ECO2 memory line of modules where born." Marketing hype aside, what Mushkin is pushing are low profile DDR3 memory modules protected with aluminum heat spreaders that sport a black and silver symmetrical design. Available in 4GB and 8GB modules (8GB and 32GB kits), the ECO2 is rated to run at 1600MHz with 9-9-9-24 timings at 1.35V. If that floats your boat, you'll find these new modules at Newegg, which secured an exclusive deal with Mushkin. Here's how they're priced:
All five options are available now and backed by a lifetime warranty. Whether or not you should jump depends on your RAM needs. As mentioned, DDR4 is trying to become the new standard, though many of today's systems run DDR3. Furthermore, Intel's Skylake processors are said to support both DDR3 and DDR4 memory. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| AMD Tracks Down Culprit of Noisy Fury X Cards, Fixes Problem Posted: 07 Jul 2015 09:52 AM PDT Say goodbye to pump noise If you were interested in buying a Radeon R9 Fury X graphics card and were lucky enough to find one in stock, you might have been disappointed to find that it exhibited pump noise. While not all Fury X cards are affected, it's a known issue with some early production units, including both review samples sent to members of the press and some that made it to retail. The good news is AMD thinks it's fixed the problem. In a statement provided to Legit Reviews, AMD said it addressed the issue by making adjustments to the sound baffling compound used in the assembly of the high speed cooling pump. Repeat testing on AMD's part showed that the fix was effective in reducing the pitch/sound that some users complained. Users also complained about coil whine. AMD's wording makes it sound like the fix to the pump addresses both noise issues, while also pointing out that the fan's near silent operation makes any sound from the pump more noticeable than it would otherwise be. Here's the full statement: We have received feedback that during open bench testing a small number of Fury X cards emit a sound from the high speed liquid cooling pump that, while not loud, is bothersome to some users. While the vast majority of initial Fury X owners report remarkably quiet operation, we take this feedback seriously, as AMD's mission is to always deliver the best possible experience to our Radeon customers. AMD Radeon R9 Fury X customers demand and deserve the best, so adjustments in the sound baffling adhesive compound were applied in the assembly of the high speed cooling pump to address the specific sound a few end users experienced as problematic. This improved the acoustic profile of the pump, and repeat testing shows the specific pitch/sound in question was largely reduced through adjustments to the sound-baffling adhesive compound in the pump. AMD will work with its graphic card partners to ensure the satisfaction of the small number of initial customers who observed this specific sound and experienced it as bothersome. AMD is confident that on-going production of Radeon R9 Fury X product reduces the specific sound in question, but this is also a highly subjective matter with wide differences in PC case builds and room acoustics. The AMD Radeon R9 Fury X radiator fan is near silent, and this makes any sound from the high-speed pump more noticeable to some end users, especially during open bench testing. Thus although the overall sound levels are remarkably low for an enthusiast product, AMD has worked to reduce the specific sound that some customers report as bothersome. If you own a Fury X graphics card that is noisy, you should get in contact with the manufacturer or place of purchase and see what replacement options are available. For everyone else, we'll cross our fingers and hope that AMD was successful in eliminating the noise issue. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| VR Porn "Scene" Comes to Oculus Rift, Samsung Gear VR Posted: 07 Jul 2015 07:47 AM PDT Oh, my! Feeling a bit frisky and need some alone time? A company called Naughty America (NSFW!) has developed and released a virtual porn "scene" starring Nikki Benz, Jaclyn Taylor and… possibly you! That's right: this scene will feature a threesome that can't be described here. All you'll need is Samsung's Gear VR for Android, the Oculus Rift for PC, or the Homido Virtual Reality Headset and Mobile VR Station app for iOS. There are other compatible devices as well, the company said. "Using a VR headset, males will be immersed directly in Naughty America's first-person point-of-view scene, with Benz and Taylor standing seductively before them, elevating the user to a new height—a more sensitized, sexual plane," the company said on Monday. The company also suggests that this scene, titled "2 Chicks Same Time," will help couples and "lovers" bring a third party into the bedroom. Now get this: the new scene, along with its two stars, will be at the Comic-Con International in San Diego from July 9 to July 11. Interested viewers, who probably should take a really cold shower before entering the virtual scene, will be able to provide feedback in addition to talking with both ladies. Speaking of ladies, Naughty America also announced that it's currently working on a virtual porn "experience" for women. This scene will have a woman and a man fighting for the user's attention. The company is also working on other virtual porn scenes that will be released on the company's website each week. "Our customers want to get as close to reality as they can get, without reality getting in the way," Naughty America CEO Andreas Hronopoulos said on Monday. The company's press release points to an Oculus NSFW Reddit board that talks about the new scenes. The threads are mostly full of praise, although there are complaints that the framerate is too low (30 fps). Regardless, Naughty America seems to be reeling in new subscriptions left and right. The launch of virtual porn shouldn't come as a surprise; it was inevitable. As Hronopoulos points out, users can get close to the real thing without actually involving other people. | ||||||||||||||||||||
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