*Official* NBR Desktop Overclocker's Lounge [laptop owners welcome, too]

Great bargain indeed. I ordered a 1TB and 512GB as well on sale for giggles. I'm needing to upgrade some family members laptops so instead of going sata, this cheap NVMe was a no brainer like you've said.

i just hope they hold up. With the issues going on with the 2TB sabrents and the known problems of it being broken with 512 sector emulation, it's a bit concerning. However, for the price it makes up for any worries really lol...

The nice thing is that with more options in the market, it forces the top tier drives to lower their prices too, which is great for us.

Sounds good Bro. Happy 4th.

I agree. When it comes to reliability, that is a whole different thing all together. Unarguably these newer cheap drives lack track record to even determine any data, however with the problems that are already arising I'm grabbing the popcorn to see how it pans out. Bad start already.

I'm curious to know what's going on with the sabrent drives from the inside (company) perspective (although we already somewhat know), because there are reports of issues on top of another. This seems like to be an integrity issue as predicted. I must say, I kind of feel bad about installing these on the family members laptops now lol. To circumvent that I'm setting up a private cloud for them on my NAS account so I'll create a folder called "PUT IMPORTANT STUFF HERE," as insurance haha...

This also leads to the cheap drives offering 5 year warranty, bluffing to try and match Samsung ...well...... if you lose your precious data like priceless family photos and such, that 5 years means nothing...so when people try to use the warranty period to butter up how good the cheap drives are, it really doesn't matter to the majority of users; because most people (sadly) don't back up their data.

To each his own. I hope it pans out well for them, because it's one heck of a deal. Before all these issues, I had WD SN750 over the sabrent in the mid tier category, but now there's no way I can comfortably recommend the sabrent to people for the time being. (If the user backs up their data then even an el cheapo bottom of the barrel silicon motion would suffice lol.)

 

My friend is offering me his Vega 56 GPU for a decent price. Debating whether I want to build up a desktop LOL.

I currently have sitting in my shed:

i7 950 Quad-Core 1st Gen (X58 system)
EVGA SLI3 X58 Motherboard
12GB RAM (3x2GB, 1x4GB, 1x2GB mix and match LOL)
250GB SSD
Garbage ATX Case
450w Corsair PSU
GTX 550Ti
Windows 7

Wondering if it's worth making it into a real beast LOL:

Intel Xeon W3680 6-Core unlocked CPU ($50)
650w PSU (Corsiar, free from another friend)
Vega 56 ($200)

Thoughts? lol

 

I don't think 'broken' is the way of describing the 512 sector thing with the Sabrent drives, the issue you're referring to is that the Sabrent drives come with 4K sectors, whereas a lot of other drives are 512byte sectors - this means that you can't clone your OS from your previous 512 byte sector disk to a 4K sector disk, but this is not a problem if you're doing a fresh install. Additionally, Sabrent offer a program to convert the Sabrent from 4K sector to 512byte sector ( https://www.sabrent.com/download/sb-rocket-256/). I don't think 'broken' is the accurate way of describing the situation or the product.

The high temperatures that you see on your 2TB Sabrent drive are nothing like the low temperatures I see on my 1TB Sabrent drive, the hottest mine has ever been was 60 degC, and that was with intensive disk benching (32GB Crystal Disk Mark test, and 80GB folder copying) - mine doesn't even have a heatsink on it (no motherboard NVMe heatsink). Maybe you have bad airflow in your case, or maybe the 2TB version of the product heats up more than the 1TB version, but I suppose not everyone who uses these drives is gonna have optimal airflow, so that's kinda moot point but it provides some perspective.

The 5yr warranty and high TBW warranty that you have doubts about combined with your concern for reliability of the product - even if the high TBW figures have been inflated, we're talking about Toshiba TLC NAND here, there's no concern with anyone wearing out the NAND on their drive, the NAND will last for decades before most users have exhausted it's write endurance. Also, these are Phison E12 & Toshiba TLC NAND drives, cookie cutter drives that are pretty much all the same on a hardware & firmware level offered by quite a few companies like Corsair, Seagate, etc - so I don't think you have to be concerned with the Sabrent brand in terms of product quality. I think the same firmware is often shared between the different companies, for instance I have the ECFM12.2 firmware which using Google is the latest version of the Phison controller firmware, and is the same one used on some of the latest Phison E12 drives. (See following pic showing the firmware revision, you can also see that my drive has also never in it's life exceeded the temperature warning thresholds from that pic). (You can also see that airflow is probably pretty good in my case as the drive is at 24 degC and my room temperature is 25 degC (the room thermometer is about 1 meter higher up in my room than my PC, so I guess that's why it's reading a higher temperature, rooms are hotter near the ceiling).)


What was the issue with the 2TB drive allegedly being pulled from a few websites, what specifically? I wouldn't really recommend a 2TB drive for any NVMe drive anyway, as it's not an efficient use of the "lanes & data channels" so they're slower than the 1TB versions and often cost per GB is less for the 1TB drives anyway.

 

It's an interesting idea, but it's not worth it from a practical level considering your Area-51M laptop will game better - due to better CPU & GPU. It might be fun to do though, but only for that reason, unless you've got lots of people using your hardware (family & friends) and you want an extra PC to use when they're using your stuff!

 

well...in his case it would actually be super cheap cuz basically free

Sent from my Xiaomi Mi Max 2 (Oxygen) using Tapatalk

 

This looks like fun... and not that difficult.

Plus, if you are using the system purely for entertainment purposes, there is really little or no reason to give a rat's butt about security. It isn't all that important. If it is something a person wants to worry their pretty little head about, they can always use a different system that is secure if and when security ever matters.

 

It's your most logical next step bro. With the launch of the super cards, Nvidia won't be launching anything new in the very high end until summer of next year. Unless they pull another Titan Xp.

 

I know you are ultimately right. That's exactly what I need to do next. Seems like I need to make some decisions before long about whether I am going to hang it up or keep going. I'm extremely tempted by this mod, but this is a mighty expensive GPU to tear up that way. I'd probably do it to a cheaper one first to get the hang of it before ripping into my FTW3. It also basically destroys the ability to use the GPU for anything normal because of all the extra junk attached to it.

But, I'm kind of disenchanted with the whole idea of benching any more. Maybe I am just going through a phase or something. Having a hard time getting excited about it, since I can't beat myself at this point and kind of maxed everything out in terms of my hardware capacity. I know I could do more with LN2, but I'm not really into the idea of spending any more money on this hobby. The non-stop retarded BS from the goons at NVIDIA has rubbed me the wrong way as well... bastards. I sure as hell don't want to give them any more of my money. They don't deserve to be paid for their nonsense. The "Super" cards don't affect 2080 Ti (yet) and therefore not affecting me (yet), but I've taken up a grudge for all of the 2080 owners that got screwed by the release of "Super" cards.

Just ran this... not too bad, but about 721 points short of my best score.

 

And, this one is about 98 points short of my best. Meh. Time to turn the chiller off and flip back to my 5.0GHz BIOS profile. Not much point in trying until something changes... futile.


Edit: OK. Back to status quo... 50x on Linux.

 

A little encouragement for you my friend Can't compete with your 50x on Linux... 1 core CELERON M [email protected] from before last decade smash out amazing 35cb in CBR-15 But yeah, is better than last. Benching this old 1 core amazing thingy tragedy is very time consuming. A short bench is fast an 1/2 hours run. I'm sure you don't want that, HaHa

https://hwbot.org/submission/4182922_papusan_cinebench___r15_celeron_m_743_35_cb


https://hwbot.org/submission/4184065_papusan_superpi___32m_celeron_m_743_35min_58sec_669ms

 

Flash from the past. Amazing how easy it is to take things for granted. I can remember back when 35cb points was pretty typical and 500 meant your machine was a wicked beast.

 

How warm did the single core Celeron get? Looks like I need to repaste the ZBook 15. I hardly ever subject it to anything stressful because there isn't really any reason for me to do that. I just use it for email and web browsing most of the time. This Cinebench R15 run severely thermal throttled at 99°C, but it still returned a better score than lots of other garbage. I did play Crysis on it not long ago and noticed the CPU was pushing 95°C and the GPU was running around 80°C. It does have a pathetic cooling system, like most other laptops do, so it will most likely never have good temps.

 

624cb is on level with many 6700Hq.

I can't remember. Didn't check the temp. But I put it on top of my mod U3 cooler with 3x 3000rpm fans so I expect it run quite cool I opened up the backcover and saw 2 ram slots. I let it be open and the fans spewed in a lot of air into the wimpy small chassis. This little thingy have even a 5 cm long heatsink grill. Probably better cooling than todays ultrabooks, HaHa

https://hwbot.org/submission/4182924_papusan_cinebench___2003_celeron_m_743_244_points

 

Without overheating and thermal throttling, it's about 140cb points higher. Pretty sad that 6700HQ performs so poorly, but not surprising at all. Newer is better.

https://hwbot.org/submission/3937719_mr._fox_cinebench___r15_core_i7_4800mq_765_cb

 

And the newer Mobile 7700Hq doesn’t make it any better

 

It's always gonna be a little bit like that when it comes to benching whatever hardware you have - at some point you've tweaked/modded/& overclocked everything to the max and you've got nothing left to improve on...at that point you just have to buy some new or old hardware and do the same again. Maybe if the hardware is more locked down, then it's more of a challenge to get it unlocked and then posting scores that are extraordinary to what everyday people can achieve - maybe that's more interesting in a way. Like when you were overclocking laptops, not that many folks doing that, and breaking some new ground with mods and going against the established "laptops don't overclock" motto spouted by ignorant desktop owners!

My personal level of interest in overclocking (in terms of reading, etc), the point where it ceases to be interesting, is the point at which a system becomes totally impractical - so for desktops LN2 does not interest me, but I'm interested in everything else that's not a complete pain in the ass to use & own!

 

I'm mainly just sick of burning money on the hobby and I'm sick of dealing with castrated filth just to reach a good starting point. If all you had to do was add custom parts and do some modding and tweaking it would be fine. But, fixing messes first blows. When the hardware is castrated from the factory and has to be modded to function properly (regardless of what is "intended" by the ODM) it sucks. Add the wildcard of poorly binned silicon (seems more common now) and the stupid software issues to the mix (Windows 10 filth and "security fix" idiocy) and you're just chasing your tail. I still love doing it, and to me it doesn't matter too much if the system is impractical. Kind of like top fuel dragster are impractical totally unsuitable as transportation. They're no less awesome. Totally not doable for me financially though. I ignore whatever I can't own and do myself because I don't enjoy being a spectator. I enjoy watching about 15 minutes, then I am ready to move on to something else and don't want to watch again for a super long time (like years in some cases).

I've essentially lost interest in gaming. Not entirely, but it's not something I look forward to doing and not many titles can hold my interest long enough to play to the end. I have a hard time sitting still doing one thing for that long... probably ADD (I have a lot of those symptoms and they seem to be worsening with age). Once in a while I find a title that I can get lost in and play for hours on end, and replay again when I am done, but that is very rare. Without gaming and overclocking, I view PCs as being close to pointless as anything except tools one may need for work (depending on their career). So, I am in a re-evaluation mode right now. I could easily throw in the towel. Not because I don't enjoy it... I still love it. Just disgusted with the endless nonsense and getting tired of spending gobs of money on severely overpriced junk. Everything is a poor value now in the low, mid and high-end PC hardware ranges.

 

Well fair enough. I do remember thinking when you first decided to leave laptops and go desktop benching...I remember thinking he's gonna get bored because he's not doing something "extraordinary" with the hardware, because so much competition and wider spread adoption in desktop benchmarking/overclocking. I just remember thinking that he'd be better off getting the most out of laptops. That kind of goes against what you're saying now about not liking messing around removing the lockdowns, but even so I do remember thinking that.

 

You are mostly correct, but the change was the result of a similar re-evaluation phase that I went through with laptops. I moved away from laptops because they've become way too retarded and most are unfit for my purposes. BGA filth, the elimination of MXM standards, etc. There are too few options that are worthy of my time, and the one and only option left that is worthy of my time was discontinued. The next best model is a total joke that I would never consider spending money on. Laptops are also severely overpriced, require a lot of work and the manufacturer is almost guaranteed to pull a stupid stunt that stops me from upgrading it, or severely interferes with that. I find desktops more rewarding, more practical, and mostly more economically feasible. The parts are also less prone to failure than laptop parts.

 

I really hate this about myself, too. It affects a number of areas of life, not just computers. I even notice it in my daily exercise routine at the gym. I cannot use one machine for a long time without some kind of distraction, like the TVs overhead or counting to myself (usually both) to help me lose track of time. After about 10-15 minutes of being on a stationary bike or rowing machine I start to have a mild sense of panic because I have been doing the same thing for too long. Using weight machines is not as bad, because a couple of sets of 15 reps and I move to another machine. But, if I look at the clock on the wall in the gym and see I have been there for 30 minutes I have a strong urge or a sense of feeling compelled that I need to leave because I have been there for too long and need to go do something else immediately. This also affects my ability to sleep. I've never needed lots of sleep to feel rested, but after about 4 or 5 hours I often start waking up and feel like something is wrong because I have been in bed for "too long" and need to do something else. If I sleep 7 or 8 hours I usually have a strong sense of regret for having wasted so much time sleeping, even though my mind and body need it. It's worse on weekends and holidays because sleeping makes me feel as though I have squandered my time off. I know the idea is to use that time for R&R, but that gets lost in translation somehow.

 

That's pretty interesting, it surprises me that you'd be able to sit still long enough to focus on things like complicated desktop/laptop mods that you've done! I've always been able to focus on a single thing for many hours, but the closest to what you're talking about is my hatred of queuing - it used to make me feel really uncomfortable, panicky sometimes, but I've chilled a lot out over the years. Although I remember once I took a 'course' of natural ephedra for some fat reduction and weight training related reasons (silly) and it made me feel kinda scatty, antsy and irritable, similar to what you're describing there. You don't drink lots of caffeine or similar do you?

 

Sometimes I have a hard time mustering the motivation to start a project that I know is going to soak up a lot of time, even if it is something I am really interested in doing. Once I am totally immersed into something I like a lot it is not too hard. I lose track of time having fun, and then I don't want to be bothered with any kind of interruptions or distractions, like eating or sleeping, having music playing in the background, or talking to people. I want to finish it all in one sitting (even if that is more than 24 hours) without any kind of distractions and not stop until I am done. If I have to do it in stages or phases I can easily lose interest in a project and either abandon it or I have to literally force myself to resume where I left off. Sometimes the only reason I will resume a project I could not finish in one session is due to a sense of obligation and commitment to someone else.

I really suck at multi-tasking as well. I don't like it, don't want to like it, and try to avoid it as much as I can. I cannot walk and chew gum, talk and type, read and talk, watch TV or listen to music and have a conversation, watch TV or listen to music while using a computer, etc. It makes me really angry for some strange reason and I cannot concentrate on either task. I can only do one, LOL.

And, I'm married to the queen of multi-tasking. My precious wife can watch a movie, talk on the phone and read a book, all at the same time and not miss anything. Crazy. If I am watching a movie and she asks me a question I have to pause it and ask her to repeat the question. I heard her talking, but don't have a clue what she asked. I was watching the movie. I love music, but I am not going to have a conversation. We are either talking or listening to music, not both. As a consequence, I generally do not listen to music unless I am home alone and that's all I am doing is listening to music.

I'm just a weirdo.

Yes, quite a bit. Not coffee, but sugar-free colas and tea (has to be cold, as I do not care for hot drinks). I drink a lot of water as well. Between the two, probably close to 2 gallons a day of liquid. And, I consume mostly proteins. Hardly any carbs or sugar. But, I've been this way all of my life, just seems to be more evident as I age. I used to eats tons of carbs and sugars until a couple of years ago.

 

Off topic (again)... congrats to Brother @Meaker@Sager for breaking 8K rep points. I just pushed him over the edge. On purpose.

@Vasudev - you need to build a desktop, bro.

 

You monster you

 

Bro, it sounds like you're simply burned out. Nothing wrong with that. You need a small hiatus from XOC'ing and I promise when you come back, the love and focus on the sport will be renewed. Leave the sport for a couple of months, at least until Intel rereleases their HEDT processors for X299.

The HEDT market is flat. Intel's new processors will be a rehash of the original Skylake X and AMD will not release anything for TR until next year. The UHCC processors are a dead end because Intel only released one overclockable UHCC proc and AMD doesn't compete in this newly created market segment. We are more than a year away from anything really good in the HEDT processor market. 2020 will be interesting for GPU's when Intel comes out with their offerings, as that will push Nvidia to innovate a bit more.

 

You're probably right, bro. Maybe when I return after a break things will have improved to the point that using a soldering iron is not a prerequisite to having a throttle-free experience at stock clocks with GeFarts GPU. That sure would be nice.

 

Yeah, and cut out the caffeine too for a while as an experiment to see if it tones down your 'obsessions/compulsions'. I guess that is if you do drink a lot of caffeine or maybe you've just become sensitive to it, nothing wrong with trying it!

 

Well, I ended up giving the desktop to my brother. Got a AMD R9 270 from my friend so the desktop is now at:

Intel Core i7 950
6GB 3x2GB DDR3 1600Mhz (I have a 4GB & 2GB stick but when adding those the RAM actually doesn't all work)
500GB Samsung 850 Evo
750GB WD Black 7200rpm 2.5" HDD
AMD R9 270
430W Corsair PSU
Windows 10 Pro

Total cost is still $0. Other friend will give me a 650w Corsair PSU.

I'll post some benches later CB15 got 485 points stock.

Will try and OC to 4Ghz on the CPU. Told by brother to get the W3680 for $49 on eBay in the future and we'll OC to 4.0-4.2Ghz and it'll be up there with today's CPUs.

He's also getting my 680M SLI for his M18xR2 since I went 780M SLI. LOL must be like Christmas for him.

 

Good on you man for looking out for your brother.

For the average user, that desktop is more than fine and it will still runs games just not at max level.

As for the laptop, 680M SLI is still capable.

My future son in law is running a M17x r3 w/ 3610/M290x (no overclocks anywhere) and is perfectly happy.

My daughter just recently said she needs an upgrade and she was using her Studio 17 640m / Radeon 5650. I have a mound of Clevo parts
laying around (4930mx's, 4940mx's, 765m's, etc...), so I'll try to hunt down a P170/177 or P375 barebones and build it out for her and it will
be a massive upgrade across the board. The main reason she needs an upgrade is the WoW engine upgrade won't run on her 8yr old
laptop anymore.

When I look at the wide swath of systems used by my family and friends (outside of my gamer guild), they are at or below what
you put together for your brother and they are content.

 

Contentment is a happy place. And, it's a place we all need to find. Life is too hard without it.

Setting aside the fabricated frenzy over ray tracing, minimum system requirements for most modern games is still rather conservative and that is a matter of survival for game devs.

If all the desirable new game releases required new high-end hardware it would bankrupt them and kill gaming. Many do not have the financial means for that, and many that do are not willing to blow a massive wad of their money on something insanely expensive that will be obsolete and lose half of its value in less than a year.

As fancy and pretty looking as it is, it is simply not necessary and there will be a way to turn off ray tracing for the majority of hardware that simply cannot handle it, including the best of the best in last generation GPUs.

 

Well looks like he won't be able to enjoy 680M SLI. We're selling his M18xR2 to a friend.

He'll get an opportunity to get whatever laptop he wants now within the budget.

 

Hi Brother Fox. You have time for a call later? Need to catch up.

 

Yeah, Intel screwed up.
XTU to be disabled for points until further notice 2019-06-28

As newer versions of XTU do not produce a score which is on par with older versions, we are forced to take the hard decision to disable points for all XTU submissions. HWBOT can be used as a competitive platform, for fun, or just statistics, and in the current state XTU can not be used for any of those purposes.
We will be working together with Intel to see whether a new version of XTU can solve these issues. Until then, points remain disabled.

For more information, read the forum topic made by leeghoofd.


From the Forum topic... XTU will become pointless

lo all,

I did some testing yesterday to confirm the findings regarding XTU as there are way too many bugged outputs on the Bot. I tested a dozen of versions yesterday with the 9700K on H20 and Cascade on Windows 10

Findings:

XTU performance is very inconsistent. Scoring 2900 one run, a rerun goes up to 3150.

XTU performance output is too depending on the installed versions, as we already knew the 64Bit version 6.5.1.321 is easily outperforming any older versions. Till now no way to seperate them, Intel is working on it, but we loose too much time as 10K subs chime in weekly...

The mix of 32 and 64 OS version requirements doesn't make things any easier

It seems XTU loves Heat iso Cold, not being able to replicate a score done on H20 versus the setup under the cascade. Put the fans on low on the H20 setup and score even higher… sure...

Especially the temperature issue is the last drop for me as headmoderator, Seriously if one overclocks and runs colder one achieves a lower score for the same processor speed. The Efficiency/MHz gets totally lost the colder one runs...

I feel this point withdrawal is a thing that should have been done earlier, Sorry for those that will loose a heap of points but the current ranking doesn't reflect the true spirit of Overclocking.

Fingers crossed that XTU 2.0 will be the next big thing… I've been a fan of XTU for quick stability testing, but the many bugs that slipped in over the years made it as one of the most unstable benchmarks we have implemented at HWBot.

 

Good riddance. It hasn't been a reliable or stable benchmark for a while. It's also less useful as an overclocking tool than it used to be. Too many BIOS settings that it can't change, BIOS settings that do not show, or BIOS settings that it does show are not reflected accurately, and most never stick with reboot. Piece of crap software. Just broken rubbish, like so many other things are now. An unfortunate sign of the times.

HWBOT should start thinking about monitoring 3DMark bloatware suite's results for consistency as well. It's heading on a similar trajectory with inconsistent results. Some tests in the suite more than others, but all are more inconsistent than they used to be.

 

XTU in one or another shape (services - task) is implemented in all sorts of software from many laptop ODM nowadays. The only possibility to overclock (change power settings) your new toy is halfbaked XTU solutions. Maybe Intel work too hard make it work OK in Jokebooks? Hence the Intel tool is so screwed up.

More nasty Junk...
Windows 10 security: Bad bug in our CPU diagnostics app, so patch now, says Intel
Intel fixes high-severity security flaw in its CPU performance-testing software for Windows 10 systems.

 

That could have something to do with it. They may be surrendering to pressure from turdbook ODMs to make things not work intentionally to prevent consumers from overclocking their broken trash in ways that their firmware cancer does not allow. That wouldn't surprise me at all. They are all kissing one another's butts, and Micro$lop's butt. Seems like the PC industry is being run more and more by a bunch of stupid grab-a$$ control freak clowns. (Dollar signs are used there as an indicator of their ulterior motivation, not as a word filter bypass.)

 

Brother Fox I'm thinking of getting an EVGA dark. Will you be available today around 4PM your time? Thanks

 

Sure, 4PM my time would be fine.

 

Looks like ASUS was asleep at the wheel on the BIOS settings, LOL.

Rather sad that 4.3-4.4GHz on CPU and 3600 on RAM is the "sweet spot" for 3900X. I thought it might turn out better than this.

 

true, but still hilarious to see intel jacking up the clocks like crazy just to be able and keep up with AMD's IPC bump haha its like upside down world

Sent from my Xiaomi Mi Max 2 (Oxygen) using Tapatalk

 

AMD: Ryzen 3000-Series CPUs Lack Manual Overclocking Headroom tomshardware.com | July 11, 2019

Robert Hallock, Senior Technical Marketing Manager at AMD, has explained on Reddit (and copied below) that AMD pretty much squeezes all the performance out of every single Ryzen 3000-series processor, leaving little headroom for manual overclocking.

AMD has always focused on maximizing the performance from its processors for the end-user. According to Hallock, that's the primary reason why the chipmaker develops algorithms, such as Precision Boost 2, to automatically extract every megahertz of computing power from a processor. That way "you're not forced" to lean about overclocking to get the extra performance or worry about risking the warranty on your brand new processor.

 

Sounds like an excuse. If true, even sadder. Instead of being impressed, it makes me wonder how slow would it be if it were not already pushed to the edge of its ability to function. Also sad that someone in a "Senior Technical Marketing Manager" role would make a ludicrous comment like being forced to learn about overclocking. People that think this way really scare me, and the people that believe it scare me even more. Smoke and mirrors carefully crafted to distract from the fact that if you buy his brand you can't learn to overclock because the hardware doesn't cooperate? That sort of messed up excuse-making thought process is why the tech world is so full of broken rubbish.

Click-and-run products are not rubbish per se--I actually own some that serve their purpose effectively--but, lame excuses certainly are rubbish. And, hardware that doesn't overclock isn't made for enthusiasts. It's made for ordinary consumers that maybe like to think of themselves as being an enthusiast. Again, doesn't mean the product is bad. What's bad is the shills misrepresenting it and the gullible yuppies that don't know what they don't know.

The people that just come out and say things (and actually mean them) like "I know it doesn't overclock, and that's OK. I want it because it performs well and costs less, and I don't have an interest in overclocking" are the ones I can tip my hat to out of respect. They're honest with themselves, and I'm totally cool with that. And, I am totally onboard with the idea of saving money to buy hardware that does a nice job of playing games and functioning as a powerful workstation without costing an arm and a leg. Just don't pull my leg and tell me silly things about it, or make excuses to the effect that it doesn't overclock well because "we've already fully optimized it so you don't have to" LOL. C'mon, I might have been born at night, but it wasn't last night.

A strong showing of IPC prowess and low cost are nice features that add value. A max clock just a few clicks south of 4.5GHz on core and 3600MHz representing the bleeding edge of capacity on memory are not hideous, but they're also not things to write home about.

Well, can't hate that. One thing we can appreciate about Intel and NVIDIA--which are also the same things we love to hate about them--is they do whatever it takes to win. I'm glad they do. Their ludicrous prices suck. And, so does losing.

Computing is getting more and more like politics. You have to ask yourself hard questions like, "in a world where every available option sucks, what are you willing to settle for?" and "do you really want that bad enough to pay such a high price for it?" and "are you willing to turn a blind eye on A in order to get B, and what does that actually mean over the long haul?"

 

That was a good video, cheers. Ha, yeah, unbelievable how ASUS messed up the stock voltage settings for about 11 of the variables, but like Jay said - they got one of them right at least! I really don't know how they could release something like that, I mean I'd probably be able to choose better stock voltages for them if I was working there, with just a bit of googling effort to inform me! They must have had unpaid blindfolded interns set it up!

Disappointing for overclocking, yep, for sure.

Ha, that's right, AMD had that crazy Bulldozer CPU that sucked what was it, 200W of power at stock and ran at 5Ghz or something and it still performed poorly vs Intel. Did it have 9950 or something in it's name, can't remember? Actually, thinking about, Bulldozer was a hell of an apt name for that architecture - slow as hell and sucked power like nobodies business! (I don't know if Americans will get that joke, I'm thinking they call bulldozers something else, "earth movers" or something else, not sure?)

Well, this a good thing for most consumers, they're getting the max performance that AMD can possibly provide for that piece of silicon, so almost nothing is being left on the table - maximum performance and value to the consumer. It's the relatively small overclocking crowd that are disappointed that they can't squeeze out much more performance from it - and that's something I've enjoyed doing with my own hardware, so for me I'd rather have ability to buy some PC components and then enjoy overclocking them to find out where the max headroom is, I like to extract my own value from it rather than the manufacturer doing it all for me! Yeah, that's part of the excitement of building a new build, the journey to tweak it to it's maximum performance. I'm not as hardcore (by a long shot) as some others though when it comes to overclocking as a sport (including benchmarking), but I do enjoy that aspect. Having said that, if AMD's "unoverclockable" CPUs were to offer better gaming performance and at better value than what Intel could offer, then I'd still choose to buy an AMD CPU over an overclockable Intel CPU - but as we know Intel CPUs are still king of the hill for gaming performance, so we kind of have the best of both worlds with Intel right now, just have to close your eyes to the evils of Spectre and wallet damage!

 

LOL, yes they are called bulldozers here as well. The more modern term has been shortened to dozer. Earth mover is a broader category that includes numerous types of machines. To name a few... dozers, excavators, loaders, backhoes, track hoes, scrapers, graders, skid steers, directional drills, dredges, articulated dump trucks... all examples of earth moving equipment.

The name bulldozer was totally appropriate in terms of being slow-moving and not being energy efficient for those AMD CPUs. But, the name is also way off base in terms of performance and utility. Bulldozers are expensive to buy, operate and maintain. But, they are also extremely powerful tools that work hard, produce good results, and potentially make a butt-load of money for a successful excavation or construction business owner. Those things were definitely not an accurate analogy for those horrible AMD processors. They were basically garbage. When their prices hit the bottom they were good options for someone that had a very limited budget and could manage to live with lousy performance.

 

Hey, I think you got shares or in the earth moving business or something!

 

Hey, you guys are gonna love this, if you don't already know about it, but I think it's new:
https://www.nvidia.com/en-gb/geforc...er-and-performance-benchmarking-app-download/

 

I downloaded it earlier this week, but have not tested it yet. It seems like a portable app as well. It does not have a normal Windows installer. There is no documentation for it that I could find, but it seems pretty basic in terms of use. You select a destination folder for the output files and that is about all there is to it. The "readme" files in the archive are empty... nothing to read.

 

I've just done some testing on it, and it doesn't seem to be giving reliable results for my GPU. For a start it's not reading my GPU Power right, but that's ok, that's because I'm using a Gigabyte GTX 1070 vBIOS on a Zotac GTX 1070 card, and it reads power about 50W lower using the Gigabyte vBIOS. But, more importantly in relation to the unreliable results of NVidia FrameView, it's displaying average framerate accurately, but 90th/95th/and 99th framerate percentiles are well off and make no sense. I'll explain. In BF1 I cap my framerate to 141 fps at the moment using the inbuilt game engine config commands of BF1, and it's pretty much always stable at 141 fps because I've lowered the graphics details, but anyway it's showing 90th as 114fps, 95th as 109fps, and 99th as 98fps. Now, it's also showing the average framerate to be 141 fps, which is impossible if those percentile framerates are correct, because that would have dragged down the average framerate because I've set 141 as the maximum fps. I tested using RTSS to limit the fps to 141 fps rather than the BF1 game engine setting, and it's the same strange results. I know it's stable at 141fps in the game because the on screen display is showing it as 141 without fluctuation. However, in the logs it does seem to indicate that max framerates are in the region of 19157fps, which is gobbledegook because this is all taken from a short section of the game where I'm in a server on my own running around not doing anything intensive like shooting whilst looking at the displayed framerate to make sure it's not deviating from said & expected 141fps. Although that might explain why it can think the average framerate is still 141fps when the different percentile framerates are all lower like I listed before (e.g. 95th Percentile at 109fps). I did wonder if this application is measuring framerate so finely that it's measuring some kind of 'microstutter', but I don't see how that can happen with those massively high max framerates, when I've got a G-sync screen and telling it to limit the fps to 141 fps. I think the program is bugged at the moment unless me using a different vBIOS has somehow confused the hell out of it!

If I enable the on-screen overlay for NVdia FrameView, then it will also show in real time that the 90th, 95th, and 99th Percentile framerates are skewed lower than 141fps, just like I described regarding the logs in the previous paragraph. This is all whilst displaying the same average framerate of 141 fps. Must be bugged for me.

By the way, the performance cost of the program during the monitoring is 0.5-1% lowered CPU performance (for my 6700K @4.65Ghz), and zero degredation in GPU performance - as measured by Firestrike results.

EDIT: reverting to my stock vBIOS for my GPU, and will retest. Same strange results on stock vBIOS, not related to that then.

EDIT#2: found a guide for this software, not read it all yet:
https://www.nvidia.com/content/dam/...ogies/frameview/FrameView_Beta_User_Guide.pdf

EDIT#3: Did some more testing on different settings in BF1 and also other games to see if there was this weird fluctuation in framerates during framerate lock in other games too. It turns out that some games have more fluctuation than others for the Percentiles: BF1 has the most, Rise of the Tomb Raider/Far Cry 5/Dirt Rally don't have much fluctuation at all. Remember, this is all with a locked and stable framerate according to 'normal' framerate monitoring tools. I'm not sure what to make of this, perhaps this software is measuring so fine-grained that it's picking up all the rapid frame time variances that would otherwise be covered up by 'the rolling average' framerate that is shown in most normal frame rate display tools. If that's the case then perhaps BF1 is more prone to microstutter than say Rise of the Tomb Raider or Far Cry5. I did some more testing in BF1 to see if removal of a framerate cap reduced the framerate variance - even when just stood still staring at a wall at a stable average framerate of say 160fps (with G-sync off) there was still these big variances in all the Percentiles. The BF1 results though still don't make sense to me on a mathematical & logic level like I described before in this post (so I won't type that bit out again). We could do with some tech sites to do an in depth investigation of this tool to see if it's just bugged or reporting reality.

EDIT#4 (next day): I think I've been able to put some of these 'low' Percentile fps values in perspective by looking at some BF1 FCAT frametime analysis over on Guru3d. If you have a look here ( https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/battlefield-1-pc-graphics-benchmark-review,8.html), you can see that the frametime analysis looks pretty smooth right, which is good, and it made me realise that I've got my previous analysis out of perspective. At high framerates large differences between fps have only a small affect on the frametime. So to illustrate with my previous measurements that my average framerate was 141 fps which is 1/141*1000 = 7ms frametime; while my 99th percentile measurement was 98fps, which is 10ms frametime - that's only a fluctuation of 3ms at an absolute maximum, which is gonna be imperceptible in game play and will feel totally smooth still (which it does). You can see that this is a similar amount of fluctuation that guru3d saw from their frametime graph at that link above, which they describe as no issue and perfectly smooth - so even though a framerate drop of 40fps for a 99th Percentile sounds pretty catastrophic, it's not when you're at high framerates, as the maths there proves (as well as Guru3d's graph). Yeah, Rob, but what about those massively high framerates reported in the log which were well above the 141fps cap of the game: well I don't think those frames are actually displayed - if you notice in the NVidia FrameView overlay there's a measured variable called "Drop", and this is the dropped frames, and there's always a figure that's listed there regardless of which game you're running - I think the game engine/graphics driver drops those frames that are calculated at ridiculously high framerates as no monitor would be able to display it, so that might go some way to explain how BF1 (and some other games) have a frame rate cap and be running stably at that framerate cap while still showing what seems on the surface significantly large drops in fps in the 90th/95th/99th Percentile values.

This is a very long post added to/edited over a couple of days, so I apologise for the length, it was quite mentally challenging to put these theories and observations into words, so I'm thinking it's at least equally challenging to read & comprehend, but I felt I should show what I think I've learned!

 

It was good talking to you. After I sent you those files on Google drive, I just sent more today so check your email.