Sir Beregond

I mean I'd be fine if we moved past ATX as the standard, but whatever replacing it has to be a standard too.

I wonder if its less about planned obsolescence and more that they just got addicted to pandemic level margins and as such are building everything in the stack to maintain that. The fact cards aren't selling doesn't seem to matter to them now though because of the AI cash cow, so no reason to make things sane again in their mind on the consumer side of graphics. If it doesn't sell, its more silicon allocation that can go towards higher priced AI products, if it does sell, its at a high margin. Either way consumers lose in my opinion. Well said. The 20-series also just didn't present a good enough upgrade to performance over the 10-series outside of the 2080 Ti too, so most of the 10-series and older users were waiting for 30-series. I'm glad you touched upon the VRAM scam of the 3080. This was clue #1 that the new "flagship" of the 30-series was in fact the "90 cards" which were in fact rebrands of what used to be "80 Ti" with a price hike. But they tried to market as "Titan like" to justify it. The 10GB 3080 told you all you needed to know about the truth of that lol. Didn't know "flagships" were supposed to regress in VRAM vs the prior 2 generations.

You hit the nail on the head. Regarding memory, I do think the concept of a 192-bit bus on products that are north of $500 is something awful though.

2nd matching 650 Ti Boost came in today. Hopefully these Twin Frozr III cards will work out well.

I offered to use my 5900X, but it appears it needs to be literal 4-core chips.

Aside from the 4090, which itself is cut down significantly from the full die vs say the 3090 and full GA102, the rest of the stack definitely got shafted on memory bandwidth, and added L2 I don't think really compensated like they thought it would. 4080 being 256-bit lines up with most "80" branded cards of the last decade, but the $1200 asking price sure doesn't. Everything else though? Yeah...its not good.

Yeah, this led me to think that they should have thought about a different mechanism for securing the connector against side to side tension that can just enough make it come out and have problems.

Great question. I don't really play FPS games, but that's a good idea to test. I don't actually know how to test input latency, let me look into that and perhaps I can update the review.

Yeah, needs to become a standard for that to be viable in the industry as a solution. I agree it is certainly and interesting one.

Thanks for reading! Yeah, it's expensive for sure. I've never spent north of $100 for a mouse. My current mouse was $60 I think and ergonomically it fits me much better. I also don't need to use iCUE with it as the side buttons have default values in hardware mode that are exactly what I want them to be. This was a totally new feature for me. I didn't know Logitech was doing that too. Good to see. Would love for that to be a feature in more mainstream mice. Yeah this is a weird one. I didn't outright dislike using the mouse. I thought it overall worked well, but yeah that side cluster of buttons needs work, as does the ergonomics. Large hands like mine that like palm gripping? Not ideal, which seemed weird considering the size of the mouse. Smaller hands, probably have to readjust a lot to reach some of the buttons. I think those with larger hands that prefer claw gripping will probably enjoy the mouse. Thanks for reading!

Thanks man. Yeah the grips killed the mouse for me too and the asking price is a lot.

Read the full review HERE

B stock for one of these for an old EVGA card still in my closet. The shipping cost more than the block which was $11. Figured might come in handy for HWBot in the future.

If you are going to venture into doing new parts builds, then take a look at your competition. Once you are getting north of $1000 I'd be expecting Zen 4, 12th gen/13th gen platforms. If still using Zen 3, then has to be a 5800X3D at that point. I know not everyone has these around, but I look at the PowerSpec lineup at Micro Center locally for a good idea. Honestly it's why I thought the Zen 2 system at $1200 was kind of a ripoff, because $1200 can get me an i5-12600kf and a 3070 Ti based PowerSpec. Obviously can look at other SI's for price point configs as well.

Good game. I also use parking lot mods.

That's just luck of the draw on RAM OC/FCLK. My 5900X can't do crap over 3733 either. But yes, you'd buy this for a plug and play gaming PC. I wouldn't buy this if you want to OC.

Pretty good choice for gamers if still on older AM4 and platform supports Zen 3/Zen 3 X3D. microcenter.com WWW.MICROCENTER.COM For those not near a Micro Center, also seen for $299.99 at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/AMD-5800X3D-16-Thread-Processor-Technology/dp/B09VCJ2SHD

Thank you! My first EVGA board, and is going to be the foundation of my future test bench. I've been pretty happy with my ASUS boards over the years, but I totally get it. About the only thing I saw on the Apex that looked interesting was that DIMM.2 slot. Wish my X570 Dark Hero has that as one of my only complaints is a mere two m.2 slots on it. Why I may need to look at that Sabrent adapter card you recently reviewed.

Oh man, rip. I acquired a Z790 Dark a couple weeks back, but I'm doing quite the mismatch as well with a 13100 . I was saving the big bucks for the 14900k.

Yep, been my go to since my 128GB M4. Crucial SSD's are always my default choice for other people I occasionally upgrade storage for or whatever as well. Agree, top notch review as always with excellent formatting for pictures, tables, etc.

Coulda been dinner.

Its technically 8/8 CCX/CCD now. 4/8 would be Zen 2. But I totally agree, I'd love to see a 12 core CCX/CCD. I get that, but isn't the default behavior to do core parking on the non-X3D CCD in gaming workloads? That essentially turns the 7900X3D into a 7600X with 3D v-cache, and the 7950X3D into a 7800X3D. I don't know maybe its just me but instead with fiddling around with this weird hybrid CCD approach that has janky scheduling solutions that is sure definitely appealing to a niche market, the option was simple. 7950X for those needing more professional workloads, and a 7950X3D with both CCD's having 3d v-cache for those that want it on higher core parts. I don't think the way they did it makes any sense at all. But that's just me.

^ Yeah I don't know what AMD was thinking with that split CCD design choice for x3D. The 7900X3D especially makes no sense as its essentially worse than a 7800X3D for gaming. And I am not sure the 3D cache is helping much in workloads you want 12 or 16 cores for. I don't know, was a very strange design choice imo. The market that could potentially benefit from this split design seems pretty niche to me.

Yeah I mean if upgradability of CPUs with the same platform is a big deal to you, then it makes sense. LGA1700 is at its end with the Raptor Lake Refresh. AM5 will probably get Zen 5. They said 2025, so don't necessarily see it lasting past Zen 5 unless they extend it like AM4 was. To me it feels like AM4 was sort of an anomaly. But it does mean you have a longer period to upgrade on AM5 if getting in now. So I totally get it.