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    Hardware support: Zen 2 Die Shot Analysis, Part V

    June 22, 2020

    Hardware support: Zen 2 Die Shot Analysis, Part V

    Zen 2 Die Shot Analysis, Part V

    Posted: 21 Jun 2020 09:30 PM PDT

    We bought Walmart’s $140 laptop so you wouldn’t have to

    Posted: 21 Jun 2020 11:34 AM PDT

    Reviewing eight x86 single-board computers - Explaining Computers

    Posted: 21 Jun 2020 08:02 AM PDT

    (GN)HW News - RTX 3000 Rumored Launch, New 1260mm Radiator, AMD Ryzen XT, & ...

    Posted: 21 Jun 2020 07:23 PM PDT

    Reviewers need to start doing more than just VRM testing on motherboards

    Posted: 22 Jun 2020 01:08 AM PDT

    Recently pretty much all motherboard reviews on the most popular review channels have been limited to VRM testing. I agree that VRM testing is extremely important, and is part of a good review, but it's not the only important thing. It's quite impossible to find quality reviews on motherboards these days that would not only be focused on the VRM.

    To stir up some discussion, here is my list of things I feel that should be tested, and that end-consumers might actually be confused about/have the wrong information, and that reviewers should clarify.

    What do you wish that motherboard reviews would cover?

    1. x16 PCI-E slots on consumer platforms (Z390, Z490, B550, X570 etc.) It seems to be very trendy at the moment for motherboard manufacturers to highlight 2x or 3x PCI-E x16 slots. Sadly, these slots pretty much never are x16. That's understandable from a technical point of view, since neither Intel nor AMD consumer processors provide enough PCI-E lanes to do this. However, with 2x PCI-E x16 slots you'd expect an 8x/8x distribution when both are in use. Now however it seems that pretty much every mother board manufacturer that is offering 2x PCI-E X16, actually offer PCI-E x16 from the CPU to one slot, and x4 (!) from the Chipset(!) to the other "x16 slot", which actually is a x4 slot. On the 3x PCI-E x16 slots you tend to get x8/x8/x4, but even that is very far away from the marketing of 3x PCI-E x16 slots. Not everyone only has a GPU to feed, for example, professional video cards for 4K (12G-SDI) do require their x8 bandwidth to function. This is really something that the motherboard makers should be called out on, or the reviewers should at least explain to their viewers. I see way too many reviews saying: "This bord is kind of "meh", I don't see the point". Well, the point is, it's one of the only B550 (for example) boards that support x8/x8. There are plenty of extremely expensive top-of-the-lineup motherboards out there that support x8/x8/x4 or x16/x0/x4, as well as some rather new high-end B550 boards that do not even support x8/x8, only x16/x4. Once again, due to technical limitations from the CPU, this is clear, but I bet that 90% of people do not actually understand that 3x PCI-E x16 is not possible to have, and that the implementation that motherboard makes has used is actually quite important.

    2. WIFI performance

    WIFI is becoming more and more common. I understand that reviewers and most likely everyone who needs high-end connectivity will use cable, but it doesn't change the popularity of WIFI. Please at least do a rudimentary check that performance is up to par. You might say that of course it should be, to which I'll reply, so should VRM as well (and we all know how that goes..) There always exists the possibility that a manufacturer has messed up their implementation and/or antennas. Please test this in a crowded environment with a lot of access points competing for airtime, as that's just more realistic for most of the people in the world who live in apartment buildings.

    This naturally goes for LAN as well, only a few months ago Intel released the information that the i225 2.5Gb LAN controller will not function properly when used together with network devices from several large manufacturers, and will have packet loss, and that it will only get fixed in a new stepping(!), that is to say, no software fix, and that the sad work-around for anyone affected for it at the moment is to manually set it to 1Gb/s instead. Shouldn't this at least be mentioned if a motherboard is using this controller?

    1. Please check at least quickly SATA and NVME performance. There are plenty of posts out there saying that these do not always perform the same.

    2. Dual bios functionality. Please test this at least a little bit. The amount of people hitting their head on the desk over badly designed dual bioses that automatically keep changing to a random bios (when there is no physical switch) is quite large. The situation is even worse because of this feature normally only existing on the high-end high-cost boards where you'd expect things to work well.

    3. Marketing. Take a look at the motherboard vendors website for claims that might confuse the consumer. How have they connected their TB controller for example? Will it actually reach 40gigabit/s per direction (on data) as they say on the website?

    4. Give at least 1 chart of the maximum validated memory speeds per board. Yes, this is hard to test, but at least it'll give an idea of how much work and effort the manufacturer has put into their memory traces. If you have the time, give another chart on how much that speed falls when using 4 DIMMs.

    I understand that reviewers time is limited, but I really think that the pendulum has swung way too much in the "I only test VRMs" direction.

    submitted by /u/RealTotoro
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    [DE] Ampere: Nvidia offers A100 as a PCIe card for servers

    Posted: 22 Jun 2020 12:08 AM PDT

    For everyone hyping the impact of AMD bringing "more competition" on GPU pricing this year...

    Posted: 21 Jun 2020 08:05 AM PDT

    AMD was already highly competitive with Nvidia in the $300-500 segment this last hardware generation. Nvidia apparently felt no real pressure to lower prices. The RTX2060 had identical perf/$ to the GTX1060, and how did they respond to AMD bringing the heat in the form of the RX5700 at $350 (10% better than RTX2060 at the same price) or RX5700-XT (27% better than the RTX2060 at $400)? With the RTX2060S, which once again had precisely identical perf/$ to the RTX2060 (15% better at 15% more cost ($400!)).

    It could be argued that the pricing of the RTX2070S at $500 - the same as the OG RTX2070 - was made possible by pressure from the RX5700-XT. But if so, they still released it $100 more expensive than the "competition" with identical performance. Anyway, the RTX2080S also brought an improvement in perf/$, but it's hard to argue the pricing here was a function of AMD competition at $700.

    Here's the deal. AMD simply existing in the same performance tier as Nvidia doesn't necessarily entail a price war. It depends on AMD's marketing, their trust and mindshare among buyers, and the efficiency of their manufacturing process to ever more aggressively undercut Nvidia.

    There are several good reasons to think pricing will come down, I reckon it will, but the generic AMD, "big Navi=competition=cheap GPUs" hype engine is severely overblown IMO.

    submitted by /u/omgpop
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    Why Apple Ditched PowerPC, and What it Says About Apple Ditching Intel

    Posted: 21 Jun 2020 11:35 PM PDT

    [LTT] Fixing Apple's Engineering in an hour

    Posted: 21 Jun 2020 12:47 PM PDT

    First Arm-Based Macs to Be 13-Inch MacBook Pro and Redesigned iMac, Launches Coming in Late 2020 or Early 2021

    Posted: 21 Jun 2020 11:36 AM PDT

    Why don't spinning hard drives have more than 256mb cache? Isn't ram cheap?

    Posted: 21 Jun 2020 09:48 PM PDT

    Why do spinning hard drives, even big 8tb drives, have seemingly small caches? Can an operating system layer cache outperform the hardware cache in the hard drive?

    submitted by /u/kwirky88
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    [Hardware Canucks] Who Is This AMD Notebook For? MSI Bravo 15 Review

    Posted: 21 Jun 2020 04:30 PM PDT

    (AHOC/Buildzoid) mobo PCB Breakdown: Gigabyte Z490 Aorus Xtreme

    Posted: 21 Jun 2020 01:51 PM PDT

    When will 4k

    Posted: 21 Jun 2020 10:21 PM PDT

    When will 4k monitors reach higher Hz ratings at an affordable price.

    submitted by /u/njs1787
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    Why did gigabyte not include a ps/2 port on b550 aorus boards?

    Posted: 21 Jun 2020 09:26 PM PDT

    Most other brands include the ps/2 port on their boards. Heck even gigabulyte puts rhe ps/2 port on their lower end b550 boards, but no b550 aorus board has a dang ps/2 port. If you're paying more, why take away features? Ik its ancient technology but let me use my ps/2 keyboard dammit!!!

    submitted by /u/ogwb
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