Watch the video via our VIMEO Channel (Below) or over on YouTube at 2160p HERE

If you're in the market for a new white graphics card, you likely have your eye on a number of Gigabyte's Aero models, and the RTX 4070 Ti Super Aero OC in for review today is certainly a looker. You do pay for the privilege, as we've seen it online anywhere from £850 to £920, but it offers a number of attractive features on top of its gaming performance. We test thermals, acoustics, overclocking and more to find out just how good this card is…

First, a quick spec recap. Unlike the RTX 4070 Ti and RTX 4070 Super which are based on AD104 silicon, the new 4070 Ti Super uses a cut-down AD103 die, measuring 379mm². The fundamental building blocks are still the same of course, with the RTX 4070 Ti Super offering a total of 66 Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs), each housing 256 CUDA Cores, for a total of 8448. We also find 66 RT cores, 264 Tensor cores, 264 Texture Units, and 96 ROPs.

TSMC's N4 node has Nvidia cranking up the clock speed significantly this generation, with the RTX 4070 Ti Super sporting the same 2610MHz rated boost clock as the 4070 Ti. Gigabyte has increased this to 2655MHz with the Aero OC, but we would expect GPU Boost to push things further still.

The memory configuration is arguably the biggest upgrade over the other xx70 series SKUs. Moving to AD103 means the 4070 Ti Super comes equipped with a 256-bit memory interface, paired with 16GB GDDR6X running at 21Gbps, putting total memory bandwidth at 672 GB/s. L2 cache remains the same as the RTX 4070 Ti, with 49152KB.

Considering the increased core-count, it's interesting that power draw remains the same as the RTX 4070 Ti, with the new Super model still boasting a 285W TGP, and Gigabyte has not increased this out of the box.

Be sure to check out our sponsors store EKWB here

Watch the video via our VIMEO Channel (Below) or over on YouTube at 2160p HERE

No doubt about it, the Nvidia RTX 4080 Super is the least exciting of the three 40-series Super refreshes. Even just on paper, the RTX 4070 Super delivered a 22% boost in CUDA cores over the vanilla 4070, while the RTX 4070 Ti Super increased VRAM and memory bandwidth by a third over the 4070 Ti. The RTX 4080 Super however, only ups the CUDA core count by 5%, alongside a 3% increase to memory speeds.

We'll analyse what that means for gaming performance over a wide range of titles, but clearly the 4080 Super is all about the price cut. Back in November 2022, the original 4080 hit the market at £1269 in the UK, or $1199 in the States, and it was almost universally agreed to deliver poor value for money at that price point. Fast-forward just over a year and the 4080 Super has come down in price by over £300, to the MSRP of £959, or $999 USD. Let's find out what that means for those with about a grand to spend on a new GPU…

If you want to read this review as a single page, click HERE.

First, a quick spec recap. Unlike the RTX 4080 and RTX 4070 Ti which use cut-down versions of the AD103 GPU, the new 4080 Super is a full implementation of AD103 silicon, with the die measuring in at 379mm². This means the RTX 4080 Super offers a total of 80 Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs), each housing 256 CUDA Cores, for a total of 10240. We also find 80 RT cores, 320 Tensor cores, 320 Texture Units, and 12 ROPs.

TSMC's N4 node has Nvidia cranking up the clock speed significantly this generation, with the RTX 4080 Super sporting a 2550MHz rated boost. That's 45MHz faster than the rated clock speed of the RTX 4080, but we would expect GPU Boost to push things further still.

The memory configuration is almost identical to the RTX 4080, too. The 4080 Super comes equipped with a 256-bit memory interface, paired with 16GB GDDR6X running at 23Gbps, putting total memory bandwidth at 736 GB/s. L2 cache remains unchanged at 65536KB.

Considering the slightly increased core-count, it's interesting that power draw remains the same as the RTX 4080, with the new Super model still boasting a 320W TGP. This is something we focus on closely in this review, using our enhanced GPU power testing methodology, so read on for our most detailed power and efficiency testing yet.

Be sure to check out our sponsors store EKWB here

Watch the video via our VIMEO Channel (Below) or over on YouTube at 2160p HERE

We've only just taken a look at Palit's RTX 4070 Super JetStream OC, and the RTX 4080 Super JetStream OC carries on in the same vein, eschewing extra bells and whistles like RGB lighting and Dual-BIOS in favour of a simpler approach. That helps it hit the £959 MSRP, but let's put it through its paces and find out just how it performs.

First, a quick spec recap. Unlike the RTX 4080 and RTX 4070 Ti which use cut-down versions of the AD103 GPU, the new 4080 Super is a full implementation of AD103 silicon, with the die measuring in at 379mm². This means the RTX 4080 Super offers a total of 80 Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs), each housing 256 CUDA Cores, for a total of 10240. We also find 80 RT cores, 320 Tensor cores, 320 Texture Units, and 12 ROPs.

TSMC's N4 node has Nvidia cranking up the clock speed significantly this generation, with the RTX 4080 Super sporting a 2550MHz rated boost. That's 45MHz faster than the rated clock speed of the RTX 4080, though Palit has added an extra 25MHz on top.

The memory configuration is almost identical to the RTX 4080, too. The 4080 Super comes equipped with a 256-bit memory interface, paired with 16GB GDDR6X running at 23Gbps, putting total memory bandwidth at 736 GB/s. L2 cache remains unchanged at 65536KB.

Considering the slightly increased core-count, it's interesting that power draw remains the same as the RTX 4080, with the new Super model still boasting a 320W TGP. This is something we focus on closely in this review, using our enhanced GPU power testing methodology, so read on for our most detailed power and efficiency testing yet.

Be sure to check out our sponsors store EKWB here

Watch the video via our VIMEO Channel (Below) or over on YouTube at 2160p HERE

It was just over a year ago that we reviewed Gigabyte's RTX 4090 and 4080 Gaming OC models and the RTX 4080 Super Gaming OC picks up where those two cards left off. It features a gargantuan cooler, with the addition of some RGB lighting, a metal backplate and a modest 45MHz factory overclock. Landing with an MSRP of £1059.99, Gigabyte is charging a 10.5% premium over the £959 baseline, so let's find out if it's worth buying.

First, a quick spec recap. Unlike the RTX 4080 and RTX 4070 Ti which use cut-down versions of the AD103 GPU, the new 4080 Super is a full implementation of AD103 silicon, with the die measuring in at 379mm². This means the RTX 4080 Super offers a total of 80 Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs), each housing 256 CUDA Cores, for a total of 10240. We also find 80 RT cores, 320 Tensor cores, 320 Texture Units, and 12 ROPs.

TSMC's N4 node has Nvidia cranking up the clock speed significantly this generation, with the RTX 4080 Super sporting a 2550MHz rated boost. That's 45MHz faster than the rated clock speed of the RTX 4080, but Gigabyte has pushed things even further, with the Gaming OC sporting a 2595MHz boost clock.

The memory configuration is almost identical to the RTX 4080, too. The 4080 Super comes equipped with a 256-bit memory interface, paired with 16GB GDDR6X running at 23Gbps, putting total memory bandwidth at 736 GB/s. L2 cache remains unchanged at 65536KB.

Considering the slightly increased core-count, it's interesting that power draw remains the same as the RTX 4080, with the new Super model still boasting a 320W TGP. This is something we focus on closely in this review, using our enhanced GPU power testing methodology, so read on for our most detailed power and efficiency testing yet.

Be sure to check out our sponsors store EKWB here

For a basic timeline – and this is something we covered in our day 1 review of the RTX 4070 Ti Super – we were sent the MSI RTX 4070 Ti Super Ventus 3X directly by Nvidia as there is no Founders Edition model. The card arrived with me on Tuesday 16th January, and I started testing on Friday 19th. On Sunday 21st at 20:10 GMT, less than two days before launch, we received the first email from Nvidia which said performance of the Ventus 3X was ‘approximately 5% below expected figures on other RTX 4070 Ti SUPER SKUs'. A BIOS update was also attached to the email, version 95.03.45.40.DC, which I did some initial testing on as part of my review, but didn't find it made any real difference. Nvidia also suggested this newer BIOS was still 3% below expectations, so it wasn't even the final fix.

Instead, that came later, on the day of the launch itself, January 23rd 11:49 GMT, barely two hours before our review was due to go live. Of course, this left us with no time to even flash the BIOS before the launch, let alone test it, but we have now managed to completely re-test the Ventus 3X using this latest BIOS version, labelled 95.03.45.40.F0.

For absolute clarity then, the numbers presented below are comparing the MSI RTX 4070 Ti Super Ventus 3X's original BIOS, version 95.03.45.40.58, with the latest version 95.03.45.40.F0 (which is the one MSI has made publicly available HERE). Despite the updates, it's interesting that the card's rated clock speed was never tweaked from 2610MHz boost, nor was the power limit adjusted from its default value of 285W. Neither Nvidia or MSI have specified what the issue was, or what has changed, so there's only one thing left to do…

Performance benchmarks

Instead of posting all of the individual benchmark results across 1080p, 1440p and 4K resolutions -which is both time consuming and unnecessary – we've broken our testing down into two charts for each resolution. The first shows relative performance of the new BIOS (95.03.45.40.F0) compared to the original one (95.03.45.40.58) as a percentage. Then we show the 12-game average results, with comparisons to every other GPU we tested in our day 1 review, so we can see how the picture has changed, if at all. We're only looking at rasterisation performance here to keep things simple, but I did test our usual suite of eight ray-traced games and the performance scaling is the exact same.

1080p

1440p

2160p/4K

As we can see from the breakdowns, the latest BIOS makes very little difference to frame rates, even compared to the original BIOS that the card shipped with. Performance differences of more than 2% were very uncommon in my testing, with everything else being of basically no statistical importance at all, given almost all of the variation is within margin for error. That's because we saw an average improvement of just 1% across all 12 games, at every resolution tested.

Power draw

I also logged power draw of the graphics card-only, using Nvidia's PCAT tool, over every single game we tested – this is standard practice in our reviews as it allows us an excellent insight into power draw and efficiency on a per-game, per-resolution basis (you can read more about how and why we do this HERE.)

1080p

1440p

2160p/4K

We did measure a very slight increase in power draw in almost every game, and on average across all three resolutions tested, power draw went up by 3%. Again, this is of no great statistical importance, but it was observable in nearly every game tested.

Clock speed

The final metric to look at is operating clock speed. This is data gathered from each game, across all three resolutions tested, given we use Nvidia's FrameView benchmarking tool which presents an average GPU frequency metric for each benchmark run.

Once more, we are looking at next to no difference with the latest BIOS. The average clock speed we observed between the two BIOS versions is almost identical at 1080p and still less than a 2% difference at 4K.

Closing thoughts

Having been unable to re-test the MSI RTX 4070 Ti Super Ventus 3X before our day 1 review went live, it was always my plan to test the card again using the latest BIOS ahead of the upcoming RTX 4080 Super reviews, which will be out next week. While doing so, I figured I may as well present the data in a quick-and-dirty fashion, so we can see exactly what difference was made by updating to the latest BIOS version.

As it turns out, the answer is next to none. I saw, at best, a 3% gain using the latest BIOS for the Ventus 3X, and only on three occasions. Even if the gain was 3% on average it wouldn't be much, but almost every game tested showed an even smaller margin of difference, and we averaged just a 1% gain for the new BIOS, over all 12 games tested, at all three resolutions tested.

Now it is possible that other Ventus 3X models will see a bigger gain from updating to the latest BIOS. After all, I've only tested a single card, and I did note that the relative gains for the RTX 4070 Ti Super over the RTX 4070 Ti that I found in my day 1 review were slightly higher than what most other reviewers saw from the Ventus 3X. Indeed, the figures I got from the original BIOS are fairly closely matched to what Steve from Hardware Unboxed has now seen from his own revisit, so it's possible I had a ‘better' Ventus 3X sample that wasn't as badly affected by whatever issue MSI identified.

At the end of the day, it's nice to know that the RTX 4070 Ti Super wasn't mis-represented in my original review as the performance differences with the latest BIOS are completely negligible. Regardless, we have now updated all of our GPU data using this latest BIOS, so we can press ahead with our testing for the RTX 4080 Super.

Discuss on our Facebook page HERE.

KitGuru says: The data may not be particularly exciting, but this was necessary testing – do let us know if you have any questions or comments.

Watch the video via our VIMEO Channel (Below) or over on YouTube at 2160p HERE

If you missed the initial announcement at CES 2024, the AMD RX 7600 XT is very easy to summarise – it's basically an RX 7600 but with slightly higher clocks and double the VRAM. That means there's no change to the underlying silicon, you get the exact same number of cores, ROPS and so on. As a result, any differences in performance compared to the RX 7600 non-XT are purely as a result of the increased clock speeds and memory.

Still, in a landscape where 8GB GPU launches had a pretty tough ride last year, could the move to double the framebuffer be a welcome one? We put the Sapphire RX 7600 XT Pulse to the test in twelve games, plus another eight with ray tracing, to find out…

If you want to read this review as a single page, click HERE.

First, let's take a quick look at the specs. Just like the RX 7600, the 7600 XT uses the monolithic Navi 33 die, fabbed on makes TSMC's 6nm node, with a 204 mm² die size. It's the exact same configuration, too. Navi 33 packs in 32 Compute Units, each of which houses 64 Stream Processors, for a total of 2048 shaders. There's also 32 Ray Accelerators – one per CU – and 64 ROPs.

Clock speed is the first real change compared to the RX 7600, as the 7600 XT sees a roughly 10% higher game clock, rated at 2470 MHz, while there's a boost clock of 2755 MHz. The Sapphire Pulse model I am reviewing today has pushed this slightly higher too, with a rated 2810 MHz boost clock.

Meanwhile, the memory sub-system is almost identical to the previous generation RX 6600. We still find a 128-bit interface, with memory that clocks in at 18Gbps, resulting in memory bandwidth of 288 GB/s, though AMD claims an ‘effective' bandwidth of 476.9 GB/s due to the 32MB of 2nd Gen Infinity cache. The key change is of course that the amount of VRAM has now doubled, with the RX 7600 XT outfitted with 16GB.

As with Navi 23, Navi 33 also features a cut-down PCIe interface, offering a Gen4 x8 connection.

Power draw for the RX 7600 XT is the final change over the RX 7600, as it is now rated at 190W Total Board Power (TBP), an increase from the 165W figure of the RX 7600. We are using our updated GPU power testing methodology in this review, so read on for our most detailed power and efficiency testing yet.

While it's true that the Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti Super is launching at the same $799 MSRP as the original RTX 4070 Ti, in the UK the situation is even better. The 4070 Ti launched at £799 on these shores, but due to changing exchange rates, the 4070 Ti Super lands at £769, so it should be both faster and cheaper than the GPU it replaces.

It's also worth making clear that, as with the 4070 Ti launch, there is no Founders Edition model for the 4070 Ti Super. Instead, we were sent the MSI Ventus 3X model, which is designed to be an MSRP card according to Nvidia. Let's find out what it has to offer…

If you want to read this review as a single page, click HERE.

First, a quick spec recap. Unlike the RTX 4070 Ti and RTX 4070 Super which are based on AD104 silicon, the new 4070 Ti Super uses a cut-down AD103 die, measuring 379mm². The fundamental building blocks are still the same of course, with the RTX 4070 Ti Super offering a total of 66 Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs), each housing 256 CUDA Cores, for a total of 8448. We also find 66 RT cores, 264 Tensor cores, 264 Texture Units, and 96 ROPs.

TSMC's N4 node has Nvidia cranking up the clock speed significantly this generation, with the RTX 4070 Ti Super sporting the same 2610MHz rated boost clock as the 4070 Ti. That's 95MHz faster than the rated clock speed of the RTX 4080, but we would expect GPU Boost to push things further still.

The memory configuration is arguably the biggest upgrade over the other xx70 series SKUs. Moving to AD103 means the 4070 Ti Super comes equipped with a 256-bit memory interface, paired with 16GB GDDR6X running at 21Gbps, putting total memory bandwidth at 672 GB/s. L2 cache remains the same as the RTX 4070 Ti, with 49152KB.

Considering the increased core-count, it's interesting that power draw remains the same as the RTX 4070 Ti, with the new Super model still boasting a 285W TGP. This is something we focus on closely in this review, using our enhanced GPU power testing methodology, so read on for our most detailed power and efficiency testing yet.

Be sure to check out our sponsors store EKWB here

Alongside the triple-slot, triple-fan cooler, the Aero OC also comes with a mild factory overclock, support for dual-BIOS, as well as a power limit that can be increased all the way to 320W. Combine that with the aesthetic and it certainly looks like an attractive card on paper, so let's see if it does enough to justify the £659.99 MSRP…

First, a quick spec recap. Just like the RTX 4070 Ti and RTX 4070, the new 4070 Super uses a cut-down AD104 die, measuring 295mm². The fundamental building blocks are still the same of course, with the RTX 4070 Super offering a total of 56 Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs), each housing 256 CUDA Cores, for a total of 7168. We also find 56 RT cores, 224 Tensor cores, 224 Texture Units, and 80 ROPs.

TSMC's N4 node has Nvidia cranking up the clock speed significantly this generation, with the RTX 4070 Super sporting the same 2475MHz rated boost clock as the original model. Gigabyte has increased this slightly, with the Aero OC offering a 2565MHz boost.

The memory configuration also remains the same as both the 4070 and 4070 Ti. That means a relatively narrow 192-bit memory interface, so even with 12GB GDDR6X running at 21Gbps, total memory bandwidth comes in at 504 GB/s, lower than the RTX 3070 Ti. That said, there has been a substantial upgrade to the L2 cache with the Ada architecture, with the RTX 4070 now offering 49.1MB, compared to just 6MB for GA102.

Considering the increased core-count, power draw is naturally a touch higher than the RTX 4070, with the 4070 Super boasting a 220W TGP. Gigabyte has not increased this out of the box for the Aero OC, but the power limit can be manually pushed up to 320W.

Be sure to check out our sponsors store EKWB here

Unlike many other custom cards, Palit's RTX 4070 Super favours a simple design approach. It's entirely black, with a triple-slot triple-fan cooler, no RGB lighting or LEDs or any kind, no on-board fan headers, no included accessories or any other real features – it's very much just a heatsink and a PCB attached via some screws. That's not necessarily a bad thing though, and it could well appeal to those looking for a ‘set and forget' experience.

First, a quick spec recap. Just like the RTX 4070 Ti and RTX 4070, the new 4070 Super uses a cut-down AD104 die, measuring 295mm². The fundamental building blocks are still the same of course, with the RTX 4070 Super offering a total of 56 Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs), each housing 256 CUDA Cores, for a total of 7168. We also find 56 RT cores, 224 Tensor cores, 224 Texture Units, and 80 ROPs.

TSMC's N4 node has Nvidia cranking up the clock speed significantly this generation, with the reference RTX 4070 Super sporting the same 2475MHz rated boost clock as the original model. Palit has bumped this up a fair amount with the JetStream OC however, with a rated boost clock of 2640MHz.

The memory configuration also remains the same as both the 4070 and 4070 Ti. That means a relatively narrow 192-bit memory interface, so even with 12GB GDDR6X running at 21Gbps, total memory bandwidth comes in at 504 GB/s, lower than the RTX 3070 Ti. That said, there has been a substantial upgrade to the L2 cache with the Ada architecture, with the RTX 4070 now offering 49.1MB, compared to just 6MB for GA102.

Considering the increased core-count, power draw is naturally a touch higher than the RTX 4070, with the reference 4070 Super boasting a 220W TGP. Palit has increased this further though, this time with a 240W TGP for the JetStream OC.

Be sure to check out our sponsors store EKWB here

Casting our minds back to April 2023 and the release of the RTX 4070, at the time we praised the GPU for its efficiency gains and decent performance at 1440p, but it's fair to say we weren't blown away by the generational gains on offer. Fast forward to today and Nvidia is claiming 15% better performance with the new RTX 4070 Super, and at the same price (£579/$599) to boot.

The increased core-count is more-or-less the only change, so if you were hoping for more VRAM or a wider memory interface on a xx70 SKU, then you will have to hold out for the RTX 4070 Ti Super that launches next week. For now though, we have tested the 4070 Super over twelve games, plus another eight with ray tracing, so let's find out how it got on…

If you want to read this review as a single page, click HERE.

First, a quick spec recap. Just like the RTX 4070 Ti and RTX 4070, the new 4070 Super uses a cut-down AD104 die, measuring 295mm². The fundamental building blocks are still the same of course, with the RTX 4070 Super offering a total of 56 Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs), each housing 256 CUDA Cores, for a total of 7168. We also find 56 RT cores, 224 Tensor cores, 224 Texture Units, and 80 ROPs.

TSMC's N4 node has Nvidia cranking up the clock speed significantly this generation, with the RTX 4070 Super sporting the same 2475MHz rated boost clock as the original model. That's still 135MHz slower than the rated clock speed of the RTX 4070 Ti, but we would expect GPU Boost to push things further still.

The memory configuration also remains the same as both the 4070 and 4070 Ti. That means a relatively narrow 192-bit memory interface, so even with 12GB GDDR6X running at 21Gbps, total memory bandwidth comes in at 504 GB/s, lower than the RTX 3070 Ti. That said, there has been a substantial upgrade to the L2 cache with the Ada architecture, with the RTX 4070 now offering 49.1MB, compared to just 6MB for GA102.

Considering the increased core-count, power draw is naturally a touch higher than the RTX 4070, with the 4070 Super boasting a 220W TGP. This is something we focus on closely in this review, using our enhanced GPU power testing methodology, so read on for our most detailed power and efficiency testing yet.

Be sure to check out our sponsors store EKWB here

Today's testing is quite simple, then. We've taken 10 games released over the last 12 months, and tested them with the RX 6500 XT using the lowest in-game presets. We're only interested in native 1080p, so no upscaling (FSR) was used in this analysis. We're also not even thinking about ray tracing, apart from something like Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, where it simply can't be turned off.

As a minimum baseline, we are targeting 30FPS for a result to be deemed ‘playable', anything below that figure will be marked down as a fail. Of course, a lot of PC gamers will want a lot more than 30FPS, but this keeps things simple and I have a feeling we may not want to set expectations too high…

Test Setup

Driver Notes

• RX 6500 XT was benchmarked with the Adrenalin 23.12.1 driver.

Test System:

We test using a custom built system from PCSpecialist, based on Intel’s Rocket Lake platform. You can read more about this system HERE and configure your own PCSpecialist system HERE.

Benchmarks

Closing Thoughts

So that is it for the ten games tested, and I’d be really interested to hear from our readers if the results went how you were expecting. I personally wasn’t anticipating that the 6500 XT would fail in every single game, especially for long-running series like Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed – you do expect those titles to be developed with older and slower hardware in mind.

That said, of the ten games we tested, six of them delivered sub-30fps results with the 6500 XT when tested at 1080p using the lowest in-game preset, and that is a pretty shocking result it has to be said. Of course, these are modern games, but that is the whole point. Less than two years on from the launch of what was a £200 GPU (if not even more expensive due to the shortages) it can’t even keep a majority of the games we tested above 30FPS on the lowest settings at 1080p resolution.

I really think that just goes to show how bad an investment the 6500 XT would have been at the beginning of 2022 – the marketing around the 4GB VRAM buffer was pretty misleading in my opinion even at the time, and we are feeling the effects of that limited VRAM capacity to an even greater extent as we head into 2024.

That’s not even mentioning other issues, including the fact the 6500 XT supports just two display outputs, there's no H.264 or H.265 video encoding, let alone the fact we did all of our testing on a PCIe 4.0 platform, and if you use this on a PCIe 3.0 system… well, performance will be reduced even further.

So that’s where I’m going to leave this revisit – we knew the 6500 XT was dire when it came out, and less than two years on, it somehow manages to look even worse.

Discuss on our Facebook page HERE.

KitGuru says: We stand by our original review of the RX 6500 XT – it's a truly awful product.

Specification:

• Display size: 34″ / 86,36 cm
• Resolution: UWQHD / 3440 x 1440 pixels
• Screen refresh rate: 165 Hz
• Panel type: VA
• Screen surface: non-glare
• Aspect ratio: 21:9
• Brightness: 350 (± 30) cd/m²
• Contrast ratio: 3000:1
• Dynamic contrast ratio: 1000000:1
• Display colours: 16,7 M
• Colour space: 99 % sRGB, 85 % AdobeRGB, 85 % NTSC, 85 % DCI-P3
• Viewing angle: H: 178° / V: 178°
• Curvature: 1500R
• Response time: 1 ms MPRT
• Interface: 2x HDMI 2.0 / 2x DP 1.4
• Audio: 1x Audio out (3,5 mm jack)
• Integrated speakers: no
• Colours back side: black with red LED illumination
• Dimension (without base): 809 x 364 x 124 mm
• Dimension (with base): 809 x 511 x 256 mm
• Dimension (retail): 902 x 480 x 177 mm
• Swivel angle: 15°
• Base tilt: -5°~15°
• Height adjustment: ca. 100 mm
• VESA mounting: 75 x 75 mm
• Weight (product/overall): 7,86 / 10,06 kg

Be sure to check out our sponsors store EKWB here

The story begins with the Acer Predator Orion X prebuilt system, which Acer sent to us for a sponsored showcase – not a review. The system we were sent had a liquid cooled RTX 4090 in it, which led us to believe it was an international model – in the UK, as we confirmed with our Acer representative, the Orion X will only be available with an RTX 4080.

Still, we had what we felt was a very unique and interesting product, and many comments on our showcase video asked us to take a closer look at the RTX 4090 itself. We also received quite a few emails on the subject as well. As someone who reviews graphics cards for a living, I was only too happy to oblige – both because it would make good content, and I was very curious to see how a liquid cooled GPU made by Acer would perform.

And so we published our article. I was deliberate not to call it a ‘review' and you will note that no score is assigned to the graphics card in the article itself – a conscious decision as I didn't feel we could accurately ‘score' a product that won't even be available in the UK as part of a prebuilt, let alone as a standalone product. Even so, we presented a fair amount of data and the cooling performance was demonstrably worse than other RTX 4090 graphics cards.

Unfortunately, unknown to us, it would seem that the Predator Orion X we were sent was not a final retail sample and so the performance of the RTX 4090 we presented in our analysis may not be representative of the final product. To be clear, we did not know that the Orion X system, or any of the components in it, were not ‘final' retail products – we simply thought it was just a different configuration than what would be available at retail in the UK, something that happens fairly regularly in the industry.

Our intent was never to mislead or misrepresent performance of the Acer RTX 4090. We have requested a final version of the Orion X system once available so we can present a thorough, independent review that would be fully representative of the final product any of our readers would buy. We hope to follow up with that in the New Year. Acer right now seem keen to make that happen.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru says: We hope to get our hands on a final retail version of the Orion X as soon as possible.

Developed by Massive Entertainment, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is built on the latest iteration of the Snowdrop engine, notably used in Tom Clancy’s The Division series. It has been radically updated this time around though, with ray tracing at its core – it features ray traced reflections, shadows and global illumination, and while there are different quality levels, you can’t actually turn ray tracing off – it’s very much an integral part of the updated engine.

Massive Entertainment has added a wealth of tweak able options and even published a blog post explaining what each of them does. There's also four presets – Low, Medium, High, Ultra – to keep thing simple, and we test all four in the preset scaling section of this article below. Alongside that, we also find support for DLSS, FSR and FSR 3 Frame Generation, although DLSS 3 Frame Generation and XeSS are not currently supported.

Driver Notes

• All AMD GPUs were benchmarked with the Adrenalin 23.12.1 driver.
• All Intel GPUs were benchmarked with the 31.0.101.5074 driver.
• All Nvidia GPUs were benchmarked with the 546.29 driver.

Test System:

We test using a custom built system from PCSpecialist, based on Intel’s Rocket Lake platform. You can read more about this system HERE and configure your own PCSpecialist system HERE.

Preset scaling

Preset scaling is the first area of my testing, benchmarked with both the RTX 4070 and RX 7800 XT at 1440p. Overall scaling is very similar between the two GPUs, with the High preset offering about 35% better performance than Ultra. The Medium preset is only about 12% more performant than High, while Low offers another 10-12% FPS boost over Medium.

Based on these results I decided to benchmark the ultra and the low preset, so we get both the best case and worst case scenario. That said, as we show in the video, the Low preset is still a very good looking option – despite the name, I’d say it looks better than a lot of games' Medium or even High presets. The main difference compared to Ultra that I noticed is a bit more texture pop-in, as well as lower resolution shadows which caused increased amounts of flicker.

As an aside for those interested, although Avatar does have a built-in benchmark that reports a whole heap of different metrics, I decided to use a custom scene in a jungle area of the open world as it was just a bit heavier overall than the built-in benchmark. I can't yet say if it is a worst case scenario for the game as a whole just yet, but it was certainly above average from what I saw during my initial play through.

Ultra preset benchmarks

Low preset benchmarks

DLSS/FSR

We go over a brief image quality analysis in the video, but using the Quality mode for both DLSS and FSR results in very similar performance scaling, with the gains being biggest at 4K, where performance almost doubles thanks to the lower internal resolution.

Closing Thoughts

That brings us to the conclusion of our GPU benchmark for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora – hopefully you have found it useful, or if you’ve already been playing the game, do let us know how you’ve been getting on in the comments below.

No doubt about it this is a very, very good looking game, but it does have GPU requirements to match, as Ultra settings are very demanding indeed. Even the likes of the RTX 4070 Ti can’t do a locked 1440p/60fps, while native 4K gaming is out of the question for everything apart from the RTX 4080 and 4090.

Thankfully the game’s lower settings scale pretty well and still look very good as we show in the video at the top of this page. Even then, the RX 6600 for example was only delivering just below 50fps at 1080p Low settings, so there’s no guarantee the game will run well on older or slower cards.

The other main trend I noticed is how much stronger Nvidia’s offerings perform compared to AMD. Across the board, Nvidia was winning all the key match ups – with the RTX 4080 ahead of the 7900 XTX, the 4070 was beating the 7800 XT comfortably, and the 4060 was faster than the 7600. It would seem the game’s heavy integration of ray tracing features is likely the reason for this, though it does make me wonder why AMD sponsored Avatar in the first place, considering their GPUs don’t look like the best way to play, but it is what it is.

Discuss on our Facebook page HERE.

KitGuru says: We'll likely be using Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora in our GPU reviews going forwards, it's a great looking game that has high GPU requirements.

Update 15 December 2023: Since publishing this article, it has come to our attention that the Predator Orion X prebuilt system, from which we took this RTX 4090, was a late-stage engineering sample and not a finished retail product. This was unknown to us before producing this analysis and naturally the results shown must be viewed with that in mind. We will aim to get a final retail sample as soon as possible to revisit the performance. Read more on this HERE.

When I first got hands-on with Acer’s Predator Orion X prebuilt system and found out that not only does it use a custom-made RTX 4090, but one that is actually liquid cooled with a built-in pump and radiator… well, you just know I had to take a closer look! In today’s analysis, we take this card out of the Orion X and put it into our regular GPU test system to see how it stacks up against a range of RTX 4090 cards from more established brands, and it did not go how I expected…

First, for a quick spec recap. Using TSMC's 4N node has allowed Nvidia to vastly increase transistor count, up from 28.3 billion with GA102, to a staggering 76.3 billion with the largest Ada GPU, AD102. Accordingly, core count has gone through the roof, with the RTX 4090 home to 16384 CUDA cores, with 512 Tensor cores and 128 RT cores, with a sizeable increase to the ROP count too, up to 176.

Such a leap forward in process node has also allowed Nvidia to crank the clock speed significantly, with the RTX 4090 now sporting a 2520MHz rated boost clock. Acer has left their model at stock clocks.

Memory configuration is almost identical to the RTX 3090 Ti, with 24GB GDDR6X running at 21Gbps, operating over a 384-bit interface, totalling memory bandwidth of just over 1TB/s. That said, there has been a substantial upgrade to the L2 cache with the Ada architecture, with the RTX 4090 now offering 73MB, compared to 6MB for GA102.

Power draw also remains at 450W, as per the RTX 3090 Ti, with Acer's custom card also coming in at that stock power figure.

For several years now, KitGuru has been using Datacolor SpyderX colorimeter units, and the included Spyder software suite, to conduct our testing for monitor reviews. While still a useful and affordable tool, we have been looking to step things up in a way that neither the Spyder software nor hardware would allow. Enter Portrait Displays, who kindly provided us with a license for Calman Ultimate, software you may be familiar with from the likes of TFTCentral and Hardware Unboxed.

We've also improved our hardware thanks to the X-Rite i1 Display Pro Plus colorimeter, now known as the Calibrite Display Plus. This offers significantly better low-light accuracy than the Spyder, which in turn improves report contrast ratios, while it can measure brighter displays too – up to 2000 nits, which is necessary for proper testing of HDR monitors. Not only that, but it works with OLED monitors too, something the SpyderX and even Spyder X2 units still don't officially support.

Below we outline the new areas of our testing, with a brief explanation of what the data means and the sort of results we are looking for.

SDR

First is brightness and contrast. We will measure five sets of data per monitor, reporting white luminance, black luminance and the corresponding contrast ratio from each monitor, with the brightness set at 0%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%. This allows us to see the range of brightness on offer from each screen and to ensure that the contrast ratio is consistent across the range.

For the first time, we are now able to present greyscale (or grayscale for those across the pond) measurements. This test runs through a total of 20 shades, from black to white, and measures the white balance relative to the target – which for our purposes will be 6500K/D65, as is standard for monitors.

This test gives a deltaE (specifically dE 2000) result to each shade, the lower being the better. In the example above we see excellent results with an average dE2000 of just 1.1, though results for every shade tested are also shown.

Alongside that part of the results, we find a nice visualisation of the RGB balance across the range, with an average CCT (Correlated Colour Temperature) presented, with 6500K being the target. Lastly, a gamma curve is also generated, alongside an average gamma result, where 2.2 is the ideal.

Gamut relative to sRGB

With Calman Ultimate, we also have the ability for more advanced gamut testing. By default, we will be targeting the sRGB gamut which most monitors should be able to cover fully…

Gamut relative to DCI-P3

However, many wide gamut monitors now extend far beyond the sRGB colour space, so with Calman we are able to measure gamut relative to a far greater number of other colourspaces, such as DCI-P3 (as above) and Adobe RGB or Rec. 2020.

ColorChecker accuracy relative to sRGB

The same also goes for our new colour accuracy tests, using Calman's ColorChecker tool. This measures a total of 49 different colour patches and determines the accuracy of each, via a deltaE (dE2000) figure, and an average result is also provided. As a guide, Calman suggests anything below 1 is excellent, a result between 1-3 indicates some deviation, but above that is a poor result. By default, this is all done relative to the sRGB space…

ColorChecker accuracy relative to DCI-P3

But we can also show colour accuracy relative to other colourspaces, as with the DCI-P3 results shown above. Wide gamut monitors will tend to deliver more accurate results here than when shown relative to sRGB, due to the colours extending beyond the sRGB space.

HDR

For the first time in our monitor reviews, we also have the ability to properly test a screen's HDR capabilities. This includes tests similar to the ones shown above – including greyscale, gamut and colour accuracy, though with some slight differences.

Critically, Calman offers a very handy test for luminance too, where it runs through 8 different window (APL) sizes and measures the display's brightness at each one (1%, 2%, 5%, 10%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% APLs). This is key for HDR testing, particularly OLED and mini-LED screens which will likely dim as the window size increases. Now we can test this precisely to see how behaviour changes depending on the window size.

All in all, our testing is set to improve significantly as we head into 2024. If you have any questions or suggestions, please don't hesitate to leave a comment.

Thanks to Portrait Displays for providing us with a Calman Ultimate license. You can read more on their website HERE. Special thanks also to Simon Baker from TFTCentral who kindly provided assistance with getting this new testing suite setup. You can find Simon's excellent reviews at TFTCentral HERE.

Discuss on our Facebook page HERE.

KitGuru says: We look forward to presenting our first monitor review with the revamped methodology!

While we go over the key specs and features in the video, it is worth making clear that is a showcase video and not a full review. Our sample differs slightly to the one that will be available at retail in the UK, so for now the video above is a first look showcase, though we do aim to revisit the Orion X in the New Year with a full review, including all the usual details benchmarks that you'd expect.

Specifications:

• Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 408 16 GB GDDR6X
• RAM: 32 GB DDR5 (5600 MHz)
• Processor:  Intel® Core i9-13900KS Unlocked Processor
• Motherboard: Z790
• Connectivity
  • WiFi: AX WiFi 6E
  • Ethernet: 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet port
  • Bluetooth: Bluetooth 5.0
• Ports
  • USB Type-C x 2
  • USB 3.2 x 4
  • USB 2.0 x 2
  • HDMI 2.1 x 1
  • DisplayPort x 3
  • 3.5 mm jack
• Cooling: Liquid cooling (240 mm) FrostBlade 2.0 fans
• Colour: Black
• Weight: 10.3 kg
• Dimensions: 257.5 x 179 x 336 mm (H x W x D)
• Manufacturer’s guarantee: 1 year
• Box contents:
  • Acer Predator Orion X POX-950 Gaming PC (DG.E3SEK.002)
  • AC power cable
  • Setup guide

You can pre-order from Curry's for £3799 HERE. Any PC or laptop from Acer's Nitro or Predator ranges come with 3 months of PC Game Pass included, while anyone who pre-orders the Orion X before the end of the year will also receive a £100 Curry's voucher. Learn more HERE.

Discuss on our Facebook page HERE.

KitGuru says: The Acer Predator Orion X is a very compact and attractive system – we hope to get a retail model in for a full review soon.

00:00 Intro
00:48 Meet the Gigabyte RX 7000-series cards
03:11 The comparison cards from years gone by
03:41 Test setup
04:37 Alan Wake II
06:02 Assassin’s Creed Mirage
07:05 COD: Modern Warfare III
08:15 Cyberpunk 2077
09:03 The Last of Us Part 1
09:53 Starfield
11:09 esports gaming!
13:25 Performance per Watt
14:07 Closing thoughts

In this content then we pit the Gigabyte RX 7700 XT Gaming OC 12G, Gigabyte RX 7800 XT Gaming OC 16G and Gigabyte RX 7900 XTX Gaming OC 24G against the RX 5700 XTX, Radeon VII and RX Vega 64 to see exactly how far things have come since 2017. We test a variety of games, including new releases such as Alan Wake II, Assassin's Creed Mirage and COD: Modern Warfare III, at both 1440p and 4K resolution using ultra image quality settings.

Test System:

We test using a custom built system from PCSpecialist, based on Intel’s Rocket Lake platform. You can read more about this system HERE and configure your own PCSpecialist system HERE.

All GPUs were tested with the latest AMD Adrenalin drivers as of November 20th 2023. Gigabyte also sent over their M28U Arm Edition monitor which we used for all testing today, a 4K 144Hz panel that ships with a nifty desk mount instead of a typical stand.

To learn more about the Gigabyte RX 7700 XT Gaming OC 12G click HERE.

To learn more about the Gigabyte RX 7800 XT Gaming OC 16G click HERE.

To learn more about the Gigabyte RX 7900 XTX Gaming OC 24G click HERE.

Discuss on our Facebook page HERE.

KitGuru says: Be sure to watch the video for the full breakdown in performance, and thanks to Gigabyte for partnering with us for this content.

Timestamps

00:00 Intro
00:34 Screen size and resolution
01:36 Aspect ratio, curved or flat?
02:28 Different panel types
03:19 Refresh rate
04:43 Motion blur + response times
06:11 Input latency, adaptive sync
07:46 Brightness + contrast
09:56 Gamut and colour accuracy
11:06 A few other things to consider…
12:35 Closing thoughts

In the video we go over all the key areas you need to think about when looking for a new monitor. There's lots to cover, but we break down things like….

• Which screen size is right for you?
• The resolution
• Aspect ratio
• Curved or flat?
• Different panel options – IPS, VA, TN, OLED…
• What matters most for gaming
• Refresh rates and eliminating motion blur
• A monitor's response times
• Input latency
• Adaptive sync – G-Sync and FreeSync
• Brightness
• Contrast ratio
• High Dynamic Range (HDR)
• Colour gamut
• Colour accuracy
• Display inputs
• OSD controls, settings and more…

As always, there's no ‘one size fits all' recommendations we can make, but thanks to MSI we do have good range of screens on-hand to help us put this guide together. If you are interested in any of the monitors shown in this video:

• You can buy the MSI MEG 342C QD-OLED for £999, reduced from £1299, from Currys HERE.
• The MSI MAG 274UPF 4K/144Hz monitor is available for £449, that's £100 off, from Currys HERE.
• Or if you're interested in the MSI MAG 275CQRXF, we were told to expect some good deals around the Christmas period, and you can read more about it HERE.

Discuss on our Facebook page HERE.

KitGuru says: Thanks to MSI for sponsoring this video, and we hope it proves useful if you're shopping for a new gaming monitor!

We are looking for someone who will be able to produce reviews of a range of tech gear in video format and in the KitGuru style. Any experience in this sector is beneficial, however we are open to all applicants provided you can give us a sample of your written and video work so we can assess your abilities.

KitGuru is a great company to work with, we are all tech enthusiasts who enjoy gaming, so we all have very similar interests. Behind the scenes it is very close knit environment and many of our team have been with us for several years.

To be considered for this position you need:

• Skillset to present well on camera – and in English.
• The ability to meet tight deadlines.
• Strong communication skills.
• Some knowledge of video editing would be useful, but we have that capability in-house if we find the right candidate.
• Strong writing ability.
• This is a freelance position.

The successful applicant must be based in the United Kingdom, and we pay very well for this kind of work. If you are interested and feel you can meet the criteria above and want to work in this fast moving, extremely demanding sector then please send your CV along with any samples of your work to our Deputy Editor in Chief, Dominic Moass – dominic(at)kitguru.net. We would like to see samples of your work, but please note we are looking for applicants who can produce high quality videos and written articles in the in-depth KitGuru style, so your submissions should reflect that.

KitGuru says: We look forward to receiving your application. 

Specification:

• Case: Corsair 3000D RGB Airflow Gaming Case – Black (features 3x ARGB 120mm fans)
• CPU (Processor): AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D – 8-Core 4.20GHz, 5.00GHz Turbo – 96MB L3 Cache Processor w/ Radeon Graphics
• Graphics Card (GPU): AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE – 16GB GDDR6 – HDMI, DP – RDNA 3 Architecture, Infinity Cache (Single Card)
• CPU Cooling: Corsair iCUE H100x RGB ELITE 240mm Liquid CPU Cooler, Ultimate OC Compatible
• Motherboard: MSI MAG B650 TOMAHAWK WIFI: ATX w/ Wi-Fi 6E, USB 3.2, 3x M.2
• Memory (RAM): 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5/6000MHz Corsair Vengeance RGB Memory
• PSU (Power Supply): MSI MAG A850GL PCIE5 850W 80+ Gold ATX 3.0 Fully Modular Gaming Power Supply
• NVME Drive: 2TB Kingston Fury Renegade M.2 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD – 7300MB/s Read & 7000MB/s Write (Single Drive)
• Wired Networking: ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT — As standard on all PCs
• Sound Cards: HIGH DEFINITION ON-BOARD AUDIO
• Operating System: Windows 11 Home – with FREE trial of Microsoft 365 and 1 month Xbox Game Pass (64-bit Edition) (No Recovery Media)
• Warranty Service: DESKTOP GOLD WARRANTY: 5 Years' Labour, 2 Years' Parts, 2 Years' Collect and Return plus Life-Time Technical Support

Taking a closer look at the system, we start with the chassis, where Cyberpower has opted for the Corsair 3000D RGB Airflow. We've not reviewed this model but it is popular with system integrators, offering a compact mid-tower design. It's not a particularly feature-rich case but you get a mesh front panel, tempered glass side panel as well as three pre-installed 120mm RGB fans acting as intakes at the front. Cyberpower has added a plain black 120mm to the rear of the case, acting as an exhaust, while the two fans on the radiator are also exhausting out of the roof.

For the CPU itself, here we have the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D, which Leo reviewed earlier in the year. This is a fantastic all-round CPU, offering 8-core and 16-threads of Zen4 goodness, but crucially with that added 3D V-Cache which really shines when gaming, making this the fastest gaming CPU on the market right now. It's also relatively low-power, with a 120W TDP, and in the Ultra R77 Pro it is cooled by Corsair's H100x RGB Elite, a 240mm AIO with two 120mm RGB fans.

Cyberpower has paired that CPU with 32GB of Corsair Vengeance RGB memory, running at 6000 MT/s. Timings aren't the tightest, with a CL36 latency, and at the time of writing a CL30 kit only costs about £30 more than the CL36 kit, so that would have been a smart upgrade in my opinion. That said, we'd still expect the CL36 kit to perform fine and we can't argue with the capacity either.

As for the graphics horsepower, this is provided by AMD's RX 7900 GRE, a GPU we've not seen before. It was initially launched to just system integrators, but has just started to appear on the DIY market. It's essentially a RX 7900 XT but with 80 Compute Units, and only four active Memory Cache Dies, giving it 16GB VRAM and 64MB of Infinity Cache. In theory that means it should slot between the 7900 XT and the 7800 XT but we've got plenty of game benchmarks later in the review.

All of that hardware is plugged into the MSI MAGH B650 Tomahawk WiFi motherboard. We've not reviewed this one but I can't have any complaints about it from my experience, it looks solid and offered no issues during my testing. One thing worth noting is that this board doesn't support PCIe 5.0, either for M.2 drives or full-size PCIe slots, which isn't the end of the world but is unusual for a B650 motherboard, especially at this price. I also took a quick look into the BIOS as well where Cyberpower left most things on auto, but XMP and ReBar have been enabled. It's also good to see the system shipped to me with the absolute latest BIOS version installed, so fair play to Cyberpower for keeping on top of that area.

In terms of storage, Cyberpower has fitted a single M.2 drive in the primary slot just above the graphics card, underneath the integrated heatsink. The drive in question is a 2TB Kingston Fury Renegade which we reviewed earlier this year. It's a solid drive, and while it's Gen4 not Gen5, it's still going to be more than good enough for gaming. If you want to add more storage down the line, there is another Gen4 M.2 slot accessible below the graphics card which has its own heatsink too.

Switching to the back of the case, we can get a look at the power supply, MSI's MAG A850GL PCIe 5.0. We've not reviewed this one, on paper it looks fine offering 850W capacity and 80 Plus Gold certification. The ‘PCIe 5.0' part of the name just means it does support a 12VHPWR connector, which we don't need for the 7900 GRE, but the cable still comes included if you upgraded the GPU down the line.

It's hard to fault Cyberpower's cable management, too. Everything has been tied down and routed incredibly neatly, I certainly couldn't do better than this in a million years. It's just good to see how much care Cyberpower has given it, rather than just shoving everything behind the motherboard tray.

The final thing to mention is the RGB situation. Despite the RGB fans, liquid cooler and memory all being from Corsair, the cooler and fans actually plug directly into the motherboard with standard 5V ARGB headers. This means you can't use iCUE to control all the lighting, as only the memory shows up. You can supposedly use MSI Mystic Light to control Corsair's RGB memory, and it did show up for me, but no matter what I did the memory lighting never actually synchronised with the fans or liquid cooler. I guess it's not the end of the world but I don't think it's too much to ask to have all the RGB gear able to be controlled by a single piece of software.

Be sure to check out our sponsors store EKWB here

Alongside its headline 40in screen size and 3440×1440 resolution, the AOC Agon AG405UXC is sporting a flat IPS panel with a claimed 1200:1 contrast ratio. It offers a 144Hz refresh rate, and a claimed 4ms GtG response time, alongside DisplayHDR 400 certification. Today we put it through its paces and find out what the AG405UXC has to offer at the £530 asking price.

Specification:

• SCREEN SIZE (INCH): 40
• SCREEN SIZE (CM): 100
• CURVATURE RADIUS: Flat
• DISPLAY HARDNESS: 3H
• PANEL TREATMENT: Antiglare (AG)
• PIXEL PITCH: 0.26925
• PIXELS PER INCH: 93.2
• PANEL RESOLUTION: 3440×1440
• RESOLUTION NAME: WQHD
• ASPECT RATIO: 21:9
• PANEL TYPE: IPS
• BACKLIGHT TYPE: WLED
• REFRESH RATE: 144 Hz
• RESPONSE TIME GTG: 4 ms
• RESPONSE TIME MPRT: 1 ms
• STATIC CONTRAST RATIO: 1200:1
• DYNAMIC CONTRAST RATIO: 80M:1
• VIEWING ANGLE (CR10): 178/178
• DISPLAY COLOURS: 16.7 Million
• SYNC TECHNOLOGY (VRR): Adaptive Sync
• HDR (HIGH DYNAMIC RANGE): Vesa Certified DisplayHDR 400
• MULTIVIEW (PBP, PIP): PbP, PiP
• KVM: 1x USB3.2 Gen 2 type C + 1x type B
• REMOVABLE STAND: ✓
• SPEAKERS: 5 W x 2
• VESA WALLMOUNT: 100×100
• TILT: -­3.5° ±1.5° ~ 21.5° ±1.5°
• HEIGHT ADJUST (MM): 150mm
• SWIVEL: ­-30° ±2° ~ 30° ±2°
• HDMI: HDMI 2.0 x 2
• DISPLAY PORT: DisplayPort 1.4 x 1
• USB-C CONNECTIVITY: USB-C 3.2 x 1 (DP alt mode, upstream, power delivery up to 90 W)
• USB HUB: USB 3.2 (Gen 1) (4 USB downstream ports) 5Gbit
• NET WEIGHT EXCL. PACKAGE (IN KG): 11.88
• PRODUCT WITHOUT STAND (KG): 9.53

Be sure to check out our sponsors store EKWB here

Utilising an OLED panel manufactured by LG, the Corsair Xeneon 27QHD240 is a very attractive monitor on paper. We know how good OLED screens are for gaming, and driving competitive multiplayer titles at 240Hz doesn't require that much GPU horsepower either. Let's see what this screen can do.

Specification:

• Native Resolution: 2560×1440 (16:9)
• HDR Certification: None
• AC Adapter: 180W
• Display Technology: OLED
• Flicker Free: Yes
• Display Inputs: 2x HDMI 2.1, 1x DisplayPort 1.4, 1x Type-C DP Alt-Mode
• Display Surface: Non-Glare
• Display Colors: 1.07B (10-bit RGB)
• Static Contrast Ratio: 1,500,000:1
• Peak Brightness: 450 nit peak brightness, 800 nit @10%APL, 1,000 nit@3% APL
• Color Gamut: 98.5% (DCI-P3), 100% (sRGB)
• Response Time: GtG 0.03ms
• Adaptive Sync: NVIDIA G-Sync Compatible;Yes
• Screen Size: 27”
• Refresh Rate: 240Hz
• Max Resolution: 2560×1440 (16:9)
• Warranty: 3 Years / Zero Dead Pixels
• Adjustable Height: 100mm
• Weight: 9.1kg

Be sure to check out our sponsors store EKWB here

Specification:

• Case: CORSAIR 3000D AIRFLOW MID TOWER GAMING CASE
• Processor (CPU): AMD Ryzen 5 7500F Six Core CPU (3.7GHz-5.0GHz/38MB CACHE/AM5)
• Motherboard: ASUS® PRIME B650-PLUS (DDR5, USB 3.2, 6Gb/s) – ARGB Ready!
• Memory (RAM): 32GB Corsair VENGEANCE RGB DDR5 6000MHz (2 x 16GB)
• Graphics Card: 10GB AMD RADEON RX 6700 – HDMI, DP – DX® 12
• 1st M.2 SSD Drive: 1TB SOLIDIGM P41+ GEN 4 M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 4125MB/s R, 2950MB/s W)
• Power Supply: CORSAIR 750W RMe SERIES MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD
• Power Cable: 1 x 1.5 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
• Processor Cooling: PCS FrostFlow 100 V3 Series High Performance CPU Cooler
• WIRELESS INTEL® WI-FI 6E AX210 2,400MBPS/5GHZ, 300MBPS/2.4GHZ PCI-E CARD + BT 5.0
• Windows 11 Home 64 Bit – inc. Single Licence [KK3-00027]

Taking a closer look at the system, we start with the Corsair 3000D Airflow case. We've not reviewed this one but it's an affordable, compact mid-tower with a tempered glass side panel and vented front panel so we shouldn't have any concerns about airflow. PCSpecialist has fitted two 120mm fans in the front acting as intakes, while there's a single 120mm in the rear acting as exhaust, with some assistance provided by the 120mm CPU air cooler.

The CPU itself is a new one to KitGuru, as we've got the Ryzen 5 7500F. This is essentially a Ryzen 5 7600X, offering the same 6-core 12-thread configuration, but with slightly shaved down clock speeds and no iGPU. A six-core Zen4 CPU at this price range is certainly appealing so it'll be interesting to see how that performs in our testing. The 7500F is also cooled by a PCSpecialist-branded FrostFlow 100V3 air cooler in our system, but due to stock it will be replaced by a DeepCool AG400 ARGB cooler for any retail purchases. Both are fairly standard-looking 4-heatpipe tower coolers so I have no concerns there but it is worth noting.

Paired with the CPU we find 32GB of Corsair Vengeance DDR5 memory, running at 6000 MT/s. It has to be said the timings aren't the tightest, as this is a CL40 kit, however I think it is hugely impressive to get 32GB at this price point. It's arguably overkill for now, but the longevity this provides is pretty remarkable at the £999 price-point. When we initially spoke to PCSpecialist about taking this review unit they were planning on including a 16GB kit, but told us they could do 32GB for basically the same price – so why not?!

To provide the graphical grunt, PCSpecialist has opted for an AMD Radeon RX 6700, and we have the Sapphire Pulse model to be specific. This isn't the same thing as the RX 6700 XT, it's cut-down in terms of core-count and has 10GB GDDR6 memory, but we're still expecting it to do a very solid job once we get to our game benchmarks.

All that hardware is plugged into the ASUS Prime B650-Plus motherboard. We've not reviewed this one but it didn't give me any problems in my testing and taking a quick look into the BIOS shows most things left on Auto, though XMP and ReBar were enabled as we'd expect. The BIOS version isn't the absolute latest, as there was one newer update prior to the system shipping to me, but it was still from August 2023 so we can't knock PCSpecialist too hard there.

One thing not immediately visible is the SSD. PCSpecialist has opted for a single M.2 drive, and this has been installed in the primary slot underneath the integrated heatsink. Specifically we have a 1TB Solidigm P41 Plus that we have reviewed in the past. It's not the fastest drive in the world, but it will get the job done. That is the only drive in the system though, and with the sizes of current games, 1TB won't get you too far these days – but we appreciate there are some limitations with the £999 price tag. The good news is another M.2 slot is very easily accessible just underneath the graphics card, and this operates at PCIe 4.0 x4 speed, so adding another 1 or 2TB drive down the line would be a doddle.

Round the back of the case we can get a look at the power supply, a Corsair 750TXm semi-modular 80+ Gold unit. As it happens, the final spec of this system will actually be changed to a Corsair RMe series due to low stock of the TXm model, but that's actually an upgrade – PCSpecialist is clearly not skimping here, 80+ Gold efficiency is great at this price-point and 750W is more than enough for the current spec and will carry forward if you upgrade the CPU and GPU down the line, so I'd say it's a very shrewd move.

General cable management is fantastic as well. We can see everything has been tied neatly down behind the motherboard tray and nothing looks unsightly, while the GPU and motherboard 24-pin cables round the front have been tied together and tucked away as best as possible. I can't fault the overall build in general – nothing fell loose in transit, no cables were left unplugged or anything like that, it was a flawless setup experience.

The only other point to mention is relatively minor but if you like a bit of an RGB light show with your PC, the Topaz Spark won't float your boat – the only bit of lighting in the entire system comes from the RGB memory, so for the most part it looks pretty dark and stealthy. Some may like that, some may not, but that's what PCSpecialist has opted for.

Be sure to check out our sponsors store EKWB here

When I reviewed both the Intel A750 and A770 this time last year, my main takeaway was how Intel's Alchemist silicon showed promise, but the driver side was really holding things back. Thankfully, Intel has been working continuously to improve things, and when I revisited the A770 earlier this year, it was impressive just how far things had come.

Now, with the launch of the Intel Arc A580, it's time to see if Alchemist has what it takes to compete at the $179 price point, with the likes of the RX 6600 and RTX 3050 currently occupying this market segment. This review also marks Sparkle's return to our pages, with the former Nvidia partner back in the business making Intel-based graphics cards. Let's find out what it can bring to the party…

If you want to read this review as a single page, click HERE.

First, it's worth recapping the specs here. With the A580, Intel is continuing to use its ACM-GM10 silicon – the GPU that was the basis of both the A750 and A770. This time, the A580 is cut down and uses just 6 render slices, or 24 Xe cores. Each Xe core offers 16 vector engines, with each vector engine housing eight FP32 ALUs, for a grand total of 3072. Each Xe core is accompanied by a Ray Tracing Unit, while we also find 192 TMUs and 96 ROPs.

The memory subsystem, meanwhile, is identical to the A750. That means we find 8GB of GDDR6 operating at 16Gbps, with a 256-bit memory interface, giving a total memory bandwidth of 512 GB/s.

Clock speed has been cut down for the A580 however, with a 1.7GHz reference clock, but as we shall see, Sparkle has increased this to 2GHz via a factory overclock.

Lastly, total board power is rated at 185W, but this has also been increased by Sparkle, something we look at closely in this review using our in-depth power testing methodology.

Be sure to check out our sponsors store EKWB here

What is DLSS 3.5?

DLSS 3.5 was announced only recently at Gamescom 2023, bring a new feature to the DLSS family – that being Ray Reconstruction. Unlike other DLSS features, including Super Resolution or Frame Generation, the goal behind Ray Reconstruction isn’t to boost your frame rate by lowering the internal resolution or adding in new frames. Rather, it is designed to significantly boost image quality when playing ray traced games, and it does this by replacing the denoising stage of the render pipeline.

All ray traced games currently utilise one form of denoising or another, but Nvidia is keen to point out the current limitations – temporal accumulation denoisers can introduce ghosting, while spatial interpolation denoisers can reduce detail. No matter how you slice it, current so-called hand-tuned denoisers do reduce ray traced image quality in one form or another.

Not so with Ray Reconstruction – or at least, that’s the idea. By replacing hand-tuned denoisers with an AI network that has apparently been trained on 5 times the data of DLSS 3, Nvidia is claiming massively improved image quality, as Ray Reconstruction can recognise different RT effects and intelligently pull out the key details that might otherwise be lost.

In essence, it’s all about ray traced image quality. There may be some difference to performance as we’ll see later, but this is unlikely to be much of a change either way. Ray reconstruction also works on all RTX GPUs, alongside DLSS Super Resolution, though of course Frame Generation is still limited to 40-series GPUs.

Test setup

Test System:

We test using a custom built system from PCSpecialist, based on Intel’s Rocket Lake platform. You can read more about this system HERE and configure your own PCSpecialist system HERE.

Driver Notes

• All Nvidia GPUs were tested with the 537.34 driver.

All image quality testing was done using an RTX 4090, with footage captured at 4K/60FPS thanks to the Elgato 4K60.

Image quality comparisons

For a full look at image quality, be sure to watch the video at the top of this page, both to see more examples but also to see how Ray Reconstruction handles motion. Note: The below are 4K screenshots. Please zoom in using your browser if you want to enlarge the image.

Performance

As shown in the video, we observed small performance increases using DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction. As a reminder, it is currently only available with RT Overdrive enabled, so frame rates are lower than they might other wise be with less demanding ray traced effects.

Still, at 4K using DLSS Performance, the RTX 4090 saw its frame rate increase from 72FPS to approximately 77FPS in the Cherry Blossom Market area. The RTX 3080 10GB also saw a boost of 1-3FPS, from about 40FPS up to around 42FPS at 1440p using DLSS Quality. I also tried the RTX 2070 Super and this also performed marginally better with Ray Reconstruction enabled, but it was sub-30FPS even at 1080p using DLSS Quality.

Closing Thoughts

Firstly, if you haven't already, I would encourage you to watch the video at the top of this page to really get the best idea of what Ray Reconstruction looks like – we include about a dozen different image quality comparisons, focusing on both the positive and negative aspects to this new technology.

Undoubtedly though, it is an impressive innovation from Nvidia and one that has huge potential. We saw numerous examples where Ray Reconstruction offered a pretty substantial boost to clarity and detail compared to traditional denoising techniques, while also performing slightly better than said traditional denoisers.

It's not perfect though, as we did notice a few issues with shimmering and image instability in certain scenes, particularly when involving finer details and moving volumetric or particle effects. Ray Reconstruction can also ‘smooth out' an image slightly too much for our tastes, especially when tested at sub-4K resolutions.

The positives far outweigh the negatives however, and if I were to start a new game in Cyberpunk 2077 right now, I'd definitely play it with Ray Reconstruction enabled. I also think it's fair to consider Nvidia has a strong track record of improving its DLSS features – DLSS 2 was a huge leap in quality compared to the original DLSS implementation, while DLSS 3 Frame Generation has also improved since it hit the market last year – so hopefully DLSS 3.5 will only improve in time.

As part of its improvement process, I'd like to see two specific things happen. Firstly, it would be great to be able to enable Ray Reconstruction at native resolution using DLAA. Secondly, I really think Nvidia (or CD Projekt Red) missed a trick by not allowing the technology to be used with single ray traced effects, like reflections or ambient occlusion. Restricting the new technology to only the RT Overdrive mode really does limit how many RTX gamers can realistically use Ray Reconstruction – regardless of the fact they are officially supported, you really do need a high-end 30-series or 40-series GPU to run RT Overdrive mode as it is simply so demanding.

Regardless, there is clearly massive potential here and I'm personally excited to see more games announced with support for DLSS 3.5. Portal with RTX and Alan Wake II are already on the way, but hopefully we will get some more announcements very soon.

Discuss on our Facebook page HERE.

KitGuru says: DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction is a very interesting new feature from Nvidia. It's only available in one game so far and has some minor issues, but there is huge potential for this technology.

We've already reviewed the Sapphire RX 7900 XTX Nitro+ this generation and came away seriously impressed, so we have have high hopes for the RX 7800 XT Nitro+. Utilising a near-identical design as its more expensive sibling, the 7800 XT Nitro+ is certainly a looker and Sapphire will be hoping it has the cooling grunt to back up that swish design. We'll find out soon enough, so let's dive in…

First, let's take a quick look at the specs. Unlike the most recent RDNA 3 GPU – the RX 7600 – AMD has made a return to its chiplet-based design for the RX 7800 XT, as we initially saw last year with the RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT. This time around, the 7800 XT offers a 200mm² Graphics Compute Die (GCD) using TSMC's 5nm process, flanked by four 150 mm² Memory Compute Dies (MCDs) built on TSMC's 6nm node.

Internally though, the compute makeup hasn't been radically changed. Navi 32 packs in 60 Compute Units, each of which houses 64 Stream Processors, for a total of 3840 shaders. There are also 60 Ray Accelerators – one per CU – and 96 ROPs.

As for clock speed, this remains high with the RX 7800 XT, with AMD touting a boost of up to 2430MHz. Sapphire has increased this to 2565MHz for the OC BIOS, though the Silent BIOS remains with the reference 2430MHz target speed,

Meanwhile, the memory configuration is almost identical to the previous generation RX 6800 XT. We still find 16GB GDDR6 operating over a 256-bit interface, but this time the memory clocks in at 19.5Gbps, up from 16Gbps. This gives a memory bandwidth of 624 GB/s, though AMD claims an ‘effective' bandwidth of 2708.4 GB/s due to the 64MB of 2nd Gen Infinity cache.

Power draw for the RX 7800 XT is rated at 263W Total Board Power (TBP),  though Sapphire has again increased this for the OC BIOS. We are using our well-established GPU power testing methodology in this review, so read on for our most detailed power and efficiency testing yet.

Be sure to check out our sponsors store EKWB here

We were highly impressed with the PowerColor RX 7800 XT Hellhound that we reviewed just a few days ago, but the Gigabyte RX 7800 XT Gaming OC looks like it could be a potential rival. It sports the highest out of the box clock speed of any Navi 32-based graphics card to pass through our doors, and it's not small either, with a large heatsink and triple-fan Windforce cooling setup. We look at thermal performance, noise levels, game benchmarks, overclocking and more in this review.

First, let's take a quick look at the specs. Unlike the most recent RDNA 3 GPU – the RX 7600 – AMD has made a return to its chiplet-based design for the RX 7800 XT, as we initially saw last year with the RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT. This time around, the 7800 XT offers a 200mm² Graphics Compute Die (GCD) using TSMC's 5nm process, flanked by four 150 mm² Memory Compute Dies (MCDs) built on TSMC's 6nm node.

Internally though, the compute makeup hasn't been radically changed. Navi 32 packs in 60 Compute Units, each of which houses 64 Stream Processors, for a total of 3840 shaders. There are also 60 Ray Accelerators – one per CU – and 96 ROPs.

As for clock speed, this remains high with the RX 7800 XT, with AMD touting a reference boost of up to 2430MHz. Gigabyte has increased this further, to 2565MHz, regardless of which BIOS is used.

Meanwhile, the memory configuration is almost identical to the previous generation RX 6800 XT. We still find 16GB GDDR6 operating over a 256-bit interface, but this time the memory clocks in at 19.5Gbps, up from 16Gbps. This gives a memory bandwidth of 624 GB/s, though AMD claims an ‘effective' bandwidth of 2708.4 GB/s due to the 64MB of 2nd Gen Infinity cache.

Power draw for the RX 7800 XT is rated at 263W Total Board Power (TBP), though Gigabyte has increased this for both BIOS. We are using our well-established GPU power testing methodology in this review, so read on for our most detailed power and efficiency testing yet.

Be sure to check out our sponsors store EKWB here

We were generally impressed with the RX 7800 XT in our launch day review, and while it's not a huge step forward from the previous generation, it does offer convincing value against the likes of the RTX 4060 Ti and RTX 4070. While AMD's own RX 7800 XT reference (MBA) card was decent, we'd expect an experienced partner like PowerColor to improve on pretty much everything with the RX 7800 XT Hellhound, so let's find out what this card can bring to the table.

OC BIOS, left, compared to Silent BIOS, right

First, let's take a quick look at the specs. Unlike the most recent RDNA 3 GPU – the RX 7600 – AMD has made a return to its chiplet-based design for the RX 7800 XT, as we initially saw last year with the RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT. This time around, the 7800 XT offers a 200mm² Graphics Compute Die (GCD) using TSMC's 5nm process, flanked by four 150 mm² Memory Compute Dies (MCDs) built on TSMC's 6nm node.

Internally though, the compute makeup hasn't been radically changed. Navi 32 packs in 60 Compute Units, each of which houses 64 Stream Processors, for a total of 3840 shaders. There are also 60 Ray Accelerators – one per CU – and 96 ROPs.

As for clock speed, this remains high with the RX 7800 XT, with AMD touting a reference boost clock of up to 2430MHz. PowerColor has tweaked this up to 2520MHz for the OC BIOS however, while the Silent BIOS remains at stock clocks.

Meanwhile, the memory configuration is almost identical to the previous generation RX 6800 XT. We still find 16GB GDDR6 operating over a 256-bit interface, but this time the memory clocks in at 19.5Gbps, up from 16Gbps. This gives a memory bandwidth of 624 GB/s, though AMD claims an ‘effective' bandwidth of 2708.4 GB/s due to the 64MB of 2nd Gen Infinity cache.

Power draw for the RX 7800 XT is rated at 263W Total Board Power (TBP), though PowerColor has again increased this for the OC BIOS. We are using our well-established GPU power testing methodology in this review, so read on for our most detailed power and efficiency testing yet.

Be sure to check out our sponsors store EKWB here

As with any new GPU launch, there is plenty to discuss today and we will cover as much as we can in this written article and in the video review embedded above. I do feel it is important to manage expectations for the RX 7800 XT, as I don't necessarily agree with the naming scheme. On paper, it sounds like the successor to the RX 6800 XT that launched back in November 2020, but the reality is the two products are positioned quite differently.

For one, the RX 7800 XT is launching at an MSRP of £479.99, £120 lower than the £599.99 launch price of the 6800 XT. The new GPU is also built on AMD's mid-range Navi 32 silicon and sits three models below the flagship 7900 XTX, whereas the 6800 XT used the biggest Navi 21 die and was positioned a single tier below the RX 6900 XT at launch. In actuality, the pricing and position of this RDNA 3 card would put it somewhere between the RX 6700 XT and RX 6800 – but let's see how things shake out in our benchmarks…

If you want to read this review as a single page, click HERE.

First, let's take a quick look at the specs. Unlike the most recent RDNA 3 GPU – the RX 7600 – AMD has made a return to its chiplet-based design for the RX 7800 XT, as we initially saw last year with the RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT. This time around, the 7800 XT offers a 200mm² Graphics Compute Die (GCD) using TSMC's 5nm process, flanked by four 150 mm² Memory Compute Dies (MCDs) built on TSMC's 6nm node.

Internally though, the compute makeup hasn't been radically changed. Navi 32 packs in 60 Compute Units, each of which houses 64 Stream Processors, for a total of 3840 shaders. There are also 60 Ray Accelerators – one per CU – and 96 ROPs.

As for clock speed, this remains high with the RX 7800 XT, with AMD touting a boost of up to 2430MHz, though a slightly lower game clock of 2124MHz.

Meanwhile, the memory configuration is almost identical to the previous generation RX 6800 XT. We still find 16GB GDDR6 operating over a 256-bit interface, but this time the memory clocks in at 19.5Gbps, up from 16Gbps. This gives a memory bandwidth of 624 GB/s, though AMD claims an ‘effective' bandwidth of 2708.4 GB/s due to the 64MB of 2nd Gen Infinity cache.

Power draw for the RX 7800 XT is rated at 263W Total Board Power (TBP), though AMD pointed out to us that this is an ‘up to' figure. We are using our well-established GPU power testing methodology in this review, so read on for our most detailed power and efficiency testing yet.

Be sure to check out our sponsors store EKWB here