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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Friday, 18 October 2019 19:33
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Written by garfi3ld
Continuing with my coverage of the aftermarket AMD RX 5700 models, the first RX 5700 XT that came in was from XFX. They sent over their top of the line model, the RX 5700 THICC II Ultra. Now the THICC branding kind of goes along with the Fatboy branding that I made fun of at the RX590 launch and adding Ultra in as well for the name does make the cards name a little crazy, silly, and long. But none of those things have anything to do with performance. Beyond maybe being a little embarrassed when you tell everyone your new video card is THICC, the name isn’t even in the top 5 things to worry about with your video card purchase. So today I’m going to focus on the card itself, how it performs, and I want to take a look at the new cooler design. Is the new look XFX going back to some of their great past designs or is it sticking with the flashy fake carbon fiber type theme they have been doing recently? Initial looks put the new design as looking good, but let’s find out more.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Friday, 04 October 2019 18:10
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Written by garfi3ld
When I took a look at both the AMD RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT at their launch I was extremely impressed with their performance and the price point that AMD was aiming for. While I normally like blower coolers, the reference/blower cooling on both of the RX 5700 cards had a really hard time keeping up with thermals causing both heat and noise issues. Because of that, I have been excited to get my hands on aftermarket cards to see how they could potentially improve on things. Well today's the day, Asus sent over their RX 5700 Strix and today I’m going to check out what the card has to offer in both features and performance. So let’s dive in and see what sets it apart from the reference design!
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Saturday, 07 September 2019 18:33
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Written by garfi3ld
Before I head out for vacation I have been working on a lot of testing of video cards. We have a stack of RX5700 and RX5700 XT’s upcoming but there have been delays here and there on those. I have had the chance to spend some time with the RTX 2070 SUPER Gaming X from MSI. I’ve had one other 2070 SUPER aftermarket card in the office and I was impressed with it. MSI, on the other hand, hasn’t disappointed me yet when it comes to their Gaming X cards. So I’m excited to take a closer look at the card and then check out how it performed in our test suite. If you are ready to throw down on an RTX 2070 SUPER, would this be the card for you to get? I’m going to find out soon, let's go!
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Saturday, 24 August 2019 15:25
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Written by garfi3ld
With all of the GPU launches this summer it has been exciting to see the aftermarket cards trickle in as well. The RTX 2070 SUPER performed really well in my initial review of the Founders Edition card. Well, Gigabyte sent over their RTX 2070 SUPER Gaming OC 8G and I have been putting it to the test. Today I’m going to check out what Gigabyte is doing differently with theirs compared to the Founders Edition. I’m also curious to see how the extra overclock will compare with the RX 5700 XT as well. All in all, today I’m going to find out if the RTX 2070 SUPER Gaming OC 8G is the 2070 SUPER to get, let’s take a look.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Tuesday, 23 July 2019 14:09
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Written by garfi3ld
Three weeks ago Nvidia launched their RTX 2060 SUPER and RTX 2070 SUPER and I had the chance to check out both on those in their Founders Edition versions. At the same time, they also announced the RTX 2080 SUPER as well but performance details weren’t released. So while we have been checking out the Founders Edition cards, the new AMD cards, and later the new aftermarket SUPER cards I’ve been waiting to check out the RTX 2080 SUPER. Well, today's the day. I’ve had a little while to put the RTX 2080 SUPER Founders Edition through our test suite and now we can check out what is different with the card and how it performs compared to the old RTX 2080 as well as the 2080 Ti, Radeon VII, and Vega 64. The other SUPER cards had significant performance jumps, will the 2080 SUPER do the same? Let's check it out.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Monday, 22 July 2019 23:54
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Written by garfi3ld
With the recent Nvidia SUPER launch, it also means all new aftermarket cards. I had the chance to check out MSI’s highest-end RTX 2060 SUPER. Well, I also had two different cards come in from Gigabyte. The Gigabyte RTX 2060 SUPER Windforce OC which has an overclock over the Founders Edition model but sells for that same base price point and a Gigabyte RTX 2060 SUPER Gaming OC. The Gaming OC isn’t Gigabytes highest-end card, but it has the upgraded triple-fan cooling and a huge overclock which was well over all of the competition so I’m curious to see how they both perform and how they compare. Is the Gaming OC fast enough to justify a little more money and is the Windforce OC a better choice than the Founders Edition at the same price. Today we are going to find out!
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Tuesday, 16 July 2019 18:14
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Written by garfi3ld
Man, its been a crazy couple of weeks. Nvidia launched their RTX 2070 SUPER and RTX 2060 SUPER a week and a half ago. I had the chance to check them out and was impressed with the jump in performance they were both offering over the previous models. But then this past weekend AMD brought out their RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT which stepped things up even more. So today I’ve got our first RTX 2060 SUPER aftermarket card in, the MSI RTX 2060 SUPER Gaming X and today I’m going to see how MSI’s Gaming X improves on Nvidia’s design as well as checking out how an overclocked 2060 SUPER compares with the new AMD cards. Let’s dive in!
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Thursday, 11 July 2019 17:02
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Written by garfi3ld
Well I’m a little late to the party on this one, during the mad dash to the combined NAVI and 3rd gen Ryzen launch I ran into a lot of issues with our GPU test bench and late in the process after spending almost a full week in the original testing I dropped everything to switch the bench over to X570 and redid all of the work. The good news that gave me time to come in with numbers running on a faster and more accurate system to what a lot of you might be looking to run the RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT on. So today I’m going to take a look at what AMD has going on with their long-anticipated launch, check out the two reference models they sent, then put them through our tests to see how they perform. The Ryzen 9 3900X was a monster, it will be interesting to see how an all AMD system will perform.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Tuesday, 02 July 2019 09:18
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Written by garfi3ld
I took a look at the new RTX 2060 SUPER Founders Edition first and was impressed that Nvidia basically turned it into the RTX 2070. With that in mind, it only made me wonder even more where that put the also announced RTX 2070 SUPER. So today I’m going to dive into the changes, take a look at the Founders Edition card, and then run the RTX 2070 SUPER FE through our ever-expanding benchmark suite. After that, we can take a look at pricing and see where the new card fits into the market. I don’t think I will ever get used to the SUPER branding when Nvidia had a few throwback options like GT and Ultra that they have used before. But beyond that, I’m excited to see how the 2070 SUPER performs.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Tuesday, 02 July 2019 09:00
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Written by garfi3ld
Nvidia launched their RTX lineup 9 months ago with the RTX 2080 Ti and RTX 2080 and at the time there weren’t really games available to take advantage of the RTX specific features. RTX was one of those chicken or the egg situations where the cards to be able to handle real-time ray tracing needed to be available before any games were going to offer it as an option. Well, this years E3 showed a lot more games with ray tracing support in the pipeline and Nvidia hasn’t slowed down their RTX push, even with their launch of a few GTX cards early this year. In fact, now that they have been working with Turing for a little while now they have been able to pull a little better performance out of their cards. Of course, normally this would be when they launch their Ti cards but that was used last year so today they are introducing a few new cards with the SUPER designation. They have the RTX 2080 SUPER, RTX 2070 SUPER, and the RTX 2060 SUPER. Right now I’m going to take a look at the new RTX 2060 SUPER Founders Edition card to see what makes these new cards SUPER and then put it to the test through our benchmark suite as well.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Wednesday, 01 May 2019 23:07
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Written by garfi3ld
So the GTX 1650 launched last week and I have been a little behind the curve on getting our card tested and reviewed. The new card follows the same naming of the GTX 1660 and GTX 1660 Ti which were launched in February and March respectively. The GTX 1650 is another Turing based GPU only this time based on the TU117 GPU and with a significantly lower TDP. Like the GTX 1660 and GTX 1660 Ti, there isn’t a Founders Edition of the GTX 1650 so today I will be checking out the MSI GTX 1650 Gaming X, an overclocked model.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Thursday, 14 March 2019 13:09
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Written by garfi3ld
Nvidia introduced the GTX 1660 Ti late in February and this answered a lot of questions about how the rest of the product stack would fill in under all of their recently launched Turing based RTX cards. The GTX 1660 Ti showed that they were bringing Turing to the mainstream cards by dropping ray tracing and it quickly jumped past the GTX 1070 and put AMD into a pricing bind with the Vega 56 as well as the RX590. Well, the GTX 1660 Ti name did bring up a lot of questions as to why they didn’t stick with the 2000 series or even move up to the 1100 series from the previous GTX cards. But the Ti in the name did let us know that there would most likely be a model that slotted in below it and today that card, the GTX 1660 launches. There aren’t Founders Edition models so we had to reach out to get a card and Zotac was kind enough to send their GTX 1660 so I am going to take a look at that today and see how Nvidia’s new card compares to the GTX 1060, GTX 1660 Ti, and of course the RX580 and RX590 from AMD.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Wednesday, 13 March 2019 18:22
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Written by garfi3ld
So the GTX 1660 Ti has proven to be popular and a nice step up from the GTX 1060 Ti as a card for 1080p focused budget builds. I have had a few in the office now but I love getting the chance to compare card to card between manufacturers to see what everyone is doing for styling and to compare the performance of the coolers which are typically the most drastic difference between cards that share the same base GPU. In this case, Gigabyte sent over their GTX 1660 Ti OC 6G which is their entry level GTX 1660 Ti. It does still come overclocked with a clock speed of 1800 MHz over the 1770 MHz that Nvidia recommends but this is a touch lower than the other GTX 1660 Ti’s that I have had in. But with the RTX 2060’s so close in pricing to the GTX 1660 Ti’s that are selling over the base price these more basic GTX 1660 Ti’s seem to be in the sweet spot so I excited to see how the Gigabyte card does!
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Saturday, 23 February 2019 18:27
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Written by garfi3ld
Well, the GTX 1660 Ti that has been rumored for what I can only assume is 15 or more years is finally out. I took a look at an MSI card in our initial launch and while impressed with the performance of the GTX 1660 Ti I did have a few concerns with the card itself. Luckily EVGA also sent over their GTX 1660 Ti XC Ultra. So I’m going to take a look at EVGA’s top GTX 1660 Ti and see what they have to offer. It has a boost clock of 1860 MHz which is faster than the MSI Ventus XS’s 1830 MHz and well above the 1770 MHz stock speed that Nvidia had listed for the 1660 Ti. So let's dive right in and see what EVGA has to offer.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Friday, 22 February 2019 19:16
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Written by garfi3ld
Nvidia has been slowly refreshing their product stack for about six months now as they have been introducing their new RTX 2000 series of cards. Well, we are finally getting down into the sweet spot and today they are introducing the replacement to the always popular GTX 1060. But what may come as a surprise to some of you is that replacement isn’t going to be an RTX card. Nvidia’s new card is still Turning based, but with this launch, they have dropped the Tensor and RT cores that make an RTX card so this launch is a GTX card. Today they are launching the GTX 1660 Ti. I’m not going to pretend to understand the reasoning for the move away from the 2000 series numbering, but today I’m going to dive into what is different with the GTX 1660 Ti and then check out the MSI GTX 1660 Ti Ventus XS and see how it performs.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Thursday, 21 February 2019 00:09
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Written by garfi3ld
With the RTX 2060 launch Gigabyte introduced a whole variety of models including a Mini ITX model that really caught my eye but also a new “pro” designated model that looks to keep the styling simple. The RTX 2060 Gaming OC Pro 6G is the card they have been sending out and I have been checking out the card for a little while now and today I’m going to finally dive into it for testing. This isn’t the first RTX 2060 I have had in the office. The Gaming OC Pro 6G is interesting because it doesn’t have crazy lighting or anything flashy, but it has the same 1830 MHz clock speed that the MSI Gaming Z had. So the Gaming OC Pro 6G has the potential to be a sleeper with great performance. Let's dive in and check out what it's all about!
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Monday, 18 February 2019 20:28
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Written by garfi3ld
So we recently figured out that the RTX 2060 is a bit of a gem with performance rivaling the GTX 1070 Ti and in some situations, even the GTX 1080 and that was just with the Founders Edition. I also had the MSI RTX 2060 Gaming Z 6G come in and MSI has cranked up the clock speeds from the 1708 MHz boost clock of the Founders Edition up to 1830 MHz. So today I’m going to see what the additional bump in clock speed does for performance and I’m also curious how MSIs cooler design performs as well. With it being tax time, a lot of you might be looking for a gaming performance bump for this season. Is the MSI RTX 2060 Gaming Z the way to go? Let’s find out!
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Thursday, 31 January 2019 21:28
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Written by garfi3ld
This year at CES Nvidia introduced more than self-driving car technology. They announced their latest video card, the RTX 2060. The RTX 2060 continues to fill in the RTX lineup which started months ago with the RTX 2080 Ti and RTX 2080 launch. The RTX 2070 came in October and things have been fairly quiet from Nvidia. But the rumor mill has been teasing the RTX 2060 for a while now. The RTX 2060 is based on the same TU106 GPU as the RTX 2070, only cut down slightly from 15 SMs to 10 SMs. While we are a little late to the party, we do have the RTX 2060 Founders Edition in hand and today I’m going to check it out and see how it compares to the previous RTX cards and check out the performance of the RTX 2060 to see if this is the card you should be picking up in your tax time builds.
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Monday, 14 January 2019 17:37
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Written by garfi3ld
One of the card designs that stood out to me with all of the RTX launches was EVGAs new designs. I was surprised to see them go with a transparent cooler design that lets you look inside and see the heatsink. I wanted to get a closer look so EVGA sent over their RTX 2070 XC Gaming. The XC Gaming isn’t their fastest RTX 2070, but it does have the same overclock that the Founders Edition card and it sells for less. So I was really curious to see how it performed and to see if it might be worth spending some of that valuable post-Christmas or tax time money. So today I’m going to run it through all of our normal testing and take a closer look at the card itself. Let's go check it out!
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Category: Video Cards
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Published: Wednesday, 12 December 2018 13:03
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Written by garfi3ld
Well RTX finally has a game that supports it and the market for GTX 1080s and GTX 1080 Tis has all but vanished with new stock finally clearing out so it is looking more and more like RTX is the way to go on the high end of the market. Well not long after the original launch of the Founders Edition cards I did get an aftermarket card in from Asus, their ROG Strix RTX 2080. It's about time I put it through our testing and take a closer look at the card to see how a 2080 with an aftermarket cooler performs. So today I’m going to do just that, then at the end revisit and see if the RTX 2080 is any better of an option 3 months past the launch.
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