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I tried out frame gen through Lossless Scaling, and it produces some really good results. This is a really nifty little program! While yes these are interpolated frames rather than raw frames, it still leads to a significantly better experience vs running your game at half or a third of your screen's refresh rate without frame gen. I find I get the best results when running games at half my monitor's refresh rate (raw framerate) and then using frame gen to interpolate to double that, matching my monitor's refresh rate. I can definitely notice the latency penalty due to my raw framerate only being half the displayed framerate, but as I said, it's still a significantly better experience vs no interpolation at all. However if you use a controller rather than a mouse, this almost completely hides the latency penalty as a controller is a rate over time input device rather than an instant input device like a mouse. I had very good results on my Lenovo Legion Go when using x2 frame gen. I would not recommend doing x3 as the input latency penalty is very noticable when your raw framerate is only a third of your refresh rate. All in all, Lossless Scaling is awesome for handheld devices like the Lenovo Legion Go. If any of you guys own something like the Legion Go, Steam Deck, or ROG Ally, I'd highly recommend getting Lossless Scaling as that will allow you enjoy high framerate gaming on the go with AAA titles! Of course nothing beats raw frames, but frame gen is really good if you're using a controller and can't hit a 144 fps raw framerate.

MXM Type A RTX 4060 in that desktop in the second video 🤪. That should provide a nice upgrade to anyone still running a laptop with an MXM GPU.

So it appears if you just lock all your cores to the same frequency, 13th and 14th gen CPUs from Intel should not experience the degradation issue we've all been hearing about. Makes sense since you won't be supplying higher voltages to any cores than necessary. I've never understood single core boost vs all core speeds. With every CPU I've ever owned, I always lock all the cores to the same speed (usually the single core boost speed so all cores operate at that frequency if I'm gaming or working, or at around 2.5-3.5 GHz on battery power). I don't know why anyone wouldn't want to run their CPU this way as you can't truly get max performance unless all cores are running at their maximum frequency. Not only that, having a big rift in clock speed seems like it would cause problems as you'd end up frying certain cores with a much higher voltage than necessary for the speed they're running at. Do newer chips have the ability to supply a per core voltage independent of all others? I'm pretty sure they all still get supplied the same voltage, which is going to be dependent on the highest frequency core. All the CPUs I've had can run their single core boost speed across all cores at once. Is that uncommon, and thus the reason single core boost exists? To increase performance in lightly threaded workloads on chips that can't handle running that speed on all cores at once? A little disclosure, I don't usually run benchmarks but rather game on that all core frequency across all cores, or run in game benchmarks. Maybe that affects my perceived results?

A 10900K, both on my desktop and laptop.

I'm still on Windows 10 LTSC V1809. It's held up incredibly well and there are minimal compatibility issues with new software at the moment. As far as I can see, just Unreal Engine 5 titles and Starfield so far. I have so many games I can play through that the incompatibility with a few newer titles doesn't matter, and I'll only be updating if I get a performance uplift or if performance remains the same. I've benchmarked Windows 11 vs Windows 10 LTSC 1809. I get about a 20% uplift in framerate with LTSC V1809 vs Windows 11 across most of my games. I don't know how people are getting better performance in Windows 11 vs Windows 10. My benchmarking says otherwise. To be fair, they're probably comparing against standard Windows 10 rather than LTSC, but even then I wouldn't expect Windows 11 to perform better.

As the title says, humble bundle currently has a deal for a big collection of Resident Evil games. You can get 11 games for $30, which is a heck of a deal, especially if you're a big fan of the series. The deal lasts 19 more days as of the date of this post. Enjoy! https://www.humblebundle.com/games/resident-evil-decades-horror-village-gold?hmb_source=&hmb_medium=product_tile&hmb_campaign=mosaic_section_1_layout_index_1_layout_type_threes_tile_index_2_c_residentevildecadeshorrorvillagegold_bundle&_gl=1*16xde0z*_up*MQ..&gclid=CjwKCAjwnv-vBhBdEiwABCYQA-8JV3PZhb3nyQF17gicwE05JWhEUMfSWKd1f0yzHuz0KX0DX-EHoRoCkekQAvD_BwE

I wonder if this also applies to Windows 10 or even the LTSC editions of Windows 10. If so, this is yet another software tweak to further increase performance. I'll take it! Screw security, just gimme more performance! Added to my knowledge base. I keep track of software optimizations/tweaks that I hear about that will increase performance. I've compiled quite the list, each item of which on its down only does a little, but hey, a ton of small performance increases combined yields one big performance increase.

Who likes my new laptop?

I'd love to see that Strix Halo APU in a handheld! That would be super awesome! Hopefully we can unlock the power limit and push it further than 120 watts for MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE! MWAHAHAHA! I like all my stuff big, including handheld gaming devices. I don't understand why people want such tiny screens in their devices, and I say this as someone who has hawk vision. Small screens aren't very immersive. I'm taking a balanced approach to new deivces that are coming out and not immediately writing all of them off. I like desktops, laptops and handhelds. They each serve their purpose and I make sure to have every tool possible to be prepared for all situations since there isn't a single system that can do it all. I do need to be able to have fun with them though as I hate anything that's locked down. I was able to overclock my Lenovo Legion Go and games perform great on it! You know what would be awesome? A handheld with 2 m.2 slots. Equip one with an Optane P1600X as your boot drive and the other with your storage drive. Bam! Super fast hibernation and wake from hibernation that'll feel like the suspend function on a PS5.

Indeed, it's the super 10900K I acquired from @Mr. Fox. It's a beast of a chip. This is the same CPU I ran at 5.4 GHz all core in my X170SM-G when first taking it for a spin and am now running in my desktop. My super fast, low latency memory in my desktop was able to give a significant boost to my framerates in games despite using the same CPU, hence why that chip got moved to my desktop, to take full advantage of its capabilities. I remember some dude on either overclock.net or overclockers.com that had a mythical grade 10900K that could do 5.7 GHz all core on air cooling. It sold for about 3 grand. An absolute top tier chip.

I've been toying with the idea of upgrading the peltier in this cooler with a more powerful one just to see how hard I could push my 10900K. I've been wanting to top your 5.6 GHz all core achievement on it. I suppose this situation gives me an excuse to do that experiment. In any case, I think I'll go ahead and get the Li Galahad II Trinity Performance 360 as @electrosoft recommended so I can at least have a high performing cooler to fall back on should my experiments not be fruitful. I trust your guys' recommendations a lot more than any other group. I just needed confirmation that someone here thought the cooler was excellent, so thank you guys for that!

The TEC in my MasterLiquid ML360 Sub Zero cooler seems to have died. I can't get it to come back up anymore and it looks like there's a hardware error code being displayed by the cooler. Does anyone have any tips for reviving a thermoelectric element or is it completely toast? If the TEC is irrecoverable, I heard that the Lian Li Galahad II Trinity Performance 360 is one of the best AIOs on the market. What do you guys think of it?

I'd always go for high refresh rate 1080p. 1080p resolution already looks good enough to me. Does 4K look better? Yes it does, but the jump in sharpness doesn't justify quadrupling the performance cost to get the same framerate as on a 1080p monitor in my opinion. I find the jump in visual fidelity going from 1080p to 4K to be smaller than the jump from 720p to 1080p. At 1080p, everything looks good enough already, and you'd be better served going for as high of a refresh rate as possible since that would do more to increase immersion than bumping your resolution higher than 1080p. All of this is coming from someone who is a framerate junkie and is super sensitive to refresh rate. I prefer motion smoothness over resolution.

Now the only thing missing is 11900K support for the X170SM-G🤪

Nice! I did not know about these so thanks for sharing! Looks like there's a new top dog SSD for me to get. Edit: Did the calculations, and the theoretical max random read on this model is 781.25 MB/sec, or about 20% faster than the theoretical max of a P5800X. Hot dang! I also saw there was a P5810X model, which seems to be the 2.5 inch version of ths P5801X.

Achieving maximum framerates requires a combination of a fast GPU, a fast CPU (preferably with lots of cache), and the fastest, lowest latency RAM you can get. Throw in some 2nd gen Optane SSDs for super fast loading times and you're golden! I'm definitely hooked on Optane now. I plan on getting some P1600X SSDs in the near future as a P5800X is just way too darn expensive. i wish I could have one of those, but you pay an absolutely insane upcharge for the best technology. Optane scales really well with very fast CPUs. According to my calculations, my 905P will max out at about 355 MB/sec for random reads, the P1600X maxes out at 558 MB/sec for random reads, and the P5800X maxes out at 651 MB/sec for random reads. Currently, the only CPU fast enough to almost max out the 905P's random read is the 13900K, which will get us a random read of around 350 MB/sec (according to reddit users that have this CPU + drive combination). For reference, I get about 256 MB/sec with my 10900K. The P1600X and P5800X will continue to scale with faster CPUs. Eat that NAND! Meanwhile, NAND SSDs will continue dragging their feet in random read/write. Optane is truly going to be our only option for a faster, more snappy system for a while. I've heard some people don't see a difference between Optane vs NAND SSDs, but I think the reason for that is their CPU choice. In this case, your file access times are bottlenecked by your CPU, not the drive. I definitely noticed a difference after swapping from a Samsung 970 Evo Plus to an Optane 905P.

My X170SM-G is from zTecpc and has the Premamod BIOS. I don't think the stock Clevo BIOS supports XMP either, just custom ones directly from specific vendors. I don't think Crucial has a 32 GB SODIMM with a CAS latency less than 22. The only low latency kits I've seen have been from those with 16 GB or 8 GB modules.

There isn't one that I know of, but I do know that Crucial specifically listed the kit I bought as being compatible with this model laptop, which is why I got the kit. My Crucial Ballistix 2x 16 GB 3200 MHz CL16 kit was explicitly stated as being compatible with the X170SM-G on Crucial's website. Some vendors have a laptop compatibility list, so you may want to check for that.

Not unless you can find a vapor chamber the same thickness as the part of the IHS that makes contact with the CPU die. I remember someone on the old NBR forums toying with the idea of doing something like that with their P870TM.

My kit is a Crucial Ballistix 3200 MHz CL16 kit with 2 16GB modules (so 32 GB total). The XMP profile works perfectly in my X170SM-G. I don't know if anyone still sells it but the part number is BL2K16G32C16S4B if you want to search around for it. The voltage is 1.35 volts like that Mushkin kit. Voltages up to 1.5 volts are safe long term for DDR4.

Looks like the Titan 18 is getting an AMD CPU variant: https://wccftech.com/msi-titan-18-pro-ryzen-edition-gaming-laptop-amd-ryzen-9-7945hx3d/

This is where Optane really shines. It's significantly faster than Gen 5 drives in anything other than large file transfers. Basically it's better in everything that really matters for everyday usage. I got my 905P for work related stuff and use it as a boot drive, but I figured I'd try loading games from it as well since I already have the drive. Games load significantly faster if I launch them from the 905P. So if you want a real speed upgrade and don't want to wait a few more gens for drive manufacturers to drastically increase random read/write speeds, get an Optane drive while you can.

Good news for AMD fans. Ryzen 9000 X3D could have overclocking support + a homogeneous CCD design for SKUs with multiple CCDs. If this truly ends up being the case, I may get one myself. This would end up being my first AMD desktop CPU ever. I'm happy to switch camps if AMD's CPUs turn out objectively better than Intel's this coming generation in all metrics.

Tell me about it. I really liked the 19 inch class of laptops that were out back when I was in elementary school. The alienware mALX was one of the coolest laptops I saw at the time. I'd like those laptops to make a comeback. It's good that the 18 inch class has made a comeback recently, now we need the 19 inch class to make a comeback too. Big screens are awesome. The increased real estate allows you to view more at once when working, and it makes games more immersive. A 19 inch laptop is perfectly portable in my opinion, and I'd be happy to carry one around with me everywhere.

zTecpc did not sell the X170KM-G model, only the X170SM-G model. In Jedi Fallen Order specifically, my 10900K running at 5.3 GHz across all cores draws 220-225 watts of power and runs at around 203°F (95°C). This is with those cooling system mods from zTecpc + my delidded CPU + a full copper heatspreader from RockItCool for this CPU + liquid metal between the CPU and full copper IHS + liquid metal between the IHS and seatsink + max fan speed. I use Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut as my liquid metal of choice. For kicks and giggles, I tried that other very well binned 10900K I have and ran it at 5.4 GHz across all cores in this laptop. The results were similar as above in Jedi Fallen Order. I tried a Cinebench R15 run at that speed and the CPU drew 275 watts and immediately thermal throttled. These speeds across all cores work well for gaming but maybe not necessarily productivity workloads. The temperatures and power draws will depend on your workloads, but this is a good idea of what you can expect in CPU intensive games when you try maxing out the CPU speeds. The maximum amount of power I seem to be able to push indefinitely through the CPU without thermal throttling in this laptop is around 225 watts with all these mods. You'll also need a well binned chip if you want to see these speeds and not thermal throttle.