Talon

Nice work! That is a substantial improvement. 30 series coolers were just OK. The 40 series is a pretty substantial improvement. The lack of backside vram on the 40 series is very helpful too.

Dang, I have a 4090 FE in my other rig and I love it. It runs ridiculously cool on my end, but I'm not on an open air bench. I have fans blowing over that chonky boy.

💯

Higher performance with APO, lower power consumption. Intel being a bunch of di**s not giving this to 12th and 13th gen though. I am happy to see HWU shit all over Intel in this case because they deserve it. APO, if implemented into enough games moving forward should be on all of their LGA 1700 hybrid CPUs. This type of anti consumer behavior is BS and needs to be called out as such.

Wow Newegg is sold out basically, and my local Microcenters have almost no stock left, just a few cards. Here we go again!!!! Again, again again...

I edited the BIOS for the Z690 Dark to enable Intel Dynamic Tuning Technology in the BIOS, and therefore Intel APO or Application Performance Optimization with 14900K for BIOS version 2.13. As it stands, this is not available in the default BIOS and therefore you cannot enable APO or use the required DTT driver. I used the Asrock Z790 Nova Intel DTT driver as all mobos are using a generic Intel driver package so can be cross installed. https://imgur.com/iSJMx2Z I tested Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, and it's working 100% like my Z790 Apex with 14900K. APO ON: Average Framerate (99th percentile): 176.03 Max. Framerate (99th percentile): 272.78 Min. Framerate (99th percentile): 97.92 APO OFF: Average Framerate (99th percentile): 150.81 Max. Framerate (99th percentile): 231.70 Min. Framerate (99th percentile): 94.0 Works a charm! Apparently were going to have to fix these issue ourselves going forward with EVGA completely MIA. Thankfully it appears we can at least fix some of the issues and big thanks to them for leaving the BIOS open to custom modded BIOS flashing. I'm going to try and get the newest Microcodes added to the BIOS and flashable without brick like this fix. Unfortunately I am learning as I go and really have to rely on other peoples guides. Hopefully I can get it figured out.

When are we setting up the notebooktalk/NBR squad lol?

Awesome! Love this haha. I'm about to punt my Z690 Dark right out of the window. EVGA is not bringing updated BIOS for 14th gen, and while that isn't a huge loss, it sort of is. It kills some of the resale value, it won't have support in the future for any issues that may arise with future hardware. We had plenty of those with new RTX 4000 series that needed BIOS updates to correct. I think I'll drive over late tonight or early tomorrow morning to grab one of the few remaining APEX at my second local MC. My closest MC sold out last night. So I gotta drive a tad bit further to get this one.

I know, my jaw hit the floor when I first got it working. I was like the first person outside of Intel to test this feature? Like WTF. Not a single reviewer looked at it, some specifically mentioned they weren't looking at it on launch day. That is somewhat BS but somewhat on Intel for not explaining that this feature really does work, albeit limited in scope right now with a somewhat annoying installation process. I almost gave up on getting it working myself, but through some persistence I figured it out and got it working. The Verge did some testing about an hour ago and also saw large gains, but not as large as mine. The reasoning for that is they used the Very High preset which isn't as CPU limited, I specifically used the low presets to look for the CPU difference. Additionally I am using stupid fast memory/ram setup which helps extend that lead. Once you remove the governor that has been in place, the high speed ram can now scream it seems. Either way they got pretty decent gains. The hardware scheduler that Microsoft is using is really that bad which is why Intel is fixing it. Then there are some games that don't like the loading of E cores or are inappropriately assigning tasks to them. This driver fixes that issue. It seems Intel is sick of their CPUs under performing and are likely going to go through and test/fix each game, similar to ARC division and their driver improvements. AMD already does this with their 7950x3D driver requirements. This serves 2 fold. First, it fixes the game performance for consumers, and it also shows the Intel CPUs performance properly. Some had made the argument you can simply disable the E cores and see the same uplift. Wrong. I've tested this and in Siege it does help quite a bit, about half actually, but it still does not reach APO performance. In Exodus, performance suffered terribly by disabling E cores. In both cases, APO was the clear winner. So there is more going on under the hood. Moreover, hardware reviewers are not going to go through games and turn On/Off E Cores, they're not going to mess with thread affinity or priorities. So even if gains be had by doing this, they won't do it, they won't report on it, and this can show an Intel CPU in a worse light than what is possible. Again, this APO fixes that issue and some or all of those gains AMD CPUs have enjoyed might now get clawed back. Best of all, APO is a driver. It's listed under the chipset section as Intel DTT. You install that driver and it's automatic. Nothing else needs to be downloaded or done by the end user. The Windows APO OSD app is not necessary and APO is on by default with driver install. The App only serves a purpose to disable APO or ensure it's on, but not installing it would not prevent it from working. This driver setup makes it apart of Intel's motherboard/setup. Meaning reviewers can't simply say they aren't going to use APO, or not install a required diver for the motherboard. That would be like saying they're not going to test a new Nvidia card with the proper driver, or they're going to test a CPU without installing chipset drivers, etc. APO is a default setup for the system after required driver install. It's actually genius. The part that pisses me off is the gate keeping here. This should be for ALL LGA 1700 CPUs. Keeping this for only 4 SKUs is complete and total BS.

Intel now offering DLC FPS upgrades for their CPUs in the form of Intel APO -- Intel Application Optimizer. Only works on 14th gen i7 and i9 K KF CPUs, ain't that nice? Reminds me of the days when you could buy Intel performance cards in stores to get HT on non HT CPUs lol. I've tested it in the 2 games they support so far, more 'profiles' to come. Rainbow Six gained 200~ fps for me at 1080p low settings. Went from 667 to 857. Metro Exodus went from 273 to 339 fps. Like what the heck. Downloadable FPS, Now I've seen it all. 🤨 https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/intel®-application-optimization/9NZ98VNK5X1S?hl=en-us&gl=US

7000MTs on the DDR5 is insane lol. Nice work!

My Microcenter has it in stock, I reserved one. Now I'm sitting here debating driving over before they close to grab it, or waiting and sleeping on it. I hate myself. But I'm sitting here wanting that ENCORE baby. lol. Why, why do I do this to myself. I will torture myself, FOMOing that board, and then do it all again when Arrow Lake drops. I need hardware rehab.

This is fake news. At least from what I found. I updated to latest BIOS for my Z790 Apex and 14900K today after I snagged one. My long term PWL was set to 253w with 14900K. Odd. I of course removed that and went about my business as usual.

These cracks are ridiculous. It's happening on all cards. They're too heavy unless you use the brace. I have a brace under my cards since launch and haven't had an issue. But they need to make it clearer to consumers that the card needs this to be used. To be fair, all of my cards, except for the FE had a brace in the box.

Pretty much the review I expected.

I've been testing one of these with a 280mm AIO on my living room setup. They work pretty dang well! Temps are comparable to the best pastes out there. I ordered the 38x38 sheet and then cut to size. When I cut it down a tad the sheet to slightly crack so that actually could have hurt temps IMO. I have a second one that I'm saving for 14th gen so don't want to retest. But overall I'm impressed with this. Could be good for those that don't need absolute best, don't want the mess while quickly testing a setup, etc. I'll keep using it for that setup since I leave it stock and don't need the best temps possible.

Pretty interesting, I found that Reflex helped latency quite a bit vs not using it. You can feel a significant different in the mouse movement/latency. Either way, definitely a good start for AMD, just wish it wasn't tied to FSR upscaling.

I think I have you address, when I get back from my 4 day I'll drop you a tube in the mail. I bought 3 when I got it and I don't think I'll be using all 3x anytime soon.

Nice! Good to see the temp drop and your gap came down a bit more too. Good stuff. I'd be curious to see how well the temp shakes out using the paste. I personally have not tried it.

See my above comment. That is AMDs FMF or Fluid Motion Frames, only works on their 7000 series RX GPUs. So unless you have one of those, it will not work. It's a driver side toggle. @tps3443Ya, unfortunately more exclusive features lol. https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fgdxrp1niy8rb1.jpg%3Fwidth%3D1404%26format%3Dpjpg%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D0eef5d0124a6a02c33762d9a37e790793ef68c99 More beautiful examples of FSR3 Frame Gen 😁

That is AMD FMF or Fluid Motion Frames and it's EXCLUSIVE to AMD 7000 series cards. You can't use that unless you have one of those cards. It's a driver side frame gen thing, but not nearly as good as the game dependent version. The only 2 games you can use the game dependent, hardware agnostic frame gen is Forspoken and Immortals of Aveum, both really shit games lol. Hopefully more games to come soon.

Tested FSR3 Frame Gen on my 4090 in both games. Unfortunately it's linked to forcing FSR, no DLSS available and looks like garbage because of this. The tech itself does seem to work decently enough, and seems to take a different approach than Nvidia. They are like doubling the frame vs AI generating a frame. This leads to visual issues. See below. It's also odd to me that they didn't do a preview/early sample to tech outlets that usually review this stuff. Then they released it with 2 terrible games. Either way I gave it it try since I have access to both games and ya not terribly impressed. This is at 4K Quality FSR with Frame Gen in motion. Horrible ghosting, fizzles, and halos around objects. Some of the textures are just missing basically.

Yes I grabbed mine on eBuy7. I went with the 7958 version for the paste.

Yes, I use the 7958 on my desktop with 13900K/Apex. It's good stuff. I have the 7950 Pad on my laptop 4090 while the bare die 13900HX is using LM. I also tested the 7950 Pad in the past on a 6750 XT that had a huge delta between core and hotspot. It not only improved core but lowered the delta down to around 10c between core/hotspot. So the pad/sheets work great on GPUs.